A shot of Jack

 

Eupraxia

Eve Lurie shared these thoughts back in 2007 when Diana Covington’s interview with the late great John O’Donohue was published in the Sun Magazine in April of that year.  I have had John’s book Eternal Echoes since December 2004;  I might read it properly one day. 🙂   This is one of the earlier cards I have made (Nov 2009); this article seems to go with it.  In a funny way, this card is about when I was a barmaid and the trays of glasses we used to bung into the dishwasher.   

When it all gets a bit too pretzel-shaped, I like to kick back with a shot of Jack……..always does the trick.

The Unseen Life That Dreams Us by Eve Lurie

I must read John Donahue again. An interview with this  lovely ex Catholic Priest in the Sun Magazine talks about how we all need times alone, times to reclaim that’ wilderness of ours’. ‘How wonderful’, he says,  ‘it is to come together with a woman who has retained that wilderness’ (the term is not defined). One simply has to imply that this means not having been domesticated by the relationship and retaining one’s original tendencies. Different tendencies than one’s mate.

And how the common ideas about what compromises a relationship these days  serves to essentially fu— it up. i.e. the couple tries to merge, compromise until a new entity is formed (if the merge is successful), if it is not, the relationship ends in divorce. The new entity is a wan version of the two individuals that became one. Of course, this is occasionally untrue. the merge is successful. Each person retains some semblence of their original personality, they each maintain their  own baliwick in the business of life together, work, eating shelter, entertainment, knowledge, socializing, play or leisure activities. It is the experience of these occasional couples that stand as a beacon to those who long for a life of togetherness.

More often these days, people are finding that they like having everything their own way, even if it means that they are totally alone.  More time is spent at the computer, reading, or responding to, other people’s ideas in the comfort of their own isolated module. Sometimes expounding on ideas read from books. It is all inside their minds, and all comes from that history they carry with them. There is little chance for real change since all the  input is from within. Oh yes, there are writings and talking to people, but there are no confrontations. These are the meat of change. No — they are not pleasant, but real change seldom comes from pleasure. I am not advocating that one get into a relationship so that one can change, however, there is something to be said for trying to make it as a unit in life, at least for a concerted time. There will always be time to be alone. People leave, people die, people go off for one reason or another.

And what about the joy of intimacy? Cousin Stephie once said, “He doesn’t get it, life is about our connections to each other” I don’t remember who she was talking about, but I have found, that although it is a joy to be wild and free. It is also a joy to connect on a personal level. To have someone in your life that you retain an interest in, as well as them retaining an interest in you.

The joy of intimacy is as sweet as the joy of being wild and free.

And there is joy of connection with other humans, but it must be a meaningful connection about things that are important you both of you. That is what makes the connection.

A relationship might be customized. What does it mean to be there for someone, Does this mean that you must live together, travel together? If you find someone in which you are interested, consider, what do you want from each other, really want. It doesn’t have to be all one way. And, what can you give, really give? And how do you have to live to retain yourself, and what do you have to offer if you merge.

Image Credit: Violet Hour Muse

Echoes from Jane

Jane Roberts, 8 May 1929 – 5 Sept 1984

In Modern Greek, goldfinches are called kartherinas; the word for ‘heart’ is karthia. The relevant collective noun in English: a ‘charm’ of goldfinches. The goldfinch is also a symbol of Christ’s passion.

Kozminsky Symbols for the Natal Chart of Jane Roberts, channel of the entity known as “Seth”

Third House

Pallas Athene/Hylonome 29º Pisces: A bat flying at night in an old graveyard

Hygeia 30º Pisces: A man trudging along a rough road, dragging a mass of heavy chains. A strong horse in a cart standing idly near.

Asclepius/Varuna/Eris 2º Aries: A man with a sword in his hand falling through a skylight of coloured glass

Transneptunian Hades 8º Aries: A silver axe shattering a shield of iron.

Transneptunian Admetos 9º Aries: A Roman general gaudily apparelled receiving a wreath of flowers from an empress.

Uranus 10º Aries: A ship illumined with the rosy rays of morning sailing towards the rising sun.

Elvis 16º Aries: Wild flowers growing amidst the corn in a sunlit field.
Denotes a person of charm, a lover of freedom- mental and physical-of nature, and of simple loveliness whose works in life will be blessed with success, and whose individuality will make itself felt amongst men. It is a symbol of Abundance.

Venus/Kassandra 22º Aries: A pilgrim crossing himself in front of an ancient temple, an overdressed official and a soldier mocking him.

IC 27º Aries: A huge hour-glass, the sands in which are running low.

Fourth House

Okyrhoe/Hekate 2º Taurus: A heart crowned on the summit of a barren rock jutting out of the ocean–a bevy of white sea-birds speeding towards it from the east in crescent form.

Ceres 4º Taurus: The arena of a circus during a night performance, the ringmaster in the centre urging forward the movements of a large white horse galloping round the ring, a lady gymnast standing on the animal’s back holding a hoop of fire.

Transneptunian Kronos 6º Taurus: A judge in his robes of office handing a book to a student, who is stretching out his hands to receive it.

Chiron 11º Taurus: A monk on a rocky road giving drink and food to a poor traveller who has fallen by the way.

Moon 17º Taurus: A sea-gull flying over the waters of the ocean.

Sun 19º Taurus: An archer, dressed in red, firing arrows at the Moon.

Vulcan 20º Taurus: A flight of white eagles.

Fifth House

North Node/Jupiter 22º Taurus: Hand holding a torch amidst the darkness.

Orcus 23º Taurus: St. Michael slaying the Dragon in a shower of black rain.

Denotes one with strength of purpose and ability to sustain trials. The Dragon is lust, corruption, end the cold moistures of the earth. St. Michael is the life, solar energy, conqueror of decay; the black rain the evil which corruption draws. So when the native realizes her soul force he becomes a veritable victor over the monster into whose jaws so many unwarned and unguarded fall. It is a symbol of Victory.

Hephaistos/Fibronacci 26º Taurus: A giant of benevolent aspect, with his foot on a broken sword, tearing up the laws of the world by which men have been governed for centuries. Behind him are broken bags of golden coins, which are falling in a shower over a precipice.
Denotes a child of the new age whose thoughts contend against orthodoxy, systems, war, and the accepted justice of the times. She is gifted with a powerful and convincing individuality, strong in wisdom, worth, and excellence. His mind is dominant, and she is morally and mentally brave. It is a symbol of Iconoclasm.

Vesta 2º Gemini: A military officer seated on a heap of arms studying a map which he holds in his hands

Alkestes 5º Gemini: Little children playing near an old wrecked ship on the seashore.

Mercury 9º Gemini: A hand holding a document on which is a crown and royal seal.

Sixth House

Transneptunian Vulkanus 13º Gemini: Two men playing at cards, a man standing behind one player making signs to his opponent.

DC 1º Cancer: A curious ring set with a large heart of white onyx.

