…and now a word from another blog

ies

Memoirs of a Female Vagrant

Mary Saxby (1738-1801): 

The girl who ran away with the gypsies

 

Mary Saxby’s autobiography, Memoirs of a Female Vagrant, was published after her death in 1806, and it is fascinating story of a rebellious 18th century woman.

 

Mary was born in London, in 1738. Her mother, Susanna died early, and her silk-weaver father John Howell joined the army, leaving Mary to be passed from ‘one relation to another’, never staying long, ‘in consequence of my perverse temper’. Her father eventually returned with a ‘serious’ stepmother, much to Mary’s displeasure, and before reaching her teens she ran away from home.

She lived on ‘rotten apples, or cabbage stalks’ and ‘what the hedges afforded’, while fending off ‘wicked men’ and tramping the countryside around Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire, and Buckinghamshire. Soon, Mary was ‘nearly perished with cold and hunger’ and ‘in a dismal plight’, and would have died, if she had not found a protector, ‘a poor travelling woman’ with three daughters of her own. [read more at Writing Women’s History]

Libra 29: Walking the Line

Libra 29: Humanity seeking to span the bridge of knowledge

On Wednesday, 7 August 1974, shortly after 7:15 a.m, Philippe Petit stepped off the South Tower and onto his 3/4″ 6×19 IWRC (independent wire rope core) steel cable. He walked the wire for 45 minutes, making eight crossings between the towers, a quarter mile above the sidewalks of Manhattan. In addition to walking, he sat on the wire, gave knee salutes and, while lying on the wire, spoke with a gull circling above his head.

His audacious high-wire performance made headlines around the world. When asked why he did the stunt, Petit would say,

 “When I see three oranges, I juggle; when I see two towers, I walk.”

 

Fluke Skywalker: The Philosophy of Philippe Petit

Asteroid 8236 Gainsborough: the fag end of life

"Pinkie" by Thomas Lawrence (Sarah Barrett Moulton) and "The Blue Boy" by Thomas Gainsborough

 

The painting of The Blue Boy is possibly the most well known work by Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788)  Gainsborough was noted for the speed with which he applied his paint, and he worked more from his observations of nature (and of human nature) than from any application of formal academic rules. The poetic sensibility of his paintings caused Constable to say, “On looking at them, we find tears in our eyes and know not what brings them.”

Of himself, Gainsborough said:

 “I’m sick of portraits, and wish very much to take my viol-da-gam and walk off to some sweet village, where I can paint landskips (sic) and enjoy the fag end of life in quietness and ease.”

Transiting Gainsborough in Gemini trining Saturn in Libra could speak to a career change, sea change, tree change colour in the lives of some folks.  Finding the balance between what pays the rent, what you do for love, and what nourishes the creative heart. Midlife changes, midlife crises, golden wood landscapes and Orpheus’ lyre (or liars).  Did Gainsborough “paintshop” his patrons to look less jowlier and rotund than they were in life?  It’s a canny artist who knows which side the bread is buttered on and how to keep jam on the table.

Gainsborough was a musician who played the viola and once said, “I paint portraits to live, landscapes because I love them, and music because I can’t leave it alone”.

Natally, Asteroid 8236 Gainsborough dwells on the cusp of my Eighth and Ninth houses at Taurus 7º A woman of Samaria, which is also the placement of Asteroid Lilith.  When swapcards were objects of childhood desire in the 60s, I had the Blue Boy and Pinkie and knew nothing about the artist.

However, in the art world, it seems that the real companion piece to the Blue Boy was the Pink Boy! 

The Pink Boy (Master Nicholls) - Thomas Gainsborough

Image source: ArtConversation

Curious and curiouser.   Could Gainsborough also speak to matters hidden in the closet?  The importance of being earnest? Or maybe it’s all about what’s fashionable and the fashionably vague. A subset of people that honk off my Lilith.  Perhaps Gainsborough is simply about aesthetics and the psychological concept of “presenting well”.  Of painting over the inner turmoil with an outward appearance of impeccable grooming.  Judging books by their cover and not noticing the tiny cigarette burnholes in the clothing……

One time, I got smartly dressed in a cream raw-silk suit and went to the Mall.  My credit card was close to being maxed out, yet I wanted some retail therapy. Being so well-dressed, the shop assistant assumed there was no reason to ring Head Office for authorisation of my purchases.  Real easy to trick the vague with a bit of glamour!  I may have missed my calling as a Con Artist. but who needs to rack up that much karma?  Not this little dack bluck!

Gainsborough also painted a portrait of Georgiana Cavendish, The Duchess of Devonshire and, curiously, I have borrowed out the 2008 biopic The Duchess from the library to kick back and relax with.  I might make myself some scones and have a Devonshire Tea!

A Gallery of Pretty Pictures

Portraits and Portraiture ~ Museum Network

About Pinkie at Wikipedia

Hue Consulting ~ Why is blue for boys and pink for girls?

