bibliomancy for the Sun into Sagittarius

“Matthew’s entire world is concentrated in this still, small space next to the river.  Here is everywhere, his inspiration taking him out of the boundaries of his meagre individual self, and uniting him with the Whole that is existence.  Suddenly, he is river, plains, hills, and sky, as the earthy goat-god of the woods is infused with an angelic presence.  Such is Matthew’s call.  His pen will fly across the page, without him even knowing what he is writing.  The Word will speak through him; he is merely its enchanted mouthpiece.  Such is Grace.”

(John Carrol, Ego & Soul on Poussin’s Matthew)

bibliomancy for venus-pluto and another new era

wolves of the unconscious (all rights reserved d sinclair '09)

For us Westerners, who imbibe the liquor of romance with our mothers’ milk, Iseult of the White Hands seems a minor player.  We are mesmerized by the other drama; the secret meetings and partings, the intrigues, the unearthly intensity that rages between Tristan and Iseult the Fair.  But if we step back from that and turn our gaze on Iseult of the White Hands, it may be as Kaherdin said:  “Then perhaps you will hold in greater fondness my sister, Iseult the gentle-hearted, the simple.”

This Iseult personifies a different side of the inner feminine, a side we have not met before.  Her ‘white hands’ connote many things in symbol.  They are fair and delicate, yet skilled in the practical work of life.  This Iseult delights in the ordinary, human, earthly life….

(Robert A Johnson, The Psychology of Romantic Love)

bibliomancy for venus square pluto

“Yet he also knows that his other arms, which are bare, the ones bathed in divinity, embrace her.  She is beautiful, she is all-seeing, and she is his – for better and for worse.  There is intimacy.  He tilts his head to cock an ear, to hear what she whispers to him.  He loves her.  He knows she sees through him, and for that, too, he loves her.  From her, he can hide nothing.”

(John Carroll, The Western Dreaming)

and for mercury gliding silently into pisces…

ds '09 all rights reserved

“Real freedom, for Eliade, is the freedom to participate in the continual creation of the cosmos and of everything in the cosmos.  This is possible only through myth, only through returning to the origin of creation in mythical narrative and ritual…”  (Elizabeth M Baeten, The Magic Mirror, Myth’s Abiding Power)

bibliomancy for mars-neptune and a gibbous moon

promises ds ‘09 all rights reserved

“Also, with their movement the heavenly figures maintain themselves, and with their harmonies, their rays, their movements penetrating everything, they thus affect the spirit, in a hidden way, from day to day, as Music, above all can affect in a more open way. Look how easily the figure of a mourner moves many people to misery.  And how much the  figure of a lovable person suddenly affects and moves the eyes and the imagination, the spirit, and the humours.  Well, a heavenly figure is no less alive and effective.”  (Marcilio Ficino, The Book of Life)

and for venus’ cat walk back through aries

ds '09 all rights reserved

“Malraux’s statements would deny that the origin of art lies in emotion as such, as Wordsworth seems to hold.  It is not just emotion but rather the emotion spreading and igniting from one artist to another via a work of art.  In other words, art takes rise in a specific emotion, the emotion of artists as expressed in a work of art…”  (James Hillman, Emotion)

bibliomancy for the trickster’s visit with the warrior in the sign of the water bearer

“Business has defeated  everything in its path.  Its last enemies are the oldest: it is still defied by the ancient Gods of blood revenge, territorial tribalism and the strangely recurrent death struggles between genders, as well as by the untamed divinities of nature – the oceans, the deserts, the magma at the earth’s core and the powers of storm and rain.  They alone remain to affront and disrupt the power of business.”   (James Hillman, Kinds of Power)

and for the dark moon…

nude on a pedestal, stephane graff '88

“The staggering magnitude of the heavens, their immense power and motion, work in such a way that all the rays of all the stars penetrate immediately and easily right into the center of the earth, which is barely a pinpoint in the heavens, as all the astronomers say.  “

(Marsilio Ficino, On Making Your Life Agree With The Heavens, from The Book of Life)

bibliomancy for a still-crowded sky

blind contour of the winged messenger

“….

