It never ceases to amaze me how these symbols, divined randomly, perfectly and precisely follow a twelve-fold sequence of the Zodiac. After the street scene of yesterday, ruled by Gemini, Cancer is the ruler of today’s oracle and, as you’ve no doubt heard me say ad nauseum, Cancer is associated with flood myths and deliverance. Enter today’s Sabian symbol: The Storm Ended, All Nature Rejoices in Brilliant Sunshine. Really? Okay. The official symbolism here is pretty straightfoward: The surging of life and love after crisis, a word that shares an etymological route with crossroads, Mercury being the god thereof, and Gemini being the sign that expresses that particular marketplace of duality. And as yesterday’s carnival explosion allowed the individual to release via catharsis, we now see the effects of it.

We are, as Dane Rudhyar puts it, “singing in the cleansed and refreshed mind, flooded for a while by the waters of feeling”—if that’s not a Cancerian image I don’t know what is. We are today given a sense of the joy and hope of new beginnings. I know this is going to resonate in our household today because this was theme of conversation this morning before glancing at what today’s oracle might be. Anyway I have some insight: We all want a certain sense of do-over, to really cut losses and make piece with failures of the past—in a sense we do this every day, even just looking at what is left on our to-do list, making new pacts and promises with ourselves to positively take life in new directions. It’s a very mental thing typically….but sometimes, there is a greater sense of “starting over” which just happened to be the name of Linda Lavin’s cabaret we saw a few days ago (if you are a performer and reading this make it a point to see LL’s master class in cabaret). I guess the difference is this: Sometimes we aren’t so much deciding to start over, but rather find ourselves as the vehicle, the embodiment, of the archtypal energy (sone and the same as this Cancerian “flood myth” experience) of true deliverance taking hold, whether we are mentally aligned with it or not.

Real renewal and recovery is emotional—we have to feel it. So today we see “all nature rejoices” (re-joy); and, as we are not separate from nature, but just a human expression of it, nature can rejoice through us. Two days ago we sensed the soul’s yearning for this, and we were advised to let it not make it happen. We then took to the streets, the crossroads of human and spiritual experience and the duality that brings to bear, and we managed achieve release, getting our minds out of the way without completely losing our noodles. And now we are open channels for the waters of the emotional world to work its nature through the channels of our very own. Have a nice day.

Copyright 2015 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Half-way through Leo, at 15° of the sign, we see A Pageant, With Its Spectacular Floats, Moves Along A Street Crowded With People, and it’s not even carnival time in Provincetown. The esoteric meaning of this image is the releasing of energies in a form that enacts the aspirations of man’s soul/nature—yesterday we explored, albeit briefly (I’m busy—don’t judge me) the soul’s yearning for express, ruled by Taurus, associated with the voice/expression. Today we take it to the streets which is the domain of the scrappy sign of Gemini, ruled by Mercury, named for the god of all sorts of jugglers, clowns, name-sake merchants, buskers and your basic carnie folk. “Happenings” fall under Gemininan government, people of the sign being buzzy types, typically with an excitement addiction—the kind that like a parade or carnival. But the street-level aspect is only one side of the duality of that sign. By reveling in the streets, allowing excitement to build, we are seeking some form of release or incandescence. (Isn’t that a great word?)

We can reach a state of sublime luminosity via the ecstatic experience. We know this from many cultures, from shamans to Shakers, dervishes to pentacosal devotees. Through the individual experience—and the Gemini-ruled nervous system—we find ecstatic connection with the collective and, again, access the transpersonal through demonstration. Gemini combining with Leo really amplifies the theatricality associated with the latter sign, allowing us to sing the body electric, Walt Whitman, a Gemini, knowing full well the connection between the individual/self and transpersonal/collective.

 The advent of a clown, or costuming associated with carnivals, had its origins in the funerary. There is the expectation of opening oneself to some darker, demonic elements when one crosses the threshold into altered states of consciousness that link them to collective spirit, designed to move the individuals. The costumes are a) designed to disguise the individual; and b) to frighten away and unsavory spirits, which is why we wear them on Halloween, when the veil between the worlds is meant to be quite thin.

So take to the streets today folks, but keep your psychic defenses strong. Allow the spirit to move you but beware of your own personal demons.

Copyright 2015 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.

