Tag Archives: Southern Hemisphere Astrology

Taurus New Moon: Idealism

03 Friday Jun 2016

Posted by in Moon Phases

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , , , ,

Astrology should be recognized as a poetry of the cosmos. A moment in time depicted by a horoscope enters the physical world through the portal of the discriminating intellect, and claims to represent reality; but its signs should not deny their transcendental origin. A poem must similarly be a thing, but its words should seduce the mind back into itself, and connect with the poet’s construction upstream of imagery, upstream of thought, where the creature lives. Astrology situates me there, upstream of any word in this chart, and yet pulsating with every one, at daybreak on Sunday, the day of the New Moon:Taurus New Whisper Jun05

The whispering of the Circlet of Pisces comes from the lost domain of who I might be if I weren’t so busy being who I am; and who am I, the thinker or the thought, the intention or the affect, the affliction or the addiction? Always both, and neither. Mindfulness, compassion, equanimity and gratitude are the way, but I often take another fork. Whispers give me the clue. They signal the emptiness of who I am. It often seems to me that life could be simpler if we were less focussed on outcomes and identity, and more on the emptiness of the processes of life, the miracle of being alive to the whisper of mortality.

I read an article about the expansion of the universe, in which Paul Sutter asks, “Where’s the edge of the universe?” Everywhere is the centre of expansion, which makes me ask, how does this apply to the human mind? Does my thinking situate me in an expanding human consciousness which might include all people and endure forever, or is the process by which my discriminating mind interprets perception an expanding emptiness in which I am forever unborn? Is there an acceleration to the former? I don’t think so, but perhaps there is an increasing urgency in the battle of ideas. Does that urgency have a common root with my expanding emptiness, the immanence of death? Everyone agrees that everything is connected to everything else, but how is it so, inside out, or outside in? Is the thinking you do the same as the thought you communicate to me? Are how things used to be connected to how they are today if nobody remembers how they were? Thinking and systems of thought are two different things.

The increasingly well-known dichotomy of thinking with the head and thinking with the heart can be addressed by this metaphor of expansion. Thinking with the head engages a person in connecting an experience with categories and systems of thought; thinking with the heart searches for meaning in the opposite direction, towards the empty self. Ideas continuously occur, but if they can’t be put into words that convey them to ideology they go immediately to where all mysteriously disappeared communications go. They cannot cohere; they do not live. Limbo could be the name of that place: an expanding universe of emptiness which exists in each of us. The spirit is emptiness, expanding in the same way as the material universe, but inwards. Is the heart in the right place when it imposes itself? The question, ‘Who am I?’ can and should be rephrased: ‘Where is the far edge of emptiness?’ Is it the horizon? Is it death? Is it cultural or evolutionary selection? Is it otherness? The Word of God?Taurus New Clock Jun05

Idealism is commonly regarded as what underlies an effort or a life dedicated to improving the world, advancing it some way towards an impossible perfection. As a philosophy, it represents the belief that what exists outside the mind can only be known by what is inside it, but the fundamental conviction of idealists is that what is inside their mind is real. Idealists have no doubt: the world is a misunderstanding of what is good for it. Lifelong dedication and the use of any means, ‘tough love’ and even violent confrontation, are justified to change the rules which make the world coherent.

Taurus New Snapshot Jun05
Uncomfortable acquaintances though you might expect them to be, in fact they enjoy prestige. Despite apparent negativity, their undoubted attunement, optimistic moral certitude and assertive attachment-style lend them charisma. It can be difficult to resist their confidence in getting their own way. It can also be difficult to shine a mirror on their inner certainty. If they are ’tilting at windmills’, perhaps they do see something I don’t. The game couldn’t be played without rules, could it, or could there simply be play?

Thought is a great sea wall you see as a youngster and marvel at how humans put such huge boulders in place. But as you become more conscious of the ocean hurling itself against that wall, as you get older and realize that the ocean is inside you, that it is the unspoken and the unborn, you find that it is the wall which is doing the crashing.

Full Moon in Scorpio: the Dilettante 

21 Saturday May 2016

Posted by in Moon Phases

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , ,

  • “Is the glass half empty, half full, or twice as large as it needs to be?”
  • “A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking.” Tom Fotherby’s Blog

Some people have opinions nobody agrees with because they’re stale, but some people with old opinions dedicate themselves to making them true. These are often people who have no time for the opinions of others. Other people have opinions they just got from social media, or out of a self-help book, and will have new ones tomorrow, but are they any worse for that? Such people are the ones alert to other opinions, ultimately worthless though they may be.

