Does astrology really let me hear the echo of bells on Earth? Do stars really pull the heart strings of a doe and petals of a rose? Is my life only one long bale of circumstantial strings held by mind stuff that is on the same pallete as every other bale of humanity? Whose pallete, and, whose Farm do we belong? The bale of wheat that we are according to this image must be food for someone or something. Perhaps not food but material or ingredients. a part of a recipe Man eating gods? Why not? After all we have a major religion that practises on a regular basis god eating.
Starry, starry questions?
February 21, 2012
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Posted by stavr0s
Astromusings
February 3, 2012Someone asked me the other day, “So, how do you use this astrology stuff?” Good question.
Firstly, I’m not that interested in personal horoscopes, you know, character identikits made from cook book recipes. Don’t get me wrong, I believe there’s a lot to it, it’s just not interesting for me. Mind you, I have analysed, synthesized and delineated my own horoscope and my immediate family. I have also done it for friends and with the software available now, if you wanted, you could just read the automated printouts and you would find some meaningful statements. Does this mean that a software produced cook book reading of astrological data shows that there may be an objective meaning to astrology? No, not necessarily because of the predisposition of human psychology to find patterns of meaning almost anywhere so that software output can be read as if it is uniquely true for the reader. This is the phenomena called apophenia, a term coined by Klaus Conrad in 1958 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophenia) which is the experience of seeing meaningful patterns or connections in random data.
After going through the narcissistic labyrinth that new students of Astrology go through (in ways akin to Freudian psychologists who have to be psychoanalysed before they call themselves psychoanalysts) you are left with the bare essentials. Why does “Mars” mean something different to “Venus”? What is this “something” that elicits the difference? Is this “something” made up in my mind with no connection to the “real” world? Obviously, the “something” that I deal with in astrology does not have to do with Mars rocks and Moon dust or Venusian heat, though in some contexts, it may very well do.
The meaning that arises from considering a horoscope is similar to that which arises from a mandala, or even a playful glance at Rorschach ink blots and clouds drifting by. The meaning is not implicit in the horoscope or clouds that float by but rather in what is evoked in the reader / observer.
So, if this is the case, then why bother studying something that has no overt connection with the meaning extracted from it? Why don’t we just slaughter an animal and read its entrails, like some ancient people did? Well, it’d be messy and besides, it would not be a loving gesture to another sentient being. Well, why don’t we just read tea leaves, coffee grounds and cracked tortoise shells (the origin of I Ching hexagrams)? All of these carry something other than just the object observed. They carry a history, an accretion of observations and readings that assist the reader ascertain meaning. If someone drops a bucket of sheep entrails, with the liver in a dominant position, how would one know where to start reading it? There would be nothing to inform a beginning, a middle and an end. The history, or the tradition of readings that come with entrail reading would at least give the reader a start. The question then becomes, why would the history / tradition of readings carry any weight in meaning, at all? The tradition may well be full of misguided, random guesses systematised to give the illusion of structured meaning. This is what sceptics of Astrology, Tarot and the I Ching say in their own words. And, you know, I have no problem with this conclusion.
If I have no issues with the stance of a sceptic, then why do I still dowse for meaning in Astrology? If I was dependent on reading passing clouds in the sky for situational prognosis I would not have an on call “object” with which I could play for meaning because, each moment the cloud changes shape and may disappear within a short time. However, a structure, a blueprint that has its origins in Number and can be called on at any time has the possibility of a systematic reading. Astrology and the I Ching, even the Tarot have as their foundation Number. Notice how I use the capital letter “N” here for Number. Number to me is a living Being, it is not just a quantity, but a Quality. Number, for me has Pythagorean connections. Have a look at an earlier post called Time Body https://dodona777.wordpress.com/2009/08/23/time-body/, also check the post https://dodona777.wordpress.com/2009/02/16/is-consciousness-a-function-of-the-brain-or-vice-versa/
It is Number that speaks to me in its geometrical placement. All Astrology is geometry and the meanings that ensue from the horoscope are numerological.
I know this raises more questions and perhaps I will write some more on this later. I also know that I haven’t answered the original question of this post, “So, how do you use this astrology stuff?”. I will attempt a short answer. Astrology gives me the means to step outside my ordinary sense based mindset and to approach a world that is non – sense based. So, is it nonsense? Yes, but in a way different to the ordinary meaning of non sense 🙂
6 Comments | astrology, consciousness, divination, I Ching, numerology, philosophy, Pythagoras | Tagged: Apophenia, astrology, Divination, Horoscope, I Ching, Klaus Conrad, Pythagoras, Religion and Spirituality, Rorschach, Tarot | Permalink
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A born again virgin soul
April 6, 2011I’m attempting to reach a state where I am a born again virgin soul, a state where I can dream once again of clouds passing through my ear into my head and out again through the other ear carrying life giving water.
I’m looking at the process of writing this down and it has opened up a little river of opportunity. Action … it seems acting (doing something) sets up its own dynamic in a super structure sense. The action into the unknown allows another higher order world that shows signs on the crossroads. The GPS here is set to the inner satellite orbiting one’s heart. Obviously the muscle pumping blood around the body hasn’t got a Latter Day Sputnik bipping around it. The heart I speak of is that part of ourselves which tastes truth and sees through the onion layered worlds we live in. Sees through? Yes, like a prehistoric insect sees through amber before it solidifies.
One of my greatest “heroes” is a guy called Gurdjieff. Someone wrote that the Fourth Way which Gurdjieff brought to the West was a method of making the real – super real. In fact, it is practical surrealism. So now I want to practically surrealise some of my dreams. Using the template of power-in-action through visualisation, various projects were able to be given a material existence (like the Cultural Stomp and the Flotillas of Hope). It is not “me” who did it, or who does it. In fact, my job as a person with heart is to move out of the way so that the forces attempting to make whatever needs to happen, happen.
