The reality of sexual trauma and the paradox of healing

Family Hunger Games, Part 2 — A Special Edition of Planet Waves

Brussels bedroom curtains. Photo by Eric Francis - Book of Blue

This article continues a theme I began discussing a year ago, involving a pattern originating in Capricorn and spreading through the cardinal signs Aries, Cancer and Libra. It involves family constellations and miltigenerational issues. — efc

---

“When I am healed, I am not healed alone.”
—acim

Dear Friend and Reader:

Everyone struggles with sex, by which I mean sex, its associated emotions, and its many results.

At least I don’t know anyone who does not, or who has not done so significantly at some time. Most of the struggle is silent; most goes unnamed. Yet some blend of longing, pain, confusion, guilt and shame reside in the back of nearly every psyche, and sometimes bleed out to the front. And this can have a suffocating or even devastating effect on relationships.

From unresolved rape and incest to a thousand shades of sexual betrayal, to the nonstop drama of repression and religious dogma, to the secrets we keep, we all share a burden that most do not understand and often do not recognize. Some people figure it out. They are usually the quiet, compassionate ones.

The pain of society affects and afflicts everyone, whatever you may have been through (or are going through) personally. This week, I’m here to discuss certain lesser known elements of the problem, and also the prohibitions and restrictions on healing. It’s my intent that this will inspire a discussion of what we can do about the problem.

The Problem of Repeat Injury

Recognizing and acknowledging injury allows the next step, which is healing. Anyone with an injured ankle, knee or shoulder knows about the problem of re-injury. The weak spot is where you’re likely to get hurt worse the next time. This is why injuries require special care and rehabilitation. The goal is to heal rather than to be constantly afraid of getting hurt, or walking on a crutch the rest of one’s life.

That seems easier said than attempted, much less accomplished. Difficult as it may be, I think it’s worth trying — which begins with asking inwardly for help. The healing power is within you. Therefore, turn your attention within and ask for help if you need it (This sums up A Course in Miracles in a few words.) In that spirit, I will proceed.

Remember that something comes after healing, which is feeling better — or even feeling good. And to be real, healing must be available and offered to everyone equally, including alleged offenders or seemingly unworthy beings. Nobody can be left out; those society likes the least need the most help; there is plenty of healing to go around, if we say so.

The Hunger Games pattern at full strength Thursday and Friday. Ixion is not shown — it’s earlier in the aspect pattern, at 7 degrees of Capricorn. It’s currently conjunct asteroid Child, which demonstrates the threat to children by those invited into the home.

Venus with Salacia, and the Family Hunger Games Group

The timing of this discussion is something we’ll never see again happen quite this way, and it’s exact on Friday, when Venus in Aries passes through an aspect pattern associated with family constellations, legacy, abuse and denial. Due to the recent Venus retrograde in Pisces and Aries, this is happening for the third time (the first two were in April 2024 and February 2025).

As part of this, Venus in Aries forms a conjunction to a point called Salacia (277-year orbit, with a theme which I will develop later in this article) and squares (bold, provocative aspect) four different points in Capricorn at the same time. Just at that moment, the Moon in Capricorn passes through the configuration.

Venus and the Moon are the quick-moving, local activators of a pattern that is usually lurking in the background. (This is one facet of the relationship between the inner and the outer planets.)

For about a year, I’ve been referring to the pattern as the Family Hunger Game group, now at about 12 degrees of Capricorn. This is an ultra-slow moving pattern that will be with us in some form for years. Due to the closeness of the alignment and the presence of Venus and the Moon, it’s in rare form right now — and this will not happen again in any aeon soon.

The concept of a “hunger game” is desperation turned into competition to the death — for the entertainment of others. The observers are not just the overlords. The whole society is dragged in. Scandal provides plenty of entertainment for the population, and serves as direct interference with the healing process or even thinking that such a thing is possible.

To be clear: in families, as in society, the game of desperation takes the place of healing. It is the perfect distraction. Yet the message of the medium of a hunger game is lack of empathy, conditioned within families, spread out over the whole society, and as one of its dominant characteristics. This is a cultural game.

Ashokan Solstice. Photo by Eric Francis.

Games People (and Societies) Play

There are a lot of others, for example, the constant conflation of sexual and relational matters with politics. We take this as normal — the gender battle has been waged in the streets for 100 years — but all it does is perpetuate itself, mingle sex with so-called power, and keep people far away from anything that might help them. This presents yet another barrier to healing, and to recognizing it necessity.