Pink Think: Becoming a Woman in Many Uneasy Lessons – Lynn Peril

Ten Weeks Later

Ten weeks after the car accident, it’s a grey, wet and windy pre-spring Melbourne day.  Without a car , I would arrive very windblown and soggy-bottomed if I had to be somewhere today.  One of my favourite quotes was made by comedian Billy Connelly, who observed that there’s no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong clothes.  Looking out the window, I thought “Dayum, I haven’t got a Driza-bone”, which is an iconic Australian oilskin coat.  I’ve acquired a couple of pairs of comfortable walking shoes, a shopping jeep in which to haul home the 15L bag of kitty litter, and have backpack will travel.  I always thought it would be fun to do the backpacking thing when I was younger, so that chook has come home to roost in a quirky way. 

Being catapulted back into the lifestyle of the carless, I have enjoyed the reconnecting with the relationship between my body, clothes, the community in which I dwell, and the Elements.   Been a long time – a real long time since I’ve not had my own vehicle and been reliant on my feet to get me places.  Once I got my driver’s licence in 1979  and first car, a Hillman Hunter station wagon my father bought for me that was barely roadworthy, I stopped walking and could venture further afield.  Go to places off the beaten public transport track and not be limited by timetables, or inconvenienced by strikes.

In the week before I survived the roadtrauma, I was frustrated with a lot of things and sent up the prayer, “Remove all the obstacles from my path , or take me out of the game”. 

A few hours before the fateful collison, I had been around at the Library blogging. When I left the Library, an amazing – and unusual – seafog had descended over the suburb. I love fog.  I drove around to the beach, parked the car, and walked out on the sand. Awed by the banks of rolling cloud floating just above the water.  The beach was deserted and it was so beautiful and silent.

I remembered the last time I saw a seafog like that.  It was the last day of a retreat-like holiday I took to the small coastal village of Robe in South Australia in 2000, which was a profoundly lifechanging year.  The seafog rolled in and as I walked along the main street with its quaint 19th century architecture, I thought “It’s bloody Brigadoon!” and laughed.

Eleven years later, ten weeks ago, I stood on the beach marvelling at the life around me and thought “It’s a good day to die’.  Less than four hours later, as I faced the inevitability that my car was going to hit a brick wall, I felt nothing other than interest in what was about to transpire.

I had been warned that a major car accident was coming down the pike and that it wouldn’t be my fault ~ and it wasn’t. I had known for months before the event, I simply asked that I not see it coming. Not know when or where or how. The day before the accident, I had to brake swiftly to avoid a collision with a car driven by a man wearing a hat, a dog sitting next to him, who blithely failed to give way to me, and sailed through the intersection.  Didn’t even look.  I watched this car drive away, wondering if my eyes were cheating me, if that car was real or a fetch giving me the heads-up.

I have dwelled in this area for five-and-a-half years now and am familiar with the local driving habits, the reckless driving, the failure to pay attention.  In 32 years I’ve never had an accident, had always been a conscious driver able to read the traffic conditions, and not get caught up in the collective aggro and rush-rush. From the first day I sat in the driveway of the Hillman Hunter, as the engine warmed up, I was intensely aware of the responsibility of being a driver, and being on the road. That I could be killed, or kill others if I didn’t pay attention.  Didn’t keep my wits about me. I suppose you could say I received a ‘divine download’ that day for the sense of clarity I felt before driving off, has never left me. The awareness that a moment’s inattention on my part could have detrimental ramifications on the life of another.

The severe bruising to my left breast and pectoral region from the seat-belt has faded. My wounded knee, which hit the underside of the dashboard, no longer hurts and I have also lost my fear of  having a panic attack on public transport. Which  isn’t to say I don’t have moments of anxiety, I do.  After 25 years of avoiding the whole public transport deal, it’s a totally new experience again and enormously liberating.

The attachment to my car was the obstacle. The concerns surrounding meeting the on-road costs: insurance, registration, maintenance, petrol were weighing me down.  As long as I still had my car, I had no reason to use buses or trains and my fear of having a panic attack went unchallenged.  The strategies I had developed for coping with a panic attack remained untested in the last arena, for reasons that I became aware of in the weeks immediately after the accident.

I had stopped using public transport in the mid-80s after being tired of being verbally assaulted by drunken and belligerent fellow passengers, all of them men.  I became scared of men and their capacity for random acts of violence.  A few years later I would develop Panic Disorder with Agoraphobia, but I had ceased using public transport for another reason, that isn’t that irrational.  I’m a woman. Men are physically bigger and stronger and, when under the influence of alcohol or drugs, unpredictable.

I used to be a barmaid when I was 18-20. Worked in some pretty rough pubs in Melbourne and New Zealand surrounded by violent outbursts, wiping the blood off the walls after the regular Friday/Saturday night stoushes.  I loved working as barmaid. Wouldn’t be the first time, not the last, that I would love something that was not good for me. 

 I can choose to view the loss of my car in the negative, or I can choose to interpret the evidence of the last ten weeks that it hasn’t been a negative loss, rather a necessary shedding of an attachment that was holding me back.  Adapt and overcome.  Been a lot easier than I thought it would be.  Been a lot of fun actually. I remembered how much I loved riding on trains, all the books I read commuting to work, and looking out the window at the passing scenery.

