danae sinclair

...and I've flown south....

2009-02-02T17:14:00.005+10:30

again! I know I know, but life just keeps getting better and better and why not move this blog to a platform that is more efficient and user friendly??

come and see the new look me at www.danaesinclair.wordpress.com

mercury stands still

2009-02-01T12:09:00.005+10:30

daemone est deus inversus ds '09

"But in the unconscious is everything that has been rejected by consciousness, and the more Christian one's consciousness is, the more heathenishly does the unconscious conduct itself, if in the rejected heathenism there are any values that are important for life - if, that is to say, the baby has been thrown out with the bathwater, as so often happens. The unconscious does not isolate or differentiate its objects as consciousness does."

(Carl Jung, Answer to Job, p 100)

bibliomancy for the new moon (solar) eclipse in aquarius...

2009-01-23T08:37:00.001+10:30

"...the vision of soul given by anima is more than just one more perspective.  The call of soul convinces; it is a seduction into psychological faith, a faith in images and the thought of the heart, into an animation of the world.  Anima attaches and involves.  She makes us fall into love.  We cannot remain the detached observer looking through a lens.  In fact, she probably doesn't partake in optical metaphors at all.  Instead, she is continually weaving, stewing, and enchanting consciousness into passionate attachments away from the vantage point of a perspective..."

(James Hillman, Anima)

bibliomancy for venus - uranus

2009-01-17T11:37:00.006+10:30

'groom'

The Lover comes, the Lover comes!
Open the way for him!
He’s looking for a heart,
Let’s show him one.
I scream
“What you come to hunt is me!”
He says laughingly,
“I’m here not to hunt you but to save you.”

(Rumi)

the language of the birds...

2009-01-17T08:51:00.014+10:30

you look more like a magpie these days '07

Writers write every day. Artists create all the time. That's what I'm told - a real writer is compelled toward setting words in print, come foul or fair. In worst of times, the true writer will come up with just one word rather than fail to create.
Julia Cameron, author of The Artist's Way , insists that many self proclaimed 'writers' are in love with the idea of being a writer but when it comes down to it are without the drive or the stamina to do the work. Others possess talent but internal voices of critics past and present snuff out any sparks of motivation or inspiration. There's also a category of women, in Cameron's Way, who produce baby after baby rather than show up at the page and answer an artistic call. Fruit of the womb as a substitute for real world success is the gist of that bit of pop-psychology.

You can imagine that someone such as myself, who has indeed produced baby after baby and not much else (by some standards), who may well be one of those who are in love with the poetic image of the solitary but brilliant artist and who could just as well qualify for the other, would be suitably shamed and chastised by all of it and duly set a course of remedial action.

Actually, no.

There comes a moment in a person's life, hopefully for all of us, when the realisation dawns that enough means enough, that yes there are difficulties, possibly some cellulite (I jest!) or a lack of funds, but these needn't be a reason not to accept oneself and one's life completely as is. Exactly as is. Not the potential of oneself, not the idea of how one could be, and not the way one would be if all the problems were overcome. Yes, just like this.

There also comes a moment of reckoning (and I'm having one of these) - a kind of straighten-up-and-fly-right type message from the divine. It hasn't escaped me that after over a year of drawing birds and working with words I've moved into a house where the previous occupant went to great measures to repel all things feathered. The now fully laden fruit trees in the back garden are enclosed in a gigantic metal cage - which at first glance looks like an aviary but is designed to keep birds out. Every now and then a cheeky little bowerbird will squeeze under the gate and help himself to some windfalls while I watch with admiration - with that much determination the little guy is welcome to anything he can get. Even with the limits set in a most obvious way, life thrives.

Work with what you've got, the signs all say, no remedial action required other than what it takes to move from stone-still to action - openness (and maybe a small measure of that little bird's cheekiness).

So what if one isn't built for creating epics - one can always come up with an haiku or two. If there's only a small gap in a busy day (perhaps otherwise filled with nappy changing, runs to school and the market and the like) there's still opportunity enough to look around and notice things - to see life in one's own way - get under the fence and be inspired.

And if all else fails, take a look at what has been created so far.

In honour of Mercury's retrograde phase, I'm doing a review of my work - including some of my favourite bird drawings.

there goes my angel... ds '08

waiting for moonrise ds '08

unfinished business ds '08

balsamic sparrow ds '08

heron now ds '08

happy new year...and a new era

2009-01-07T18:20:00.003+10:30

"...Yet since the process of individualisation has reached a stage at which it has become a public issue, and the attainment of a state of consciousness, free and autonomous individuality is presented in one form or another all over the globe as the ideal goal of human evolution, the trans-Saturnine planets play a critical role even at the sociocultural level..." (Dane Rudhyar, The Astrology of Transformation)

and for a new moon in sagittarius (that almost slipped my mind)

2008-11-28T06:38:00.004+10:30

"Attention to the qualities of things resurrects the old idea of notitia as a primary activity of the soul. Notitia refers to that capacity to form true notions of things from attentive noticing. It is the noticing on which knowledge depends..."

(James Hillman, Anima Mundi)

bibliomancy for the end of an era...

2008-11-26T11:52:00.005+10:30

'magician' d sinclair '08

"...'the death we speak of in our culture is a fantasy of the ego,' and from that perspective we lose touch with subtlety. 'For us, pollution and decomposition and cancer have become physical only.' He notes that in the great art of other cultures there is a different kind of sensibility with respect to dying, one that has faded from our attention and become part of the modern unconscious and of the psychic underworld..."

(Stanton Marlon, The Black Sun: The Alchemy and Art of Darkness, 77)

...and for a patch of blue in an otherwise cloudy sky

2008-11-19T11:16:00.005+10:30

"Let the sun come.  I shall have to take nights more slowly.  For now its enough to find a tiny pattern, faithfully every day, that begins to spell my name..." 

(Jeanette Winterson in Gut Symmetries)

bibliomancy for a full moon in taurus

2008-11-13T20:35:00.003+10:30

     "So you make Reason and Justice and Wisdom?"
     The Serpent laughed.  "Reason and Justice and Wisdom are not things one makes.  They are qualities that make life better.  I do my best to further those qualities in the world."
     "Tell me again what they mean.  I remember Reason, it's using your mind to figure things out."
     "The use of the intellect - the mind - rather than the emotions."
     "Justice?"
     "Justice is what is fair and right."
     "And Wisdom?"
     "Wisdom is made up of knowledge, judgement, and insight.  Knowledge is what you know, judgement is how you make decision; insight is being able to feel and understand a situation intuitively, going beyond the facts.  When the three are combined, you have wisdom." 

(Elsie V Aidinoff, The Garden)

maybe its Uranus opposite Saturn...

2008-11-05T10:38:00.011+10:30

...but I just don't feel like writing or drawing.  I don' t feel like washing dishes or sweeping the kitchen either.  All of these things usually make me feel productive and good.  I just want to goof off.   Go walkabout.

I don't even have the energy for a full-length sentence.

Take yesterday - the kid and I wandered around Ikea looking for things we might need (even though I don't particularly like that flimsy flat-packed-impossible-to-assemble stuff), ate a dissatisfying cafeteria meal, and went home with a $6 pack of candles, vanilla scented .  Then, while she napped I read - or I should say 'sucked down' - a Nora Roberts paperback instead of writing the brilliant article that's been banging around inside my head.

Days like these, I just love Nora Robert's novels.   They're chocolate for my mind.  Don't tell anyone.  Seriously, the woman  is brilliant and by my reckoning as rich as Zeus, or at the very least JK Rowling.  I'm tempted to google her and find out just how many thousands of books she's published, but that might be too much effort right now.  I've read maybe two dozen of them, just for research purposes you understand, and they're all the same but still manage to draw the reader in and deliver that delicious thrill all the way through.

You gotta admire a writer who can do that. Even if she never wins the literary prizes she gets the Prada prize.  I know which I'd rather have.

Anyway, I'm a little restless and at the same time completely happy to do nothing else but anything that makes me feel good.

I encourage you to do the same.

bibliomancy for a new moon in scorpio...

2008-10-29T11:04:00.002+10:30

Many time man lives and dies
Between his two eternities,
That of race and that of soul,
And ancient Ireland knew it all.
Whether man die in his bed
Or the rifle knocks him dead,
A brief parting from those dear
Is the worst man has to fear.
Though grave-diggers' toil is long,
Sharp their spades their muscles strong.
They but thrust their buried men
Back in the human mind again.

WB YEATS

mercury-uranus and so long for a while...

2008-09-30T15:51:00.002+09:30

Just letting you all know that this site will be unattended for a while, due to unforseen circumstances - I'll be busy moving house among other things... if the site goes down, check again later, I promise I'll be back!

and for a new moon in libra...

2008-09-28T11:54:00.001+09:30

"The existentialist emphasis on commitment which many psycho-analysts credit with broadening the scope and shifting the emphasis of their work suffers many of the same defects, thought they are expressed differently. For both Sartre and the early Heidegger (Being and Time), the unbridgeable distance between self and others gives interpersonal commitment an arbitrary and self-centered quality. I am committed because I choose to be, not because the other, who is just a mirror that narcissisticly reflects my existence back to me, in any way solicits that commitment. It is I, my choosing, which lends meaning and value to the commitment and I who benefits by thus exercising my freedom...Equally, commitment understood in quantum terms...is not something directed towards others, nor projected upon others, but and act of fidelity bound up with others as a fundamental part of the self's own definition, a fundamental part of its very nature as a system always engaged in creative relationship..."

(Danah Zohar, The Quantum Self)

bibliomancy for mercury retrograde in the domain of venus...

2008-09-26T16:14:00.002+09:30

"..as she has observed, boys remain boys, boyishness usually resilient into old age. Yet these two and their heirs will not be able to stop themselves filling the world with images of her. From a safe distance, with sweet longing, they will daydream away. In their churches, they will lodge statues of her idealised form, backed by stained-glass windows glistening with Madonna blue, alongside altars in sentimental fidelity to the heart of the human world. Then there will often be some wall - in home of office or gallery - on which hangs a crudely painted or photographed image of a particular woman as instance of her and it will be her eyes, always her eyes, looking out through the blurred and distant face. "

(John Carroll, The Western Dreaming)

and the wheel turns again...

2008-09-22T10:37:00.005+09:30

A long anxious face is not the thing now.
Forget your cares and enjoy what life offers you.
A workman's capable hands
clear away the dust that hides a precious jade.

Kuan Yin Oracle, 16: A Happy Face
(Karcher)

bibliomancy for a full moon with uranus...

2008-09-14T17:52:00.002+09:30

young whales ds 'o8

"At this point in the work the ego and the unconscious have both dramatically changed. The ego and the principle of consciousness it represents have gotten closer to the inner world of instinct and freedom....at the same time, the unconscious has moved closer to the world of consciousness by casting off its chaos and confusion and by allowing a certain level of harmony and order to affect it...its wildness and ferocity are now ordered by its relationship with the ego; the two are cooperating and entering into new depths of relationship..."

(Jeffrey Raff, Jung and the Alchemical Imagination, p 111)

bibliomancy for mars and venus together in libra

2008-09-11T11:03:00.007+09:30

"...Tristan is called to sacrifice. He thinks he is asked to sacrifice both anima and woman; but he is not. He is called only to sacrifice a way of approaching anima and a way of approaching woman. He is called to give up his precious claim to the right to live his soul by projection. He is called to give up his demand that woman bear his unconscious for him. If he could make that sacrifice, and make it cleanly, he would discover that what he thinks he has lost will be returned to him: his soul will be returned to him..."

(Robert A. Johnson, The Psychology of Romantic Love)

bibliomancy for pluto and jupiter direct

2008-09-04T14:53:00.004+09:30

ds '08

"you must go into the dark in order to bring forth your light"

- Debbie Ford, the Dark Side of the Light Chasers

(apologies, I'm on a sort of 'hiatus' - or rather I'm seeing how far I can go into 'not doing' before the forward motion begins again)

memories...

2008-08-30T12:36:00.005+09:30

'heron now' ds '08

"Perhaps this intimacy between calling and fate is why we avoid the daemon and the theory that upholds its importance. We mostly invent, and prefer, theories that tie us tightly to parental powers, encumber us with sociological conditioning and genetic determinants; thereby we escape the fact that these deep influences on our fates don't hold a candle to the power of death...." (James Hillman, The Soul's Code)

(*archetypal psychologists hold that memories are fictions, flights of fantasy...)

for venus and mercury square pluto...

2008-08-29T09:21:00.003+09:30

'art class' ds 'o6

"my workshop participants, too, were in touch with their intution - but they assumed that intuition meant clear direction rather than intuitive guidance.  They hoped one good intuitive 'hit' would give them the power to reorder their lives in complete harmony and happiness.  But intuitive guidance does not mean following a voice to the Promised Land.  It means having the self esteem to recognise that the discomfort or confusion that person feels is actually directing him to take charge of his life and make choices that will break him out of stagnation or misery." 

(Carolyn Myss, Anatomy of the Spirit)

dark moon..or ..Saturn in Virgo?

2008-08-26T11:09:00.005+09:30

'other half of eden' ds'o8

"The humanly impossible, rapid change out of dark motherhood into bright virginity is discernible against the cosmic background. The inner tension and opposition between motherhood and a maidenhood that is dedicated to the father and signifies a prohibition against all other men is a human reality. If we have understood the peculiar birth of Pallas Athene through the epiphany of the new moon, we must not forget the bondedness of a real father's daughter to her progenitor, to the dominant spirit of the father."

(Karl Kerenyi, Athene)

routine...

2008-08-23T13:32:00.004+09:30

'a little privacy, please' ds 'o8

"They look at me in a way that says, "My, what an intriguing question, but don't come any closer."

When they offer responses, the first chorus invariably includes descriptions of power as the ability to maintain control over one's environment, or as a vehicle for getting things done. The second chorus describes power as the internal strength to control oneself."

(Carolyn Myss, Anatomy of the Spirit)

and for the sun in virgo

2008-08-22T12:17:00.004+09:30

'half of eden' ds 'o8

"While Mary the mother is swamped by the tragedy, this Magdelene stands up and turns towards the world. Her story is of the gaining of inviolable presence through traumatic initiation. She flings her right hand outwards. There may be anguish shading into horror in her face but she is rising through it. Her work will be in the world and for the world, where she will both command and nurture."

(John Carroll, The Western Dreaming, p 61)

bibliomancy for mars in libra

2008-08-19T18:01:00.002+09:30

'waiting for moonrise' ds '08

"This is a story about being at home on the earth. To abide requires an abode - where one fits. Vocation is right dwelling, a way of possessing the here and now as a place in which I abide. It has taken over in a modern West in which other homelands, the more traditional ones, have been left to run down, or abandoned - the tribe, community, town and suburb, church, and even family. Ever present, in the near vicinity of I am, it is that trustworthy intimate who is also portable, like a favourite light coat. Snug in that homely coat, the I am may speak through the act of doing the work, speak the grace note. Vocation informs being."

(John Carroll, The Western Dreaming)

everything I need...

2008-08-15T21:19:00.011+09:30

Need is such a problematic word, isn't it?

Need, want and desire - these three are tricky things, often involving 'being clear', writing lists, sorting through, taking action and letting go. There's a culture springing up around these terms, including a psychological and spiritual 'correctness' meaning that they must be clearly distinguished from other human-invented qualities (such as desperation). Or so it may seem.

There was once a man in my life who'd occasionally say to me 'you're a bit needy, Dan' - completely baffling me as I lived what I believed to be a self-contained existence, independent in so many ways. He'd then go weeks without calling or answering my calls just to prove how needy I was. As it turned out all he proved was how much I didn't need him. (a Scorpio, what more should I say?)

From time to time, on this blog, I state that I 'have everything I need', meaning that in every situation Life has shown me that there really is no need to worry about there Not Being Enough. Of anything. If I need it, I have it - or will have it soon. If I have it, then I need it - until I Don't Need it Anymore. It works like that, as simple as that, every time.

But, like the guy who decided for us both that my needs are a bad thing, occasionally something 'negative' does show up in my experience. My faith in my Theory of Needs is then tested. I have to question, after an initial struggle with emotion (aka a bit of a sook), why would I need what I don't think I want?

