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HAMILTON VS. MASSA - To the wire!
Halfway round the 71st and last lap of the Brazilian Grand prix I was gripping my chair-arms exclaiming 'But he CAN'T lose the Championship! Jupiter's on his Sun! It rules the starting MC of the race! His natal Venus is about to culminate at Interlagos!' Yet here was Lewis Hamilton, having driven a faultless race under very trying circumstances from P4 on the grid, trailing in to the flag in 6th position and losing not only the race but the Championship by one point to Felipe Massa. The Brazilian home crowd were ecstatic.
Then Timo Glock - who hadn't changed to wet tyres when the Moon swam onto the Midheaven and started to rain all ove the track for the second time since a chaotic and delayed start - skittered about on the track, lost grip, slowed down ... and Hamilton passed him. So he was now in 5th place. And that's where he was at the finishing line. And so he claimed that crucial one point that inched him ahead of Massa at the climax of the 2008 F1 series - and the UK has another World Champion racing driver! He's the youngest ever, and our first black driver, and I for one am absolutely thrilled. Well done, Lewis! And Well Done, friend Jupiter, who delivered astounding good luck at the eleventh hour and 59th minute, right on cue.
Felipe Massa who won for his home country was hampered by the current transit of Saturn/Uranus - its draconic position is across 3-4 Taurus-Scorpio and hitting on Massa's Taurus Sun. So a tricky year ahead for the gifted young Brazilian; I hope he gets his turn at the top spot later on. He drove like a champion, conducted himself with great dignity, and only because it wasn't his lucky year he missed out by a whisker. Roll on 2009!
Thursday, October 30, 2008
OBAMA VS. McCAIN
Less than a week to go until the USA decides who is to clear up after G.W.Bush! Who has the makings of a President? To whom is that great gold finger pointing from the heavens, scrawling 'It's for YOU!' ...?
Birthcharts first. According to a newly-discovered Birth Certificate (thanks to AstroDataBank and all involved) John McCain was a sunset birth at 18h25 EST in Colon, Panama, with Jupiter close to the MC in the 10th, so a high profile and expectations of success there, then. 
Like most Virgos, McCain is a sidereal Leo on the public stage, and it shows. That Leo Sun/Desc joins his tropical Mars, so this guy is as aggressive as they come when he's up against it or his ego is on the line. Another provocative Republican. Yes, he has what it takes to be a 21st century President, but whether we need it or the USA wants it is another matter. 
Annual progressions are the next stop - and the converses, because these, as usual, are showing stronger patterns at this tipping-point in each man's destiny. McCain's shows a nice feisty Moon/Venus/Mars conjunction on the Gemini Descendant - lots of publicity then, attracting the ladies, drawing the crowds ... but this is all moving back to the square with Saturn, and already his choice of running mate, his Moon/Venus/Mars/Desc Sarah Palin, has come in for a lot of negative attention and may have compromised his campaign. Barack Obama just has his annual sunset ... but it is stronger now; and the annual converse Ascendant is at 29 Sagittarius, right on transiting Pluto. Which has finished with McCain. Advantage Obama.
I have set the Solar Returns for Washington DC, as I have no idea where each candidate spent his August birthday, and there is nowhere else more likely to throw up a useful pattern. Obama has Moon/Mars-Uranus straddling the horizon with Pluto at the IC, suggesting a very public and somewhat bumpy ride to the ballot box and beyond, with much power to his elbow. But will it be Presidential power? The Sun close to the approaching S.Node reminds us that the eclipse of August 1st fell conjunct his Sun, and this always presages significant steps along the path of the soul. McCain's Return has that S.Node rising, however, a position not to be envied as Self always has to come last, and planets nearby can signal the cause of one's undoing. Here, it's the Moon. This could be Sarah. Neptune sets with Chiron and the Dragon's Head, so he pursues his dream, but it could come to nothing if he has fibbed about his citizenship and skewed his birth details! (You need to follow the link from the bottom of his page at AstroDataBank to appreciate what I'm suggesting here.)
OK. To me, Obama is looking the stronger candidate for the White House. If he wins, it will mean he has a really special day coming up in January - the Iauguration. Since 1937 this has take place by custom on January 20th around noon - although there have been occasional necessary deviations. How does that date look for our hopefuls? Well, John McCain's converse daily progression is the only one of his patterns to throw up an angular planet, which is Uranus on the DCMC. A change or surprise of some sort for him on the 20th - otherwise the Inauguration chart itself, depending on the time the ceremony climaxes, may pick up his progressed Sun and Pluto on the Desc and IC. 
Obama, now, has his daily progressed Ascendant still close to the Sun, while the converse daily Descendant is right on Jupiter. That nice Venus of his is a whisker away from the DPMC - and transiting Pluto is opposite on the DPIC. What is more, the Sun/Mercury conjunction of Inauguration day is conjunct his Jupiter and the noonday Moon is shining on his natal MC. Most striking of all, when you put the two draconic charts together - Obama and the Inauguration - it is his Sun on the noon Midheaven, his Ascendant opposite the Sun/Mercury, his angular Moon on the 7th cusp. McCain is nowhere.
Less than a week to go until the USA decides who is to clear up after G.W.Bush! Who has the makings of a President? To whom is that great gold finger pointing from the heavens, scrawling 'It's for YOU!' ...?
Birthcharts first. According to a newly-discovered Birth Certificate (thanks to AstroDataBank and all involved) John McCain was a sunset birth at 18h25 EST in Colon, Panama, with Jupiter close to the MC in the 10th, so a high profile and expectations of success there, then.
(May I say at this point, that any remarks I make about John McCain are entirely contingent on the accuracy of this newly presented birth time. If astrologers and public have been led up the garden path - as politicians and their enemies so often love to do - then half of all that follows will be nonsense! But let's go for it... Two more things to note - these triwheels are centred on each man's Draconic chart; and if you need a clearer view, right-click on the image and save it to your PC.)
Like most Virgos, McCain is a sidereal Leo on the public stage, and it shows. That Leo Sun/Desc joins his tropical Mars, so this guy is as aggressive as they come when he's up against it or his ego is on the line. Another provocative Republican. Yes, he has what it takes to be a 21st century President, but whether we need it or the USA wants it is another matter.
Obama, now, is a tropical Leo, and again born at sunset! His Sun, helpful in the 6th, is a little below the horizon, not as strong as McCain's; but he has a nice communicative Gemini Moon right on the IC. Both Lights on angles = famous! OK, but will he make President? Both men have a lot of contacts from their draconic charts to sidereal and tropical, so each is a man of strong purpose and principle. McCain's draco Sun is in fun-loving Sagittarius ('No-one will interrupt a World Series game with an infomercial when I'm President!') so he is driven by the power of positive thinking; 'everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds'. But Sag also believes in Money ... and we have a Credit Crunch. Obama is a draconic Piscean, hence an idealist - maybe a dreamer - and will be carried strongly by his faith. On his draco MC is tropical Venus in Cancer, but opposite is sidereal Saturn; sidereal Jupiter joins a Capricorn draco Moon, and on his draconic Virgo Ascendant tropical Mars rises! This orator will give less away than he lets on, wants to stay in control, and is a pussy-cat with sharp claws. Pursuing conscience politics will certainly make him very attractive. Between tropical and sidereal there are also conjunctions of Sun/Pluto and Saturn/Ascendant. Someone on the radio today said Obama had plenty of power under the bonnet; I second that! This man is serious, and determined to make a difference. McCain the Virgo is a small man with big ambitions; Obama is a big man with imagination and a love of his country. Which will be chosen?
Annual progressions are the next stop - and the converses, because these, as usual, are showing stronger patterns at this tipping-point in each man's destiny. McCain's shows a nice feisty Moon/Venus/Mars conjunction on the Gemini Descendant - lots of publicity then, attracting the ladies, drawing the crowds ... but this is all moving back to the square with Saturn, and already his choice of running mate, his Moon/Venus/Mars/Desc Sarah Palin, has come in for a lot of negative attention and may have compromised his campaign. Barack Obama just has his annual sunset ... but it is stronger now; and the annual converse Ascendant is at 29 Sagittarius, right on transiting Pluto. Which has finished with McCain. Advantage Obama.I have set the Solar Returns for Washington DC, as I have no idea where each candidate spent his August birthday, and there is nowhere else more likely to throw up a useful pattern. Obama has Moon/Mars-Uranus straddling the horizon with Pluto at the IC, suggesting a very public and somewhat bumpy ride to the ballot box and beyond, with much power to his elbow. But will it be Presidential power? The Sun close to the approaching S.Node reminds us that the eclipse of August 1st fell conjunct his Sun, and this always presages significant steps along the path of the soul. McCain's Return has that S.Node rising, however, a position not to be envied as Self always has to come last, and planets nearby can signal the cause of one's undoing. Here, it's the Moon. This could be Sarah. Neptune sets with Chiron and the Dragon's Head, so he pursues his dream, but it could come to nothing if he has fibbed about his citizenship and skewed his birth details! (You need to follow the link from the bottom of his page at AstroDataBank to appreciate what I'm suggesting here.)OK. To me, Obama is looking the stronger candidate for the White House. If he wins, it will mean he has a really special day coming up in January - the Iauguration. Since 1937 this has take place by custom on January 20th around noon - although there have been occasional necessary deviations. How does that date look for our hopefuls? Well, John McCain's converse daily progression is the only one of his patterns to throw up an angular planet, which is Uranus on the DCMC. A change or surprise of some sort for him on the 20th - otherwise the Inauguration chart itself, depending on the time the ceremony climaxes, may pick up his progressed Sun and Pluto on the Desc and IC.
Obama, now, has his daily progressed Ascendant still close to the Sun, while the converse daily Descendant is right on Jupiter. That nice Venus of his is a whisker away from the DPMC - and transiting Pluto is opposite on the DPIC. What is more, the Sun/Mercury conjunction of Inauguration day is conjunct his Jupiter and the noonday Moon is shining on his natal MC. Most striking of all, when you put the two draconic charts together - Obama and the Inauguration - it is his Sun on the noon Midheaven, his Ascendant opposite the Sun/Mercury, his angular Moon on the 7th cusp. McCain is nowhere.Lastly, as for every day of his life, each man has a 'Q' chart for Inauguration day, which should show what it has in store. It is Barack Obama who has the Sun/Jupiter conjunction on the meridian from the IC in Washington at his birthtime of 19h24 AHST, and picking up his natal Mercury/Jupiter opposition. To me, that strongly suggests a victory speech. 
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
DEATH AND THE Q-CHART
Once again a tragic loss of life has come painfully close; last week in the Talking Newspaper studio I was having to read a report of that terrible accident on the M6 motorway that killed a family of six, when their car went under a lorry in a five-vehicle collision and burst into flames. They were from Llandudno, and they were on their way home. Michelle should have been back in Clifton Road with her new baby daughter and thinking about getting back to work at the estate agent's round the corner, the other three children should have been back at junior and nursery school; the boys should have been at Karate club next evening at’The Dojo’ just up the road from my house, and serving at the altar with my friend Father Jones on Sunday. And on that following Sunday, October 26th 2008, David would have been 39 and opening cards from his mates at the local college where he worked as a chef.
He, with the rest of his family, came from Birmingham ; I thought I would take a look at his chart set for the time of the crash near Sandbach that took his life, the ‘Q’ chart.
Once again a tragic loss of life has come painfully close; last week in the Talking Newspaper studio I was having to read a report of that terrible accident on the M6 motorway that killed a family of six, when their car went under a lorry in a five-vehicle collision and burst into flames. They were from Llandudno, and they were on their way home. Michelle should have been back in Clifton Road with her new baby daughter and thinking about getting back to work at the estate agent's round the corner, the other three children should have been back at junior and nursery school; the boys should have been at Karate club next evening at’The Dojo’ just up the road from my house, and serving at the altar with my friend Father Jones on Sunday. And on that following Sunday, October 26th 2008, David would have been 39 and opening cards from his mates at the local college where he worked as a chef.
He, with the rest of his family, came from Birmingham ; I thought I would take a look at his chart set for the time of the crash near Sandbach that took his life, the ‘Q’ chart.
A police notice appealing for witnesses to the accident gives the time as 10h30pm on the night of October 20th . The Moon was rising just as the Uranus/Saturn opposition, on David’s Nodes, hit the meridian; draconic Uranus was at 3 Taurus opposite David’s Sun at the draconic crash IC; transit Mars had run into his draconic Sun. On the day David Statham was born, October 26th 1969, at the crash time of 22h30 BST Pluto was at the IC conjunct David’s sidereal Mercury in 26 Virgo, and Mars (square Mercury) was setting - its sidereal position at 29 Sagittarius, on transiting Pluto! Draconic energy drives the story of the soul, sidereal strength in a pattern always implies a public or historic impact; and here, written into David’s script, is his sudden, shocking, violent, fiery end on a fated journey that made national headlines and left our town in tears. Already waiting for him in the drama of life was his ‘Q’ for exit. It was time to go home.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
PLUTO, CAPRICORN, AND THE CRUNCH
I’m sure it hasn’t escaped your notice that Ingresses are major aspects to the Aries Point, arguably the most dramatic being outer-planetary squares from the Solstices. Accordingly, they impact on the entire human race and especially those bosom children of the Tropical zodiac, the citizens of the Western world.