Seventh House

Eros 11º Cancer: A number of maidens, crowned with garlands of wild flowers, dancing on a green lawn.
Denotes one of bright and joyous spirit and friendly nature whose desire it is to spread happiness and contentment wherever she goes. The native will always be much loved and popular. He comes to the world with a message of love, life, and hope, and a mind which resists the encroachments of evil. It is a symbol of Simplicity.

Pluto/Odysseus 17º Cancer: A band of merchants on camels traveling through the wilderness.

Mars 28º Cancer: An old mill-wheel lying on the bank of a lily pond, with pretty creepers growing over it.

Medea 2º Leo: A roll of papers having dropped from the hand of a dying scholar is eagerly caught up by an eminent professor on whose face there is a look of triumph.

Transneptunian Zeus 7º Leo: A book, on which is a crown, resting on a golden throne.

Eighth House

Vertex 12º Leo: A man of martial and distinguished bearing giving alms to the poor.
Denotes one of brave and generous disposition who is an earnest and sincere champion of the oppressed and who is one of that great band who cannot be deaf to the moans of the suffering many. She is a militant, generous force, and in his philosophy “charity covereth a multitude of sins.” It is a symbol of Humanity

Transneptunian Cupido 25º Leo: A poet reading his verses to a group of ladies in an old castle garden.

Pandora 24º Leo: An old rusty sword, over which grass is growing, outside a rustic cottage.
Denotes one who, after struggling and fighting to gain ascendancy in the world of illusion, realizes in his later life the futility of it all, and throwing away her aggressive sword he retires to a life of peace and simplicity, whilst the sword rots to decay and the tender grass covers it as the flowers over a grave. It is a symbol of Renunciation.

Neptune 29º Leo: A man climbing a ladder and helping others who strive behind him. At the top, a veiled figure holds out to him a wreath of stars.

Transneptunian Apollon 6º Virgo: A large ballroom in which men and women are dancing.

Europa 11º Virgo: A king, seated in a chariot drawn by two stags, throwing coins to some peasants who are singing on the roadside.

Mnemosyne 15º Virgo: A radiant rainbow, in the centre of which is the sun in its brightness.
Denotes a lover of nature in her grandeur, one of artistic, mystic, and philosophic mind, who will move about a great deal and travel to various places. He is capable of spreading the light of truth and of helping many to see and appreciate its marvels. This degree is a fortunate one and promises much. It is a symbol of Arising.

Ninth House

Transneptunian Poseidon 30º Virgo: A heap of bright yellow oranges blown from the tree by the wind.
Denotes one who suffers much deceit and whose hopes are threatened.  Of a sincere and spiritual nature, she dislikes, to find fault with the actions of others, and she goes her own way whether they hurt her or no. Fate is strong in her life, and she is forced by circumstances to accept its ruling. It is a symbol of Circumstances.

Cheshire Cat 10º Libra: An old hermit, in a cave, grasping a crucifix.
Denotes one of a conservative and religious mind who is drawn towards solitude. She has many troubles, and endures mortification and suffering, but he directs her thoughts to the grand ideal which materializes as life advances, and this to is happiness. It is a symbol of Solitude.

MC 26º Libra: A successful candidate for Parliament addressing the people after an election.

Tenth House

Ariadne 4º Scorpio: Sword maker tempering a sword.

Echo 10º Scorpio: A revolving star which throws off many colors and shades of color.
Denotes one capable of receiving, translating, and presenting many shades of opinion, chiefly as regards philosophies or sciences with which he is identified. She is unorthodox in thought, but reasonable, desiring not to condemn, but rather to enlighten, others. She may travel a great deal, but money does not cling to her, and she must avoid risks of all sorts. Her wealth is in herself. It is a symbol of Discrimination.

Juno 21º Scorpio: A double headed giant, in his right hand a club, in his left a tree, roots and foliage.

Eleventh House

South Node 22º Scorpio: A tax gatherer demanding dues from a poor poet.

Waldemath Dark Moon 2º Sagittarius: A woman of angry countenance holding a dagger in her hand.

Twelfth House

True (Osc) Lilith 15º Sagittarius: A painter at his easel in a forest upland, observing not the heavy black clouds which betray an approaching storm.

Black Moon Lilith (Mean) 29º Sagittarius: A chariot decorated with garlands of flowers, broken down on the roadway.

Galactic Centre

Black Moon Lilith (Mean) Sabian Symbol 28° Sagittarius: An old bridge over a beautiful stream.

Saturn 30º Sagittarius: A shield, with a gorgon’s head embossed on it, attached to a column.

ASC 1º Capricorn: A man, armed, rising out of the earth.

First House

Part of Fortune 2º Capricorn: A revolving disc of light, red centre surrounded by a black rim. The colours are pure and distinct.

Pholus 3º Capricorn: An old man seated on a throne in the clouds with his right foot on a sword. A large bright star is above his head and two pillars of light are on either side.
Denotes one of genius whose gifts raise her far above the common things of earth, enabling him to comprehend sublimities. What she feels and knows he endeavors to clothe in a dress of vibrating colors to charm the children of earth and to raise them to dreams and contemplations of a glory beyond all material thought and understanding. It is a symbol of Immortality.

Medusa 4º Capricorn: Persephone rising gracefully from the under to the upper world. The sun is shining, and the surrounding country is rich in fields of corn, fruits, birds, and flowers, whilst butterflies are sporting round her head.

Psyche 10º Aquarius: A woman, blind and in chains, in a magnificent and brilliantly lighted room.
Denotes one fated in the strongest sense of the term.  She may do things she will regret and from which suffering may come. She should take hold of herself as a rider does a restless horse. Let her learn to open her eyes and to strike off her chains, and she will know the beauty which surrounds her. It is a symbol of Narrowness.

Second House

Lucifer/Desdemona 2º Pisces: An old man sitting beneath a leafless tree with bread in his hand and a bag of money by his side.
Denotes one who will be no stranger to suffering. Directly or indirectly she benefits through people older than herself. No matter how important  her position in life, she is limited. She feels for those whose portion of earth life is but pain and she relieves when the pained plead. It is a symbol of Clemency.

Merlin 6º Pisces: Pirates tying a captive to a tree by the seashore. An old sailor hidden behind the rocks and foliage watching and waiting, knife in hand, to set him free.

Isis 8º Pisces: A slave merchant selling a beautiful woman in an Eastern marketplace.
Denotes one who is destined to have power over others and who may be forced by circumstances to obey the wills of stronger forces.  Hers is a peculiar life of importance, but not one of absolute free will. It is a symbol of Responsibilities.

Kozminsky Symbols drawn from Placidus Chart for 8 May 1929, 11:27pm, born Saratoga Springs, New York.  Chart provided by Astrodienst.

