Sun in Scorpio - Cabernet resurrection
10:52 PM 11/1/2009
It's All Soul's Day! Sun in Scorpio is closely conjunct Mercury, and both are just past the square of Mars. Moon in Taurus is full, six degrees from the opposition. Moon is culminating, Sol in the 4th.
I soaked grape ash in purified water all day, and tonight poured the water into three carboys full of wine, as well as three gallon jugs full of what was left over and two glasses of the wine we most recently pressed. So far this new wine is interesting. We added oak spirals to it, and that increased the tannins noticeably. Other than that it has no sweetness or sourness, is almost watery. Steve thinks it will age well, and he's probably right. It is a dark, opaque purple. I think it has good energy, also, gentle and dignified, and very relaxing.
I see a silver Mercury-head dime. On the back is the image of a capitol building. The gods and monuments that stand over the symbols we have invested with our wealth bless us with the protection of our national angels and spirits, a form of magic considered a matter of national pride more than idolatry or totemism yet which does call intelligences who protect our interests. Assigning states and nations birds, trees, flowers and flags is as ancient a form of tribal magic as any, no different from the magical correspondences of the planets. That something as vulgar as national politics calls the spirits of the land to its aid shows that there is nothing humans do on a large scale which is not also of the natural or spiritual world, and even as we displace spirits from their natural settings we give them new purpose in the man-made world we replace them with. There is nothing not woven of the body of God, nor nothing profance that can endure.
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Saturn/Scorpio skrying
Saturn in Scorpio: Samhain!
6:40 PM 10/31/2009
Moon in Aries is sextile Jupiter. Saturn in the first degree of Libra is closely square Pluto.
The libation is our homegrown wormwood flowers tinctured in vodka. The bottle is in the shape of a skull and I consecrated it to Death during the last Venus-Mars conjunction. It's delicious, not too bitter at all, and sort of like chamomile-mint or pennyroyal, I think from the floral contribution. The energy of it is pretty intense. In fact this invocation was harsh; just doing the Scorpio pentagrams took me from feeling great to a twinge of headache. The libation is improving that actually. I'm glad I made it, this is an unusual flavor that I will enjoy getting used to.
There is a black sea at night with green phosphorescence under the waves. Deep red shapes like stingrays are swimming underneath, each a few meters wide and lit strangely from all around. the vision doesn't progress until I get into the water, I feel weighed-down and cold and it is unsettling; nor do I see much, I just feel enveloped in this substance. I have the thought of amniotic fluid, yet do not feel fetal so much as in an alien place having an alien experience of being slowly warped. I start swimming because again the scene is static, until I see a door into an underwater cavern. Though I open the door I greatly do not like the look of entering here, like death's back door, some disused portal, very dangerous. I swim up and away from it and leave the vision. That experience was claustrophobic and difficult to interpret.
6:40 PM 10/31/2009
Moon in Aries is sextile Jupiter. Saturn in the first degree of Libra is closely square Pluto.
The libation is our homegrown wormwood flowers tinctured in vodka. The bottle is in the shape of a skull and I consecrated it to Death during the last Venus-Mars conjunction. It's delicious, not too bitter at all, and sort of like chamomile-mint or pennyroyal, I think from the floral contribution. The energy of it is pretty intense. In fact this invocation was harsh; just doing the Scorpio pentagrams took me from feeling great to a twinge of headache. The libation is improving that actually. I'm glad I made it, this is an unusual flavor that I will enjoy getting used to.
There is a black sea at night with green phosphorescence under the waves. Deep red shapes like stingrays are swimming underneath, each a few meters wide and lit strangely from all around. the vision doesn't progress until I get into the water, I feel weighed-down and cold and it is unsettling; nor do I see much, I just feel enveloped in this substance. I have the thought of amniotic fluid, yet do not feel fetal so much as in an alien place having an alien experience of being slowly warped. I start swimming because again the scene is static, until I see a door into an underwater cavern. Though I open the door I greatly do not like the look of entering here, like death's back door, some disused portal, very dangerous. I swim up and away from it and leave the vision. That experience was claustrophobic and difficult to interpret.
Friday, October 30, 2009
Venus in Scorpio skrying
Venus in Scorpio - Rose hip elixir resurrection
9:11 PM 10/30/2009
Venus is in Libra trine Neptune. Moon in early Aries is not yet opposite Venus and is closely trine Mars in Leo.
I put a dropperful of this elixir in our cherry mead, and the result is superb! The flavor is excellent. This mead is transformed into a fertile and juicy elixir, very much the hip of rose. It smells and tastes round and beautiful, and the color is exquisite. I have never had a better Venus libation, in terms of energy also - it is filling my body with the sensation of light pouring through my heart and down my limbs, coupled with so much energy in my head that it hurts a bit unless I breathe deeply and slowly to move the energy down.
