My life’s a Tibetan sand painting

August 5, 2020

Today I went to hospital with my son who is suffering all sorts of ailments.  I sat outside on a bench feeling the cold wind on my face and wrote this while waiting for him.

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My life’s a Tibetan sand painting. All the patterns and links between people, places & events will one day be blown away with death’s sigh.

I’ve laid hexagrams over moments of uncertainty. I’ve sought algebraic calibrations of life’s hieroglyphic events with astrology. I found grains of sand, more than this, projections of need for meaning onto events. Are events in my life just random flotsam?

Are the same events iron filings gathering around an unknown magnetic north? I think, I am, I feel, I need, I want, I hunger, I thirst, I hurt, I see – I am human. My life must have some meaning.

Must? Does it?

Tibetan Sand Painting

Meditation. Tibetan sand painting . Traditionally most sand mandalas are deconstructed shortly after their completion. This is done as a metaphor of the impermanence of life. The sands are swept up and placed in an urn; to fulfill the function of healing, half is distributed to the audience at the closing ceremony, while the remainder is carried to a nearby body of water, where it is deposited. The waters then carry the healing blessing to the ocean, and from there it spreads throughout the world.

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Some patterns laid over my life

Astromusings

Time Body

An Astrological Turning

True Beginnings of the Flotillas of Hope

Symbols

An Experiment with the I Ching and Astrology

 

 

 

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Predicting Election Results with Astrology

April 1, 2016

The chances of accurately predicting an election by pollsters and journalists are pretty dismal. If I toss a coin, there’s a 50:50 chance of being right. That’s not bad compared to some political commentators’ predictions.

A few years ago I came across an interesting article that said nearly 80% of astrologers who attempted, accurately predicted the 2012 USA Election outcome at least 3 months and one 26 years before hand! In his 1976 book “The Astrological Chart of the United States, from 1776 to 2141” Gar Osten wrote that the year 2012 would see the “re-election of the incumbent president”.

Intrigued I looked further into it because an 80% correct result is not bad considering most mainstream media had written Obama off before the election. A prediction 26 years beforehand is mind blowing.

I looked into each of the astrologers’ forecasting methods and predictive techniques. I wanted to filter out all approaches that were foreign to my approach and/or would require a level of expertise I didn’t have. By the end of this looking I found one I could adapt to my approach.

It was the simplest.

Now, I’m aware that most of you reading this have a critical and sceptical view on astrology.

For this reason, I’ve wracked my brains over how to structure what I want to say about the coming election because I use astrology as a tool for understanding life. If I wasn’t using this tool to make sense of current political atmospherics and wrote an opinion piece instead, I’d have no worries. For some reason the mention of astrology gets peoples’ backs up and they immediately throw an Art that works with Time into the recycle bin.

Most people are happy to read opinions and commentary based on other biased opinions and commentary churned out in mainstream media. An opinion based on astronomical data ie number, generated by an active imaginative interpretation of this is “superstitious”. However, an opinion based from within a Press Gallery Reality Bubble is not. Is the Press Gallery commentary scientific? No, just an opinion embalmed in a mainstream media consensus reality.

The stars and planets I’m concerned with are archetypal forces (Carl Jung), mytho-poetic currents within humanity. 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 symbolic elements of the horoscope gives a different kind of mind environment. Psychologists call it imagination.

JUng collective unconscious

Diagram from: http://uregina.ca/~lawlorda/jung/jung.htm

This way of looking at astrology is not accepted by most astrologers because it banishes star forces, energies, vibrations etc of the external planets and stars. This way of looking at astrology is troublesome for many because it says there is NO intrinsic meaning to the planets. It also points the way to divination. Divinatory astrology puts it on par with other mantic arts – like Tarot and the I Ching. To many astrologers this is anathema because they like to consider it as a “science”.

Some have referred to this kind of astrology as Hermeneutic Astrology:

“Hermeneutics is the study of meaning, of how we arrive at our interpretations of things. In the context of astrology the term implies a turning away from the common assumption that a fixed astrological meaning is simply “there”, in front of us, as some sort of fact of nature. The hermeneutic inquiry in astrology reveals the essential dependency of the meaning of symbols on the act of interpretation of that meaning. Seen in this way, horoscope interpretation involves something other than a supposed pre-existent meaning waiting to be decoded, and depends both on the context in which meaning is sought, as well as on the intentionality of the one making the interpretation.” (Cornelius, Geoffrey, C. 1994. “The Moment of Astrology: Origins in Divination”)

jung archetypes

I like to consider this way of looking at astrology as a poetic interpretation of astronomical data. Poetry from numbers and geometry – active imagination in action. The calculations and the process of symbolising are just a pretext to occupy the conscious mind. The complexity of nuance and context for symbolising engages the rational mind while the REAL work is done by the broader and more holistic unconscious. This unconscious insinuates “meaning” beyond the logical limits of rational “complexity”. So, my manner of working these “complexities” is to treat them as a long Zen Koan and the Sky Map – Horoscope as a Yantra.

