Welcome to my Astro Advice Column! If you subscribe to my Astro-Kats or Star Kids Club groups you are able to ask me questions about astrology for this advice column.
In Chicago, the homeless/immigrants/needy crisis has gotten so huge that much larger numbers of people are asking for help and individuals stake out territories nowadays for asking for money, so one gets familiar with individuals/feels an involuntary relationship from the number of weekly encounters with the same individuals in a way that was never imagined in my earlier decades here. Of course, it's amazing to be aware that people living in many of the adjacent or further suburbs let alone different areas do not have this phenomena tugging at their heart daily, multiple times per day. This is the person at the same farmers market every week, this is the person always at the Trader Joes location I use, this is the person always at that intersection, etc--all demonstrating an admirable work ethic/reliability to show up regularly. How can we not create decent jobs/housing/healthcare that cover their basic needs plus a few indulgences?
Oh wait, I'm struggling to provide the same for myself. Point is I'm in my head worrying, having conversations, reviewing what can I do/how can I handle the next mistreatment/how can I fulfill another's needs coming at me...re people for whom I already do all that I can or for whom it's just a matter of time for me to work on handling a big challenge (like trying for a better housing situation for myself) or for whom I just don't have sufficient time to donate to fulfilling their emotional needs (especially given I can't see to ever do enough for them & they don't fulfill mine anyway). I have a theory that this issue has something to do with my Mercury & Venus & Chiron in Pisces all in the 3rd house trying to make up for/simply repeating my family pattern of needy & hostile sisters....and as transiting Saturn has lately sat on my Chiron on 29th degree and now is going retrograde ...I am really trying to feel into letting go of my need to be taking care of everyone (feeling guilty or fearing their upset at my failing) and outright fearing others and feeling ashamed of my own needs for which I was always punished by my family (how dare you have needs!).
Kind regards, 29
I received this question from a member of The Astro-Kats in response to a I Ching related project that I’ve been doing with the group. I’ve been taking questions that people might have about collectives, about the psyche, and about love and using the I Ching as an oracle to respond. For question asker 29, they wanted to gift their question not just for The Astro-Kats but for the public advice column. That’s why I’m answering it here.
When I work with the I Ching, I like to summarize a vast searching into one succinct question. The question that me and 29 decided to ask the I Ching over email correspondence was: How can I understand my concern for other people from my concern for myself?
This is what the I Ching gave as a response. Our external hexagram was hexagram 13:
Hexagram 13
Fire inside, sky outside
Name: 同人 tong ren
My translation: community, fandom, collective, similar people, friends
The internal hexagram that the I Ching gave us was:
Hexagram 1
Sky
Name: 乾 qian
My translation: sky, cosmos, season, sun, time
I have to admit—I struggled with this reading for a long time. I’m currently feeling skeptical about community so I didn’t know what to make of hexagram 13. What is a community? What is a collective? Doesn’t the word 同人 feel really Confucian and filial? What happens when we aren’t interested in traditional collectives?
Then, I realized that 同人 isn’t just any group of people but a creative collective. 同人 or tongren or doujin is actually what we call a self created fanwork community. That’s why doujinshi is called 同人 records. Fan published doujinshi is just a record of a self-started creative community.
同人 isn’t just any community. It’s a community that is creative and self regulating. The I Ching uses 同人 to describe the external circumstances of our question. By doing so, the I Ching is reminding us that we exist in a society. This society can be creative or consumerist. This is the context in which we are concerned about other people and about ourselves. Okay.
The second hexagram that the I Ching gave us also threw me off. Hexagram 1? Sky? Hexagram 1 is a hexagram where both inner and outer trigrams are the same. It just means sky. What could this mean? I had to spend some time with both your question about personal and collective care and the sky. The days passed. I kept looking up. I started to notice some interesting things about the sky that we all live under.
Something magical happens each and every day in our sky. Do you know what that thing is?
Each and every morning, the sun rises. It rises every single morning. Everything from the shape of trees to the color of our eyes is shaped by the consistent motion of our sun.