Waters tumbling over echo canyon
Falling with the faith of eaglet wings
Corridors are filled with wolf pack howls
Guardian of this fortress of mystique

I could just make this my addiction
This place where heart and soul collide
This place where time has been suspended
Where my desires come alive

I wanna be where you are
Everywhere invisibly
I wanna be the storm that fills you
Melts way on summers wings

You can’t just take away the hunger
You can’t just wipe the memory clean
And if you make me your addiction
You’ll slowly draw me from my skin

I wanna be where you are
Everywhere invisibly
I wanna be the storm that fills you
Melts way on summers wings
~ Echo Canyon lyrics, Susan Aglukark/Ben Mink

in Ash Canyon at Echo Canyon State Park, Nevada

Image credit: sangres.com

Isidore Israel Kozminsky was born on 25th October 1870 into a Prussian Jewish family who had immigrated to Australia via London a few years before his birth. Kozminsky was a well-known Jewish occult and esoteric author, reputed to have been a leading member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. His works reveal a very broad knowledge of esoteric tradition and astrological knowledge. During his life Kozminsky wrote several valuable books on astrology and numerology.

In 1917 he published his work on the zodiac degrees in a book named ‘Zodiacal Symbology and its Planetary Power’; which is an invaluable tool for interpreting natal charts in greater depth. In this book, Kozminsky describes each degree of the zodiac in terms of its planetary vibration, symbol and interpretation. When ascendant, midheaven or planet has additional minutes of arc, he recommends that the interpretation for the next degree be applied; hence 17Leo14 is classed as 18 degrees Leo.

Kozminsky, along with his wife and two children moved from Australia to London around 1935, presumably because London had established itself as the centre of esoteric and occult tradition by that time and though Kozminsky had a doctorate in archaeology and owned a well established jewelry business it was esoteric tradition that became his lifelong passion. He died in London in 1940 aged 70. Having survived two war time bombings he was knocked down an escalator on the London underground and sadly never recovered.  [Sourced from Cornerstone-Astrology]

Musing on the Sabian Symbols (with pictures)

Over the last couple of years, I’ve been exploring the Sabian Symbols and their many facets and they are the most wonderful prompts for active imagineering, transforming, accessing higher information, winkling out hidden meanings and for pathworking the planetary aspects. Recently, I read Dane Rudyhar’s perspective on their origin: when Elsie and Marc sat in the park.  Dane writes:

Marc Jones has related it to the type of occult Brotherhood which apparently existed in ancient Mesopotamia (whence the name “Sabian” that he has used for the group of students he has been directing and teaching for nearly half a century).But whatever the exact manner in which the Sabian set of symbols was produced, it is not enough merely to say that “they work.” What has to be clearly understood is the nature of their validity and what is really implied in their existence and character. One may speak of inspiration from some ancient Brotherhood or the presence of an occult partner in the work, but it is obvious that the scenes and images visualized by Elsie Wheeler are entirely modern and, what is more, in many instances strictly American in character. They contain references which even a European, especially one living in 1925, would have some difficulty understanding. They belong to the collective consciousness of the average educated American.Thus we have a significant antinomy: randomness versus internal structure, and a purely American mentality (or mentalities, if we include that of Marc Jones) versus a postulated archaic occult source of inspiration. Such a dualistic situation is not unusual in occult or spiritual training, for there the extremes meet and interact to produce a total transformation of the consciousness. In this sense, the polarization of the highly intellectual and abstract mind of Marc Jones, many of whose concepts link him with the medieval scholastics, and of the mediumistic middle-class mentality of Elsie Wheeler also implies a kind of dialectical process. The occult and the commonplace are synthesized in the symbols, which is another way of saying that they should be understood at two levels: the archetypal-structural and the existential. The symbolic images or scenes are existential and relatable to the mostly ordinary experience or dream fantasy of the collective American consciousness; through the commonplace and the collective, one may reach the archetypal level at which a cyclic sequence of phases occurs, each phase meant to actualize a specific quality of being and endowed with a structural meaning because of its rank and function within the cycle-as-a-whole, the Eon. (sourced from Mindfire)

Earlier this year, as I was reading the book, The Devil in the White City about the 1893 Columbian Exposition held in Chicago, which brought us the invention of the Ferris Wheel and so many antecedents of technologies we derive benefit from in the 21st century; I was guided to refer back to the biography of Marc Edmund Jones to follow up a hunch. 

I was not at all surprised to have my hunch confirmed; that St Louis-born Marc grew up in Chicago and as a five-year-old boy – moved through the fair. In Marc’s own words:

“I was fascinated [at the Columbian Exposition],” said Jones, “with relations in sequence and particularly in two areas: one was precious stones, which varied in color and in value. The sequence in terms of preciousness puzzled me. Why were some more precious than others? Nobody explained. I had the same experience with varnished samples of different kinds of woods. Some were more valuable than others. Here again was the same problem of sequence. So from the age of five on I had a major worry, a phenomenon that I call sequence.” 

 He also would have visited Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show that was set up next door to the World’s Fair. Buffalo Bill having been denied permission to set up his Wild West Show within the grounds of the Columbian Exposition.  A somewhat embarrassing financial decision for the Exposition’s bean-counters.  

Marc’s comments inspired me take a much closer look at the Sabian Symbols, especially in light of Dane Rudhyar’s identifying the Sabian Symbols as belonging to the collective consciousness of the average educated American, and the deep impression the Heaven-on-Earth magic of the Columbian Exposition, with its striking buildings designed by the creme-de-la-creme of American architects and other visionaries, made on the average American: Could Elsie Wheeler have plucked the images for the astrological degrees from the memory piggybank of Marc’s puzzling five-year-old Self?  

In the midst of all this magical mojo in Chicago, behind the scenes a rather cunning serial killer was active, building a block-long three-story hotel in which visitors to the Columbian Exposition would stay. He preyed upon vulnerable women and others that rented rooms. This hotel was later dubbed “The Murder Castle”, and the author of The Devil in the White City, interweaves the duality of wonder-and-wickedness that coexisted during this period in a most riveting fashion. Erik Larson’s book is a must-read, especially if I have got you thinking about the Sabian Symbols. 

I’ve done my research into the nature of the exhibits and 95% of the Sabian Symbols can be attributed to things that little Marc saw, objects that were delivered from around the world. The latest inventions, futuristic drawings, pictures and the American Indian themed symbols? Remember Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show………. 

Leonard DiCaprio purchased the film rights to Larson’s nonfiction book in 2010, so I really hope a movie is in the can soon.

Consider that this World’s Fair had the same effect as a Harmonic Convergence with some potent energies being seeded and along comes five-year-old Marc, the age of Innocence and with his unique destiny still veiled, and he’s thinking about things that nobody explained. Give me the child until he is seven and I’ll show you the man..St Francis Xavier. For a five-year-old like Marc the Midway and Pavilions of the World’s Fair must have been as impressive as Disneyland today and more. From the emotion of AWE, that Pearsall says is our eleventh emotion, Marc’s receptive child-like purity was perfect alchemical soil for those energies to have been planted in.  He chose Elsie Wheeler as the Medium for the Sabian Symbols because she was less worldly-wise than other candidates………and may not have been worldly-wise enough to have negotiated a percentage of the royalties from his subsequent book either. Bygones.

