Friday, December 13, 2013

Happy Birthday Sagittarius! Spotlight on...Bruce Lee!



  Hey y'all! I'm looking out my window right now and there's snow on the ground. It's not snowing, it snowed the other day, and it's just been too cold to melt. V exciting for a Southern Girl like me. I hope you are all enjoying this festive time between Thanksgiving and Christmas (even if you don't celebrate either one, they're still pretty hard to avoid- trust me I tried for years.) otherwise known as Sagittarius Season. Sagittarius Season comes when we need it most, helping us rise from the moody, inward depths of Scorpio Season and encouraging us to live it up with fun celebrations for people of all ages. On my part of the planet, it's also the darkest part of the year, and we compensate for that by having lots of parties and festivals of lights. And isn't that the role of most Sagittarians you know? To shine their special light and bring the fun?

  And shine they do! Sags take fun to a whole new level, it's their calling. With a Sagittarius, anything can become an adventure. A more elevated Sagittarian can infuse your typical night on the town with a philosophical energy and transform it into a magical memory you'll treasure always. My best friend since high school, Julia, is a textbook Sagittarius. She was fearless and shone like a diamond. (Still does!) She hung out with the freaks, but she was a Varsity Cheerleader. Centaurs are cool with contradictions. She could even turn driving past her ex-boyfriend's trailer in the middle of the night into a hilarious caper. Julia's Rising Sign is Capricorn, making her an excellent judge of character, except when it came to relationships. Then she had that famous Sagittarian blind spot. Plenty of boys in our school were in love with her, but she was too busy chasing douchebags to notice. (Sorry girl, you know it's true.) Our ninth grade English Teacher told her she had a special light inside of her, and that if she wasn't careful some people might try to keep it all to themselves, or put it out all together. Does that sound like any Sagittarian you know? They shine bright, but there's a certain fragility there as well, no?

  Sagittarius is the Ninth Sign of the Natural Zodiac. It is a Fiery, Mutable Sign. Fire Signs are naturally creative and tend to be on the more extroverted end of the spectrum, but not always. (The Rising Sign is the better indicator of an introverted or extroverted personality.) Mutable Signs come at the end of a Season, in the case of Sagittarius, Fall turning into Winter. Mutables tend to be more low key, spiritually inclined, and fascinated by transformations. Sagittarius is ruled by the Planet Jupiter, the planet of Gifts and Luck. Sagittarians tend to be born with both. Jupiter also rules Philosophy and Religion, and Sagittarians are the Seekers of the Zodiac Sagittarians are always on the move, one way or another. They have fast, intellectual brains and can be extremely perceptive.They love to learn and grow, and their quest for knowledge tends to have a spiritual component. New experiences are like food for them, they need it to live and grow. Some other Sagittarius keywords are: Honest, Philosophical, Energetic, Enthusiastic, Optimistic, aaand Irresponsible.

  Because most Sagittarians prefer to stay active, and because they tend to bring their unique brand of creativity to whatever their chosen field is, many Sagittarians are standouts as Athletes. A few famouse Sag-thletes (Gong!) include: Joe DiMaggio, Larry Bird, Jason Collins, Tracy Austin, Jackie Stiles, and of course Bruce Lee. Like most Sagittarians, he defied categorization. He was born in San Francisco, but raised in China. He was a Martial Artist, an Actor, a Teacher and an Author. Like the Centaurs of Mythology, he was many things at once. It's worth mentioning that above all else,  he considered himself to be a Philosopher, and  Martial Arts was his chosen medium to express his life philosophy.



  Bruce Lee, born Lee Jun-Fan was born November 27, 1940 at 7:12AM  in San Francisco. According to Chinese Astrology, he was born in The Year of the Dragon at the Hour of the Dragon. According to Western Astrology, He was born with his Sun and Ascendant in Sagittarius, and his Moon in Scorpio. It's worth noting that his Sun was in the Twelfth House of the Unconscious at the time of his birth. I call that placement The Midnight Sun, and I think it's so cool. It tends to mean that the way a person's expression as an individual is inspired by something deep within that they may not fully understand themselves. These people tend to pay close attention to their intuition and dreams. They usually have a specialness about them that is made all the more appealing by the fact that they have an enigmatic quality that leaves you wanting more. Andy Warhol had a Midnight Sun. Moving along, Bruce Lee was your typical Sag in a lot of ways, fiery, charismatic, creative and extremely disciplined, and always in motion. When he starred in the short lived series, The Green Hornet, producers had to ask him to slow his movements because they were too fast for the American audience to follow. My son is a Sagittarius, he actually shares a Birthday with Bruce Lee, and he literally never learned to walk. He went straight from crawling to running, and he still runs everywhere. There's no point in asking a Sagittarius to slow down. The rest of us just have to learn to catch up.