The last time Pluto strode over a solstice point was in 1914, and the 1st World War, the Great War, the War to end all Wars, broke out. The King of Darkness was entering Cancer, since when any protective shell can be shelled and nowhere can be called a safe haven. Next he invaded Leo, making a fiery trine to the Spring Equinox; it was 1939 and the 2nd World War broke all the promises made at the end of the 1st, dramatically re-drawing the map of power. Now on the cusp of Capricorn it is the turn of global business empires to be shocked to their socks, time for new rules to be written in all areas of competition, worldly aspiration and control.
Two weeks ago, Pluto, still finishing its business at the end of tropical Sag but heliocentrically well into the first degree of Capricorn, was rejoined around the Sun by Venus after an absence of eight months and all hell broke loose in the world money markets. Back in 2007, things seemed very different - Pluto, visiting and revisiting 28 Sagittarius and helped by Jupiter, utterly seduced the English through their sidereal Sun into thinking the property boom years would never end. So we were all behaving as if they wouldn't. Property prices had been mushrooming since 2003/4 when Pluto hit on the UK’s sid. Sun at 18 Sagittarius: one house wasn't enough - we had to have two; one source of income wasn't enough - we all had to be property developers and buy to let. We had to have the perfectly finished designer home plus the luxury holiday pad, and we could do all this on dirt-cheap debt which banks and building societies were able to sell to each other and eventually bury somewhere overseas like the rest of the UK's rubbish. Many years ago I read a great story by Kurt Vonnegut where science had found a way to shovel all humanity's unwanted detritus through wormholes in space and leave our world lovely and`clean; unfortunately while people were enjoying their hedonistic lives, hyperspace filled up and a disgusting torrent of filth burst back through a zillion gaps in reality to overwhelm the globe. We are getting our come-uppance, big time. It's our fault.
Each time Pluto enters a sign he creates upheaval in pretty well any area of life associated with that twelfth of the sky - often through the way he seems to empower a fresh section of the human population. Unfortunately the folk who are spiritually asleep - and there are many - fail to recognise that charge of power as a shot of divine energy to purify and transform their lives, and instead turn into swaggering narcissists who throw their weight around and spark off a whole new slew of cultural problems. Pluto in Sagittarius enticed the whole developed world onto a quest for endless growth, wealth, mobility, knowledge and perfect bodies, and of course millions, manipulated shamelessly by rampant media, tumbled onto the bandwagon. We were all tested by the Tempter and found lamentably wanting. We were offered faith, but chose intolerance. Materially rich, we created poverty. The world was our oyster - we left it dying. In pursuit of fitness, we filled with vanity. Liberty became licentiousness, exams became quizzes, the law all letter and no spirit in a minefield of litigation and political correctness. A compensation culture where everyone knew their rights created the monster ‘Health and Safety’. The exhilarating, dangerous, Sagittarian adventure was to understand our place in the living universe, so of course we chose cheap flights, chatrooms, 'Big Brother,' and scoffed at God.
By the time he reached 29 Sag, Pluto had finished downloading WiFi, texting and YouTube to the UK sidereal Moon at Gemini 27 and was pointing squarely at England's tropical Moon in the end of Pisces, at long last provoking a country blighted by slobs and yobs to start cleaning up its act. The booze culture is still England's shame, but at last her streets are cleaner, her lungs healthier, and recycling bins busier. In the 1066 sidereal chart that undisciplined Moon was still in Pisces; so with the culminating Sun in sidereal Sag , the English nation has always been known for profligacy and adventure, high culture, great learning, immense greed, exhibitionism, bursts of surprising altruism, and a delight in comedy. If this country were a client we would be urging her to work hard now with Pluto's new Capricorn energy to capitalise on her strengths and drive out her demons. The Moon’s Nodes as usual tell the story - the South in disorderly Pisces, the North in Virgo with Saturn; she needs to accept Saturn's demand for a return to self-discipline, that a culture of growing selfishness and irresponsibility needs to be replaced by one of thrift and attentive service to the needs of ordinary people, particularly the old, the lonely, the sick and the deprived.
World map for Pluto's 1st ingress into Capricorn, based on London, UK
The hand-over of power is nearly complete: at 02h37 Ut on January 26th this year Pluto made his first brief but crucial entrance into the 10th sign, and on November 27th 2008 Pluto will finally exit Sagittarius at 01h03 UT to start its 16-year journey with us up Mt. Capricorn. I think it’s in the English Lake District that there is a little tour bus called The Mountain Goat ... this will be some tour! In London it is marked by the Saturn-Uranus opposition across the Asc/Desc, so expect the unexpected and a long-term reality-check. When he gets to 5 Capricorn the IMF’s Sun will be in the firing line after all the alarming activity of the past two years (Venus, Ceres, S. Node... ) so it may be staring at emptied coffers by then, Heaven help us all, and going through ‘death and rebirth’! Crunch time will be when Pluto hits the English/UK/EEC Sun in 2012/13, also impacting Australia (which, like the IMF, has been having an eventful time lately and may be ready to say Cheerio to the Queen), the British Diplomatic Service, and The Times. Will we have got our collective act together to celebrate a memorable Olympics? Or will it be another failure of planning and imagination, a damp squib to match the River of Fire and the Millennium Dome? Will we give the cold shoulder to Europe? Or will our benighted islands reluctantly embrace the Euro? Will we realise we no longer have ‘human rights’, only debts? Will we bring back the real spirit of competition in which we re-learn the art of losing gracefully? Limits will have to be set - flights grounded, populations controlled, behaviour schooled, promiscuity checked, standards raised, purse-strings tightened, freedoms curtailed. Will we see the end of the throw-away society, and a return to older, more lasting values? Or will it be the end of Freedom Food and the hope we still had for the planet? It could be the new age of the entrepreneur - or a field day for the ruthless.
Maybe we should all emigrate! At the first ingress Saturn, Uranus and Moon close to the UK meridian promise a lonely and rocky ride, while Jupiter rising at Baghdad (!) culminates over burgeoning China, and the third, final ingress chart sees Jupiter rising in Tokyo, setting in New York. But he is debilitated in Capricorn, so joy may not be unconfined. As in all aspects of life a sound structure is the prerequisite for true freedom. Only through determined self-discipline, moderation and careful planning are any of us going to survive what the globe could throw at us if climate continues to change. Sagittarius wants to magic it all away; Capricorn hunches his shoulders, gets his goal in focus, and plods on.
It would be nice to think that power might yet rest with the hitherto powerless, that the poor and the ill and the old and the lonely and the cold and the homeless and the hungry will be heard, honoured and rescued from unhappiness ... but I fear that as ever the controllers may strengthen their grip on our lives and our pockets, the heartless may walk over us, and the ambitious will toss us off their mountain. Grey power risks penalising the young; grey men may drain colour from the world. Yet perhaps in chillier, darker, frugal times there will be a return to commonsense, humility and a love of quietness - perhaps we will find an ordered simplicity in which we can take stock of who we are, learn to be self-sufficient, know our limits and use our time more wisely; perhaps when we are hardest-pressed and there is nothing left but prayer we will bend our knee on the highest summit of all, take God’s hand, and even come to realise the blessing of death.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
VISIONS
But here he is, as if my computer screen were a window and his gaze would melt the glass. He has been brought to life in a painting called 'The Prince of Peace' made in 2003 by a then eight-year-old girl from Illinois, who in visions from the age of four has been painting at the request of God. She has painted Mary, too, and captured the ineffable sweetness that invaded my soul in Lourdes.
Her name is Akiane Kramarik, and a visit to her official website ( www.artakiane.com ) told me that she was born (to non-relligious parents) on July 9th 1994 in Mount Morris, Illinois. My first chart for her is a Q-chart (not having any birth time) set for 4 am, which is the time she habitually starts work on the day's painting. At this time, Venus is at the IC and her Mercury rises! The Moon is just past New, in Cancer; her Sun is in the exaltation of joyous Jupiter, and these happy Lights are most powerfully configured with all three outer, spiritual planets - opposite the conjunction of Uranus/Neptune, and trine Pluto with the Moon's Ascending Node. Her extraordinary creative gift is clear from an immensely strong 5th harmonic - Mercury biquintile Pluto and tredecile Saturn, Leo Venus biquintile the Uranus/Neptune conjunction and decile the Sun. Not only is her output prodigious - she is very, very shiny!
It is when you enter the dwad chart, leaving the material for the conscious self, that the real magic happens. At work time, 4 am, Pluto and the IC meet; a transformation is taking place. The steady flow of her inspired and guided work is guaranteed by the 'kite' formed by the trines of Mercury and Neptune to Sun and saturn opposed across the Monn's Nodal axis.
As for the Composites, they left me momentarily speechless. Akiane/Jesus has Pluto on Asc, a trio of Chiron/Sun/Mercury in Gemini opposite Neptune, and the MC conjunct Venus and the South Moon's node. This is an old, old love bearing fruit in the present, a powerfully spiritual relationship centred on inspired teaching.
The past becomes present with Mary, too; the Sun and Venus go to the South Node (so close to Akiane's Moon!); Saturn (and maybe Ceres? - I have no idea if it is accurate for births BC) conjoins the MC to discipline and guide, and the trio of Mercury/Moon/Mars in Leo on Our Lady's Sun/Pluto burns with creative dialogue. In both these Composites there are hardly any stresses; the aspects are sweet.
And of course the chart for the programme is no less expressive. Here I have put the dwad at the centre of the biwheel - to show you that the Prince of Peace is indeed present. Because the dwad has the conjunction of Sun and Jupiter setting, just as Jesus does at his Nativity ... and they are still together, and still on the horizon, in his dwad. Akiane herself is shown in the sensitive, painterly trio of dwad Moon/MC/Neptune, as well as the radix pattern where the Pisces Moon has just risen conjunct Uranus and still opposite the 6th-house Mercury/Venus. Pluto is radically on the MC: Akiane and the other four people in this study are all exceptional people. But she has chosen the most exceptional life of all.
(A note on this post: this is my third attempt to post successfully with charts included in the text. If the old one is still posted below this, I apologise - I am hoping I have removed it! The space between text and charts may be variable. Pam.)
I am looking at the most beautiful face. I could look into these eyes for an eternity and it would be rest to my soul. The first time I saw him, he was waiting for me in a caravan, and I was astonished at the meeting; his hair was short, darkish and quite curly, and the eyes were all love, laughter and joy. Desperate to remember, I woke up. No effort with a pencil on my part could do justice to the face of this re-embodied Jesus.
But here he is, as if my computer screen were a window and his gaze would melt the glass. He has been brought to life in a painting called 'The Prince of Peace' made in 2003 by a then eight-year-old girl from Illinois, who in visions from the age of four has been painting at the request of God. She has painted Mary, too, and captured the ineffable sweetness that invaded my soul in Lourdes.
Her name is Akiane Kramarik, and a visit to her official website ( www.artakiane.com ) told me that she was born (to non-relligious parents) on July 9th 1994 in Mount Morris, Illinois. My first chart for her is a Q-chart (not having any birth time) set for 4 am, which is the time she habitually starts work on the day's painting. At this time, Venus is at the IC and her Mercury rises! The Moon is just past New, in Cancer; her Sun is in the exaltation of joyous Jupiter, and these happy Lights are most powerfully configured with all three outer, spiritual planets - opposite the conjunction of Uranus/Neptune, and trine Pluto with the Moon's Ascending Node. Her extraordinary creative gift is clear from an immensely strong 5th harmonic - Mercury biquintile Pluto and tredecile Saturn, Leo Venus biquintile the Uranus/Neptune conjunction and decile the Sun. Not only is her output prodigious - she is very, very shiny!How did I find her? After a restless night, once the seagulls woke up this morning I gave up trying to sleep and settled down to watch a video taped 11 days ago. It was a programme screened by ITV at 9 pm on August 18th, its title 'Superhuman: Genius', and it began with Akiane. By 7h30 I was down in the study and online to her website to find out as much as I could about the blonde little girl who was born in the year I went to Jerusalem and took my first small booklet on the Birth of Jesus to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. From that website, this wonderful face will meet you.
It is when you enter the dwad chart, leaving the material for the conscious self, that the real magic happens. At work time, 4 am, Pluto and the IC meet; a transformation is taking place. The steady flow of her inspired and guided work is guaranteed by the 'kite' formed by the trines of Mercury and Neptune to Sun and saturn opposed across the Monn's Nodal axis.The second chart for Akiane is her Q chart with Jesus (born 7th May, 5BC), set for his time of 18h43m55s and zone -2:20:48, at her birth location. First of all, it gives her a 10th-house stellium, and his work has become her vocation. But look what happens when the dwad is added! Neptune/IC comes to her Ascendant, Jupiter sets, Ascendant meets her Mercury, and of course that Capricorn/Cancer Sun/Saturn opposition straddles the nodes from South to North in the dwad chart as we have already seen, collecting her Uranus/Neptune and the late Cancer Moon into a spiritually, karmically intense 'full moon'. Dwad Moon/Mercury is conjunct her radix South Node. This whole picture is of a sacrificial soul on a lonely and focussed path, bound to Christ and her destiny, and totally tuned to the Voice which guides her all the way.
