Love's Burn

Aries Horoscope for week of March 1, 2012

 
At one point in his book The Divine Comedy, the Italian poet Dante is traveling through purgatory on his way to paradise. American poet T.S. Eliot describes the scene: "The people there were inside the flames expurgating their errors and sins. And there was one incident when Dante was talking to an unknown woman in her flame. As she answered Dante's questions, she had to step out of her flame to talk to him, until at last she was compelled to say to Dante, 'Would you please hurry up with your questions so I can get on with my burning?'" I bring this to your attention, Aries, because I love the way you've been expurgating your own errors and sins lately. Don't let anything interfere with your brilliant work. Keep burning till you're done. 
(Source: "A New Type of Intellectual: Contemplative Withdrawal and Four Quartets," by Kenneth P. Kramer.) 
Rob Brezsny, www.freewillastrology.com

Catharsis, Greek κάθαρσις   cleansing, purging

Cathexis,  Greek κάθεξις   holding, retention

Our urge to cathect with an other, one other, re-form the uterine, the maternal connection, both drives our search for "love" and undermines our understanding of what love is. (Or: my search, my understanding.)

I, you, she, we.

In the garden of mystic lovers

these are not true distinctions

Rumi 

Expurgating this visceral-emotional drive and learning of love: this has been my work. This, behind the "errors and sins" along the way that are neither costly nor deadly, that are par for each course, that hoist us from one level to another as we learn; this work is my Dantean paradise.

So to burn as catharsis. I burn my points of cathexis; the pain that attends this fire is an internal not eternal suffering. With promise of an end, the pain is that of becoming-released, of childbirth, of a phoenix renewal, not hell's slow infinite burn, the fearful unknown at death's pyre. 

It was deep into his fiery heart
he took the dust of Joan of Arc,
and then she clearly understood
if he was fire, oh then she must be wood.
I saw her wince, I saw her cry,
I saw the glory in her eye.
Myself I long for love and light,
but must it come so cruel, and oh so bright? 

Leonard Cohen "Joan of Arc"