"So beautiful, almost evil - you're like butterflies in my head: you made me feel alive when I was almost dead" - lyrics this brings to mind
I think that this experience is challenging some energy blocks I've had bothering me for awhile. Also during the invocation I thought of the meaning of the Hindu part of my Venus talisman, "Love is stronger than death." What I think this is getting at is that even at the nadir of our lives when we are numb and everything is hollow and meaningless to us, there is a dormant seed that starts to grow and miraculously bring us back from this, and it is love so irrational and powerful that the beloved is as astonishingly breathtaking as a deity. It is not the person who is so powerful, it is the power of Venus to trigger an emotional resurrection and make even ice or desert bloom and live again. Such loves survives also the death of the beloved, who enters the whole world and makes of creation a heartbreaking song of eternal life. It can be called redemption, and makes visible to the blind the piercing beauty of God, which halts one on one's robotic journey and gives a holy purpose through feeling. People can change in a dramatic reversal, and it is this unexpected vision of Venus that brings a second chance to the person who has hit bottom and is finally ready to let their fear go - a lifetime of crystallization is broken open and volatized.
9:11 PM 10/30/2009
Venus is in Libra trine Neptune. Moon in early Aries is not yet opposite Venus and is closely trine Mars in Leo.
I put a dropperful of this elixir in our cherry mead, and the result is superb! The flavor is excellent. This mead is transformed into a fertile and juicy elixir, very much the hip of rose. It smells and tastes round and beautiful, and the color is exquisite. I have never had a better Venus libation, in terms of energy also - it is filling my body with the sensation of light pouring through my heart and down my limbs, coupled with so much energy in my head that it hurts a bit unless I breathe deeply and slowly to move the energy down.
"So beautiful, almost evil - you're like butterflies in my head: you made me feel alive when I was almost dead" - lyrics this brings to mind
I think that this experience is challenging some energy blocks I've had bothering me for awhile. Also during the invocation I thought of the meaning of the Hindu part of my Venus talisman, "Love is stronger than death." What I think this is getting at is that even at the nadir of our lives when we are numb and everything is hollow and meaningless to us, there is a dormant seed that starts to grow and miraculously bring us back from this, and it is love so irrational and powerful that the beloved is as astonishingly breathtaking as a deity. It is not the person who is so powerful, it is the power of Venus to trigger an emotional resurrection and make even ice or desert bloom and live again. Such loves survives also the death of the beloved, who enters the whole world and makes of creation a heartbreaking song of eternal life. It can be called redemption, and makes visible to the blind the piercing beauty of God, which halts one on one's robotic journey and gives a holy purpose through feeling. People can change in a dramatic reversal, and it is this unexpected vision of Venus that brings a second chance to the person who has hit bottom and is finally ready to let their fear go - a lifetime of crystallization is broken open and volatized.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Venus trine Jupiter - The Star
Venus trine Jupiter - The Star
6:51 PM 10/28/2009
Venus in Libra is exactly trine Jupiter at 17 Aquarius. Jupiter is in 10, Venus is in 6. Moon in Pisces is approaching no close aspects.
Once again, I'm working with Venus and Jupiter simultaneously and it just seems to make me mad. I don't know what it is about this combination. I ended up yelling at Steve.
I see the star pulse over the head of the woman, becoming extremely bright and casting forth rays. Sirius, the Sun behind the Sun, bringer of the fertile flood. The land is made fertile by the mountains, which store water as snowpack and then release to the rivers as this store melts over the spring and summer. This sustains the animals during the parching time of no rain, gathering the riverwater into joyous lakes and underground reservoirs. The mountains are the givers of life to the summer, and shape weather systems as cloud break against them. This is related to migration, especially of river fish. Animals will walk or fly long distances to find the water in places it is scarce, relying on the summer flood. The mountain as the storage place of water as ice is the flipside of its birth by fire. The Star is actually The Mountain.
6:51 PM 10/28/2009
Venus in Libra is exactly trine Jupiter at 17 Aquarius. Jupiter is in 10, Venus is in 6. Moon in Pisces is approaching no close aspects.
Once again, I'm working with Venus and Jupiter simultaneously and it just seems to make me mad. I don't know what it is about this combination. I ended up yelling at Steve.
I see the star pulse over the head of the woman, becoming extremely bright and casting forth rays. Sirius, the Sun behind the Sun, bringer of the fertile flood. The land is made fertile by the mountains, which store water as snowpack and then release to the rivers as this store melts over the spring and summer. This sustains the animals during the parching time of no rain, gathering the riverwater into joyous lakes and underground reservoirs. The mountains are the givers of life to the summer, and shape weather systems as cloud break against them. This is related to migration, especially of river fish. Animals will walk or fly long distances to find the water in places it is scarce, relying on the summer flood. The mountain as the storage place of water as ice is the flipside of its birth by fire. The Star is actually The Mountain.
Mercury in Scorpio
Mercury in Scorpio
5:38 PM 10/28/2009
Mercury in Scorpio is conjunct the Desc, exactly sextile Pluto, combust Sol and square Mars in Leo. Luna in Pisces approaches no close aspects.