One can explore consciousness and imagination deeper and look at the structures of mind and the material that appears as is done in various and diverse ways by Phenomenology. I just like to play on the edge of reason, that spot between sanity and insanity, where all the wild creatures are 😉

Sometimes, in flickering moments, astrologising can be vision. A “vision – feeling” into another world that is holographic in structure, energetic and alive. In these rare glimpses, a human and the universe are seen as the same organism. As above so below, Hermes Trismegistus says. A different relationship exists between things – or at least that is what appears when astrological Sun glasses are worn.

Here are two articles by Geoffrey Cornelius that point to a way I look at Astrology Practice “Astrology as Divination” and “Is Astrology Divination and Does it Matter?”

Below are posts in my blog which give further insight into my approach:

Guerilla Ontology

An Experiment With Astrology and the I Ching 

Astromusings 

An Astrological Turning 

I’m reminded of a Zen saying, “Don’t look at the finger pointing to the Moon, look at the Moon.”

All this astrological stuff is just a pointing finger.

 

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Dear TAFE Colleague

August 21, 2015

It’s great hearing from you.  You asked me how I am so here goes ….

I’m sitting here ruminating about stuff.  Kinda like reviewing a movie, a film called “My Brilliant Career in TAFE”.  It has been 5 years since I left TAFE. In the first year images of TAFE World – faces, encounters, engagements, conversations and meetings kept flashing across my mind.  Scenes  rose like steam from a drying towel in the sun. Rather than in a sequence, my mind made it all appear like one of William Burrough’s cut up stories.

When TAFE got rid of Principals it also got rid of access and equity principles. From a college it became a Corporation. My nervous system became programmed to corporate tunes that had nothing to do with education. TAFE gradually became a health hazard to my hopes, dreams and life. Sure, working there helped pay   the mortgage and bills but  I feel  I am still rehabilitating from the “brilliant career”. After   5 years away I am a lot more relaxed and do not feel the need to “perform” to some KPI. Yes, I remember some of those acronyms.

I am getting to know me again.

I remember how afraid I was to leap into the world of university study. Fear may be too strong a word, but I felt I was going to lose my “mindful” innocence,  that the systemic conditioning of my thinking into the University Academic  Mould, would destroy my individuality – my soul.  Yes, it was my own Blakean song of innocence and experience.  It was my own small town version of Paradise Lost. Whatever I feared at the beginning of university became a tool of remembrance   for my  efforts  to work on myself in the Fourth Way. Fourth Way? Yeah, something I couldn’t talk about with any of you.

That’s the other thing. I wanted to tell you that one of the reasons I had to leave when I did was to ensure I didn’t have my second Saturn Return while still working in TAFE.  If I stayed my life patterns showed it would be a disaster   because I didn’t have the courage to follow my heart. I felt I couldn’t say this to you because you and others in the system would just laugh. Little did any of you know how often I used Astrology and the I Ching to strategize and coordinate projects that won national and state quality  awards. In case you’re interested here’s an example that helped introduce English for Specific Purposes Program in the BHP Workplace. No one knew except me and my muse 🙂   This is not the place to explain  Saturn Returns but if you’re interested let me know.

The old Zen images of enlightened Mind  –  “Chop wood, Carry water” and “No Moon, no water” are now hovering around my attitude.  I’m getting something nutritious in just chopping and splitting  logs for our evening fire, painting the new sleeper pine wood pegola and garden boxes with decking oil, planting seeds, cooking, reading and trading at a much more relaxed pace. Ah, trading! Yes, I’m now a Forex Trader. That’s a whole other letter – again, if you’re interested.

I’m reading drafts of many unfinished works and instead of flogging myself with guilt that they exist and NOT finished, I’m just reading them. I’m playing around with ideas and don’t know where it will take me except that I’m enjoying just catching up with my stuff…….catching up with me.

