A tower without roots looks impressive until the wind picks up. We follow Rapunzel and The Six Swans to uncover how a real calling demands both height and depth: the Midheaven’s shine, the IC’s ground, and the sixth house’s quiet craft. Using vivid fairy-tale images, we explore the earth-house triad—second, sixth, and tenth—and what happens when desire for “more” outruns our sense of enough. From stolen rampion and severed hair to a desert reunion healed by tears, Rapunzel shows the cost of ambition cut off from home and body. The Six Swans answers with a different power: six years of wordless work, sewing starwort shirts under accusation, modeling the discipline and devotion that transform ideals into form.

I share how scarcity in the second house morphs into compulsion, why the IC’s hearth practices restore vision when the public gaze distorts, and how the sixth house rescues the tenth from burnout by dignifying humble routines. We talk Thomas Moore’s insight on moving both up and down—growing and deepening—so authority stays human. Expect practical reflections: crafting a resource plan that feels like “enough,” creating rituals that anchor memory and grief, and building systems for deep work that keep you steady when attention splinters. The ending isn’t neat by design—one brother keeps a wing—because meaningful work is always incomplete and that’s the point.

If you’ve felt visible yet unmoored, driven yet depleted, these stories offer a map: braid your golden ladder back to living soil, let tears restore sight, and keep stitching the star into the everyday. Subscribe, share this with a friend who’s rethinking their path, and leave a review to help others find the show.

* the above blurb was auto generated by Buzzsprout's AI

Thomas Moore: A Life at Work

Episode Artwork is here and here.

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Podcast Musician: Marlia Coeur
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What if your calling isn’t one narrow lane but an oak with many strong branches? We open the year by climbing from the ninth house of vision to the tenth house of visibility, where ideals must learn to walk, speak, and serve a real-world “whole.” The Midheaven becomes our threshold: a place to meet power, define vocation, and decide how to be seen without cutting off the roots that feed us.

We ground the theory with living images. An ancient oak oracle in Dodona shows why vocation can have many limbs that still belong to one tree. The seagoat reveals a body-wisdom path from the IC to the MC, and we guide a simple spine practice to carry soul upward without burning it out. Then myth raises the stakes: Zeus, fed on goat’s milk, dons the pelt and faces Cronus across a decade-long crucible. Jupiter’s expansion and Saturn’s restraint become two necessary “horns” you must use to gain purchase on your mountain.

Drawing on Dane Rudhyar, we reframe the “world” as the largest whole you can genuinely participate in with competence—your village, your nation, or humanity. Achievement, he says, is becoming chief, but a head is useless without the body that sustains it. We explore how to right-size ambition, avoid the twin traps of self-inflation and self-shrinking, and translate ninth-house understanding into tenth-house mastery. Along the way, we highlight Thomas Moore’s many-layered path as proof that one seed can unfold through multiple forms without losing coherence.

If you’ve ever felt pressured to choose a single label, this conversation is a relief and a challenge. The tenth house isn’t just career; it’s your second gestation in public, where authority, authorship, and authenticity share a root. Find the whole you can serve, claim the power you can responsibly marshal, and let your branches grow from the same living trunk. If this resonates, subscribe, share with a friend who’s rethinking purpose, and leave a review to help more seekers find the show.

* The above blurb was generated by Buzzsprout's AI.

This book by Dane Rudhyar is referenced in the episode.

The TV show from my childhood - Monkey - is also in here.

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Podcast Musician: Marlia Coeur
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A winter wish, a juniper tree, and a song that won’t be silenced. We read and unpack The Juniper Tree through the lens of myth and astrology, following a stark arc from dismemberment to remembrance, from underworld descent to the ninth house return of voice. The tale’s violent turn isn’t spectacle—it’s symbolic. A sister gathers bones and lays them at the roots; a bird rises from fire, sings what happened, and earns a golden chain, red shoes, and a millstone. Each gift answers a wound: the chain restores the severed link, the shoes return movement and joy, and the stone delivers the kind of Saturnian justice that ends what cannot be integrated.

Along the way we explore why juniper is a liminal, funerary, protective tree and why solstice is the perfect time for a story about death and the slow return of light. We trace resonances with Snow White, the Raven, Medusa, Osiris and Isis, and even the Christian ritual of remembrance that turns body and blood into bread and wine. The ninth house shines through as the realm where hard-won wisdom gets sung aloud, where fair exchange dignifies art, and where truth becomes beautiful enough for others to bear. This is not a call to bypass grief; it’s a ritual map for metabolizing it.

If you’ve ever felt your voice frozen in the underworld, this story offers a path: gather the bones, honor the roots, set a boundary around your song, and let the wings come back. As the year turns, join us for a solstice myth that holds both the darkest night and the first hint of dawn. Subscribe, share with a friend who loves deep stories, and leave a review to help others find the show.

*the above blurb was generated by Buzzsprout's AI

Podcast Artwork: Warwick Goble - Out of the fire flew a beautiful bird.

The Juniper Tree from the Grimm Collection.

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Podcast Musician: Marlia Coeur
Please consider becoming a Patron to support the show!
Go to OnTheSoulsTerms.com for more.