The whole question has been on my mind lately as I've been going through some turbulence, and the only answer I have is this;

Any external circumstance that triggers an unexpected internal reaction (i.e. so called 'negative' emotion) is an opportunity to see something else about myself.

Under these circumstances, other questions arise; how much of a fight is going on with reality? That's a battle that can't ever be won. Does there have to be an underlying reason or spiritual lesson for what is? (how exhausting!) And if I'm Creating My Own Reality, why on Earth would I sign up for Trouble?

Acceptance seems to be the key that opens all doors - and locks those that are better closed against what is no longer serving a purpose from entering in again.

More and more I see there's a part of each of us that knows what's best, whether we think we want or need it or not. Some call that part God, others call it The Universe, the Higher Self, Spirit or Soul. Whatever we call it, Its got it all covered, so best step aside and pay attention (or risk having to go through it all over again).

And, as I keep reminding myself, if I have everything I need, then I need all the emotions and experiences that I have, so its all alright. OK?

That's got to be all I need to know right now.

detached...

2008-08-13T18:42:00.005+09:30

'there goes my angel...' ds '08

"..the office of conversation is to give me self-possession. I lie torpid as a clod. Then comes by a safe and gentle spirit who spreads out in order before me his own life and aims, not as experience, but as the good and desirable. Straightaway I feel the presence of a new and yet old, a genial, a native element... I regain, one by one, my faculties, my organs; life returns to a finger, a hand, a foot. A new nimbleness - almost wings - unfold at my side..."

(Ralph Waldo Emerson)

bibliomancy for venus with saturn

2008-08-12T16:21:00.006+09:30

"...earlier we considered the demonic feminine who must be appeased, as in the appearance of the rabid dog in the 'Font of the Knight of Treviso." Here, in this part of the alchemical text, we see her other face, the redemption bringer. Redemption comes experientially, when human and divine essences of being open to one another, and the cosmic heart of being penetrates between the mortal and divine spheres, and peace arrives..."

(Monica Wikman, Pregnant Darkness, Alchemy and the Rebirth of Consciousness, p 143)

but wait - there's more.... mercury enters virgo and a free set of steak knives...

2008-08-10T07:47:00.005+09:30

'danae and angels' ds '06

"Greek myth has it that the goddess Demeter personally showed the people of Eleusis 'the conduct of her rites and taught them all her mysteries..- awful mysteries which no one may in any way transgress or pry into or utter, for deep awe of the gods checks the voice...we might say, then, that in many traditions the injunction to silence is the speech act by which a particular narrative is made sacred. The rule of silence separates or cuts these stories off from all other stories and makes them special, holy, sacred..."

(Lewis Hyde, Trickster Makes This World)

Just kidding about the steak knives...

and not forgetting a generation of pluto in virgo....

2008-08-07T14:43:00.006+09:30

'unfinished business' ds '08

"...since modern roses of sin and sorrow tend to go beyond those of the past in extremities of anguish, the number and force of our roses maintaining affirmative roots become significant as a measure of our still surviving hope. It is surely a healthy sign that even in the troubled present the rose has continued to be far more often linked with attempts to resolve man's problems than with the deceptiveness of such attempts..."

(Barbara Seward, The Symbolic Rose)

This morning, while trying to figure out where this (almost) petrifying fearsome feeling I have is coming from, two things occured to me. First, that with planets moving through Virgo, including new entrant Venus, that these are touching an area of my own chart that's particularly potent; and second, that there's a whole generation of us with Pluto (and Uranus) in Virgo who are likely to be feeling it, to varying degrees, too.

Mars goes by this region of the cosmos regularly - about every two years; likewise Venus transits Virgo every year, so a lot of what we're experiencing now is familiar. However (and wherever) Virgo energy manifests itself in our lives, we're getting a fresh wave of Mars and Venus vibes and more opportunities to do as we Will, love as we can and continue soul-making as we do. Pluto, Lord of the Underworld, will have us come-what-may. Mars as the archetype which carries forth our desires, plus Venus's wont toward beauty and transformation - well, these are the easier energies to work with when it comes to Pluto's compulsion toward destruction-regeneration and digging through our depths for hidden treasure. The process can bring out parts of ourselves we didn't know we had and polish them up so that they're a pleasure to notice.

Born with Pluto in Virgo, Saturn's (once in 28 years) transit feels at once like a double dose of fear, death and pain. The darkest depths of Soul stretching to the outer limit of Ego. Mythical outcast Titan, King, Terrible Father (eater of offspring) - Lord of time, Dweller of the Threshold - the Grim Reaper - meets The Guy in Charge of Hell (where all things squalid and sordid dwell), in the constellation that represents service and honourable servitude and all things wholesome. It calls to us to a new awareness of how much our unconscious - both personal and collective - (Pluto) controls our lives and how our ideas about need (Saturn) do likewise.

I'm looking to Virgo's ruling planet, Mercury (who in this guise I like to think of as a girl, as the glyph for the constellation suggests) who has a part to play here - as psychopomp or guide of souls. In this capacity Mercury keeps our minds on our work, on the journey - vigilant against hungry ghosts that may pull us into a downward spiral towards despair - and points us toward the signs and the way out if we get carried away during this time.

Stay well, stay the path - and see you on the other side!

bibliomancy for Neptune's oppositions

2008-08-07T09:45:00.010+09:30

changing gaze d sinclair '06

"This is the Alchemy that is the Sister of Prophecy, a Prophecy that is rupture, iconoclasm, and a call to waken from the sleep of the dead and hear the voice of the Verdant One, the Green Man who is the Incarnate One and the Angel of the Earth. The prayer of the fourth century North African Bishop Serapion can stand as the great cry of the human heart: "We beg you Lord, make us truly alive!""

(Tom Cheetam, The Unrefused Feast)

and for mars opposite uranus...

2008-08-07T09:41:00.003+09:30

'naked man dancing' d sinclair '06

"Overtly sexual relationships are often being driven by something deeper, more fundamental. This has to do with the need to be held together as a cohesive personality, so that we do not easily fall apart with unbearable anxiety or depression, so that we can maintain reasonable self esteem, and so that we can withstand the usual fluctuations of life's successes and failures with reasonable equanimity, without excessive inflation or despair. I believe that the elusive bonding agent which is required here is what the alchemists referred to as the glutinum mundi."

(Lionel Corbett, The Alchemical Glutinum Mundi, in Fire in the Stone: The Alchemy of Desire, p 127)

bibliomancy for mercury conjunct sun in leo

2008-07-29T14:25:00.005+09:30

'say it again, angel' d sinclair '07

"A soulful life is one of thoughtfulness, care, and engagement - you are present in everything you do, not just going through the motions. You give attention to the things that matter most. You take care of your body and your health. You make your home a place of comfort, welcome, and beauty. You educate yourself throughout your life in values and solid ideas. Your leisure time relaxes you, gives you a rich social life, and provides fun and play. Your spirituality is deep as well as visionary, and you incorporate contemplation, discussion, ritual, and prayer into everyday life, and you do all this in a style that suits you as an individual."

(Thomas Moore, A Life at Work, p103)

and for the coming solar eclipse...

2008-07-26T18:00:00.003+09:30

'swallow and don't stop' d sinclair '08

"To paraphrase an old saw, the wound becomes the window to the soul. Without the affects, our unconsciousness would continue and we would be deprived of the opportunity to grow, to live more fully, more authentically, more responsibility.

For this reason, shame and dread, although experienced as painful psychological chaos, are, if worked through, opportunities to establish order by integrating into consciousness elements of our lives which were both unconscious and critically important...."

(Sandra Edelman; Turning the Gorgon, a Meditation on Shame)

bibliomancy for the sun in leo

2008-07-22T15:24:00.005+09:30

self, again. d sinclair '06

"How are we to take these references to the gods of Greece or Rome? Or, how are we to interpret his quaint and occasionally downright insane remedies? He advices a person lacking in the spirit of Jupiter, for example, to add peppermint to his diet. Is this legend, folklore, precocious pharmacology, or pure metaphor?"

(Thomas Moore; The Planets Within, on Marcilio Ficino)

"... Soul - psyche - and psychology, these are not merely personal things; they're about the whole world.." (me, from my paper journal)

bibliomancy for a capricorn-cancer full moon

2008-07-18T11:19:00.007+09:30

d sinclair '06

"In the Florentine view the human body was a manifestation of the soul. It was possible to entertain a soulless notion of the body, but that was considered an aberration. Such a body was unnaturally split off from the soul. We might call it schizoid - lifeless, meaningless and without poetics. But an ensouled body takes its life from the world's body, as Ficino said, "the world lives and breathes, and we can draw its spirit into us" What we do to the world's body, we do to our own. We are not masters of this world, we participate in its life." (Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul, p 172)

..and for a peregrine bibliomancer...

2008-07-17T11:54:00.016+09:30

self portrait d sinclair '07

"The first contact brings the sudden awareness that all is not 'right' but it is often difficult to discern which part of oneself or one's environment is inappropriate to the future.  One begins to cast about, looking outside oneself for the cause of anxiety or turbulence"

(Erin Sullivan, Retrograde Planets, Traversing the Inner Landscape - Chapter 21, Transiting Uranus Retrograde, p367)

The word 'Peregrine' comes from the Latin for 'alien' or 'foreigner' (pereger = beyond the borders, ager = land, i.e., 'beyond one's own land'). In old English, to peregrinate means to wander far from home. In traditional and medieval astrology the term refers to a planet which has no 'level of rulership' or power in its current cosmic position - its a drifter, an immigrant and just passing through, buddy.

There are a few planets doing not much in particular at the moment, or so it feels to me - but perhaps its only that here in my house we're all home from school; mooching around wrapped in blankets, passing each other tissues and hot tea as we nurse runny noses and coughs; pottering between one creative project and the next; reading the same page over and over; generally not getting a whole lot done. The phone is off the hook, we're hunkered down, as they say in the movies (and probably in real life somewhere out there). At the same time is a feeling that we'll be leaving here soon, but as yet we have no place to aim for. I await the guidance of the Gods.

Jupiter, Uranus, Pluto, Chiron and Neptune - these boys are all in cosmic drift mode, otherwise known as 'retrograde'. Not actually going backwards, as the word suggests, but appearing to do so as the heavens continue to reel around them. Someone recently described this as akin to being driven along on one of those childhood road trips, lying down on the backseat and watching the trucks overtake - marvelling at how this really feels like travelling in reverse. Yeah, like that, remember?

While lying there on the backseat, watching the world go past, you might start to wonder about where you've been, which direction you're going in; you might question the nature of time and direction and you might imagine a whole lot of stuff. The inner world - soul - takes over. Those telegraph poles you can see out of the window become markers - proof that you are indeed still going somewhere. You can fly between them, leap from one to the next. Until your little sister decides to stick straws in your nostrils, and Mum in the front seat tells you to keep your feet inside the vehicle or for goodness' sake a passing truck will take them off.

Sorry, I got carried away there for a moment.

(See? I'm a wanderer in my own inner landscape right now, and in need of outer guidance - but my body is telling me to be still a while, let life get out of focus. Who am I to argue with the soul's wisdom?)

Bleuch, I'm going back to bed...

bibliomancy for venus in leo

2008-07-13T08:46:00.002+09:30

'paradise chick' d sinclair '08

"We possess Beauty when we are true to our own being; ugliness is in going over to another order...Let the soul fall in with the Ugly and at once it shrinks within itself, denies the thing, turns away from it, out of tune, resenting it." (Plotinus: V.8.13)

bibliomancy for mars conjunct saturn in virgo

2008-07-10T14:25:00.003+09:30

'weighting' d sinclair '06

"...'I'm not worth it', that lie lives in your mind because you believe it. You don't believe people who tell you how great you are, and you don't believe them because you believe the opposite. Your faith is already invested in a belief that is not the truth; its a lie, but your faith guides your actions... "

- Don Miguel Ruiz; The Voice of Knowledge, p 97

dream readings, personal bibliomancy

2008-07-04T09:22:00.020+09:30

'magician' d sinclair 'o8

Got a dream that just doesn't make sense?  Maybe you get the feeling that its important, but understanding eludes you?

Has a seemingly random event occured in your daily life that's too poignant to ignore - perhaps a series of recurring symbols keep appearing - yet for some reason you can't figure out what it all could mean?

Do you have a burning question about the future?

I'm now offering dream readings, 'cledon' reading and bibliomancy in the privacy of your email inbox.  Send your dream or query to me (danae AT danaesinclair DOT com.au) - in whatever depth you feel necessary - use the paypal button below to send your donation to receive your personal (not generated by a computer program!) reading within 24 hours.

bibliomancy for a new moon in cancer

2008-07-03T11:51:00.004+09:30

inner trinity d sinclair 'o8

"The Orphan archetype teaches the inner child to survive difficulty. The Wanderer differentiates the adolescent from parents and others and promotes the sense of adventure we need to face the unknown. The Warrior activates the inner father so he can protect and provide for us. The Altruist supports the inner mother so she can nurture and comfort us."

- Carol S Pearson: The Hero Within, Six Archetypes We Live By, p 220

bibliomancy for mars in virgo

2008-07-01T15:01:00.015+09:30

'jester' d sinclair '08

""Beauty and the Beast" suggests that we can transform not only ourselves but others by loving them just as they are - "naming" them as lovable, even with all their imperfections. "The Frog Prince," though is a different story. The frog takes advantage of the the princess; she is emotionally younger and not so wise as Beauty, not so able to love the frog as a frog."

- Carol S Pearson, PHD; The Hero Within, Six Archetypes We Live By, p201

Mars, planet and archetype of masculinity in its prime, of yang, initiating, outward-moving energy; our inner warrior, charioteer and all-round action figure - is changing sign again. Out of Leo, where the sun shines so bright its a wonder our guy doesn't fry inside that armour and into cooler, cleaner, analytical Virgo. Yes, what a relief.

A pause to re-group and have a good think about where things are at.

For we women folks, the men around us may begin to be a lot less hot-headed and perhaps cool off in other regions as well. I've heard a lot of stories lately about how the fellas are acting out like big Drama Kings, and in some good ways too. Leo rules romance, after all, and who doesn't like splashy, dramatic displays of emotion and affection?

Well, we'll see. I for one didn't experience much of the above anyway - Mars, for me, is creative energy which is best put to use on my various projects, one of which is this blog. Tapping into my inner warrior means going after what I want, not necessarily with a sword in my hand but with intent to succeed. Lately I've been so fired up about certain things that - no surprise - fire alarms keep going off in my presence. (this morning I burnt my favourite pan - a gorgeous red soup pot that I left on the stove top over long and is now ruined). Ideally, I'd like to tone it down by degrees and settle into 'active receptivity' mode. Let things fall into place of their own accord. Work more efficiently, with less energy expended.

As for the blokes - or should that be Beasts? - there may well be shift to cerebral emphasis in relations with them. Virgo is ruled by Mercury, and Mercury represents the mind. Then again, if it involves Mercury we're talking about that Trickster God so it may be wise to keep a sharp eye out for, well, tricks. It might also be helpful to be in tune with the healthier aspects of Virgo - good, positive self-care - the grounding kind. Hold fast to integrity, and be less easily influenced by flash, flowers and sleight of hand.

And don't, what ever you do, kiss the frog.

bibliomancy for uranus stationary retrograde...

2008-06-28T08:51:00.015+09:30

"We must love each other or die"  WH Auden

As above, so below; as within, so without.  Sometimes, though, its hard to tell which is the driving force of change - as if there's some logic to the old Chinese belief that fate is divided into three parts, only one of which is in the control of the individual.  It could be true, especially if you believe it (which I don't).

Uranus, out there in the cosmos past Saturn,  is said to embody the archetype of change; of innovation, aliveness and synchronicity. One astrologer says this planet brings 'mishaps and miracles'.  Its more than a Trickster, though,  which brings minor mishaps and challenges to the flow of our daily lives and creates the kind of connections which make us laugh in spite of ourselves.  Wherever Uranus touches our lives we find ourselves confronted by the truly unconventional - things get turned on their side.  Like the discovery of the planet beyond our known solar system that coincided with the rise in technology; the 'industrial revolution' that moved humans en masse like nothing else.  Nothing has been the same since.  Life just keeps getting faster, smaller, stranger.

