The Medicine Bow

May, 1976. Zero visibility! A snowstorm from the Medicine Bow Mountains suddenly descended upon my 1969 Rambler. The headlights were useless. And fear gripped the steering wheel when I began sliding along U.S. Interstate 80. My hopes and dreams were on a precarious edge, in danger of crashing into some forlorn abyss. At that moment, I felt a strange peace. The illusory boundaries of life and death, time and space vanished. My soul was adrift in the galaxy and ...

... I was 12 years old, bicycling through winter winds on a busy highway. "Shorty," an employee in my father's gas station, told fascinating stories of Native American sites in Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains and near my home town. I was so determined to explore one that I left behind a friend who complained of the weather -- and pedaled across the Chemung River Bridge onto Route 17. Nothing could stop an adventurous spirit within.

Aries, the warrior, rules my 9th house, the natural house of Sagittarius -- long distance travel, higher education, publishing religion and philosophy. Whether the 9th, 7th (relationships), 10th (career) or the other houses, everyone has Aries somewhere in their astrology chart. In addition, Mars, which rules Aries, charges around the zodiac every twenty-two months and empowers whatever house or planet it runs into.

In 1976, the freedom of the West and the grandeur of the Rocky Mountains were so near -- after Iowa and Nebraska cornfields, after so many flatland years -- that I pushed myself through the night toward Cheyenne, Wyoming and the Great Divide -- 1,000 miles from my Chicago clergy past and 1,000 miles from a hippie lifestyle in California's High Sierras.

"Aries, ruled by the planet Mars, is the natural sign of the first house. It signifies beginnings and new enterprise; hence, Aries is indicative of the pioneer spirit. A cardinal-fire-positive sign, Aries represents dynamic action, initiative, self-motivation, enthusiastic drive, aggressive effort ... [Aries' persons are] highly competitive, outgoing, resourceful, confident and decisive. They step into the thick of things boldly, sure of themselves, fearless of adverse consequences, unafraid of failure (Compendium of Astrology by Rose Lineman and Jan Popelka).

The natal horoscope is our soul's blueprint for a lifelong journey. And Aries' (or Mars') location is where we fiercely fight through any roadblocks. In May, 1976, Mars was sextiling Saturn in my 9th house while Jupiter, the natural ruler of the 9th house, was transiting the 9th and sextiling my Mars. When I first left home for college, Jupiter was also sextiling Mars -- and Pluto was opposite it.

Aries has always been a merciless 9th house taskmaster. During college, I worked in a settlement house for Cuban refugees, attended an Illinois religious conference and spent a Civil Rights summer at an African-American church in Brooklyn, New York. In seminary, the issues I wrote about in an underground newspaper led to a new Ethics class and revised curriculum.

While a pastor, I organized world religion seminars and spent most of my money on Human Potential Movement workshops. The multi-media explosion in East-West spirituality only whetted my appetite for a journey toward another frontier, a writing career in California.

Steven Forrest says Sagittarius is a "gypsy, student and philosopher" always expanding his/her knowledge -- and "no sacrifice of safety or security counts for anything if it stands between a man or woman and that unceasing quest" (The Inner Sky by Steven Forrest).

And my Aries 9th house has been Sag's trailblazing fool. Before I knew much about astrology, I traveled West in an Aries symbol (the Ram/bler) -- in which I eventually logged over 100,000 miles. Later, I traveled the same mileage in an aptly named Plymouth Satellite.

In the twentieth century, interstate highways and telecommunications have facilitated the transformation of social, religious and political structures. The Internet computer network has made self-employed explorers, entrepreneurs -- and spiritual warriors of us all. Not only Aries, but the esoteric growth of all astrology signs has been accelerated.

Aries is the natural sign of the first house which has to do with manifesting one's Higher Self (or ego) on the planet. Forrest says the real meaning of Aries, the "Warrior, Pioneer, Daredevil and Survivor.... refers to existential courage," the "ability to say: 'This is my life. I have the right to seek whatever experiences I need to have. Nothing will stand between me and my growth. Not another person. Not any circumstances. Not even my own fears'" (The Inner Sky).

A courageous risk in a career or relationship occurs in a lonely abyss, away from familiar religious-philosophical structures, from friends and family. In that "Great Divide" between our ego and Higher Self, the future is unknown. Such was my near-death (and rebirth) experience on the Medicine Bow.

Richard Alpert left his Harvard University credentials behind for LSD experiments -- and a journey to India: "My mind went faster and faster and then I felt like what happens when a computer is fed an insoluble problem....I started to cry....I wasn't happy and I wasn't sad.....The only thing I could say was it felt like I was home. Like the journey was over" (Be Here Now).

After changing his name to Ram Dass, his "be here now" book described the Tao as an existential and utilitarian spirituality in a fast-changing East-West world. The future, a Sagittarius energy, has become, as Alvin Toffler said in Future Shock (1970), part of our reality.

The spiritual warrior or "swordmaster is fearless, but, unlike him, he grows daily less and less accessible to fear. Years of unceasing meditation have taught him that life and death are at bottom the same and belong to the same stratum of fact. He no longer knows what fear of life and terror of death are. He lives -- and this is thoroughly characteristic of Zen -- happily enough in the world, but ready at any time to quit it without being in the least disturbed by the thought of death" (Zen in the Art of Archery by Eugen Herrigel).

An opening appeared in the universe, in my soul -- on the Medicine Bow. I scaled the heights to a mountaintop death and rebirth experience, an ending and beginning. At that moment, the snowstorm lifted. Like a Sagittarius archer, I aimed my Rambler through an opening in the storm -- and sped toward California.

Watch for Part II - The Sagittarius Interception and Part III - Across the Great Divide in coming issues of The Monthly Aspectarian.

Brock Elk Horn does clairvoyant readings, and holistic counseling that facilitates healing of mind, body and spirit. Telephone: 312/338-3329. For more information, see the Chicago Pulse - Practitioners in this issue of TMA.