Decommissioning Pluto

With each passing degree of arc through which Pluto moves further from his domicile of Scorpio I become a little more convinced that the relationship between Pluto and Scorpio is a conundrum. In many ways we can easily appreciate the symmetry between sign and planet, theoretically at least, but I do not see a generation that expresses Pluto with especial intensity.

That said, it might simply be that in this most submerged of constellations, Pluto is remaining hidden and will erupt one day with astonishing force – albeit not overtly astonishing force. I think it was Noel Tyl who so accurately described Pluto energy as “a bomb under a blanket”.

In my view Leo, Libra and Sagittarius are the signs in which Pluto energy is most overt, because these are the dominating generations. This is how Pluto can most accurately be appreciated, as a struggle to manage domination energy. As you will hopefully appreciate this is a nuanced description of Pluto which contains several levels of self and spiritual awareness in potential. We can break it down in myriad ways, but broadly – and perhaps inevitably – crudely we can apprehend Pluto in our lives in the following ways, as:
1) the unconscious struggle to covertly dominate others, then,
2) the conscious struggle to master our compulsion to dominate others,
3) which in turn forges a less self-interested consciousness from this awareness of the increasingly sublimated nature of Plutonic drives.

Each of these is itself a spectrum. When I talk or write about this subject it provokes an enormous array of reactions from the brave and generous, to the downright compulsive, and no astrological subject has so much power to put people on the defensive. I have done enough personal ‘Pluto work’ now to not feel the need to take the difficult reactions personally (although I used to, as you would read if you were to scour these archives).

Most often I am asked, “is there any circumstance in which Pluto can be good?” Or some approximation (evaluative or otherwise) thereof. I think this misses the point almost entirely and betrays a fundamental misconception  about the intrinsic nature of Pluto. Pluto is unconscious domination energy. You can ask then, is there any way in which nuclear material can be good? because this is fundamentally the same question. Let us examine it just a little and uncover its innate paradoxes.

Broadly we can argue that nuclear material can be harnessed to provide power. So that’s good (this is the argument that governments use when they’re resisting the movement for alternative energy sources). This is true, and nuclear material and Pluto energy can both be harnessed to provide power. The crucial difference here though is that if Pluto energy were nuclear material, in most human lives it would be akin to hiring a cowboy band of builders to construct your nuclear power station. Most people put the reactor in the equivalent of a garden shed. Inevitably, the flimsy structures around the seething core have no possibility of containing the invisible toxins that pervade the atmosphere.

And then you have to wonder what the power is being used for? We live in an age of burgeoning nuclear proliferation, the haves versus the nearly-haves and many more have-nots wondering how they can get hold of their own atomic device. Why would you want that kind of power?

And yes of course, it’s entirely possible to use nuclear power for entirely philanthropic and compassionate purposes, such as providing heat and lighting for orphanages, but let’s face facts, that was never the motivating ambition of Rutherford and his cronies at Los Alamos, was it? In the same way, it’s never the motivating ambition of ordinary people either. Nations as well as the individuals want the ultimate power of Pluto, because it gives them the power of life and death over other nations and individuals. That changes relationships and puts one nation or individual in the kind of position where they get respect from the other nation or individual. If you don’t truly (truly, truly) want that power, then you have no need of Pluto.

So, can Pluto ever be good? No. In exactly the same way as when you harness nuclear material, the safegaurds, oversights, constraints, cost and ongoing legacy of using that power are prohibitive, entirely outweighing the benefits; you need so much control to be able to handle Pluto that you would never be able to let it out.

This is (as many will see) the Mars principle writ large. Mars is overt domination energy (like Pluto which is the same, but covert), and of course you can argue that Mars is necessary and it is. It is necessary to get what you need to survive. Okay that’s arguable from a certain perspective too, but if you believe that, then that is how you have to see the world of course. If somebody punches you then you need Mars energy to punch them back, or perhaps to run away if you don’t fancy your chances. You can ramp this principle up all the way to Pluto and reductio ad absurdum, if somebody kills you, then you can kill them back.