There's an argument that Uranus should be called Prometheus - the one who stole the fire of the gods.  I'm sure Uranus has something in store for all those who say 'should' about anything.  Some call this planet The Awakener - the electric boogooloo of the divine world, the one who'll shake us up, inspire remarkable creations and  open our minds to previously unimagined things.   He is the Great Science Fiction Writer in the Sky - except that the fiction is becoming reality.

As an outer planet Uranus moves slowly, unseen (to a naked eye looking out from here on earth) and is more about the collective personality than any individual psyche.   Or rather, Uranus breaks through our personal ego-barriers to show us how our thinking is all wrong, that our individuality is just an illusion, that we aren't separate at all.  Uranus gives us the quantum dimension - a whole other perspective from which to view life the universe and everything.

So as Uranus slows down before entering its retrograde period we can expect some revelations -  this is a powerful change in direction - and some events that ask us to think differently.  More, to recognise that we are part of a collective; to observe how our thoughts and beliefs shape our part of that collective and ask ourselves if these are working towards something creative and good - and if not, then why.     

Because as the guy with the lightbulb has shown us, one person really can make a difference to the whole world.

bibliomancy for the solstice

2008-06-22T15:35:00.005+09:30

north star d sinclair '08

"Every person, in the course of his life, must build - starting with the natural territory of his own self - a work, an opus, into which something enters from all the elements of the earth. He makes his own soul throughout his earthly days; and at the same time he collaborates in another work, in another opus, which infinitely transcends, while at the same time it narrowly determines, the perspectives of his individual achievement; the completing of the world."

(Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Divine Milieu)

bibliomancy for mercury direct

2008-06-18T12:53:00.020+09:30

'groom' d sinclair '08

"After a long rain, we joyously watch the heavens clear.

The sun and moon grow slowly brighter.

The gloomy days are over, so be happy and joyous.

You will bound through the Dragon Door in one leap."

You have found the hidden treasure. Open the spirit world and enjoy its riches.

(The Kuan Yin Oracle, 100 Poems of the Goddess, Karcher: 20)

Sitting here sipping fennel tea, which is said to have 22 separate healing qualities as well as being sacred to our Trickster friend, its a relief to be almost to the end of Mercury's retrograde phase.

Oh OK, it hasn't been too bad. There was costly work to be done on the car - just like last time the god of travellers went AWOL - and two computers went down (I won't bother getting them fixed until we are well out of the danger zone). There was plenty of miscommunication, double-crossed wires, forgotten appointments, late arrivals and more than one person laughed with me about having missed a plane. Over all, though, it has been a good time to go back over some old ground. In one situation where I'd previously had difficulties with billing I discovered money owed to me (it has been delayed in its return, but it must surely be on its way!).

Mercury sure does love to move things around. Today I heard someone say that the planet itself is a big chunk of iron - that would make it the most powerful magnet I've ever heard of.

Yes, I feel the need to renew my sense of equilibrium, to get my polarities lined up.

It occurred to me last night after receiving a comment from a reader here that in spite of what others may expect me to project into the world - a stronger vision, a more realistic representation of my self, or what ever - that the swing between one way of being and another doesn't sit comfortably with me. What I'm saying is that I hope never to be one way or another but to be both.

There are situations in life that require a strong manner of speaking, but that doesn't mean that I am not also scared. Just because I accept the consequences of my past actions doesn't mean that I don't also feel wronged. I'm acutely aware that for every victim a bully is constellated, that heroes call foes into being - every archetypal pattern demands its counterpart be played out. I've found that the way through these mythical forces is simply to walk the path of non-resistance. Acknowledging the gods, if you like. Because they're alive and they will one way or another extract their dues.

Too much energy is wasted in denial - 'I'm not a victim' is something I've told myself over and over again. And so over and over again life has shown me that is exactly what I am. If you've been reading this blog for a while you know that there are things going on here that are challenging me, that sometimes I let these challenges send me plummeting. I go down alright, without fighting. I won't fight anymore.

Resistance just creates more of what isn't wanted.

So with that in mind, in these last moments of Mercury's 'time out', I reckon I'll just go with whatever is. If I'm down, I'll be resting; if I'm strong, I'm using it. And if someone wants to tell me I've failed, I'll listen - and accept that I can only do as I do.

Hm, and I'll have another cup of magical fennel tea. Want one?

he still calls me witch

2008-06-17T13:32:00.020+09:30

I've dreamt a lot about walking through shaky, wobbly high buildings, baby in my arms; or of giving birth in odd places – alone, in the bank, out on the street, the supermarket; on the floor in front of everyone. Private parts exposed, infant at risk. Other nights I’m heavily pregnant, struggling with bags of groceries while my nappy-clad daughter runs out onto the road or off into a crowd. I'm helpless, powerless and words are stuck in my throat.

Where’s our protector? I want to shout. There’s something very wrong here – I’m supposed to have help with this. Then I remember why he’s not with us. Time is all skewed, events are muddled – my daughters are at school, the new baby is a year old, life is better, we’re OK. We’ve adjusted.

Waking from these dreams the feeling of vulnerability is hard to shake, so I live with it.

Days move along efficiently; four girls off to school, house tidied, baby and I go through our routine. We go for walks, sit in our favorite café while I write and she charms the regulars. She falls asleep to the sound of the coffee machine and I let myself drift a little.

“You’re so calm!” People say to me, stopping by.

“How do you do it?” they ask

“Its not fair” some complain, impressed by a cool demeanor, smooth hair and slim hips – as if I should be harried, overweight and upset that I have five children and no husband.

‘A defense mechanism’ is my carefully prepared response; ‘If I’m upset, baby’s upset, and I wouldn’t be able to cope’.

A calm mum makes calm babies is how the cliché goes – and so it satisfies most.

As for the rest, I smile and move on rather than say what’s really on my mind – a rant about choices and fairness and staying home eating vegetables, not drinking, not eating out and walking and walking and walking to stay sane. I shake off the resentment I sense, breathe deeply. I hold my gaze steady - stand by my convictions and the direction I've taken my life in.

Women have been doing this since we first looked up at the moon, I tell myself. We’ve been raising children alone – men leave, they go off to do ‘man things’; once they were hunters and warriors and often they didn’t come back. We call these things by different names now, but the nature of the beast hasn’t changed, and why should it?

So we get on with it and look elsewhere for understanding. Well, we hope for understanding. I do.

I know I'm not alone, not really. There are an alarming – and growing - number of children in this developed country being raised without fathers, with part-time fathers, by mothers who are under-valued, over worked and - I suspect - enraged.

One in five children goes through every day looking to a mother who, based on the cultural norm of ‘ the nuclear family’, is doing the job of two people [i]. There’s fear for the future, for the hearts of these children who will grow into men and women, but mostly for mothers who, right now, are also told that raising children isn’t enough, and they must do more. Be more. Be productive and legitimate members of the economic nation, within bounds.

Even women with partners, with legitimizing positions within community, careers, media profiles, and money – who do all of it willingly and joyfully - continue to do the lion’s share of parenting. It seems we had a feminist revolution but the boys, well, the boys are still taking the head off the Medusa and becoming heroes.

Heroes don’t change nappies do they?

And even though we are good brave patriarchal daughters we know that we face an issue that’s more than political – one that cuts to the deepest part of the collective psyche, to our very soul. It’s archetypal. It’s about a human relationship with the Anima Mundi – the essence of the world itself.

But its all too huge, too hard and scary and it feels like everyone else is satisfied with the way things are. Anyone who wants to change this Big Story is fighting against a powerful reality and losing. Its sensible to go with the flow, not to try and swim against the current.

Even so, there are the small things - taking care of what's in front of us, and that's what I do. I want let go of my fear and anger and my idea of the way things 'should be' and change my life bit by bit; strive to give others what I want for myself; become willing to see things differently; allow others to be right; to recognise the good stuff when I see it, when its in my hand.

If I can see that the problem of our relationship with the world - both the world as a concept and the planet Herself - and the worldview of mothers is tied up together, then I need to; it must be a calling. Writing it all down may be the answer to that calling, but mostly all I can do is nurture my own part of the world, my own piece of the Anima Mundi - my own soul, and those of my children.

Will it ever be enough? God only knows.

[i]
Over the last two decades, one-parent families increased substantially as a proportion of all families with children under 15 years. In 1986–1988, one-parent families accounted for 14% of such families on average. The proportion increased to an average of 20% in 1996–1998, reached 23% in 2002–2004 and then fell slightly to 22% in 2004–2006. (source; ABS, 4102.0 Australian Social Trends)

bibliomancy for venus opposite pluto...

2008-06-16T10:23:00.005+09:30

'talk is cheap' d sinclair '08

Honey Sweet Words
Beware of words sweet as honey that betray your love and care.
You once treated a thief like your own son.
You would be humiliated and endangered if you fall into that trap again.

(if you can free yourself from this web of sweet poisoned words, this can be a very fertile time)

(from the Kuan Yin Oracle, Karcher;
41)

and for a Neptunian weekend...

2008-06-14T09:43:00.025+09:30

"confirmation is always available, if you're looking for it"  (Paracelcus)

For some reason I feel as though I should be diarising like a voyager on a doomed mission - a kind of 'ship's log';  day 31, we're running out of food.  The work of keeping the engine running is keeping me from going insane but I'm so tired, even in my dreams I lie down and  sleep.  I don't know how much longer I can go on.  If anyone finds this please tell my children  I love them, that I tried....

Yeah OK, I'm overdramatising things a bit.  Everything's alright.   I look around me  now and  can see plenty to  feel  happy about.  The house is gorgeous and scrubbed clean; a minimalist paradise (all the clutter is boxed up in the garage, which looks anything but minimalist).   With the exertions - scrubbing, shifting around and boxing-up - I've toned up somewhat, so I'm feeling simplified physically too.  Not to mention the 'make over' cost not a cent, so my financial fitness is increasing, as well as having avoided that 'decorated all in one day' look that so many professionally styled homes have.  I've lived my axiom 'I have everything I need' to the highest this week, and proved my own resourcefulness.    Yep, its pretty good.

So what if the house is officially 'on the market'? In the meantime we live in it, we're here.

Psyche, of course, has something to say about it all.  In contrast to my dreams last weekend, which wanted me to wake up, snap out of it, check out of  denial; last night's nocturnal images had me lying down under a table where I'd been preparing a meal with the Rigger, unable to stay awake any longer.  'Morning sickness'; I'm pregnant and need to rest.  It occurs to me, in daylight, that its more like mourning sickness that points me to the floor, toward less emphasis on being on top of things.    Maybe take a time out...   I guess I'll dwell on it a while - things aren't always what they seem.

James Hillman writes that the soul makes intelligent statements to our conscious selves all the time.  We only have to pay attention to what's being shown and then resist the urge to substitute images for their literal counterparts.  What I've found, apart from that the resistance he suggests is easier said than done, is that if I allow it, the message of  a dream, image or event really will be understood.

I've written about this before, anyway, so this is revision.

I don't think I can rest yet - there's a lot to be done.   There are things that've been calling me - finishing up my series of articles on parenting with soul, for one.  I have more to say about soul mates, about dreams and cledons and divination in general, and I've a book to write.   Birds land on my back fence, asking to be part of it all - to be drawn into the scene.

The cosmic climate is strange and brilliant and more than ordinarily tricky, just the way I like it.   Expect the unexpected...and dream on...

bibliomancy for a long void of course moon (a post that went missing early in the week!)

2008-06-11T16:12:00.006+09:30

'naked babbler' d sinclair '08

"When you dream about something, it is always a match to the thoughts that you have been thinking. And so, since each of your dreams is, in fact, your creation, it is not possible for you to dream about anything that you have not created through your thoughts. The fact that it has now manifested in your dream state means that you have given it a significant amount of thought."

(Abraham Hicks, Ask And It Is Given)

Have you ever had a night where your dreams keep waking you up so you can check that you are in fact still here - where your dreams seem to be yelling at you for some reason?

I had one of those last night. I woke up twice, wondering why I was clutching a rose quartz crystal heart to my chest, and with a strong sense that I'm somehow sending the wrong message to the world. I don't know how the crystal got into my hand, but I do know that lately all the wrong words seem to come from my mouth as well as flying too fast from my mind onto the page.

There's nothing worse than wanting to communicate one thing, but actually saying something else entirely...

celebrating 5000 readers

2008-06-07T12:27:00.005+09:30

For the duration of the triple conjunction of the Sun, Venus and Mercury (that is, this weekend) I'm offering a dream analysis to any of my readers who has had a dream in the past week that needs a bit of clarifying.

All readings are private, free of charge, and remain the property of the dreamer.

Simply email me with a short, one paragraph summary of your dream, including the overall feel (that is, how the dream made you feel) of the scene, and I'll email you back my thoughts.

... and Thanks, to all of you who have continued to read each week, who've passed on the link to my blog, who've sent other reader's my way, who've contributed on the comments stream and to those of you who read and move on. I appreciate you all.

love, Dan

venus, the sun and mercury: a tipping point?

2008-06-07T08:37:00.015+09:30

I don't usually like to write about astrology in any kind of direct way - not just because I'm not an astrologer (although as part of alchemy studies astrology is covered pretty thoroughly) but also for the reason that I don't like to offer interpretations. Rather, I prefer to point people towards their own ideas of what's going on, symbolically, metaphorically, allegorically.

One of the axioms of alchemy goes something like (forgive me for not quoting the original Latin) 'the macrocosm and the microcosm are the same' or as some would have it 'as above, so below' (you could say 'on earth as it is in heaven'). Basically the cosmos, the planets, the archetypes, the whole universe; all the largest things are the same as the smallest things. Not simply reflections of each other, not copies. The same thing.

I'm not going to go into a complicated discussion of quantum mechanics here but will say that this ancient assertion of the alchemists is something that modern science supports.

OK, I could go way off course here - what I'm trying to get to is that astrology works at a very personal level, at the level of the microcosmic self - that the planets are moving in you and I too.

But looking outward into the sky, recognising that we are part of a living ball of matter and energy moving in an orderly fashion through space that there are other living, moving, balls of energy and matter existing in relation to us - this can give us some perspective on how we live our little lives.

During the most challenging times in life a refreshed perspective can really help. Its as though a part of us that we don't ordinarily tap into recognises the greater scheme of things - and seeing things differently changes things powerfully.

This morning one of my favourite astrologers sent out his weekly newsletter and reminded his readers of an pair of astrological events that rarely happen - the transits of Venus to the Sun. Venus tracks her way through the solar system in a very specific pattern in eight year cycles which form a greater cycle in relation to our Sun.

To the average follower of astrology most of all of this is going on in a way that is partly hypothetical (in that the actual position of the planets and the way western astrology presents their positions don't concur); mostly invisible (conjunctions aren't really about planets 'meeting' - they are occupying the same 'degrees' on a one-dimensional scale but are separated in space by everything else that is real) and possibly confusing. Its the often poetics of astrology, in the absence of understanding the physical energies of the planets, that give it its power.

Still, right now it transpires that not only are Venus and the Sun metaphorically conjoined, we're midway between the two greater and far more potent events - the first of which occurred on June 4, 2004 that some of you may recall. Venus was visible from here on Earth against the backdrop of the sun. The twin of this 'occultation' of the sun by Venus is expected in June 2012 and won't happen again for another one hundred and thirteen years or so.

I don't know what it means, and wouldn't dare speak for what other's may believe about this. But it does say something for itself and the perfection of the Universe, the synchronicity and beauty of life. It seems to demonstrate that even the unseen or unknowable will at some point be revealed - returned. There are some that say that this moment in time is a tipping point. Many stories are circulating about the archetype of transformation, the divine feminine, about women and the way we love. I don't know.

What I do know is that this is all happening in Gemini - the sign of the twins, ruled by Mercury (who is, of course, right there in the midst of it) and bringing to the whole picture the realm of ideas, the mind, thought and choice.

I think its worth looking outwards right now - with a renewed perspective, and with an open mind and heart. Something very special may be revealed to each of us.

