Stories emulate our life’s motifs. You do not have to know how to read cards or a chart to divine stories, folklore, fables, or poems. Still, the passing of myth is quickly becoming a lost art, just another thing we leave back there in childhood like the pacifiers we no longer need. Though if you look closer, like pacifiers shape shift into a different form (the vape, the wine bottle, the rectangle screen) so do stories. As one grows we are no longer the child being read to but maybe the adult doing the reading or even the main character in the humorous, the tragic, and the whimsical tales now long forgotten.
Even now, I try to look up specific stories and I find my browser saturated with paywalls or summaries, but not the actual story itself. You have to really look for some of these, especially the ancient ones, especially ones that do not center white narratives or romantic characters. Most of the time, you’ll find them in a dense book that is, of course, never available at your local library and I’m sure the most sacred stories are scarcely written down at all. Many are only to be spoken from the elder’s mouth and, if it wasn't already obvious, we are losing our elders. Maybe this is encouragement for myself as much as others to write down these bedtime stories and to write down your own story so that it does not become lost in the wind. Something magical happens when we make the real life connection between fiction and reality, a pattern is broken, a lesson is learned, a decision is made. This is the only spiritual guidance we truly need and it starts with sharing.
There is always a battle between “Who am I to share (my story, my art, my work…)” and creative necessity, calling, or even creative torture that might hold you captive until you do share. There is always a naysayer, always someone there to call your work “silly” or “half baked” or “too much” but there is also always someone whose life is hanging in the balance, precariously waiting for your vision to change their mind, providing the spiritual legwork, helping them to essentially cite their source for why they have made a particular decision. Something like that happened to me recently, a story helped me understand, helped me choose, helped me gain insight into the depths of my own psychology. I am not here to share that story today, but I will share one that has come to mind over and over again through the years and throughout this week leading up to the Solar Eclipse in Libra.
Here is ¡El Cucuy! An abridged retelling of the one I grew up with by Joe Hayes in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
El Viejo Cucuy, sometimes called el Coco or el de la mañana, lives in the mountains back crooked as a bent cedar branch and with his oversized left ear that shone bright red. With this ear, he can hear everything. He knows when children are misbehaving and sometimes he comes down from his cave to carry disobedient children away.
In mountain villages there lived three sisters raised by their widowed father. The youngest daughter was so kind and helpful but the older two were lazy, leaving their chores to play. Sometimes when their father came home and saw that his older daughters had done nothing, he said, “One of these days I will call el Cucuy on you.” but the girls didn’t believe him, they knew that el Cucuy was just something that parents made up.
One day, not only were the sisters lazy, they did everything they could to make their younger sister’s work harder. When the man came home that night and saw the mess they made, he cried, “¡Cucuy! ¡Cucuy! Baja para llevarte a estas malcriadas.” Come and get these spoiled girls. When nothing happened, the girls laughed and sang “Cucu-u-u-y, Cucu-u-u-y” in jest. Though that evening as the Sun set, down from the mountain came El Cucuy with his big red ear glowing. As he descended, the villagers ran to hide. He went and picked the two girls up right from the dinner table and carried them up the mountain. The sisters cried and begged him to release them, their dresses were torn on cactuses and their faces covered in dust but still, he carried them to the deepest part of his mountain cave. The days dragged on inside the cave and el Cucuy convinced the girls that they would never see their father again and that he was glad to be rid of them, though he knew it wasn’t true. With his big red ear he heard the father frantically searching in the mountains for his children, he hadn’t slept at all since the girls had been carried away but he never could find them.