I remember one time when the Flotillas of Hope project was white hot in its birthing. Two websites had already manifested, as well as a satellite phone and 2 boats. An art auction was about to happen in Sydney, where we raised over $8,000, and I get this call from a guy heavily involved in the Socialist Alliance.
He says, “Stavros, this is big. How the fuck are you managing this – where’s your committee?”
I laughed and told him that if he knew the truth he wouldn’t want to work with me because he’d think I was absolutely crazy. Really crazy! He pleaded with me to tell him the truth.
So I told him,”My job is to just keep the fire burning while aligning myself to the Kabbalistic Tree of Life using the astrological chart of the project as the foundation.”
- Tree of Life from Z’ev ben Shimon Halevi’sAdam and the Kabbalistic Tree, Rider, London 1974
Tree of Life - another aspect from Z'ev ben Shimon Halevi's "Adam and the Kabbalistic Tree", Rider, London 1974
He went quiet. I added, “I am just focussing on the vision – the image of us sailing to Nauru and the focus is the fire.”
He replied slowly as if it pained him to hear something like that, “B-u-l-l-s-h-i-t !!”
I laughed and told him that it was true and if it was all bullshit, how did he explain the manifestation of boats, websites, satellite phones, art auctions, crews, inverters etc etc that are here in the real world? He didn’t ask me again how I was managing .
I’m trying to get out of the way so that what is most necessary at this time comes to fruition. Who knows, it may be a book, a million dollars, a shop with hidden treasures or a beautiful garden. It may be the birth of another grand child, or my recently planted grapevine bearing fruit this coming year.
Having a shed allows me to play and tinker to my heart’s delight. At the very least, I want to have made my scaled down Great Pyramid to experiment with to see if Pyramid Power is real, my very own Orgone Accumulator and a simple Dream Machine within a year or so.
I suppose to gain a born again virgin soul is really to regain the innocence of a child. We were all once children, so innocent and then experience came in and made us fall from that state of grace. This is so beautifully expressed in William Blake’s “Songs of Innocence and Experience”.
William Blake's Frontispiece for "Songs of Innocence and Experience"
The Divine Image by William Blake
The Divine Image
To Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
All pray in their distress;
And to these virtues of delight
Return their thankfulness.
For Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
Is God our Father dear,
And Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
Is man, His child and care.
For Mercy has a human heart,
Pity, a human face,
And Love, the human form divine,
And Peace, the human dress.
Then every man, of every clime,
That prays in his distress,
Prays to the human form divine,
Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace.
And all must love the human form,
In heathen, Turk, or Jew;
Where Mercy, Love, and Pity dwell
There God is dwelling too.
6 Comments | astrology, consciousness, Cultural Stomp, flotillas of hope, fourth way, Gurdjieff, William Blake | Tagged: consciousness, consensus reality, dream machine, dreamachine, flotillas of hope, fourth way, G I Gurdjieff, George Gurdjieff, God, great pyramid, Gurdjieff, Holy Spirit, invisible forces, Jesus, kabbala, London, orgone accumulator, Religion and Spirituality, Songs of Innocence and Experience, Wilhelm Reich, William Blake, Z'ev ben Shimon Halevi | Permalink
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Time Body
August 23, 2009“Being in the timeless moment without the coercion of time is to dream, while lacking any sense of the timeless is to be only a machine.” Anthony Blake, “A Seminar on Time”
I have been long thinking about the Time Body since I turned 40. My interest in this was not only aroused by my entering the 40’s Chamber but also because I have read in the esoteric / occult tradition that the Path of Initiation cannot truly begin until the aspirant is at least 40 years old. So, all the Sufi practices, all the Gurdjieff exercises, all the attempts at the Jesus Prayer in Rhythm to the Breath, all the quiet desperation in a cube, all the immobility of mind, “Stopping the World” and the sacred wish arousing in the Heart….all of these things and more are only a preparation. Note, however, that when we speak of 40’s we are speaking of 4 to a number of degrees. Four is not 40 but shares attributes of four-ness with 40 as does 400 and 0.04 and 0.4.
Preparation for what? For the next phase of one’s life – the 40’s and the next few decades left in the mortal coil of three score and ten and beyond. Let’s remember that women, generally go through menapause in their 40’s, and men go through a “midlife crisis”. Why then? There’s something happening to us, just as powerful as puberty but this time it is the “puberty of old age”. What I mean by this is if I live to be 84 (a good number to work with because of the 12 X 7 connection), then 42 is the mid point (6 X 7). During the period of the 40’s we are laying the foundation (if we wish to) for a healthy, vibrant old age – my 60’s and the rest.
So, who is it that sees someone in the mirror that isn’t them? It’s me and all of us who are in mid life. In me there is a cry for the youth that I was and a fear of what I may be in old age. I have decided that this decade will and is the decade of consolidation. Actually, this is pompous. I didn’t decide anything, it’s more that there is a period of consolidation in one’s Time Body. The Time Body is the body of your mortal coil, it is the moment of your birth, like an Ourbouros, eating the moment of your death..this whole picture of one’s life/body is spatially perceived as 0 – 84 years long.
Pythagoras
Taking the Time Body as 84 and working with a hint from Schwaller de Lubicz’s insight into Ancient Egyptian understanding we will enter a realm of geometrical/numerological correspondences. Though one is inclined in this Age of Techno-Scientism to use words like “mathematics” to denote a respectable regard for dead abstractions, I like to think that the magico-mythico-Pythagoro Number is where I’m working from. Status quo respectability, when it comes to such life and death considerations such as, “Where am I going? Why am I here on this Earth? Who am I? Is there Life after Death?” can go in the dustbin of history. The danger of leaving the table of consensus reality – the current technoscience rationalism, is that you may end up sitting alone at the table of insanity. An unbending intent, a purity of heart and a constant need to grow will at least provide some assurance that one’s understanding may not be crazy, but just the way things are if we live in an onion layered world.