If the sun didn’t rise every single day, it would not be a nurturer. It would become a destroyer. If it suddenly left us now and then, we would all freeze to death. If it veers too close suddenly occasionally, we all burn to death. Life would not be able to develop under an inconsistent sun. The only reason why we are alive today is because the sun shows up for us consistently throughout the ages.
Nurture is about showing up with consistency. The I Ching told us that our question is about creating community. Through hexagram 1, it tells us that we nurture community into existence through a consistency that is as effortless as the cyclical sun.
Care and creativity exist when we show up to them consistently. Self care isn’t about going all out and splurging for ourselves. We don’t take care of ourselves by sleeping for 16 hours one night and not all at for the rest of the week. We take care of ourselves by giving ourselves what we need with consistency. We sleep the amount we need every single night. Likewise, we care for other people when we show up for them not one day here or there but in a predictable way. We get to create with people when we get to see them with consistency.
When I realized the I Ching’s message, I felt excited. On one hand, the sun isn’t able to nurture planets on other solar systems or asteroids that it skims close to without regular cycles. It’s able to nurture life on our planet because we are captured by the sun’s gravitational orbit. We live inside of the sun’s cycle, inside of the sun’s home. On the other hand, the I Ching is telling us how to identify who does care work. It’s telling us—look for the person who shows up consistently. That is the person who is doing the work of nurture.
I understand that your question is about collective care and personal care for yourself but I also hear in your question, 29, a story about someone specific. You see a specific person at Trader Joe’s, at the farmer’s market, and at the same intersection all the time. Like the sun, this person is showing up in the same places all the time with consistency. Like the sun, this person is taking care of their surroundings.
People on the street do a lot. They circulate information, they make the streets safer because they observe everyone, and they find new ways of using old things. When you live on the street, you’re always taking care of your environment because it is your home.
When we walk the streets, we walk in places that are cared for by the people who show up in them every night and day. I remember when I used to work at a brick and mortar store. Just like anyone who visits the same places everyday, you get to know the people on the street because you’re sharing cigarettes and chatting. I got to know one woman, a poet, especially well. When I stopped working at the store, I lost touch with her because I no longer walked her street. That neighborhood was very much her neighborhood. She was the one who knew everyone, the one who held the neighborhood’s stories. After that, my work put me in different locations more sporadically and I wasn’t able to learn any street well. Funnily enough, that new job was actually about community programming and care.
Right now, you get to see the same person all the time. I understand that, a lot of the time, our culture teaches us that people who live on the street need things from us and that we should distrust street folks because of some burden of need. I don’t think that’s true. Someone is always caring for the streets that we walk through. It’s not the city or its employees. It’s the people who make the street their home. Who is the nurturer in your question? You see a person show up in places that are critical to your life all the time.
How can I understand my concern for other people from my concern for myself? You can’t, not cleanly. The streets that you walk are cared for by someone you’re also concerned about.
Hexagram 13. We live in a social world—a community. Someone is showing up to care for that community all the time. Hexagram 1. That someone shows up consistently like the sun in the sky. In your question, the person who shows up to the same intersection all the time sounds like this sun. You are also someone who shows up to the same street all the time because you see this person all the time. Hexagram 13. You and this person who you see have a commonality.
When hexagram 13 changes into hexagram 1, line two is the one that changes. The I Ching has this to say about that particular line becoming whole: 同人于宗，吝。
Loosely translated, this line tells us that we become stingy when we only recognize exclusive kinship structures like ancestry and clans. By giving us hexagram 13 and hexagram 1, the I Ching is telling us to open our assumption about who is already part of our community. 同人 is not an ancestral clan. It’s not biological family. It’s a very loose conception of community that is self created. Your community are the people who you co-create with. When we inherit community, we become stingy because we see our own needs and those of others as a burden. But we don’t just inherit our communities. We also create them with our friends.
In your community, someone is showing up like the sun. They are doing the work of nurture already. Do you want to co-create with this person? You already are because you already see them all the time. If your commute changes, you might not get to anymore. Right now, you are like minded with them (同人 with them) because both of you share the same streets.
