Some time between the Stone Age and the Bronze Age, while the peoples of the Mediterranean were cobbling together myth and asterism and time as eventual attributes of a religion of connection, the tradition grew that a small triangle of rather dim stars a little more than a handspan east of the Milky Way resembled a goat, and as Capricorn (Goat Horn), it was the right place for the Sea-Goat to inhabit, eternally watching over the children destiny doomed him to lose.
By now, the Moon is aware of being meat in the sandwich of science and superstition, and by increasingly presenting his own perspective, is attempting progressively to emancipate himself from the prejudices and preoccupations of earthly folk-history. Nevertheless, he cannot evade the path to meaning indicated for him by the witches’ hats of the Sun-goddess, despite the senseless complexity of their pattern—she is primarily responsible for magnifying the Sea-Goat’s loss by uncoupling his constellation from the seasons, and reducing him to undeserving obscurity. It is beyond belief that the Moon might ever evolve back into a rock, so how does the Drone know when to fly, and in what direction? He follows human practice, of course, and devotes himself to his Thou!
No wonder the Drone is so seldom successful in finding a subject for his devotion!
But wait! Driven by loss, the Drone will inevitably find the Vertex in the Eighth House, even should the wind-blown recipient of his devotion there have no hope of perpetuating her hive. Here it is, in the middle of the ocean, and neither seasons nor Milky Way could guide him, only the mythical cry of the Sea-Goat.
Are-you-there-for-me? It is an interesting question—at a very busy intersection of hotly contested terms which endanger the life of anyone crossing against the lights—which is answered in the affirmative, not without trepidation, and in a voice barely audible and without echo, by the Drone.
“Let any man lay the map of Australia before him, and regard the blank upon its surface, and then let me ask him if it would not be an honourable achievement to be the first to place foot at its centre. Men of undoubted perseverance and energy in vain had tried to work their way to that distant and shrouded spot.” Charles Sturt.
”Just before our love got lost you said I am as constant as a northern star and I said, Constantly in the darkness Where’s that at? If you want me I’ll be in the bar.” Joni Mitchell, “A Case Of You“, Blue.
“Understanding the past as a place crisscrossed by the tracks of numerous people and creatures is crucial if we are ever to glimpse futures beyond blank spaces.” Samia Khatun, Australianama (p. 105), OUP, Kindle Edition.
Sometimes it seems that life is expanding faster and faster into nothing, and sometimes simultaneously it seems like the view from the panorama lounge in the last carriage of the super-fast transcontinental. It is probably true to say that polarities unite rather than divide us, when we are aware of them. We can tolerate in one room the multiplicity of interpretations of time because each is experienced by us all at some hour. As we emerge from winter such thoughts arise because spring is activating the dormant, and complex stories are beginning to ensnare us in an understorey of bewildering urgencies. That’s Leo, and there will always be one in the bar. Just because the possum is invisible, don’t imagine that’s rain falling on your bicycle helmet.
In my short life I have been mad with lust, mad with doubt and anxiety, mad with grief, and at its end I may well be mad with death. Madness is an experiment with being, a quest of subjectivity, like Chinese nationalism, the survival of indigenous cultures and the entire history of Western Civilization, and I hear its voices loud and clear, as the universe saying, in any language available, “I am.” Say it yourself and it rings hollow. Finitude laps around it like a rising tide, and the whole of philosophy, psychology, sociology and anthropology cannot convincingly clothe the emperor. However, if you venture into solitude, extending your awareness to the vast panorama of the property which has disclosed itself to you, and you imagine it in your absence, say it then and those two words will be thunderously true, as true as the call Abraham heard to sacrifice his son, as true as the sacredness of a birth-tree.
Is it too mystical to suggest that each of us is not only the universe but everyone in it saying, “I am”? It was not disclosed to the early explorers that the heart of the land downunder had been pierced countless times in the 60,000 years of human habitation—call it property—prior to European arrival, but Sturt was nevertheless giving voice to the universe in the quote above. You can leave “I am” to the experts, and most of us do, and how democracy works is through the regular information of our experts by our voices, but we should recognize that most of the time voices are just noise: talking shit, putting a not-too-fine point on it. Chinese nationalists or no, we seem in equal numbers to be loud exploiters or exploited. However, in the category of legatee we must never fall silent, sharing with dead people, animals and plants, social and other institutions, even the weather and the universe itself, a primal voice: we are the Subjective.
Is it ironic that the voice makes noise? “Make them both confess,” as Joni said. (“The Priest”, Ladies Of TheCanyon, 1970.) Subjectivity was everywhere in 1970, in case you were not present. One man’s memory just got a prelate objectified and destroyed by popular consent to the voice of outrage. I have always wondered about the permanent injury caused by, and the apparently universal horror of questioning the damage of, the loving touch of someone of the same gender. Perhaps “I am” might be less noisy, or nosy (no ‘I’), if we weren’t commuting for hours a day, blinded by speed to the country beyond road or rail, digging our gardens in subdivision fill and submitting to evening barbecues bathed in artificial light, never venturing from the raft we have earned on the ocean of other voices.
Reality is emergent; disclosure is its enjoyment in time, gossip its narrative; the world is a subject. Whether you can identify with the tree as a physical shape, a system of responses or a set of materials, whether you regard your Self as a work in triumphant or shameful progress, a victim of circumstances or an impediment to enlightenment, the world enjoys you, because you confirm it. You may be an accident, though a probable one, but you will never happen again! Once upon a time, there was no accidence, coincidence, synchronicity or probability: there is now because the world which enjoys you invented them and you confirmed them by giving them back as passion, spontaneity, free will and unpredictability. Are you present, in this auditorium screening your History?