Let’s get back to de Lubicz’s hint. His insight is to consider that at every 7 years of one’s life a “life” has been and a new 7 year lot is coming up. Like layers of skin, each layer 7 years thick is a time-onion-skin where each skin is a period of 7 years. Consider that at 7 years old – the Church and Institutionalised understanding has it that a child has reason. Let’s go to 14 – puberty ….21 adulthood…..
A few clues: get Dane Rudyar’s “Astrology of Personality” and read about The Dial of Life. It is interesting because he considers the language of Astrology as the Algebra of Life. Read P D Ouspensky’s account of the Enneagram in In Search of the Miraculous. Also Ouspensky’s “Tertium Organum”, a classic book which gives some semblence of “rationality” to the mystic vision and his other classic “A New Model of the Universe” where he introduces the idea of Eternal Recurrence (not the same as Nietzsche’s concept). My account of the onion skin layers of time is dependent on all of the above and a generous helping of experience.
Try this as an experiment: Write out in 7 year lots X 7 a table like this:
To make it “user friendly” you can include the year of the age eg 1(1962) 2(1963) 3(1964) 4(65)……etc
As you write the number and year beginning from your birth year try to notice any images/memories arising and what year they pertain to. These memories as they arise become “key symbols”, they become in a very personal sense the x,y,z and the a,b,c ‘s of one’s own algebra of life. If focussed enough you create your own memory body. Now, look at your “algebra of life” through the prism of your meaning/memory. Like, what happened to you when you were 7,14, 21, 28, 35, 42 ? Looking across and down the table: what happened at 4,11,18, 25, 32, 39, 46 ? You will find that there is a corresponding change in “motion” for each layer of 7. With each lot of 7 years there is a noticeable change and experience that suggest layers of octave experience. Each year is a note in the scale Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Si Do. What is interesting is that there is a discernible signature for each octave period. Later on you can then put the table of years onto the Enneagram.
Enneagram
The Circle depicts daily life, the life of the diary – sequential time.
The inner movement 1-4-2-8-5-7 depicts the “notebook”, the method and know how, the Sadhana. In the events of one’s life, this is where synchronicity resides.
The Triangle depicts the idea of a creed, one’s faith. It is Timelessness.
The Enneagram with all three aspects of one’s experience together as a whole. See A G E Blake’s “The Intelligent Enneagram” for a detailed discussion of this symbol.
I have done all this and more with my own life numbers. If you are astrologically inclined, do the Solar Returns of each year and see what you find. The whole purpose of this is to focus the mind onto one’s own life stream. This focussing is not analytical, indeed, the process abhors analysis. It is the realm of imagining and then self remembering – or at least a preparation for this. The exercise itself is another version of “Recapitulation” which Carlos Castaneda refers to. Indeed, you will, if you delve a little deeper in what I’ve just given above, find not only clues to the notion of Fate but also clues to one’s Destiny. These clues are not uttered in any way by me, but rather by the very simplicity of the gods – Numbers. The Ancient Egyptian concept of Neter is close in meaning to the Pythagorean concept of Number.
The cover of R A Schwaller de Lubicz’s magnum opus “Temple of Man”
What are you looking for in the numbers of the years of your life? Just a few hints that can help name the years. Maybe then, your heart will play around with mystic circles and triangles with the Numbers of Life turning off and on like a light show.
All this may sound weird, but I can assure you, if you try this experiment, you will be pleasantly surprised by the octave “correspondence” you will see in your life experience. It will be as if there is a pattern, unknown to you, unfolding in a manner totally unexpected. A kind of music of your life, a hidden melody that you were not able to hear notes of until this moment. At times you may experience a déjà vu , the feeling that you have been here before,and this is interpreted exactly as that through the Great Idea of Eternal Recurrence as expressed through P D Ouspensky in his “A New Model of the Universe”. A good summary of this idea & its connection with Nietzche’s and Steiner’s take on it is here.
I’ve been influenced much by the 4th Way – through Gurdjieff and other teachings. Is it any wonder that I have become a middle aged Gnostic seeker carrying the lantern of wonder?
Try it and see if it isn’t true. You will find a pattern that will truly spook you. If you follow the clues and hints you will see the synchronicity of events
and
maybe the big question will arise:
WHOSE SHOW IS THIS ANYWAY?
9 Comments | alchemy, astrology, attention, consciousness, divination, enneagram, fourth way, Gurdjieff, numerology, personal, philosophy, Pythagoras, Schwaller de Lubicsz, sufi, symbolism, synchronicity | Tagged: A G E Blake, A New Model of the Universe, alchemy, astrology, DuVersity, enneagram, Eternal Recurrence, fourth way, G I Gurdjieff, gnostics, gods, inner warfare, intuitive arts, invisible forces, Nietzsche, numerology, P D Ouspensky, philosophy, synchronicity, Tertium Organum, time | Permalink
Posted by stavr0s
Introduction to Flotillas of Hope Sky Map
April 28, 2009Below is the introduction to the Horoscope of the Flotillas of Hope Project in 2004. I sent this out to a few supporters of the Project around the world who I felt would not laugh at the idea of an astrological – magical approach to a human rights campaign. Now, since the Action is complete and Nauru Detention Centre is shut down I feel that I can reveal my own inner stance to such external actions publicly.
I will also upload the complete reading of the Flotillas horoscope to a storage site. When I do I will give you the link.
Here’s the Intro……
Sky Map
“If there is dust on our lense, we see dark spots in the heavens.”
