The Sign of the Cross

Before I was a United Church of Canada preacher’s kid, and way before I became an Anglican server (in my teens), I was baptized Catholic. I even have the certificate to prove it:

But I digress. In my dream last night, I made the sign of the cross but didn’t say the words correctly, ending in “from this day forward”. Someone in my dream was surprised I’d get it wrong, and I think that someone was my friend, Kate. So that got me to thinking this morning: should I post about the Great Schism of July 16, 1054?

Notice that Putin’s sign of the cross goes from right to left and not left to right as we in the West might expect. This isn’t accidental. Like many things after the Great Schism, the two sides did everything they could to differentiate between them, including how to make the sign of the cross.

East-West Schism (July 16, 1054)

I wasn’t expecting to see such a visible ‘schism’ dynamic. The T-squares formed by the Sun/Mercury/Mars/Midheaven in Cancer with Neptune in Aries and the Ascendant in Libra (conjunct to Uranus in Scorpio) show the tensions of the day @ noon. I don’t known exactly when the excommunications took place, but this chart gives a fair hint. It took until the 20th century to heal some of the wounds inflicted on the day. There is but one inconjunct.

Saturn Inconjunct Uranus

If either of these planets is near conjunction or opposition with the Ascendant or Midheaven, this aspect indicates a serious tension in your life between freedom and restriction. Many have this conflict, but in your case the tensions may be so severe that you express them physically as muscle tension and possibly nervousness. You feel that somehow you must keep everything in your life under tight control, that if you let go, the whole structure will fall apart.

But the unspoken word in the question that forms the title of this post should be a reminder that we are all Christians. God bless us every one.