Until one day, a goat herder from the village took his trip up to the mountains to let them graze on the grass but before he left, he realized that one of his goats was missing. He climbed deeper into the mountains searching for the lost goat and eventually found it with its foot stuck in the rocks. After he freed his goat, he heard a crying sound from below him and as he looked deeper, he saw the girls down in el Cucuy’s cave. The girls pleaded, begging him to help them out. He lowered his jacket like a rope to help them climb up safely. He took them back to the village along with his goats and on their way down, they saw their father and younger sister coming up the mountain to search for them. They all hugged with tears saying, “Please don’t call el Cucuy on us ever again.” and their father never had to. The girls became so polite and helpful, they were the most well behaved in the village. Even now, when people ask why their grandchildren and great grandchildren are so good, the villagers will tell you it is because they are the descendants of the two girls that were carried away by el Cucuy.
At first glance, this story does not seem to capture Libra at all. It is certainly not the one I would have picked out, but then maybe I am not the picker, stories have a way of finding us at the right time. When you look into Libra’s lore it is not nearly as kind as modern-pop astrology wants us to believe. Both Venusian signs are opposed by Martian signs, Scorpio and Aries, this is deeply relevant to this week’s eclipse as Venus is sitting detriment in Scorpio. That opposition alone should help us understand the fundamental struggle that Venusian signs face when digging into their own daemon. Cautionary tales exist for a reason. Warning us of the storms that rage, of true dangers like rapists and murderers but also of our own hubris, the things that take us away from the wild soul within, our sacred callings. The remedy for El Cucuy is to listen.
In this story, something has gone terribly wrong. The girls test their own fate, drenched in hubris, they do not contribute to the equal balance of give and take like their youngest sister. Some invisible line was crossed when they decided to antagonize the good work being done by making it harder. Libra is about choices, decisions, and the fate that answers in reply to what has been woven, the girls were brought to justice not only for their careless behavior but for their disbelief in the consequences. Did they deserve this harsh of a punishment? Old gods like el Cucuy typically do not care about humanity or justice (I mean he is traditionally depicted as a child eater for crying out loud) and yet, he let the goat herder take them back to the village. In this version of the story at least, he is benevolent, allowing the girls to return home even if only to pass down their own cautionary tale to their future generations. Other stories of this nature are not nearly as kind.
A memory has been coming to mind recently. I was about 8 or 9 years old, prime time for collecting stories like this one. I remember that I was too small to see how my dress looked in the mirror so with Aries stellium bravery I climbed up atop the spinning office chair, the kind that had no back or arms around it. It swayed under me with warning, like a bull about to buck me off. My bed was right next to the chair and because it was so close, I carelessly jumped off of the chair ready to let the soft mattress catch me and instead, the chair slipped backwards under my momentum and I fell down, down where my arm collided with the metal bed frame. The crash left a break clean across both my radius and ulna bones in my wrist. I wore a cast for months after. Embarrassed from my grave miscalculation and ultimate failure, I lied and told my family that I fell off the chair instead. The remedy for El Cucuy might be to listen to your parents, the remedy for a healthy body might have been to listen to the chair that, in its own way, warned me to be careful. Children rarely use caution and isn’t that what stories like these are all about? Little Red Riding Hood, the Wendigo, Baba Yaga, etc. Watching, waiting, listening, being mindful of your behavior, taking the passive role of seeing in the face of danger. This is Libra, the opposite of Aries, the one who knows that there is always an equal opposite reaction ready to balance the scales. Saturn exalts in Libra, the planet of consequences.
We never want to scare children, we hardly want to face the truth as adults so we butter and baste and wrap it in bacon so that it might taste better going down. Even this version of El Cucuy is horribly tame, the original lore is much more disturbing and graphic, truly a tale meant to scare children. Many of us are not able to recognize warnings and “red flags” for what they are because it is a slippery slope to hold darkness and danger in one hand and optimism and faith in the other; this is what it truly means to embody the Libra archetype though– to hold both, to balance both. Rarely do we encounter what it means to truly hold space for both the light and the dark without slipping too far into one, despair or sunshine. The solution that we often adopt for this problem is to focus on the positive and why wouldn’t we? Who wants to live in despair? Who wants to talk about the El Cucuys of the world that will absolutely eat you up?