Oops, oh dear, you seem to be absent in me: I am your Thou; I and Thou are the subject of creation, the disclosure of the I of the universe. Whether I was a wave, a fish or a seawall, my time is near, but it will remain absent in yours, and absence in the universe has lasted forever, as disclosure will always have it. Disclosure is a two-way street connecting presence and absence, but across town with all those traffic lights it can seem interminable. If you have not already done so, you must imagine in the charts above the absence of the Earth you are standing on and looking through. In such exercise I sprout wings to join voice with the glorious equanimity of the grey butcherbird apparently confronting its finitude with its vigorous resistance to objectivity punctuated by the mournful refrain, “I am”, outside my window where our tracks intersect.
The Monk arrives, as he always does, in the inverted sign of his departure.
An equatorial grid reveals a hitherto unremarked affinity of the fabled Circlet of Pisces with the mythical vanity of Cassiopeia. Fortuitously lurking in the Mexican astrological house of the intellect, the two of them are conversely at home in the Indian Ocean aspirations of the antipodean American hungry ghost.
On his way to give succour to the wretched pilgrims camped expectantly below the Circlet of Unfulfilled Love, the Monk is waylaid by a throng of rancorous social scientists. He stands accused of not disclosing emotions which have the potential to perpetuate gender duality and white male supremacy. Additional charges, that he helped Captain Cook chart the Australian coast and is therefore implicated in the invasion which followed, and that he gave solace to unhappy priests tempted into the sexual abuse of children, have been dropped for want of credible eyewitnesses.
It cannot be denied that the Monk has triggered some pain, but if we can dispassionately judge perpetrator, why not victim? With all due respect, he defends himself, although I cannot deny being a witness to the whole of human history, I do not control it. I am not responsible for the emergent practice of connecting with the cosmos at sunset, or the associated encounter with the Other of people’s unconscious longing and exploitation. Do not delay me further, and what influence I may have, I will employ.
For generations, it has been the Circlet which has offered connection in the suffering embodied by human loving, and the Monk has been revered for the selfless love and courage of his service to humanity in renunciation of the physical comforts of biological union and material wealth. However, he is aware that some of his followers have begun to practise the contemplation towards the west of the setting Sun. As darkness falls on the last glow of the day, they quietly absorb the same feeling of primal union that dissolves the individuality of lovers and stimulates the dropping of bonded milk for the newborn.
The high priests, by computing the precise intersection of the prime meridian and the ecliptic, which half the time occurs below the horizon, have bolstered their claim to special powers of interpretation, but in doing so have introduced a potentially disturbing perspective, namely, that the rush of oxytocin may have unconscious elements which are not always benign.
“It’s sometimes known as the “cuddle hormone” or the “love hormone,” because it is released when people snuggle up or bond socially. Even playing with your dog can cause an oxytocin surge, according to a 2009 study published in the journal Hormones and Behavior. But these monikers may be misleading.
Oxytocin can also intensify memories of bonding gone bad, such as in cases where men have poor relationships with their mothers. It can also make people less accepting of people they see as outsiders. In other words, whether oxytocin makes you feel cuddly or suspicious of others depends on the environment.” Stephanie Pappas, Live Science.
Astrology is working in parallel with social science to quantify oxytocin’s effects. The Vertex faction of the Capricornia Chapter of the Australian Coastal Retirees Association is playing a prominent role. Its members are in silent uproar as the glorious rays of sunset give way to darkness. The Vertex at this latitude offers something for all who rummage in their hormones for the indrawn sigh of connection. Unfortunately, there is as yet no Anti-Vertex faction.
As the Vertex disappears below the horizon in the astrological house of relationship, the Monk is approaching from behind, while the cosmos has clicked into perhaps its most significant configuration. The Milky Way arcs in a straight line from southwest to northeast centred directly overhead. The Monk, himself an habitual contributor to light pollution, is unaware of the profound implications of connection with fifty thousand years of indigenous culture dulled by the lights of Rockhampton above the oxytocin worshippers focused on gratitude for their superannuation and companions in retirement. However, he does have some thoughts on country.
The Monk taps on his champagne glass and clears his throat. Lifelong friends, he begins, I commend you for your refusal to succumb to suffering as the pilgrims waiting for me at the Circlet do, but please hear my testimony. I share your yearning for validation, but I have learned its pitfalls. As long as it comes from the Other, it can only reinforce the Self as Other too. What is it about you which gives you the power to connect with the Other? Only Thou can know. Love is not projected, nor can it be measured or deserved. Transcendence and joy can only be found right here, as the source of the real, not at the end of an investigation or journey. Let your meditation be the ground under your feet and the sky above you. Open your heart to all who share them with you, and let yourself fall into total disclosure, whether they do or not. To worship and be worshipped is a beautiful thing, but to be the place of worship is sublime.
Observe the Vertex Calendar, true for leap years, and enjoy the rapture of prattling children, renewed friendship and new shoots in the vegetable garden, savour the mysteries of bewitchment and compulsion, but embody north, south and east too. The driver of midsummer is midwinter. The driver of permanence is idolatry. I will face my charges guilty of my innocence.
[My disclosure: I am a Cassiopeia in the lower case: letter ‘w’. ‘You’ are not Other, but when absent, missed. Please do not colour me in. Abliq.
Everything’s been returned which was owed. Dylan.]
Observe the Vertex Calendar, true for leap years, and enjoy the rapture of prattling children, renewed friendship and new shoots in the vegetable garden, savour the mysteries of bewitchment and compulsion, but embody north, south and east too. The driver of midsummer is midwinter. The driver of permanence is idolatry. I will face my charges guilty of my innocence.
Southern Hemisphere Astrology 