Elsie did not attend the 1893 World’s Fair, she was six years old, had developed juvenile rheumatoid athritis and was still living with her family. One parent had already died, and she and her four siblings would be orphaned the next year. Due to her spectacular degree of clairvoyant ability, as Rudhyar put it, I feel that she did get to go to the World’s Fair… via the snapshots taken by Marc’s five-year-old Self in a Vulcan mind-meld kinda way.  (Vulcan being the esoteric ruler of Taurus, (Venus the common) the White City was a most beautiful Venutian place).

The world “Sabean” is very similar to the Latin word “Sabini” or “Sabin”  that we know as Sabine.  The Sabines were an Italic tribe that lived in the central Appennines of ancient Italy, also inhabiting Latium north of the Anio before the founding of Rome.

Consider the classical architecture of buildings constructed for The Columbian Exposition.  Also that this World’s Fair marked an American Renaissance; a coming-of-age in art and architecture that put America “on the map” in the higher echelons of those visionary circles.

Consider that the tarot is believed to have originated in Northern Italy.  La dolce vita!

How did the Sabian Symbols get their name?  This offering from the Sabian Assembly is revealing:

The students themselves picked the word Sabian, which was lucky because it afterward turned out that the Sabians were a Mohammedan group, and nobody knew just what they were. It is not a historically legitimate word for what we do, but it’s a good substitute, and it did represent people who were interested in what was then astrology. Later Jones would derive the word from the Hebrew phrase “Yahweh Sabaoth” or Lord of Hosts, referring to the Hosts as the potentialities or basis of all study in the Sabian work and calling it a convenient term for the pre-Biblical Mesopotamian mysteries “in lieu of the much abused terms Chaldean and Magian.” Significantly, the Koran entitles Sabians, Christians and Jews to toleration.

Close but no cigar!

The origins behind the Sabian Symbols is, as I have postulated, a far more simple story than the one Marc Edmund Jones and his students came up with. They were looking in the wrong place. Much has been written about the Sabian Symbols and Dane Rudyhar certainly uses some five-buck words that one should write down for use in future Scrabble games, yet simplicity is the keyword here. Think horses not zebras.

The Sabian Symbols are potent portals into the subconscious and their potentials are better activated if you step into the innocence and receptivity of your child self. Your Divine SeedChild and allow them to work through you, not wrestle them into submission via the complexities of the information you have accumulated. Each Sabian Symbol is a multifaceted precious gem, a piece from the Tree of Life with rings that can take us back and forward through time and dimension.

Dane Rudhyar felt that the Sabian Symbols needed to be reworked, yet I sense that he didn’t quite twig to the World’s Fair connection and was ‘blinded’ by his own considerable knowledge in all things esoteric and ancient.  His identification of the Sabian Symbol imagery being relevant to the American consciousness was the final piece that I needed to come forward with my thinkingWayoutsideofthebox theory, and post it on a blog that nobody reads. 

There is nothing “ancient” about the Sabian Symbols.  They are a modern living breathing and evolving tool ‘birthed’ at a truly magical time in the cultural history of humankind ~ a Renaissance period ~ and they hold those energies in trust for us to access at this time of a Mystical Renaissance. 

Consider that Caroline Myss, one of the foremost Mystical Teachers on the planet at this time, a medical intuitive who was born, raised and still lives in Chicago, and the thrust of her teachings, and you may understand the role the World’s Fair of 1893 played as a period of seeding for many things that are still waiting to be found……in your backyard, if you are an American.  Not in the sacred sites overseas, but underneath your very noses in your own heartland.

Chicago is also the resting place of America’s first saint, Mother Cabrini.

The Midwest….”America’s Heartland”….Chicago the “Windy City”…..the whispering winds of change. The World’s Fair served to tell the world that the city had “risen from the ashes” of the Great Chicago Fire. (The Phoenix is often referred to as a fire bird and burns itself in fire every 500-600 years. It burns itself to create a new fire bird, ready for another long life).

The 1893 Parliament of the World’s Religions, which ran from September 11 to September 27, marked the first formal gathering of representatives of Eastern and Western spiritual traditions from around the world.

Like I said, the Columbian Exposition had the energies of a Harmonic Convergence.  

I simply connect the dots.

The Parliament of Religions opened on 11 September 1893 at the Art Institute of Chicago. On this day Vivekananda gave his first brief address. He represented India and Hinduism.[79] Though initially nervous, he bowed to Saraswati, the goddess of learning and began his speech with, “Sisters and brothers of America!”.

Swami Vivekanada died on 4 July 1902.  He was a huge hit at the Columbian Exposition.  

“A bride with her veil snatched away” 12 Virgo 

This symbol is illuminated 4:32 PM EDT Sept. 3 (8:32 PM GMT, Sept. 3)

 Theme: Exposure.

“My personal contribution, of course, is a once-and-for-all matter to serve as groundbreaking or foundational work on which others can build their own characteristic way in their orientation to a world that continues to change as a necessity of its existence.” ~ Dr Marc Edmund Jones

Further Reading

Visit the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 at x-roads.virginia.edu

Asteroid 7256: Bonhoeffer

Asteroid 7256 Bonhoeffer is a mainbelt asteroid discovered on 11 November 1993.  The main asteroid belt is the region of the Solar System located roughly between the orbits of the planets Mars and Jupiter and is occupied by numerous irregularly shaped bodies called asteroids or minor planets.  Maybe half the mass of the belt is contained in the four largest asteroids: 1 Ceres, 4 Vesta, 2 Pallas, and 10 Hygiea.

Bonhoeffer dwells in my natal Sixth House at Aquarius 11 Man tête-à-tête with his inspiration.  With the triple energies of Mars/Orcus/Lucifer in the Eleventh House sextiling Pluto in the First House, their Fistful-of-Yod points right at Bonhoeffer, conjunct Pallas, sextile Ceres and quintile Hygiea.  Estoteric astrologer Alan Oken writes that the quintile is an aspect which will only have meaning in a chart of a spiritually progressiing individual, for it indicates the ability to harmonize the energies of the planets involved on an inner plane of understanding. It is an aspect of evolutionary potential.  Make that revolutionary.

Where is Bonhoeffer in your chart?  He embodies the archetypal energies of  Pastor, Prophet, Martyr, Spy, Maverick, Righteous Gentile.  On a sacred ordinary level, the placement of Bonhoeffer in the natal asks: What is the cause that you are willing to die for and is it a worthy one? Is your job “killing” you, your relationship, your family, your busyness, your diet, your addictions, your shoulds/musts/have-tos………your shoes?