We may see something that may not come around again for a while.

a new moon and a conjunction of the sun, venus and mercury in gemini

2008-06-06T09:44:00.021+09:30

'but something inside me says it's gonna be fine'
d sinclair '08

(no bibliomancy today, the current cosmic conditions will reveal all, without any help from me)

I was going to write about how the week's activities have shown me how strong I am, about how I've overcome many of my doubts, as a writer, as a woman and mother and as a person. I actually did write a long essay on how great it is to be finally writing my book, about being busy getting my home ready to be sold and getting the car fixed and finally cutting ties with the father of my child. I wrote that through it all I've been fine, I've been stoic and resolute and positive. That I've maintained my composure and calm and kept the faith.

It was all lies, so I deleted it.

The truth is that I'm not at all positive about the house being sold - the children and I believed this was our permanent home, that we'd make it our own. Today when the 'stylist' came to the house and told me that it needed 'such a lift' I felt as saggy and disappointed as I ever have. Apparently I have to change so much about the way it is I might as well just move out and let the experts come in and do the 'make over'. After she left I stood in the kitchen and cried.

It was like letting one of my ex husband's friends in to the house - he's an architect and the sort of people he prefers the company of are likely to critique everything they see. In an objective, arty and intellectual way, of course. Nothing personal. (believe me I just didn't need to be reminded of my ex husband, his friends or the house I left behind to gain this supposed freedom)

I know its silly to get upset, that it's just a service offered by the real estate agent in the interests of getting a better price on the house, and it really isn't personal. Its only personal to me.

A house is an extension of soul, in a way - which is how feng shui can have such an effect - it has an energy which is intimately connected with the energy of its inhabitants. We get a 'feel' for homes and they have 'vibes'. This house has been loved and cared for like everything else in my life - and its beautiful - so to have a stranger come in and tell me how much more work there is to do on it is a blow.

A lesson learned, I guess. Not to be too attached, not to get invested in an egoic idea of home and soul and the care of it.

The same goes for the rest of what's been going on around here. While on one level I've found I can rely on inner resources, there's a current of anger and fear and loneliness which has some power over me still. My chest hurts like a handful of me has been pulled out so I know I'm grieving.

I tend to try and distract myself and to deny what I'm feeling. I tell myself that my inner peace can't be destroyed by outer events, by other's words, or lack thereof or by anything short of an act of god. I want that to be true. On the other hand, I'm so darn tired of having to be brave and strong and manage all of it on my own, I can understand why people turn to religion. There are days when I just want to hand my whole life over to a higher power and relinquish all responsibility for it.

But there's still hope in the here and now, and I'm going to continue to work together with that higher power, taking responsibility for my Self, myself. I'll work with my heart to heal what's hurting, and with my soul to have a home, where ever that may be next. I still have choices.

Choices are worth a lot.

bibliomancy for chiron conjunct the north node of the moon

2008-06-02T11:45:00.006+09:30

"we're not together you know" d sinclair '08

"...In the years that I've known Tabra, which add up to a lot, my friend has been sick, disillusioned, poor, and with a thousand problems, but I have seen her despair only once: when her father died. She cried for months over that man she adored and for other losses in the past, and I could not console her. In the period of her financial travails her demeanor never changed. With humour and courage she prepared to travel from the beginning the road she'd traveled in her youth, convinced that if she had done it at twenty she could do it again at fifty..."

(Isabel Allende, The Sum of Our Days)

trickster's past

2008-05-30T10:43:00.006+09:30

from my paper journal:

January 15. Moon in Aries, Mercury sextile Venus (natal)

the car won't start
my phone tells me I have a connection failure - to check my settings.

life is never strange anymore.

Craig tells me I'm a brat - same as Edi and Alice (does that mean he 'loves me the best' too?)

I know I'm a brat - I love being a brat! I'll always be a BRAT!

why would I want to be anything other than what I am - exactly as I am?

I've been to the plastic surgeon to see about my plastic parts. He tells me I'm not as bad as I think. HA! I'm exactly as bad as I think.

I'm only ever what I think at one time or another.

I AM.

But I won't have to wait long now.

(and I may have turned into one of those people who sits in cafes staring at everyone strangely)

so, nothing.

more mercury retrograde...

2008-05-27T10:53:00.005+09:30

from my paper journal:

June 29, 2007

Who wants to know about me? Want to hear a story - a story about a woman sitting at her desk writing? Writing and wondering about that story - what to write - what's the true story?

The Alchemical Psychologist says that all stories, all histories, are fictions. By the time we recall events from memory they've changed from travelling all those dark corridors in the mind.

Even the brightest minds can trick things around.

What's more, our perception of events is always coloured by our ways of perceiving - our thoughts and beliefs.

Coloured!

My mother always told me I had my father's duck-shit eyes. Imagine that. I've gone through most of my life seeing things through duck-shit eyes.

These days I prefer to think I'm looking out at the world through amber-flecked green or at the very least murky-pond...

My point is; no matter what story - its a fiction. I'll tell you! It might be beautiful, it could be dark and twisted, but it won't be the truth.

bibliomancy for mercury retrograde

2008-05-27T09:37:00.002+09:30

"invitation" by Edith Chow Sinclair, aged 6

"Trust in Allah, but tie up your camel" (Arab saying)

bibliomancy for venus in gemini

2008-05-25T08:19:00.013+09:30

'she was such a dear old duck' d sinclair '08

"Not until the moon was high did the alchemist ride into view. He carried two dead hawks over his shoulder.

"I am here," the boy said.

"You shouldn't be here," the alchemist answered. "Or is it your Personal Legend that brings you here?"

"With the wars between the tribes, it's impossible to cross the desert. So I have come here."

(Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist)

Thanks to you all for your patience during my absence from blogging. It's been a challenging couple of weeks.

Sp ace clearing was a success - the garage is now organised after sorting through all the boxes of stuff left over from the move to this house just over a year ago. Likewise all cupboards and wardrobes are tidy and clutter free.

There's something very satisfying about giving away things that are no longer needed. Especially knowing that the items are still good and will be of use to someone else - a kind of random benevolence that has me wondering if I'll see that shirt on someone passing in the street some time.

I enjoy that someone somewhere has a need for those things and I play my part in it. Also, the simple act of giving away things of value but no further use seems to affirm just how abundant life really is.

We have so much. We're very lucky people.

Sorting through belongings showed me just how much of my money has gone into acquiring things I really believed I needed but didn't. And it had me questioning my methods of assigning value to material things. Truly an enriching experience - with unexpected results.

I was shocked when about four days into my 'clearing space for a miracle' I received the news that my baby's grand mother had passed away.

Pam had been fighting Cancer for three years and it had finally won.

It might not have been such a shock if I'd known that she was that close to leaving - I'd been spending time with her regularly so that she could enjoy her grand baby in her last days on Earth and had hoped that we'd have a few more visits before saying goodbye.

We'll miss her even though she drove me nuts with her swearing and grabbing my forearm each time she wanted to get a point across. She couldn't change a nappy for peanuts and she liked to feed my kids junk but she was a good sweet woman who loved people, and was loved in return. Seeing her one and only granddaughter grow up was important to her. I hope she's still watching, where ever she is now.

The funeral was a remarkable event - hundreds of people were bussed in from the country town where Pam and her husband have been living for the past twenty years. I've never seen anything like it. Everything was handled with style and humour and it was an honour to be there as part of the family.

The day before the funeral I received more news - my father is very ill and is in such dire straits financially that the family trust is now forced to sell the house that my children and I live in.

This phone call came on my way back from the local police station where I'd reported threats against me from a confused individual who I didn't know existed until six months ago - someone who imagines I've done something to come between her and the man she believed was her 'boyfriend' (the father of my baby).

I'm unsure as to why all of this has happened now - particularly as it's my intention to keep drama 'on the page' through writing and drawing. I live my life peacefully and soulfully, caring for my home, family and the small things I can do for the world. This is my Work.

All I can think of is that my Personal Legend (as Paulo Coelho calls it) is being challenged - and I'm called upon to draw on inner resources rather than become a victim to it all.

So I have.

Its strange but truly wonderful to find that I'm not afraid, that I'm not weak and that I can do this no matter how events beyond my control may seem daunting and overwhelming.

And if I can so can anyone. So can you.

...and for another full moon in scorpio

2008-05-17T14:19:00.006+09:30

"I have known true alchemists," the alchemist continued.
"They locked themselves in their laboratories, and tried to evolve, as gold had. And they found the Philosopher's Stone, because they understood that when something evolves everything around that thing evolves as well.
"Others stumbled upon the stone by accident. They already had the gift, and their souls were readier for such things than the souls of others. But they don't count. They're quite rare.
"And then there were others, who were only interested in gold. They never found the secret. They forgot that lead, copper, and iron have their own Personal Legends to fulfill. And anyone who interferes with the Personal Legend of another thing never will discover his own."

-Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

clearing space for a miracle

2008-05-12T18:54:00.004+09:30

'unreliable ducks'
d sinclair all rights reserved '08

My apologies, dear readers - I'm not posting today or for the rest of the week while I clear space in my home and my heart for something miraculous (I don't know what it is yet, but can feel it coming).

bibliomancy for mars in leo

2008-05-10T13:08:00.006+09:30

"...we need ethical behaviour, or social life becomes untenable. It does matter what we do, how we treat others; it is important to challenge corruption, to make a stand. It is not good enough to put it all down to fate and turn away. But at the same time, we have to understand the deep ground of oneness out of which we and others arise...." (Diana Durham, The Return of King Arthur, p 178)

five ways to parent with soul, part two

2008-05-04T09:06:00.021+09:30

A woman's heart grows larger and stronger during pregnancy. Biologically this is to circulate all the new blood her body has made to sustain the pregnancy and nourish the babe. Metaphorically, well, this should need no explanation.

I wonder about it from time to time though. What happens to my heart in the months after the baby is born? It grows smaller, obviously, and just when its needed the most. Other parts of me that I'd really like to shrink remain resolutely stretched, sagging and disappointed. Again, metaphors for motherhood that don't need interpretation as much as acceptance on my part as I strive to firm up and feel differently.

I've noticed how the body's message is either ignored or considered wrong. 'In symptom is soul' James Hillman teaches us, in the footsteps of Jung who said the gods are in our diseases (for want of a higher place in our lives). Our own physiology (and our pathologising) tells us about psyche - about where life settles upon us, our dis-ease with the world; our stories of who we are and how we change and grow.

We don't need to look further than the mirror or the diagnosis to see our souls. Do we though?

If we're sick we want to be healed and we go about this by fighting the sickness rather than by loving it or paying attention to what it may mean. We think of sickness and symptom as being from outside of ourselves; a foreign invader, an enemy. We have 'bouts' of illness; our hearts attack and we track the white and red armies in our blood.

Likewise if our healthy bodies are less than aesthetically perfect we might not be forgiving of those flaws. Then we diet, work out, burn fat, restrict and punish - tell ourselves no pain, no gain. We try to tweeze and wax and squeeze and scrub away our hairy, dry, clogged surfaces. So brutal. Its as if our flesh isn't our own, as if we are not in fact alive inside our skins, our cells, but trapped by them like POWs.

Some of us might give up without grace or grateful surrender to what is but with resentment, shame and loathing. We may hide ourselves under layers, behind smokescreens; stuffed down with milky, creamy sweet 'treats' telling ourselves and anyone who'll listen 'I wasn't like this until I had babies'.

Strangely enough its our children who most often want to speak up for our souls, our symptoms. My seven year old daughter is fond of rubbing my wounded belly like a magic lamp, murmuring 'beautiful soft Mama'.

What I want to say here in this second part of the series - after touching on surrendering to how things are and being still enough to allow our children to live according to their own natures - and I am really saying the same thing in different ways - is simply this:

3. Listen. Pay attention to what is being said and what you're being shown. What do your symptoms tell you? What are your children's symptoms saying? Take all those things you might otherwise consider wrong or sick and be willing to understand them in a new way. These things are your soul's language.

I'll be back with more on this.

bibliomancy for a new moon in taurus

2008-05-04T07:59:00.010+09:30

"..where do I wander? Down what draughty tunnels?  Where the eyeless wind blows? And there grows nothing for the eye.   No rose.  To issue where?  In some harvestless dim field where no evening lets fall her mantle; nor sun rises.  All's equal there.  Unblowing, ungrowing are the roses there."

(Virginia Woolf, Between the Acts, 1941)

five ways to parent with soul, part one

2008-04-30T07:50:00.023+09:30

There's a billboard outside the primary school I pass on my daily travels and for the past few weeks it has displayed this;

challenge for the day - find something good in your child

I don't know about you but the idea that its a challenge to find good in a child worries me. It reminds me of The One Minute Manager that I had to read when I worked for the Gap years ago. 'Find something good in your staff, and praise them for it', is how it went, along the lines of how to win friends and influence people and the like.

This billboard doesn't challenge anyone that far, so I guess its not about kid productivity levels or morale. But as I pass it, even in heavy traffic, it seems apparent that parents might need to see their kids - and parenting itself - differently.

So I'm offering some suggestions on how to parent with soul, that is, with acceptance of all its parts, good and bad.

1. Surrender. Yes, you read that right - give up the idea that you're in control and that everything will go according to your ideas of how it 'should'. Babies cry for no reason, toddlers poke things in the CD player and preschoolers swear in front of people you want to impress. Teenagers mumble. Some of them do none of these things. Children do as they do; that is the nature of the beast. Rules do not apply, so throw out the 'what to expect' book.

Boundaries, on the other hand, teach kids and parents how to be safe and to navigate life - and its up to us parents to see the difference between a reasonable boundary and a dumb veto that's making all concerned crazy. Telling a toddler 'no darling, daddy's watch doesn't belong in the bin' is crazy-making (ask my friend who lost a few watches); moving the bin, the watch and the kid out of range of each other is a reasonable boundary.

Or maybe the kid has a point?

The little darlings want to try out everything they see you do (perhaps - who knows for sure what their reasons are?) and have no idea of the value of a Rolex, until we drum it into them. But they do know the value of time together, just playing and making general mayhem.

So stop trying to fit the kid in around your life - for every one's sake - that's all over now. Better to concentrate on your own self control, and teach by example.

Rearrange your house, rearrange your life. Be prepared to at the very least. Trust me on this - by surrendering control, you gain peace.

2. Be still. Stop trying to 'fix' your kids, your parenting or your life. You can't make everything perfect for your kids, you can't make your kids perfect for your life, and you are the parent you are no more and no less.

Every heroic action creates a victim, every martyr creates an oppressor. I see so much solar parenting around me that its no wonder there's a greenhouse effect. Ah, OK, its a 'hothouse' effect - close enough - my point is that we could do a lot better by allowing our kids to have their own failures and teaching them to forgive themselves.

While we are at it we can allow our own parenting 'mistakes' (if there is such a thing - and here we can throw that damn book of expectations again) and let our children see that we are human,imperfect and lovable.

And, you know, your children are great the way they are anyway - complete with mumbling and 'bad' grades and black nail polish. Who says they should be any different? (aim that book at them, whoever they are!)

Last year my family grew, and we all had some growing pains. My fourteen year old daughter, eldest of five, started having conflict with teachers at school; her grades dropped and she seemed like the weight of the world was upon her, like nothing mattered, like she just 'didn't care'.

In this situation the only thing I could change was myself - my thinking. I knew I cared and could do with lightening up.

The school teachers started calling me and asking me how to 'get through to her' and then, later in the year, asking me to 'do something about her'.

"I have faith in her" I told them.
"I've delegated the task of sorting this out to her" I reassured them.
"I'm doing the best I can, and so is she. Please be patient." I tried, when that wasn't the result they expected.
"Stop relating to my kid like she's an animal that needs to be tamed!" I finally blurted. Actually I put that one in writing.

I do have complete faith in her, whether she improves her grades or not. She's not a performing monkey, she's a person. I've always maintained that there's no point in making kids miserable so that 'one day' they can 'make it' in the world. I want mine to be happy and true to themselves now, and because of this I love her even more when she is 'acting out'.

Anyway, she found her own way, with my full support, and she's fine. Only a few weeks ago her teachers called me to say how great it is to see the kid doing so well.

So what I'm getting at is that we are doing too much - we as parents have some kind of compulsion for taking action - just stop. Stop that right now! (I'm waggling a finger at you)

Stop doing. Let life unfold as it will and have faith that everything is how it must be, because it is.

