Showing posts with label Karl Kerenyi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Karl Kerenyi. Show all posts

26 August 2008

dark moon..or ..Saturn in Virgo?


'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)

25 February 2008

bibliomancy, mischief and the anatomy of a dream

"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.

14 January 2008

bibliomancy for a Monday morning




"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)