For example, scandal is a kind of publicly accepted form of social porn, with a more interesting plotline. There always seems to be one bobbing up at the top of the news. Many of the same people who need healing the most are the most engaged and entertained by scandal. This makes sense. It’s a prurient diversion from the addressing of something real, and concealing it from view.

Addressing that something would require vulnerability and cultivate intimacy. The purpose of any game (in Dr. Eric Berne’s concept described in the essential book Games People Play), whether individual or cultural, is specifically to avoid intimacy. (Read the introductory chapters — don’t just go right to the games section.)

This is why games are so popular (such as creating artificial social dramas). They are ultimately based on avoidance of intimacy, and this is one reason why not just confronting, but working with shame (and its close cousins guilt and embarrassment) is so central to the sexual healing process.

When Help is Not on the Way

There are other prohibitions on healing. No person who bears a license as any kind of “legitimate” therapist or doctor can engage in actual sexual healing process, or they will have their license revoked. Many therapists are afraid to go there even in conversation; many others simply cannot. None are properly educated through their education programs (and someone contends they are, please share the reading list).

Other factions of society attempt to initiate discussion of what they present as correcting alleged transgression with vigilante justice. Family, personal or emotional healing is never exercised through public or political power.

Another example is how male survivors of domestic abuse often cannot find help. There are exceedingly few shelters for them, they are not welcome in women’s shelters, and when they speak up they are often ridiculed for “being weak.” Many people think that men and boys are not abused, and society often reflects this false value. [Note, Tom Golden of Men Are Good Substack responded and said that while the problem continues, there are signs of improvement, such as this service.]

Women who falsely accuse men of abuse rarely face any consequences at all, including for initiating a false arrest. I have spoken personally with prosecutors who have tried to file such charges and have failed. I know of one successful prosecution, ever, anywhere. And it was not without issues.

One crisis society faces is the ideology that injury and healing are partisan issues. This is a bias that takes many sly forms, which must be recognized and addressed as obstacles. To ply false partisanship is to perpetuate abuse, neglect and re-injury, and send it down the generations for our progeny to suffer. This is the same thing that has happened to us.

Beaver Dike, the Ashokan Reservoir. Photo by Eric Francis.

Enough Alcohol to Fill the NYC Reservoir — Every Year

One of the main actors in the Capricorn side of the Hunger Games alignment is Pholus (Chiron-like centaur planet, 92-year orbit). This signifies issues with alcohol that may go back four generations (to one’s great-grandparents). It’s difficult for most people today to understand the extent to which extremely heavy drinking at every social gathering was considered normal social behavior just a generation or two ago.

Some people get it; they were there, and/or it afflicted them. And we still have a problem today, though perhaps less obvious.

The Ashokan Reservoir — the primary reservoir serving New York City — holds about 123 billion gallons of water at maximum capacity. Spanning 12 miles end-to-end (about a 25-minute drive), it’s about a mile wide at the widest, and is 190 feet deep at its deepest. It has 40 miles of shoreline.

As many alcoholic beverages are consumed worldwide each and every year to fill this reservoir — effectively, a punch bowl 40 miles around!

Though prescription drugs have done a lot of catching up, if there is one thing perpetuating misery down the generations, it’s alcohol. The effect of alcohol is to cut people off from themselves and from one another. This afflicts whole lineages and impacts one generation after the next.

In vino veritas (wine makes you tell the truth, an old expression from ancient Rome) works for a minute. Once the tide of ethanol starts to roll in, deception, denial and guilt take over. Complicating this situation is the extent to which people use alcohol to lower their inhibitions so they can get out of their own way and be sexual with someone else. (It’s rarely necessary for selfsex, which deserves a pin in the map. The issues reside not within sex itself but rather within relationships.)

Using alcohol to lower your inhibitions usually leads to developments you regret. John Lennon said that most people are born out of a bottle of whiskey on Saturday night. That sums up a sad situation with his usual dry wit.

Full Moon at the Ashokan Spillway Gorge. Photo by Eric Francis.

Many People are Shamed to the Core

Have you ever wondered why so many people are so paralyzed? This includes a highly curtailed capacity for joy, and a near total lack of curiosity. John Bradshaw (1933-2016) got it right when he associated alcohol with the preservation and perpetuation of toxic shame. But alcohol is not necessary.

In his 1988 landmark book Healing the Shame that Binds You, he wrote, “To be shame-bound means that whenever you feel any feeling, need or drive, you immediately feel ashamed. The dynamic core of your human life is grounded in your feelings, needs and drives. When these are bound by shame, you are shamed to the core.”

Let’s focus this one idea: “whenever you feel any feeling, need or drive, you immediately feel ashamed.” Feelings include hunger, creativity, sadness, depression, curiosity, love and sex. We all know the nagging feeling of guilt and the indulgence in “guilty pleasures.”