I see an inky black whirlpool that seems full of terrible things, blood and secrets, whispers and stains from different times which still tell their tale. I feel grief and a sorrowing desire to right what has gone wrong, to avenge it, or atone. There is the desire to explore the forbidden, to unearth what has been buried, to silence the blood that is still calling out by answering it with justice.
There are many things that lay waiting, which have been put there by terrible acts, and the spirits which form of the blood and pain released in places of destruction become a blood of creation in the other world; it sets in motion the furious ones. Calling and binding a child of murder with further blood or iron gives intelligence and purpose to raw emotion, which exists parasitically once so shaped. Then they go where there is fear. But they hate the perverting mind of man, and the blood they wish to taste is that of the one who made them.
I sense that the blood of life (sexual fluid) repels them. It creates a different class of being; being the finest seed of the body, meant to be cast forth into the future, its purity is very high and it consecrates what it touches with life. It is as sunlight to shadow and obliterates the past in new becoming.
5:38 PM 10/28/2009
Mercury in Scorpio is conjunct the Desc, exactly sextile Pluto, combust Sol and square Mars in Leo. Luna in Pisces approaches no close aspects.
I see an inky black whirlpool that seems full of terrible things, blood and secrets, whispers and stains from different times which still tell their tale. I feel grief and a sorrowing desire to right what has gone wrong, to avenge it, or atone. There is the desire to explore the forbidden, to unearth what has been buried, to silence the blood that is still calling out by answering it with justice.
There are many things that lay waiting, which have been put there by terrible acts, and the spirits which form of the blood and pain released in places of destruction become a blood of creation in the other world; it sets in motion the furious ones. Calling and binding a child of murder with further blood or iron gives intelligence and purpose to raw emotion, which exists parasitically once so shaped. Then they go where there is fear. But they hate the perverting mind of man, and the blood they wish to taste is that of the one who made them.
I sense that the blood of life (sexual fluid) repels them. It creates a different class of being; being the finest seed of the body, meant to be cast forth into the future, its purity is very high and it consecrates what it touches with life. It is as sunlight to shadow and obliterates the past in new becoming.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Moon/Scorpio skrying
Moon/Scorpio (Monday, Sun in Scorpio)
11:54 PM 10/26/2009
Luna and Jupiter are exactly conjunct in the 7th house. I saw them together in the sky tonight. Luna is more widely conjunct Neptune.
I am in a wood filled with bare birch trees and dry leaves, very stark and still. I see beetles on the ground, and then many of them, a flood, all running past and behind me. I am caught up in a swell of emotion and turn to follow them. It is then that I sink into the earth, earth folding all around me and embracing me in its solidity, and when I see again I am in a very dark downward-sloping passageway. I am alone, and I feel the danger of the place; it is fetid, not clean, the entrance to a sewer. I descend until I am in the water, still in a dark passageway. I gigantic crocodile lunges towards me and past; I think it must be Sobek, and wonder why it did not challenge me. He said that it indeed was he, and that I may pass because I have honored him (on an altar I have his figure).
I emerge in a dry, dusty place of harsh sunlight, with ridges here and there, nothing growing. There is an excavation, and I see an ancient skeleton still half-buried in the dirt. Scorpions come toward me from the empty desert, and one offers me a scroll. I take it and open it, and it is full of glowing letters that I can't read but that seem to enter me as I unroll the paper and look at it. I feel filled with power. The Scorpion says these are the words by which one may pass unto immortality.
A dust storm arises from behind me, and I crouch over the scroll, thinking that I must protect it. The dust howls all around me, and then a see a figure coalescing in it, made of dust and wind. I think this must be Set, and am in awe that I have encountered him at last - never have I in all this time. I greet him, lord of storm and wasteland, lord of chaos, and he asks if I am an enemy of Horus. I do not say yes, but instead whose enemy I am. He is silent for some time and I wait. Then the storm vanishes.
I am aloft in the air in beautiful sunlight over a green and rolling land, where there is agriculture. I feel uplifted and joyous, free. I keep rising, and rise into a night sky filled with stars, and I think it is the velvet body of Nuit. I rise until I am alone in space. I am still holding the scroll protectively. I call for Barkiel Levanael and see a glowing form. I ask what is her nature, and she says,
"The gate of Hell and the gate of Heaven. Through me, a spirit can leave the chain of successive incarnation on the earth and enter an underworld, or the realm of the stars. I am the gate past which - if one can pass - all the concerns of your reality no longer exist."
And she shows me the swirling center of a galaxy, and lets me feel the massive forces, the stars interacting.
After I come out of this vision I feel jittery and there's a sense of surreality. It is quite different from my usual aftermath of invocation. I rarely feel ungrounded when I do these.
11:54 PM 10/26/2009
Luna and Jupiter are exactly conjunct in the 7th house. I saw them together in the sky tonight. Luna is more widely conjunct Neptune.