A third chart was necessary, too; the Q-chart of Akiane with Mary (born 4th August 24 BC), thus in her zone -2:21:12, at her time, 12h49m21s. Again it is stunning. Her Cancer New Moon rises with dwad Mars to energise her; again Neptune and Jupiter are angular, dwad Neptune on radix IC and a dwad conjunction of Jupiter and Midheaven. In the dwad, Venus sets with Ceres; and her dwad Sun/South Node meets radix Uranus/Neptune again on that same 'full moon' axis as before. Across those two powerful horizons Akiane relates directly to all the sweetness and motherliness of Our Lady, taking from her encouragement and strength in the Mars and Jupiter.
As for the Composites, they left me momentarily speechless. Akiane/Jesus has Pluto on Asc, a trio of Chiron/Sun/Mercury in Gemini opposite Neptune, and the MC conjunct Venus and the South Moon's node. This is an old, old love bearing fruit in the present, a powerfully spiritual relationship centred on inspired teaching. The past becomes present with Mary, too; the Sun and Venus go to the South Node (so close to Akiane's Moon!); Saturn (and maybe Ceres? - I have no idea if it is accurate for births BC) conjoins the MC to discipline and guide, and the trio of Mercury/Moon/Mars in Leo on Our Lady's Sun/Pluto burns with creative dialogue. In both these Composites there are hardly any stresses; the aspects are sweet.And of course the chart for the programme is no less expressive. Here I have put the dwad at the centre of the biwheel - to show you that the Prince of Peace is indeed present. Because the dwad has the conjunction of Sun and Jupiter setting, just as Jesus does at his Nativity ... and they are still together, and still on the horizon, in his dwad. Akiane herself is shown in the sensitive, painterly trio of dwad Moon/MC/Neptune, as well as the radix pattern where the Pisces Moon has just risen conjunct Uranus and still opposite the 6th-house Mercury/Venus. Pluto is radically on the MC: Akiane and the other four people in this study are all exceptional people. But she has chosen the most exceptional life of all.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
DEAR RICHARD DAWKINS ...
... what would I say to you if we came face to face? You seem desperate to present yourself as a nice man, yet everywhere you go, a hundred hackles rise.
First, on the current scientific understanding of evolution I am 100% with you. I have strolled home from Great Orme's Head with my pockets full of fossils, and who could doubt their antiquity? Secondly, I share your admiration and respect for Charles Darwin, and all the pioneers of practical science. But thirdly - how do I not accept and integrate my own experience and that of thousands of other sane men and women who have found their souls to be more than 'a collection of neurons'?
I take my hat off to the science teachers who 'stuck to their last' and refused to attack the faiths of their sensitive pupils; these may indeed be indoctrinated by their priests and parents, but however odd, however skewed, their beliefs - like mine - are founded on authentic and disconcerting experience. Now, I cannot personally vouch for that authenticity in most cases, so where I would share your ambivalence toward a particular faith, all I can do is give its adherents the benefit of the doubt - and my respect. But there remain certain incontrovertible facts.
1. The mobility of consciousness.
My husband-to-be, in straitened circumstances, was soaking in one of the men's public baths in Sittingbourne when he found himself floating near the ceiling; from this unexpected vantage-point above the partitions he could watch the local vagrants splashing and drinking in the adjoining cubicles. After a few minutes he was looking through his physical eyes again and could only hear the sounds of the men.
A close friend was listening to a concert at the Royal Albert Hall; he was so shocked to find himself looking down on orchestra and audience from the ceiling of the dome that he shot straight back into his seat.
Another friend was out walking when she saw herself several yards ahead. She followed herself, alarmed and fascinated, for several minutes until she rejoined her body.
This kind of experience cannot be dismissed as a dream state - generally in dreams we do not inhabit and navigate the immediate space and time. The above experiences and hundreds of others documented in OOBE research over several decades point to individual consciousness - at least in humans - inhabiting and exploiting rather than arising from the evolved structures of body and brain.
2. Cosmic integration.
This is a difficult one for someone like you. Let me begin by stating that for 25 years, since I was 40, I have had to endure frequent and crippling migraines. Trying to coax one's life into some kind of acceptable shape around these bouts of miserable illness is a real challenge (which, for all I know, you may share.) At least I knew when I was at risk; the migraine always came around ovulation and menses, so I steered clear of commitments at these times. But a total hysterectomy at 46 put paid to all that. Neither did it rid me of the illness; instead its timing became chaotic and my life, personal and social, was in ruins.
Here's the bit you won't find easy to accept: since my teens I had had an interest in astrology, and in my twenties began studying it seriously. By my forties I had become a counsellor, teacher, researcher, lecturer, writer and occasional broadcaster on this unorthodox subject, respected by my peers, and still full of delight in its endless intellectual and philosophical adventure. I had always been a bright child; I could turn my hands and my mind to most things with noticeable success - and I had been brought up to value criticism and analysis, so anything that failed to 'do what it said on the tin' would be dismissed as a total waste of time and effectively binned. Astrology, unlikely as it will seem to you, consistently rose to my challenges, decade after decade. As you are probably as unfamiliar with its language as I am with Urdu or Mandarin Chinese, there is little point trying to explain much of its technique; but the fact is that it gave me my life back. It was the only tool I had in 1989 (in the absence of effective treatment, which didn't turn up till 1992) to get a handle on the apparent chaos of the attacks.
I will now inflict upon you a little of the terminology ... knowing that the planetary energy of Mars connected with pain, heat and blood-flow, with acute symptoms, strong stimuli, and traditionally with the head, I started watching its interactions with my own birth pattern, both natally and as the sky diagram turned slowly through the days and years in what we call 'progression'. In brief, whenever Mars approached the meridian or horizon, Moon, Sun or inner planets of any of my astrological charts within 2 degrees of arc, even if my circumstances were relatively stress-free the migraine would hit. Several concurrent hits on different charts, a cluster of impacts, would coincide with intensified symptoms. As soon as Mars separated from the vulnerable degrees, the migraine disappeared. I could go through quite a busy and potentially stressful period which in theory should invoke an attack - yet if Mars was not impacting on any of my patterns I would not become ill. A common reaction to such findings is that they are merely self-fulfilling prophecy. I can assure you this is not the case; the studies I made were retrospective, based on my diaries. Soon I had the confidence to plan my engagements around the movements of Mars, and was at last able to keep my promises and stop letting people down at the last minute. I have lived this way for 20 years now - quite a decent long-term test of migraine management, don't you think?
Notable amongst the planets, Pluto ('demoted' or not!) has an energy which is potentially devastating. When its slow progress against the ecliptic brings it (for between one and three years) onto a sensitive natal degree, life gets pretty heavy. These are the times when the greatest moral dilemmas have to be faced, or the greatest physical challenges. Power - its use and abuse - is often involved. Temptation to take the destructive, selfish path comes at you from every direction. Empathy, compassion, loving-kindness, altruism, are the strongest armour in this spiritual battle. Pluto's purpose is to wake one up to the core values of one's very existence, and sometimes it takes trauma to do this. One can come close to death, as I did, giving birth to my first son by a nearly fatal emergency Caesarian, having to learn to walk again, and then coping with an autistic child. Pluto was in my rising degree. One can become the object of collective hatred for sticking to a principle, as my husband (a Bishop) did in honouring his calling and ministering to a friend who had done something very stupid that landed him in prison for two years. This test of conscience was extremely hard; but he achieved the moral victory. Pluto was on the degree of his Sun. When it made a right-angle (we call this a 'square') to my own Sun-degree, circumstances drew me into the Christian Church - a major step for this free-thinking woman! - and since then I have applied myself to the astrological study of its history.
The implications are that human lives (and probably life in general) are inextricably linked to the movements of the Solar System - and ultimately the observable universe - through meanings locked into relative position and orbital geometry. Poetically, we are phrases in a mighty and stirring music; or tiny, vital cells in an immeasurable body. Each human consciousness is a living and possibly eternal fragment of the consciousness of eternity itself, a huge mind comprised of or generating billions of fractal minds, whose totality we might call God. Each mind is itself an evolving thing, and shifts dimension into the material to learn how to grow and improve, using a body that evolution has declared fit for purpose. And because Mind is the over-arching reality, communication between embodied and discarnate minds can take place under favourable conditions to offer guidance to those who are floundering, and aid to people in danger or in pain.
You are currently in a very good position to test some of this for yourself, if you have a mind to. Your own natal tropical Sun is in 5 degrees of Aries close to the descending node of the Moon at Aries 1, in a friendly relationship with Pluto at 2 degrees of Leo, and in a tight square to recently 'promoted' Ceres at 4 degrees of tropical Capricorn. Venus is not far back, at 29 degrees Pisces. All these positions are being challenged by the transit of Pluto over the next three years, ( it has already been affecting your relationships and resources through Venus ) with its maximum impact in February-June 2010 ( including very hard work, even struggle ), September 2010-February 2011 ( big opportunity/success here if all goes well ), and August-October 2011, when the personal significance of the previous years' experience should give you pause for thought. It is meant to be a period of conscientious soul-searching - but for you of course this would mean acknowledging that you do not just have but are a soul!
On this point let me round off my comments with a brief look at your pattern. To use another image, each one of us is, astrologically, a minute shard of the macrocosmic hologram, specific to our birth-point in space and time. The sky patterns at birth are charged with complex meaning, which reflect both who we are and what we are endeavouring to become. I have seen few patterns as polarised as yours, torn as you are between the passionate science pioneer who wants to be the first and the best and to win every argument by verbal force if need be, and the diametrically opposed soul within who believes on principle in fairness, justice, kindness and balanced dialogue. Driven by a compulsive sense of mission, you can over-heat to the point of arrogance, betraying that gentler, fairer self - and this Aries combativeness is what will inevitably undo all the good that you have achieved, if you insist too often on picking a fight and fail to listen to - and honour - your neighbour's point of view. The focus of this inner contest will always be the relationship between nature and time - nothing but the structures of evolution (Ceres in Capricorn) could ever hold such fascination for you. By embracing in your work and in your life the competitive principle, don't forget that ultimately it is only through peaceable collaboration that you will attain real success. All people born with the Sun close to the Moon's descending node have to make sacrifices, and in your case it is that provocative stance and the very drive to win, that can turn friends into enemies and careful argument into incoherent bluster.
I respect your passion and your work, and I like the other man I see beneath the determined atheist. I hope he will take to heart a little of what has been said.
Rev. Pam Crane
... what would I say to you if we came face to face? You seem desperate to present yourself as a nice man, yet everywhere you go, a hundred hackles rise.
First, on the current scientific understanding of evolution I am 100% with you. I have strolled home from Great Orme's Head with my pockets full of fossils, and who could doubt their antiquity? Secondly, I share your admiration and respect for Charles Darwin, and all the pioneers of practical science. But thirdly - how do I not accept and integrate my own experience and that of thousands of other sane men and women who have found their souls to be more than 'a collection of neurons'?
I take my hat off to the science teachers who 'stuck to their last' and refused to attack the faiths of their sensitive pupils; these may indeed be indoctrinated by their priests and parents, but however odd, however skewed, their beliefs - like mine - are founded on authentic and disconcerting experience. Now, I cannot personally vouch for that authenticity in most cases, so where I would share your ambivalence toward a particular faith, all I can do is give its adherents the benefit of the doubt - and my respect. But there remain certain incontrovertible facts.
1. The mobility of consciousness.
My husband-to-be, in straitened circumstances, was soaking in one of the men's public baths in Sittingbourne when he found himself floating near the ceiling; from this unexpected vantage-point above the partitions he could watch the local vagrants splashing and drinking in the adjoining cubicles. After a few minutes he was looking through his physical eyes again and could only hear the sounds of the men.
A close friend was listening to a concert at the Royal Albert Hall; he was so shocked to find himself looking down on orchestra and audience from the ceiling of the dome that he shot straight back into his seat.
Another friend was out walking when she saw herself several yards ahead. She followed herself, alarmed and fascinated, for several minutes until she rejoined her body.
This kind of experience cannot be dismissed as a dream state - generally in dreams we do not inhabit and navigate the immediate space and time. The above experiences and hundreds of others documented in OOBE research over several decades point to individual consciousness - at least in humans - inhabiting and exploiting rather than arising from the evolved structures of body and brain.