Yes, I know it all sounds narcissistic, and maybe it is,   but I feel  I need to nurture that part of me the Corporate World could not and did not value.

How are you?

Stavros

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A Nano-Flash from reading “The Theory of Celestial Influence”

February 21, 2012

I wrote the stuff below after I read Rodney Collin’s book, “The Theory of Celestial Influence”. I was attempting to put in my own words a ” flash ” his book gave me. Rodney Collin began writing this book during P D Ouspensky’s last illness. He completed it soon after Ouspensky’s death. In fact, Collins believed that much of the book was transmitted to him by Ouspensky both before and after his death. Whether this is true or not doesn’t concern me.

“The Theory of Celestial Influence” is one of those books which have thrilled me with the vision of worlds within worlds with onion skinned layers of Eternity and Time. He sets out to reconcile the considerable contradictions of the rational and imaginative minds and of the ways we see the external world versus our inner selves. It is subtitled MAN, THE UNIVERSE, AND COSMIC MYSTERY. You feel that it is an on the spot documentary report of the way the world is. It is staggering in its reach and depth.

For readers familiar with Gurdjieff’s cosmology you will here find further examinations of the systems outlined in by Ouspensky in In Search of the Miraculous. If you get a chance read it.

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Let us attempt to visualize the metageometrical form of a four dimensional solid using as a model the planetary world.

From this view when looking into the sky we are actually observing cross sections of the sun and the moon. Planetary movement is no more than our perception of a succession of discrete points along the greater line of time. Yet in order for us to appreciate the magnitude of a four dimensional form we must take as our subject of investigation a sufficient number of points along the timeline of our solar system. But inasmuch as our own individual lives are quite trivial relative to the solar existence we cannot hope to formulate an interesting or even approximately accurate representation unless we view a much longer span of time than that occupied by the mere life of either a human or, for that matter, humanity.

Therefore, let us take as our “point in time” a one million year segment. In order to simplify our model let us first presume that the direction of the sun comprises a straight line. The four dimensional body or form of the sun over a million years would appear to an observer capable of perceiving such a thing as a large burning rod . Bound and tightly coiled about the rod spiral twelve much smaller concentric threads These are the planets. Upon closer examination we detect even smaller ridges spiraling the planetary threads. These are various moons and satellites. We could further complicate our model to include asteroids and comets as they traverse the sun, and as a matter of course we would have to significantly expand this now growing model if we were to place the sun in its proper place, because the sun itself spirals “through space” on its own predetermined path within the much larger galactic cosmos. Thus, instead of a straight rigid rod we would likely observe a curved, twisted, and spiraling rod. In fine, within this new model our time has become space. Imagining space thusly (i.e. in four dimensions) begs the question, “What of a man’s life?” Dissecting tightly wound threads from the central core and subsequently stripping away the outer threads (planets) we would eventually reach the third to the last thread, our earth. 

Living Solar System “Sperm” from book.

If we had a powerful enough viewing instrument we might discover various geologic ages. If our microscope were capable of finer resolution we might even be able to discern the age of man. As yet, an individual man, or even a single civilization would not be apparent. Perhaps certain age old relics would be observable such as the Sphinx or the Great Pyramids. And maybe the period between 1945 and 1965 would somehow be detected as the many above ground atomic explosions conducted by the U.S., U.S.S.R., and China were measured as strange bursts of nuclear energy.

Still, the life of any individual would not be missed. The wars, deaths, and all the suffering of humanity would be a minor thing indeed. And what we revere in our science, religion, and art would be nothing. In reality and if such a thing were possible it would be even less than nothing since we must remember that we are dealing with an almost instantaneous fragment of the life of the sun, i.e., a mere one million years.

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Astromusings

February 3, 2012

Someone 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 🙂

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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”

spiral clock-animated-gif-18

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

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:

time body table

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

Enneagram

The Circle depicts daily life, the life of the diary - sequential time.

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 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 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.

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"

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?

Now clock animated

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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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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.

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.

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

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.

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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.

pentagram-astro-man1

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

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: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
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Hello world!

December 19, 2008

Albrecht Durer

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.

ouroboros-pergamino

 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.

cosmic-clock1

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.

earth-sun-and-moon

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.

whirlpoolgalaxystarbirth

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

5 Comments | astrology, asylum seekers, community art, divination, fourth way, human rights, I Ching, personal, philosophy, poetry, politics, refugees | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
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