1 FIRST STEPS

 

Lupita spent days and nights in a therapeutic reclining bed in her bedroom. More than ninety years old, her eyes no longer distinguished a shape. Her only daughter-in-law was in charge of her care. I met Lupita many years before, in that same old house in Mixcoac, south of Mexico City, when my Mom attended her astrology mentoring and she use to take me with her.

Upon opening that huge entrance gate you could see the garden, to which all the rooms converged. We were welcomed in her studio, to the right and upstairs; stairs that I liked to climb jumping. Her home was chilly, with very high walls and large beams on the tall ceiling. We entered through the split doors with tall windows and curtains did not let in much light in. The shelves around, made of dark wood and full of old books, with that special smell difficult to describe, had backs of faded colors and some had letters in gold. On the walls old paintings and pictures with images full of symbols, mysterious and interesting things, that absorbed my gaze and mesmerized me with an inexplicable attraction. 

My short stature only allowed me to look at part of her silhouette from the window in the background, but I sensed her strength, sitting there, behind her desk, filling not only the room but the whole house. 

Upon entering, a desk, as old as Lupita, with a lamp that lit the top surface, the fine point red, black and blue color pens forbidden for me, loose sheets with a cursive and impeccable letter and most fascinating items of all, sketched sheets with drawings of circles with signs and symbols, small letters, stars and colored lines, these were the Astral charts, they stared at them perched as if they were peeking at a small window with an invisible telescope.

Lupita use to explain the aspects and its meanings with words that I never heard before out of my home, like “trills”, “sextile”, “quadrature”, and named some of the Roman gods as well, who of course I was not very familiar at all; “Neptune in quadrature with Jupiter ”, or“ Mars is in trill with Uranus ”or phrases like “has the Sun in the nine ”, if I ever dare repeat these words to my friends at school, they would look at me like if I suddenly turned crazy.

My mother use to carry her small briefcase with a tape recorder, new cassette tapes, color markers, some rulers, some books and a folder with the astral map chart to interpret in that class. Lupita’s eyes, behind her glasses, used to check the calculations against the ephemeris and the tables of houses, she used to confirm the position of the ascending Sun and she used to verify the calculations were correct and in the right house according to the exact time of birth.

When I started studying Astrology thirteen years later, I understood all those meticulous precautions you must take to review an astral map before interpretation, are not enough , because it just takes a small error, to lose the accuracy and hence the entire sense of the map.

If Mercury was put instead of Venus, if a trill was drawn in red color, or if Virgo is confused with Scorpio, she had to start over.

When I learned to calculate an Astral Map chart, many elements were needed, first the time of birth as exact as possible. Once I had the exact time, I must look if in that moment the person was born, there was a change of schedule or daylight saving time, and make the adjustment to the official meridian as recorded in the country of birth. For this purpose, we had to save any news, history book, atlas, etc. that could contain important related data or information. Some texts we extract from those used books, full of dust, as authentic treasures.  Lupita had some laminated lists with such information and gave us copies to all her students and stakeholders to continue record changes and dates as they happened.

The real time is calculated according to the official meridian, then against Greenwich, 4 minutes for each degree. With these results and other calculations, we tabulated in the tables of houses looking for the Ascending sign, from which the zodiac sign "ascended" across the horizon at birth time and which provides us guidance to identify someone's personality and the potential scenarios of their experiences.

The personal astral chart is a representation of the sky as seen from our planet at the exact time a person is born. It is a snapshot drawing of an instant in the Universe. A graph in which a prepared mind recognizes and describes the characteristics of a person or a moment in time, for example, when signing a contract, or getting married, but cannot predict the exact facts, not the actions, neither the consequences of these. You can perceive the possibilities of such action or reaction of a person according to their natal map chart, but the free will and the spirit of the person. It is an astral code that contains a pattern of evolution. So the way a soul lives, observes and responds to such code, will impact your understanding and awareness, and at the same time, send information back to the universe in a divine exchange of energy and experiences. 

A manual calculation of an astral map requires at least three hours.

At school I never understood how to make these kinds of equations. My brother use to spend hours teaching me how to solve an equation and calculate an "x". The next day I was able to barely pass the test at school and later completely forgot the subject.

      But I was feeling so important among those tables of houses, ephemeris, logarithms, antilogarithms, stars, graphics full of symbols, was so exciting it compelled me to dedicate myself to live up to all those exciting things so I made an extraordinary effort to become an astrologist.

