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

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.