Carlos Suares
Flotillas of Hope Horoscope (Sky Map)
“..the apparently lifeless data of astronomy can be used to produce a calculated and objective emotional effect.This is astrology. But it is an astrology quite unlike astrology today.”
John Anthony West and Jan Gerhard Toonder
I feel like experimenting with my beginner’s astrologer mind on the Flotillas of Hope. Part of me is uncertain as to how it will be taken by you and in what spirit. My concerns revolve around the bad press that astrology has received since the Age of Reason. I am not going to justify the working rationale of such an ancient method of making sense of the world. Astrology is one of the oldest science – arts in the world, globally used by the first great civilisations of humanity, in Egypt, India, China, Americas, Africa, and Australasia. Written history shows that the Babylonians or Chaldeans developed it to a fine art. In fact “Chaldean” was synonymous with “astrologer” in those days because the practitioners of that country were considered the best practitioners of the art. Abraham, the root of Judaism, Christianity and Islam was a Chaldean. In those days the dichotomy between science and art did not exist. One could argue that our 21 St Century “West” is schizophrenic when we compare ourselves to the unitive vision of the ancient worlds. Check out Jaynes “The Origin of Consciousness and the Bicameral Mind” to see where I’m coming from. Sure we’ve got Eye of Hubble taking and transmitting beautiful images of the heavens from the edge of our Solar System to us on ground zero. However, we cannot see ourselves as an integral part of a living organism we call the Universe. We don’t believe that the Eye of Ra looks over us. Funny that, because the Sun still shines and that is what the Eye of Ra is – the Sun. This reminds me of William Blake’s response to someone who said that the Sun was just a guinea coin shape in the sky, “For you the Sun is a guinea disc, for me it is a chorus of Angels singing Alleluia! Alleluia!”
I want to reclaim that sense of wonder. Astrology helps me ponder the interconnection between myself and the universe, between all of us and the universes.
I want to experiment to see if Astrology as a symbolic language can demonstrate the noumenal underpinning of reality. This two way communication between mind and symbol may help manifest the Flotillas of Hope. I’m more comfortable in using the French “symbolique “ in the Schwaller de Lubicz sense than symbolic. The difference is so small yet it adds another world of meaning. Symbolic in the usual sense means a sign that stands for something. Symbolique means that the sign is the represented ie the symbol is alive in its own essential meaning – it is in itself what it symbolizes. The aliveness is the symbolique.
The underpinning I am referring to is not a static slab of concrete but rather a cluster of “energetic” patterns. If David Bohm is right about implicate and explicate orders of the universe then the pattern crystallizing between the implicate and the explicate orders as pin pointed at the moment of sending the Flotilla email is the Sky Map – a particle of the Holographic Universe . That moment carries with it space and we enter the zone of descriptions, associative tracings dancing across nervous systems and neuronal connections making “realities”. The Horoscope/email did not cause the journey of hope to Nauru. We are not talking about Causes here but rather acausal resonances, synchronicities, patterns of what is.
It is a fundamental premise in this reading that there are multiple descriptions of reality and that these descriptions have an equal being status. Consensus reality, in which we are embedded, is not the only one around. Australian Aboriginal people can discern over twenty different words for different kinds of desert sand where through Western eyes only one sand word exists “SAND”. The same applies to the ground. Original Australians see sacred ground where Western consensus reality only sees a potential dollar making resource.
The more you look into it, with a beginner’s mind, you find that the macroscale physics of relativity is in contradiction to the micro scale of the quantum universe. The humble electron orbiting around the nucleus of an atom cannot be placed. The electron cannot be pinned down as to where it will be at any moment. Its location is probable only. Picture the journey of a car in the centre of a city. You will see the car stop and turn, make its way in a continuous action. The car moves through space in a certain amount of time. This is the macroscale, however in the microscale, within the heart of matter it is a different picture. The analogous image of the car-electron travelling through the city centre, is the discontinuous location of the car. Instead of moving and turning around a corner for the car to be at a particular place, the quanta car first appears in one place and then another and then another without the “journey”. It is this discontinuity which is the quanta – a time –space packet of probabilistic matter. In fact, it seems that the micro universe of probabilistic matter is in closer concert with Astrology than the macro scale of “separate” stuff in an open universe. That moment, according to astrology encompasses the position of the planets and stars and the time the email was sent – it is all an Event Organism. The astrological hypothesis is based on a resonance between that which is above (the heavens) and that which is below (the everyday world of our existence – Earth). In other words there is a coincidence between the positions of the stars at that moment and the event. I won’t even try to enter synchronicity’s whirlpool to explain the connection. Check out Carl Jung’s Introduction to Richard Wilhelm’s translation of the I Ching. It is the best summation of the synchronicity idea. Rupert Sheldrake’s morphic resonance comes to mind applying its theme to a time body. The Flotillas of Hope may even be tapping into morphological roots in archetypal memory …..Jason and the Argonauts on a quest for the Golden Fleece. By the way, Jason is pronounced Yiason and when Greeks say “Yiasou” it means “long life and health to you”. Yia and as it means “hygia” as in hygiene…it also means to make Whole and is the Earth – Gaea = Yia both in pronounciation and in meaning. Gaea Mind – Hive Mind.
In other words the emerging pattern from the invisible world into the visible 3 D world of what is called “Flotillas of Hope” may be revealed in a symbolique exploration of a Sky Map. Not necessarily the future but the potential trends and cycles of an emerging future. Kind of like seeing the lineaments of a living time body. Seeing the curve of the Flotillas time sail, tiller and anchor may indicate certain needs. Sure, its not prediction pure and simple but it is better than nothing at all. This kind of astrology is as far removed from fortune telling as Reality is from Reality TV.