“Family secrets can go back for generations,” he writes, in the spirit of Pholus. “They can be about suicides, homicides, incest, abortions, addictions, public loss of face, financial disaster, etc. All the secrets get acted out. This is the power of toxic shame. The pain and suffering of shame generate automatic and unconscious defenses.”

These defenses go by a diversity of classical names: denial, idealization of parents, repression of emotions and dissociation from emotions. “What is important to note is that we can’t know [I would say do not know] what we don’t know. Denial, idealization, repression and dissociation are unconscious survival mechanisms. Because they are unconscious, we lose touch with the shame, hurt and pain they cover up. We cannot heal what we cannot feel. So without recovery, our toxic shame gets carried for generations.”

So what is the way out? The chances are you will have to make up your own, but there are some tried and true methods — if we would ever use them. You will need help, which you will very likely need to recruit yourself — starting with your own help. For much of this journey you will seem to be on your own. Trust that there is a way.

Ashokan Spillway. Photo by Eric Francis.

From Capricorn to Salacia in Aries

The other three points on the Hunger Game aspect pattern (all conjunct Pholus) involve family. Quaoar, a small planet out near Pluto, takes us all the way back to the origins of the tribe (which for most of us is the story of family formation, such as when the great-grandparents immigrated).

There is also the special point Cupido, which is about family gathering. And then there is Ixion (251-year orbit), which represents the principle of amorality. Not immorality, but the total lack of any moral framework; any notion of right or wrong. Ixion in this pattern represents an invited guest into the family structure who is not related to anyone by blood. This figure stalks countless histories of abuse scenarios (see the book Tiger, Tiger by Margaux Fragoso for an example of pure Ixion).

Exactly 90-degrees across the dial — the most powerful aspect, a square — is a slow-mover called Salacia. Another Pluto-like body, my delineation of Salacia is about innate sexuality — which is associated with one’s amorous nature. We all have that, somewhere. Most of us don’t know much about it; the search is almost always suppressed. But we all have a truth, whether we know it or not.

I have previously described Salacia as representing “the sex that is right for you,” as in actually right, rather than sanctioned by some authority (family, social, religious, governmental or otherwise). Let’s get this concept into the conversation.

Most of the time, we do what we think is right for other people, or acceptable to them. In such conditions, there is really no way to even understand your innate needs and desires, which stifles both love and growth. The issue here is conformity: specifically, the feeling of not being able to be yourself around your family.

This is especially true if there are various attackers and aggressors in your tribe who have made you into the one who was wrong. And I have found that more often than not, there are sexual elements involved.

That’s a lot of beer.

Being Honest With Yourself is the First Step

Salacia, the “innate” principle, is confined and conditioned by the Hunger Games construction 90-degrees away. The box that it’s in is comprised of numerous layers of conditioning going back generations. It’s almost like an archeological site. If you keep sifting through the soil, you will find evidence of many previous civilizations.

Even if one has escaped overt sexual trauma, there are all kinds of insults and injuries inflicted by this conditioning process. Much of it is religious guilt. This is a serious problem that relatively few people have confronted is considered normal and even a good thing. Fortunately, it’s one of the easier forms of damage from which to heal (as they come) but it’s extremely pervasive and taken for granted. It’s why guilt seems so normal. Looking from the other side, we might ask why society is so in love with its governing devices placed over sexual expression.

Then there are the severe injuries, which often remain concealed due to shame, denial and the lack of availability of meaningful healing. One might acknowledge trauma — but then what can you do about it? This is an essential feature of the paradox of healing. You cannot let this stop you — and certainly not stop you from being honest with yourself. That is the very first step. And the point of all the guilt and shame is to prevent you from doing that one simple thing.

Salacia is also pushing back. It represents something simple and true, that is at the essence of every human being. It contains a growth impulse; a tropism, like a plant’s leaves reaching for light and its roots reaching for water.

And now, Venus is moving through the pattern — for the third time. This can have the effect of making whatever situation it represents obvious and palpable to you emotionally. At the same time, Venus in the pattern is screaming you must be you, no matter what.

What makes this pattern so rare is that it occurred twice last year (due to the recent Venus retrograde) and is now happening for a third time. There is something that is wanting to be addressed and worked out. Even acknowledging your situation can be a significant step. That may bring on the awareness of some inner darkness, which you will have to move through; and from there, you may find small ways to feel good. You find ways to relax. You find ways to trust. This cycle can go on for a while.

Photo by Eric Francis - Book of Blue.