Pluto is an energy construct that is inbuilt to the human soul’s self-motivating desire to realise its own emancipation. It is a poison power cell which we all start out believing we can harness to improve our survival prospects, to get respect, to get ahead. The more we use it though the more we are poisoned by it. Our relationships become toxified and our physical, emotional and spiritual health is compromised every time we tap into it.

And this is the key insight into the raison d’etre of Pluto. Its true power to transmute the soul is realised in the forgoing of it. We cannot remove the poison cell, it’s a part of the human condition, all we can do is decommission it, a little like Chernobyl or Fukushima, and never go there again.

The Player of Games

What you can see here is a diagram of my devising which places the planets in the context of human consciousness. They are calibrated in this way using a specific methodology which has been checked against a number of spiritual perspectives and which (ultimately) feels correct, intuitively at least. I do not wish to make too much noise about where this diagram came from, but I can explain it quite easily. This is especially useful because I have had a few people ask me recently about the Chirotic Awakening, and of course Orcus and Pluto are important topics for any initiate of the astrological mystery school.

We can see here that the path from Pluto – base compulsion – to the Sun – true solar consciousness, is interspersed by various levels or stages of self-awareness. Perhaps we should say, rather than levels, that what we are looking at here are the gradations of self-awareness, from none, to a completion, wherein the completion contains no compulsion at all. Mercury and Uranus are the only planets which are ‘difficult’ to place and I am uncertain as to why this should be so at this time.

In any case, it is possible to deduce that the progress of the soul is dependent upon a series of enlightenments, each progressively more conscious and progressively less compulsive than its predecessor. It’s interesting too that we talk about the transformation of Pluto, because this is in fact only the first transformation, and it therefore becomes the benchmark or mould for all transformation, which is why we learn the principle associated with the Crucible of Hades before we learn anything else. Once we understand this, in principle, we can apply the Plutonic energy to higher and higher paradigms of human consciousness. So while we begin with a Plutonic transformation, the seed transformation of base compulsion, we are only beginning the spiritual journey at this time and we have much work to do. The Plutonic transformation requires that we master our compulsions and immediately we have done that we are in the field for learning the Orcan paradigm. Let us call that integrity. For most people, integrity is just a word that is interchangeable with a phrase: let us call that phrase “the appearance of integrity”. I will not say too much on that because I have written a book on it and I don’t want to spoil the “plot”. Once we have mastered Orcus, we are into the various archetypes of human life and on we go.

So, the first important question must be: why do most people not understand what integrity means? I estimate 85% of all people alive today do not understand what integrity is, although they assume they do. This is because they have no soul. That is not to say that their soul is missing, everyone has a soul, but the majority have no access to it. It is too oppressed by ego. They effectively do not understand that they exist and instead believe that are acting under their own volition in all things. But they cannot see the puppetmaster, the ego, pulling the strings in the shadows. Once you are able to accept the simple truth that you cannot control anything in the entire Universe other than yourself, you have begun to transform Pluto. Then, when you have actually stopped trying to control anyone or anything else, you have done it.

Is that not incredibly simple? It is the easiest thing in the world to do, but nobody is very keen to do it. We can make it even simpler than that. If you’re serious about waking up, if you’re serious about wanting to be happy, if you are totally, starkly and unconditionally committed to becoming a truly spiritual being then you only have to do one thing, and it’s so incredibly easy that you can start today and have mastered it by tomorrow. Here it is:

Stop playing games.

Well, it sounds easy doesn’t it? The only obstacle to this objective is that most people believe that they are not playing games; they believe that the game is life, not that the game is what is preventing them from living their life. They think that without the game, they would not have anything, that it would all be taken away and they would be destitute, homeless, unloved. They worry. You probably believe that everyone worries, about everything, all the time, but it isn’t so. Only people that play games worry, because the game is a worrying game. When you stop playing, the worry fades and very soon, you have no worries. It is really tough for people to get it, because they are always concerning themselves with the game, and especially with the other players. This is because the ego is the gameplayer, and you are therefore competing with other gameplayers to win. But the great trick is, that since there is no game – it’s just a goad that the ego uses, your anxiety about losing something to keep you hooked on playing – there is nothing to win, or to lose.

