The Art of Magic, the Magic of Art

December 1, 2024

True art is magic, and any true magic is art. With the touch of a pen, a brush, or even a finger, an artist—if aligned with the essence of their vocation—commands worlds both seen and unseen. Percy Shelley once declared that “poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world,” and though his words echo from an era long past, they feel uncannily prescient.

But what does this mean in practice? Some might argue that if poets and artists truly wield such power, they are the most woeful rulers ever to preside over humanity. After all, if art is shaping the world, why do the screens that dominate our lives churn out nothing but dissonance, despair, and empty spectacle? Is this dystopian noise truly the vision of today’s artists?

I imagine Shelley himself interrupting from the shadows of the ether: “Don’t be so literal! I meant it metaphorically. Art isn’t governance by laws; it’s governance by ideas, by imagination, by what transcends the mundane. But for heaven’s sake, don’t turn poetry into a cargo cult—worshipping its form as though it’s divine by nature rather than by what it creates within you.”

And yet, there’s a peculiar magic in this metaphorical cargo, in the words, images, and sounds that tumble into the open space of our minds. For those who see the world in myths and metaphors, art carries immense weight. It is both vessel and spell, weaving meaning from the chaos.

Take, for instance, the ancient stories we hold as sacred. The tumbling walls of Jericho. The resurrection of Christ. The creation of the universe in seven days. Do these stories endure because they are literally true, or because they resonate with something deeper—something ineffable? These tales are, above all else, poetry, built to inspire, to guide, to anchor us in moral or spiritual truth. Their magic is not in their factual accuracy but in their capacity to awaken a sense of wonder and move us toward the good.

In this sense, the Bible, like all great art, is a magical artefact. It is less a document of historical fact than a talisman, transmitting its moral and poetic energy across centuries. It scarcely matters whether Jesus of Nazareth held an identity card or walked among us as a historical figure. What matters is the poetic proof—the themes of redemption, sacrifice, and hope that compels us to strive for something greater.

Even today, this ancient poetry retains its power in a world awash with “meaning packages” from advertising slogans and clickbait soundbites. The cynicism of the modern world would have us believe that such stories are relics of the past, yet their resonance persists. True art, like true magic, touches something eternal. It reaches into the ineffable and makes it visible, if only for a moment.

But here’s the tension: if art is so powerful, why does it so often feel powerless in the face of modern chaos? The art world seems increasingly commodified, trapped in an endless cycle of trends, likes, and algorithms. It’s tempting to believe that the magic has been diluted, reduced to spectacle, or even silenced altogether. Yet, history reminds us that art’s power isn’t always loud or obvious.

Think of Picasso’s Guernica—a painting that “legislated” not through laws, but through the weight of its horror and the clarity of its vision. Or Maya Angelou’s poetry, which legislates even now, carving spaces for hope and resistance. True art doesn’t demand attention; it reshapes the world quietly, insistently, often long after it is created.

Art’s magic, much like a magician’s sleight of hand, often works unnoticed. It transforms us subtly, weaving itself into the fabric of our lives without our conscious permission. Consider a song that makes us weep, a novel that reframes the way we see the world or a photograph that stops us in our tracks. These are not passive objects; they are spells cast by creators who reached into the ineffable and returned with something transcendent.

The danger, as Shelley warned, lies in worshipping the artefact itself rather than the spirit it conjures. Too often, we mistake the form for the magic, clinging to what can be packaged, sold, or commodified. But art’s true power is never in the object—it’s in the transformation it invokes within us.

This is where the artist becomes a magician, conjuring meaning from raw material and shaping worlds from chaos. True art challenges the status quo not because it seeks to destroy but because it dares to create—to reimagine what is possible. The poet legislates not with authority but with imagination, reshaping the boundaries of what we believe to be true.

Even in today’s fractured world, art retains its quiet, ineffable power. The greatest works endure not because they are timeless, but because they speak to the timeless within us. Art—like magic—relies on the participation of its audience, on our willingness to suspend disbelief and step into the unknown.

So yes, art is magic, and magic is art. Both touch the eternal, both pull at the ineffable. And whether we realize it or not, both shape the worlds we inhabit. The artist’s hand, like the magician’s, is at work all around us—transforming, challenging, inspiring. The question is whether we are brave enough to recognize it.

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The quote is from Percy Bysshe Shelley who said that “poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” This famous phrase comes from his essay A Defence of Poetry, written in 1821 but published posthumously in 1840.

“Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present; the words which express what they understand not; the trumpets which sing to battle, and feel not what they inspire; the influence which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”

1 Comment | art, consciousness, Creativity, Expression, fiction, lyrics, philosophy, poetry, songs, surrealism, symbolism, Uncategorized, William Blake, writing | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
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The Quest for Inspiration

April 18, 2024

The oppressive Australian heat bore down as I trudged along the endless road to the small Queensland town where my friends had once lived. Car after car whizzed past without stopping for the wayward traveler. After hours of walking under the relentless sun, I finally reached my destination only to find their house abandoned – they had moved on.

Feeling lost and alone, I sank onto the front step, uncertain of my next move. That’s when the wizened old man appeared, his weathered face seeming to defy the laws of age itself. He fixed me with an inscrutable stare for a long moment before speaking.

“Your mates are gone. But you’re in luck I’m still around.”

His humble shack was a one-room timber structure that emanated an odd warmth, the air carrying the scent of freshly-hewn wood. We sat on tree stump stools as he poured our drinks. I explained that I had come to Queensland seeking inspiration to work on my thesis about the mystical poetry of William Blake. His response took me by surprise.

“Ah, Blake could perceive the hidden truths, my friend. The rest of us are blind to such mysteries.”

This peculiar old man had me rapt as he delved into the sacred geometries, the mystic language of numbers, and how words and logic obscure the greater realities. His words wove together theosophical concepts and Pythagorean numerology.

“Within these corporeal shells, we are mere observers,” he proclaimed. “Catching fleeting glimpses of the vastness through sensory keyholes.”

I could only listen in silence as he added with a sage nod, “Having nothing to say may be your salvation.”

As I bid farewell to the enigmatic stranger, stepping out into the crisp air, the world itself seemed transformed around me. The return journey, hitching rides and passing through landscapes both familiar and foreign, carried an ineffable sense that I had been granted a glimpse into something far greater than myself.

With each passing car and transient vista, I felt I was traversing the synapses of some vast cosmic mind, every experience and perception flickering like synaptic connections within the neural network of a greater consciousness. Finally arriving home, I marveled at the profound interconnectedness of it all. I could taste the words Blake had penned in “Auguries of Innocence“:

To see a World in a Grain of Sand

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand

And Eternity in an hour

What once seemed an impossible task no longer felt so hopeless. The thesis that had tormented me for so long now carried the promise of insight and meaning.

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The above event demonstrates for me the ideas of synchronicity and hyparxis. Below is a schematic diagram of a “MOMENT”. It shows 3 dimensions of the ‘moment in time’ – Serial Time, Spatial Time and Timeless Time. This diagram is based on J G Bennett’s ‘Dramatic Universe‘ where he explores these issues of Time. Yes, it’s my hand drawn version!

2 Comments | consciousness, fiction, numerology, philosophy, poetry, Pythagoras, symbolism, William Blake, writing | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
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A born again virgin soul

April 6, 2011

I’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: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
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Cognitive Imperialism

August 21, 2009

In “Archaic Revival”, Terence McKenna explores consciousness, civilization, and the profound effects of magic mushrooms. He provocatively suggests that the ingestion of psilocybin—a compound found in certain mushrooms—may have played a critical role in the development of human language. McKenna bases this argument on the idea that, once humans domesticated cattle, mushrooms containing psilocybin proliferated in their dung. This theory isn’t isolated to McKenna; for instance, the 5,000-year-old Ötzi the Iceman, discovered in the Alps, was found with mushrooms in his possession, suggesting their medicinal or hallucinogenic use.

It’s important to clarify that I’m not advocating the use of magic mushrooms. However, maintaining an open mind about the more significant questions concerning consciousness is essential. If experimenting with entheogens—a term meaning “god-revealing substances”—can open doors to alternate dimensions of reality, we should not be quick to close our minds and hearts to these possibilities. The term “entheogen” is gaining traction today, possibly as a way to ‘cleanse’ the image of these substances, previously known as psychedelics. A comprehensive resource on this topic can be found at [this link](http://deoxy.org/index.htm).

Reflecting on my own experiences, I recall how my understanding of reality was transformed after reading Aldous Huxley’s “The Doors of Perception” and other works from the psychedelic era. A few personal experiments with mushrooms significantly altered my perception, challenging the boundaries of what is considered ‘real.’

Over time, I became convinced that just as geopolitical imperialism exists, there is also a form of cognitive imperialism. This concept refers to the dominance of a particular worldview over others, often marginalizing alternative perspectives. I now believe that many of humanity’s political issues stem from the narrow ‘reality tunnels’ we navigate—tunnels shaped and reinforced by cognitive imperialism.