(more soon)

at peace with the present

2008-04-26T15:52:00.029+09:30

Be warned, this is all about me.

Some of you who know me are aware that in a few days it'll be my birthday and that I've spent the past week or so in quiet contemplation of what this means.

I'm not really a party person but I do usually like to celebrate the turn of another wheel with some kind of ritual or another. This year, I suppose, will be no different - except that I've made no plans at all and, well, I don't plan to make any. Which, yes, is just silly.

Maybe I'll be spontaneous for once. I can be spontaneous. Really.

Well alright. I'm actually a little funkier than is reasonable about having a birthday - and I tell you its most definitely not because for the first time I realise I'm not a young woman anymore. No sir-ee.

I'm not looking in the mirror for wrinkles and sagging and greys (although they are there). Something has happened to me over the past twelve months or so and I no longer see myself in the same way. I see myself as a person who has something to offer the world, not someone who is waiting for the world to show her what's, well, on offer. I don't look for what others might see of me either.

I think its good to be older and wiser. I've never been more accepting of myself. I've passed the tidemark whereby I could get away with anything because I was somewhat cute and sexy. Now I'm now called on to have some substance - from within - to be something more.

And so why am I so blah about celebrating this year?

For one thing, true to my former, flakier self, I asked (and paid) an astrologer to look at my natal chart and do a forecast for the year. In the course of things this apparently required dredging through some murky past events that I'd rather leave in the murky depths. I've been down there and can honestly say I like it a whole lot better here where I am. (heavy sigh here)

So what if my whole history is still with me? I'm aware that I lived a lot of upheavals in my childhood, and that I will most likely always have a slight issue with being 'uprooted'. In defence of upheavals and up-rooted-ness, though, these once gave me the courage to travel alone to the other side of the world with nothing but a suitcase and the money in my pocket. (wow, what ever happened to that girl?) Many an adventure required that I transplant myself across borders and it never occurred to me that I couldn't.

I like that I have a so-called 'unstable' background. I do. I have no tribal conventions to tie me down and tell me how to live my life. My limitations and beliefs are my own. I fly my way, and love it. I'm free to make of myself what I will, and I do.

Well and truly gone are the days I tried to 'fit in' and let small minds tell me I need to improve myself and thus my fortune.

What am I being so grumpy about then? I am positively sulking. Not exactly grown up is it??

Hm. Could it be a wind of change I can feel? I think it is, and it has me spooked. No question about it I shouldn't have asked for that forecast either.

The distant past and the possible future - what have I done? Even if knowing what's in front of me helps me to steer my course or if understanding how I got to this point is reassuring, I can only deal with whatever's here and now.

And so this is where I am, staring out ahead of me, holding on to who I am, (with my big bad scary past and all those things I forgive myself for) shaking off a dream about change.

I still don't feel like going anywhere. But I trust that I'll be OK.

bibliomancy for venus-neptune

2008-04-25T07:55:00.006+09:30

"...Love is a kind of madness, Plato said, a divine madness. Today we talk about love as though it were primarily an aspect of relationship and also, to a great degree, as if it were something within our control. We're concerned about how to do it right, how to make it successful, how to overcome its problems and how to survive its failures.."

(Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul)

even birds have bad hair days

2008-04-23T08:47:00.002+09:30

and for a jupiter-mars-venus tangle

2008-04-22T16:03:00.006+09:30

"King Mark's refusal to marry is an ominous symbol. In myth or dream the king's failure to take a queen and produce an heir symbolises a refusal of wholeness, a refusal to grow, a refusal of the destiny that comes in the form of a new child."

(Robert A Johnson on the myth of Tristan and Iseult, The Psychology of Romantic Love)

the most important thing you need to learn about alchemy

2008-04-21T14:57:00.025+09:30

At the risk of really flying the freak flag high, I want to talk about alchemy.  Because I notice, with growing irritation, that the word gets bandied about a lot these days.  It seems to be a stand in for the once-cool but now over used descriptive term fusion.

Its not just the metaphysics crowd - I see it now in general fiction and even in commercial use.  There's a trend, too, of using 'alchemy' in the title of books that have nothing to do with the subject.  'Sexual Alchemy', 'the Alchemy of Policy Making', 'Editorial Alchemy' 'Garden Alchemy' etc.  (I'm rolling my eyes, if you can picture that)

And just lately there's been some discussion, in other parts of the blogoshpere, about alchemy  and the practice of 'turning crap into gold', to which I occasionally pipe up in defence of the Work and it not involving any actual fecal matter, that I've ever heard of.

Too literal, I say, excuse me but alchemy is all metaphor and allegory and mystery-with-a-capital-M.  No pooh, if you please.  

Oh I know they are not talking about real shit either - its the flippancy that bothers me (hence my flippant tone now).

There's a general idea circulating about Alchemy that it involves madly and magically transforming things into gold.  The archetypal Alchemist is an old man in a pointy hat, long white beard and dark robes, labouring to produce the impossible.  An image arcane and laughable at once.  Not quite a snake-oil merchant, but not far off.

Oh and the other idea is that alchemy is a long-dead science harking back to the reformation era origins of chemistry and other sciences.   Which, OK, is sort of true, but is still only a part of the picture.

Truth told, I only have part of the picture myself, and I've been studying alchemy for about four years now.  Its not a long time - men such as Isaac Newton and Carl Jung dedicated decades of their lives to it, so I am even lower than an apprentice.  

Having been drawn to alchemy on a quest for insight into my own restlessness and dissatisfaction as a  mother and woman in a world that often appears to appreciate neither -  I've worked my way through many books and classes and performed my nigredo in drawing and  other creative  works and my life as a whole.

Along the way I've had a lot of arguments with sixty-something Freemasons, become frustrated with asking questions to which answers never came (or which I missed entirely); laughed at  obscure, strange old texts (as I'm certain they were meant to be laughed at) written by Fraters with all-too-obvious Latin pseudonyms; puzzled over quantum mechanics and laws of the universe; and got my hands and face dirty grinding up antimony in the laboratory of two of the coolest people I've ever met, real alchemists.

I've learned meditation, astrology, qabala, sacred geometry, sacred languages - a plethora of sacred things.  I've learned and relearned the meaning of the word esoteric and to stop talking, stop listening and believing my own thoughts -  to stay still, and to contain myself.   I learned the true meaning of disipline.   

Most of all, though, I learned to embrace all things as being perfect according to their own nature.   

And that's only the beginning of Alchemy as I understand it.

Yeah, its frustrating to see it all so trivialised, and more so because - and this is it, the most important thing -  whatever anyone may think alchemy is they are right.

Bibliomancy for a scorpio full moon

2008-04-19T06:51:00.006+09:30

"It is frightening to see how many people seek help for human expressions of aliveness, such as grief reactions to loss, overt expressions of anger, feelings of jealousy or frustration or stress. And it is especially frightening because I know that many therapists would give medication or even hospitalize these healthy people when an intensive period of attention and being listened to would accomplish much more." - Deldon Anne McNeely (Mercury Rising p.101)

it's only money - the love is what matters...

2008-04-13T14:07:00.016+09:30

'Tenn'

Here's a letter sent to me today from a friend and reader - it really does add some truth to my previous post about living soulfully...

Dan...my kind neighbor and friend Todd gave me this pearl today after the following series of events:

1) found the stray hound dog I've been feeding and trying to coax into my car for the past month, on the side of the road, with a bad injury. Someone had run her over and not stopped to help her.
2) called Todd, as Jeff is away, and he carried the dog into my car and I drove her to the vet.
3) received a positive diagnosis and agreed to adopt the lovely girl after phone-conferencing with Jeff
4) payed $240 for the x-rays and exams on lovely dog
5) named her Clementine
6) vet discovered multiple spine fractures and suggested euthanising her
7) she died peacefully.

I am bereft for a dog I've known for 4 weeks - she was a beauty.

I wanted to share this with you for some reason - I think after reading your blog, I want to add something to it (dumb, 'cause it's YOUR blog!!).

Anyway, today, to me, living soulfully sometimes involves letting go of value. By this I mean that the value of money 'well spent' on a new thing, or 'wasted' on a stray dog, or comparing, adding up, finding opportunity costs, or putting a price on anything, is not soul-nourishing.

I found myself lamenting the loss of the $240 to the few people I told about my doomed dog-rescue, instead of saying how I really felt, which was sad and small and angry that a sweet young animal could be left for dead, especially after I'd tried for weeks to get her to my home. I was wrong to do that in an attempt to hide my sorrow.

Todd saw straight through my misdirected money rage and let me be as upset as I needed to be about the dog. After which I held his baby daughter Carly and wondered why I had to put a price on my feelings. Carly snuggled in and growled like a puppy when I put her down on her blanky and wandered back home to take my own sweet canine friend for a walk and a play at the park.

Tenn rests now on my bed, snorting softly in his sleep - and still manages to keep one eye on me as I write. What he's worth to my soul is impossible to add up.

Anyway, that was my day. Dogs and neighbors and friends and babies and good, kind people were all around me - and I don't care what my VISA statement says next month. It's only money.

bibliomancy for mercury sextile chiron

2008-04-11T08:35:00.005+09:30

"As long as you think you're white, I have to think I'm black" - James Baldwin

five ways to live soulfully

2008-04-10T09:56:00.019+09:30

Why are we always striving for improvement - to fix things about ourselves and our lives? Imagine what it would be like to fully accept the way things are with your self and your life, whatever your current state of affairs.

Here are five simple practices that are about soulful living - that is, being at peace with the present and with yourself.

1. Give yourself more fully to the little things that you do everyday - the dishes, making the bed, cooking meals; your daily tasks - even if you can't stand doing them anymore. Especially if you're tired of doing them. Do these things without thinking, without struggle and with care - paying attention to the doing and not the story of needing to do them. Practice it, one thing at a time.

This is your life and everything in it is important because each part is part of you.

2. Forgive yourself for something. Pay attention to that which you find hard to accept about yourself - if you want thin thighs, but you continue to have the thighs you have - forgive yourself for that; if you believe you should be kinder but find yourself sniping anyway, give yourself a break. Do this as often as you can.

Its OK to be who you are, exactly as you are.

3. Notice what's in your life. Look around where you are right now - take it all in. You created this scene, these people, things, experiences. Breathe it in and be grateful. See that your choices have brought you here and let go of ideas of 'good' or 'bad' about those choices. Things are as they are, no more and no less - as they should be.

However things are, you can change all of it if you want to, one choice at a time. But you don't have to.

4. Listen to yourself. Really listen to the way you speak - to others, about yourself, about others, about everything. Listen to your thoughts too. Your words are telling. What are you saying? All the answers you could ever need are coming out of your own mouth.

Your words are your witness. Love them or be silent.

5. Give yourself what you want from others. Whatever it is you think anyone else can give you, and won't, give to yourself. Allow yourself to have all the pleasure and kindness you desire.

You want what you want, so have it. Go all the way with it and watch what happens.

bibliomancy for venus in aries

2008-04-08T13:22:00.029+09:30

"...it is worth going to a little trouble to make a dinner a ritual by attending to the symbolic suggestiveness of the food and the way it is presented and eaten.  Without this added dimension, which requires some thought, it may seem that life goes on smoothly, but slowly soul is weakened and can make its presence known only in  symptoms." 
   
 - Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul

I have to admit I'm impatient.  Not just 'won't suffer fools' huffy impatient, but the 'really in a big hurry so move it will you' bratty kind.  I'm told this is partly due to being born while Venus was in Aries.

So I'm the type that pursues.  Especially in love, yeah - but I'll lose interest if the man of the moment gives too much too soon.

I also can't abide sappiness, I like my men with balls and attitude.  'Just leave the poetry to me' is what I have to say to a guy who talks about 'feelings'.

In fact I'd rather not talk at all.

Lets take a ride on a motor bike, race me in your car. Thrill me if you can.  Make me blush with rude jokes and never ask permission to kiss me.  Just do it.

Aries is the domain of Mars , the celestial action man.  It rules the head but not the mind (which is under Mercury), its symbol is the Ram - so my kind of Venus is drawn to strong faces, thick woolly hair, and, er -  horns. Or maybe that's swords?  You get what I mean.

I'm sure its Venus in Aries that causes me to swoon over men with tools - the more powerful the better. Don't get me started on the particular effects of a uniform.

As my dear friend Simone once said about how my preferences look,  'big, dumb and beautiful'.

Well, maybe not dumb.  After all, the battle is no fun if one's opponent is mismatched.  If a man can't raise a laugh then he has no chance of disarming me, and humour takes brain.  Having said that, I don't do well under siege.

Venus in Aries may prefer martial and gutsy, but she's still a woman and she wants what she needs.  Fiercely passionate and determined as a woman can be -  remember this -  Aries is the infant of the zodiac, the first sign.  Those needs are primal instincts; give me, care for me, protect me.  

OK.  Venus has gotta eat too but in Aries a girl has no time for a leisurely meal.  Just grab it and let's go - inhale it, attack each mouthful, finish victorious and get on with the next task.  Food has its purpose, and slow pleasures be damned.

Not exactly the stuff of romance, eh?

For me, having a family has taught the value of becoming still, laying a table and sharing a meal with others.  As the children grow it becomes a necessity to draw out any opportunity to talk and listen. Every word they say is a gift, even if they need a gentle reminder to finish their mouthful first.

With as many kids as I have its a logistical challenge to get it together - and far easier to lapse into kitchen eating and snacking at desks. Our dinners are events we work together to achieve, and so we appreciate them all the more.

At the end of a day the little things matter to us - care and attention to details - colour, texture, smell, sound.  A thrown together and thrown down meal does happen every now and then, but its never really good for us as a family, or as people.

Food becomes part of our bodies, its value is not just counted in recommended daily units of vitamins and minerals.  We all know it by now.  'You Are What You Eat' may be about not 'junking' our bodies -but on another level its about not trashing our lives.

And so, how much of our relationships with each other and the world can be healed - recovered from the trash - through ritual activities like meals?

Now that Venus has moved into Aries, perhaps its time to examine how beauty and pleasure take shape in our daily routines - in all the small ways they can.

Maybe there's room for more courage; some daring new colour or taste or smell that expresses something of - and energises - the soul?

Where there's been impatience there can be a move toward enthusiasm; taking notice of our responses to the efforts of others to please us.  Appreciating what is given in love, prepared and made with care.

I for one welcome the idea of putting down weapons and lighting a candle for real intimacy.

As long as I still get that motorbike ride.

the most important thing you need to learn about soul mate love part 2

2008-04-06T15:24:00.013+09:30

"The voice within is what I'm married to. All marriage is a metaphor for that marriage. My lover is the place inside me where an honest yes or no comes from. That's my true partner. Its always there. And to tell you yes when my integrity says no is to divorce that partner." (Byron Katie)

the most important thing you need to learn about soul mate love, part one

2008-03-26T13:01:00.049+10:30

 Actually, when I say you I really mean me - this is about the most important thing I have to learn.  

After all, how can anyone else tell you what you should and shouldn't know about love and relationships?  Its your life, your destiny and your call.

But having pursued relationships all the way around the world and back again and made it my life's purpose to find my soul mate -  I feel I can pass on some of what I've got the gist of so far. 

Like, for instance,  there is no model for relationships that works for everyone, but there's only one love.

The prevailing attitude, conversely, is monotheistic in its approach to relationships but consists of many ways of measuring love.  Romance, it seems to me,  is a religion of false  idols.

What I mean is that from my observations people are unrealistically expected to conform to certain patterns of behaviour - there are rules about courtship; ideas about 'fidelity' that inform our decisions about 'suitability' and 'commitment'.

There's a tendency to compartmentalise and label our relationships - this one is friendship, that one partnership, another parent-child love, pet-owner affection and so on.

The thing that we are led to believe we really want is that One Magnificent Love, the special Soul Mate, a total and deep immersion in another.  Completion.  Forever.

"I love you but I'm not in love with you" is what we hear when the heart won't open - when there's some magical ingredient missing from the coupling;  "the chemistry's just not there".

The romantic narrative is supposed to go a certain way and if it doesn't its a dud.  "He's just not that into you" is how it goes these days.

But apparently the real question is - are you that into you?  