Once you realise that the game is meaningless, you can stop playing, you can develop material integrity (the precept of taking nothing that is not freely given) and that in itself is liberating, then you can work through Saturn, that materialism is only another part of the game, and on you go.

So why is Chiron there, on the threshold of self-realisation? This is the Chirotic Awakening and as you can see, it is a fairly advanced stage of human consciousness. Individually speaking, the clue will be in your Chiron placement, so if you have Chiron in Aries and the 1st house then you will know that the one thing you cannot easily do is interact. When you do, you are prone to feeling irrelevant, talked over, talked down. People with this placement (I watch them) do one of two things: they either fade awkwardly into silence and allow themselves to be sidelined in an exchange, or they push too hard, force their statements out and create tension. Either way, they end up feeling awkward and self-conscious. At the point of the Chirotic Awakening, they quickly come to understand that all along, they had no need to be heard. That nobody has anything to say. Most of all, people with this Chiron, upon awakening, realise the truth of the maxim that while speech might be silver, silence is certainly golden.

Does it detract anything from you if nobody listens to you? Of course not, although it will be very damaging to your ego. Then you are into the game again. It is for this reason that Chiron is the point of true self-realisation, because our most vulnerable nature is the final and most compelling trigger to the avoidance of nothingness. Nobody wants to be nobody, right? That is true enough, at least until you reach the threshold of self-realisation, because then you realise that everybody is nobody, and nobody is all we ever can be. In truth, nobody is all we ever were, and having got past that, we become free to be exactly who we are!

Then you stop worrying and move increasingly into present time. Now you’re happy and life simply unfolds, without your having to do anything, not even having to express a view, a reservation, because you know that you cannot change anything anyway.

There is no game, so why play?

The Amateur Pluto-Hunter

Make no mistake, Pluto is strong stuff. Hard to handle, and while there is much to understand about Pluto and his mechanisms and expositions it is important to remember that the planets do not control us, they cannot ‘make us’ do anything at all, it is only our determination to be the master of our astrology that frees us to be persons of integrity and self-awareness. Pluto is seen as the planet of compulsion for the most part because his energetic frequency is so very base; like Hades, it is well below the surface, in the unconscious murk, and so we have to be very attendant to our behaviour, which is the external symptom of our internal state. Because Pluto is very subtle however, we frequently hide his influence even from ourselves, through rationalisation. In my life, I study Plutonic compulsion on a daily basis and it’s fascinating. I think that perhaps 90% of people I interact with in my life are more or less totally unaware of Pluto’s influence in their lives and in the dramas that they create. Pluto always creates drama, and this is one of the key manifestations of his effects.

So, if there is drama in your life, a big hoo-har about this or that and a great deal of excitement, particularly where there is condemnation, mocking or contest, then chances are, Pluto is pulling the strings somewhere in the situation.

Another important insight lies in the fact that Pluto is an octave of Mars (I hesitate to say ‘higher’ perhaps we should say a more subtle octave), so while he may not manifest in direct, overt expressions of anger, he has the same agenda; he is pushing to get things working how he wants. Passive and covert aggression are therefore invariably signs that Pluto is in the mix. The classic Plutonian power struggle therefore becomes quite easy to spot when you understand all of these factors. Typically, the symptoms of Pluto in the driving seat are very clear once you’re familiar with them:

• A grimy, uncomfortable, edgy feeling in the air. If you zone in on it, you’ll realise that it is hitting you in the solar plexus chakra. You may have digestive ‘issues’ as a result. One common (and suitably Plutonic) feature of being unconsciously ‘violated’ by a Plutonian therefore manifests through a need to rush to the loo after the drama is over. You’ll note that you only need to think about certain people to cause an upset feeling in your solar plexus. Those people are Plutonic and toxic and they invade your subtle body with casual disregard. Plutonians are entitled.
• Plutonic people dehumanise. This can be as simple as calling the opponent a loser, a thief, a liar, through to something more extreme, like vermin, parasites, scum etc. This is all Plutonic language, and is designed to make the opponent appear less than human. A dehumanised person is much easier to target, isolate and annihilate than an equal. Plutonians thrive on dehumanising tactics, so if they can make you appear to be beneath respect they will. They will intimate that you’re dangerous, mentally ill or deranged, evil, abusive or dishonest. In this way, others will automatically begin to treat you contemptuously which serves the controller’s agenda.
• Inappropriate relationships. Healthy relationships should be based on love, trust and mutual respect. If you are involved in, or witness to, a relationship that does not have those features, then chances are, it’s a Plutonic relationship. Relationships without these features usually form out of mutual self-interest, and serve agendas rather than love. Once you see that the relationship isn’t based on love, it’s quite straightforward to deduce which agenda is being served.
• Covert evaluation. You will  note that when you come into contact with a negative Plutonian, while they might be all smiles, you come away from the exchange feeling somehow judged, evaluated or doubtful about yourself in some way. You might feel angry or resentful without really being able to say why. This is achieved through the Plutonian’s subtle, hard to spot evaluations. For example, if you’re a parent and you value yourself as a competent Mum or Dad, the Plutonian will accost you and wax lyrical about somebody else who is (self-evidently) half the parent you are, while not mentioning your dedication to your children. If you get riled, you’ll just look churlish and self-centred! Neat huh? Welcome to the ‘whatever you do, you lose’ world-rules of Pluto.
• The smear campaign. When the power struggle has escalated, the Plutonian always resorts to a smear campaign. This is like a big flashing beacon for Pluto issues. The Plutonian won’t say anything to your face, but they’ll be undermining you for all they’re worth behind your back, with anyone who’ll listen (and most people love a bit of gossip, right?). Usually they’ll take something with a grain of truth and omit or distort facts to make you look guilty. So, for example, if you had an argument with your partner and they were upset and hurt, they’ll tell people that you’re ‘emotionally abusive’ in your relationship – after all, they know that your partner was upset on that occasion, so they’re not really lying. Or, if somebody else tells them something about you that isn’t true, even if they know it isn’t true, they’ll repeat it,  because they didn’t originate the rumour and they’re not therefore responsible for it. It allows them to tell lies about you, without being responsible for formulating the lie.
• Resource control. Plutonians take control of the resources, it’s a kind of scorched earth policy in relationships. This means that all the things that sustain you; material, emotional, whatever, are procured by the Plutonian in order to leave you isolated and vulnerable. If the Plutonian can destroy your support network, then you’re a very easy target, and this is the major reason why they form inappropriate relationships. The Plutonians in your life will suddenly become bosom-buddies with somebody that they have nothing in common with, and never cared a fig for before the power struggle started just to deny you the relationship and to leave you without support. They may keep your possessions too, using the smallest expedience to rationalise their theft into something more ambiguous. This latter is especially relevant in relationship breakdown, where items are ‘jointly’ owned: if there’s a remotely ‘grey’ area about ownership, you’ve lost it!

If you challenge the Plutonian though, they’ll always have a great excuse for their manipulative and underhanded actions. Usually they’re only trying to either ‘stand up for what’s right’, to ‘protect some poor soul who is the victim of you,’ (especially ‘the children’, Plutonians are always doing things to protect the children: by associating their cause with the innocent and vulnerable, their motives become unquestionable: ‘why are you questioning me, do you want the children to be miserable/abused/oppressed etc?) or they’re simply being ‘normal and responsible’ (thus implying that by disagreeing with them you’re being abnormal and irresponsible).

So, using this checklist, it’s easy to spot the Plutonian at work. Of course, they don’t start this way, usually they’ll saunter casually into your life, and all might be well, until you press the right (wrong) button. I see this frequently with Plutonians who are usually very easy-going while you’re behaving in the way that they want. Then you do something that isn’t on their list of tolerated behaviours and suddenly you’re in the power struggle. Once the button’s pressed though, there’s no switching it off again. The compulsive Plutonian will just go on, poisoning everybody and everything in your life until you’re thoroughly sick: often quite literally.

What’s the solution to these Plutonic types? Simple. Run away.

That’s right. Don’t engage, don’t try and get your point of view across, don’t negotiate, don’t reason, don’t capitulate. If you give an inch to the Plutonian, he or she will only deduce that you’re controllable and press their covert agenda all the harder. They are like Plutonium, quite literally; if you are in their proximity for any time at all, they will make you sick and eventually they will kill you. It is, unfortunately, that serious.