The Flotillas of Hope was conceived as an event organism when the “SEND” button was pressed. The idea entered the web-mind-womb and the flotilla was conceived. We know it was at that moment because we have witnessed its embryonic movements and now, at the time of writing, 4 boats – 3 from Australia, one from Colombia are here in the 3 – D World of our senses. The baby is kicking in the womb waters of both the web and the earth. On World Refugee Day, 20 June, 2004, the Flotilla of Hope will be born at Nauru, Longitude 166 E 55, Latitude 00 S 32.
Astrology for me is a means of exploring the edges of rational thought as it touches the unknown. The horoscope is like a semi permeable membrane, it can suspend the ordinary associative processes of the mind and allow a different kind of attention to manifest. This attention striking off from the symbolique elements of the horoscope gives a different kind of mind environment. Psychologists call it imagination. Sometimes, in flickering moments it can be vision. A vision – feeling into another dimensional world that is holographic in structure, energetic and alive. In these glimpses, a human and the universe are seen as the same organism. As above so below, as Hermes Trismegistus says. A different relationship exists between things – or at least that is what appears when astrological Sun glasses are worn.
Astrology for me is a mantic science with an intuitive technos.
In political or judicial astrology the beginnings of any event is deemed to hold its potential futures. Note the plural for it shows that there is no predetermined single end but rather multiple futures resonant to a common end. It was believed in ancient times that a study of the stars could ascertain the rise and fall of kingdoms and dynasties. It has also been recorded that the birth of Jesus was predicted by astrology when the three magi in a caravan crossing the Middle Eastern desert followed the Star of Hope to Bethlehem. Astrologers were employed to chart possible battles and voyages trying to predict what may happen and advise accordingly. Someone wrote, “In my beginning is my end and in my end is my beginning” Judicial or mundane astrology (mundanus from the Latin meaning “material world”) sees events in the same light – in a beginning is its end and in its end is its beginning. Judicial or political astrology deals with events in the social sphere. It is not as well known as the personal natal astrology but it has been of enormous influence in shaping history up to the Age of Reason. Some say, even until today.
Art of Manifestation
Another aspect to this reading is that the actual exercise of casting a chart, reading it and writing out the interpretation can be an intentional act of manifestation. Well, according to all the stuff I’ve read and been told, it can be. If the miraculous or the lyric by Leonard Cohen, “God is alive, Magic is afoot “ irritates your sensibility then so be it. I take those words literally. The secret seems to be “not doing” and “resting”; in knowing “how to wait”. It is a contradictory state >>> manifesting an intention by not doing. Something like Tao and the process of “From Little Things Big Things Grow” – Paul Kelly and Kev Carmody.
Look, I am new in this kind of work. One of the main things anybody has to do when learning a new skill is to apply it, try it out – practice. So, this effort of mine is a beginner’s effort. It may all be fantasy but at least I got another chart out of the way for my personal target of 1000 completed practice charts. It is an experiment in using a different model of the world to see if it can have an effect. Who knows what powers lie both within and outside ourselves when we remain open to different modes of apprehension.
“When positive, equational logic rejects feeling, it makes as great a mistake as when intuitive feeling rejects logical control.”
Schwaller de Lubicz
If the interpretation is all mere fantasy with no true moments of seeing, do not blame the stars. Blame my faulty vision. If astrology has no objective reality, it may yet have a reality in the subjective world.
In many ways, this reading is an experiment in communicating a social – political event and its intentions using categories that are Astrological. Whilst every attempt has been made to keep the Astrological technical language to a minimum, no prior knowledge of Astrology is required to understand its intentions.
The Flotillas not only sail on physical oceans they also sail in peoples’ hearts as courage and compassion bringing an end to the heartless and inhumane incarceration of refugees on Australia’s Islands of Shame.
This is just my small effort to do something, armed with a computer and a sense of wonder at the oneness of it all. As you read the interpretation you are also helping to manifest by reinventing and recreating the Flotillas of Hope in your own imagination. In effect you are creating your own vision of what may be.
Any other astrologers both beginner and advanced please send me your comments. I‘d be interested in hearing your views and interpretations of the Flotillas of Hope Sky Map.
Final word to those who know:
Somehow you’ve come to the conclusion that at the very heart of matter, at the turning point of decisions, at the core of bone marrow, molecule, atom, neutrino and pepperino there is an intelligence operating. You know that Earth is a stone with a lick of moisture on its surface orbiting about a type G star we call the Sun. You don’t disdain science and you also know that there is a blueprint of the whole of Creation. This blueprint, this plan , this informational map is embedded within every atom, cell, organism and living whole from a sand flea to Andromeda, from a child playing with a ball to the Milky Way.
How you came about this knowledge is your business. It could have been through a book. It could have been a friend who told you. It could have been a certain altered state of mind that led you to this knowledge. It doesn’t really matter where you got your knowledge or even how. The important thing is that you know that there is an imperishable spirit in every piece of matter, in every volume and in every measure. This means that there is an imperishable immortal part of human nature. It is here and now, we only have to slice through the onion layers of conditioning to see it. This knowledge we are speaking about is certain knowledge. It is an X ray vision of the imperishable in matter. It is not a mere belief and neither is it an open conclusion of faith. It is certain knowledge based on direct experience…nothing is in the way. Having this knowledge gives a different spin on the Earth as a stone orbiting a medium sized type G star.
In fact having this knowledge makes words like Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto mean something different to hunks of rock gravitationally stuck in orbits about the Sun. They are verbs in one context and gods in another. They are as far removed from the astronomical planets and Sun as green cheese is to the moon. This is where the possession of this knowledge instead of bringing fame and fortune will bring instead ridicule and laughter, sometimes scorn and banishment. The possession of this knowledge has marked you as an outsider. Even though it is invisible, your mark of Cain is your knowledge. If you are lucky you may have found a way to manifest secretly and keep a semblance of an ordinary householder life. Being an invisible outsider gives you great opportunities to observe and learn how to be a partner in creation. For this is what it comes down to. In essence humans are not a symbol of the Universe – we are the Universe and in this kind of partnership we all do our bit or we get flushed out of existence. Where’s our immortality then? It’s still there waiting for another to clothe it.