I am in a wood filled with bare birch trees and dry leaves, very stark and still. I see beetles on the ground, and then many of them, a flood, all running past and behind me. I am caught up in a swell of emotion and turn to follow them. It is then that I sink into the earth, earth folding all around me and embracing me in its solidity, and when I see again I am in a very dark downward-sloping passageway. I am alone, and I feel the danger of the place; it is fetid, not clean, the entrance to a sewer. I descend until I am in the water, still in a dark passageway. I gigantic crocodile lunges towards me and past; I think it must be Sobek, and wonder why it did not challenge me. He said that it indeed was he, and that I may pass because I have honored him (on an altar I have his figure).
I emerge in a dry, dusty place of harsh sunlight, with ridges here and there, nothing growing. There is an excavation, and I see an ancient skeleton still half-buried in the dirt. Scorpions come toward me from the empty desert, and one offers me a scroll. I take it and open it, and it is full of glowing letters that I can't read but that seem to enter me as I unroll the paper and look at it. I feel filled with power. The Scorpion says these are the words by which one may pass unto immortality.
A dust storm arises from behind me, and I crouch over the scroll, thinking that I must protect it. The dust howls all around me, and then a see a figure coalescing in it, made of dust and wind. I think this must be Set, and am in awe that I have encountered him at last - never have I in all this time. I greet him, lord of storm and wasteland, lord of chaos, and he asks if I am an enemy of Horus. I do not say yes, but instead whose enemy I am. He is silent for some time and I wait. Then the storm vanishes.
I am aloft in the air in beautiful sunlight over a green and rolling land, where there is agriculture. I feel uplifted and joyous, free. I keep rising, and rise into a night sky filled with stars, and I think it is the velvet body of Nuit. I rise until I am alone in space. I am still holding the scroll protectively. I call for Barkiel Levanael and see a glowing form. I ask what is her nature, and she says,
"The gate of Hell and the gate of Heaven. Through me, a spirit can leave the chain of successive incarnation on the earth and enter an underworld, or the realm of the stars. I am the gate past which - if one can pass - all the concerns of your reality no longer exist."
And she shows me the swirling center of a galaxy, and lets me feel the massive forces, the stars interacting.
After I come out of this vision I feel jittery and there's a sense of surreality. It is quite different from my usual aftermath of invocation. I rarely feel ungrounded when I do these.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Sun in Scorpio skrying
Sun in Scorpio
11:17 PM 10/25/2009
Sun in Scorpio is in a close approaching square to Mars in Leo. Luna just transited in a t-square from Aquarius, now separating. Luna is in a very wide trine with Venus in Libra.
I am the snake of the caduceus, the ever-self-renewing power of the Sun in the cells. I am the guardian of DNA, both in reproduction and in self-regeneration. I am of the darkness in that high-energy rays can knock off pieces of my name and cause me to have accidents in self-duplication. I am very keen on self-maintenance and self-defense, for flaws in identity are dangerous, and so are invading viruses. To be hijacked by alien information and compelled to reproduce it rather than make my own proteins is the fate against which I guard. I would sooner auto-lysis than be corrupted in this way. Thus, that is what I am, the guardian against corruption. I will kill what has been transformed into an agent of evil (genetic contamination such as cancer or infection) if I must, even if it is myself I must destroy rather than meet my end as an incubator of perversion, rather than tolerate its spread.
I'd destroy my own kind to stop an invasion, I'd destroy myself rather than give birth to abomination. Yet this is an extreme; for the most part I replenish, over and over, and make new again what has begun to degrade.
11:17 PM 10/25/2009
Sun in Scorpio is in a close approaching square to Mars in Leo. Luna just transited in a t-square from Aquarius, now separating. Luna is in a very wide trine with Venus in Libra.
I am the snake of the caduceus, the ever-self-renewing power of the Sun in the cells. I am the guardian of DNA, both in reproduction and in self-regeneration. I am of the darkness in that high-energy rays can knock off pieces of my name and cause me to have accidents in self-duplication. I am very keen on self-maintenance and self-defense, for flaws in identity are dangerous, and so are invading viruses. To be hijacked by alien information and compelled to reproduce it rather than make my own proteins is the fate against which I guard. I would sooner auto-lysis than be corrupted in this way. Thus, that is what I am, the guardian against corruption. I will kill what has been transformed into an agent of evil (genetic contamination such as cancer or infection) if I must, even if it is myself I must destroy rather than meet my end as an incubator of perversion, rather than tolerate its spread.
I'd destroy my own kind to stop an invasion, I'd destroy myself rather than give birth to abomination. Yet this is an extreme; for the most part I replenish, over and over, and make new again what has begun to degrade.
Saturn/Libra Invocation
Saturn and Libra
1:18 AM 10/25/2009
Saturn is in the final degree of Virgo, trine Moon in Capricorn. Moon is exactly square Mercury in Libra.
This invocation was intense. I felt the scales fall from my eyes in a way I'm not sure how to describe; I feel the deeper meaning of things is available to my consciousness in an everyday way. It is emotional. We had just watched Hellraiser, and though the movie was cheesy I think that was part of it.
