mercury stands still

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...

"...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

'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...

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

"...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)

"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)

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

"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 new moon in scorpio...

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

and for a new moon in libra...

"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...

"..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...

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...

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

"...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

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...

'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...

'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?

'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...

'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

'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

'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)