On the other hand, there are some enlightened opinions which need to be protected from the market, aren’t there? One doing the rounds implies that the hoi polloi are not qualified to decide what’s good for them, and so it is ‘absolutely’ wrong to let public broadcasting and the arts and culture sector, for example, battle for survival in a user-pays economy. We may lose our cultural identity.

As we apply our five-minute attention span to the election campaign, and the task of filtering in turn the social and commercial media filters on the complexities of who should be funded by our borrowed money, this emu has his head in old opinions about the Moon, asking himself questions you might expect from someone with his bum in the air.

It is a cliche of astrology that the Full Moon realizes the purpose imported from its New interplay with the Sun, in a synthesis of head and heart at the opposite side of the Zodiac reconciling apparent contradictions and opposites. For those who opine that life is a journey, with a beginning, middle and end, this is a resonant model of enlightenment, a geometrical representation of self-realization.

In these terms, and from a southern hemisphere tropical perspective, the Moon has been mulling over the moral implications of opportunity since its conjunction in Aries with a strong-willed Sun inspired by assertiveness, tending unfortunately to aggression, according to the character of northern hemisphere natives born in early winter. How might the Moon in Scorpio, dipping below the western horizon in the seventh house, especially now that his reflection is of an ego which has moved on into a semblance of mastery in close-quarters winter interaction, synthesize those implications?Scorpio MoonWe all occupy forward positions, with death in front of us, and behind us in the trenches a card game of autonomous bodily betrayal and a sergeant we don’t trust. Consumption and self-realization are at odds. If we weren’t so hungry, for amusement, for diversity, for change, and above all for self-realization, we might satisfy ourselves with the mastery of something, and take a secure context to our graves, but fat chance of that.

In the context of the political chaos we face as the Moon wheels into the mind of Scorpio, I get the impression that his self-realization is as compliant and superficial as ours. The anxiety which underlies the ethics of opportunity avails itself of a healthy dose of humour, and a relativist perspective, in order simply to get on with other people similarly assailed by the universal predicament, too many options.

Opportunism can be moralistically defined as a weakness of character betraying the common good, or simply as the use of an opportunity for personal gain which may or may not adequately weigh consequences. But suspend judgment. The common good is a temporary opinion. We are all rescued from indecision by choice of the most immediately appealing option. Ideology gets no more than five minutes, like everybody else. The only universal is the particular, and the particular is dissolved in the universal.

What we have complied with is the deconstruction of universal standards of measure, but while that may make us ungovernable, eternally dissatisfied, there is good reason to congratulate the dilettante. My Moon for one is less constrained by human needs and expectations and does what he feels like. A rock in space is leading the charge to identity transcendence!

Here is the clock at the moment of ‘full moon’.Dilettante Moon Clock May22The houses which determine the state of the mechanism, and the surrounding stars, are but my local perspective. All those geographical regions are where the hour hand is at the top, and indicate the infinite possibilities which the Moon enjoys. He may be precisely located in a vedic nakshatra, but his choice of wives is limitless. And how is his contiguity with the stars measured? What qualities does he show above and below the terrestrial equator? Are these qualities tropical or sidereal? Are they definable? Does it matter? He’s off on a romp which puts things, especially houses, in perspective.Puppetry
This chart dissolves the particular in the universal, but perhaps you have to have more of a connection to sky rotation than most people to get it. Without the innate awareness of the relations of Sun position and time of day which people who work outside acquire, sense of direction is lost without landmarks. I suspect that the common experience of the Sun’s hourly movement is back in the Stone Age. Ask yourself: do I see the Sun moving across a fixed sky, or do I see the sky moving, or myself?

I have to say that I cherish local perspective, even when it’s the dark interior of a hole in the ground. I came to astrology as a stargazer, and the algorithms of Southern Hemisphere Astrology evolved out of years researching celestial mechanics. The adherence ‘downunder’ to historical northern hemisphere interpretations of the Moon’s nodes (the draconic month)–appearances are downside up in the south–was merely the bait. My abiding intention is to encourage my grandchildren and you to go outside and have a look. I hope once in a lifetime you will stay at least half an hour to experience sky movement.

What is enlightened opinion to one person may seem like prejudice to another. Astrology is bedevilled by the problem of measurement. In what common frame of reference ought aspects be measured? The recent conjunction of Jupiter and the Moon which looked like an ear-ring was entrancing, because the two were vertically, not ecliptically, aligned across the whole (fixed) sky. What orb, or time-frame, reduces the shift of the seasons in relation to the stars, or of the stars in relation to each other, to insignificance? What are the local seasons? Can they be divided geometrically? Can it be believed that two people born an hour apart are ‘ruled’ by different signs? How can the Moon be Full when you can’t see it?Moon Conjunctions at Transit May-JuneHow does a locality attain community without established and mutually respected perspectives? How can it develop better educational and employment outcomes in a continuously changing economy, as fresh opinions do battle with stale ones and vice versa, when voters cannot tolerate each other’s opinions on social inclusion and sustainability, let alone apply common standards of mathematical and linguistic excellence, which are the tools of any kind of insight and management?