2. Cosmic integration.
This is a difficult one for someone like you. Let me begin by stating that for 25 years, since I was 40, I have had to endure frequent and crippling migraines. Trying to coax one's life into some kind of acceptable shape around these bouts of miserable illness is a real challenge (which, for all I know, you may share.) At least I knew when I was at risk; the migraine always came around ovulation and menses, so I steered clear of commitments at these times. But a total hysterectomy at 46 put paid to all that. Neither did it rid me of the illness; instead its timing became chaotic and my life, personal and social, was in ruins.
Here's the bit you won't find easy to accept: since my teens I had had an interest in astrology, and in my twenties began studying it seriously. By my forties I had become a counsellor, teacher, researcher, lecturer, writer and occasional broadcaster on this unorthodox subject, respected by my peers, and still full of delight in its endless intellectual and philosophical adventure. I had always been a bright child; I could turn my hands and my mind to most things with noticeable success - and I had been brought up to value criticism and analysis, so anything that failed to 'do what it said on the tin' would be dismissed as a total waste of time and effectively binned. Astrology, unlikely as it will seem to you, consistently rose to my challenges, decade after decade. As you are probably as unfamiliar with its language as I am with Urdu or Mandarin Chinese, there is little point trying to explain much of its technique; but the fact is that it gave me my life back. It was the only tool I had in 1989 (in the absence of effective treatment, which didn't turn up till 1992) to get a handle on the apparent chaos of the attacks.
I will now inflict upon you a little of the terminology ... knowing that the planetary energy of Mars connected with pain, heat and blood-flow, with acute symptoms, strong stimuli, and traditionally with the head, I started watching its interactions with my own birth pattern, both natally and as the sky diagram turned slowly through the days and years in what we call 'progression'. In brief, whenever Mars approached the meridian or horizon, Moon, Sun or inner planets of any of my astrological charts within 2 degrees of arc, even if my circumstances were relatively stress-free the migraine would hit. Several concurrent hits on different charts, a cluster of impacts, would coincide with intensified symptoms. As soon as Mars separated from the vulnerable degrees, the migraine disappeared. I could go through quite a busy and potentially stressful period which in theory should invoke an attack - yet if Mars was not impacting on any of my patterns I would not become ill. A common reaction to such findings is that they are merely self-fulfilling prophecy. I can assure you this is not the case; the studies I made were retrospective, based on my diaries. Soon I had the confidence to plan my engagements around the movements of Mars, and was at last able to keep my promises and stop letting people down at the last minute. I have lived this way for 20 years now - quite a decent long-term test of migraine management, don't you think?
Notable amongst the planets, Pluto ('demoted' or not!) has an energy which is potentially devastating. When its slow progress against the ecliptic brings it (for between one and three years) onto a sensitive natal degree, life gets pretty heavy. These are the times when the greatest moral dilemmas have to be faced, or the greatest physical challenges. Power - its use and abuse - is often involved. Temptation to take the destructive, selfish path comes at you from every direction. Empathy, compassion, loving-kindness, altruism, are the strongest armour in this spiritual battle. Pluto's purpose is to wake one up to the core values of one's very existence, and sometimes it takes trauma to do this. One can come close to death, as I did, giving birth to my first son by a nearly fatal emergency Caesarian, having to learn to walk again, and then coping with an autistic child. Pluto was in my rising degree. One can become the object of collective hatred for sticking to a principle, as my husband (a Bishop) did in honouring his calling and ministering to a friend who had done something very stupid that landed him in prison for two years. This test of conscience was extremely hard; but he achieved the moral victory. Pluto was on the degree of his Sun. When it made a right-angle (we call this a 'square') to my own Sun-degree, circumstances drew me into the Christian Church - a major step for this free-thinking woman! - and since then I have applied myself to the astrological study of its history.
The implications are that human lives (and probably life in general) are inextricably linked to the movements of the Solar System - and ultimately the observable universe - through meanings locked into relative position and orbital geometry. Poetically, we are phrases in a mighty and stirring music; or tiny, vital cells in an immeasurable body. Each human consciousness is a living and possibly eternal fragment of the consciousness of eternity itself, a huge mind comprised of or generating billions of fractal minds, whose totality we might call God. Each mind is itself an evolving thing, and shifts dimension into the material to learn how to grow and improve, using a body that evolution has declared fit for purpose. And because Mind is the over-arching reality, communication between embodied and discarnate minds can take place under favourable conditions to offer guidance to those who are floundering, and aid to people in danger or in pain.
You are currently in a very good position to test some of this for yourself, if you have a mind to. Your own natal tropical Sun is in 5 degrees of Aries close to the descending node of the Moon at Aries 1, in a friendly relationship with Pluto at 2 degrees of Leo, and in a tight square to recently 'promoted' Ceres at 4 degrees of tropical Capricorn. Venus is not far back, at 29 degrees Pisces. All these positions are being challenged by the transit of Pluto over the next three years, ( it has already been affecting your relationships and resources through Venus ) with its maximum impact in February-June 2010 ( including very hard work, even struggle ), September 2010-February 2011 ( big opportunity/success here if all goes well ), and August-October 2011, when the personal significance of the previous years' experience should give you pause for thought. It is meant to be a period of conscientious soul-searching - but for you of course this would mean acknowledging that you do not just have but are a soul!
On this point let me round off my comments with a brief look at your pattern. To use another image, each one of us is, astrologically, a minute shard of the macrocosmic hologram, specific to our birth-point in space and time. The sky patterns at birth are charged with complex meaning, which reflect both who we are and what we are endeavouring to become. I have seen few patterns as polarised as yours, torn as you are between the passionate science pioneer who wants to be the first and the best and to win every argument by verbal force if need be, and the diametrically opposed soul within who believes on principle in fairness, justice, kindness and balanced dialogue. Driven by a compulsive sense of mission, you can over-heat to the point of arrogance, betraying that gentler, fairer self - and this Aries combativeness is what will inevitably undo all the good that you have achieved, if you insist too often on picking a fight and fail to listen to - and honour - your neighbour's point of view. The focus of this inner contest will always be the relationship between nature and time - nothing but the structures of evolution (Ceres in Capricorn) could ever hold such fascination for you. By embracing in your work and in your life the competitive principle, don't forget that ultimately it is only through peaceable collaboration that you will attain real success. All people born with the Sun close to the Moon's descending node have to make sacrifices, and in your case it is that provocative stance and the very drive to win, that can turn friends into enemies and careful argument into incoherent bluster.
I respect your passion and your work, and I like the other man I see beneath the determined atheist. I hope he will take to heart a little of what has been said.
Rev. Pam Crane
19/8/08: JUPITER RETROGRADE...
... has been on my Quotidian MC today. Yes, I re-ordered our monthly box of the finest chocolates money can buy (from our friend Roy Nesling, Chocolatier, established in East Looe) and put up cheery new curtains in my study, and made an excellent stew ... but the day was really about Channel 5's gory hour on the Romans & Druids during the 1st-century invasion of Britain. At 20 past 8 we were told that the Roman legions trampled across the South-East, mowing down anyone who was unlucky enough to be in their way. At last I had confirmation of one of my earliest flashbacks.
This had taken me totally by surprise over 20 years ago in my own kitchen at Ospringe (whose fields have since been much visited by diggers, including my old drama school acquaintance Tony Robinson). I was standing by the sink, holding in my hand a bone-handled knife which hitherto I had never brought myself to use. Suddenly my skin felt covered with very different clothes; against my cheeks was soft but firm leather - the lining, I assume, of a helmet's cheek-pieces. I had sandals on, and a short tunic; and I knew in that moment that I was a Roman legionary. But I was frozen in a dilemma - at the edge of the rough path on which I stood (just like the beaten tracks shown on Channel 5) cowered an old man, a local, who was in my way, and I was supposed to stick my bone-handled knife into his skinny body and be rid of him. The problem was that at some point I had encountered the teachings of Christianity, and I couldn't do it. For about ten minutes the vivid flash-back and the agonising dilemma held me motionless and fascinated beside the open cutlery drawer, before normality returned and I could put the knife back again. Ever since that episode my life-long nervousness of knives ebbed away.
Twice more in the 1980s that Roman life came back to me - once at Reculver where I remembered spending months of boredom staring out to sea, 'keeping watch' (about as enthusistically as the Yorkshire cops in 'Last of the Summer Wine'!) and once at Broadstairs where the oppressive aura of old and bloody battles sent me home miserable with migraine. This evening that sick revulsion at the violence we met and meted out returned in full force - and this time the story had moved to North Wales, our home for the past six years.
I now understood that Qotidian Jupiter, moving backwards; in my nativity (also retrograde and so inviting a return to the past) it rules the IC, therefore both the home and the past itself. In east Kent I was living on the southern end of my local space Jupiter line; coming to north-west Wales we had moved along its diagonal to pitch camp near its northern extremity. In 1981 our honeymoon on the Nile had taken me sailing and exploring where Jupiter had culminated at my birth - and here again memories had come flooding back, amid some joys bringing the lessons of much private pain.
Yes, it turned out to be quite a day!
... has been on my Quotidian MC today. Yes, I re-ordered our monthly box of the finest chocolates money can buy (from our friend Roy Nesling, Chocolatier, established in East Looe) and put up cheery new curtains in my study, and made an excellent stew ... but the day was really about Channel 5's gory hour on the Romans & Druids during the 1st-century invasion of Britain. At 20 past 8 we were told that the Roman legions trampled across the South-East, mowing down anyone who was unlucky enough to be in their way. At last I had confirmation of one of my earliest flashbacks.
This had taken me totally by surprise over 20 years ago in my own kitchen at Ospringe (whose fields have since been much visited by diggers, including my old drama school acquaintance Tony Robinson). I was standing by the sink, holding in my hand a bone-handled knife which hitherto I had never brought myself to use. Suddenly my skin felt covered with very different clothes; against my cheeks was soft but firm leather - the lining, I assume, of a helmet's cheek-pieces. I had sandals on, and a short tunic; and I knew in that moment that I was a Roman legionary. But I was frozen in a dilemma - at the edge of the rough path on which I stood (just like the beaten tracks shown on Channel 5) cowered an old man, a local, who was in my way, and I was supposed to stick my bone-handled knife into his skinny body and be rid of him. The problem was that at some point I had encountered the teachings of Christianity, and I couldn't do it. For about ten minutes the vivid flash-back and the agonising dilemma held me motionless and fascinated beside the open cutlery drawer, before normality returned and I could put the knife back again. Ever since that episode my life-long nervousness of knives ebbed away.
Twice more in the 1980s that Roman life came back to me - once at Reculver where I remembered spending months of boredom staring out to sea, 'keeping watch' (about as enthusistically as the Yorkshire cops in 'Last of the Summer Wine'!) and once at Broadstairs where the oppressive aura of old and bloody battles sent me home miserable with migraine. This evening that sick revulsion at the violence we met and meted out returned in full force - and this time the story had moved to North Wales, our home for the past six years.
I now understood that Qotidian Jupiter, moving backwards; in my nativity (also retrograde and so inviting a return to the past) it rules the IC, therefore both the home and the past itself. In east Kent I was living on the southern end of my local space Jupiter line; coming to north-west Wales we had moved along its diagonal to pitch camp near its northern extremity. In 1981 our honeymoon on the Nile had taken me sailing and exploring where Jupiter had culminated at my birth - and here again memories had come flooding back, amid some joys bringing the lessons of much private pain.
Yes, it turned out to be quite a day!
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Straight from the horse's mouth!-
- as we arrived in the Lakes for our annual hols, my p. Moon finally hauled itself out of Scorpio and started its liberating trek through Sag. The change is extraordinary. For two plus years all I've really wanted to wear is black and various shades of khaki, very strange arrivals in my normally vibrant wardrobe! And now, to coin a phrase, 'when I am an old woman I shall wear purple' - can't get enough of it, also red, since Mars occupies Sagittarius in my sky (in fact the mauves were beginning to leak in at the tail-end of the last degree of the old sign.) And most oddly I've begun to find my beloved mountains really quite oppressive; they are looming at me now, taking my space, which I want to extend, and stretch out in, and (as a typical Capricorn!) have all to myself ... or do I? Even my solitariness is shifting; my charity-shop stint last week meant sharing a cluttered space with another volunteer for 4 hours, which would normally give me the heeby-jeebies; but I found myself able for the first time to work in close proximity with abundant good cheer, far more relaxed than I've been all year! There is not a shadow of a doubt, if you want to learn what a Sign is all about, study the progress of your own Moon through all of them, remembering how you were, who you briefly became. It fascinates me, including the colour thing - I could never wear blue till the Moon went into Libra, and through Leo - well! How yellow and orange can one girl get?! Moon in Cancer was a very green phase, Virgo demure and in love with tiny patterns. You can have a lot of fun with this.
Talking of imagery, and getting back to Formula 1, Jenson Button is driving a Honda with 'Earth Dreams' writtten all over it ... just as Sidereal Neptune is driting and dreaming over his tropical Capricorn Sun!