  Sagittarius loves knowledge, and is ruled by Jupiter, the Planet of Expansion. It's no surprise then, that Double Sag Bruce Lee wanted to share his unique brand of martial arts to the world, not just in the form of entertainment, but also in the form of instruction. Bruce Lee owned two martial arts academies in his lifetime, and his dream was to oversee a national chain. Sagittarians don't like to be told what to do, and Bruce Lee was no exception.When members of the martial arts community demanded that he stop instructing non-Chinese Americans, he refused. Probably contributing to his go-your-own-way mentality was the fact that Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Pluto were all Retrograde at the time of his birth. Having four retrograde planets in a birth chart is rare. One or two is average, and that's where a lot of our most important life lessons come from. Three or more is results in a more eccentric personality that defies categorization, a person who stands out from a crowd, for better or for worse. Activist Angela Davis, for example has seven retrograde planets in her chart. Bruce Lee's four retrograde planets may explain then why his unique fighting style was inspired in part by his street fighting experiences as a youth in Hong Kong.


  Despite his scrappy past, Bruce Lee expressed many high minded Sagiattarian qualities. He studied Philosophy at the University of Washington, he wrote poetry, he was an avid reader all of his life, famously stating that all knowledge leads to self knowledge. Sagittarians prefer to live in the present and not hold grudges. They're not easily offended. When Bruce Lee was passed over as the lead for the television series, Kung Fu, he didn't take it personally. Saying,"They think business wise it is a risk and I don't blame them. If the situation were reversed, and an American star were to come to Hong Kong, and I was the man with the money, I would have my own concerns as to whether acceptance would be there."

 Bruce Lee's Martial art Philosophy,  Jeet Kune Do, or The Way of the Intercepting Fist, has many Sagittarian qualities.The ultimate goal is formlessness, and Bruce Lee preferred to call it the style of no style. His goal was to move past the formality of traditional Martial Arts, and included elements of fencing, boxing and street fighting. His vision was fighting style that could not be defined and therefore could not be limited. So Sagittarian!

  In addition to being a Double Sagittarius, Bruce Lee had four planets, Moon, Mercury,Venus and Mars in Scorpio, all in the Eleventh House. When four or more planets are in the same sign or house this is called a Stellium. A stellium in a person's chart can tell us a lot about them. It brings tremendous energy to whatever life area those planets fall in. The Eleventh House rules Groups, Organizations, and our Relationship to the World. Bruce Lee's relationship to the world was not just as an entertainer, but also as a teacher. Scorpio is the Sign of Secrets, and Bruce Lee's life's work was demystifying ancient martial arts secrets and making them available to anyone who was interested. Mercury is in Scorpio especially loves a good mystery. His Mars in Scorpio probably contributed to his famous intensity, while Mars square Pluto in the Eighth House gifted him with boundless ambition.

  Bruce Lee was very Sagittarian in that he abhorred any kind of limitations. I think all those planets in secretive Scorpio helped him conclude that mysterious or privileged attitudes about martial arts were a form of limitation. I think he saw himself as being someone who could eradicate those boundaries and making martial arts available to everyone. The fact that he had Neptune in the Tenth House, a placement that unconsciously draws one to serve others probably helped.

  My hope is that in his sadly brief, intensely lived life, his personal life was fulfilling as well. His chart ruler, Jupiter was in the Fifth House of Love and Children, suggesting a happy, supportive, adoring family.


  I hope you are all keeping warm this Sagittarius Season. Let us be inspired by our Sagittarian brethren, and not be limited by the cold weather and lack of daylight. Instead let's fill our homes with warmth and light, and maybe take some time to learn about a new subject we've been meaning to study. Remember: All knowledge eventually leads to self knowledge.