Have you ever been the person telling the cautionary tale? If you have, you’ll know that it is often not well received. A few years ago a roommate that I was living with had a friend that they invited over from work and I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off about him. After he had been to our apartment a few times I finally confronted my roommate about this friend, it did not go well. They were offended and annoyed that I said something, this was already not a very comfortable living situation to begin with, so of course I was dismissed. Not even a week later, this person sexually assaulted him at work. He came home in tears saying, “All I could hear was your voice in my head warning me.” This was definitely not an “I told you so” moment, though I know I could have made it one. I have also fallen prey many times to the very thing I was warned about and have since struggled with my intuition, particularly in cases where I have felt a sense of responsibility or duty that prevented me from seeing poison for what it was. How could I fault someone else who was just now learning about danger, the “big bad wolf,” what they look like, what they sound like. Most of the time we do not want to see people that way. We do not even want to think of it. What a terribly disenchanted way to live in this world, to be constantly looking over our shoulders. This is why we might dip too far into the rose colored pool or too far into a sea of paranoia, Libra is the archetype that helps us live and start from the center.
How do we live from the center? It starts with the senses and how fitting for a Venusian sign. The decans of Libra begin with the Moon in Libra correlating with the 2 of Swords in Tarot. What is so often mentioned about the symbolism of this card is the blindfold around the woman’s eyes. It asks us to question what we see because if you take away sight you are still left with sound, touch, taste, your nose to sniff out your environment and most importantly, you have to shift from the outer world of seeing back inside to what lies beyond the darkness: the rich inner vision of feeling and divining. These are the most important instincts. Still, sometimes curiosity might get the better of you and you may choose to take a peek at the enchanting face in front of you. It is nice to live there for a while, in the magic, but then we are not living from the center. I have said this before about this first decan of Libra– sometimes we choose not to see and that leads to the second decan of Libra, the decan of this Solar Eclipse.
The second decan of Libra is ruled by Saturn. It is here that we face the consequences of ignoring the warning signs and cautionary tales and whispers from the senses, this is the very feared 3 of Swords. In fact, a very good way to tell if you are living from the center is whether or not you fear the 3 of Swords when it comes out, this is the card that illuminates difficult truths. If you are living from the center, unclouded by the extremes, you are probably willing to accept that the domain of love automatically requires that you enter the womb of pain. Is the thing or person in front of you worthy of your grief, your tears, is it worth all that accompanies the sensation of loss? As we leave this nodal cycle over the next few months, it is important to take these lessons with you– we have been learning how to weigh the outcomes and how to accept whatever may come regardless. We have also been learning how to respect the inner no, how to heed the warning signs. This eclipse may be an acknowledgement that not everything is worthy of pain, that we do not actually have to accept pain at every turn. Sometimes we can choose to see this apparition for what it is and get the hell out of dodge. That is simply what we might call self respect and that is what the North Node in Aries has emphasized so heavily since July of 2023.
This is the last eclipse in Libra until 2033 and it is actually a symbolic beginning within an ending being a Solar (meaning New Moon) eclipse conjunct the South Node. What we learn now and what unfolds as a result over the next 6 months paints us a map for this area of our charts and our lives, a baseline for equilibrium determined by facing the consequences. For the sisters in the story of el Cucuy, they established this too, a new expectation for how things will be from now on for generations to come. This is a time that asks you– have you been listening? Did you use your big red ear? Did you listen when the chair swayed under you? Did you listen when your roommate suggested that someone might be predatory? Did you consult and listen to your own body, intuition, your inner sense hidden in the center? Eclipses in Libra always represent some kind of justified reckoning, it would be wise to open your mind to the consequences unseen for ignoring your body, what it hates, what it loves, what it fears, what it desires. It is telling you a story now.
With love and surrender.
Your friendly neighborhood astrologer,
Katie
References
Hayes, J. (2001). El Cucuy!: A bogeyman cuento in English and Spanish. Cinco Puntos Press. Illustrated by Honorio Robledo.
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