Is it fair to expect from someone else to give us what we cannot or will not give ourselves?  Hand in hand with romantic love comes 'self esteem' - we must first love ourselves before someone really great can get anything from us.

Low self esteem means we have crappy 'destructive' relationships and high self esteem gets us better (constructive?)  ones.  There's that hierarchy again; measuring and defining.

Where does all the dogma come from?

Robert A Johnson, in his work on the psychology of romantic love, explains how we in the west have come to muddle human relationships and spiritual discipline - how the urge to merge with the divine and the need for companionship have become fused and distorted.

Somewhere along the line Eros has been caught and caged like a budgerigar.  We've literalised love between people just as we've literalised every other mystery and made it into a religion.

Maybe I'm wrong.  I'm willing to be, because there's a part of me that still wishes for it to be true - the fairy tale and happily ever after.

Meanwhile, though, what is true of my experience is that all relationships are soul mate relationships.

By this I mean that its the nature of love to call to the soul - 'Eros always leads to Psyche' as alchemy teaches.  Likewise, soul draws love to itself and in many forms, without judgement or restriction.

I find the notion of 'self esteem' to be dubious - it seems to be an ego created illusion about 'how I should be', holding oneself separate from others.

Which brings me to this - the most important thing to learn about soul mate love;  there's only one soul, its the soul of all of us.  So, as Deepak Chopra puts it, 'through the mirror of relationships I find my non-local self'.

In other words, in every 'other' that we relate to we discover a part of our ourselves.

So what's not to love?   Therein lies the rub - this means we must unlearn all we know about relating, to drop our ideas of what it all means and be willing to live without judgement or measurement, with forgiveness and with a fearless heart.

This can happen, moment by moment, if we allow it to.

Well, I never said it was an easy lesson.

oestre

2008-03-21T16:09:00.003+10:30

Now would be the time for Gods to step forth
from inhabited things..
and embrace every wall
In my house.

-Rainer Marie Rilke

bibliomancy for the equinox, the libra full moon and a celebration of death and rebirth

2008-03-21T12:08:00.036+10:30

The journey from cloud coo-koo land to reality lasted a long time.  In my case the pilgrim's progress consisted in my having to climb down a thousand ladders until I could reach out my hand to the little clod of earth that I am.

-C. G. Jung

Here we are at another seasonal equinox, another turn of the wheel.  The sun has passed the beginning point of the zodiac - zero Aries - and we're calling it a new solar year.

Mysteriously enough the heatwave finally passed away without any kind of weather dramatics - no storm, no rain, not even a strong wind.  The temperature just cooled in the course of a day, lifting the heavy, dry breathlessness and glare, and by night we were all comfortable and at rest.

Such a relief.

Life in such extreme heat as we've had, the drought and the restrictions imposed might be far removed from reality for those of you reading this from cooler or greener parts of Earth.   This is the Vernal (Spring) Equinox, remember, and there's plenty of new life to celebrate everywhere.

But looking around here it seems we have the opposite.  Street after street of brown lawn and curling shrivelled foliage where gardeners have planted anything but natives. 

Yep. Envy has found a new colour in this city of roses where the neighbours are watching every drop. Now and then a front yard in full bloom is justified with a hand painted sign; bore water in use.

It does amaze me that the planet is more than 70% water and we still don't seem to have enough of it.  We're told there isn't enough, and we believe it.  OK, so most of the water available to us in its current state is not potable, but the technology is.  

Why is it that with all the wonderful things we can do a simple thing like managing the resources of this planet is beyond us? 

It says something, doesn't it?  Our bodies have the same problem.  Too much water over here, a drought over there.  Pollution gets the better of us at times - we have a land-fill crisis, holes in our O-zone and some other zones; de-forestation is taking its toll.

Do we know how to live in our bodies - how to nourish and care for them?  

This is one of the first things our mothers teach us isn't it?  

Perhaps not.

But I'm not going to come on all political and preach about the state of the environment, about how much we ask of Mother Earth, about how we're raising our offspring to be in this world, or go on about the mythology behind all of it (and I could, easily).

No  - the microcosm and the macrocosm are the same, as the alchemists say.  If we take care of the small things the large will follow.  That's all I have to say about that.

And never mind the ideology behind this holiday - the cult of the hero, what I call our 'crucify and ressurect mentality' which says we must overcome; we have to have something to overcome, so we can be heroic.    If we don't have anything to overcome, well, we soon will.

Our primary image of this, a man bleeding and nailed to a cross - doesn't do much to promote the love of our bodies.  Flesh is temporary, right?  Spirit first.   Matter doesn't matter.

But I digress.

What I want to say, if anyone is following, is that all of these things make me feel like a child - or rather it reminds me that we really are children in this cosmos.

We are young.  As a race, and in the bigger scheme of things; we're still learning so we can be forgiven for so much fear, so many mistakes - for our confusion.

We can start over and we can recognise the beauty in every moment if we so choose - any time - however things are.

Now that's really something to celebrate.

owlways be here

2008-03-14T09:43:00.004+10:30

the most important thing you need to learn about divination

2008-03-10T14:25:00.047+10:30

"Hermes, too, gives his followers  acute hearing; they call him "the god of the third ear", the one that can hear  an essence buried in an accident."  (Lewis Hyde, Trickster Makes This  World)

Such a promising headline.  It deserves an  instructional essay or at the very least some dot points to lay down the gist of  things.  Augury 101;  reading signs and omens.

Lets start with a prediction; in a world that wants more  and more out of everyday experience, we'll want to know what everything means and want it to fit with our ordinary understanding.   We'll want a method for  interpretation,  a glossary of the terms of the Gods, all the air-borne secrets  revealed in one digest.

Friends, divination is one subject that's, well,  subjective for one thing.  To my  mind there's no direct route or hard and fast approach.    But we can sneak up  on it from behind to catch it by its tail and we can stay very still and wait  for it to come over of its own accord.   We can 'greet the angel'.

Whatever our system of belief, looking to the Gods  for guidance begs us to open up our minds to meet with life around us  differently; to assign value to that which ordinarily means nothing and to  assign nothing to the usual clout.

What that entails, more or less, is  willingness to let go of the stories of how things should be and allow life to  present itself as it is; to generate awareness that all the answers to our  questions are already given, and detachment from the need to know.

Because as soon  as we think we know, it all changes.

Take, for example, a form of  divination called cledonomancy -  a random remark, a kind of language version of a lucky find.  The Greek origin  of the word cledon itself refers  to two things, rumor, a report  and avis, a bird, pointing us to  what 'a little birdie told me..' as more than a turn of phrase.

A cledon is when you turn on the radio and  hear a message in a song which resonates with something on your mind.  Its a  voice in the crowd which calls out a message that may or may not be heard by  anyone else but nonetheless speaks directly to you.   Clear as a bell.

Its  the answer to a question of how to proceed at a crossroads in the same manner as  bibliomancy or cartomancy or any other  'omancy' (whether you know you've asked a question or not).    Its something  'out of the blue' like the kookaburra that appears on the fence  outside your house to laugh at you just as you're pondering the seriousness of  the matter at hand.

And then its gone, leaving you to wonder if you only imagined it.

In fact it was probably there every day as you left  the house and you never noticed until this moment.  The voice in the crowd has  been calling out for a while and you only just heard it today.  The cards have  been falling like that, the words were in the book, the song played over and  again until you were ready to know.  And now you've got the message.

But  then comes the temptation to interpret - to consult a text or call a friend - to  replace the direction, the resonance, the ah-ha! moment with tangibility and  credibility - "does this mean..?", "oh, yes it means this and that".   There's the urge to take that  received knowledge and examine it from every angle, poking and prodding and  squeezing every last drop of what its made of out of it.

This is where  we read too much into things.    We get our answers and then want to question  them.

And its this very mistrust of what's given to us in its own form  that destroys the divine part of divination.   We apply the scarcity mind-set  that proclaims Not Enough and disconnects us from the benevolent source - the  larger intelligence - that is soul.  
So the challenge is not how to read omens and signs but to contain them. In other words to stick with the original message rather than allow the mind's tricky ways to unravel it and remake it into something else.
Its as simple as this.  Trust that if you ask, the answer is on its way.  Notice what life is showing you because soul makes intelligent, meaningful statements all the time.

Keep a journal -  the act of writing mystical experiences shows you your own understanding of them .  Stop interrogating the answers and, above all, sit for just a moment with what you've received and recognise the magic.

Trust it, its part of who you are now. Laugh with that kookaburra, sing along  and smile at the voice from the crowd and then keep on walking, you're on your way.

bibliomancy for a festival

2008-03-08T13:17:00.030+10:30

"I termed this the forepleasure principle.  This refers to laughter in anticipation of joking, laughter that there is a joke going on or laughter just for its own sake."  (Hillman, Cookbook, p80)

Its so darn hot outside that even all the festivities going on in town won't move me from my cool quiet cave.

Writer's Week - meh.  Who needs it, I can read all about it in the next newsletter - its an outdoor event for lawd's sake.  The Fringe Festival - even that Garden of Unearthly Delights, as tempting as sitting in a gigantic tent (read; heat trap)  full of sweating, smelly humanity.  Ick.

Oh what a downer, Dan.

Well, OK - we just had that lovely new moon which in other times and places was a celebration of Bacchus    or Dionysus, that dastardly son of Zeus and God of all earthly pleasures.   It kinda calls for a more indulgent and joyous tone, doesn't it?  At least a little dirtier and sweatier - in a good way?

It occurs to me that Bacchanalia never took place during a heat wave.  But its easy enough to imagine that honouring the divine patron of bad behaviour could take place around, say, a log fire, involve plenty of good wine (perhaps warmed up, accompanied by good cheese) and lewd gossip.

A bit like a typical girls night in?  In fact the festival was just for women, and held in secret - and considering Bacchus' (or Dionysus, if you prefer) phallic nature, no doubt it was always an occasion for mirth, although not very 'spiritual'.

Which brings us back to the business at hand.  Humour, wit and laughter.

Perhaps with the sun in Pisces and Jupiter ruling the sky its time to turn to all things, er Jovial - but this week I've found myself explaining my need to laugh at most inappropriate things.

And I do - during sex, for one thing.  Not entirely conducive to successful intercourse, but dammit its so funny.  Manly parts are comedic, adorably so, and all that bouncing around, well you get the picture.

I also find the subject of death lacking in gravity (where does this comes from?) as well as giving birth.  Yes, I did crack up during labour all five times and I have witnesses.

I laugh so hard at the Rigger's dumb filthy jokes I'm left dizzy. When my sister and I get together we're known to collapse in a single pile over nothing - limbs weak to the point we can't get up and braying uncontrollably for minutes beyond the joke.  Then we laugh some more because we're such a sight.

My mother and I wheeze and hold our sides in supermarkets over her batty misuse of language, trying not to make a sound, heaving even harder standing there with legs crossed in front of the incontinence products.

Upon news of small misfortunes and minor tragedies I attempt to keep a straight face, knowing as I do that I'm expected to at least chuckle - and of course the pressure to maintain seriousness is usually cause enough for you know what.

See?  Not funny, any of it.  Not intelligent either.

It seems that there's another humour not dependent on wit or words - about something more than the mind and making connections.  It comes from a different place entirely.  And its Not Allowed.

There are, of course, officially sanctioned occasions for community practice of transgressive humour, within bounds. There are days for mischief and upsetting the order of things - to mock life and death;  festivals, carnivals, Mardi Gras.  We have gross humour movies, television and such.

We can watch, we can enjoy other's enactment. One doesn't see huge wooden statues of Priapus these days though - the dirtier fun side of life doesn't belong in daily ritual.  We prefer things clean, antibacterial and white.

Perhaps a soulful existence - one that is not polytheistic and honours all our parts (and when I use the word honour I'm really talking about acceptance and love) means letting ourselves be inappropriate and disorderly every day.  Maybe its a deep human need to get base, grotty, gross and stupid from time to time - intoxicated?  I think so.

Alright, pass me that bottle of red.

poetry for a dark moon and goodbye

2008-03-06T17:28:00.003+10:30

atropos

you are silver to me

needing heat

for your hardness

and truth

for guilt and shame

(wasn’t silver all i had

and didn’t i long for gold?)

i can’t save you or heal you

only take you deeper

into your troubles so

that which has ailed you

will make you whole

(only then will i

put my hands

my mouth

on all your wounds

and taste your pain)

no if i ever loved you

it was for all your suffering

if i ever wanted your love

it was because of your

beautiful injured heart

(look at you feet pierced through

and arms outstretched -

did you even try another path?)

oh your eyes promise me everything

plead with me for release and cry

tears latent with stars

so that i cannot bear to comfort you

lest i stem their flow

(we both know that behind you

in the shadows there are others

that thief and that wife-killer

you think are forgiven

but reveal all your lead)

don’t tell me you’re dying

i’ll have no choice

but to stand by and watch

as you bleed

wait for the beating and sighing end

and later cover you with my grief

(how could i worship less?

i understand you perfectly

but i will never wipe away

the gift of blood filled with

the seeds of so many flowers)

and you don’t die at all

you are here in the garden

facing me over and again

innocently

as if you had not sent me

into my own anguish

(all my wisdom unreceived

all my waiting

for this

i have nothing left)

is there ever an end to our story

when you keep rising

and i go on causing your fall?

this is where horizon and

heavens meet, always

(yes, you are silver to me

the heat i need

for my indifference

and the truth of

my own guilt and shame)

bibliomancy, spam and mars opposite pluto

2008-03-06T12:40:00.010+10:30

"Owls, bats, and crickets are designed by nature to be awake in the dark of night."

(spam, seriously)

I've been meaning to write about the story of money - how our deeply ingrained ideas regarding finances, financial success and abundance inform and create our current state of affairs.

There was a lot to say about it yesterday as Mars moved into the sign of Cancer - ruler of all things domestic, including the household budget and our ability to feed and nurture ourselves.

The masculine principle of mars - coagulating, creating and outwardly manifesting soul's desires - moving into the realm of the triple-face of femininity speaks to me about Making Things Happen.  And woman's intuition speaks back about allowing Things to Come Together.

Yeah, I decided not to write some awful essay about The Story of Money after all.  I took a look around me and saw that its one of those lessons in life we either get or we don't.  For the most part I don't.

And I like that I don't get it.

Part of Pluto-nature (and lets not forget the appelation means 'Riches') is to dwell in darkness.  There's comfort in that - when deprived of one sense we're more accutely attuned to others.  We can align with the deeper rythym that underpins all life - the ebb and flow of energy and matter; the pulse of our cosmos, inner and outer.

So rather than falling into a fearful state when it comes to scarcity - panic - scrambling around blindly attempting to do something about this forgawdsake - stay cool, accept the lack of light and information.    Resist the urge to 'ascend' or heroically overcome anything.

Oh, I know I bang on about 'heroics' a lot - to my mind there's something about the solar nature of our world that has gone all out of balance with the way things actually are.  Only half the world experiences daytime at once, after all.

Our predominant global myth is in denial of an essential side.

Well, when I say 'denial' I only mean that our current dichotomy assumes that the failure lies in terrible darkness and that the Light is the Only Way.

We demonise, we fear - we go marching two by two but one of us has to be weaker.  Our victims make some of us Victors.  Our Gods and Goods depend upon Devils and death.

So we have this urge built in - to get what we can get before it all runs out.  To win.  Be right, be on the side of the good guys.  To judge those who don't also follow these urges as belonging to The Other Side.

Mars out of whack wants to 'go out there and fight for it, take over, colonise and win' - Pluto at best goes 'Whoa. Be calm - its OK, yes there's death but there's also enough of everything to go around.  '

Yeah, Pluto regenerates, Mars creates.  If we stop 'doing' for long enough - step into the shade for a moment - and sit without value judgements, we may begin to actively receive in harmony with our own true Selves.

Maybe I'm just an idealist, I want to believe that we'll all see that life is and/and and not and/or.

In other words, its not one or the other - its both.

bibliomancy for mars into cancer

2008-03-04T20:07:00.004+10:30

"Satan, then, needs to be more in touch with his Anima" 

(Dendon, Mercury Rising, Women, Evil and the Trickster Gods; p24)

bibliomancy, synchronicity and flying

2008-03-01T11:57:00.021+10:30

"... only love is real.  Nothing else actually exists.  If a person behaves unlovingly, then, that means that, regardless of their negativity - anger or whatever - their behavior was derived from fear and doesn't actually exist.   They're hallucinating.  You forgive them, then, because there's nothing to forgive.  Forgiveness is a discernment between what is real and what is not real."  

(Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love)

Do you remember the thrill of your first flight on a jet airplane?  Taking off feels strange but exciting - this huge amazing machine has to leave the ground, the force of which pushes you back into your seat.  It seems impossible.

You lean forward and look through the steamy little window watching things get smaller and bigger at the same time.   Land below and sky above, it becomes clear that there is more happening in life than you pay attention to in the linear, ordinary course of a day.

Then comes the rocking and shaking and shuddering - can this be happening?  Just as you gained faith in flight it turns out it can't be sustained after all.  It seems only moments ago you were shown the emergency procedure, and remember absolutely none of it.

You grip the armrests.  Imagine crashing to the ground, everything up in flames.  Plunging deep into the sea.  Contemplate all the things you've never done, the things you've done and wish you hadn't - maybe you pray.  This is it.

Then a reassuring voice tells you the aircraft is experiencing 'normal air turbulence' which will pass shortly, and asks you to please remain seated and safety-belted.

Oh Right! (you're thinking)  You try to breathe slow and deep and sit very very still.

And it does pass.  Before you know it 'turbulence' is no big deal, after all, flying is safer than driving.

Isn't it?

I'm sure you can see where this is heading by now - although possibly this is not a metaphor that truly fits -  life can be like that first plane ride.

Thrilling, I say, seemingly impossible; containing moments that make you wonder why you ever got on and others where you can see the whole deal laid out like a blanket.

Actually, the further you travel the more connections are made and others missed entirely causing you to sit a while. Still, knowing its not likely that you'll end up in the wrong place, even if your baggage goes astray, you stay on the trip.

This week has been one of those weeks - connections made, take-off-thrills and long airless moments which left me like a virgin passenger without a window seat.  But there was no getting off - and there was no forgetting that this was a journey that couldn't be done by car.

I managed to upset a few people and attract the anger and criticism of some more.  I had some career breakthroughs via a chance meetings, and was delighted to have an old friend appear from nowhere.  A series of small but important assurances - a power bill that was ten times less than I thought it would be, a check in the post from something I overpaid, a rebate from the telephone company that put me on hold so often earlier in the month.  These showed me that my way is clear and my ticket is paid.

And came the realisation that there's no good lying to myself about certain relationships and emotions - just as there's damage to be done by denying the part I play in creating particular circumstances. 

Yeah, there's fear,  ego and error - but at the end of the day I've got to believe it was my choice to get on this plane, so its over to the pilot to get me there.     Come what may, I'm on it until it lands and have to let the expert in charge handle what I have no control of.  Believe.

Love will always find the way home.

bibliomancy to make amends

2008-02-29T15:19:00.006+10:30

"Wisdom, also known as Sophia, is described in the Old Testament as she who protects and inspires life into her children (Eccl 4; 12-14), the tree of life (Proverbs 3:17), holy, one, gentle, eloquent, active, steadfast, unspotted mirror of God's goodness, before the light, reaching from end to end mightily and ordering all things sweetly, and no evil can overcome her."

(McNeely, Mercury Rising, Women Evil and the Trickster Gods p129)

bibliomancy, mischief and the anatomy of a dream

2008-02-25T20:38:00.033+10:30

"Hermes...is not the source of light, as the sun is, but rather the source of this source. He also begot the moon-like and dark Pan. His world originates before sunrise, and as the source of his world he can only be the one who himself allows a source of illumination to originate in the outpouring of souls...

...in the prehistoric depths of the life-source, light and its mirror are begotten simultaneously; there as great Greek philosophers also knew, the source of light and the source of soul are one and the same..." (Kerenyi, Hermes p144)

There's a lot to be learned from venturing forth into the blogger-sphere. One Can Not, for example, post comments about misfortunes to one's cat on the blog of a cat lover - even with the most light-hearted intentions.

Really.

No seriously, I'm trying to lighten up, and step out from under my rock at last. And the story about my two cats called Arkie is funny, and has a happy ending. Well, apart from the bit where I accidentally killed the first cat, and reversed over the second one also completely by accident.

So, OK I'm not good with pets - this is something I'm working through.

Meanwhile I'm getting the picture that my style isn't going to have a 'typical' audience, and that being a virtual stranger just won't do.

And having said that, I see how things here could be less cryptic - and so (da da daah - *cough*) I set about explaining myself.

As far as bibliomancy goes I tend not to 'interpret' but rather to 'analogise'.

It is a form of divination and there's the temptation to rant on about possible manifestations of, say, the current transit of Mercury through Aquarius and occurrences like sudden (a trait of all things Aquarian) illuminations (Mercury ruling the mind) that come from venturing forth into community (also an Aquarian thing).

Or the odd little synchronicity involving technology (double ditto). The urge to express the soul's eccentricities; perhaps play a few tricks, Hermes-like.

But no, I prefer the moonlight and mystery and the possibility a passage points to. The act of defining is too orderly and interpretation is, to my mind, heroic - solar. I'm blinded by the light.

So I mostly ignore the quote I'm lead (oops I mean led) to and write my lived experience, knowing that there's a correlation and that all will be revealed - like undoing an origami crane. (There! that's how it started - that's how it became!).

If you interpret a dream, which is not far removed from divination, its intelligence is in danger of disolving - of being melted down and remade by daylight meaning and definition. That horse, no longer a horse but a sex-act; the snake a phallus - every character a stand-in for something else.

Too literal! A dream's lunar, night-world images - frightening, arousing and confusing - are the life lived by the deep unconscious mind.

A deeper, darker approach to a dream or a mystery is called for.

So lamp in hand we can ask - what does this image, this scene, this passage show me? What does it want?

Let it come to you.

Watch, wait - allow - and exactly what you need to know will turn up.

Try it. Take a dream or the above 'bibliomancy' and instead of penetrating it, let understanding surface. Leave 'symbols' out of it and get in touch with the nature of each image. A horse is still a horse - and its horse-ness. 'The source of light' is what it is - and its light-ness, its origin and its destination.

Yes, in the spirit of 'lightening up' - I'm willing to see things differently - if you have a dream you are yet to understand, perhaps this is exactly the bit of mischief you've needed to show up - maybe I can shine something on it after all - let me know, I'm all yours.

bibliomancy for venus in aquarius

2008-02-24T10:24:00.027+10:30

"The Cloudless Sky.

The sun is shining on you,
bright and clear
in a cloudless sky.
Everything is going as you wish."

(100 Poems of the Goddess, The Kuan Yin Oracle)

Well, this is more optimistic than I thought possible.  I almost overlooked this transit on account of all the Saturn activity - teeth and bone and joint issues abound in my family and among friends, not to mention a general heaviness in myself.

Alright then, Saturn rules Aquarius, so it fits.

I've been contemplating what it means to 'build community' (one of Aquarius' rulerships) and the wider world.  There's a strong pull towards whatever is 'out there' as opposed to hiding away here at home behind my computer screen.

As mentioned casually to a friend - and not for the first time lately - 'I've been living under a rock for far too long'.

Its a big rock and quite a burden, not to mention the kind of insect-life one attracts from under here.  And having dropped my sense of humour somewhere in the dirty darkness I seem incapable of 'lightening up'.

Darn.  I've heard of the 'wrong side of the tracks' but it looks like I'm on the wrong side of the rock.

I want to be on top.

So I ask you, what does it take?  You're all 'out there' - am I missing anything?  Is this idea of 'community' one of those ideas, like marriage and formal education that are theoretically sound but in general practice rather, er unsound?  Is it a fantasy?

Oh, don't get me wrong - I'm not saying that marriage and education are fantasies, only that our stories around them can be detrimental to our mental health.  (ok, MY mental health, I'm sure yours is fine)

So is 'community' another monotheistic model for lived experience that will bring me to grief - or am I looking for reasons  to keep hauling like Atlas indefinitely?

There is an argument, quite a scientific one if you view Quantum Mechanics as science - that separation is an illusion.  So we aren't individuals, however much our egos tell us we bloodywellare, and creating groups of individuals seems to me like creating kind of a communal ego.  More separation, more fear and more trouble.

As a child it bothered me somewhat that there are such things as countries and nations and borders.  We all live here on this one world together - part of it - we're all the same aren't we?  I'd think to myself (yes I knew better than to say it outloud) that there was a Big Mistake.

My mother should have put me to bed instead of in the bouncy chair in front of the telly that day they walked on the moon - the day they showed us we're a living ball hanging in space.

Hm.  Where was I going with this?

I'm really getting to the point of no return - separation is an illusion, as is the darn rock I keep referring to (but not the one we live on and are in fact a part of).  There isn't anything 'out there' that isn't going on 'in here'.

All at once, actually, inside and out, in the large and little things that happen each day, each moment.

Time and space as we know them are changing - our linear model won't fit with our expanding world view and concurrent shrinking technology.  We're learning to see beyond what we think is happening to what the other possibilites are.

Its too easy as people locked into our daily routines to fall deep into the Saturnine trap of 'not enough', that is, disconnection and immobilisation by the fear of scarcity, of inadequacy and failure. Turning away from another true state of things.

Sure, such a thing as scarcity does exist - limits exist, boundaries, form, borders and egos exist for real reasons - but the other truth is that we are limitless, we are all made of the same stuff and that the biggest thing and the smallest thing are exactly the same.

Its not one or the other, its both.

So there's no need for me to go anywhere to commune - if you are somewhere dancing, so am I.  If you are somewhere making love, so are we all.  I can sit right here at my desk, and lifetimes of experience and understanding are delivered to me instantly.

Of course, should I venture past my front door, unlock the gate, take myself out and actually have some fun I can only be doing the world some good - right?

That's no light-weight idea.

bibliomancy for a lunar eclipse

2008-02-21T11:15:00.007+10:30

"...for Eskimos, when one falls ill, one takes a new name, a new diseased personality. To get over a disease, one must quite literally 'get over' it by transcending, that is, by dying. The only hope for cure lies in the death of the ill personality. Health requires death.." (HILLMAN)

freedom, writing and passion fruit

2008-02-09T14:02:00.001+10:30

This past weekend someone asked me 'what do you write?'.

After an initial moment of embarrassment I said I write poetry 'and other poetic things', but was lost describing what I really write. I stuttered something about also drawing and being allowed 'to be really bad at it'.

Nothing like positive self talk.

But there was a time - more like a moment - when I told others I do 'textual anatomy'. I'm not sure how that translates to what I'm doing now, though, however gorgeous the sound of it.

Textual. Anatomy. Its writing and drawing together, poetic-like. It has a body and soul.

But is it worthy of an audience? And what is it all about anyway?

An email that blared its message to me yesterday reminded me that if I want my blog to be noticed I ought to be writing content my 'target audience' wants to read.

The marketer in me bristles at this, picks fights with my inner artist who in turn declares 'marketing matching principles' to be a load of creativity-stifling dogma.

'Write the story you want to write, not the one they want to read' comes to mind - sage advice from a well known author - nose-thumbing any imaginary group of people 'out there'.

I want an audience, a subscriber list, a following. I care about the people who read this - readers. You. So it looks like its time to define things here a little more clearly. Here goes:

I write about alchemy, myth, archetype and astrology. I write about how I see the world around me, the metaphors - the poetry - of life. I write about psychology as Hillman' sees it - an 'ology' of psyche - of soul.

Writing, for me, is like a relationship - it changes me, challenges me. I grow with it, and it grows with me.

Drawing is different, it comes from another place in me and keeps me honest. I know I can't draw and I don't mind. Its like I have no 'drawing ego' - no attachment to how my drawings 'turn out'. I don't have to think. What I see with my heart goes on the page without censorship or judgement.

I put the drawings and writings together because they are meant to be together. That's what I do; that's what's going on here.

So - what is 'bibliomancy'?

I started 'bibliomancy' as a means of inspiration some time ago. With something on my mind I choose a book from the pile, open it at random and without fail something meaningful falls off the page. Of course all the books in my pile are full of 'meaningful' in some form or another. But what happens for me here is relevant, divinatory, angelic.

And synchronicitous. Sometimes cryptic, always mysterious - above all requiring a stretch of the imagination and a mind open to new ways of seeing things.

This week life has shown me how free I am now to be who I am and let go of outdated ideas of how to relate to the world - in not so subtle ways. Events are telling me that there's support for me to carry on doing what I do and that I can expect good things to continue to flow.

My last post concerning the eclipse and taking care of the junk in my life. Getting into a space of allowing good to flow preceded a miracle and a spray of smaller gifts - free things that fell into my hands. Things that give me freedom, time, money, space and clarity.

Not least of these, I notice now, is the vine growing over the fence. It was here when we moved into the house a year ago - the only thing growing aside from two neat and tidy patches of lawn, front and back.

Through winter the vine crept along the fence at the side of the house, hidden from view, originating next door. It posed a contrast - a steel sheet fencing and minimal concrete wall against this unruly, lush, shiny leafy creature.

Spring sprung large white flowers with deep purple centers and it sprouted curly feelers everywhere. I worried that the drought would destroy it - such an impossible task to make fruit with so little sustenance. How could that happen?

Now its a dark green jungle with passion fruits dropping out of their hiding places onto the ground. Each one is a surprise to me and a message that life is abundant - that even without faith, even without intent - with nothing at all from me - from dark and unexpected places - beautiful things grow.

This is who I am and this is what I write.

bibliomancy for a solar eclipse in aquarius

2008-02-06T13:27:00.000+10:30

"This means you have free will to do as you wish and that I make your will Mine, through unconditional love.

Now for My Will to be yours, you would have to do the same.

First you would have to know it.  Second, you would have to accept it.  Third, you would have to praise it.  Fourth, you would have to love it.  Finally, you would have to call it your own."  (NEAL DONALD WALSH, CONVERSATIONS WITH GOD)

A full lunar cycle has passed since I made the decision not to 'de-clutter' and 'space clear' but to revision my clutter and junk - to find out why I have it.

The phrase I made my mantra 'I have everything I need, and nothing I don't' sustained me through an extraordinary period of self-examination to what now feels like true self-acceptance.

I found, I still do find, that the idea that there are parts of the psyche that are unacceptable and unlovable - untenable.  I don't want to discard and reject and abandon and throw away anything that's part of me.   I may be getting rid of the thing that makes me whole.

Today I realise that I can still love and accept myself and take care of the trash - the debris and natural waste that is a by-product of life and needs to be dealt with before it starts stinking and causing disease.

I thought I'd learned to diferentiate between the real waste that can be carefully dealt with and stuff that's just someone else's imaginary crap left to rot where it has no business.

And I found good reasons for denial - to go on pretending the accumulated rubbish pile doesn't stink - there's no rubbish, what rubbish??  (That which we  give  attention to grows, after all - so no looking).   Or, to yell at someone - whoever is responsible, dammit -  to 'come and clean this shit up!'; huff and puff about it and stomp around about 'how unfair'.

After a while, it has to be realised, there's just no getting around it - all the clutter that I can see needs to put where it belongs.   And I have to do that, too.

So, while cleaning the house today, clearing space, enjoying the beauty of crisp sheets, muck-free floors, bathrooms and clear windows - I'm restoring order where I can; taking care of the dirt that belongs to me, and doing what I can with what 'isn't mine' to deal with.

I can see that this is my house, my home, my life and my mess to work on. Some of the mess is good.

The pile of toys over there - that's not crap, that's where  children play.

The chaos on my desk, piles of drawings, half-used oil sticks, books and bits and pieces - I use those.  I like it like this.

I admit the box of recycling under the sink threatens to overwhelm the sanctity of the kitchen at times.  I sometimes forget to put out the wheely bin.    I have plans to start composting.

Overall there is peace in my home, there is light and love and laughter.

Yes I let others walk their mud and grease through my house - I haven't protected against those who walk in dog-do. There it is around the skirting boards; under the sofa; finger-printed onto walls at man height; accumulated into grime over time, undealt with, disowned and mysterious.  The usual methods of mopping up don't seem to work.   What do I do with it - this crap I think of as 'not mine'?