There’s a view across the suburban treetops to Mount Dandenong from the train as it passes over a high bridge that is breathtakingly beautiful. The holy mountain of William Ricketts. I recall the author J.K. Rowling saying that she received the inspiration for the Harry Potter books while riding on a train…..and that is an encouraging thought.

All the obstacles have been removed in so many uncountable ways.

More Heads-Up

Navigating The Best of Times, The Worst of Times: Part I and Part II ~ Blue Light Lady

Asteroid 31 Euphrosyne

On this day, September 1  1854, Scottish astronomer, James Ferguson, discovered a large main-belt asteroid; the first asteroid found from North America, named after the second Charite in Greek mythology, Euphrosyne (Mirth). 

Euphrosyne is said to be a loosely-packed rubble pile.

 “The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth”

 Ecclesiastes 7:4

The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton is one of my most favourite books ~ and movies.  Gillian Anderson, she of The X-Files, delivers a pitch-perfect portrayal of hapless heroine, Lily Bart.  The themes of The House of Mirth are classic and timeless: society & class; wealth, marriage; freedom & confinement; respect & reputation; morality & ethics; women, femininity and appearances.  The Age of Innocence is the anima to the animus of The House of Mirth.

Nothing much has changed…not really….. except that a whole bunch of moneybags and robber barons went down with the Titanic ~ and, gee, 2012 is going to mark the 100th Anniversary of that event, which in my view, eclipses the whole Mayan Calendar malarkey.

Transiting Euphrosyne gives us the Sabian Symbol Taurus 18º A woman holding a bag out of a window (to catch all that rubble fallout in no doubt)

Now, I bet y’all expect the usual Greek mythology clap-trap about Euphrosyne?  Naaaah…that’s too easy and ho-hum!  The story of this Euphrosyne is more way more relevant to the themes of the Mirthful One, and the interpretation of the Grace of Cosmic Jokes in the natal chart. 

I designed and oversaw the building of a house once.  A monument to my folly in soooooooo many ways. In my natal chart, Euphrosyne is holding hands with Eris in the Eighth House.  Tragedy and Mirth.  Yuk it up…..I am!

The Cross of St Euphrosyne of Polatsk (replica)

Saint Euphrosyne of Polatsk (1110–1173) was the granddaughter of a prince of Polotsk, Vseslav.  Refusing all proposals of marriage and, without her parents’ knowledge, she ran away to the convent of which her aunt was the abbess and became a nun. later Euphrosyne would found her own convent, spending her time copying books, distributing the money she earned amongst the poor.  She also built two churches, and one, the church of The Holy Saviour, still stands today and is considered to be the most precious monument of early Belarusian architecture.

Towards the end of her life, Euphrosyne  undertook a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, where she died sometime after 1167. Her body, after the conquest of Jerusalem by Saladin in 1187, was carried by the monks to Kiev and deposited there in the Monastery of the Caves. It was only in 1910 that the relics of the saint were brought back to her native town of Polatsk. Her feast day is celebrated on May 23.  Euphrosyne is the only virgin saint of East Slav origin. (Sourced from Wikipedia)

In 1910, Edith Wharton published a collection of short stories entitled, Tales of Men and Ghosts.

Orcus at Virgo 2º gives us the visual of A large white cross upraised, while the hypothetical  Transpluto-Isis Leo 30 tests our personal integrity with An unsealed letter forming a serendipitious tredecile with Euphrosyne’s woman left holding the bag  A woman holding a bag out of a window.  Emptying the vacumn cleaner bag, mayhaps?  Don’t let the cosmic dust get in your eye…….

Click here to view the souvenir stamp created for the 850th Anniversary of the Cross of St Euphrosyne of Polatsk.

Just for fun, we have Euphrosyne of Alexandria, patron saint of  the Bleeding Oblivious.

Image sourced from The Official Website of the Republic of Belarus

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

Asbolus……off course

In Greek mythology, Asbolus (English translation: “sooty”) was a centaur. He was a diviner who read omens in the flight of birds. When Heracles came to visit the centaur Pholus, Pholus opened a jug of wine for him which belonged to all the Centaurs; Asbolus saw Pholus do this and brought the other Centaurs running. The party got rowdy and a battle ensued in which Pholus and Chiron, as well as Asbolus, met their deaths at Heracles’ hands.

Asteroid 8405 Asbolus ~ Astrologer, Philip Sedgwick, says that each Centaur bears a particular gift of healing, and defines Asbolus like this:

This Centaur insists that one always, always must follow their intuition. Typically real life circumstances demand their payment for failure to adhere to instinct. Leading charges against causes not worth engaging bring short circuits of life efforts and a significant loss of energy. Studying intuition and psychic development feed the protocol of Asbolus. Learning augury or reading the omens and totems of life restore Asbolus-like guidance. [read more about Asbolus]

Sooty is a British glove puppet bear and TV character popular in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and other countries. The children’s television show which bears his name has continued in various forms since the 1950s and, according to the Guinness Book of Records, is the longest-running children’s programme in the UK. He was 60 years old on 19 July 2008 and, as this was close to Nelson Mandela’s 90th birthday, Sooty sent him a birthday message [read more]