I like Bonhoeffer.  He’s my kinda guy. 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Image Sourced: Living Wittily

The film Valkyrie claims to tell the story of the ‘July 20 1944’ plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler.  One name was missing……….

 Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) was a German Lutheran pastor, theologian and martyr. He was a participant in the German resistance movement against Nazism and a founding member of the Confessing Church. His involvement in plans by members of the Abwehr (the German Military Intelligence Office) to assassinate Adolf Hitler resulted in his arrest in April 1943.

A Long Loneliness

“Dietrich became a theologian because he was lonely,” said Eberhard Bethge, his friend and biographer.  Bethge could be right; Bonhoeffer’s dissertation, Sanctorum Communio (The Communion of the Saints) and many of his later works, such as Life Together,  dwell on the subject of creating Christian communities.

Bonhoeffer’s opposition to the Nazis left him isolated in many ways.  His support of the Pastor’s Emergency League and Confessing Church placed him in opposition to many established churchmen he had admired.  Restrictions on his right to speak and publish prevented him from exchanging ideas with others.  His rejection of anti-semitism set him apart from a society propagandized into hysterical jew-hatred. His work with the Schwarze Kappelle had to be carried out in secret.

By 1943 his greatest consolation might have been his engagement to Maria von Wedemeyer. 

They were an unlikely couple: Maria von Wedemeyer was a vivacious, fun-loving girl of 18 and Bonhoeffer was a 35-year-old religious scholar.  He made her a bet that she could teach him to dance; she said he was a hopeless case.  He responded that, of the two of them, he was the better cook.  Her innocent enjoyment of life was a tonic for a man whose phones were now tapped and correspondence read by the German government.

“You must know how I really feel and must not take me for a pillar saint…I can’t very well imagine that you would want to marry one in the first place– and I would also advise against it from my knowledge of church history,” he wrote to her. 

Three months after the couple announced their engagement, Bonhoeffer was arrested.

There are a number of memorials in Germany honoring those who fought the Nazi regime from within.  A plaque at Flossenburg commemorates Bonhoeffer, Canaris, Sack, Oster and Gehre; another in Berlin honors von Stauffenberg and the German Resistance.

But Bonhoeffer left another memorial, a living legacy.  His life and work retain a meaning beyond a daring attempt to end a brutal dictatorship; they are more than the musings of a theologian contemplating his own death.  His writings have influenced Martin Luther King, Jr., Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Thich Nhat Hanh. They point to a way that all people of conscience can exist in a flawed world:

“I discovered later, and I’m still discovering right up to this moment, that is it only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. By this-worldliness I mean living unreservedly in life’s duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities. In so doing we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously, not our own sufferings, but those of God in the world. That, I think, is faith.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer,  July, 1944.

Maria von Wedemeyer.

Would you dance if I asked you to dance?
Would you run and never look back
Would you cry if you saw me crying
Would you save my soul tonight?

Would you tremble if I touched your lips?
Would you laugh oh please tell me these
Now would you die for the one you love?
Hold me in your arms tonight?

I can be you hero baby
I can kiss away the pain
I will stand by you forever
You can take my breath away
~lyrics “Hero” Enrique Iglesias

Bonhoeffer was condemned to death on April 8, 1945, by SS judge Otto Thorbeck at a drumhead court-martial without witnesses, records of proceedings or a defence in Flossenbürg concentration camp. He was executed there by hanging at dawn on April 9, 1945, just two weeks before soldiers from the United States 90th and 97th Infantry Divisions liberated the camp, three weeks before the Soviet capture of Berlin and a month before the capitulation of Nazi Germany. Like other executions associated with the July 20 Plot, the execution was particularly brutal. Bonhoeffer was stripped of his clothing and led naked into the execution yard, where he was hanged with thin wire for death by strangulation.

Maria stayed faithful to Bonhoeffer to the very end.

References:

Deafening Silence ~ Valkyrie’s Forgotten Man: Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Bonhoefferblog

Prison Writings in a World Come of Age: The Special Vision of Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Man of Destiny

Dancing to the Muse of Time

Arabesque

The bodies of traumatized people portray “snapshots” of their unsuccessful attempts to defend themselves in the face of threat and injury. Trauma is a highly activated incomplete biological response to threat, frozen in time. ~ Peter A. Levine from Memory, Trauma & Loss [read full article]

The process of SoulCollage™ as developed by Seena Frost is a form of somatic healing. Through the deceptively simple act of cutting and pasting images, your mindbody subconscious develops the negatives of the “snapshots” of repressed trauma memories.  The psyche is more delicate than we know and the vicissitudes of life take their toll in ways we are dimly aware of.  We develop a carapace from the conditioning and enculturation into our society. We form defence mechanisms that serve to protect us, yet over time become security jackets of subtle and not-so-subtle physical, mental and emotional discordances. 

Last year I made this card from a collection of images that appealed to me. As I was pondering over what this card had to say to me, I was swiftly drawn back to a memory of when I was 12 years old.  My parents and I were sitting in the loungeroom when a butterfly flew in through an open window.  I started to chase it and as it fluttered up high, began leaping up to catch it.  My mother had been sewing the previous day and had dropped a pin on the carpet.  Of course, I jumped right on it, driving it deep into the soft flesh between the big and second toes of my right foot. I crumpled up on the floor in a ball of agony.  The force had broken the pin and considering the length of the shard, my parents felt there was no reason to take me to hospital.  My mother prepared compresses and applied them to the angry red swelling.

Three days later as I was still hobbling about and in pain, my mother took me to the local GP, who poked and prodded around. My foot was very painful and I was a little scared of what was going to happen if he said there was a fragment of pin still embedded in my foot. However, the GP declared that he didn’t think there was any pin fragment embedded in my foot and administered a tetanus needle. Which I was worried he was going to do!

The diary I still have from 1973, records that I hobbled around in pain for a good month. I can recall playing “chasey” at school and not being able to run as fast as I used to, and I was sucking up the pain. One day at home, sitting cross-legged on the floor inspecting my foot, I could see a black dot ~it was the pin fragment working itself out.  (The rest of the pin that the GP said wasn’t there!)  My father, sitting in his chair and smoking his pipe behind me, saw what I was doing and told me to come over so he could have a look at my foot.  He then  asked my mother to fetch a pair of pliers and when I twigged that he intended to remove the pin fragment himself with the pliers, I made a bee-line for the door. Anticipating my response, my father already had a firm grip on my leg. I struggled harder ~ fought ~ until he manouevered me into some wrestling hold he must have seen on TV,  jammed his knee into my stomach, twisted my leg up behind me like a pretzel, told me to “effing stay still”  and then proceed to remove the pin with the pliers as I howled and carried on like I was being murderated.