Logos is the Truth Waiting to be Acknowledged

A slow-mover called Logos (310-year orbit) is also in the pattern, in Libra, opposite Salacia and Venus. As the ruler of Libra, Venus brings the Logos principle into the discussion even more strongly. I have not discussed Logos previously except in The Awakening. A principle originating in classical Greek thought, Logos refers to a universal divine reason, immanent in nature, yet transcending all oppositions and imperfections in the cosmos and humanity.

It is a kind of eternal and constant truth, and it wants to be invited into the conversation. It is in Libra, the sign of relationships. If this exists, it sounds a lot like the Holy Spirit as described by A Course in Miracles. It’s not a thing; it’s a living entity that interconnects all minds.

I would propose that the first step toward finding the truth you seek is within yourself; and then within your existing relationship. You must start where you are, which means having the courage to open up. To do this, you may need to squirm through various layers of fear, resentment, guilt (a form of resentment or malice directed at yourself), and shame (which feels like existential wrongness).

You may not be able to open up to your partner. Of course, you might be avoiding that, and sooner or later you will have to. You can start with someone else, for practice. Find someone you trust, whose middle name is not Trauma. You want to talk to someone trusting and stable, who knows how to work through their own problems.

It’s important to remember that you have inherited the pain of many people before you. And unlike them, you may be the first generation to learn that you cannot blame your way out of this problem. Ultimately, it is yours to address consciously. There is power and strength in recognizing that.

Ashokan Spillway in the dry months. This overflow dam (shown flowing above) has served for about 110 years. Photo by Eric Francis.

The Pleasure Anxiety Crisis

Are you familiar with the term “pleasure anxiety”?

I have not seen it used in a long time. It may be the most significant obstacle to healing because it’s present at every stage of the crisis, and stands as the final obstacle once all of the issues and trauma are out in the open, when pain is acknowledged and even when amends are made.

It’s an anxiety response to feeling good. This is conditioned in early childhood as a way to keep kids under control. It’s not really about moralism, though it wears that mask. Controlling children through pleasure anxiety is a standard tactic of raising them, and I have no reason to believe we have made ANY progress. It’s the nuclear reactor at the core of the American psyche (in which I include the crown states Australia, New Zealand, Canada and much of Europe).

Wilhelm Reich (1897-1957) wrote that this particular emotional knot is the core reason why people voluntarily submit to fascism — to being totally controlled (which we are now doing rapidly). By that I mean political fascism of a kind that makes you wonder why people just roll over.

This manifests in the most personal ways. Someone starts to feel good, and then shuts down and has a control response. The essence of sexual healing is being able to let go into a good orgasm. If that terrifies a person, then the only other direction of travel is to freeze up and submit to external control.

Nearly all that passes for sexual healing stops short of this one thing — the fulfilling orgasm. That is the part that cannot usually be said out loud. Guilt, shame and embarrassment seem to prevent it.

We are conditioned into various states of anxiety, withholding, blame, obsession with scandal, and their resulting mistrust and righteous anger — and that somehow passes for progress. It is likely that you were taught that dragging around gender rage is your best protection against bad things happening. It is more likely to attract them, and preventing intimacy or trust from coming into your life.

Spillway gorge at low water, in early autumn. Photo by Eric Francis.

Armoring Blocks Orgone; and All Society Gives Us is Armor

All of this is armoring — buttressing, and defenses — that blocks orgone — the healing force itself, the vital force sometimes expressed as orgasm — from washing over the pain and having its restorative effect. And that washing over is exactly what needs to happen.

The paradox is that sexual pleasure is required to work through sexual pain. Experiencing pleasure will bring up painful elements, and that is the time to work through them. For example, whatever you are feeling at the time your orgasm is interrupted points to a potential topic to work out, which you may not have given a name. Note how few people will say this openly, as obvious as it is.

You will know this is an issue for you if you have a negative response to your pleasure, or that of anyone else. A political justification for your feelings merely conceals this. Most people who are healers cannot talk about this, or consider it diagnostically. It’s the sacred relic around which the cathedral and religion have been built.

The extent of the armoring demonstrates why people flock to sexually repressive religions like they were being offered a lifetime of free pizza and beer. In those social environments, it’s possible to suppress the whole topic — until it boils to the surface with a vengeance.

What does a path of sexual healing look like? It looks, or rather feels, like learning how to forgive and feel good despite it all — and then opening up to others feeling good (which is called compersion — a concept worth understanding). If you start to feel good and then allow your consciousness to deny others that same privilege, you are perpetuating your own pain and struggle, and theirs.