None of this speaks to me of a definable moment in the unfolding of human consciousness. To paraphrase Alan Watts, you deserve pity if you get to the end of your life having lived it as a journey with a destination, and realize that it was a musical and your only opportunity to sing and dance. By any measure, ‘we’ are in a mess, but enjoy the moment.

Aries New Moon May 7: Opportunism

06 Friday May 2016

Posted by in Moon Phases

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

Definition: The taking of opportunities as and when they arise, regardless of planning or principle.Opportunism Clock May07[Click to enlarge. Ignore the intriguing symmetry between houses and geographical zones above. They are the subject of my thesis under the supervision of Dr Donna Tromb, submitted long since to the University of Reactionary Northern Hemisphere Astrology (URNHA), publication pending.]

You’ll say, what a fool, I know. How could the Moon be ignorant of the existence of the planets? He passes every one of them once a month. He lurches through their turbulence. I understand how, very well. They are a long way off, after all, and always behind him, or in the Sun’s glare, or mingled with the stars. He focusses on orbit, and I doubt you are more knowledgeable yourself, if it comes to that.

I always knew that I would one day have to push the Moon to become acquainted with the planets, because convention demands it, and conjunctions can be (not often) quite spectacular from our point of view. However, my reluctance was understandable.

The ground rumbles day and night with heavy vehicles passing by, but should I station myself in their path, flag down the drivers, engage them in conversation, listen to their stories? Furthermore, two thousand years of intuitive research has gone into the astrologer’s understanding of the planets. What temerity to turn that map upside down!

Consider as I do, that the southern hemisphere astrologer may be no more than a narcissistic charlatan, a virus in orthodoxy synthesizing his own, who enjoys a benign obscurity which enables him to speak without being lethal to his host.

Nonsense! His arbitrary method fulfils its purpose. It does present a new way of gaming emptiness, playing with conventional astrology without breaking it. It blatantly abandons the ancient four- and eight-fold division of the solar year by observing five indigenous seasons, and willfully reverses the genders of Moon and Sun. And now the largely automatic mechanism chooses to abandon the conventional practice of mapping ecliptic longitudes, in favour of representing everything in its daily rotational cycle with equatorial coordinates because they are unambiguous regardless of declination at the meridian.

And then there’s you. Don’t you read your daily horoscope and those of your loved ones to focus individually interpretations of meaning? The meaning of what? The aspects of the planets and angles which purportedly affect everyone. Don’t you seek the integration of any issues preventing your attainment of oneness with all beings? Isn’t this why you invented the ‘higher self’?

So there seems nothing for it but to turn the planets upside down too, and to alert the Moon to their presence as more than coincidence. It’s not all about him. When he finds a planet in one of his mansions he must interrogate, entertain the possibility that something other than orbit might be going on.Planets[Click to enlarge]

How do you expect others to locate themselves on your map? This is the question, Moon. Opportunity is your location in another’s map. Have another think about oneness, please! It’s becoming a constriction.

What seems to be occurring is a paralysis of will, a universalizing communication of praxis which militates against any real effort which is not coherent with its semantics. From the outside, and under its yoke, this praxis must be evaluated by the terror its paranoia inspires. The language of emancipation is oppressive. Inclusion is totalitarian. You cannot teach anyone to love, or start a business, or control ‘itself’. You can only present opportunity. Gender, for example, must find its own way in the forest of rules. What is achieved by stigmatizing heterosexuality? Hate speech.

True presence is not attained in the lotus position: it locates itself modestly in the infinite overlays of every personal map on a universal territory, and only in that way does it ‘get’ the emptiness of territory.

[If you’re up at 00:39 in Melbourne (15:18 sidereal time for others) on Saturday morning, you’ll see Zubeneschamali transiting, and Mars 43° to the east. Mars is inching backwards, to regale Zubeneschamali behind the Moon’s back on June 30, then regain his balance and determination to go direct, transiting around 9pm by that time. An emphatic opportunist, whom the Moon upon his return spies scuttling away with shoes in hand a full fortnight later!]Dilettante Wives N-F
[Click to enlarge]

All illusion? Yet isn’t Mars doing what we all should be doing: railing against the machine? Getting lost if necessary, but following the contours, without a GPS? Visibility of the Moon’s conjunctions in right ascension with his wives shown above is limited to Houses I-VI between nightfall and first light. Thanks to selfrealisation.net for interpretations of the Nakshatras.