We also did the pressing of our first batch of wine today. The wild yeast batch is very sour. The rest I'm a bit worried about; some was good, but of the three batches one smelled a little strange; it ended up getting mixed with the others because we were putting all three in two carboys. I hope we haven't ruined the whole experiment - the odd smell was like rubber, and then like dark beer. Meanwhile, I've been drying out some of the wine grapes, preparing to calcine them.
I have been thinking about the nature of the spirits of trial, who torture the impure with their own vices until they are cleansed by pain and confrontation. I've also been thinking about the need for a person who wishes to save the world to understand that world on its own terms - the nature of the people and the forces in it. Can it be done? I almost understand the need to face darkness, pain and evil, to have no guide but our inner sun, to be abandoned and without rescue in this place. When we wish to know what we do not know, we accept that this revelation will *not* be what we wish to know, it will be whatever actually is; and because we do not belong there, it will hurt us. To gain understanding we must go where we are strangers, and to really understand we must experience immersion in it; and this is incarnation. If we could stop when we began to suffer, we would learn nothing. This curiosity that we have about things better left alone makes all of us Pandoras, especially magicians. We dare assume the risk; and then it must run its course. We will not know what it means while it is happening. We survive by changing who we are. The trial is always fatal to who we were; but someone may survive, and that person will be who we make ourselves into by sheer force of will. And will that person be converted into a denizen of the place where he arrived a stranger, or will he overcome it after discerning the machinery behind the illusion? We can all swallow the lethal draft and forget who we were when we decided to come, accepting the land as our home and becoming enslaved by its ways. The change is not always for the better; to challenge the unknown may be the way of the hero, but the way is narrow.
1:18 AM 10/25/2009
Saturn is in the final degree of Virgo, trine Moon in Capricorn. Moon is exactly square Mercury in Libra.
This invocation was intense. I felt the scales fall from my eyes in a way I'm not sure how to describe; I feel the deeper meaning of things is available to my consciousness in an everyday way. It is emotional. We had just watched Hellraiser, and though the movie was cheesy I think that was part of it.
We also did the pressing of our first batch of wine today. The wild yeast batch is very sour. The rest I'm a bit worried about; some was good, but of the three batches one smelled a little strange; it ended up getting mixed with the others because we were putting all three in two carboys. I hope we haven't ruined the whole experiment - the odd smell was like rubber, and then like dark beer. Meanwhile, I've been drying out some of the wine grapes, preparing to calcine them.
I have been thinking about the nature of the spirits of trial, who torture the impure with their own vices until they are cleansed by pain and confrontation. I've also been thinking about the need for a person who wishes to save the world to understand that world on its own terms - the nature of the people and the forces in it. Can it be done? I almost understand the need to face darkness, pain and evil, to have no guide but our inner sun, to be abandoned and without rescue in this place. When we wish to know what we do not know, we accept that this revelation will *not* be what we wish to know, it will be whatever actually is; and because we do not belong there, it will hurt us. To gain understanding we must go where we are strangers, and to really understand we must experience immersion in it; and this is incarnation. If we could stop when we began to suffer, we would learn nothing. This curiosity that we have about things better left alone makes all of us Pandoras, especially magicians. We dare assume the risk; and then it must run its course. We will not know what it means while it is happening. We survive by changing who we are. The trial is always fatal to who we were; but someone may survive, and that person will be who we make ourselves into by sheer force of will. And will that person be converted into a denizen of the place where he arrived a stranger, or will he overcome it after discerning the machinery behind the illusion? We can all swallow the lethal draft and forget who we were when we decided to come, accepting the land as our home and becoming enslaved by its ways. The change is not always for the better; to challenge the unknown may be the way of the hero, but the way is narrow.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Venus in Libra skrying
Venus in Libra - Cherry brandy resurrection
11:50 PM 10/23/2009
Venus in Libra is crossing the IC and is trine Jupiter. Moon in Capricorn just passed the square with Venus and is otherwise unaspected; she is also closely conjunct my natal Venus.
I've had a fever today, but right now I feel okay. The ritual was powerful, I feel a lot of energy on the top of my head.
I just tasted the cherry mead we added honey to - it is so much better! The rest of the bottles won't be this sweet, since this one was only a third full when we added the honey ounce. The consecration made it feel very full of life.
The equality of men and women has been on my mind today, in terms of the concept humans have of God. That the male and female principles exist in a dynamic partnership is obvious everywhere in nature, and it is common to fall back on thinking of the divine, in its aspect as the oneness that unites all that is, in terms of the male principle only. I was thinking that due to this habit, the Golden Dawn tree of life even seems feminist at first since there are female concepts of god represented *at all*. But it isn't; the benefics are all male; the malefics are all female; both lights, Sun and Moon, are male.