With the last image, the self sought to recollect itself, I imagine, in preparation for certain reincarnation. An old man reflecting in a rocking chair could be the very image of weighing the past (karma) which determines a new state of being, all very high-Aries. Now, at Leo 14°, ruled by Taurus in a twelve-fold sequence, we find A Human Soul Seeking Opportunities For Outward Manifestation, which strikes me as an image of an evolved Taurus kind.

Self-actualization is the keynote here, something which is achieved through the manifestation of our talents, qualities, assets, worth, value—all of which are attributes of Taurus and the second astrological house. What is life then but the proving (fixed-earth of Taurus) proving ground for the soul’s yearning. In a sense life is a process of terrestrially representing the true nature of the spirit. We want to have as little separation between what our original, true soul’s desire might be and the life we live—it’s a great chasm between those two elements of self which characterizes dis-ease on any and all levels. Rudhyar suggests this urge is transpersonal, that is to say, dealing with states of conscioiusness byoned the limits of personal identity. This is debatable. I consider them one and the same. And of course it’s easier said then done.

Life provides obsacles. And would we be dealing with an Aries-ruled oracle, here, we might say that the answer is to attack, the energy of that sign being directive and objective, ruled by Mars, whose symbol is a spear and shield, armed to do battle. But Taurus energy is the opposite. Ruled by Venus the sign is about attracting or allowing. So we see today that the prescription for leading a life mor aligned with soulful yearning is one of letting the soul speak and manifest; this would suggest, by exention, that our obstacles are largely self-imposed. And if we are not letting our true self to come out, then we are therefore in some state of self-hatred or -denial. That won’t get any of us anywhere.

Copyright 2015 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Leo 13° is ruled by the sign of Aries in a twelve-fold sequence and not surprising it focuses on Selfhood. An Old Sea Captain Rocking Himself On The Porch Of His Cottage, to me, speaks of the evolved Aries experience. I see an old soul who has kept the integrity of self intact and might even now be recollecting or, even anticipating reincarnation. He is more akin to the child in the swing in his rocking back and forth. He has weathered the storm of temporal existence and is contented with his choices. He may be like the individual who snuck away from yesterday’s lawn party with it is artful setting to bask in what nature offers. He is in quiet reflection of old age, seemingly contented. More than anyone he likely has tales to tell but all his worldly travel has brought him to this place where we all might find ourselves if we are fortunate: old age.

It’s a short one today. I’m off to the doctors to help insure I might get to that rocking chair one day.

Copyright 2015 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.

It bears repeating that the Sabian Symbols were not divined in order—blank cards with the degree numbers on the back were held up to the clairvoyant Elsie Wheeler by astrologer Marc Edmund Jones and Wheeler spontaneously came up with these images. The fact they follow a twelve-fold sequence is surely more than coincidence. And, so far as I know, I’m the only student of these symbols to simply apply the twelve-fold sequence of the zodiac to them. Just as yesterday was a symbol of revelation (associated with the eleventh sign of Aquarius) today is one of escape, a hallmark of the twelfth sign of Pisces.

An Evening Party of Adults On A Lawn Illumined By Fancy Lanterns is on the surface an image of respite from the daily routine, an escape from work and obligation. Yesterday children may have inhabited the same lawn, on a tree swing, an image of being open and curious and, like a child, ripe for learning, especially, spiritual teachings. Pisces’ power of dissolution may have diluted the power of the spiritual teaching, reducing it to a cultivated lawn party, with Chinese lanterns and probably liquor—the kind of party someone like Blanche Dubois, a Pisces archetype, might enjoy—”oh, look, we created enchantment”—but it is, by nature, all fancy and fairy favors, illusion and delusion, or is it. On the flip-side we do have an “illumined” setting and, perhaps, we are here creating a little slice of heaven on earth, the veil between the spiritual and the so-called real having been thinned out. In any case, it is an image of decompression and the letting down of guards, a retreat from the workaday worlds.

It seems rather pointed that yesterday was about children and that today is focused on adults. But remember these images were conceived all out of order. The minds at play here aren’t those of innocents; on the contrary, one imagines a great deal of sophisticated interplay, gossip, uninhibited advances and small soap-operatic intrigue. All is wit and whimsy, the shadow side of transcendence and sacrifice, the highest vibration of Pisces escape being that which unhinges us from material trappings, Pisces’ mutable-water signifying energetic, spiritual existence. As we try to create heaven through material means, especially sophisticated ones we get lost. Liquor or drugs or absinthe, perhaps, even in this setting, might seem to take us to an exalted place and, yes, perhaps it does illustrate to our all-too-human minds that different, altered states of awareness are possible for us to achieve, but drugs, or “spirits” like absinthe, the green fairy, ultimately lead us astray, further and further from that childlike state of pure revelation and that tree.