Now finally, what if you are evincing these behaviours? I would be surprised if you knew that you were, because subjectivity is a giant obstacle to surmount, but it’s possible (usually after the struggle is done) to understand retrospectively that you have behaved in this sort of way, and been, if you like, the unwitting puppet of your own Pluto. The key is to learn from the experience and to keep a very tight leash on your future conduct. Indeed, try to follow the anti-Pluto checklist:

• If your stomach feels uncomfortable in a situation, try to step back and get some perspective. Ask yourself: “what’s really going on here?”
• Don’t dehumanise, sneer at, mock or denigrate other human beings. It is okay to complain about bad treatment, therefore it’s okay to call out bad behaviour, but it’s not okay to draw conclusions about a person’s character or motives on the basis of it. Therefore you can say that you’re hurt because you feel that somebody deceived you, but it’s not okay to accuse them of being a habitual liar or a fraudster, most especially not to a third party.
• Don’t maintain inappropriate relationships. If somebody you’re associated with makes you feel uncomfortable, drop them. At least minimise your association until you can work out the obstacles to enjoying an authentic and loving connection instead.
• Be very careful what you say to people and examine your motives for saying it. If it’s not kind and uplifting to that person, then it’s probably best to keep your mouth shut. This is especially true in the matter of offering unsolicited advice. By all means express your view if somebody asks for it, and it’s fine to state your position with somebody who is trying to blame, accuse or manipulate you, but you should try to avoid giving even well-meaning advice to others if they haven’t expressly asked you for it.
• Don’t gossip. I have a Buddhist friend who follows a rule of never talking about anyone unless they are physically present during the conversation. It makes it almost impossible for him to get involved in a smear campaign, even if he was compulsively motivated to do so.
• If something isn’t 100% unequivocally yours, don’t take it. Even if you think it should be yours, make your case for it, don’t just assume you have the right. If you follow this simple rule (that is, the Buddhist precept to take nothing that is not freely given), then you cannot go wrong.

Following these rules is not just a moral choice, it is important for the sake of your mental, emotional and physical health that you do so. Remember the tenets of medical astrology: all disease begins in the mind with your thoughts. Your thoughts upset your emotions, and your upset emotions make your body sick, especially in the areas ruled by the corresponding elements. Thus Plutonic people are especially prone to cancers, problems with the elimination system and the reproductive organs. They can also cause these symptoms in others who they target with their control agendas, so this makes it doubly important that you avoid the Plutonians in your life. It’s remarkable the number of clients I’ve had who have suffered from chronic digestive complaints (like for example IBS), who have experienced a complete cure when they finally managed to get rid of the compulsive control-freaks in their lives.

Last, it’s important to remember that in order to live spiritually, you have to live and let live and be respectful of other people’s life choices, even if you don’t agree with them. I find that it helps immensely to follow the Golden Rule: treat others as you would like to be treated yourself, Pluto doesn’t have much room to manoeuvre once you adopt this simple maxim.

The Magi of Uranus-Pluto

May you live in interesting times! This is an old Chinese curse, although some mistakenly attribute it a blessing. Interesting times are of course, times of change, times of upheaval, times where the old and sedate ways of the world are undergoing transformation. They are, quite simply, Uranus-Pluto times. We live in such times.

As a standard-bearer for the Uranus-Pluto in Virgo generation of the late 1960s, I am under no illusions about what it might mean. It means that now, as Pluto squares Uranus for the first time since Hitler rose to the office of Chancellor – indeed, he was sworn into that sacred office exactly at the critical median pass of the Uranus-Pluto squares of the 1930s – we are likely to experience interesting times ahead. Every grating clash of these distant behemoths tells a similar story, whether it be the Norman conquest of the 11th Century, the Black Death in Europe, or indeed the rise of Fascism, these contacts, in the 4th harmonic at least, seem to encapsulate a time of darkness. The greatest pressure will fall therefore on those born in the late 1960s and early 1970s who have been serving their apprenticeship in handling these vast and unstable cosmic energies and whose lives to date have involved a remarkable training in uncertainty principles!