And, interestingly, after my earlier post, on July 19th at Hockenheim the German Grand Prix started with the same pattern as Silverstone - Ceres on the MC (with Mercury) opposite Jupiter and Lewis Hamilton's Sun.'Looks like Lewis is going to win again!' I remarked to Gerard ... and he did, in great style! 2007 at Budapest also brought him home in front - and Ceres was setting at the start. He also won in Japan last year when his Sun rose on the starting grid. But his last race was pretty disastrous; it ended up with his partner Heikki Kovalainen sharing the podium with Timo Glock and the other flying Finn Kimi Raikkonen. Ceres had abandoned the angles of the starting grid, and the UK was nowhere.
I haven't looked at Valencia yet, next weekend, but the last race of the season looks good for Lewis again - I wonder if it will also mean the championship, after this exciting, closely-fought F1 season?
- as we arrived in the Lakes for our annual hols, my p. Moon finally hauled itself out of Scorpio and started its liberating trek through Sag. The change is extraordinary. For two plus years all I've really wanted to wear is black and various shades of khaki, very strange arrivals in my normally vibrant wardrobe! And now, to coin a phrase, 'when I am an old woman I shall wear purple' - can't get enough of it, also red, since Mars occupies Sagittarius in my sky (in fact the mauves were beginning to leak in at the tail-end of the last degree of the old sign.) And most oddly I've begun to find my beloved mountains really quite oppressive; they are looming at me now, taking my space, which I want to extend, and stretch out in, and (as a typical Capricorn!) have all to myself ... or do I? Even my solitariness is shifting; my charity-shop stint last week meant sharing a cluttered space with another volunteer for 4 hours, which would normally give me the heeby-jeebies; but I found myself able for the first time to work in close proximity with abundant good cheer, far more relaxed than I've been all year! There is not a shadow of a doubt, if you want to learn what a Sign is all about, study the progress of your own Moon through all of them, remembering how you were, who you briefly became. It fascinates me, including the colour thing - I could never wear blue till the Moon went into Libra, and through Leo - well! How yellow and orange can one girl get?! Moon in Cancer was a very green phase, Virgo demure and in love with tiny patterns. You can have a lot of fun with this.
Talking of imagery, and getting back to Formula 1, Jenson Button is driving a Honda with 'Earth Dreams' writtten all over it ... just as Sidereal Neptune is driting and dreaming over his tropical Capricorn Sun!
And, interestingly, after my earlier post, on July 19th at Hockenheim the German Grand Prix started with the same pattern as Silverstone - Ceres on the MC (with Mercury) opposite Jupiter and Lewis Hamilton's Sun.'Looks like Lewis is going to win again!' I remarked to Gerard ... and he did, in great style! 2007 at Budapest also brought him home in front - and Ceres was setting at the start. He also won in Japan last year when his Sun rose on the starting grid. But his last race was pretty disastrous; it ended up with his partner Heikki Kovalainen sharing the podium with Timo Glock and the other flying Finn Kimi Raikkonen. Ceres had abandoned the angles of the starting grid, and the UK was nowhere.
I haven't looked at Valencia yet, next weekend, but the last race of the season looks good for Lewis again - I wonder if it will also mean the championship, after this exciting, closely-fought F1 season?
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
PRIME MOVERS
Number and the multi-dimensional Circle
Number and the multi-dimensional Circle
Pamela A. F. Crane
DFAstrolS,DMSAstrol ,DPCCH
Work in Interdimensional Astrology provokes an interest in dimensions generally and their effect on numbers.
What is a "dimension"?
Esoterically, we tend to think of a dimension not just as a single quantitative measurement but as an experientially (or at least conceptually) real spatial and/or temporal environment which is distinct in quality from others that may coexist with it. Such dimensions, as they refer to human life, appear to exist as increasingly rarefied states of matter and/or spiritual energy. These may interpenetrate each other yet still be unknown to each other, and may only interact where the dense becomes refined and the fine is able to condense its energies sufficiently. These dimensions, as suggested elsewhere, may possibly be described by a "Fractal" astrology, refined to the Dwad and the Superdwad (similar but different in phase to the 12th and 144th harmonics.) Ideally one would go even further into levels of refinement corresponding to the 1728th and then the 20736th!... but our data can never be precise enough.
Mathematically, one dimension gives us a line, two dimensions extend this into a plane. three develop a 'solid' form - and these are the dimensions with which we are all familiar, as they shape our everyday existence. What we call 'Time' is generally accepted as our fourth dimension. But in modern mathematics and particle physics, the description of ultra-refined material phenomena demands calculation in four, ten, or even twenty-six dimensions which are then required to compactify into experiential 3-D space.
Setting aside the theoretical mechanisms of such compactification, it seemed worthwhile to follow curiosity into an area that may so far be unexamined by the scientists, as it rests on assumptions that only the astrological mind would fully endorse. These assumptions are (1) that as most - if not all - phenomena are cyclic, the properties of the circle should engage us more than those of the line, and (2) that the division of a circle into 360 discrete degrees recognises a natural vibrational sensitivity to the first twelve harmonics and their products, except the seventh and eleventh. To increase subdivision of the circle to include the 7th and 11th would immediately refine it beyond the Dwad, and so leave the dimension of familiar material forms.
The diagrams and tables which follow ( to be found in the collection of images at the very bottom of the page of posts - I am unable to include them in the text) are the result of expressing all 360 degrees of the Circle in successively higher dimensions by the simple formula {N to the x power mod360} - ie, the degree-number is raised to the required power (multiplied by itself the required number of times) and multiples of 360 subtracted from the result where necessary. The remainder is the new degree on the circle generated by this process.
EG: 11 Aries in the 2nd dimension, hence squared: 112 = 121
= l Leo
23 Virgo in the 3rd dimension, hence cubed: 1733 = 5177717;
5177717 mod 360 = 197 = l7 Libra
7 Taurus in the 5th dimension: 375 = 69343957; mod 360,
23 Virgo in the 3rd dimension, hence cubed: 1733 = 5177717;
5177717 mod 360 = 197 = l7 Libra
7 Taurus in the 5th dimension: 375 = 69343957; mod 360,
= 37 =7 Taurus!
( Normal Harmonic calculation operates on the same principle, except there the formula is the degree-number multiplied by the given harmonic before removing multiples of 360.)
It is worth mentioning at this point that Degrees/Minutes/Seconds can of course be raised to the same powers... in theory! But in practice you will find that this introduces large margins of error in the resulting degree-positions once you go beyond the second dimension, where the margin of error on 1 second of arc squared is already 10 minutes of arc. So in this study, we are dealing solely with whole degrees, for the reasons given above.
( Normal Harmonic calculation operates on the same principle, except there the formula is the degree-number multiplied by the given harmonic before removing multiples of 360.)
It is worth mentioning at this point that Degrees/Minutes/Seconds can of course be raised to the same powers... in theory! But in practice you will find that this introduces large margins of error in the resulting degree-positions once you go beyond the second dimension, where the margin of error on 1 second of arc squared is already 10 minutes of arc. So in this study, we are dealing solely with whole degrees, for the reasons given above.
One tantalising coincidence, before we look at the diagrams, is that the whole circle of 360 degrees raised to the tenth power gives us 3.65615844E+25 in scientific notation, which, divided by 1023, closely approximates the number of Earth's axial rotations (days) in one complete orbit of our Sun - 365.6158 - approximating to the exact figure of 365.2422. If one kilometer is multiplied by 1024 it takes us to the limits of the known universe, therefore so does 10km23. 10km is 6.2 miles. Perhaps this measure has some significance?
The following text refers to the DIAGRAMS at the 'foot' of the blog.
SQUARING THE CIRCLE -
by squaring the one-dimensional circle, the line as a closed loop, It becomes geometrically a surface, perhaps a Möbius strip. But when we square each zodiacal degree-value In turn, a sequence of fresh degrees is generated which in the '2nd-Dimensional' diagram draws a helical progression of larger and larger angles from 1 Aries to 30 Gemini and then reverses the same sequence from l Cancer to 30 Virgo. This repeats again for the second half of the zodiac.
It is therefore ASYMMETRIC, and oscillates about the Cardinal Points.
Just 35 of the 360 degrees form the pattern.
It is therefore ASYMMETRIC, and oscillates about the Cardinal Points.
Just 35 of the 360 degrees form the pattern.
CUBING THE CIRCLE takes the loop into three dimensions - and raising each degree-value to the third power creates an entirely different diagram from the foregoing.
This sequence of generated degrees (76 of the 360) introduces SYMMETRYabout one axis, l Aries-Libra. The sequence does not reverse, and repeats three times in the circle from 1 Fire to 30 Water. The degrees of the natural pentagram come into strong focus - 30 Pisces/0 Aries, l2 Gemini, 24 Leo, 6 Scorpio and l8 Capricorn. Upon it can be superimposed the figure of Leonardo's man, his head in two Mars decans, his hands in four Mercury decans (two out- stretched on the Gemini-Capricorn cross-bar) and his spread legs following the flow of the pattern down to the feet at junctions of Mercury and Mars. Sun-lines and Moon-lines cross each other on the spine at the major chakras of Gonads, Solar Plexus and Heart, also above the head, over the Crown.
We have moved into the world of form with the action of Trinity, and are looking upon the idea of Man - united with his Cross.
THE FOURTH DIMENSION reduces the number of degrees to 16 - 1, 15 and 24 of Fire, 10 of Earth, plus 3 Pisces and three 'rogue' degrees - 21 Gemini, and 6 and 15 Scorpio, which upset the potential symmetry about the 21 degrees Gemini-Sagittarius axis.
Like 2-D, this is an oscillating sequence, reversing at 15 of Fixed signs, and repeating four times over the circle. It is a numerical parabola, which you can see clearly in its table, and which mirrors our
experience of duration and patterns of change more credibly than a repeated linear sequence. Life rises, peaks, and falls away.
With the FIFTH DIMENSION we are entering mysterious territory; there are no popular concepts of what a fifth dimension may comprise. It is a most beautiful pattern; five axes of perfect symmetry contain a lacework of interconnections which intersect to form concentric rings of gathered energy. There are seven foci of energy, including the centre and periphery, and six intervals. It is thought-provoking tofind a suggestive resemblance to electron shells in a pattern generated by the Creative number 5, and the same number of intervals as there are electrons in the Carbon atom. Carbon is, in our world, the stuff of life. (For more on Carbon, see "The Hidden Splendour", available from the author.)
Once again, the degrees of the natural pentagram are strong, and form the five axes of symmetry.
The pattern for the SIXTH DIMENSION is a curiosity: its sequence is very short, picking out just 12 different degrees which reverse after15, with twelve repeats of the oscillation, throwing the cusps and mid-points of each astrological sign into prominence. Four points of the natural pentagram appear - but the fifth, 12 Gemini, invisibly marks the one axis of symmetry. The shape itself is irregular, until its mirror-image 'shadow' is drawn in, as shown.
THE SEVENTH DIMENSION is amazing... a seventh heaven? Like the third, it forms about the single axis of 0 Aries-Libra and contains similar patterns. But it is a far more complex and delicate tracery, taking the full 360 degree circle to complete. Like the fifth, it is beautiful; but its patterns remind one of neural networks. Perhaps It has some relation to the angelic kingdom, or to Man in his spiritual state.
In the EIGHTH DIMENSION 'rogue' degrees from 6 and 15 Scorpio again bring asymmetry into an otherwise balanced pattern pivoted about 21 Gemini - Sagittarius, comprising the actual sequence of 16 Fire and Earth degrees plus its 'shadow' - as we found with the Sixth. The pattern repeats four times in the circle with reverses after each 45 degrees.
THE NINTH DIMENSION reminds us of the idea of Nine as a number of perfection: this displays another most lovely five-fold pattern, again focussed on the natural pentagram. It is essentially a radiant star, suggestive of no organic form except the flower in its perfection, and shines three times from the circle.
A TENTH DIMENSION re-introduces a contrasting and definite asymmetry in a 24-degree sequence that repeats after each 90 and reverses after each 45 The structure is based on the grand trines of 1,16 and 24 of Fire, 10 and 19 of Earth, and 4 of Air, but it is upset by 8 Aries, 21 Gemini, 6 and 15 of Scorpio. Like all the other Base-2 dimensions, it is a pattern of oscillation.
Comparison with the ELEVENTH DIMENSION could not be more dramatic; its delicate networks are very similar to those of the Seventh, but not identical. Like Three and Seven, it produces symmetry about the 0 Aries-Libra axis and the idea of life-form - and to me it is reminiscent of the bird ( often a Dove ) as symbol of the animating and inspiring spirit, particularly when reversed to emphasise a 'descending' form. It may be from these primal geometries that the collective unconscious draws its enduring symbols, clothing them - like the stars - in recognisable forms.
In the TWELFTH DIMENSION we have a return to utter simplicity, eight key degrees that lay the ground-plan for the beautiful traceries we saw in Three, Seven and Eleven. It repeats twelve times around the circle, and reverses every 15 degrees, a simple sequence with a shadow. It combines the properties of symmetry and oscillation.
