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SUN-URANUS
SIRENS << continued from previous page CELESTE The constantly changing Sun-Uranus Gemini nature includes an extremely bright mind and active imagination, coupled with a stubborn independent streak. As a young girl, Celeste knew how she wanted to live. She once told a teacher, "I want to get married, raise horses, and live on the same street as my husband." Celeste realized even then that she was going to need some space in her togetherness. But with the moon in the relationship-oriented sign of Libra, she first needed to experience a closely bonded union. After traveling the world and having many adventures, she fell in love at 23 with a famous poet-singer in her home of Quebec. Though never married, the couple lived an earthy and artistic life together on a farm for many years. The musician matched Celeste's inner image of the beloved, that of "an earthly man who would relate to me in the most heavenly way possible." (Pisces on the 7th house cusp). As many of us did at that age, Celeste lost herself in the relationship, and it ultimately fell apart. Her next serious encounter, in the late 80s, was with a Sagittarian spiritual teacher who surrounded himself with beautiful women at a California retreat center. "It was all about union and communion," she recalls. "I was with him 24 hours a day, and I was in heaven the whole time." But there was a problem. After 11 years Celeste could take the lack of earthy sex no longer and opted for a very sexual-but brief-marriage instead, to someone outside the spiritual community. The vivid fantasies of Celeste's Sun-Uranus Gemini mind, combined with the lack of earth planets in her chart, had led her into yet another situation that didn't suit her-and she had to break free from it. "Freedom is the most important thing for me," says Celeste, "but it has also created a lot of pain for myself and others. I've been abandoned a thousand times and done my own abandoning." And yet she has also been a mythological force in her men's lives. "I think that the Courtesan, or Muse, is my archetype. Women like myself are schools for men. That's why, for us to look for conventional or enduring relationships is to miss our calling. We have an incredible task, which certainly isn't more important than being a faithful wife, but because society only honors the faithful wife and not the courtesan, we are not honored. I love the Lilith myth; she was like the dark Eve. I see us as that, too. Kind of tricksters of the heart, not to deceive but to jar men's inner images of women, which are so limited." In a nod to her Virgo Ascendant, Celeste bought a cabin in a small, high-desert town some years ago to help ground herself. "I even put up a little white picket fence around my cabin," she laughs. "Before I would have died before coming anywhere near a white picket fence. But I wanted to befriend the conventions I had run away from most of my life." Being a rule-breaker is an inherently Uranian trait. But Celeste, 57, says she has learned over the years what freedom really means. "I'm doing a lot of things now that are conventional, but they allow me unconventionality in other areas, like my art or my writing. I don't have to dress weird anymore, or drive a really outlandish car." With three planets and the North Node in Gemini near the Midheaven, Celeste also channels her restless nature into a creative career as an antique dealer. Menopause gave Celeste much relief. "Now that I look back on my life before The Change, I see that it was deeply dominated by the erotic force. I was seeking this electric union with everything: music, food, men, God, dogs, all of it. It brought me a hugely interesting life, but also a very painful one, because it didn't bring me peace. I was always hungry for that intensity. Now the quality of it has changed, because I don't need to act on the impulse like I did." Celeste has still not manifested her ideal of living down the street from her husband. Instead, she has been cohabiting for the past year with her much-younger boyfriend. The couple moved slowly, taking four months to finally dive into sexual waters-with satisfying results. "Much of what I believed about myself in relationships, the opposite turned out to be true," she says. "For example, I never thought I could live happily and freely with someone, and now we're sharing a one-room cabin." This works, she adds, because she and her partner are so similar. "We both have a great need for complete trust and freedom and an equally great need for physical contact." Celeste's partner, an unconventional Aquarian, is sometimes away on business for months at a time. "But we love our lives apart as well as together," she says. "We do have issues to work out, but this is done with love. It's a whole new ballgame." DIANA The Sun-Uranus Cancer often appears deceptively mellow on the outside, but a rebellious nature lurks not far below the watery surface. "I've always been different," says Diana, an easygoing Sun-Uranus Cancer. "Always done things that weren't totally acceptable at the time." By the age of 13 Diana was pushing her rather frail body (Chiron in the 6th square Saturn) to its limits by hard core surfing and dropping acid. By 18 she was traveling the world, smuggling hashish out of places like Afghanistan. Even with music, her chosen profession, when she played the sax she "had to be out front channeling Coltrane and being wild." Diana was determined to be fearless in ways that women usually aren't. "A lot of what I've done was to prove that I can do whatever guys do." Rather than the seductive Siren archetype, here we see the androgynous side of Sun-Uranus-which has its own magnetic appeal. Often the only woman in a group of men, Diana learned early on how to be one of the guys. The result, she says, is that men have always seen her as being very real. "I don't play girl games. There's nothing that shocks me, which seems to be a relief for men. I think I really see them, and they like that. Especially now that I've taken on the role of a teacher, they find me fascinating because I've done so many things and lived such a free life. I've never had kids, never been tied down by anything." Diana has moved almost every year of her life (Uranus conjunct the Sun, ruler of her 4th house) and had a number of career changes along the way. "Every time I move, I meet whole new circles of people, so that now I have friends who are like family all over the U.S. and Europe. It used to bother me that I didn't have roots, but now I realize I have roots wherever I go." (Since Sun-Uranus rules my 4th as well, I also move quite frequently. Perhaps it's part of the compelling need to break free of tradition and create family in unorthodox ways.) Diana now makes her living doing a form of healing work she calls "tracking," in which she tunes into another person's body to release energy blockages. But in another age, Diana could well have been a courtesan. "I'd rather be a mistress and keep my own space than have to deal with the mundane aspects of relationship," she says. Even at 54, her arthritic legs barely functional due to the early abuses of surfing, men still gravitate to Diana. "I think I will always be attracting men no matter how decrepit the body is, and I also see that in my Sun-Uranus friends. We're very interesting women who have a lot more going for us than just the physical. I think of us, who happen to be women who never had children, who do interesting things in their careers, as being similar to what courtesans were. Able to discourse with men on a wide variety of subjects, loving great sex and companionship and beautiful gifts. Men give me beautiful presents. I know there's something about me that almost demands that." (A regal moon in Leo, perhaps?) Though she has had several intense, monogamous relationships, one of which lasted for 12 years, Diana was often on the road touring while her partner was off doing his own thing. She admits that the idea of a long-lasting marriage is still a bit scary for her. "I think I'm threatened by permanence. My nightmare is being in front of the TV all comfortable and cuddling up." After living alone for so long, she adds, "I may be too set in my ways. Plus, I get all the intimacy I need from my men friends." But doesn't she miss the sexual aspect of relationship? "I like sex and I'm always open to it," she explains, "but if there's no man around I'm interested in, there's nothing to miss. I'm really not looking. I find something sad about people who are looking, because in some way it takes you away from the sweetness of your life." Diana has reached a place where she no longer feels separate from things. "I can't say I get lonely; I've found a core of connectedness where I don't have that same longing as I did in my 20s and 30s. In each moment I feel connected to whoever or whatever or wherever I am, that truly feeds me so that nothing is missing." Lovemaking, for Diana, is similar to playing jazz. "It's like being completely improv, never knowing where you're going next. In my last relationship, we were in past lives together during sex. Things were happening in so many dimensions at once. When two people are in the same vibration, it's an amazing journey." Not surprisingly, Diana has remained friends with most of her exes. "With the men I've been intimate with, the love never goes away. We are still connected; we'll love each other till we die." .
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