I feel as though I've mistakenly tolerated a lot of chauvenism because I was raised in such a bitterly male-hating climate, and I wanted to make up for it by caring about the male perspective. This is funny, since it wasn't very long ago that young men still felt that way about women, wanting to be more sensitive and therefore taking a lot of shit. Now I want to cease perceiving this relationship as a power struggle, and start seeing it as a partnership. I want to see men and women go back to loving each other, and increasing the power of both by sharing their energy with one another - in a sexualized context or not. Furthermore, I wish to see us all cease the internalization of self-hatred that we sometimes take on as a sort of unconscious favor to the other (whatever type of other), putting them first out of guilt and then resenting them; it's no favor to any lover or friend to hate ourselves. In fact, self-hatred is the root of the persecution of people that we feel conflicted about due to the ways they do not mirror us.
Wishing to see through someone else's eyes, that's what this combination seems to be about. Self-love and self-hate, love of another for their differences and hatred of the same. We covet and condemn, we are fascinated and fearful, but what we need to do is to be human with each other and not define ourselves along a single axis of polarity.
11:50 PM 10/23/2009
Venus in Libra is crossing the IC and is trine Jupiter. Moon in Capricorn just passed the square with Venus and is otherwise unaspected; she is also closely conjunct my natal Venus.
I've had a fever today, but right now I feel okay. The ritual was powerful, I feel a lot of energy on the top of my head.
I just tasted the cherry mead we added honey to - it is so much better! The rest of the bottles won't be this sweet, since this one was only a third full when we added the honey ounce. The consecration made it feel very full of life.
The equality of men and women has been on my mind today, in terms of the concept humans have of God. That the male and female principles exist in a dynamic partnership is obvious everywhere in nature, and it is common to fall back on thinking of the divine, in its aspect as the oneness that unites all that is, in terms of the male principle only. I was thinking that due to this habit, the Golden Dawn tree of life even seems feminist at first since there are female concepts of god represented *at all*. But it isn't; the benefics are all male; the malefics are all female; both lights, Sun and Moon, are male.
I feel as though I've mistakenly tolerated a lot of chauvenism because I was raised in such a bitterly male-hating climate, and I wanted to make up for it by caring about the male perspective. This is funny, since it wasn't very long ago that young men still felt that way about women, wanting to be more sensitive and therefore taking a lot of shit. Now I want to cease perceiving this relationship as a power struggle, and start seeing it as a partnership. I want to see men and women go back to loving each other, and increasing the power of both by sharing their energy with one another - in a sexualized context or not. Furthermore, I wish to see us all cease the internalization of self-hatred that we sometimes take on as a sort of unconscious favor to the other (whatever type of other), putting them first out of guilt and then resenting them; it's no favor to any lover or friend to hate ourselves. In fact, self-hatred is the root of the persecution of people that we feel conflicted about due to the ways they do not mirror us.
Wishing to see through someone else's eyes, that's what this combination seems to be about. Self-love and self-hate, love of another for their differences and hatred of the same. We covet and condemn, we are fascinated and fearful, but what we need to do is to be human with each other and not define ourselves along a single axis of polarity.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Mercury in Libra skrying
Mercury in Libra
9:18 PM 10/21/2009
Mercury in Libra is trine Neptune. Moon in Sag is sextile Mercury and very closely sextile Jupiter. It is equally widely sextile Neptune and square Uranus.
I see brass scales swinging back and forth, the pans filling in rapid sequence with all the choices one could make, particularly economically - how do we know where to put our money? Do we choose based on reason and superior long-term value, or do we spring for an impulse that will soothe us emotionally? How do we know how our future happiness and prosperity will be affected by the choices we make today? How can we see past our habits to choices we haven't noticed yet? Is a methodical examination of our options the answer? How do we learn about our desires and goals and the choices we need to make to attain them? Is discipline and self-denial the answer? Are we swayed by envy and irrational associations? Are we swayed by glamour? Who profits from it when we make a mistake? How do we avoid confusion? How do we avoid deception?
One answer is to picture ourselves five years after making a certain choice, or many like it. What will our lives be like? Will we have anything to show for it? What will we be like? What kind of person do we think makes a choice like this? Is it true? Is this who we are? Is this who we want to be?
Emotions are fleeting, they come and go, and they can be educated. We need to look at the assumptions that provoke them. Emotions have underlying beliefs, whose validity need to be examined. We should make a plan in terms of our true goals, and what choices we need to make to get to them, and how to budget our resources to support those goals. A rational underpinning applied to even trivial decisions will alter our futures greatly, and we will realize a level of control over our what we will be based on all the details of our decisions about what we do with our time and our money. A free person is a person who troubles themselves to do this analysis, make a plan that is true to their own nature, and maintain discipline in sticking to it. Someone who doesn't do this will become a slave to their own appetites, and to the people who have done this work.
9:18 PM 10/21/2009
Mercury in Libra is trine Neptune. Moon in Sag is sextile Mercury and very closely sextile Jupiter. It is equally widely sextile Neptune and square Uranus.