It would be tempting to end the sequence at that point - but the apparent requirement of twenty-six dimensions for satisfactory structures in particle physics suggests that we should go further. I have not attempted all the powers between twelve and twenty-six, but offer the 26th itself, and the 13th.
The THIRTEENTH DIMENSION turns out to belong with the FIFTH & NINTH, and like the 5th is a harmonic web of five-fold symmetry. It differs, however, in its constructional sequence, so that where the 5th is made mainly of trines, sextiles and inconjuncts ( all plus 1 degree of course) the 13th has a preponderance of challenging squares and oppositions. This is a fascinating thing to find associated with numbers that are part of fortune's folklore - five being the number of the pentagram or Lucky Star, and thirteen traditionally the Unlucky Number! The 'shells' are there, as in the 5-D pattern - but because of the different chords the energy distributions are different.
With TWENTY-SIX we are back with the asymmetry now familiar in dimensions that are multiples of 2, and no further comment seems necessary.
The SEQUENCE TABLES
A table-by-table analysis Is needless, as the phenomena they produce can be summarised quite briefly.
As one would expect, raising any multiple of 30o+1 to any power, mod360, gives a multiple of 30+1 - ie 1 degree of a Sign - as its answer; and any multiple of 30 to any power mod 360 results in 0.
Immediately, by doing maths on our circle, the fiducial 0 (0 Aries) and the pulse of 1 degree of a 'Sign' every 30 are naturally emphasised.
Every sixth dimension - 1st, 7th, 13th, 19th - actually emphasises the beginning of each Sign, as the power of 1 is 1, the power of 31 is 31,that of 61 is 61, and so on (all modulo 360.)
Every fourth dimension - 1st, 5th, 9th, 13th, 17th - the natural sequence progresses by multiples of 30+1, drawing in the circle those relationships that we call Aspects; each plus an orb of 1 degree, the margin within which we know planetary and angular directions to beactive. These are the dimensions with 5-fold symmetry, the creative Star.
Every fourth dimension from the third - 3rd, 7th, 11th, 15th, 19th - the single axis of symmetry emerges from an unaesthetic linear sequence, which however still gathers its numbers into astrologically recognisable groupings across the page. One finds lines of Fire, Earth, Air and Water grand trines, Cardinal, Fixed and Mutable Grand Crosses, perfect semi-sextile or inconjunct sequences, and repeated natural pentagram degrees.
The 9th dimension elegantly combines its aspect sequence with cross-page lines of Qualities and Elements - the latter in their correct order. Even the four columns of computation yield respectively a Fire, Earth, Air and Water emphasis, converted back to the language of astrology. Nine Is quite perfect!
And the final oddity is that any multiple of 30, +6, raised to any power greater than 2, mod 360, always results in 216 - astrologically 6 Scorpio. In other words, the first multiplication giving this persistent degree is 6 x 6 x 6 . .! Does this corner of the natural pentagram have a darker significance than even its Scorpio qualities imply?
Tantalisingly, when the human form is spread on the natural pentagram - so closely approximated by Leonardo's figure - 6 Scorpio becomes the place of the left foot, and invokes another package of symbolism: the idea of Left as symbol of Wrong in its opposition to Right, the idea of mankind possessing an "Achilles Heel" which is a fatal flaw, and the image out of Genesis of humanity crushing the Serpent under his heel.
This accumulated imagery is so powerful that it is worth looking more closely at the other four points of the Creative Star. The right foot, then, would be set at 24 Leo - in the sign of the Sun... or the Son.. .archetype of the spiritual light that balances and challenges Scorpionic darkness. Both feet stand in decans of Mars; but the right is placed in Leo's Aries decan, referring back to the source degree of 0 Aries that crowns the head and symbolises the Father of whom Leo is the Son. When the pentagram is drawn, the first line is the chord of 144 degrees from Aries to Leo. The left foot is in the Scorpio decan of Scorpio, relating to no other point on the star, only to itself.
Carrying these ideas further, we find that on the right hand is 12 Gemini, the sign most closely linked to Breath and the Word, and positive like Aries and Leo. On the left hand is Capricorn 18 - a Sign like Scorpio popularly associated with images of evil or misfortune. We project our own wrongs onto the Scapegoat, sheep are to be
separated from the goats, and the devil himself, Satan/Saturn, appears horned and goat-hoofed in folk imagery. The left foot is linked to the left hand, being in the Capricorn Dwad; both right hand and right foot are in Venus Dwads, Libra and Taurus respectively, embracing justice and kindness. There is one link between Left and Right - the left hand in Capricorn's Leo Dwad suggesting that as in the book of Job, the Tempter may be constrained to do the work of God!.. working through the negative and earthy to bring out a buried light.
This can be read another way, too. The story of Genesis is told by drawing the pentagram on the zodiac circle. In this, the line Aries-Leo shows God the Father creating Adam, the first Man, from the clay of the Taurus dwad. Leo to Capricorn's Leo dwad takes the 'rib' of Adam the Man to form the Woman from the Taurus decan and lead humanity 'into temptation' through ambition and sensuality. The Capricorn-Gemini line begets the brothers Cain and Abel, and Cain, moving next between Gemini and Scorpio, experiences mankind's first jealousy and hatred and commits the first murder. But there is a last line to be drawn, from Scorpio to Aries, promising the hope of return to the Father by the path of suffering and redemption. The whole drama of Darkness and Light is contained in the natural pentagram, which must not be inverted, for then the Father is displaced, giving ascendancy to Adam and the Tempter, and the left-hand path is presented as if it were the right; Scorpio 6, 6x6x6 in the Third Dimension, usurps the place of Gemini 12, the Beast standing in the place of the Holy Spirit. This is what happens when we stand true values on their head.
This is the imagery and the message of St.John's Revelation.
It is notable that the degrees of the natural pentagram raised to any power, will only generate themselves or each other; and that the fourth dimension is ruled by Scorpio 6, the only point on the star to manifest apart from the first degree of Aries. If the fourth dimension is that of Time, then it is existence in Time that gives such
power to the dark forces, against which we men and women are pitted during incarnation after incarnation to temper and purge and prove ourselves before our return to the Father. Time is the dimension of the "Fall".
Aries 1 is pitted only 8 times against 12 of Scorpio 6. Our hell is here.
In the beginning... there is just the circle of vibration. The First Dimension, the Source of All. The Second Dimension winds the numbers into a helix, and something is created out of "nothing". In the Third Dimension, space is created and within it eternal symmetries, the primal forms and ideas; a star is born! But with the Fourth the innocence of eternal life is cast into the agonies of Time, symmetry spoiled, the fire of the spirit in the Fire Grand Trines embattled by the forces of darkness from Scorpio. But rising Into Five we enter a realm of utter harmony and beauty, a taste of heaven. Dimension Six is an enigma - in form a spread pentagon, focussing only12 of the 360 degrees, drawn asymmetrically, yet symmetrical when its 'shadow' is drawn in; repeating every 30 degrees; and emphasising not Scorpio 6 but Aries 1. Here, then, the idea of the Father, the Source,the Alpha/ Omega point, is dominant. The axis of symmetry of this imperfect pentagram is the unmarked, 'invisible', 12 Gemini point of the Word or Breath. My feeling is that this may be the dimension of judgment where the soul becomes aware of its incompleteness and must account to its Maker... before rising again to the Seventh Heaven with its delicate and beautiful vibrations, its sense of holiness of being. Beyond this plane comes another level fraught with disharmony in Eight, a domain of darkness, which leads to the utter perfection of ascended spirit in the Ninth Dimension, where Man achieves Mastery and the Christ-light shines forth as a dynamic creative force. A further hurdle to the spirit is presented in Ten; then the Eleventh Dimension fills with the choirs of angels before the throne of the Twelfth. Here, power belongs to the Father; every one of the significant Primes - 1,7,11,13,17,19,23,29 - raised to the 12th power resolves to 1. There is no pentagram here, only the First and Last Great Ideas of the Source (Aries 0/1), Mind and Matter ( Gemini 21 - Aquarius dwad - and Capricorn 10 - Taurus dwad ), the forces of Light In Leo 16 and 24, and those of Darkness in Scorpio 15 and 6.
If there is truth in these conjectures, then Twelve is the power, the dimension, of the Creator of the knowable universe, and hence a holy number. All the argument for the preservation of duodecimal measures amid the influx of decimals is entirely justified. Retaining a 12-base symbolises an adherence to the Created Order, while the spread of base-10 is symptomatic of its violation and the dethroning of the sacred by the secular.
It is in the powers of the 'significant primes' listed above that the patterns of form and harmony are principally displayed, hence the title of this piece, "Prime Movers". The study began as a hunt for the pattern of prime numbers which has become a most popular sport amongst number-crunchers of all nations. That hunt is still on, and is best left to the well-equipped; but it has led us on a most interesting and thought-provoking journey from which we may have more to learn.
Wednesday, July 09, 2008
CERES AT SILVERSTONE
What an exciting Grand Prix at Silverstone last Sunday! The track was running like the Thames, visibilty in the spray encompassing 18 insanely fast F1 racing cars almost zero. And what ballet! Lap after lap such wild pirouettes, such synchronised spinning! They roared away to the first corner at 1h00 pm, just as planet (-yes!) Ceres had crowned the Midheaven opposite England's and the UK's Sun; 24 minutes later the IC connected with Jupiter.
Now I had been pondering the significance of Ceres since her elevation to Planethood; reviewing the myths, remembering her role as goddess of the harvest, bereaved mother of Proserpine, epitome of grief and despair, unwilling mother-in-law to (literally) the son-in-law from Hell; wreaker of vengeance on an innocent world. She withdrew her labour. She banished the joys and fruitfulness of summer, forcing the whole of humanity to share her misery and deprivation for six months of every year - after negotiating visiting rights with her abducted daughter! She has a lot to do with bargaining, a lot to do with industry, food, and resources in general, focusses us on women's issues, connects to depression in every sense, and turned herself into the mother-in-law from hell. She is the exemplar of how one person's actions (whatever the motive) can have global impact, reminding us that as inter-dependent members of the hive our very survival is threatened by each small act of selfishness.
This week our Brown/would-be Green Prime Minister at last exhorted the UK to stop wasting food; we have been hit by (surprise, surprise) the Credit Crunch after more than 7 fat years (would that our Pharaoh had listened earlier to his Josephs!). The G8 is (are?) meeting to discuss the global financial and energy crisis.This greedy, complacent society is losing its children and its living to all the seductions from hell, and is about to pay dearly before some sort of Spring restores us all to our`senses and regenerates the precious environment we have over-exploited to the point of near-collapse.
You can see how two planetary themes are inter-weaving now in our history: newly-empowered Ceres is in 10 Cancer right now, July 2008, opposing the Sun of every nation or institution born at the start of the year, while her son-in-law Pluto, demoted but dangerous, enters Capricorn after 12 years in profligate Sagittarius to teach us en masse the harsh lessons of discipline and thrift. We are told that this current recession will last for two years. Interestingly almost exactly two years from now Ceres and Pluto will meet (at 5 Capricorn); what will that summit bring forth, I wonder? It won't be until 2013 that Pluto reaches 10 Capricorn and insists on our response. He finally leaves Saturn's sign in the autumn of 2024. It's going to be a long winter!
Meanwhile the Great Tempter is having his last fling in the sign of travel, law and religion and in cahoots with Ceres has arranged for this week's approval of Anglican women Bishops to fracture an already embattled Church. Our collective hedonism has climaxed in squandered resources and soaring prices; suddenly our mass freedom to hop in a car or a plane and go wherever we want has been curtailed. No amount of wilful litigation will now guarantee us getting our own way. 'Human Rights' are about to confront human responsibilities.
Now, the point is also that Ceres was discovered on January 1st 1801, the very day that the United Kingdom - the union of Great Britain and Ireland - came into being. So everything in the two 'natal' charts, apart from the angles, is shared. This conjunction of events happened in the heat of the industrial revolution, which centred on Britain and whose flames fanned into the building of an empire unparallelled in human history. The UK - as long as it can hold its integrity - will always be Ceres' own realm; all her affairs come to a head in this group of islands. So when Pluto conjoins Ceres in 2010, and when he comes to 10/11 Capricorn in 2013, the UK and the Earth Mother will live in Interesting Times ...
So - back to Silverstone on a soaking Sunday in July 2008, and at 1pm with 18 huge engines roaring, Ceres presides over the British Grand Prix. So of course the triumph went to the British driver in a British car! Young Lewis Hamilton stormed from 4th on the starting grid to 2nd in Lap 1 ... and as Jupiter came within range of the lower meridian, the retrograde Jupiter that was conjunct Lewis' 17 Capricorn Sun for the second time, he made a brilliant pass on his team-mate Heikki Kovalainen to lead the race to the finish and win his dream trophy.