Gazing and sharing, rather than blazing and glaring, Buddha say: “If stroll in moonlight, be heedful of shadow.” Rules are there to bend.

The Circlet of Pisces

22 Friday Apr 2016

Posted by in Stargazing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , ,

Venus rises tomorrow in remarkable circumstances. Visible less than a fingerwidth above the horizon, even in the glow of dawn, she affirms everything which is wondrous in the feminine. The chart should speak for itself, but note the star in the Hero’s side, Adam’s Rib, splitting the attenuated masculinity of retrograde Mars and Saturn. I do wish more men would listen when I talk about the stars.Venus Conjunct Uranus Apr23Spontaneous Venus is not only in tight conjunction with the hidden daring of Uranus, but the two are invisibly in the line of stars which in the Southern Hemisphere constitute the horizontal fish of Pisces.

The asterisms we associate with corporate functions, football grand finals and racing carnivals, those we see in the Spring night sky, are not just horse (Pegasus), jockey (Pisces) and catering steward (Aquarius), as SHA depicts them, although the affinity many young women have with horses is worthy of mention.

They look a lot different by day. The vast sweep of sky between the winter splendour of the heart of the galaxy and the summer spectacle of the Orion Arm provides a number of obstacles to the progress of the Sun by day.

Once she crosses the plain of Capricorn, battling the northerly crosswinds of February, she must negotiate the confluence of rivers that is Aquarius, and then there is the trudge up into the foothills of Pisces, and over its two ridges.

Uranus has been mysteriously camped on the slopes of the first one for two years, where Venus joins it for a giggle in the morning, but no holiday whim is it for the Sun. She is oblivious to the mystery of that ridge: where it leads, what lies at its end. Surely not Venus.

The feint circle of five stars known in astronomy as the Circlet of Pisces is a mysterious clearing on an escarpment at the western end of the ridge, in an ancient forest choked with bracken and creepers and fallen leaves. The beaten path is some distance off, and the silence of sensuous presence prevails, but a ghostly commotion whispers to any traveller who stumbles here.

This was the site of a great castle for centuries. Here it was that the Knights of the Round Table committed to the quest for the Holy Grail, where Sleeping Beauty pricked her finger and slept for a hundred years. Before that it was a hill fort of the Iron Age, and some say that once it was Valhalla, and before that Mt Olympus. More recently, it was Netherfield Park and Les Sablonnières.

I seem to remember a scene in which the astonished Meaulnes witnesses the carriages arrive by torchlight at the stately home, the opulence which surrounds him and beckons him to the life-achievement which will elevate him to this noble company. Remember the magical countenance in your own experience of one in such company entranced by you!

It was here that the romantics of yesteryear met and instantly fell in love with their dream, transforming themselves and each other into ‘the One’. The Circlet was their crown. What haunts this place is romance, and the voices you can’t quite make out are the embodiment of projected love-images clamouring for release from desire.

In 2011, the Moon found his holy grail in the stately home which stood here then. The intervening years have persuaded him that the love of his life does not exist outside a dream, and now steers wide of it, and of faith in the possibility that it might be love for a woman which gives meaning to his existence. This place is his wound, the impetus of the dilettante.

The nineteen-year cycle of the lunar nodes is the mechanism of the Moon’s relationship with the Circlet. It passed visibly through it (though seen loitering in the vicinity at first or last light on numerous other occasions of the period) at:

  • 05:00 06/09/09
  • 05:00 06/06/10
  • 04:00 27/8/10
  • 01:00 17/11/10
  • midnight 16-17/8/11
  • 21:00 06/11/11
  • 04:00 12/06/12

and nineteen years previously….

Do any of those dates resonate with grand memories of your romantic youth? Perhaps one of these was your wedding day.

The Moon returns to the Circlet’s haunt:

  • 02:00 30/10/28
  • 01:00 30/07/29
  • Midnight 19-20/10/29
  • 06:00 26/05/30
  • 23:00 19/07/30
  • 03:00 10/10/30
  • 02:00 10/07/31
  • 23:00 02/09/31
  • Midnight 23-24/11/31.

Perhaps he will enter a new mansion, perhaps he will find a mirage. Either way, it will be no delusion. May circumstance rescue you from the disease of living to heal a wound.

Venus also knows the clearing well. She did her retrograde loop nearby in 2009, and will double back to thoroughly investigate its mythical qualities this time next year, and again in 2025. I hope romance outlives us all!