I see brass scales swinging back and forth, the pans filling in rapid sequence with all the choices one could make, particularly economically - how do we know where to put our money? Do we choose based on reason and superior long-term value, or do we spring for an impulse that will soothe us emotionally? How do we know how our future happiness and prosperity will be affected by the choices we make today? How can we see past our habits to choices we haven't noticed yet? Is a methodical examination of our options the answer? How do we learn about our desires and goals and the choices we need to make to attain them? Is discipline and self-denial the answer? Are we swayed by envy and irrational associations? Are we swayed by glamour? Who profits from it when we make a mistake? How do we avoid confusion? How do we avoid deception?
One answer is to picture ourselves five years after making a certain choice, or many like it. What will our lives be like? Will we have anything to show for it? What will we be like? What kind of person do we think makes a choice like this? Is it true? Is this who we are? Is this who we want to be?
Emotions are fleeting, they come and go, and they can be educated. We need to look at the assumptions that provoke them. Emotions have underlying beliefs, whose validity need to be examined. We should make a plan in terms of our true goals, and what choices we need to make to get to them, and how to budget our resources to support those goals. A rational underpinning applied to even trivial decisions will alter our futures greatly, and we will realize a level of control over our what we will be based on all the details of our decisions about what we do with our time and our money. A free person is a person who troubles themselves to do this analysis, make a plan that is true to their own nature, and maintain discipline in sticking to it. Someone who doesn't do this will become a slave to their own appetites, and to the people who have done this work.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Mercury trine Jupiter
Mercury trine Jupiter - The Hierophant
1:49 PM 10/20/2009
Mercury in Libra is exactly trine Jupiter in Aquarius. Luna has just entered Sagittarius this moment. I have tried to work with the Mercury-Jupiter combination before and it has been the most challenging union for me.
I skryed the tarot trump The Hierophant, and this is my result:
These are the keys of death and hell, but what are they but new life and a new heaven? Turn them and go through the darkness of discorporation and fear into the light of eternity and bliss - for all things coalesce again, when the separated bodies are purified and reunited to make the Stone. I take you apart and change you, but you must take the key and walk through the door before I will do my work: there is but one thing, and you must not reject any part of it or the Stone will not form. All the dross of your life experience, which amounts to so much subjective misunderstanding, will be burned like rotting bodies once the essential wisdom has been extracted. Therefore you will die to your past. And since you think this mishmash of misunderstandings is who you are, you will seem to die to yourself. What you will get is truth, freedom and wholeness, for your body, soul and spirit shall at last be one creature, and the mind and the hand shall be as one - one eye, one hand, three in one. Action shall arise spontaneously from beingness; no more will clutter hamper vision and movement; the body will no longer seem as a prison, nor the mind a maze, nor the exterior world a hostile environment, nor the surfaces of things a deception.
Three fates: a spirit, an animal, a mirror of the mind of God. When they are aligned, nothing can resist the actions undertaken, nor can any vibration floating outward on the breath do anything less than become solid matter. I give the gift of complete manifestation absent aging and inner conflict. My sons are the sages, my daughters bring water to the thirsty, and our presence realigns those who behold us. We are peace through commitment to life, and our people are the soil we till, the divine monad the seed we scatter, one in all.
1:49 PM 10/20/2009
Mercury in Libra is exactly trine Jupiter in Aquarius. Luna has just entered Sagittarius this moment. I have tried to work with the Mercury-Jupiter combination before and it has been the most challenging union for me.
I skryed the tarot trump The Hierophant, and this is my result:
These are the keys of death and hell, but what are they but new life and a new heaven? Turn them and go through the darkness of discorporation and fear into the light of eternity and bliss - for all things coalesce again, when the separated bodies are purified and reunited to make the Stone. I take you apart and change you, but you must take the key and walk through the door before I will do my work: there is but one thing, and you must not reject any part of it or the Stone will not form. All the dross of your life experience, which amounts to so much subjective misunderstanding, will be burned like rotting bodies once the essential wisdom has been extracted. Therefore you will die to your past. And since you think this mishmash of misunderstandings is who you are, you will seem to die to yourself. What you will get is truth, freedom and wholeness, for your body, soul and spirit shall at last be one creature, and the mind and the hand shall be as one - one eye, one hand, three in one. Action shall arise spontaneously from beingness; no more will clutter hamper vision and movement; the body will no longer seem as a prison, nor the mind a maze, nor the exterior world a hostile environment, nor the surfaces of things a deception.
Three fates: a spirit, an animal, a mirror of the mind of God. When they are aligned, nothing can resist the actions undertaken, nor can any vibration floating outward on the breath do anything less than become solid matter. I give the gift of complete manifestation absent aging and inner conflict. My sons are the sages, my daughters bring water to the thirsty, and our presence realigns those who behold us. We are peace through commitment to life, and our people are the soil we till, the divine monad the seed we scatter, one in all.