On November 2nd 2008 Jupiter is back at 17 Capricorn; and if the last F1 battle of the 2008 season begins at 2pm as usual, Ceres will again be on an angle, this time setting. We might end this year with a UK champion.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
SKY CHING
Along came the new millennium, and welcome to a total outer-planetary onslaught! In a desperate bid to get some sort of handle on inner meltdown before I lost it altogether, out came my dusty volumes of the I Ching. As the Web had provided a splendid free download of the I Ching to my PDA, many hours were lost to its exploration in the June sunshine - and I came rapidly to the conclusion that I would never, ever be able to translate its antique world-view adequately into my own. Unless it would cross-reference to astrology. In which case there was Hope.
For a while I really thought I'd cracked it. A lovely system arranged itself over the hexagram table in the back of my workbook. Yet doubts nagged. Nothing quite fitted completely. It was a bit like the cheerful swimsuit I tried on one very, very sweaty morning, and which fitted really nicely round all the usual dodgy bits of body - except for one utterly intractable dimple on one side of the bust - so it was abandoned in despair. As was Fu Hsi, King Wen, Wilhelm, Jung, and Crane's optimistic transliterary effort.
THEN the penny dropped!
The whole point about pure divination (perhaps with the exception of astrology - but WHO KNOWS???) is that it is you who make the rules.
Hands will no doubt fly up in horror at this point after all those head-pounding hours spent memorising the mesmerising pronouncements of so many honoured adepts on the telling juxtapositions of cards, runes, tealeaves, coins, yarrow-stalks, flying geese, entrails, bits of beach and God knows what else, and the painstaking intensity of practice, in fear of contradiction. The workshops. The seminars. The Conferences. The dreaded exams. The expense.
But all you are doing in every case is agreeing to a set of rules devised by another human being living in the same world as you, often at a considerable distance in time, space and culture. These rules may have been intuited, or rationally planned. They may even have been divinely inspired. Or concocted for the current incarnation of a tabloid rag! None of this alters the fact that all worldly systems of divination have their origin in the world (spiritual and material) and are organised and passed down the generations by the denizens of the world to further their collective and individual insight into that world.
And they only work if practised by folk who agree to the rules.
Hence the utter impossibility of so-called scientific testing. No sceptic agrees to the rules.
At this point I must stress a) that astrology by its very nature, being Bigger Than All of Us, and being the notes of the complex music that is our eternal development, is not under discussion here despite its differing systems, since astrology as a phenomenon applies descriptively and predictively to all lives with or without their awareness or consent.
Nor b) is spiritual healing, which can be so effective for patients who have no faith in it at all, and may even be unaware that it is flowing to them.
But how many of you have picked up a pendulum and forgotten whether right or left, circular or straight movement means Yes or No? ...and decided one way (which works just fine) only to find the book said the complete opposite?
You made the rules.
You initiated and entered into agreement with the Cosmic/the discarnate/the Higher Mind.
Your questions received their proper answers.
All chosen paths, followed upwards, lead to the Summit.
The Book of Changes
... has very high status among divinatory systems due to its extremely antique and doubly royal provenance. It asks to be treated with respect; it will reward you with ancient imagery and utterances of sibylline ambiguity. 'It' may also argue with you, its answer bearing little relation to your question and seeming to scold or criticise your motive or current attitude. Coming from such an august source, such castigations can provoke much unproductive anxiety.
What is going on?
You have agreed to be counselled in a language which is unfamiliar and out-of-date.
You have deferred to a couple of
long-dead Kings instead of the living guidance you know and trust - or obliged your guidance to battle through an alien channel.
You have accepted uncritically translations of the oracle which may not do it justice, even from a famous pen.
All the above is of course the preferred and honoured practice of many, many people...
...but after taking thought, may there not be other ways to truth that are more appropriate for your corner of 21st century culture, and more enriching?
After taking thought, the idea came to me that counsel in the symbolic language I best understood would be most welcome; also that the built-in fluidity of the I Ching's divinatory system could hardly be bettered.
Therefore it was necessary to combine these in a way that compromised neither.
(I am writing these words to you at an exact Lunar Eclipse!!! Just noticed this. Make of it what you may!)
The result became what I call - for want of a better term -
SKY CHING.
The Mechanics.
You use your stalks, your coins, your software - whatever means you have chosen to generate static or moving lines of Yang or Yin energy, just as you would in normal I Ching consultation.
But instead of 8 trigrams, columns of 3 Yang or Yin lines that combine to form the 64 6-line hexagrams, Sky Ching forms 16 four-line 'Quartets' that combine into 256 possible 'Octets'... multiplied yet again if three Quartets - a Dodecet - are generated.
The lines may be displayed in columns as usuual - or, in deference to the 21st-century's adoption of the Bar-Code, as a sequence from left to right.
Instead of solid Yang and broken Yin lines, the energies may be represented by thick/thin lines like a bar code, or by the other pair beloved by those of binary bent, 1 and 0. Or if you are keen to stick with matters closer to the astrological, + and -. It really doesn't matter.
Because you are setting the rules of a new and valid contract between your consciousness and the source of Truth.
As in the venerable I Ching, if you throw, say, three coins all Yang, that line is then a moving line, transmuting to Yin in a second, derived Quartet that adds to the message of the initial Quartet.
The Symbolism
Quartets
As in the I Ching, from a Creative Monad (O ... or @ ... or * ... or even ? or ! ...?) spring two polar energies, Yang (1) and Yin (0)
From Yang come Fire (11) and Air (10); from Yin come Earth (00) and Water (01)
FIRE yields Mars/Aries/1st (1100 - Mars exalted in Earth), Sun/Leo/5th (1111 - fixed Fire), Jupiter/Sagittarius/9th (1101 - Jupiter co-ruling & exalted in Water), Asc/Desc (1110 - Fire-Air angles)
AIR yields Mercury/Gemini/3rd (1000 - Mercury also rules Earth), Venus/Libra/7th (1001 - Venus exalted in Water), Uranus/Aquarius/11th (1010 - Fixed Air), Dragon's Head (1011)
EARTH yields Earth/Taurus/2nd (0000 - fixed Earth), Chiron/Virgo/6th (0011 - concrete, physical), Saturn/Capricorn/10th (0010 - Saturn exalted in Air), Mc/IC axis (0001 - Earth-Water angles)
WATER yields Moon/Cancer/4th (0100 - Moon exalted in Earth), Pluto/Scorpio/8th (0101 - Fixed Water), Neptune/Pisces/12th (0110 - abstract, intangible), Dragon's Tail (0111)
Octets and Dodecets
A Quartet will supply much helpful imagery to illumine the subject-matter of a question.
However, you may like to generate the idea of Planet in Sign, or a full sequence of Planet/Sign/House. This is achieved as already suggested by throwing coins (etc) till 3 x 4, 12 lines are formed.
These can then be read in exactly that way. The symbolism of the 1st 4 lines will be planetary, that of the 2nd 4 its sign position, that of the 3rd 4 a house position.
If there are moving lines, then the corresponding Quartet will transmute to a different Planet, Sign, or House according to its ranking in your sequence. This new information may imply a 'conjunction' in a static Sign, or an 'aspect' between two planets in two signs, or a change of conditions over time, perhaps, when the Sign or the House changes but not the Planet.
You see how rich and flexible this is? And any astrologer can read it. It is something you can carry in your head and your smallest pocket; I have a tiny dice (I know it should be 'die' but it looks odd!) on which I have agreed that a 1 or a 5 (Aries, Leo) gives a Yang line, a 2 or a 4 (Taurus, Cancer) gives a Yin line, while a 3 or a 6 (Gemini, Virgo) means a moving Yang or Yin respectively. It's all you need.
The results will depend, not on the means of divination you have chosen or on written rules, but on your symbolic understanding, and the integrity of your spiritual agreement.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Here is a poem of mine where I have some fun with ideas of God and Cosmology....
BIG BANG
One day which never existed, God
in solitary rage surprised Himself with a Thought
so unsustainable in the here-to-fore
He cracked the unflawed sheer shimmer of Monad in Equilibrium,
He broke Mind
mirrored in all directions,
He shivered Infinity
and the incorporeal mighty Hand that held it,
thus beginning seven days of Bad Luck as Time was born in the vortex.
Being God,
Resourceful, He stretched forth His other hand
upon the vortex, with an opposite charge -
And Said: LET THERE BE LIGHT, and There Was light
flashing from splinter to splinter,
aeon to age;
suns of a shattered hand blinked fire into and out of a myriad million dizzy reflections
glinting Godhead back,
curled time-shards
reduplicating spin-drift, inkblot, starclot and coalsack -
by which light a God could see His scattered parts
And Being
God, He Said:
LET THEM FLY
Asunder upon the wind of
My unparalleled Imagination,
LET THEM SEED where a
plus-minus meets in the heart of light
a microcosmic god in the anti-mind, for this
is Matter of Moment; let there be Life, therefore,
so let there be Soul - let there be male, and female
warring and mating; let there be holes for light to penetrate,
dramatic poles, north and south in collision, upwards, down -
as in My excess I find
sorrow I cannot drown
in the necessity
for light to
mend Me by,
so will mySelf,
enantiomorphic
twin of Me and
friend
be lover of that Light,
his flesh a bandage for My fractured dignity
for a seven-night.
Till then,
Let every action have its equal and opposite reaction.
Let there be
Polarity, pendulum, fractal, parabola
And parity.
Thus Spake God.........
.........One Day that suddenly existed,
as
a myriad million fragments of Forever
took their first lesson in strife and alchemy;
towards which sex, war, succour, science and sainthood,
the long, vain struggle to tie the strings of symphonies
between grass and the galaxy, Caligula and Christ -
So many poles of puzzlement, poor man-thing! -
making itself slowly in God's other image,
feet on a star, head in the coalsack.
God forgot
to make men like snails. Here it is Sunday lunch
And still we have not mapped our route for the last afternoon
of our life; the future winks only briefly at us
out of the healing mirrors.
Some are struggling
To put their eyes out on stalks and see around corners
of the inconceivable before the last trump
is played, the last supper indigested and
the disbelievable unMichaelangelic Hand
reach forth to converge the silver trails
of the slow, vulnerable, visionary sun
housing the soul in helix.
Here they come,
a few at a time,
the unrejected cells;
a Miracle is made.
The Wound closes.
Thy Hand, O God
may close the eyes of Time - but it is built of us!...
We who have put out the cat may be most unwilling to
put out the stars the cat and we have hunted our dreams by,
may be discontent;
may fidget with the smoothed fabric of Space,
finger the substance of the Maker's Dream,
flex the muscles of a new idea -
Spring a surprise.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
PS! After pondering along these lines (instead of sleeping, of course) I thought - "and here I am, living in the town that celebrates Lewis Carroll, in a house with Alice characters on the bedroom doors (carefully painted round by me, as they are delightful) and Carroll was of course a mathematician, Charles Dodgson!" When he came here to stay with Alice Liddell and her family, and later (probably in Oxford) told her the tales we love - the mathematician/cosmologist was working overtime. He created a rabbit obsessed with time, a tea-party that went on for ever, a hatter and a hare who each lived in their own universe, a dormouse who spent its time going in and out of the sleep-state, a cat that kept shifting dimensions and a heroine who was alternately normal, transported, extremely tiny, unmanageably huge ... and retained her identity valiantly through every vicissitude! There are so many big concepts in this 'child's' tale.
I'm going to have to read it again!
I'm going to have to read it again!
MIND IN THE COSMOS
A couple of days ago I was watching, fascinated, the film 'Dangerous Knowledge', re-screened on BBC2. It concerned the obsessions of mathematicians and the consequences for their sanity.
Georg Cantor spent his life trying to get a mathematical handle on (of all things) infinity. He got to the point where he was even adding 'infinities' together and making them jump through conceptual hoops. It drove him mad.
With a south node in Aquarius I must be careful where I send my thoughts!... but it did get me pondering. A number of questions arose in my mind which may or may not make much sense, but here they are for what they are worth.
Cantor was tantalised by the number of possible points on the circumference of a circle ( and we astrologers deal with circles Great and small all the time.) Take a circle, draw radii from its centre to the edge until there is no room left on that edge - and the area will be black with lines - and you have a finite construction. But as soon as you widen that circumference, the original radii will of course fan out, leaving spaces on the new perimeter! So the number of radii in a circle is infinite, assuming the potential circumference is infinitely far away.
My question is - why start from the centre? Wherever the outer limit of any Great Circle is (and if it is Infinity, so be it, because it is beyond the conception of a finite mind) it can be completed with as many nano-nano points as it has room for, and then they can form the origin of radii to the circle's centre.
Maybe a silly thought, but let's play with ideas!
This whole conundrum arises because mankind insists on dividing things. So another question is, why assume division is appropriate? Why not try the other assumption that some phenomena function as unified Wholes?