This cognitive domination, or the enslavement of awareness, permeates our entire culture. Take, for example, the Inuit people, who have over 20 different words to describe various types of snow, while in the West, we only use the word “snow” because that is all we perceive. Similarly, the Aboriginal peoples of Australia have numerous words to describe “sand,” recognizing its many forms, yet we see only “sand.” These examples may seem trivial, but they illustrate the broader point: our language and perception are limited by our cultural and cognitive frameworks.

When we venture beyond the so-called “real” 3-D world, we enter a domain where words become almost useless. In these realms, symbolism takes precedence. Symbols are multivalent entities, not confined to a single linear meaning. For example, a triangle or cross symbol does not possess just one sense. Entheogens have the potential to reveal multiple levels of meaning simultaneously, akin to a window or door opening to the light. Plato’s analogy of the cave, where people are chained to chairs facing a wall on which shadows are cast, represents this closed realm of Darkness. In his story, one person frees himself, turns to see the source of the shadows—a candle—and then notices a glimmer of light from another direction. As his eyes adjust, he steps outside the cave, initially blinded by the Sun’s intense light. However, as his vision acclimates, he discovers a world of colour and life. When he returns to the cave to inform his fellow prisoners, they consider him delusional, unable to free themselves from their cognitive slavery.

The cave in Plato’s analogy is the Consensus Reality, its truth dictated by the Great Bell Curve, often cited by statisticians as the realm of reality. However, physics and mathematics point us toward a new direction, away from this shadow world. While I’m neither a physicist nor a mathematician, the little I do understand reveals a world vastly different from the one Isaac Newton experienced when the proverbial apple struck his head. Today, that apple could be perceived in three distinct ways, each as accurate as the other while appearing identical. Firstly, there is the 3-D apple Newton felt on his head. Secondly, the apple of subatomic physics, which Newton would not recognize as familiar. Thirdly, an apple would attract the earth towards it rather than simply falling. Each perspective is “real,” depending on our operating paradigm.

Whether Carlos Castaneda’s Don Juan existed or not, the Yaqui Indian sorcerer’s notion of different descriptions of the world, each real in its own way, holds true.

Science seems to find “evidence” of a Global Mind—a concept that shamans, mystics, magicians, and saints have intuitively understood for millennia. The entheogenic experience opens these Doors of Perception, leaving us to walk through and perceive multiple worlds simultaneously without necessarily being under the influence of these substances. As William Blake expressed in “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell”, “If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern.” This sentiment, from which Huxley derived the title of his book and which inspired the name of the rock band “The Doors”, closely mirrors Plato’s vision as he emerged from the cave.

Cognitive imperialism is the enemy we must overcome. To become Spirit Warriors, we must shift from the imperialism of the mind to the wisdom of the Heart. From the Heart, we can empathize with the suffering of others, and our actions can be fueled by compassion. The Heart of humanity is deeply connected with the Heart of Gaia, the Sun, and the cosmos. Our struggle against the forces of Darkness—the Masters of War, the Keepers of Concentration Camps, the Greed Kings who keep the poor shackled with hunger—is a struggle of the Global Mind and Gaia’s Heart against those who remain blind and deaf to the Light and the Word. The challenge is that those blind and deaf to the Light and the Word currently hold material power.

Yet, I believe that more of us will emerge from the shadows in these times. As we adjust our vision to the world of Gaia’s Heart/Mind, we may indeed usher in an era of peace.

A Reflective Note on Entheogens

Jonathan Ott offers a compelling critique of the Christian enmity towards entheogens:

“The Christian enmity [towards entheogens] is easy to explain. Since the Christians were promulgating a religion in which the core mystery, the holy sacrament itself, was conspicuous by its absence, later transmogrified by the smoke and mirrors of the Doctrine of Transubstantiation into a specious symbol, an inert substance, a placebo entheogen, the imposture would be all-too-evident to anyone who had known the blessing of ecstasy, who had access to personal religious experiences. Thus a concerted attack on the use of sacred inebriants was mounted, and the supreme heresy was to presume to have any direct experience of the divine, not mediated by an increasingly corrupt and politicized priesthood. The Pharmacratic Inquisition was the answer of the Catholic Church to the embarrassing fact that it had taken all the religion out of religion, leaving an empty and hollow shell with no intrinsic value or attraction to humankind, which could only be maintained by hectoring, guilt-mongering and plain brute force.”
Jonathan Ott

2 Comments | aboriginal culture, alchemy, attention, consciousness, personal, philosophy, Plato, politics, transdisciplinarity, William Blake | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
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Introduction to Flotillas of Hope Sky Map

April 28, 2009

Below 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

 

Flotillas of Hope 2004

 

“If there is dust on our lense, we see dark spots in the heavens.”

