The house in which my natal Aries Chiron resides, reveals in what area I am most affected by my identity being called into question as a result of feeling disempowered. My wound is in the second house. And the second house, says Meredith from Soul Navigation, is about “physical resources (including) cold hard cash.”
I was somewhere between five and seven when I first became aware that my family was poor. Before that, I thought it was normal to have cereal which consisted of WIC powdered milk poured over popcorn which had been made in the cast iron skillet. I have such an innovative mom! Anyhow, it was around that age when an older couple started attending church and began taking us, the pastor’s family out to eat afterwards. And that’s how I fell madly in love with food.
Sometimes, we ate at their house instead. Mrs. Henderson’s counters were filled with food I never knew existed and food I never knew I wanted. I fell more deeply in love with food. I first tasted Cheetos there. And then I ate the whole bag. And then I threw up. It must have been quite a shock to my body which wasn’t used to junk food. Around the same time, I began hanging out with my paternal grandmother in her kitchen as she baked goods that we never had at our house.
By the time I was twelve, my hobby was baking. I rode to the grocery store on my bike and purchased ingredients with the money I had earned from working. And by the time I was fourteen, I baked cookies, washed dishes and set the tables in the kitchen and dining room of the nursing home which was across the street from our house. This nursing home, where I worked through a program for Minnesota teens, was by then my grandmother’s residence.
Although it would soon change, my goal at that age was to one day have my own bakery. I can explain this love of good food by looking at my natal chart. Even though my planets in the natal second house fall into Aries, traditionally, the second house is ruled by Taurus. And stereotypically, Taurus especially appreciates good food. Food is a physical resource, and thus associated with the second house.
Also, my natal Taurus, which is nearly equally divided between the second and third houses, contains Jupiter, the expander or magnifier. But my point is this. The realization that my family was financially disempowered came through food. We always had enough to eat but we didn’t have liberal choices. And I wanted that so much that I was willing to start working at the age of eleven just so I could have it.
Do you remember Robert Green’s words about Law number thirty-three? He said, “Everyone has a weakness, a gap in the castle wall. That weakness is usually an insecurity, an uncontrollable emotion or need. It can also be a small secret pleasure. Either way, once found, it is a thumbscrew you can turn to your advantage. We all have resistances.” And there it is! My small or not so small secret (or not so secret) pleasure is good food.
If you practice traditional instead of evolutionary astrology, then you might be inclined to say the houses are their own systems and have nothing to do with the planets. And that’s okay. Check out what I said about dogma in My Rainbow Belief Bridge.