Part One:
Daughter of a Moon Goddess:
Confessions and suggestions for living with a Water sign

By Jannine Oberg, M.S.

Some mornings I would awaken to my mother’s lilting voice as she composed an impromptu happy Wake Up Song; no alarm clocks for her children. Other mornings I would see that the Dark Moon Demons had struck before she came into my room. Her big, expressive brown eyes would be darker than normal and I would know that she had plummeted to the depths overnight. Somehow the moon crept into her bedroom at night, laying silvery moonbeams across her pillow and transforming her. My brother, sister and I never knew which mother would greet us each morning and how long each day’s mood would hold her in its grip. Later I learned that my mother felt both helpless and truly powerless over this force that possessed her.

This possession was also her gift. Our family vacations were financed by kitchen table tarot readings that lured lonely hearts and confused souls to our tract home. We didn’t have a sign on our door, but it was known that strange and unusual people lived at the only house on the block without a lawn. Towering bamboo, a rock stream and an earthen mound blocked the view of our house from the street.

What was happening behind that natural, green wall of bamboo? I didn’t have an answer to the frequent mood changes until I learned about astrology. Being tied to the moon explained everything about my Cancer sign mother – her elated days, her comforting days, her confused days and her dark days. However, understanding the 2 ½ day cycle of the moon’s shifting energies from one star constellation to the next didn’t give me any tools for dealing with her responses, or provide any way for me to assist her as she unconsciously performed her moody moon magic.

Many years ago, I had a couple of clients who suffered terribly with the moon’s shifting cycle – one had a Cancer moon and the other had a predominance of water in her chart. My solution as a Libran with only 2 water signs and a total of 5 air signs (which includes my air moon) was to devise a calendar for each client to track the daily moon signs. They both diligently began tracking, anticipating and planning around good moon days and bad moon days as best they could. They began to take back some of their personal power; no longer were they being tossed around emotionally by the whims of the day’s moonbeams! Cathy got so good at flowing with the Moon cycles that she could tell me which sign the Moon was in without even using her calendar.

Living with a moon mother was an ever-changing experience, and one I didn’t want to re-create in my own household. No Cancers or watery people were welcome in my intimate life. But sons tend to marry their mothers, so when my brother Jeff asked me to run the chart of his new lover I was not surprised when she turned out to be a Cancer with a total of 4 water signs. I wanted to tell him to grab a life raft, raise the sail and head to dry land, because he was doomed to go under. She would certainly take him down to the depths with her. But it was too late, as they had already moved in together to a house on the San Francisco bay where the tidal flows dramatically revealed the moon’s pull. As their back yard expanded and contracted, Mary Anne’s ability to cope with her internal emotional currents decreased and increased.

As a surfer my brother knows how to ride waves and read the tides, but he couldn’t predict his fiancé’s moods any better than she could. He sent her to me for celestial advice and, more importantly, for a toolbox or doctor’s bag of remedies. Jeff wanted a prescription that Mary Anne could take to the nearby drug store to fill, with unlimited refills guaranteed. "Take one dose of Extra Strength Earth Element PM each night before retiring to combat Moon Beam infiltration, and take one dose of Earth Element AM each morning upon arising to create safe boundaries to allow for proper levels of emotional fluid intake." In emergencies, if Mary Anne forgot her daily potions, I could call in a Fire Element anti-diuretic to mop up and dry out the sobbing overflow. Jeff would have to run for cover while the side effects of the Fire Element remedy ran their course, but at least everyone would be assured of a positive outcome.

After a desperate client calls, most of us astrologers fire up our computers, put in the necessary data and pertinent client questions, and deliver a nice tidy report or taped consultation. Usually what we provide accurately interprets the heavenly cycles, predicts exact dates of planetary shifts, and eloquently describes what the client is currently experiencing. "Ah ha, I knew it", says the client. "Thank you for validating me and understanding my situation." "How clever of you to clearly describe my life and see deep into my soul through these strange and objective symbols," and off they go, flushed and warmed by the empathic connection. A few days later their rosy cheeks turn pale and reality returns with a slap in the face.

Understanding, empathy and validation are the first steps in the process of working with a water sign, but only the first steps. Coming up with a tangible, dependable, consistent action plan is the next step. The final step is to provide earth element psychological tools to use in order to assist water people in creating the emotional boundaries they need.

I would like to share with you my Earth Element prescription for Mary Anne, as well as my antidote for her years of self-medication (she is a nurse, after all).