                                                                                       Carlos Suares

Flotillas of Hope Horoscope (Sky Map)

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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Living in a Maze

January 31, 2009

Are we “rats” living in a maze, a labyrinth in which we do our thing as sleep walking voyagers in a multidimensional maze of flesh, bone, muscle, life, thought and soul energy which has as its determining edges and surface – ordinary life, consensus reality? We get lost in this labyrinth, this maze through our habitual reactions and our mind’s tendency to reduce everything to the familiar. Is the “world a vampire” as the Smashing Pumpkins put it? I believe it is, when we live our lives as robots giving food of our being to the forces around us rather than making the extra effort to BE. The big question is HOW to be and I believe an approach to this answer may lie in the fact that the “rat in the maze behaviour” may be the habits of our biological destiny locked in the “mind forged manacles” (William Blake) of our attitudes.

world-is-a-vampire-lyrics

If we acknowledge this then we may be open to the possibility for help from another level of existence, a level above the maze of consensus reality. Consensus reality, to me, is the wall to wall world of the labyrinth that appears automatically to our senses five in this culture. It is the reality that statistics places under a Bell Curve and measures standards and their many deviations. Consensus reality is the “common sense world” where Newton‘s Laws hold sway though we may know of Einstein‘s relativity and quantum physics. Consensus reality bases itself fundamentally on the dichotomy between I – and – the – world, I the knower and the world – the known. In this consensus world we do our shopping, we make love, we learn, we walk, we talk, we climb mountains, we give birth and we bury our dead. This consensus reality is what we naturally know, this is the world which Blake’s “Vegetative Eye” beholds.

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Blake’s Newton (1795) demonstrates his opposition to the “single-vision” of scientific materialism: Newton fixes his eye on a compass (recalling Proverbs 8:27)

It is difficult to speak of consensus reality because the language used to speak of it can be seen to be the guiding parameters of the / this world. Each language, thus each culture has its own consensus reality. The Inuit people who can discern over 20 different types of snow and white hues, the Aboriginal people of Central Australia who discern many different types of sand demonstrate different consensus realities which have “facts” that the western positivistic consensus reality does not acknowledge. We can go further and say that one consensus reality (a reality consented to by the participants) may include events and actions which through the window of another consensus reality would appear to be miraculous or impossible. To one reality this piece of ground means an energy resource and dollars, to another the same piece of ground may be sacred and the navel (Omphalos) of the world. Of course we have the Common Ground on which we stand and live within the Common Maze and thus communicate with our diverse languages and translations of same.

I’m interested in the realm outside the maze, the a – maze. This is where the allegory of Plato’s Cave makes amazing sense. Check out this diagram it “tells” Plato’s story in few words. The cave is the maze, is the world of senses five, the beholden of the Vegetative Eye.

Plato's Cave - the labyrinth analogy we live in is the same as this cave.

Plato's Cave - the sunlight is the Light of the Real World, the shadow world is the world seen through the Vegetative Eye.

What I’m saying in a round about way is that there are as many realities as there are consensual agreements. These realities have their own maps and means of orientation. The western positivistic reality is just one. It may be possible to change channels and tune into other frequencies…using the language of the net – we may be able to browse other patterns of meaning and thus participate in another reality. The trick is to be able to shift.

In terms of futures – each consensus reality will create its own consensus future. If enough people believe and act as if the future they want will be and is perhaps the consensus reality of these people will make it happen.

Having said all that, I use the above as my departure point when I attempt to manifest events which may assist in reducing the suffering of sentient existence – both my own and others.

The next question that arises from this is HOW?  Traditionally, the work which makes the HOW possible, the “technology” has been known as Magic. Later posts will explore this.

I can’t remember where this quote came from but I totally agree with it, “The GOAL is to become so aware of all of the levels of all of the forces determining your behavior that you can make a Real Choice.”

This real choice is the foundation of one’s true freedom.

Plato's Cave

Plato's Cave

So, we sleep in our caves and those in power can tell us any old story that we believe in our hypnotised state.

So, we sleep in our caves and those in power can tell us any old story that we believe in our hypnotised state.

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