I traveled to space in my imagination, toured the orbits of the planets and listened to the whispers of the gods revealing secrets about destiny written in the stars and the eternity to which they belong. So that is how Astrology made one of its first miracles in my life: I learned to calculate an astral map and eventually I used to calculate them in a flash.  And not to mention the outline of the chart, as a Moon in Libra, I worked hard on the harmony and proportion of the chart. It had to look pretty!

The calculated positions of the planets; the ascending and the mundane houses use to be drawn in the exact degrees of the signs of the zodiac, with colored markers, like those that I remember on top of Lupita's desk, who created a zodiac chart template, which she copied by the hundreds, where the symbols of the planets used to be drawn to plot the different aspects.

The entire process to calculate and draw a person's astral map establishes a connection with its energy and its essence that facilitates the interpretation.

Astrology is art and science, the result depends on the preparation, the knowledge and vision of the interpreter. Astrology is so vast that It covers any profession, emotion, talent and living area that exist. In my query I attend doctors, artists, and women of all ages, youngsters, housewives, entrepreneurs and those who seek deep answers about their lives.

Meditation has been a tool, and a good resource to achieve a neutral state, without judgments, to explain what you see and say what you have to say, with empathy and understanding of any life experience that patrons trust me.

But that was not for me at my seven years, Lupita and my mom asked me to go out and play in the garden when the interpretation became interesting. 

She was a tall brunette, robust, very reserved; she was from Virgo. She would not allow any pictures taken, so I don't have any. My mom told me that she belonged to a sect, where she learned Astrology and other mysteries, had obtained the highest degree allowed to a woman and when she became a widow, she began teaching Astrology, with the permission of her group school, who agreed to obtain financial income for her and her son.

Years later, when my mother told Lupita of my keen interest in Astrology and my status as a single mother, she also told her I had the star Sirius in conjunction, that is, very close, to the Sun on my map. Then, she took me as her disciple and I became her last student.

I clearly remember she asked for a moderate fee as retribution because of my youth and single mother condition, teaching me two important lessons:

First: value and price are not the same.

Second: we are only a link in the chain of life and it is our “Saturn” duty to plant seeds in young people to preserve knowledge and experience. As part of her health care, she had to follow a strict diet, which she used to be allowed to ignore occasionally. 

               I took an opportunity to show my appreciation becoming her chef accomplice, cooked for her, preparing stuffed peppers with cheese in a tomato sauce, or weathered fried ripe plantains with beans and cheese, vegetable soup with chicken broth, the star dish was a delicious recipe from a great-aunt of mine: manchamanteles, (mattsplashers),  which I prepared with chicken, a roasted tomato sauce, cooked yolk, pineapple, apple, a hint of cinnamon, two peppers and a clove. When I had to beat the egg to nougat point to enduring, I did it with a fork, while keeping an eye on my notes to keep the information in the class, mixing the pleasures for food, with the hunger of knowledge.

Venus appeared between the sweet smell of apple and cinnamon; Mars in the smell of the green peppers while we were peeling them off, and the Moon in the satisfaction of doing something special for a person you love. To my Sun in Cancer, it was very nice. I learned the first cooking astrology lessons, to the rhythm of the fork that turned the egg whites into fine foam, between peppers, cloves and roasted tomatoes.

In every mentoring session, Lupita's memory and lucidity overshadowed her prostration. She dictated the most basic lessons almost perfectly, while I made my notes writing as fast as I could; when at home, I used to write my notes clean and neat again. If I had a question, I had to wait until the next week, because if I asked my mom, she would tell me to look in the books or would answer me with a quick –“Just put it like that….”-

While teaching me, Lupita's fingers were threading bracelets with colored threads. She gave me a red one, which I used it as much as I could until it broke not long ago. A few years ago, my mom and I found one bracelet among the pages of a meditation book, she said it was Lupita’s gift, and seeing my emotional reaction, she wanted me to keep. She gave it to me and I put it in a picture frame and it occupies a special place in my studio bookshelf.

The little wristband impregnated with Lupita’s essence and a book entitled “Life after death and the new birth that deals with the existence of the soul in its relations with the Cosmos”, by Rudolph Steiner, founder of the anthroposophical school, is the only material that I keep from her. But deep inside me I carry the seed she planted, then germinated and continues to grow and spread in me.  I also have her blessing. I know because whenever I have to take important decisions regarding astrology, something extraordinary happens, an entanglement with her who guides and approves me, as I will narrate in due course.