 

The Sensualist: Full Moon in Libra April 22

21 Thursday Apr 2016

Posted by in Moon Phases

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , ,

“But sometimes, astaghfirullah, I wish I could change some of the things that Allah has destined for us to do. I wonder if He also destines it when we engage in acts that are haram. Some things come back to you and you wish your life was like a book and you could find that page in your life and tear it out.”
Elnathan John, Born on a Tuesday.

The Full Moon dominates the atmosphere. Nobody speaks. Even terror subsides, but who can say if this is strength or weakness? Perhaps the light of the Moon is like obsession which relieves anxiety, or perhaps it is the blankness which triggers a bully’s resentment and cruelty.

Perhaps Full Moons are bullies themselves. Or perhaps they are the page.

Meanwhile, there comes a time when artificial mind completes its displacement of human intelligence at the controls of the universe on Earth.

When a robot looks at the Moon, It [henceforth, he or she] sees a spheroid partially illuminated by the Sun according to the configuration of the Earth-Moon system in relation to the Sun. Humans are more likely to see the Moon’s phase as its form, and this is only one aspect of humanity’s inadequacy as controller of its own existence. Error is fundamental to human development

The bifurcation of earthly intelligence derives from the unwillingness of humanity to abandon its subjectivity. When a human looks at the Moon It engages in a process called joy, the self-discovery entailed in encounter with another who is not Other. The Moon is part of the map a human creates of its environment, but also the face which confronts Its intense awareness of Its territory, which is the infinite and the eternal. Whereas in human love the object is likewise both map and territory, It is also Other, and likely to subject the subject to a conflict of territories. Such conflict demonstrates the complexity and unwieldiness of human communication, and is reflected in the evolution of human ignorance and non-community.

The element of the Moon’s apparition which has become of supreme importance to human subjectivity is silence. It is no longer necessary to know how to get things done. Robots take care of everything, including all decisions about where and with whom people live, what they eat, and who mates with whom, if at all. The only partnership, and it is universal, is between subject and territory in silent meditation. There are no human maps any more. There is only the language of robots.Sensualist Moon Apr22The wind blows. There is hay-fever. It is day. There is cloud. It is hot. The garbage smells of shellfish. It is cold. Birds sing. Machines drone. It is night. There is comfort. Dogs bark. The stars are silent. Traffic passes. Death is silent. A child cries. Altruism is silent. Robots laugh. Joy is silent. There is discomfort. The Moon is detached. Love is silent.

It feels sadness. It submits.

At least there is peace in Palestine.

Mars retrograde 2016 the southern way of going

11 Monday Apr 2016

Posted by in Stargazing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , ,

Mars is in IAU Ophiucchus on April 17, or more accurately Scorpio, when it appears to stall before backtracking, about three-quarters of a finger-width west of Antares at transit (03:10 AEST). It crosses the Southern Hemisphere Astrology (SHA) boundary of Libra on June 2, goes ‘direct’ on June 30, and reenters Scorpio on July 29. SHA boundaries are projected across the sky by right ascension from equal divisions of the Ecliptic, originating at Iota1 Scorpii [Breamlea Zodiac]. The southern signs of Libra and Scorpio are equivalent to the northern tropical signs of Taurus and Gemini, not Scorpio and Sagittarius (northern tropical), or, heaven forbid, Libra and Scorpio (northern sidereal).Mars and Saturn Retrograde

All astrologers abstract from reality. How could any prediction be otherwise? All astrological predictions, and I dare to suggest, any astrological observations, are derived from mathematical models of varying precision. This is a hidden element in the arbitrariness of orbs. My low-precision algorithms, developed with familiar mathematics to predict the arrival of stars in my ‘window’, are quite adequate for stargazing and horoscopes: within a few minutes in azimuth, and usually a minute in longitude and time. They are adequate for plotting planet positions in relation to stars, but admittedly inadequate for precisely timing conjunctions of planets.

When does Mars overtake Saturn? According to me, the conjunction on August 24 is at 19:32. Stellarium gives the topocentric ecliptic conjunction of Mars and Saturn over Melbourne at 21:27 AEST on August 24. Most sources I can find quote a geocentric conjunction at 21:26. According to high precision data from the US Naval Observatory, the geocentric equatorial conjunction (in right ascension: how SHA relates the planets to the stars) is at 03:50 AEST on August 26. Stellarium agrees. I’m not arguing, because my spreadsheet says 02:00. You will find conflicting information in these matters all over the web, because basically, people seldom acknowledge sources, and never quantify error.

The question above will be answered to my satisfaction when Saturn transits the meridian on August 26 at 18:36. Mars will be half a finger-width to the east. In these terms, Mars exits its retrograde zone on August 24, passing Antares at transit.