We all crave a life characterised by stability, by predictability, by safety, but the Uranus – Pluto adepts of the 60s are the generation that safety forgot. They have found themselves assuming the helm of a society that looks ahead and can see only darkness, and all the predictions are gloomy, shadows beset every horizon and we can take nothing for granted. To be born between 1963 and 1971 is in many ways a curse, but there is little point in feeling cursed, you were born to be forged in the crucible of Hades and remade through the power of uncertainty, into a magician. As I speak, people write to me and tell me how they are waking up to a new reality, and how the old reality is not so much redundant as it is laughable. Of course a few people write to me and tell me that I’m an idiot too, but that’s normal. If you believe it, then it’s true, right?

So, we were not born to be safe, we were born to handle it. Some of us are still struggling with the injustice of having to handle it, but there we are. All unhappiness stems from not wanting what is, and that means that one only has to choose to be happy. It’s the work of a moment to be happy, not a lifetime. But if you’re unhappy then it’s because somebody out there thinks you deserve to be, and you believe them. That doesn’t mean that you have to endure narcissists and bullies, only that you can choose not to believe in them, and then they can’t stop you being happy any longer. Uranus – Pluto: sudden insight into the source of the control issues in your life.

So, there’s no point feeling hard done by, or worrying about impending doom. The worst that can happen to you is that you’ll die, and that’s no big deal. If you’re a magician it’s your work to change reality, to change the world through the medium of magical intention. What’s stopping you? I know what’s stopping you, it’s all the haters, the mockers, the sneering hordes, the people who tell you that you’re a fool and that you’re never going to amount to a thing. So what does it matter if you don’t, so long as you operate from a place of spiritual intention and integrity.

Nothing else matters.

If you can accept that, then you’re in a good position, because any day now, you are going to be able to step it up. It’s not easy to do this work because the ego gets in the way – not just your ego either – and you have to stay on course. People with spiritual intentions always appear to be simpletons to people without them.

On October 28th we enter the Age of the Fifth Sun. There’s some argument around the exact date of course, but there always is, it’s only those people who think that you’re an idiot who care about the ‘exact’ date. It’s close enough. The Age of the 5th Sun is accelerating the frequency of human consciousness, but it only works on those who have adopted spiritual integrity. Spiritual integrity is a meaningless concept, of course, to those that don’t have it. Imagine that it’s like getting an upgrade on your TV to high-definition: it doesn’t make any difference to the blind.

It’s difficult to talk about astrology in this context because we’re talking about Galactic astrology, not Solar. The Galactic Centre is just one piece of the puzzle. Did you know that William Lilly believed that the Moon could never go void of course in Sagittarius, but he could never understand why? I think that with precession, the GC is about to move into 27 Sagittarius, a critical degree, trining the astrologer’s degree at 27 Leo. Last night I dreamt that 10 Capricorn was an all-important degree too, that it had weight and I felt it that way. Like one of those Einsteinian models of space-time where a weight is placed upon a rubber sheet, distorting the continuum. I have not made an investigation of that yet.

Uranus-Pluto concepts are ‘out-there’ in all the myriad understandings of that phrase, and the magical act herein is to personalise that weird and dangerous energy; to bring it into the personal sphere. That process is begun by no longer being at the mercy of the energy; the instability of your life is not your fault, but neither should you feel like the victim of it (and chances are you have the Neptune-Pluto sextile in the mix too). In which area of your life, your chart are you having to take control of the instabilities of your life? Where are you required to communicate the falsity of the  myths that have grown up around your reality. The time has come to break them apart, to break free, to challenge the shadow that threatens your world. As the forces of evil, narcissists and haters all, attempt to smother your truth and humiliate you into silence (negative Plutonians always peddle judgment and humiliation) be like the sky, rise above it all and let your truth shine.

You’re rare and remarkable and you have earned the right to be you.

Three Dimensional Astrology: Part 4

This is the final instalment of my series on spiritual astrology, discussing in some depth the midlife transits, the Pluto and Neptune squares, and the Uranus half-return, among others. Thanks to everyone for their support and encouragement; I aim to record material on new topics later in the year, I am under some pressure to finish the final draft of my book!