The result of this process is not “better sex” but rather a more fulfilled life, a more creative life, where you are capable of experimenting, trusting, wanting to trust, and motivated by curiosity about yourself. Allowing your curiosity is one of the first steps that you are making progress.

As for forgiveness: the ego is not capable of this. Forget it.

It is only offered and received through the living spirit within. The ego will always condemn when it’s not busy terrorizing you with guilt and fear. Contact with your inner spirit will release fear and forgive in the same gesture.

Photo by Eric Francis.

The Art of Flying

There is a 1944 book called Stick and Rudder by Wolfgang Langewiesche. It explains the basics of how to fly an airplane — a very basic kind of airplane with no electronic technology whatsoever. It’s about the fundamental dynamics of flight, how to stay in the air and how to not crash.

In that book is a metaphor that I love. An airplane “stalls” when its airspeed is too low to keep it aloft. The engine alone (especially a propeller) will not be powerful enough to recover the necessary airspeed.

So he says you then have to do something that will go against all of your instincts but is necessary to stay alive: you point the airplane toward the ground and go into a dive. This alone will increase your airspeed. Once that is done, you come out of the dive and can safely resume level flight.

There are many examples of this in sexual healing. One of them is proceeding in the direction of shame and embarrassment rather than away from it.

This can seem to violate one’s instincts as much as pointing an airplane toward the ground. Yet it makes more sense if you know that the healing is on the other side of the seemingly negative emotions — and the only way out is through them. (The other possible direction is that of alleged purity and attempted renunciation of one’s feelings. That’s just more armoring. And it happens all the time.)

Spillway gorge at high water in spring. Photo by Eric Francis.

Going Solo: Learning to Trust Yourself

From the tradition of flight, there is something else worthwhile. When one has learned to fly, they eventually go up alone — we have all heard of “soloing.” That’s when you have enough flight hours and your instructor is confident you can take your life into your own hands.

This principle applies to sexual healing practice. Most of it must be done alone. The essence of sexuality is your relationship to yourself. The essence of trust is about you trusting yourself; the essence of respect is respecting yourself. The capability to love is based on loving yourself, which implies gentleness and not bravado.

Many people are never without a partner; they know little of adult existence without one. Some have the next partner queued up a year before their current relationship ends in seeming disillusionment. Then there is endless serial dating, designed to be without “commitment,” which really means without connection.

This is a distraction from the fact that love is only found within yourself. If you are flying solo, it’s easier to enter those spaces in yourself where you are holding dark feelings. Proceed gently — just keep going, acknowledging what you feel. From there, you would be making connections from a more grounded place.

Selflove has nothing in common with narcissism or vanity; far to the contrary — though there is some confusion here. Narcissists are among those who hate themselves; that is why they are who they are. Selflove is the quiet acceptance of who you are, and finding the freedom to make your own choices from there.

It will be easier for you to assess whether you want to do the sexual element of this going solo after you size up how much pain and sorrow sex has brought into your life. Maybe you are fortunate and it’s brought very little; maybe your sexual decisions have been what runs your life from behind the scenes. It is possible to get through this and emerge in a better place — though only working in a different environment and frame of mind than the one where the difficulty originated.

The Love Affair With Paradoxes and Double Binds

There is a way out of the paradox, though I would end with a word of caution: people love them. We are in love with double-binds and contradictions and no-win situations. This is just more distraction, more ensnarement in the original problem, and more armoring — the very things you are learning how to let go of.

This is another situation that comes in many forms, and which ultimately supports both hypocrisy and seeming political solutions.

And in the midst of those, we are missing the most important question: what is right for me? That is the Salacia principle. I am not talking about being “selfish” but rather self-oriented enough to have a sense of what choices are right for you. How do you know? To figure that out, you will need some time to yourself: a day, a month, a year, or 10 years. And you will need to experiment.

As is written in Book of Blue, “It’s not about them. It’s about me.” By that, I mostly mean your feelings, needs, desires and healing process. And at the same time, A Course in Miracles reminds us: “When I am healed, I am not healed alone.”

As part of this journey, we must lift the mandate on secrecy. Self-disclosure is an art, and it begins with you keeping nothing from yourself. That is the beginning of healing, and opens the potential for a breath of understanding, and maybe freedom.

With love,

Your faithful astrologer,

Next week I will consider this problem in the context of the digital age; I have intentionally omitted this discussion. I covered it in a different context last week.

Resources

A Proper Introduction to Salacia

“Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ” — Compersion as Erotic Empathy

Family Hunger Game, Part One

Mercury, Weaving the Story of Nessus

The Folk Art of Therapy

Book of Blue, a diary of sexual healing

Wetlands area near the reservoir. Photo by Eric Francis.