A well known Japanese haiku poet named Momoko Kuroda died recently, aged 84.
I have just discovered her and read a book with her poems called ‘I Wait for the Moon’. The book was written by a former student and ally - an accomplished haiku poet herself, who did an excellent job translating Momoko’s work and ethos.
Exploring the art of haiku poetry myself, it made me want to investigate Momoko’s human design chart, as well as her death chart and see whether I can recognise the themes that inspired me to stretch my own creative thinking process.
There is no accurate time of birth for this poet, but still her basic chart themes show a manifesting generator with a defined head and ajna linked to the throat through the channel of Structuring [‘Genius to Freak’], as well as the G centre of Self, identity and direction with the channel 13/33 ‘The prodigal’ - all part of a continuum linked to the sacral centre with the channel of the Beat 2/14.
This is a powerful design - someone who can think on her feet and verbalise her knowing while collecting revelations fuelled by her responsive individual direction.
Reading about her and absorbing her poems I was struck by her individual ‘beat’ and her intellectual originality. Haiku poetry is based on capturing an experiential spark which is refined according to one’s style of wording perceptions.
Momoko excelled in capturing moments on the go and making them read like small revelations.
~Noh mask splintered .fragments of the moon in the harbor~
lighting a bonfire — seagulls the color of work gloves~
white leek— a beam of light —now I chop it~
The irony exploring a famous person’s chart lies in remembering that they mostly lived and expressed their reliable definition through the distortion of conditioning. Still. Momoko’s brilliance shines through, which brings me to her death chart.
A death chart is literally the chart of the person’s moment of death. It’s the last testament of the life’s themes with a headline and relevant extensions spread over the map.
Looking up someone’s death chart is a moving and humbling experience, especially for people we’ve been close to. It’s a form of voyeurism shedding light on one chapter of their soul’s journey - the one just completed.
For Momoko’s chart there is no time of death available, but the themes are mostly reliable with no significant changes for what I was looking for, which is the headline of her life found in the earth gate.
Her life’s headline is outlined in gate 47.6 - ‘Futility’. The blue line [lifelong learning theme in the rave i-ching] says ‘A difficult position for which there is no exaltation’.
This sounds harsh, and interestingly Momoko’s native chart has the gate 47 twice as part of her channel of abstraction - A design of mental activity and clarity. It can be a challenging channel to have with potentially oppressive and obsessive thinking cycles looking for a way out of confusion, and trying to make sense of one’s experiences.
For Momoko this was clearly a tool of her craft. ‘Futility’ is reflected in the same cyclical thoughts and oppressing onself, but this is where the haiku mind comes in handy. There is always something new in the ‘same same’ cycle of daily life.
The 47.6 earth gate’s keynote outline points to the sun gate 22.6 as part of her life’s purpose theme, and so the treasure trail continues:
22.6 ‘Maturity’ - The alignment with experience of form with substance. Well wow. Isn’t it a perfect outline for us all on the journey of alignment?… In the context of human design it’s the maturity inherent in the experiment, aligning our form and its substance through experience.
It’s futile to think about self alignment as opposed to living it. The form is living its life, and if we are lucky we can witness and experience our maturity with awareness.
Momoko’s death chart’s trail continues with more hints. We already know what the learning of emotional maturity is, as outlined in gate 22.6 and its individual mutative frequency. The message is in the detriment and the first paragraph states - The alignment tends to express itself in non-conformist modes…
Momoko was non-conformist. Her native personality Saturn gate is the individual gate of shock 51.4 ‘Limitation’. Her disciplined non-conformist approach rose out of Limitation which brings ‘pure inventiveness’ as in the keynote.
In other words, Limitation, even at its most futile [as far as the mind is concerned], can bring pure inventiveness. This ‘genius to Freak’ poet has lived this theme by all accounts.
At the end of the day, one’s song is intended for those who are here to hear it. There is much more to glean from Momoko’s two charts - life and death - but perhaps it’s enough to inspire some readers to explore the ‘Death and dying’ body of knowledge from the Cosmology courses - if not to start reading and writing haiku, like I have.
~
balmy fall day—my body swathed in naturally dyed cloth~
underground passagethere’s a wind rushing by —the calendar seller~
Haiku poems above from the book ‘I Wait for the Moon - 100 Haiku of Momoko Kuroda’. Translated with commentary by Abigail Freedman.