Of course, I survived.  In fact, after a day or two, my foot was fine and I had forgotten all about it.  Business as normal with school and playing.  My mother was so proud of how brave I had been, that she took the 3/4″ long pin fragment, threaded it through a piece of paper, and placed it on the mantle-piece over the fire.  Where it stayed for the next 15 years.  A monument to her carelessness.  I never walked around barefoot if my mother had been sewing after the butterfly incident. (I haven’t tried to catch butterflies since either)

And I had forgotten all about this……until I made this card and it asked me a question.  How come your father didn’t make the effort to drive you the 10 minutes to hospital to have the pin removed with the benefit of pain relief?  Why did he treat you like an animal?

An answer lay within a traumatic experience my father had when he was 11-years-old, a boy in the north of England. His older brother, Walter, had been given a bicycle for his 14th birthday yet was forbidden to ride it until their father came home from work. The story goes that Walter “mithered” their mother, until she relented and let him take his bright shiny new first bicycle for a ride. He rode down a hill and collided with a tram ~ broke his leg.  Taken to hospital, Walter was treated for the broken leg and everything was fine.  That is until he developed septacemia and died.  Blood poisoning.  This tragic event tore my father’s happy family apart.  His father, inconsolable and crazy with grief, blamed the mother, eventually driving her out of the home and forbidding her from seeing her surviving children again; my father and his younger sister.  None of the family know what ever happened to my grandmother.  Her story is a mystery that may never be solved this side of the veil.

My father was a very fear-filled man.  Naturally, I was never allowed to have a bicycle. Which as a kid living in a suburb that was on the frontier of 1960s Melbourne, was fairly restricting in terms of what I could do and how I would get there.  Plus I was the odd one out; all the other kids had bicycles and I was left out of a lot of social things that involved riding bikes. (I learned to ride when I was 27). 

The textures of the floor-coverings in the image I used for this card, speak to the many textures of meaning, pain, grief & loss this Soulcollage™ card holds for me.  Not just my pain, but that of my father who never spoke at all about anything.  He had amputated his feelings.  In December 1983, my father died from a dissecting aneurysm of the aorta.  As his death was sudden and unexpected at the age of 63, he became enshrined in my memory as a Protector ~ that is until I made this card and began to clear the fantasy.

Tearing down that shrine revealed that I had absorbed my father’s irrational fears and anxieties. I am a natural empath and as a child I exhibited all the symptoms of  separation anxiety. When my mother suggested to him, when I was about 5 or 6, that I be taken to see a child pyschologist, he shut my mother down: “There’s nothing wrong with her!”  He felt I would grow out of whatever it was that my mother was concerned about. 

Well, I grew into IT! Now I know the origins of my Panic Disorder with Agoraphobia. 

Since making this card, I have entered into a deeper relationship with my bodymind and soul.  Removing the layers of  “daddy’s little girl” and understanding the archetype of the Ambivalent Caretaker up close and personal.  The emotional healing that cascaded down from this one card involved the retrieving of my Feminine Self and shifting the residue of my father’s energetic imprint out of my chakra system.  Plus there was some righteous feminist rage swirling around.  With a Chiron Return, this card was a great opener for a can of worms I didn’t even know was hidden in my psyche. The issues were personal, collective, geographical and historical. 

 When I first made this card I entitled it “Dancing on the edge of the precipice”.  It’s all about balance.  Collages of memory define us, especially the memories that are not shared.  My father was a stoic and silent man.  His heart issue was silent……….and deadly. Of course, he never went to a doctor to be checked out.  He did have a premonition that he was going to die two months before he did. We had one last family holiday together and one day, he asked me to drive.  I glanced in the rearvision mirror and noticed him rubbing his left arm.  “You’re going to have a heart attack” I thought.  I didn’t share my concern, it felt silly; he was always a robust man, rarely ill. I didn’t know then that I had just received a clear intuitive hit.  Other people were psychic, not me.

The ruins at the base of this card are of the Oracle at Delphi.

This card reminds me of what I am.  A medical intuitive………. and how well my father taught me to stay silent.  Do I regret not speaking up that day?  Do I regret not persuading my father to go see a doctor to get checked out?  Would he have listened to me? Would he have gone?  Or would he have been overwhelmed by the knowledge that he had a life-threatening condition which needed imminent surgery?  That is-  if  his condition was deemed operable in the first place and it very well may not have been.  My father believed, as far as death went, that when your time is up, it’s up.  A fatalist yet underneath his stoic exterior lived a scared 11-year-old lad.  It is that little boy I have compassion for.

I share this healing story to illuminate the process of SoulCollage™ as a gentle tool for shamanic retrieval of  misremembered selves. Not lost, misremembered.  Our stories are interwoven and intrinsically connected.  In working with this card, I resolved the ” karmic” energetic family inheritence from my paternal side. I healed a time-line. 

“Each one of us here today will at one time in our lives look upon a loved one who is in need and ask the same question: We are willing to help, Lord, but what, if anything, is needed? For it is true we can seldom help those closest to us. Either we don’t know what part of ourselves to give or, more often than not, the part we have to give is not wanted. And so it is those we live with and should know who elude us. But we can still love them – we can love completely without complete understanding.”  ~ Norman Maclean. 

August Full Moon: Ambrosia

29º Capricorn: A woman reading tea leaves.
The quest for inner understanding through all life-conditioning. First approach to reality. Desire to transcend routine.

With an emphasis on the Grand Cross of Juno-Uranus-Pluto-Mars this August Full Moon, I pulled up my transits for certain celestial bodies, and a typo brought asteroid 193 Ambrosia into the picture.

The Food of the Gods, well the English do have a special relationship with tea and I imagine with the rioting, there are lots of cups of tea being drunk in those Crisis Meetings they are having.

Lykourgos (Lycurgus) of Thrace, an antagonist of Dionysus, forbade the cult of Dionysus, whom he drove from Thrace, and was driven mad by the god. In his fit of insanity he killed his son, whom he mistook for a stock of mature ivy, and Ambrosia, who was transformed into the grapevine.

Ambrosia was transformed into the grapevine. Rather symbolic of the use the disenfranchised dispirited youth are making of Facebook and Twitter to incite violence and acts of malcontent and reckless indifference.

In ancient Greek mythology, ambrosia  is sometimes the food, sometimes the drink, of the Greek gods (or demigods), often depicted as conferring ageless immortality upon whoever consumes it. It was brought to the gods in Olympus by doves, so it may have been thought of in the Homeric tradition as a kind of divine exhalation of the Earth.

Lynda Hill writes that the Karmic Condition (the degree before) of the Full Moon is Aquarius 20: A large white dove bearing a message, yet the Full Moon and Vesta for me here in Melbourne, Australia will be at Aquarius 11: A man tete-a-tete with his inspiration.

Aquarius 11: Theme: In Spiritus.

Inspiration: When an idea, an insight, lights spirit higher, the courage to forge ahead also inspires others.

Today: Take a deep, powerful in-breath, like one taken after being under water for a long while when breaking through the surface.