He talked about yo’ people till my hair turned grey.
He say yo’ daddy’s a freak and yo’ mama’s a whore,
He say he saw yo’ brother going through the jungle selling
arseholes from door to door….

Et cetera…A game of the dozens is built on insults to family, and to mothers especially.  The Signifying Monkey story must come, then, from a world in which these things are taken seriously, where a child is admonished to ‘defend your family, ‘ to ‘respect your Mamma’…”

(Lewis Hyde, Trickster Makes this world, p272)

There’s no such thing as coincidence – there’s no denying it.  Every inner event – every emotional state, every repetitive thought, every ingrained belief – manifests in the outer world.  The outer world, from the furthest part of our known skies to the smallest corner of our daily experience, has a corresponding inner state.    This was the lesson of the ancients, the mystics and the alchemists, echoed by poets and artists and now revived by metaphysics and quantum science.

So the cosmos reels and humans look on in wonder, still for some reason holding ourselves apart from it – hardly noticing that the planets are in us and we in them.   And then, when ’something happens’ there’s an uttering of surprise or an outcry of dismay – a reaction that denies any part in what is going on within, without, in the microcosm and the macrocosm.

Ho’oponopono, the mysticism of the Hawaiian traditional people,  teaches that ‘there is no out there’ and that I am responsible for all that comes into my experience.   All of it*.  Self Identity Through Ho’oponopono is a method taught by Dr Hew Len and others which recognises that all of  ‘the world’s problems’ are errors in our subconscious (unconscious) minds – basically that our minds are like computers that have been upgraded, with new hardware and software, but still have outdated programes full of errors running in the background (and these in turn are running our lives).   By bringing these to light and ‘erasing’ them, we can move forward – with a new operating system -  and create in alignment with our truest selves.   All that comes into our experience then is altered – as though the vast dark spaces in us are less full of unknown, unknowable forces ever circling and holding us in patterns that make no sense.

Nothing could be a better reminder of my own need to clean, erase and heal some of my inner space than living life with a sky concentrated in the constellation Aquarius – said by astrologers to be the most human of all the signs – in the broadest sense – the home of original thinking (!) and detachment.    Into awareness come opportunities to affirm a place in the larger community – and the reasons for not doing a better job of it earlier.

Mercury in Aquarius, fully fledged with wind under his wings, sends linguistic riddles to untangle, daring us to play and not take things personally.   Know who you are, be unmoved and unswayed by the words or intentions of others, is what The Messenger seems to say – and recognise the connection between you and all else.   Jupiter nearby appears to be laughing at it all – blowing things out of proportion one moment and asking us to see the humour in it the next so that a woman who has given birth to a litter of young may seem  outrageously baffling and bewildering (and thanks to Mars in the mix in many cases inciting anger and hostility), and the next causing us to take stock of our own faith and philosophy about such things as reproductive technology and the economics and logistics of families.  Then we may as well, given the impossibility of such things, imagine ourselves in the shoes of others and fall off our comfortable chairs holding our sides.

Chiron, Neptune and the North Node of the Moon – that sensitive place on the plane of the ecliptic, the position of which determines the eclipses, Solar and Lunar – they’re all there in Aquarius too.  They move slowly and in different directions so their blessings are wider, deeper and fuller than can be told here today.   Faster moving planets touch upon them and then we have another opportunity to see where we can turn a challenge into beauty and strength – where and when and to whom we can say ‘I love you’, ‘please forgive me’, ‘I’m sorry’, and ‘thank you’ .

Well, this is the way it is for me.

*I’m responsible, but its not my fault!

then the moon wanes sweetly away in the sign of lovers….

I love the moon in Libra – and not just because I’ve my natal moon there, conjunct the beautiful binary fixed stars Spica and Arcturus (the goddess and her consort).   The moon in Libra seems to make things sparkle more brightly than on other days – as though Venus, ruling planet of Libra and Taurus, has imbued everything with more of her transforming presence.

Today of all days  it seems truly apt that the moon should shine down on us from the sign of Venus while the Goddess herself makes a lovely aspect to lover-boy Mars.  It all feels positively lovely!

Happy Valentines,  dear readers.

ps.  if anyone should like to read about natal moon in Libra - here is an article by the wonderful Sanja Peric