The denial of human rights of one is the denial of humanity for all.
Method of Approach
I’ll try to see if I can delineate the “soul” of the event as if it was a living organism, you know, the “Flotillas of Hope”. It is my way of considering the project in a holistic manner. I will try to place this Organism within the context of the socio – political world. One moves from the particular to the general – a person to a nation. – a local event to a national and global context. Astrology allows you to zoom in and out of the various contexts within contexts like a telescope . It can sometimes be time free and so indicate trends invisible to the naked eye. Trends seen through a time free zone? A contradiction and yet possible. Pataphysics and the Third Mind juxtaposed by situational poetics, the poetry of the moment shown not only in words but by the signs of the stars and our living motions.
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An Astrological Turning
April 5, 2009
We are immersed in star matter and star matter is immersed in us. We are sieves and ladders of energies, we are the meeting point, the centre of a whirl wind with our heads in the stars and our feet firmly on the earth, green, blue earth. We are in our own small and great ways, star gods. Yes, gods and goddesses who have forgotten their starry heritage. We are asleep to our possibilities and awake to our hand made nightmares, locked in an embrace with mortality when in reality, we are immortal. Our graveyards are full, tsunamis and earthquakes, wars and natural causes take their human toll. We all know that we are going to die.
Yet, I say we are immortal. Strange words indeed. My body is mortal but who I am – my and your Spirit is not.
Astrology is a means of seeing the pattern of star matter, both that within the body and outside in the skies. Sprinkle a handful of iron filings on some paper, get a magnet and place it under the paper. Instantly the grains of iron form a distinct pattern on the paper. The same thing happens with music and sand grains.
Sand patterns follow musical vibratons.
Cymatic sound pattern, sand on a steel plate. From "Cymatics: A Study of Wave Phenomena and Vibration" by Hans Jenny.
Sounds make distinct patterns with grains of sand. Analogically, vibrations both within and without make the distinct patterns of everyday life and one’s fate.
Flotillas of Hope - Horoscope
The idea is that Astrology if used in the right manner will enable an individual to live a conscious fate and then to be free of it, finding one’s destiny.
Astrology is not deterministic if the practitioner is seeking freedom and truth.
3 Comments | astrology, divination, hermes trismegistus, symbolism | Tagged: astrology, Cymatic sound pattern, mantic techniques, philosophy, vibrations | Permalink
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On the Esoteric
March 23, 2009
To talk about the esoteric is in many ways a blasphemy – the very act of pretending knowledge of the divine is bad faith.
The intuitive finds its place in an inner hierarchy of will. I do feel sometimes that this kind of will should be capitalised – Will. When I think of the intuitive I think of the instinctive intelligence of a new born baby that turns its head and opens its mouth and begins to suckle on the mother’s breast. This is real intuitive intelligence – a balance between what is needed, what is possible, and what is beautiful. Today many in our Western “developed” world have lost the intuitive ability, to use one’s instinctive intelligence to create order in the world. The intuitive, I feel, is the circumference of the essential.
Esoteric to me means HIDDEN – nothing more and nothing less. The esoteric partakes of an energy rather than static conceptualisation. The esoteric current flows through all and everything – yes, there is the esoteric side of a stone and the esoteric side of rationality and a smile. The only way to convey the esoteric from one human to another is through presence or the ingestion of energetic – wisdom – texts. These texts are living organic IDEAS that act like yeast in the mind. There are certain Ideas which are larger than mere conceptualisation and these Ideas, I feel, partake of a life, they are angelic life forms. The purpose of these living texts / Ideas is not to stuff one’s mind with extra information but rather to change its constitution so that it can become receptive to the esoteric. This is an aspect of alchemy.
Alchemical Medal
The discernment of the intuitive / esoteric is a function of that same hidden energy. These sacred esoteric texts serve as long koans, and if approached in an appropriate manner may open a mind to the hidden forces. The idea of text must also be enlarged in regard to the esoteric. In this context the Temple of Luxor in Egypt is a text behaving in the above manner (see R A Schwaller de Lubicz ), as are the various revelations of the world’s religions, and various dances, rituals and art. Gurdjieff coined a word for these “texts” – legominisms.
To someone who is imbued with an esoteric vision, the whole of life is one big hieroglyph waiting to be read and understood. Astrology from this perspective, is a form of life “language” and algebra. Dane Rudhyar called Astrology, the algebra of life. I like this, but I also see Astrology as a language with its own syntax and grammar.
I believe that the ability to discern the esoteric from the exoteric has something to do with one’s will. This something cannot arise without assistance from the hidden parts of one’s nature.
I don’t seek the esoteric, the esoteric seeks me.
4 Comments | alchemy, astrology, consciousness, Gurdjieff, philosophy, Schwaller de Lubicsz | Tagged: alchemy, astrology, Dane Rudhyar, esoteric, Gurdjieff, invisible forces, koan, legominism, Luxor, mantic techniques, Schwaller de Lubicz | Permalink
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Internet as analogue of Akashic Mirror
February 13, 2009
Sometimes a concrete object can be a perfect tool for an analogy. A classic example used by many is the hologram as an analogy of the One, the Holographic Universe, where one piece reflects the whole. It brings to mind the ancient teaching of Hermes Trismegistus “As above, so below”. The Holographic Universe is alive and intelligent and every child, be it stone, bird or snake, of the Uiverse is the universe in miniature. Now, remember, the Holographic Universe is NOT the real universe, it is a description supported by a technological invention. However, the description and the idea it points to can make sense of the micro scale domain of quantum physics. It allows a possible approach to the fact of nonlocality. This is where two events separated by distance influence each other in violation of locality. According to the Holographic Universe analogue, they do because they are part of the One. The Earth, from this perspective can be seen as a Holonomic Brain (see diagram below from Jose Arguelles at end of post).