That first breath of air is drawn into the lungs powerfully, hungrily. It is a very intensely individualized break-through of sorts. Call it the ‘good to be alive’ breath. Think of the moment before beginning a performance. Take a deep breath… then go.

In the world arena, inspired new starts gain international admiration and support. A sense of moving forward gains popular acceptance. An inspired sense of good fortune fuels intrepid positions in the face of even the greatest dangers.

Remain true to an inspired and light sense of spirit… but for heaven’s sake, do not speak of ‘rights’, ‘entitlements’ or ‘justice’. Do remember to breath: in spiritus. (Blain Bovee)

On January 29 2011, the Sun was at this same degree of Aquarius 11 and, paradoxically, way back in 2002, on January 29th, when then-President George Bush gave his State of the Union Address, he described “regimes that sponsor terror” as an Axis of Evil.

I don’t know about you, Thrill-seeker, but there’s something very organized about what’s going down in the Old Dart ~ and extremely malevolent.

In the Down Under of the Commonwealth, opposing Full Moon/Vesta is Medea in Leo at Leo 12: An evening lawn party. This speaks to social network mingling, Medea’s children, mosquitos…….kind of a Boston Tea Party vibe. 

Finger of FUBAR: Lucifer-in-Virgo sextile Hygeia-in-Scorpio quincunx Osculating Black Moon Lilith-in-Aries. 

In Sacred Contracts parlance, Lucifer-in-Virgo carries the healing challenge of Maintaining Personal Boundaries; Hygeia-in-Scorpio the healing challenge of Confronting Greed and Developing Personal Integrity; with the ‘doorway’ of Osc. Black Moon Lilith-in-Aries, the healing challenge of Birthing the Self.

We are all birthing this New Earth so patterned breathing ThrilSeekers……pant-pant-blow……hee-hee-Who…….pant-pant-blow….hee-hee-Who……pant-pant-blow…….hee-hee-Who…..

Lily-of-the-Valley, symbol of The Magdalen

Further Exploration:

The Choice Vine:  Mary Magdalene, the Sacred Whore, and the Benjamite Inheritance.

Asteroids: Standing Bear

Standing Bear

Image Credit: Newspaper Rock: where Native America meets pop culture

At some stage in the 1980s, I purchased and read Dee Brown’s Indian history of The American West, “Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee”: a consciousness raising experience if ever there was one. The names of the great leaders and warriors – Red Cloud, Dull Knife, Crazy Horse, Geronimo, Big Foot, Chief Joseph, Sitting Bull, Quanah Parker – to name but a few, are as familiar to me as that of my own.

The American West has always called to my soul and High School American History in 1977 was the white man’s version. I recollect being troubled by the concept of Manifest Destiny, yet was far too young to grasp its political godsanctioned seal of approval to decimate a People and rob them of their land.

The Greek Myths tell of Hercules demanding from Pholus the Sacred Vessel of wine, claiming that it had been left for him some four generations before. Pholus, in the spirit of a good host, gave Hercules the vessel, which annoyed the other Centaurs ~ one big squabble later ~ Pholus and Chiron are both dead.   The Battle of Little Big Horn?

Is the Centaur mythology just a grouping of tragic Greek stories, or may they have been prophetic.  A long-range vision of the fate of the indigenous peoples at the hands of the white man, and their insatiable greed and missionary insensitivities. 

Ah well…….no use crying over spilt milk.  I will cry no more forever over that which cannot be changed.

Standing Bear is positioned in my natal Fifth House and I was heartened to see, when checking the transits for this Scorpio Full Moon, that Standing Bear has returned, and is sextiling my Chiron Return.

Standing Bear Memorial Bridge

Image Credit: Flowrbx.

In the now almost forgotten civil-rights case of Standing Bear v Crook, that began on April 18 1879, it was argued that an Indian was as much a ‘person’ as any white man and could avail himself of the rights of freedom guaranteed by the Constitution.  Standing Bear was given permission to speak for his people:

I am now with the soldiers and officers. I want to go back to my old place north. I want to save myself and my tribe. My brothers, it seems to me as if I stood in front of a great prairie fire. I would take up my children and run to save their lives; or if I stood on the bank of an overflowing river, I would take my people and fly to higher ground. Oh, my brothers, the Almighty looks down on me, and knows what I am, and hears my words. May the Almighty send a good spirit to brood over you, my brothers, to move you to help me. If a white man had land, and someone should swindle him, that man would try to get it back, and you would not blame him. Look on me. Take pity on me, and help me to save the lives of the women and children. My brothers, a power, which I cannot resist, crowds me down to the ground. I need help. I have done.”

 On May 12, 1879, Judge Elmer S. Dundy ruled that “an Indian is a person” within the meaning of habeas corpus He stated that the federal government had failed to show a basis under law for the Poncas’ arrest and captivity. Standing Bear and his followers were immediately freed. The case gained the attention of the Hayes administration, which provided for some of the tribe to return to the Niobrara valley.[Source: Dee Brown]

The White Man Has the Last Laugh?

Newspaper Rock: Standing Bear Place Mats

Standing Bear Colouring Page ~ Nebraska History

Not Bloody Likely!

Standing Bear Looks to the Future ~ The Standing Bear Foundation

Here Where You Wish

The Spirale of SoulCollage

Image Credit: Blue Moon Creativity

From Whimsigals: An Angel Encounter

I thought I would start off with a story about meeting my Guardian Angel … I haven’t told many people … but, I am willing to share it with you 🙂

People who know me will understand that I am dealing with anxiety issues … that usually manifest as claustrophobia and/or agoraphobia.

One day I was out with my Mother visiting a very busy shopping centre … that has a multilevel carpark – complete with elevators and fire escapes.

I have shied away from the elevator in the past … on this particular day I chose to walk down the stairs and meet Mum at the bottom …

On my way to the stairs … I decided to take the fire escape … a moment of madness? I hoped it would be a shortcut.

Instead of the shortcut … it turned out to be a very long concrete tunnel with internal steps … which was taking me on quite a journey … I began to grow concerned about where the exit was … and how far away it would be … as the tunnel seemed endless.

As I came down another set of steps … I saw a woman at the end of the tunnel in front of the doors … I was relieved to see her and the end of my journey.

As I approached her, I noticed that she was wearing a uniform – white shirt, dark skirt, with a logo … she had a set of keys hanging from her belt/waist.

She was also sweeping the steps.

I explained how and why I came to be in the fire escape tunnel and that I was so happy that she happened to be there … and she smiled and let me out.

It was only afterwards that I realized that I had met my Angel … not only was she waiting for me … she was sweeping steps that didn’t need sweeping … as the tunnel and steps were perfectly clean!

SoulCollage® Playground

KaleidoSoul– A site totally dedicated to the art and wonders of SoulCollage, an intuitive collage process that anyone can do. Simple and exciting ideas.