As Astrologers we work with wholes in the form of Ideas that are grouped in twelve sections of a circular heaven. The Great Circle is the Ecliptic, and the 12 sections are what we call the Zodiac. These can be subdivided (yes!) into 144 subsets known as the Dwads; and there are a number of differing great-circular frameworks that place these Ideas in different contexts of human life and earthly existence. We also deal in Degrees - 360 of them in each circle - and in minutes - 60 to each degree; and degrees themselves carry individual meanings. But small as these are, detailed as they become, they are still Wholes, and we don't need to mess with them too much! We also work with the geometry of the circle to assess the harmony or lack of it between zodiacal Ideas that are focussed by the presence of a planet, or the Moon, or a key spatial node such as the Ascendant, the Midheaven, or the Nodes of the Moon (there are others.) But there is little to be gained in understanding by straying beyond the kind of geometries that would produce recognisable music on a taut string. So beyond 12ths or 24ths not many 'aspects' are used; 11ths are, but odd geometry is tricky to understand and work with. So why not work with Wholes elsewhere instead of constantly dividing? Maybe lines spread out into membranes? surfaces into mobius loops and toroids? Waves, particles, strings and superstrings all fall into this category, I daresay. And as astrology is more wave-like and rhythmic and musical than particulate, my feeling is that it is in this category of cosmic phenomena that the astrologer and the physicist/chemist/cosmologist will eventually meet.
And then there's Pi.
Following on from that last argument, why are folks not content with the elegant fraction, 22/7, and forever going on about Pi not resolving to a neat decimal place?
1/3 doesn't either - it's 1.3333333333333 on into good old infinity again, and yet we recognise a third of something when we see it. It doesn't have a fuzzy edge that wafts us away into hyperspace (unless you insist on examining the quantum conditions around your slice of short-cake - in which case there may be no hope for you.)
I say, let's get back to fractions. Decimals are all very handy but they do throw up this infinity problem again, as does any BaseN arithmetic. Yes it's very entertaining, and people spend their lives pushing Primes and ratios and divisions to their impossible limits - but where is understanding in all of this? (Except to recognise, forcefully, our own limitations as an incarnate family!) Look at Phi. Beautiful. Not because it's 1:1.61803...(etc) but because of the proportion itself that is built organically into so many living and wonderfully architectural things.
Somewhere in all this maths and cosmology there has to be the place where Mind Is. When you have knocked around the worls for 65 years as I and many of you have, and spent 40 or so of them as an astrologer, healer, and and general mixer with friends unseen, you know the spiritual dimensions are a reality, that they interpenetrate the apparent world, and Science will always fail until it allows for that reality in testing its own propositions. It tends on the whole not to. I've met quite a few scientists in various fields and even if they profess a belief in spirituality, or in God, I don't really see this in their work. It gets parked just outside while they go in the lab for the day to study multi-dimensional theory. One day the penny will drop, and some bright young person will get the most deserved Nobel Prize in history.
This ubiquitous Mind - consciousness - meaning - purpose - is ultimately the basis for our Astrology. The Universe is permeated with it. It is our Matrix. We are the Cinderella of Science. Look - astrologers recognised millennia ago the 'sensitive dependence on initial conditions' that is integral to modern Chaos Theory. Astrology is likewise fractal in its nature (numbers 12 and 60 being key to our work with the intelligent cosmos.) We are manifest Thought.
I have a paper that I wrote a few years back, on the properties of the Circle and muliple dimensions, that I may put up here later on if I can get the diagrams to go on the blog with it. Watch this space.
That'll do for now. Have to get tea at some point this evening!
A couple of days ago I was watching, fascinated, the film 'Dangerous Knowledge', re-screened on BBC2. It concerned the obsessions of mathematicians and the consequences for their sanity.
Georg Cantor spent his life trying to get a mathematical handle on (of all things) infinity. He got to the point where he was even adding 'infinities' together and making them jump through conceptual hoops. It drove him mad.
With a south node in Aquarius I must be careful where I send my thoughts!... but it did get me pondering. A number of questions arose in my mind which may or may not make much sense, but here they are for what they are worth.
Cantor was tantalised by the number of possible points on the circumference of a circle ( and we astrologers deal with circles Great and small all the time.) Take a circle, draw radii from its centre to the edge until there is no room left on that edge - and the area will be black with lines - and you have a finite construction. But as soon as you widen that circumference, the original radii will of course fan out, leaving spaces on the new perimeter! So the number of radii in a circle is infinite, assuming the potential circumference is infinitely far away.
My question is - why start from the centre? Wherever the outer limit of any Great Circle is (and if it is Infinity, so be it, because it is beyond the conception of a finite mind) it can be completed with as many nano-nano points as it has room for, and then they can form the origin of radii to the circle's centre.
Maybe a silly thought, but let's play with ideas!
This whole conundrum arises because mankind insists on dividing things. So another question is, why assume division is appropriate? Why not try the other assumption that some phenomena function as unified Wholes?
As Astrologers we work with wholes in the form of Ideas that are grouped in twelve sections of a circular heaven. The Great Circle is the Ecliptic, and the 12 sections are what we call the Zodiac. These can be subdivided (yes!) into 144 subsets known as the Dwads; and there are a number of differing great-circular frameworks that place these Ideas in different contexts of human life and earthly existence. We also deal in Degrees - 360 of them in each circle - and in minutes - 60 to each degree; and degrees themselves carry individual meanings. But small as these are, detailed as they become, they are still Wholes, and we don't need to mess with them too much! We also work with the geometry of the circle to assess the harmony or lack of it between zodiacal Ideas that are focussed by the presence of a planet, or the Moon, or a key spatial node such as the Ascendant, the Midheaven, or the Nodes of the Moon (there are others.) But there is little to be gained in understanding by straying beyond the kind of geometries that would produce recognisable music on a taut string. So beyond 12ths or 24ths not many 'aspects' are used; 11ths are, but odd geometry is tricky to understand and work with. So why not work with Wholes elsewhere instead of constantly dividing? Maybe lines spread out into membranes? surfaces into mobius loops and toroids? Waves, particles, strings and superstrings all fall into this category, I daresay. And as astrology is more wave-like and rhythmic and musical than particulate, my feeling is that it is in this category of cosmic phenomena that the astrologer and the physicist/chemist/cosmologist will eventually meet.
And then there's Pi.
Following on from that last argument, why are folks not content with the elegant fraction, 22/7, and forever going on about Pi not resolving to a neat decimal place?
1/3 doesn't either - it's 1.3333333333333 on into good old infinity again, and yet we recognise a third of something when we see it. It doesn't have a fuzzy edge that wafts us away into hyperspace (unless you insist on examining the quantum conditions around your slice of short-cake - in which case there may be no hope for you.)
I say, let's get back to fractions. Decimals are all very handy but they do throw up this infinity problem again, as does any BaseN arithmetic. Yes it's very entertaining, and people spend their lives pushing Primes and ratios and divisions to their impossible limits - but where is understanding in all of this? (Except to recognise, forcefully, our own limitations as an incarnate family!) Look at Phi. Beautiful. Not because it's 1:1.61803...(etc) but because of the proportion itself that is built organically into so many living and wonderfully architectural things.
Somewhere in all this maths and cosmology there has to be the place where Mind Is. When you have knocked around the worls for 65 years as I and many of you have, and spent 40 or so of them as an astrologer, healer, and and general mixer with friends unseen, you know the spiritual dimensions are a reality, that they interpenetrate the apparent world, and Science will always fail until it allows for that reality in testing its own propositions. It tends on the whole not to. I've met quite a few scientists in various fields and even if they profess a belief in spirituality, or in God, I don't really see this in their work. It gets parked just outside while they go in the lab for the day to study multi-dimensional theory. One day the penny will drop, and some bright young person will get the most deserved Nobel Prize in history.
This ubiquitous Mind - consciousness - meaning - purpose - is ultimately the basis for our Astrology. The Universe is permeated with it. It is our Matrix. We are the Cinderella of Science. Look - astrologers recognised millennia ago the 'sensitive dependence on initial conditions' that is integral to modern Chaos Theory. Astrology is likewise fractal in its nature (numbers 12 and 60 being key to our work with the intelligent cosmos.) We are manifest Thought.
I have a paper that I wrote a few years back, on the properties of the Circle and muliple dimensions, that I may put up here later on if I can get the diagrams to go on the blog with it. Watch this space.
That'll do for now. Have to get tea at some point this evening!
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Moon unhappy in Pisces 1...
Today is a sad day for Llandudno. Conwy Council met to discuss the fate of Penmorfa, the magical old house where Alice Liddell and her family spent their summers ( indeed as much time as possible ) and Lewis Carroll may have visited, gaining much of his inspiration for Alice In Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass. Need I say that the developers won, the Liddell home will be bulldozed, and flats will take its place at the foot of the Great Orme on Llandudno's stunning West Shore.
At 9 am the BBC had phoned me to ask if I would do a short piece to camera about Penmorfa, for Wales Today; I told them how we all felt, what a unique attraction would be lost to this holiday town, how the developers had torn down the extensions two years ago and left the historic heart of the building open to the weather, ensuring that by 2008 it would no longer be viable, and they could demolish it unopposed. I told them how Gerard and I chose to celebrate there 6 years ago when it was a thriving, welcoming hotel; the owner made our evening so special, and even presented me with a gorgeous red rose. I still have the petals. But all the press and TV coverage, all the demonstrations, all the celebrity support have been in vain. All we have left are our memories, and poignant photographs.
Moon unhappy in Pisces 2...
... And it's official - every healthy adult between the ages of 40 and 70 will be encouraged to take Statins daily to prevent heart attacks. The drug will be Simvastatin because it is now extremely cheap and will make a minimal hole in the NHS budget.
I was put on Simvastatin by my GP nearly two years ago because my blood pressure was deemed too high. The fact that when you are a migraineur (-se?) it goes up and down like a yo-yo was not taken into account. By last autumn I thought my life was pretty well over - I struggled to get up and down stairs; everything hurt; I was profoundly depressed; I had horrible shooting pains all over my body but especially in my limbs. I felt old.
Then I had another look at the prescription leaflet, at side-effects. The light dawned. This was not me having yet another horrible variant of the migraines that have messed up my life since 1983 - this was the downside of Statins!
Radio 4 ran a couple of very helpful programmes on these drugs over the following few weeks, where I learned that I was far from alone in suffering such a debilitating reaction. This was confirmed over and over again online, on a number of medical/journalistic websites. So, my friends, if you decide to take the doctor's advice and embark on a life of daily Simvastatin, please read the leaflet and take the side-effects section seriously, because if you have pain or weakness in your legs and leave it too long to tell the GP and either change or come off the drug, the damage to your muscular system may be long-lasting, even permanent.
I think I have just got away with it, ditching the damn things at last in late 2007, but it has affected my swallowing so that I have to be especially careful - ironically - with pills. I have my life back, God be thanked, and will let Him and nature decide when it is time to shed this body and go home.
Today is a sad day for Llandudno. Conwy Council met to discuss the fate of Penmorfa, the magical old house where Alice Liddell and her family spent their summers ( indeed as much time as possible ) and Lewis Carroll may have visited, gaining much of his inspiration for Alice In Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass. Need I say that the developers won, the Liddell home will be bulldozed, and flats will take its place at the foot of the Great Orme on Llandudno's stunning West Shore.
At 9 am the BBC had phoned me to ask if I would do a short piece to camera about Penmorfa, for Wales Today; I told them how we all felt, what a unique attraction would be lost to this holiday town, how the developers had torn down the extensions two years ago and left the historic heart of the building open to the weather, ensuring that by 2008 it would no longer be viable, and they could demolish it unopposed. I told them how Gerard and I chose to celebrate there 6 years ago when it was a thriving, welcoming hotel; the owner made our evening so special, and even presented me with a gorgeous red rose. I still have the petals. But all the press and TV coverage, all the demonstrations, all the celebrity support have been in vain. All we have left are our memories, and poignant photographs.
Moon unhappy in Pisces 2...
... And it's official - every healthy adult between the ages of 40 and 70 will be encouraged to take Statins daily to prevent heart attacks. The drug will be Simvastatin because it is now extremely cheap and will make a minimal hole in the NHS budget.
I was put on Simvastatin by my GP nearly two years ago because my blood pressure was deemed too high. The fact that when you are a migraineur (-se?) it goes up and down like a yo-yo was not taken into account. By last autumn I thought my life was pretty well over - I struggled to get up and down stairs; everything hurt; I was profoundly depressed; I had horrible shooting pains all over my body but especially in my limbs. I felt old.
Then I had another look at the prescription leaflet, at side-effects. The light dawned. This was not me having yet another horrible variant of the migraines that have messed up my life since 1983 - this was the downside of Statins!
Radio 4 ran a couple of very helpful programmes on these drugs over the following few weeks, where I learned that I was far from alone in suffering such a debilitating reaction. This was confirmed over and over again online, on a number of medical/journalistic websites. So, my friends, if you decide to take the doctor's advice and embark on a life of daily Simvastatin, please read the leaflet and take the side-effects section seriously, because if you have pain or weakness in your legs and leave it too long to tell the GP and either change or come off the drug, the damage to your muscular system may be long-lasting, even permanent.
I think I have just got away with it, ditching the damn things at last in late 2007, but it has affected my swallowing so that I have to be especially careful - ironically - with pills. I have my life back, God be thanked, and will let Him and nature decide when it is time to shed this body and go home.
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