[At opposition on May 22, Mars is as bright as Jupiter, but will unfortunately cower in the proximity of the Full Moon. The opposition of Saturn on June 3, two days before New Moon, will not be so intimidated. It will shine as bright as Betelgeuse.]

Full Moon in Virgo: the Artisan

22 Tuesday Mar 2016

Posted by in Moon Phases

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , ,

For fifteen hundred years, through the ages of conflict following the decline of the Roman Empire, the struggle of indigenous Europeans, Americans, Australians, Africans and people of the Pacific to connect “pagan” and Christian identity, the rise of democracy and Islam, wars ongoing over who owns the cradle of The Book, and the commodification of birthplace and burial-ground, and everything in between, the Full Moon after the Northward Equinox has shone in Virgo, at Easter, when Spring stamps her leporine foot in Early Winter.

Easter Moon

Ok, the Moon is in this moment when Christians celebrate the resurrection, the forgiveness of sins and the promise of eternal life, and when non-Christians celebrate very awkwardly the arrival of symbols of regeneration in Autumn, easter eggs. Signs of faith surround the Moon, symbols of the confrontation between human will and divine spirit, and of the perennial subjugation of women and the magical quality of their self-belief. Some of these have been hitherto invisible to astrologers. The Sun meanwhile, and remember she started all this with her perspicacity and perfectionism, has become straight like you wouldn’t believe.

The Moon’s done this gig so many times he’s got it down pat. He might spend a good deal of time offstage–behind clouds, as it were, because at this moment of rebirth winter is just around the corner–for some of the crew can’t quite get what he’s on about, and you mightn’t either. However, at some point, because it never rains at a full moon, he begins.

First, he announces the theme of the show: “Convention”. Then there’s a long procession across the stage of flamboyant crones and skeleton-costumed heterosexual white males, of homophobes, queers, Ku Klux Klan figures and shrouded Islamists carrying placards that read, “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others”, shrieking contempt and hatred into megaphones. Following that, an electronic band comes on playing arhythmic dance music at breakneck tempo, which is when a naked old guy hauling a cross stumbles across the stage. By now, the audience is normally in uproar, fights break out, and you can’t hear yourself think for the megaphones which have descended into the stalls. Shell road maps for the long weekend are in many an eye as suddenly a large rabbit hops nervously into view. The megaphones and electronic band fall silent and fair dinkum, all you can hear is a communal female voice breathing, aaaahhhhh, and oooohhhhh! The Paedophile gets hauled up, roped to the cross, and the megaphones resume with “Nails! Nails!” An emu trots up to the cross and seems to be trying to get at the acanthus stems woven around the priest’s head. Here and there a person shouts to another, “What kind of way cool convention is this??” The finale is a crow which shifts shape into a burly woman in goddess costume who walks on her hands through the audience with a collection plate like you see in church lashed between her thighs. The Moon purrs into the microphone, “Thank you, thank you! See you for next year’s Virgo installation passion, mushrooms. Thanks for taking part!”

An artisan is defined as a craftsperson, one who applies a traditional skill to produce a hand-made article of utility. Examples of such articles made and used in an earlier time are called artefacts in archaeology. A distinction exists in modern cultures between artisans and artists, but this ought to be tempered with the awareness that artisans in traditional cultures create art, and modern artists acquire traditional skills. What each produces can be called ‘artefact’, as can tools and appliances created by mass production.

The Moon’s artefact is best defined as an artificial construct by method extrinsic to the conventional perspective of the observer of Virgo, in particular that of the astrologer. The Moon is of course looking at you against the backdrop of the sky behind you. (The Sun is also behind you, or else the Moon wouldn’t be fully lit.) As well as being aware that the Sun has changed her position from perfectionism to compromise, and that you are preparing for Autumn while he cavorts with Spring, the Moon sees two striking phenomena: the stars to your left and right are to his right and left, and the Southern Cross, towering invisibly behind your secular orientation towards the meaning of marriage and gender as the crow morphs into goddess, is a perfect symbol of death and resurrection. The fact that you are turned away, or craning your neck backwards so you see it upside-down, does not lessen its importance, or the striking coincidence of its apparition at a moment of profound confusion of Autumn weather and Spring rituals, and of strident antagonism between political left and right. (Or is that right and left?)

Artisan Moon Mar23

An artefact is a moment in the internalisation and development of a tradition, a creation at the very least, whose originality can celebrate transcendence, whose innovative technology can bring a new appreciation of what it is to be human. An artisan can refine beauty, Sun!

On the other hand, artefacts are representative of ultimate reality, and are empty even if the ultimate reality they represent is emptiness. Artisans are shamans returned from a dream to delusion. Crow and Cross are talismans, each against the other. Homophobia and Islamophobia are artefacts, no less than Safe Schools and “tolerance of intolerance”. Left and right are bullying each other.