Maybe there's gold in it, says the Alchemist in me.

Maybe. Can anything turn to gold if I don't love it, praise it, thank it, forgive it's presence, see it as perfect?  Can I own it?  Maybe not.  I guess I have washing to do.

Meanwhile, I'm called to choose more wisely which boots will cross the threshold - because if I let them in, well. You get the picture.

I'm not sure yet how any of this relates to the solar eclipse tomorrow - only that events of the past 24 hours have turned up something that stinks and that I've had to push up my sleeves and clean up, and that feels good.   (usually these bibliomancy posts contain answers that are self-evident after the fact)

Eclipses usually 're-set' things, and give a boost of energy where its most needed. Perhaps  looked at where there's work to do, what  can be loved more, what is unnecessarily problematized, and clearing out the things - the natural byproducts -  that have been blocking the way, there'll be a renewal of something else. 

Something really pure.

mercurial blessings

2008-02-03T18:21:00.000+10:30

"Necessity knows no magic formulae- they are all left to chance. If love is to be unforgettable, fortuities must immediately start fluttering down to it like birds to Francis of Assisi's shoulder." (Milan Kundera)

There are times when Mercury's tricks can bring confirmation that all of life is - in fact - entirely miraculous.

Yesterday my car battery died without warning just as I needed to leave the car wash bay with a queue of vehicles waiting behind me, a baby in the back seat and sweltering heat outside.

My immediate thought - right after the shock of yet another 'power failure' - was to call my self-proclaimed Lone Ranger (aka the Rigger) for help - followed by the thought that he was more likely to ride off into the sunset than come to the rescue.

I sat doing breathing exercises and calming myself and within moments a kind gentleman appeared and asked if he could help. An hour later the problem was entirely rectified, my car fitted with a new battery. Better than ever. (the Lone Ranger even showed up in his Silver V6, paying for everything, shaking hands, playing with the baby before taking the sunset route)

Mercury - Hermes - is a son of Zeus. Fortune, as Zeus would bestow, is the father of chance, opportunity and luck and are an integral part of the myth - but we are too eager to problematise, to see theft and tricks and deceptions where there are openings and blessings.

The einfalle generousity of a stranger - if one can relate to the presence of such grace as 'strange' - and the unexpected reversal of a usually elusive character - are affirmations of a benevolent mercurial force in the world.

And, the event served to remind me that 'owning my stuff' and taking responsibility for the choices made - stuff ups - that have brought me to this place is a fine thing - and that ownership includes the good stuff too.

bibliomancy for venus-jupiter

2008-01-31T20:13:00.000+10:30

"...there are tales within tales that do not further the plot, showing that psychic history goes on in many places at once - meanwhile, back at the farm, in another part of the forest - and in many figures at once... other personages of the story are as interesting as the main character, just as the other figures within our our dreams and fantasies often bear more upon our fates than does our ego.." (Hillman)

"those in literature see the psychology in fiction.. its our turn to see the fiction in pyschology..." (HILLMAN)

Jupiter and Venus together are supposed to bring about love-bliss; tomorrow's conjunction is apparently great for lovers, would-be lovers and all things beautiful, in big ways.

Here in South Australia the weather is set to be hot during the day, promising one of those lovely balmy summer's evenings that are perfect for walking hand in hand on the beach, for dining al fresco and general blissful canoodling.

Hm. How lovely for those with someone whose hands will be held and those canoodling lovers. I for one say yes to those, absolutely, but for this transit, I need another paradigm for expressing the energies of such magnificent love.

So, there are lovers strolling the beach, eyes locked in restaurants and cuddling up in cinemas; there are couples everywhere - but meanwhile, here in a house in the suburbs, is a woman who is learning for the first time what it is to love, and there isn't a man in the frame.

What does it mean? How will it happen? Is this story told from her own point of view or is there an omniscient narrator?

How many ways can the fiction of love be told?

I guess we shall have to wait and see.

mars direct , mercury awol..

2008-01-28T20:25:00.000+10:30

...I've been trying to get a clear bibliomancy reading for this astro-current - but it seems our friend The Trickster has scattered my focus somewhat, as well as messing with the electric circuits in my house, the air conditioning, the car, my online banking and, well - this is just the beginning.

Mercury retrograde in Aquarius feels very Promethean - so perhaps we shall see how much of the fire of the Gods can be snatched away in this transit.

I for one quite enjoy it, as long as I don't have anywhere important to go, there's no heatwave or blizzard, and I pace myself.

Its a good time, for one thing, to examine the metaphors that present themselves.

Power issues, for example - I've a long history of troublesome on-again-off-again appliances, impossibly high utilities bills, household circuits that blow up in dramatic showers of glass and smoke and, just recently - power 'transformers' melting down, shutting off electricity to the whole street (not just once!).

It doesn't take too much genius to figure out that I have some kind of imbalance occurring, and which areas of life I can work on in order to improve things - application of power - how much is being paid for it - connectedness, transformation - these are all fundamental. I'm being shown, through these events, something of myself - my own overloads, explosive anger, meltdowns - drama.

As for Mars' station in late Gemini in preparation for returning to direct motion on Thursday - well, that feels like a cat of a different colour.

The men in my life are suddenly and inexplicably irritating. And I say 'men' plural because the retrograde period itself manifested - shall we say concentrated interest - from two of them. They both know they have competition. One tried to win me over by being understanding about the other guy (giving me advice, being supportive) while referring to him constantly as 'The Rigger'.

Said Rigger referred to the first guy in turn as 'The Greek', and was not in the least bit 'understanding' - using plenty of rigger-style expletives in letting me know what he was thinking (and riggers really know how to swear). It was kind of cute, really.

Well, sort of - although its been a long time since I had that kind of attention from two men at once, and its flattering in a crazy way - both of these men are ex-lovers and neither one of them ever had any long term intentions with me. That remains unchanged, tantalising promises and imagined futures notwithstanding.

What was I thinking??

Well, as I keep saying - there is no outer event that is not also inner. It always comes back to that. There's a case of indecision - of internal double-talk - at least something going on at the soul level, working itself out moment by moment - it'll be amazing to watch what becomes of it all next.

Meanwhile, I count my blessings that the airconditioner not working means a smaller power bill, that with car troubles we'll walk a bit more and drive less and that less focus for a while may let me dream a little more.

bibliomancy for pluto's ingress to capricorn

2008-01-27T09:47:00.000+10:30

"...given this unconscious paranoia, there will be a need for a projected fantasised enemy and fantastical defences against the fantasised enemy. Situations will always be valued by constructs of strength and weakness, winning and losing. Demand for unconditional surrender and the fear of it will be paramount, Treaties based on compromise will be all but impossible to negotiate. .." (Hillman, 'paranoia' p49)

For the first time one of my 'bibiomancies' actually comes across as prophecy. Its a bit dire, but then again we are talking about Pluto here. Planet or not, the Lord of the Underworld isn't exactly subtle.

And speaking of that - the downgrading of Pluto from planet to dwarf or whatever - doesn't it seem like a sign of the times? Come to think of it, not only does this world seem to want to diminish the devil, hell, evil and darkness aka shadow, it appears to do so in line with the public declaration of the Sun as being dangerous, risky, something we must protect ourselves against. A backlash against God/dess and downplaying the power of His/Her counterpart... interesting.

So, paranoia - well, this isn't exactly news, afterall we are in the midst of a 'war on terror' which pivots upon the assumption that there is a threat. We have 'baddies' so we can feel 'good'... there's someone out there threatening our 'freedom' and we must seek it out at all costs, invade a few countries if we must, and damn the consequences. We will reign down terror until all the Terrorists die. Insane.

Well, that's a macrocosmic viewpoint - what about the microcosmic events of our everyday lives? How many times do we demonise the 'other' in our midst?

"You must be wrong so that I can be right" is a common standpoint, as if there isn't room enough for rightness or wrongness on both sides. As if only one way is the way that's acceptable. Monotheistic. Dualistic (is that the correct term?).

And, as there is no outer event that is not also inner - on macro and microcosmic levels - we are only harming ourselves - our 'earth' or matter - the stuff we are made of - has got to suffer.

If Pluto into Capricorn means that we can finally own the terror, fear, paranoia and fantasies of 'other', then maybe the planet (this one, the one we live on) has a chance.

bibliomancy for a full moon in leo

2008-01-22T10:50:00.001+10:30

"..so the first basic characteristic of the coeur de lion is that thought does not appear as thought because it emanates like the sun into the world and remains disguised in that conformity with its motion.." (Hillman, Thought of the Heart)

Last night Jodi gave me a roar, and this morning I thought of lions, forgetting about tonight's full moon in Leo.

Its not unusual for me to think of lions - they are potent symbols and often used in alchemy - red, green, pointing to desire, to the work of making gold.

They remind me that Venus and the Sun are not so very far apart, of the tarot card, Strength (also called Force) in which a pregnant woman gently holds the mouth of the beast.

Something else that Hillman writes stays with me - that the dry desert of the heart is the birth place of lion cubs - stillborn - needing to be roared into life.

Perhaps I love this image - of cubs being roared into being inside my heart - because of the promise it holds, awakening the poetic, beautiful animal side of love.

None of the transcendental, 'spiritual' models of love hold me like this. To me there must be sulphur - desire - and salt - experience, for love to be made whole.

But this passage seems to say that heart-love is like the sun, that hearts-thoughts and imaginings are akin to consciousness, solar, central and essential to the point of taken-for-granted-ness.

It makes me wonder what else the heart has to say other than what is always there, circulating, beating out its rythym and keeping the body alive.

Are lion cubs, deserts, romantic poetic images the thoughts of the heart or just ideas about the heart?

bibliomancy for a Venus - Pluto Conjunction

2008-01-21T16:29:00.000+10:30

"Eros always leads to Psyche..." (Moore)

"how to analogise the dream I've had for the past year? -

I ask myself - what is he like??

He's like Pan;
dirty, dark, smelly and sexy

He's like Jesus;
only he won't die
and he won't be coming back

He's like me;
but with balls and a job and social life

He's too-hot water; a take-away dinner I didn't order and have to pay for; a dress that doesn't fit (something like I would have made for myself when I was learning to sew); he's a stranger grabbing at my belly and asking me if I've got another baby coming; he's a dog, fox, wolf, dingo - other wild things I cannot love that scare me except in symbolic form, in idea, in imagination... he's like Mephistopheles too... asking too much for only bad things in return...

He doesn't exist; he forces me to see how much I create in my mind.  He's never the same person twice;he forces me to see how much I change.

He isn't the man I think he is (and I'm not either)

...but for some reason it hurts me so much not to love him and imagine him as every bit as wonderful as I want him to be.  It hurts me in my chest; deep ache, burn, stab.

I don't know what to do about it, what am I supposed to do about it?  How  can I move this out of my body, out of my mind?  How can I make space for anyone else while every bit of me is consumed by this weirdness?  Its in my blood stream, pumping through all of me. "

(August 18, 2007; paper journal entry)

five things I love

2008-01-21T08:07:00.000+10:30

1. etymology; the wondrous thing about this is that words of common use often (mostly) have completely obscured origins - uncovering the roots of these opens up entire universes for me - words then have sparkly new meanings and possibilities.

2. Watching people; imagining how they are 'outer expressions of an inner state' of my own; asking - What part of me is this?
Yes, its self-indulgent, and I still love it.

3. running into people in the course of a day, whom I'd 'thought of' briefly only a short while prior to the 'chance meeting' - synchronicity! A game, I suppose, is to deliberately 'think' of long-gone aquaintences and watch how they show up 'unexpectedly'.

4. brass bands; what more can I say?

5. Shoes that are not black or white; maybe this is a 90's thing - from hanging with 'the beautiful people' (who must wear the right shade of black) - now when I see coloured shoes I'm delighted. Black is so boring. White shoes are just tacky.

bibliomancy for mars retrograde

2008-01-19T09:03:00.000+10:30

"...building the psychic vessel of containment, which is another way of speaking of soul-making, seems to require bleeding and leaking as its pre-condition. Why else go through that work unless we are driven by the despair, of our un-stoppered condition? The shift from anima-mess to anima-vessel shows in various ways; as a shift from weakness and suffering to humility and sensitivity; from bitterness and complaint to a taste for salt and blood; from a focus upon the emotional pain of the wound - its causes, perimeters, cures - to its imaginal depths..." (Hillman, The Wound and the Eye)

I've been sitting with this passage for a few days (hence, no blog entry), waiting - allowing - some understanding and inspiration to present itself.

Of course, my first instinctive reaction is the same final conclusion arrived at after weighing up, sorting through and putting aside various other 'more sensible' ideas.

Its this; having 'revisioned' the dirt and mess in my life, both the actual physical clutter of this existence, and the inner trash that refuses to be cleared - the stuff I have because I need it - I've been looking at why I need it.

The urge toward solar heroics dies hard, even in the dark.

bibliomancy for a Monday morning

2008-01-14T09:25:00.000+10:30

"On the evening of the second day, the crescent of the new moon would become visible in the evening sky, as though having sprung from the head of the sun, a phenomenon in which we recognise the cosmic referent in the birth of Athene. The greatest festival of Athene thus contained two cosmic situations: the time of the conjunction, the night of the new moon, which is shrouded in darkness and during which the sun and the moon seemingly encounter each other, and an epiphany." (Karl Kerenyi, Athene, p41)

Finding Aphrodite and Psyche

2008-01-10T13:37:00.000+10:30

'african venus; d sinclair '06

"..can we realise that we are each, in soul, children of Aphrodite, that the soul is a therapeutes, as was Psyche, in the temple of Venus - that is where it is in devotion - the soul is born in beauty and feeds on beauty, requires beauty for its life...

...psyche is the life of our aesthetic responses - that sense of taste in relation with things, that thrill or pain, disgust or expansion of breast; these primordial aesthetic reactions of the heart are soul itself speaking." (hillman, thought of the heart, p39)

Actually, I'm not all that sure that Aphrodite or Psyche can be 'found'. Not that its impossible to know them, only that the 'searching' may be fruitless - because they're experiences of the senses and the emotional body, and in as much perhaps only need to be recognised as and when they arise.

When we feel something and the thought 'beautiful' surfaces, where is it is any of it surfacing from, but within? Aphrodite is surely a necessary part of our inner workings, as much as is needed in the outer, physical cosmos.

Thomas Moore writes about Aphrodite 'rising from the sea' as per her creation myth - and this is very apt. Beauty originates from the unknown depths; rises through the body, catches in the throat, takes away breath, and puts a blindfold on one's other faculties.

Oh, I'm just musing - waxing poetic. There's no better subject to do it on.

Yes, Aphrodite is more than Beauty, but as a starting place, we can't do better. If there were a map of the human cosmos, Beauty might be found were land meets water, and the unconscious meets lived experience. Beyond there is Pleasure and then Desire, past mountains where warm breezes blow and earth's fires burn with melted ores spill over into green forests.

I have to believe that until we can get in touch with our inner beauty, our inner Aphrodite, we are closed off to a whole realm of sense and taste - and life. The beach will be closed, so to speak, forget the volcanic springs, the river mouth, the forest.

I took life drawing classes at the School of Art; enrolled in the course without really thinking about it and realised with horror on the first day that life drawing involves drawing naked people. Naked people!

For an ex ballet dancer the idea of physical 'imperfection' (that is, anything less than the ideal ballet dancer's body) is hard to, er, well, stomach.

After a while it became clear to me the 'imperfect' bodies - people - had a beauty of their own that had nothing to do with any ideals of mine. It's as though looking without ego - and nothing is better for stripping away ego than doing something so new, in the presence of a naked person no less - gives a new perspective on form.

Hillman calls for us all to practice that which the classical texts call notitia - seeing and imagining through the heart. Its about looking - really looking - and seeing things, not our ideas of things. Its allowing without describing.

Its like seeing through childs eyes - before Old Mother Bone Maker comes along and names everything, defining and setting in stone the world around us. Before being taught that this is 'self' and this is 'other' - when, without knowing what things are, everything is amazing and interesting, and there's no difference between 'it' and 'me'.

Its an old cliche; beauty is in the eye of the beholder - but its the eyes of soul that are calling it, because like calls unto like. This is a truth that takes practice to realise.