When I started my business, I quickly learned the importance of crafting my voice around my work. Finding and crafting one’s voice is crucial when creating your business. It covers the spectrum between what you say on social media, the language on your website, and all the other communication that your business and work engenders.
There’s still a lot of ancestral and current wounding around the theme of VOICE, with a current one being what marketing has come to be understood as and the practices it creates. Many of my clients have spoken about the challenges accompanied by a sense of loss around ‘what to say, ‘how to say it, and ‘how to express their voices.’ This is especially pronounced for healers, mystics, creatives, and those involved in the personal spiritual development field.
It’s no wonder that Mercury (Hermes), the ruler of Gemini and Virgo, is also the deity of commerce, trade, business, and all manner of communication. The power and magic of words have been rooted in our Judeo-Christian culture already in the Book of Genesis and its creation story where God created all through Word – and first was the Word!
Our religious structure is based on a culture of the book, and it’s no wonder that even in fantastical movies like the recent Dr. Strange, there’s hunting for two types of magical books. Words everywhere mesmerize, enchant, and imprison us. As pattern seekers, mythmakers and storytellers, humans are uniquely crafted to be both powerful and powerless to the magic of words.
The House of our first relationships
Astrologically speaking, the Third House is the first House where we relate to others. These come in the form of our siblings, first friends, and neighbors – our first partners in teaching and helping us learn about our immediate environment. The third House is your neighborhood, the street kids you may have played with, the first kindergarten friend you made, and your relationship with your siblings. In this vessel, we first learn to ‘read’ the world around us, which later will be translated into our ability to extrapolate from micro to macro in the opposing and complimentary 9th House. Our first lessons in the 3rd House will color our philosophy of life, the ideas we express, and our meaning-making abilities.
With its mercurial coloring and association with Gemini, the third House is our first social laboratory through sibling relationships, kinship (i.e., cousins), and our first relationships with those beyond our nuclear home. These relationships will underpin our adult relationships, from intimate partners to business clients. It’s also where we learn our first lessons and adopt our early learning patterns, sharing ideas and crafting our voices.
Schoolroom memories
I invite you to go down memory lane and remember your first days in school? Think about your school days from daycare through High School – what was school life like for you? Who were your first friends? Or your earliest memory of your siblings?
Think about challenges and gifts in learning and, more importantly, how these experiences color your ability to express your thoughts via your voice, writing, speaking, etc.
I’ve often heard folks that think they’re not creative or can’t write or articulate their ideas share early stories from their school days that showcase a wounding relationship with a teacher that didn’t help them work through their communication challenges.
They felt pushed down or cut off by a sarcastic remark that has cauterized their ability to find creative expression now or be able to connect to their authentic voice. At the same time, others have expressed challenging relationships with a sibling that has cut them down and made them feel dumb and unworthy of being listened to or acknowledged. And yet others were raised under the oppressive mentality that a child is to be seen and not heard.
Our collective wound around voice and power
In every authoritarian move/movement, the first thing to attack and shut down are hubs of communication and sharers of ideas. Writers, journalists, television, radio, websites, etc., will be the first casualties in the drive to stamp out the spreading of ideas that go against their vision. Manipulation of images and news through propaganda in its many forms takes root, and collective brainwashing takes root.
Another frontier of attack is demonizing curiosity – a core gift of the Gemini dimension of experience. Curiosity is the core element that must be shut down because, much like its ruler Mercury/Hermes, it leads to making connections between people and ideas that may not serve the agenda of those in power. The dulling of our curiosity through the constant propaganda of fear and othering is insidious even as we speak. It’s no wonder that we’ve grown up with the wrongful notion that ‘curiosity killed the cat.’
Minorities and women have been the first ones to experience this many times over, and it’s no wonder that many are still on a healing journey around feeling able to speak – literally and figuratively.
Are your thoughts really yours?
The houses have different levels of depth, and on a literal level, the third House sheds light on our minds with its ideas, language, and awareness of thoughts. It links to the notion of “I think. Therefore I am.” from Descartes.
