A Toy Story

Happy Summer (for those in the Northern Hemisphere)

and

Happy Winter (for our brothers and sister in the Southern Hemisphere)

Please check out the new Astro-News page at www.Astro-News.tv

I added a video for each of the 12 signs and where you experience Uranus in Aries (the Arab Spring) in your life.

The Total Lunar Eclipse on June 15-16 was extremely intense and many people shared with me their trials and tribulations. From losing their computer, to discovering that their partner had a debt they kept secret to a woman who discovered her husband had an affair with her sister. Indeed the moon can sometimes tell horror stories when she is in the mood.

I had an interesting eclipse story that I would like to share with you and please send me your eclipse stories or add a comment detailing your lunar accounts…

A Toy Story

Everyone has a toy story. Maybe it is because toys are the first inanimate objects to which we attach emotions and through stories and imagination we bring those objects to life. Some scholars assert that humanity’s evolution goes through the same developmental stages children go through. If that is true, maybe our affinity to toys in our early years is a parallel to the worship of statues and figurines our ancestors engaged in during our primitive stages of evolution.

My toy story unveiled itself on the total Lunar Eclipse while I was in Hong Kong. I knew from looking at my chart that the eclipse will effect an area in my horoscope called the “House of Home and Family,” which didn’t make sense to me because I was in Hong Kong, a 16 hour time difference from where I call home these days. I knew that Lunar eclipses tend to unearth deep emotions but what I forgot is that the eclipse was in Sagittarius, the Centaur, a hybrid between a horse and a man, which is also the sign of travel and distant lands.

I was invited to Hong Kong to teach at the Asia Yoga Conference and the organizers put me up in a magnificent apartment building called Shama, located on Peel street 26. The cross street, which I was amused to find out, was Hollywood Rd. I like to pay attention to symbols. After all, I make my living interpreting their meanings. I have no idea if Shama means anything in one of the many languages spoken in Hong Kong, but in Hebrew it means to listen. So I decided I would keep my third ear open and listen to the messages coming my way. The fact that the building’s address was 26, made me raise an eyebrow since I grew up on Freud street 26, and 26 in Kabbalah is the value of the tetragrammaton, the four letter name of God associated with the sphere Wisdom.

Since I live in Los Angeles and from my house I can see the Hollywood sign, it made it extra funny to me that the only way to get to my apartment in Hong Kong was through Hollywood Rd. Signs and synchronicities followed me everywhere, yet I could not figure what it all meant. Am I supposed to move to Hong Kong?

It is said that in places where the eclipse is visible, its influence is more pronounced and indeed, the Total Lunar eclipse in Sagittarius was visible in Hong Kong and she did trigger a great deal of emotions and memories (attributes of the moon) not only in me but in many of the people I met while I was there. I was curious to see how the moon will converse with me, what memories would she weave together, what poems would she compose for me? And I can say looking back, that she gave me a gift I did not expect.

On the day of the eclipse, as I was walking up to Hollywood road to grab a taxi, something made me look to the right. Through the display window of a thrift shop, I saw an object that not only made me stop, but also caused a chemical reaction resulting in teary eyes. I could not believe what was before me. At first I was disoriented, confused, how did he get here? To Hong Kong? Shivers ran up and down my spine as neurons storing memories from four decades ago suddenly awoke shooting signals of ancient recollections. Could it really be? My horse? My favorite toy? My first “real” friend, a gift my beloved grandfather gave me for my third birthday when we lived in Canada, his bequest to me before he passed away a few months later? The horse I insisted my parents bring with us to Israel when we moved back. The horse that influenced my pursuit of gymnastics making the pommel horse my favorite apparatus. The horse that inspired me to work as a cowboy in a Kibbutz. Yes, it was him, my horse that is no longer mine, looking at me through the glass, with his expressive inanimate yet magically alive eyes.

At first, all I felt was pain. As if I got an unexpected kick in the gut. Then it spread through my body and all I could experience was a deep aching in my core for a long lost friend. I felt guilt for abandoning him. However, I soon gathered myself and realized that while the physical toy was indeed abandoned, his spirit remained within me.

I looked at him, as he stood majestically in the window. “They don’t make toys like this anymore,” I thought. But then again, how would I know? I am 43 and haven’t had a toy for a while. It’s never about the toy anyway, it’s about the girl or the boy that plays with them and the scripts they craft around the object that give it life.

I walked into the store and asked the owner if I can take a picture with my horse. All rights reserved to her photography skills, picture is below. I don’t think I wanted to repossess it, as I have no kids as yet and I thought I already had him once, someone else should form memories with him now. But I was curious nevertheless and I asked the kind lady how much the holy relic cost. She took the horse back and placed it in the window, “3600 Hong Kong Dollars.” ($470 USD)

“What?! I can get a real horse for that price,” I replied. 36 is the number associated with saints in Kabbalah, but I was more concerned with the two zeros that followed. “Rare vintage toy from Canada, very important.” She confirmed the origin of the toy and his birthplace. I looked at its eyes, those huge communicative eyes, whoever designed the toy knew the trick, make the eyes big and everyone will fall for it. OK, Moon. I get it now. Horse, Sagittarius, home and family.

I bid my horse that is not mine goodbye. Who knows, maybe it will still be there next year when I come to the Yoga Conference in 2012. Maybe by then I will have a kid and it will be time to reunite with my friend. But what I think I learned from the eclipse is that the buried forgotten aspects of who we are can surface at any time or any place. The objects that we imbue with our emotions can resurrect at any time connecting us to who we are, by reminding us of who we were.