Saturn conjunct Pluto
Well, here it is. Saturn is in the last degree of Virgo, the same as my Pluto, and will stay there until the 29th, when it finally enters Libra.
The feeling isn't as dark as I expected, it's more philosophical. I have the feeling that if I gave it some thought, the reasons why some things worked out the way they did would be clear to me; and I feel emotionally detached from my past, as though it was all the inevitable turning of gears with little rational reason for blame or repine. It's peaceful. _Maybe_ this is the detached hindsight typical of the afterlife, but how would I know? All striving is - not vain, but not what it appears to be. We wander a little bit in the dark here on earth and when we put it down, toil and time are put down with it; but meanwhile passions and ignorance are our lot, and wisdom here is just as cold, for without power foresight is dreadful.
So I'm looking at my particular passions and I see them as a little bubble I walk around in, relevant only to myself but coloring everything I see as if the world was made to satisfy them - in fact the world couldn't be more indifferent. I organize my perceptions in a personal hierarchy based on how relevant to my inner drives what I'm relating to seems. That fantasy land is all mine. But we can take a view we build in that way for the truth, and then are ever frustrated that nothing seems to behave as it should.
Focusing such passions on a person is a typical mistake, and leads to drama and disappointment. What other people are in themselves has nothing to do with you. People often do this mutually, for great sex and great hatred later. I totally see the severity of this error in myself. Indulging in fantasies about a person and waiting for them to happen is nothing but retreat into a world of self-created meaning that will surely collapse as reality fails to cooperate, and clinging to that meaning is the same as prolonging pain. Worse, we often encourage each other. This longing for our bullshit hopes and fears to externalize so that the world will resemble the inside of our heads, make sense and do what we want it to do, is a temptation that we even deliberately offer each other as if that slight sense of power makes any difference to our situation at all. We are not alone in the world, but we are always and forever alone in our personal bullshit fantasyland.
Would I slay my passions in order for a chance to experience communion for real, and not the unnatural and vain hope for "union" but all on my terms? This seems like the source of compassion - without the delusion bubble the real beauty and ugliness of things is visible, and it is so pathetic and exquisite. Moreover, it is all one thing - the continuity of it all is more noticeable. It is heart-stirring to behold without the distortions of desire and fear; the artist sees every subject as a universe. The evils that are normally hated seem like the actions of tormented prisoners whose minds have turned upon them like knives, cutting them whenever they move, and the simple natural beings that spontaneously form and grow everywhere seem like frozen starlight.
Oh hey, Jupiter is trine Mercury today. That's probably what I'm vibing with. It's pretty nice, refined and perceptive.
The feeling isn't as dark as I expected, it's more philosophical. I have the feeling that if I gave it some thought, the reasons why some things worked out the way they did would be clear to me; and I feel emotionally detached from my past, as though it was all the inevitable turning of gears with little rational reason for blame or repine. It's peaceful. _Maybe_ this is the detached hindsight typical of the afterlife, but how would I know? All striving is - not vain, but not what it appears to be. We wander a little bit in the dark here on earth and when we put it down, toil and time are put down with it; but meanwhile passions and ignorance are our lot, and wisdom here is just as cold, for without power foresight is dreadful.
So I'm looking at my particular passions and I see them as a little bubble I walk around in, relevant only to myself but coloring everything I see as if the world was made to satisfy them - in fact the world couldn't be more indifferent. I organize my perceptions in a personal hierarchy based on how relevant to my inner drives what I'm relating to seems. That fantasy land is all mine. But we can take a view we build in that way for the truth, and then are ever frustrated that nothing seems to behave as it should.
Focusing such passions on a person is a typical mistake, and leads to drama and disappointment. What other people are in themselves has nothing to do with you. People often do this mutually, for great sex and great hatred later. I totally see the severity of this error in myself. Indulging in fantasies about a person and waiting for them to happen is nothing but retreat into a world of self-created meaning that will surely collapse as reality fails to cooperate, and clinging to that meaning is the same as prolonging pain. Worse, we often encourage each other. This longing for our bullshit hopes and fears to externalize so that the world will resemble the inside of our heads, make sense and do what we want it to do, is a temptation that we even deliberately offer each other as if that slight sense of power makes any difference to our situation at all. We are not alone in the world, but we are always and forever alone in our personal bullshit fantasyland.
Would I slay my passions in order for a chance to experience communion for real, and not the unnatural and vain hope for "union" but all on my terms? This seems like the source of compassion - without the delusion bubble the real beauty and ugliness of things is visible, and it is so pathetic and exquisite. Moreover, it is all one thing - the continuity of it all is more noticeable. It is heart-stirring to behold without the distortions of desire and fear; the artist sees every subject as a universe. The evils that are normally hated seem like the actions of tormented prisoners whose minds have turned upon them like knives, cutting them whenever they move, and the simple natural beings that spontaneously form and grow everywhere seem like frozen starlight.
Oh hey, Jupiter is trine Mercury today. That's probably what I'm vibing with. It's pretty nice, refined and perceptive.
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