The episode lasts for 45 minutes, and if you wish to download the file to listen to elsewhere, then you can find it here (45mb).

Three Dimensional Astrology: Part Three

Another day, another discussion. Continuing from where I left off last time, today I discuss Orcus as a key component of spiritual integrity and the implications this has for finding meaning within your own life. I have listened to the constructive comments and emails I have received from many kind people and tried to adjust my ‘style’ accordingly, thus, this episode is a little faster paced. I’m also keen to bring in some wider astrological observations in the future, so in this episode we will be focusing on some of the foundation concepts of spiritual awareness. As we discussed last time around, astrology is really not very effective unless applied within a spiritual framework.

I’ve also compressed the file somewhat, without hopefully compromising the quality. The discussion lasts for 42 minutes and the file is 38mb in size.

As ever, if you would rather download the file so that you can listen while you’re in your car, going for a run, or rounding Cape Horn in your bathtub, then you can find it here…

Please do feel free to join the discussion on Facebook.

Three Dimensional Astrology: Part Two

Continuing then with the next instalment of my discussion. This time I made a few changes from my previous recording: I sat rather than walked and I made a few notes to be going along with, mostly to help with continuity.

Once again, if you wish to download the source file then you can do so right here. The episode lasts 41 minutes.

Three Dimensional Astrology: Part One

Yesterday I took the momentous step of recording the first of a series of discussions on various astrological theories and concepts. As an experiment I am going to make the first part available here while I determine the best means of sharing the material with you all. Any thoughts, considered strategies or feedback is most welcome.

For the first discussion, I recorded the material while out walking Juno. I had no material prepared, and the sound quality was perhaps less than optimum because of the blustery weather and the fact that I was walking at the time. I am excited by the possibility of recording a more considered discussion in future rather than this completely off-the-cuff ramble!

If you would prefer to download the audio file so that you can listen to it elsewhere, then please download the MP3 directly. Remember that you can join the discussion directly via Facebook.

Orcan Dialogues

My book on Orcus is nearing completion and I have to say it’s been a really incredible journey, I am so very much looking forward to sharing this important discovery and its many insights with the astrological community. I have no hesitation in proclaiming my belief that Orcus is not a minor planet, indeed, I am firmly of the view that he is indeed as important as Pluto, albeit with a more impersonal focus. I realise that this is a bold claim, but in the many hundreds of nativities I have studied in my research for the book, there is no question that many fundamental aspects of character and life-orientation could simply have not been properly understood without the inclusion of Orcan principles. Indeed in many cases, the nativity is simply undecipherable without it; it is an understanding to astrology not unlike the Rosetta Stone was to Egyptology. I hope it does not come across as altogether too bold to say that some of the conclusions that I have arrived at are so startling that they will undoubtedly revolutionise the study of astrology, in much the same way as the evidence of Pluto did in the latter part of the 20th Century.

Of course, the writing of a work such as this has altered my priorities a great deal. I have struggled especially to keep up with correspondence (an occupational hazard at the best of times for a professional astrologer), and this journal has suffered most of all. I look forward to the day (in the not too distant future) when the book is published and I can get back to writing articles on this journal with greater regularity.

In order to minimise some of the fallout from the change in priorities I have created a Facebook page for this journal where I will be writing daily updates and insights and I hope to be able to communicate more directly with everyone. I would be delighted to see you there.

On Truth…

Hermeneutics is the study of spiritual thought, usually through literature, as an integral facet of the search for meaning. We all search for meaning, although we invariably look for it in different places: for some our car gives life meaning, for others their job does the trick and for a few, meaning is found within a spiritual, rather than a material context. All meaning is subjective; reality for you cannot be the same as reality for me, because we each interpret experience according to our own unique perspectives, which means, very simply, that nobody is wrong.

It took me many years to work this out. When the realisation finally broke upon my consciousness, very recently in fact, it was both liberating and shocking. Liberating because in releasing others from the burden of my subjective expectations, I also released myself. And shocking because I came to understand how much energy I have wasted in my life as a result. Strange (and good) things have begun to happen to me, emotionally, mentally and physiologically.

