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

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

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)

bibliomancy for the end of an era...

'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

"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

"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...

...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...

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...

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...

"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...)