Hermes Trismegistus on a Throne
Now, let’s move to the internet, a more recent technology, what analogy can we draw from it? If the hologram gives us a static model which shows the connection between everything, the internet may give us a process, interactive, exchanging model of the that same holographic one. If Unity is the image evoked from the hologram, what can the internet image evoke? An info-living seamless web. String Theory? Don’t know, I’m not a scientist. But a living seamless web I can see and I can take it one step further – a living seamless webbing, a constant weaving of the matrix, of informational stuff. This informational stuff can be seen as “psi” stuff from the Greek 23rd letter psi which is used in parapsychological studies as the stuff of “mind”.
23rd Greek letter - psi.
Can the internet as technology be an analogy of what some have named the “astral” realm? This realm according to occult lore is that space between the physical body and the immortal spirit. It is also equated with the “soul” in the Christian tradition of Body, Soul and Spirit.
What can the internet analogy show us as a correspondence in the astral – soul realm? According to occult lore there is a record of everything that has ever happened on Earth. They are called the Akashic Records. The internet has this magical capacity with a Google ritual. Just type in a word and in a matter of microseconds you will have every answer recorded globally on the net relevant to the word. For a Paracelsus in the Middle Ages to witness this would indeed be magic. The Akashic Records of the Middle Ages have now in the 21 st Century been vindicated as an informational/knowledge possibility. Sure Googling the internet is only a millionth part of the Akashic Records – but even this points analogically to what may be possible from an Astral realm.
The unity of the hologram gives us frame, the web of the internet gives us movement. Why movement? The constant weaving of messages across the net gives us an image of an organic informational exchange, like neuronal activity. Yes, it gives as image the Noosphere weaving into webs manufactured out of crystal chips. This is what Jose Arguelles calls the “psi bank” as seen in the diagram below. Who knows, maybe we are witnessing the genesis of a global mind. It has always been here, what has changed is humanity’s capacity to feel it. Funny that. On one hand we bemoan the loss of the hunter gatherer instinctual connection with Earth and on the other, the Silicon Valley microchip revolution with the internet has given us the possibility of a connection with Earth. The issue is more and more, as Moloch winks another sacrificial war, how to connect with the most archaic parts of our nature with the most contemporary. Archaic is in the Greek meaning of “arche” – the beginning, the first. What is the beginning of my nature? If we consider progress as an accretion over an instinctual – telepathic – holistic neolithic mind, then the genesis point of my nature is that which is not cerebral but more primeval. The danger is that we can allow the “inner reptile” take over and then we would be demonstrating the social realm of William Golding’s chilling “Lord of the Flies”.
We need both the “archaic” nature wedded to the rational nature for an attempt at being whole. How can we come to this? This is where discovering the unknown, uncharted inner country of our being is crucial. A great book which looks at the need to revitalise the “archaic” nature of our being is “Archaic Revival” by Terence McKenna.
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This is where the “how” of spirituality comes in.
Is this what an Akashic Library looks like? “I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.” Jorge Luis Borges
From Jose Arguelles "Earth Ascending" - Holonomic Brain & Demonstration of Psi Circulation within Electromagnetic Field
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A TAFE experiment with Astrology and the I Ching.
January 5, 2009The experiment concerned whether the mantic techniques of “astrologising” and casting a hexagram would assist in focusing an intention for change.
Say our ordinary experience of time is like driving down a road. We look ahead, we look at the rear view mirror and the side mirrors as we drive down the road. Occasionally we come across a dip in the road and we can’t see very far ahead except for the dip. If we have driven on this road before, we recognize the dip and we know from previous experience how deep it is and how far it extends. If we haven’t, we take it as it comes. Now, what if we look at the dip on the road as the unknown and hazardous element of the near future where we are concerned about a particular issue. Can we do anything which will assist us in knowing the dimensions of this “dip” and what may lie just beyond it?
I Ching Hexagrams. These are the 64 hexagrams used in the I Ching.
This is where the intuitive arts of I Ching and Astrology come in. They may be methods which can measure the dimensions of the “dip” and give a glimpse of what lies just beyond it.
The experience that the horoscope was drawn for, a couple of weeks ahead, would validate what the I Ching showed. In this scenario the I Ching reading is a signal from the dip ahead in number patterns and the horoscope gives a synchronous timescape illuminated in signs and symbols of astrological lore after the hexagram was cast.
The situation I drew up the horoscope for was a meeting with Management of our Institute. I needed to get an OK to push for a more proactive role in our influence on training for non English speaking background workers at BHP. I don’t want to bore you with the details but basically it was very, very important to me because it would open the door for 1000 migrant iron workers to get skilled so they could move up the ladder of qualifications classification…for more money and better recognition of their already learned skills. The educational need was for more English language tuition with vocational courses thrown in. They’ll learn English and arm themselves with vocational skills in preparation for the time when BHP would close down. The whole access and equity, social justice bit together and to boot, my father was a steel worker at the Port Kembla Steelworks.
Karmic payment time, big time. So, it was important that this deal went through.
I don’t know about you, but I when I really want something and I believe in my heart of hearts that what I want is also for the betterment of others, I realise that I can’t do it alone. The job’s too big to do on our own.
Sometimes it is important to have a periscopic picture of the dip ahead and its terrain. I called on the assistance of the invisible forces and they answered in astrological signs and ideographic hexagrams. The conjunction of the mantic techniques pointed to a favourable outcome. Advisedly it also indicated the potential hazards.