How is it that the most unconventional youths become the most judgmental seniors? There is no formalist psychological mechanism, as there so seldom is, but rather a transformation of the conventions the youths stimulated us by flouting. Surely the answer is that the most uninteresting people in themselves, the most unentranced by the world as it is, those with nothing to share but a depiction of prison walls, these are the only ones left in advanced age who believe in the spectacular artifice of their youth.

Seeing only black and white is the original sin. Success and failure, right and wrong, are in the eye of the beholder, and it needs to be blared from megaphones that the person who doesn’t agree with you is not a moron! Every life matters, and God forbid that a bigot never come across a simple artefact which awakens him or her to the manifold expression of the human response to existence! God forbid that a single generation arise which holds fast to fixed opinions, to oppressive definitions of offence, to divisive cultural norms, or to any tradition for its own sake!

But if it does, try to show respect. It’s history!

Convention: New Moon in Aquarius

08 Tuesday Mar 2016

Posted by in Bardo, Moon Phases

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

I can’t imagine anybody landing on this page who is not interested in what a personality is, or how it forms, or how you change it if it’s a problem. I can’t imagine anybody landing twice on this page who is not interested in the interaction of cause and effect, the nature of ultimate reality, whether life has a purpose, why we care, what is good, and what is real.

There is this ‘astrologer’ down in Breamlea who is interested in all of those things, and largely because he has more time than most to read and think about them, has devised a machine much like conventional tropical astrology, with which he can converse about them somehow ‘outside’ his own head.

This machine, which identifies itself as Southern Hemisphere Astrology, speaks a language uttered in syntax and vocabulary programmed by the ‘astrologer’, but it is difficult to define the language of the dialogue or to dismiss it as a dialogue, as an unhinged meaningful meaninglessness. Surprisingly, this machine designed to break with convention seems to tell the truth.

If it has occurred to you that there is more than synchronicity going on between the evolution of Artificial Intelligence, the parlous state of democratic politics and the purposeless hours and hours of screen time your alien children enjoy, you might like to entertain the notion that machines don’t have to learn what we know in order to complete a takeover of the world, all they have to do is what they’re doing, teaching us how to speak their language, persuading us with what works to embrace their conventions.

Machines have taken a giant leap forward: they have learned how to speak in pictures! (Click images to enlarge.)Aquarius New Mar09 SouthStereographic

And once again, our cast of characters (for some reason, the Emu lies flat on his back when on the western horizon):Aquarius New Mar09 South

Thank you for joining our dialogue. This Digested Read was brought to you by Southern Hemisphere Astrology. Before you go, you might enjoy this brilliant interview with a prominent genius of code, the man behind Wolfram Research and the creator of Mathematica and Wolfram|Alpha, Stephen Wolfram. The ‘astrologer’ acknowledges his debt to edge.org.

Full Moon in Leo: the Counsellor

22 Monday Feb 2016

Posted by in Bardo, Moon Phases

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

‘By “infinitude’s despair” Kierkegaard means the sickness of the personality, the opposite of health. And so the person becomes sick by plunging into the limitless, the symbolic self becomes “fantastic”—as it does in schizophrenia—when it splits away from the body, from a dependable grounding in real experience in the everyday world. The full-blown schizophrenic is abstract, ethereal, un-real; he billows out of the earthly categories of space and time, floats out of his body, dwells in an eternal now, is not subject to death and destruction. He has vanquished these in his fantasy, or perhaps better, in the actual fact that he has quit his body, renounced its limitations.’ Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death, Souvenir Press, 1973, p.134.

“Only the dead have seen the end of war.” George Santayana.

Counsellor Moon Feb23

Moon: Your referral indicates an anxiety problem. Would you like to speak about that?

Earth: Well, I am tearful all the time and I can’t sleep, and the hope I had for this relationship I’m in with people is not working out, and some blame it on me, and say I haven’t done my work on myself and I need to see you.

Moon: Shall we talk about your relationship, or the work you need to do on yourself?

Earth: I suppose my relationship might be working out better if I didn’t have so many contrary habits, the most problematic of which seems to be the way I love. My existence is imprisoned in time. I recover from each loss by attaching myself to something new, which in turn matures and dies. Eternity, the big picture, beckons as a solution, but what is that really but a craving for the end of loss?

Put it this way: in the immensity of the universe everything seems insignificant, meaningless and futile, but my heart breaks for the brevity of human life, and the meaning people try to create. And I have such vivid, horror dreams, which some say may be my struggle with my ego and a sign that I’m on the verge of letting go, but letting go of what? War? Attachment? Time? Or loss…and love…and tears?