When it comes to thoughts, collectively, we need to upgrade our understanding of them because in our current climate, more and more, we’re linking our sense of self and identity with the ideas and thoughts I share. It’s Descartes’s maxim taken to the extremes.
And yet, now more than ever, we need to question (show curiosity) to examine the thoughts and ideas that I purport as my own.
I invite you to do this exercise.
It will take some mental acrobatics and stretching of its muscles, being very uncomfortable at first, but stick with it. Think of an idea or thought that has been prominent in your mind now. Then try to retrace through memory where that thought started. Was it because of something you read, heard, or by being around someone you know?
Then, and this is the more demanding part, question yourself if this thought/idea is really in resonance with your values, ethics, and philosophy of life. Is it really true for you? Or have you been under its charm and parroted it to others?
Remember the magical power of words (and thoughts) to live and spread beyond time and geography. Why do you think we still read Shakespeare, Buddha, Jane Austen, etc.? Their thoughts/ideas put to writing have managed to live beyond their graves.
Thoughts are independent entities always looking for a host with whom they can find a home and live on.
Speaking your truth isn’t ‘hashtagable’
While there’s something honorable about our current culture’s preaching of how important it is for us to speak our truth and share our story and voice, there’s an unconscious shadow lurking.
This relates to how most folks aren’t sharing their truth; they’re parroting someone else’s message. They’re channels to something other that isn’t rooted in them. Propaganda is like dark magic – enchanting, simplistic, and highly contagious. The dead giveaway is its lack of nuance and ability to withstand curiosity and opposition. And it’s highly ‘hashtagable.’
In today’s cacophony of misinformation and communication manipulation, we must examine where our ideas are really coming from. It’s akin to doing the etymology of words, but this time through the lineage of our thoughts.
“So that we don’t continue to repeat slogans and vague ideas, it’s always wise to search for knowledge, argumentation based on facts, and (deep) reading. Get to know the great thinkers of history. Discover the classics of literature. Take a step towards your search for knowledge.” Leandro Karnal (Brazilian writer and philosopher. My translation.)
And learn history! I mean, really learn it! And we’re fortunate now to have so much out there that is of sound quality to nourish our needs for knowledge in the hopes that it will help us become wiser.
Everybody wants to rule the world or become a writer or podcaster
With the advent of social media, everyone has their particular soapbox and megaphone. From the pulpit of Facebook, anyone can shout insanities and serve as parrots to others, but they can also share wise thoughts and creatively worthy ideas. It’s a free for all. Although the God called, Algorithm has a penchant for chaotic, divisive communications and proliferating anger. Remember that Mercury is an amoral deity, given to going where the action and even chaos live.
Third House: I have a voice
While we all have our voice and ability to create magic (or chaos) with what is spoken through us, it’s vital now more than ever to check ourselves at the gate.
Are these thoughts being spoken through us really in alignment with ourselves?
What’s their origin story?
If our ability to speak is magic-making, then we must become conscious word magicians, not automatons.
Voice and the ability to speak things into being is power as time immemorial. But the impoverishment of our vocabulary (think about how little we’re articulate when it comes to expressing what we feel!) has been going on for as long as only a few were the holders of the powers of writing and reading. Knowledge has been kept in the hands of the powerful because its democratization is the widening of the birth canal for new consciousness to come through.
The impoverishment of our vocabulary leads to impoverishment of thoughts, ideas, and access to nutritious knowledge (not the carb-filled stuff we find everywhere.) If you feel keen that you have something to share with your voice (be it spoken, written, or other creative ways), then hold yourself accountable for how you engage and understand the environment around you and the power of the words you choose.
As a node in the fabric of society and culture, what passes through you captures something of your essence. Our job is to make sure our ‘filters’ are as clean and healed as possible, so we don’t continue to be vessels of toxic thoughts instead of creative making ideas.
Photo Credits:
Main image: Gary Butterfield
Subsequent images: Etienne Girardet, Stephen Harlan, Clem Onojeghuo, Kyle Glenn, Giu Vicente, Jason Roswell, and Jon Tyson Via Unsplash