After the appointment with management I reviewed the readings of both the horoscope and the hexagrams of the moment with the benefit of hind sight. Here comes the clincher – without the readings’ advice and warnings the outcome may not have been the same … so, do the readings predict the future or do they assist in making the future by engaging their energy? What I mean is, the myth of star and hexagram consultation is more like a partnership in creating the future rather than a one way line of “future” information. The “gods – the invisible forces” operating at this hinterland of observation and coincidence are functionalities and not separate cartoon figures of winged feet and curly tails. These “gods” enter through the mantic operation of “casting a hexagram / casting a chart” and assist in the arising of the outcome that is required for the moment.
I Ching traditional coins. I use 3 ordinary dollar coins. Heads and Tails are the same on any coin.
From this vantage point, I don’t do anything except open the door for the “gods” to finish what is intended to blossom.
The focus for me in that exercise was not so much the external details of the events but rather their symbolic connection. The question for me is how to focus with more of myself than just the “rational – informational” shell? The cracking of the shell is the equivalent of gaining a helicopter view over the dip in front of us.
stavros
Flotillas of Hope Astrological Sky Map – Horoscope.
6 Comments | astrology, divination, I Ching | Tagged: gods, I Ching, intuitive arts, invisible forces, karma, mantic techniques | Permalink
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Hello world!
December 19, 2008
Journeys and Star Gazing
What do I mean by journeys? And what do I mean by Star Gazing?
Recently I started to walk again, with a limp, after having broken my leg and being immobile for a long time. The physiotherapist told me that a walk of about 1 kilometre per day would be good exercise for me, especially to get my foot, ankle and leg muscles flexible again. She said to treat my walk as a physiotherapy exercise. Since I walk very slowly now without a crutch, I’m starting to become aware of a whole new world which appears in the slow pace I take. I become aware of my breath and the sensation of each step on the ground. As I do this I become aware of a silence within me which makes space and allows the sounds of birds singing , the sensation of the breeze touching my skin, the smell of recently mowed grass to enter.
Of course my “monkey mind” is still climbing and jumping around in the space within my skull but somehow because of the slow walk and the effort to “be” in the moment of the walk makes the monkey appear like a distant shadow puppet. Yes, my walk is a Zen like exercise and the fall I had which broke my leg was Life-as- Zen-Master, wacking me into a state of mind that may prioritise what is essential in my life.
My walk to the newsagent in the morning is a journey both on the road and its side gutters and beneathe my skin between breaths and sighs of wonder at what is around me.
A journey, for me is going from point A to point B via the whole alphabet of being. The Alpha and Omega. the beginning and the end of a journey is where the snake bites its own tail, a gentle ouraboros.
It all depends on one’s awareness. So, one can make a journey from one’s lounge room and go across the borders marked by a door into a kitchen. It is no different to travelling in time by simply dipping a biscuit in a cup of tea as Proust did in his “Remembrence of Things Past”. A journey can also be a trip across the planet on a boat or a plane, a train or a bus, on foot or a bicycle. It can also be a journey to the Moon or to Mars in a space ship, or a trip to Saturn and Jupiter or Andromeda in one’s mind.
Star Gazing is not only looking up at the night sky and seeing how small we genuinely are in the midst of all these galaxies and stars, pinpricks of Light escaping through Heaven’s cape. It is also seeing into the meaning of those star gazing moments, those moments that coincide with a particular configuration of planets, Sun, Moon and stars. Yes, Star Gazing for me exists in that space between Astronomy and Astrology. I look up into the night heavens and I see the stars above and I wonder why am I here looking and living. My wife got me a telescope for Christmas this year and I hope to be able to take some photos of what I gaze at.
I look at a horoscope ( I also call it a Sky Map) and I see the symbolic language of these same stars. When I say Stars I also mean the planets and the Sun and Moon. It is an easy shorthand. Star gazing becomes communing….communicating in star language. Astrology for me is a language, a way of communicating with the deeper parts of my and your nature for I believe that we all are ultimately made of star matter. While I look up at the Stars and gaze at the light that departed from its source billions of years ago, I recognise that I gaze at old, old light. The youngest light, including sunlight is only 8 minutes old when it touches my skin, Alpha Centauri light, the closest star to us, is only about 4 years old. Star light has journeyed a long time to arrive through my eyes into me and you.
However, strange as it may sound, when I speak of astrology, I’m not really talking about the balls of rock and gas that orbit our Sun – Sol as planets or about the physical stars and galaxies that surround us. The stars and planets I speak of astrologically have nothing to do with those we know astronomically and through a telescope. The only connection astrology has with the astronomical stars is the coincident time of happening. Carl Jung coined a term to explain events that happen with no apparent physical causal connection – synchronicity. This word is made of two Greek words syn – same and chronos – time...synchronicity…things that happen at the same time. The important addition that Jung makes with this is that the connection between events is subjectively meaningful for the person. I think of a person and I hear a song with the person’s name in it and then almost simultaneously, the person rings me on the phone. This is very meaningful for me because I haven’t seen or heard from this person in a long time. The song, the thinking of the person and the telephone call are not connected in any physical scientifc way, but they do connect in a very meaningful way in my mind and heart. This is synchronicity. Astrology for me is synchronicity written in Sky Script. The physical stars are connected to the stars within my inner universe, my deeper intuitions and feelings that struggle to find a way to speak. The star language of astrology gives these promptings a voice.
In Journeys and Star Gazing you may read posts that include both a journey and an astrological reading of the journey. Sometimes, you will come across a life’s moment navigated by the stars or a journey planned by the use of astrology.
It would be great to hear from you.
You can connect with me at Twitter. Here’s my handle @dodona777
stavros
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Welcome — I’m glad you’re here.
Journeys and Star Gazing 