That said, it might take getting lost, as did a whole portion of the generation, back in the 1920s when these images were originally derived, in order to be found. There might be someone at the party who, confronted by the artifice of it all as a mirror of the state of selfhood, who escapes from the escape, slips away and finds that tree with its vacant swing. Now, as a result of having tasted the sweet life leading to certain decay, s/he might find revelation once again; and one more resonant than the casual encounter of that of a child. The false escape might open unto a true one, that of personal revelation and the impetus toward true transcendence of life’s ephemeral parties toward an everlasting celebration of self and universe. Intimation of immortality not imitation thereof.

Copyright 2015 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Here we arrive at another Aquarius-ruled oracle and of course it is once again hinged on Revelation. Extraordinary. Children Play On A Swing Hanging From The Branches Of A Huge Oak Tree is the Sabian Symbol at Leo 11°. The tree of life, or that of the family of man, has many branches, each off-shoot akin to the evolutionary off-shoots that happen with each sudden mutation in our development as a species. The tree, as Dane Rudhyar points out, is also used, time and again, to express that of spiritual learning, branches representing different spiritual teachers, all rooted in the same primordial truth if not tradition. Tradition and New Growth. This simultaneity is endemic to Aquarius who has two rulers, the primary being planet Uranus (progression) and secondarily Saturn (tradition).

Be ye like little children, one of the great branches once said. For, being as such, we are open to learning, and, when it comes to spiritual teaching, we are like kindergartners no matter our adult age. The swing of course illustrates natural rhythms and moods, the human condition and mind that is as yet un-still. We see here the potential for steadying the emotions as our minds are continually opened to new revelations, unfolding. The mood of this oracle is playful, nonetheless, and it is with that sense of guileless joy that we should receive our spiritual revelations. I can’t help but think of the swing as a pendulum of time, we sitting on this temporal seat, which is held in place by some vast and growing cosmic intelligence.

I woke up today to small and petty nonsense—note to self, don’t read emails first thing. It all comes down to the same thing. People pretending to be grown-ups wielding puny soap-operatic power—and it’s always about money, which poor suckers think gives them said power. Wrong! And then I look out my window and see the swing hanging from the oak tree (for real: there is one) and I think hang it all. And it isn’t even that metaphoric. Going to sit on a swing, under a great tree full of a canopy of leaves, is one of the most mind-clearing things one can do. And it’s in that state of mind that direction, growth comes. When faced with endings, or feeling that doors or enclaves are closed to you, just hang in there.

Copyright 2015 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Is time flying? Seems like only twelve days ago I was citing a Capricorn-ruled image. Ha! Yes the sign of the seagoat governs Leo 10° Early Morning Dew Sparkles As Sunlight Floods The Field. And what a beautiful image it is. I think we all know the exalted feeling of seeing that natural near-elven phenomenon of dew sparkling upon a field. Universally, I belive it resonates as a symbol of deliverance, at having made it through some sort of dark night, most likely, of the soul. We took a chance, we took a risk, we ventured to create, to give life to some art- or intellectual form, and we survived to experience a show of cyclical promise. Our strength has been tested, our fortitude, and indeed our faith. All the elements are at play: I twas the cold night air that preciptated the dew upon the verdant field made dazzling by the rising Sun. Air, Water, Earth, Fire. Capricorn is the seagoat and it trails its briny tail, emerging from the sea as the day does from dewy morn. Promise delivered.

Now let’s look at it all from a different angle. Yesterday we were challenged to create, purely, without affectation, putting our full spirit into it. Today, perhaps, we see the anatomy of creation itself. Like the first morning, each morning is a replicant of upper-case Creation, something the sign of Leo and its 5th astrological house is “all about”: Co-creation with god, to be exact; and we can replace god, here with say, universal spirit, that which we express in any pure act of creation. Yesterday we tried. But, today, Yoda, we see it done to perfection: God’s recreation of the new day.