I create all resistance. If my neighbour decides to mow his lawn at 7:30 am, as he did this very morning, the problem has nothing to do with his mowing the lawn, and everything to do with my expectation that he should be more considerate on a weekend. In that situation I could respond in one of two ways: I could either apply pressure on him to mow his lawn later in the day, or I could decide not to have a problem with him mowing his lawn at 7:30 am. The problem arises of course when I have made a rule. My rule might say that ‘people should not make excessive noise on the weekend before 9 am’, and all might be well in my life provided nobody breaks my rule. In a world which contains inhabitants with a different rule: one which says people ‘should not make excessive noise on the weekend before 7:30 am’ there is the potential for conflict.

Clearly this is a rule designed to make sense of the physical world and yet its existence contains a seed of disharmony. Were I to enforce my rule then I am quite sure that relations with my neighbour would deteriorate rapidly, because, what with all experience being subjective, we would both be right: and no compromise would be reasonable for either party. If a compromise were reached it would undoubtedly feature at least a modicum of resentment.

And while that’s only a potential, it is nonetheless a potential actualising from grass-mowing.

Hermeneutics is derived from Hermes, thus Mercury and comes from the Greek hermeneuō, meaning to interpret or translate, and in keeping with Mercury, it is within the derivation of meaning from what is said, that the potential for difficulty arises. Mercury was after all a trickster as much as a communicator. What is meant has almost no bearing upon what is understood.

This is really intriguing because if we accept that all understanding is subjective then we can posit the amazing understanding that no two people can understand the same reality. Scientists will argue, but increasingly the field of quantum study suggests that the Heisenberg principle is distinctly more far-reaching than even Werner Heisenberg himself suspected. Observation alters reality at the quantum level, therefore subjectivity affects reality in the most profound manner imaginable, since observation is intrinsically subjective. Objectivity is bunkum.

Therefore, hermeneutic results are only good for the one engaged in the study. So, I study my life in a spiritual context to elicit meaning and I can share that experience. Indeed, it is what I do every day in conversation, correspondence and in my work, and that is all to the good. Problems can only arise therefore when I create rules. Rules which are absolutely accurate and valid for me cannot, for quantum reasons, be accurate and valid for anybody else, and this applies to grass-mowing as much as to spiritual context. Objectivity is rule-making and therefore senseless.

Okay, so you can argue. You might say that surely it’s objectively correct that you should never physically assault another person. Here there is a confusion of content with context, which is the classic flaw of objectivity. The content (assaulting others) is only inappropriate in context: (e.g. while shopping for groceries). In another context assaulting somebody may be entirely appropriate (if they are threatening to kill your children for example). The realisation therefore is that objectivity cannot exist and this is true for everything of course.

Every problem in the world would resolve itself overnight if everybody realised this truth.

Hermeneutics, which found its natural home among countless Catholic scholars from the Middle Ages on, and to this day informs fundamentalists and moderates alike of various faiths, is enormously limiting to social harmony. If all interpretation is subjective, then interpreting objective truth is a failure of perspective, even if subjectively the interpreter cannot be wrong. Religion is the transformation of subjective spiritual truth into objective rules. While there may be a consensus among scholars, the law of attraction ensures that those of a like-mind collaborate, minimising the need for compromise. If my neighbour believed that mowing the lawn should never happen before 9 am, our conflict potential would be greatly minimised.

So where’s the problem? The same insight applies in reverse. There ought to be no problem with religion, since if that’s what a person chooses to believe then that’s only their reality, right? The problem with religion is that it seeks to quarantine personal hermeneutics and exalt one person’s interpretation over another’s. The priest who proclaims God’s message is denying another human being’s freedom to subjectively interpret their reality. When we deny others the right to choose their leaders, we call it totalitarianism. Defining spiritual truth in commandments, rules or judgements – and denouncing others for not following them – is spiritual abuse. Living by them privately is your choice and how wonderful that you have interpreted spiritual truth within the context of that consensus. If that is your choice, I respect your choice, because what you believe is absolutely, marvellously, beautifully perfect.