We all come up with self-medication techniques to alleviate pain – yoga for stiffness, meditation for mental stress, chocolate for hormonal shifts, and so on. However, if we use the element of water to conjure up the remedy for water issues we are bound to experience more of the same. Water people are typically emotionally boundary-less, porous, fluid, time challenged (quite literally, for my mother has never been able to wear a watch; they keep perfect time on her dresser, but not on her arm) yet cyclic (repeating patterns) and allow intuition to override rational or mental reasoning attributes. This is what it sounds like when my Cancer friends and family members finally remember to call me: "I’m feeling overwhelmed, I can’t cope, people are crowding me, I need space, I need time to process all of this, I can’t stop crying, I’m sad, I’m depressed, I’m confused." "Why does your voice seem to echo and your tears and sobs seem so loud?" I ask through their wails. "Because I’m in the bath tub with the door closed and I’m all alone." As an air sign I can’t comprehend why a water sign, overdosed on emotions, with their personal boundaries laid wide open will, aggravate their experience by soaking alone in a bathtub filled with water or taking a walk by the ocean.

My future sister-in-law was horrified to discover that her desire to seek water for comfort is like a lactose-intolerant child’s cry for milk every day. Imagine a beautiful meadow filled with plants, their thirsty leaves spread wide open to absorb water from the rains, their roots tucked neatly into the soil. Then the spring rains come and flowers burst forth, but the rains continue and you notice that this meadow is actually flat. The meadow turns into a flood plain, the flowers and leaves are torn off and the roots begin to rot from the lack of drainage. Without a river bank or earthen berm to guide the flow and quantity of the water so that each plant receives just the right amount of fluid, even nourishing water can become lethal.

Watery people know that they feel out of sorts when negative events and negative people come into their lives; they know they get cranky when they feel overwhelmed. Therefore, they seek the element that makes them feel more like themselves – water. However, because they lack solid boundaries, they do not realize that they are already filled to the brim with emotions and feelings that either do not belong to them or that are negative. Without the element of earth, it is hard for water people to recognize when their fluid levels are topped out. A vicious cycle gets started, and the gifts of being sensitive, intuitive and compassionate become a painful curse.

To the water signs of the world and especially to the Cancers and watery moon signs, I would like to give you the gift of Mother Earth. She will create safe boundaries for you, she will comfort you, and she will allow you to heal others. She will nourish you and allow you to bloom and bear fruit as you ground yourself within her fertile soil. Plant a garden, take off your shoes and wiggle your toes in the sand or dirt, gather stones, buy a tabletop Zen sand garden for your office, create and tend a Zen sand garden in your backyard. Purchase sacred gemstones, crystals, pendants and rings. Buy or make two Medicine Bags – one to store your sacred stones and one to keep your daily Stones. And the earth shall guide you as you consciously tune into the moon’s monthly journey through the heavens. If you use your stones and honor the moon’s cycles, I can assure you that you will be able to hold and use the power of the moon.

After our consultation Mary Anne drove to the nearest metaphysical store to purchase her sacred stones. When she returned, she took her sacred stones into her home office. There, sitting on her desk, was a stone she had given to my brother. Somehow it had made it back to her. As nurturing people, Cancers have been known to give away what they actually need for themselves. With her moon calendar, sacred stones and daily stones, Mary Anne is beginning to hold the power of the Moon. With the help of Mother Earth, her water gifts are becoming a blessing.

My moon mother, a beauty at 70 years old with long shapely legs, large expressive eyes under fluttering coy lashes, and a broad smile that opens your heart, first began to find peace when she and my father moved to a home built with earth and water. She still tends the ½ acre grounds and garden herself; "Gardening restores my sanity," she tells me. Her earthen house grounds her. "When I am troubled I sit on the tile pavers in the center of the house and lean my back up against the adobe wall." "At other times I discover that I have walked through the entire house patting and gently stroking the walls. They protect and comfort me." Though she doesn’t awaken to a happy Wake Up Song, she does sleep soundly behind her one-foot thick adobe walls. Moonbeams no longer dance about her head each night as she sleeps, but she does awaken each morning as a Moon Goddess, for she holds the power of the Moon within her.

© Jannine Oberg, M.S.
All rights reserved.

Jannine can be reached for consultations by phone 760-295-4428 or by email - or, visit her website, VenusScentuality.com.

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