Transforming Fear ~ 3 Card Reading, by Anne-Marie

Agoraphobia 1 Painting by Heidi Prange

JUST MUSING, THOUGHTS ABOUT WRITING AND RECOVERY
By Dinah Dietrich

Last evening was the annual Collage holiday party. It was the first time I ever attended. I would have liked to go before but was confined to the house by strapping anxiety/panic, immobilizing and paralyzing. So I am better now and I was able to attend the party. I’m told I am in remission, now, and that the illness I had is mostly done with. It’s like a broken leg in a cast, healed, the cast came off. Now it will take some time to get used to walking on the leg.

I have to take some time to get used to life again. I was in a prison of the mind, a mental illness, all my life almost. Yet, I am glad I lived; I have had enough good experiences and enough rich stuff to make it all worth it, even the excruciating mental pain. During a dark time, I grew somehow—It was certainly an experience of life, a difficult and odd one. I was a human being in great pain and turmoil, nearly hopeless for several years of it. I had enormous endurance strength. I have to give myself a lot of credit for making it through.

Now I am better I can go out into the world again—Rediscovering the world after being confined to the house by agoraphobia. I wouldn’t step off the porch.

Image Credit: Ricko, flickr

Life is like a bowl of oatmeal with just enough raisins to keep you going through it. A really close friend of mine said that back when I was a teenager. She was nine years older and was kind of like an older sister. For several years she was like family. So many things in my life seem that they would bear writing about. I have always liked writing, having written lots in the last twenty years. It’s more than a hobby, it’s a vocation.

Several years ago I had an idea for writing a memoir. I got a very good Dell computer from Operation Jumpstart, a past existing organization that helped financially with plans that people had for things they wanted to do, with either education or career, etc. At the time I had a plan to write a book, and wanted to do some other kinds of writing too. So I was thrilled to get the computer and I wrote and wrote and wrote.

Over several years I had lots of raw material for my book, which I planned as a memoir. I saved everything—It’s in an old hard drive, which means a lot to me. In future I may pay money to get the geek squad to help the info from the old hard drive. Also, I did back up everything on computer disc, and all of the discs are in a storage area. Don’t know, however, even if I could find the discs eventually, if they are still good after all the time in storage.

Don’t know yet how it will all resolve—Definitely want to retrieve old work , yet also thinking strongly about desiring to save up money and buy a laptop. I could tap into the internet at Barnes and Noble and possibly other places. Unfortunately at the MOMH group homes, the internet is not allowed. I think that to be most unfortunate. Because of this we are behind the times. We don’t have e-mail, Facebook , a blog, etc.

I really wish I could have a computer with Internet access.

If I get the laptop, I want to write something new, something I have never tried to do before. I have an idea for some stories, but not sure how it will all play out. Part of me wants to do something new, part of me wants to go back to the memoir. I certainly feel that I have a lot to say about my life experience—the illness, as well as everything else in my life.

Pandora and the Glue Pot

 Artist: Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema.  Born in Dronrijp, the Netherlands, and trained at the Royal Academy of Antwerp, Belgium, he settled in England in 1870 and spent the rest of his life there. A classical-subject painter, he became famous for his depictions of the luxury and decadence of the Roman Empire, with languorous figures set in fabulous marbled interiors or against a backdrop of dazzling blue Mediterranean sea and sky.

The Man from Onion Valley

One of the renowned leaders and philosophers in the history of Tibet, the fourteenth-century reformer Je Tsong Khapa, was said to have passed up the opportunity to take a lover as part of his advanced meditative pursuits.

He did not feel that his fellow monks were ready to understand, and so he chose to defer his lovemaking to another lifetime. In his day, this was quite an enormous sacrifice, because it was assumed that sexual intercourse was the most direct method of gaining a glimpse of nirvana.

Nevertheless, his commentary on the Cakrasamvara tantra shows an appreciation of the liberating aspect of femal sensuality and the ways in which this sensuality is equated with the birth of the subject.

In an initial read, as was probably intended by its authors, these sensual qualities are nowhere to be found. The tantra seems to be a relatively straightforward description of the rites and rituals of esoteric practice. In its first chapter, would-be practitioners are given instructions about how to draw a sacred mandala, a circle within which the transformational meditative processes can unfold:

Draw the mandala on a mountain,

In a medicinal valley or forest,

Near the bank of a large river,

Or in a primordial cremation ground.

The instructions do not seema at all ambiguous. One is tempted to rush through them without paying too much attention. Yet Tsong Khapa, The Man from Onion Valley, unpacked their secret meaning in his commentary. The mandala, he made clear, was to be drawn on a woman’s desire. All the metaphors, the mountain, the medicine, the valley, the forest, the riverbank and the cremation ground, refer to the infinite reach of a woman’s sensual delight.

Because her great bliss is imperturbable,

She is a mountain.

Mt Beerwah, Glass House Mountains, Queensland

Because lesser beings cannot fathom her profundity,

She is a forest.

Daintree Rain Forest, Queensland

Because her cavern is filled with nectar,

She is a cave.

Buchan Caves, Gippsland, Australia

Because her union of wisdom and skill is deep,

She is a riverbank.

Lying Nessus of Narcissus

Because she [knows] the natural state beyond birth and death,

She is primordial.

Kata Tjuta

Because she is the object of great bliss,

Her activity is natural.

 

William Rickett’s Sanctuary, Melbourne, Australia

Because she burns the views of early disciples and solitary achievers in the fire of great passion,

She is a cremation ground.

Ground Zero, Sept 17 2001

Text extrapolated from:

Open to Desire: the truth about what the Buddha taught – Mark Epstein, M.D.

Cool interview with Buddhist psychoanalyst Mark Epstein ~ In Defense of Desire ~ Integral Options Cafe

Kalapas: not another Greek island

Kalapa Festival

There is a belief in Buddhism that if you stay with a feeling long enough you will reach the bodily sensation beneath that feeling.

If you stay with bodily sensation long enough you will reach the biochemical reactions that produce the bodily sensation.

If you stay with the biochemical reactions long enough you will reach the molecular constituents that give rise to the biochemical reactions.

 And if you stay with the molecular constituents long enough you will reach the most fundamental particles, which cannot be further subdivided – called kalapas in the Pali language.

These kalapas, it is said, only appear to be solid particles: actually they are vibratory waves. The fundamental reality beneath sensation and feeling, according to Buddhist thought, is one of vibratory energy. Out of this fundamental wholeness, sensation and feeling arise. Into this fundamental wholeness, sensation and feeling dissolve. When we identify with sensation and feeling we identify with our suffering. When we follow sensation and feeling back to this ground of wholeness we move through suffering to healing.

~ Source Compassionate Touch: the body’s role in emotional healing and recovery, Dr. Clyde W. Ford, 1991

An Art Blog of Interest: Eric Whollem – A Map to Shambala/the Way to Kalapa

Further reading about kalapas (with pictures): Wisdom Quarterly – Ultimate Materiality: “Particles” (kalapas)

The Chronicles of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche: the bad boy of Buddhism