Mystic Astrologers' Blog

Me First! October 11, 2010

This isn’t my week to share.  Last week, when I should have been sharing on the blog, passed by with me focused on other deadlines and clients each day late into the evening.  So….here I am trespassing on my friend’s week.  Since today is a holiday celebrating the Italian adventurer, I thought I would talk about competition versus collaboration.  Probably you are wondering how I got to that topic thinking about Columbus.

Yesterday I was at a Scottish Fair in Scotland, Connecticut with visiting friends.   At one of the booths there was a banner stating “We beat Columbus by a hundred years.”  This banner reference a claim that Scottish adventurers had actually been to America first, way before Columbus. And let’s not forget that Vikings also have a claim on being first.  Now I don’t know who was actually first, although it is a fact that Columbus did not set foot in North America, but this controversy does illustrate the competitiveness of human beings. 

I know that I have a competitive streak when I’m playing board games and I’m certain that it comes out in other venues.  It is not part of myself that I particular like.  In these changing times I sense that the culture and the drives of the human race need to be refocused.  We really do need to think in terms of collaboration and mutuality, not who can get there first, who can win.

With Saturn in the Sign of Libra until October 2012 we are being given a chance to consider the importance of relationships and being connected to other people, perhaps even collaborating and sharing rather than competing.  Saturn in Libra takes relationships seriously.  Fairness and justice in relationships is a positive expression of Libra.  Believing that everyone should get a fair share, rather than one person or group getting  it all, is the focus.  Another way we might reflect on the energies of Saturn in Libra is that we are being given an opportunity to think about  the welfare of the community, the whole world, over our singular interests.

In Columbus time finding the quickest route to the Far East meant the possibility of wealth in spice trading and glory for Spain and Italy who were financing the journey.  When Columbus found new lands  instead of the spice route, his diaries suggest that his plan was to enslave the natives he found in the new lands as a resource for work in his homeland.  He did not see the natives as equal to himself , but rather as beings to have power over.  

Adventuring, associated with the Sign of Aries, opposite of Libra, is  about winning, being first.  Columbus’ claims  that he was first to arrive at the new lands makes him a winner.   We now celebrate  his adventure, focused on the one person, Columbus, not also on the crew of 90 men who supported the venture.  My point is that this attitude of power and winning being focused on a personality or individual is engrained in our thinking and even our celebrations and holidays like Columbus Day.

As we move forward in new adventures what if we could change the lens that seems prevalent to the ways things happen?  Let’s change the foundation of  thinking about succeeding or winning.  What if Columbus had tried to learn from the natives living and surviving in the lands discovered rather than thinking to dominate and enslave them? Maybe human kind would have a much richer experience with shared knowledge.  And how different might the attitude have been if the crew of the three ships had been recognized for the important support given to the adventure?  Would that have developed into corporations being a joint adventure of management and workers all contributing to the development of the best product possible.

Is it too late for an attitude adjustment?  I don’t think so.  At least I’m trying to play board games differently.  With Saturn in Libra we are being given an opportunity to form a more elegant structure of  accomplishing, adventuring, and surviving together with collaboration and mutuality.    May it be so!

Jacqueline    

jacqueline janes @astrotherapist.com