LIFE IS LIKE GROUNDHOG DAY–GETTING IT RIGHT WITH OUR STRONG AND WEAK PLANETS

LIFE IS LIKE GROUNDHOG DAY–GETTING IT RIGHT WITH OUR STRONG AND WEAK PLANETS

Punxsutawney Phil, the famous groundhog weather watcher, was pulled from his warm burrow this morning and saw his shadow, predicting six more weeks of winter as part of the annual Groundhog Day tradition celebrated in the U.S. and Canada. That means, according to the legend, winter will not go away.

Groundhog Day (1993) is one of my all-time favorite movies. If you are unfamiliar with the movie, Bill Murray plays a weatherman who goes to Pennsylvania every February to see if the groundhog will see his shadow. Bill is boorish and rude and insults his staff. He gets trapped in a nightmare where he cannot leave the town and wakes up at the same time to the same silly tune on the clock radio and has to relive the same day. Since he cannot die, he keeps making bad choices at first, like overeating or driving a car off of a cliff. But as the movie goes on, he takes up piano, saves people’s lives, becomes an incredible romantic and the whole town suddenly looks up to him as a model citizen.

The movie is a cinematic seminar in learning to be a kind, artistic, and creative humanitarian. It becomes a metaphor for reincarnation and overcoming our negative qualities of selfishness, addiction, and rudeness. When we have a poorly placed planet or afflicted planet in our chart, it is as if we had not learned the lessons of that school. If it is Jupiter, it may be around children, respect of Gurus, judgment or wisdom. When the planet goes weak in transit, it brings up lessons for that school. Are we going to do it differently this time? Are we going to bring out the planet’s higher values?  We are here to work on our weak planets and our strong ones are our talents, which we are here to share with the world. People sometimes boast they have an exalted or a well-placed planet and if that is the case, you have learned the lessons of that planet and it’s become a talent and a gift to be shared with others, meant to be shared as our service to humanity.

This is not about ego. In reality, I rarely see a perfect planet. Exalted planets often have too much power and cause problems such as someone with an exalted Sun being too powerful with too much ego and not being able to see their blind spot.  People may complain about a debilitated Sun in Libra but its positive side, if not badly placed or afflicted is that it may make you a very beautiful and humble person that likes working together with others.  Rather than blame the planet, learn what lessons you did not master in the past and get it right this time. Like that wonderful Bill Murray movie, Groundhog Day, get out of your nightmare by being kinder and helping others and then you will not suffer. The planets just want us to get it right this time so we do not have to wake up in the same nightmare every morning. We are here to work on our weak planets. It is never easy but sometimes we see charts of people born with difficult placements in the 12thhouse and they have become very successful in life as they have used their weaknesses and overcome adversities. One of my best friends who had polio at age 4 was confined to a wheelchair and never developed much of her normal body yet she went on to be a successful lawyer who advocated for battered women and the disabled. In this kind of a case, a poor Rashi chart placement may show up strong in the D-9 chart suggesting that a birth chart weakness has a good chance to be strengthened later in life. We are not doomed to be the weaknesses of our birth chart!