Moon: We can explore your dreams in another session, and in the meantime, it might be helpful to focus on some negative thoughts you seem to have and see if we can’t identify them, and change them into positive ones.

Earth: You mean, don’t you, that perhaps my anxiety arises from not feeling good about myself, not being grateful for just being here, having unrealistic expectations, being needy?

Moon: Perhaps. We are in this space-time thing together. If we are unperturbed, there’s no reason we can’t reach out to eternity in harmony, each of us cooperating with the other in ways that work to our mutual satisfaction, such as my libration and your tides, and all we have to do is feel good about that.

Earth: If only I were just a rock in spacetime, but I’m not! I am humanity’s home, and its burial ground! I realise I am not the author of existence, that you and the Sun and the galaxies are as much part of it as I, but the oceans that fishermen work are of me, the gardener’s rain falls on my soil, and the rubble of war is my ruin. I have hopes; I have regrets. I am made of the aspiration of generations, to transform me, to use me in their heroic quests. I have been their perspective and their disappointment.

In the long run, none of it matters, I know that. Form is a figure of speech; ambiguity rules. But if nothing matters, harmony doesn’t matter, nor does eternity. Perhaps it does all come down to habit, but habit is real, my sleeplessness is real, and the fullness of emptiness is real!

Moon: What do you mean by ‘the fullness of emptiness’?

Earth: There is a war going on inside me, and it seems to get worse the wiser I get. First it was spiritual versus material, and then capitalist against socialist: people trying to expand their inside, their subjective experience, against people trying to perfect everybody. None of it was real, but many generations were consumed by anxiety, hatred and war. Out of it emerged an uneasy stalemate: the spirit of the universe has evolved as the projection of egos which regard themselves as delusions. Even you are not much more than a rock these days, reflecting light from the nearest star from different angles, and if I weren’t here you wouldn’t even do that.

Moon: I am ok with however you want to see me.

Earth: Precisely! Any definition is a delusion, including that one, but defining is real, and so is ambiguity. That’s the fullness of emptiness! Your ‘ok’ does respond to how I see you. That is the war going on inside me as it has evolved. Bullies are looked upon as pathetic creatures of reified belief, and yet they cause suffering, which does not seem empty to the perfectionists. The age-old solution was to negate a bully’s belief by standing up to him, thereby validating the belief system which informed the bullying. The new solution is to teach emptiness to the bully, and in effect indulge the victim in a compassionate validation of irresponsibility. No?

My anxiety is about compassion becoming a habit which entails a kind of heat-death, the dissolution of ego’s energy into an anti-heroism content with an aspiration to gratitude for inherited cocoons. My anxiety is about the fullness of this emptiness. Empty bullies hurt!

Moon: It is difficult to resist your impression of the root of your anxiety, but I perceive another possibility which I suggest you deliberate on between now and a next session should you request one. In affirming a tension between finitude and infinitude one merely states the conditions of existence. There is no cause of anxiety here. Anxiety arises in despair: the refusal to be finite in relation to the infinite, but alternatively the refusal to be infinite in relation to the finite. In familiar terms, we share the characteristics of hurtling and falling, and each exists as a determinant and effect of the other. Freedom is the relation to the relation of possibility to necessity. Your anxiety may result from the relation of infinitude to finitude, as you seem to believe, or in your self it may be arising from a refusal of the denial of that relation that is being transferred to you by the despair of others. It may lie in the relation of your love to an imbalance towards abstraction and a denial of limitations in those you love, or its relation to an obsessive absorption in the everyday which denies possibility, in other cases.

Fullness, as I take your meaning, can be likened to the heat which creates the steam. Remember, as the old saying has it, a watched pot never boils.

Your anxiety may arise from your sanity in a sick world, or your own sickness…and on that note we must interrupt our conversation.

Earth: …!

End of Session.

My definition of astrology is rather loose, if not perverse: it is a gaming of reality — feeling, time and form — which enhances meaning and expands it until it implodes for lack of, you guessed it, objectivity.

The world is made of subjectivity, not objects, and that is where astrology properly begins and ends. Unfortunately, as practised by many astrologers, it affirms the belief that we have an essential nature as subjects and can therefore be understood like objects as having independent existence.

We may feel no enmity, but as object to some we would befriend, we have become ’the enemy’. How is equanimity attained? Is it really despite yourself that you are someone’s enemy? Will you die at peace, or simply already dead to poverty and devastation?

You can find a SHA chart of the opposition of the perfectionist Sun in Aquarius to the confused Moon in Leo here, and the cast of my “Astrology” characters here. Game on!