As I said a day or two ago, I’m learning so much about Libra (and all the signs) in working through these 360°s of Sabian Symbols. The one at 28° Libra is A Man Becoming Aware Of Spiritual Forces Surrounding Him. Again I’m reminded that Libra isn’t “all air”, it’s inanimate symbol pointing to the purely abstract elements of life; but rather the living archetypal energies of life which is pretty validating for a Libra (me) who works in archetypes and does feel himself surrounded by assisting, unseen entities. Some people will think I’m crazy for that sentence and some will understand—I’ve pretty much weeded out any friends that fall into the former category because being open to this unseen assistance does require total belief in it and nonbelievers in your midst can mess with your channels.

The gist of this oracle is that we are never alone; that there is always a community, visible or not, that is behind your best intended efforts. The trick is to allow the assistance and not put up blocks to it which we all do, all the time. My own personal block usually surrounds abundance in which I belive in my mind, but I strive to feel. I once said that “prosperity is a sustained emotion”, but my speaking the truth of this isn’t enough, I must practice what I preach. And mainly that means not putting up roadblocks of fear and anxiety, not just over money but over time which, in astrology, is ruled by the same second house. These commodities can be a mindfuck for many and I have had my own screwed up history due to the fact, probably, that I know a lot of wealthy people, those with penthouses in new york and castles in scotland and townhouses in london and manses on hilltops overlooking the côte d’azure. And I’ve never once been jealous of other people’s money but I have hoped to be increasingly comfortable in time, which if you haven’t noticed, has a way of marching on. But that’s me. Meanwhile, I have never done without and I have created a decent lifestyle for myself, living where I want when I want, and traveling in the same manner, without ever really having worked for any one or any monolithic thing. So, really, my life has been most abundant.

But back to never being alone. When it comes to actual living human interaction the world can be a lonely place. However, I don’t think we know either how lonely or how not so until we need to rely on others, which, quite frankly, I’ve never had to do and I don’t want to test this theory to be perfectly honest. I don’t like relying on others. It’s not so much a trust issue—I’m just pathologically self-sufficient. To a fault, most likely. But when it comes to the might unseen forces, I suppose, I could ask for a bit more help. I wonder if that’s true for you. We are all part of an organized whole whether we recognize it or not. The center does hold, me thinks. And this whole is indeed greater than the sum of its parts and it’s terrifically sustaining. What separates us is the “dark path of ego separation” which, given what I just said, I might fall victim to in my in ability to ask for help. I think we all fall victim or else this would be a perfect world. In extreme cases of ego-isolation, one falls prey to destruction and self-loss.

In real terms we have communities we can reach out to; in spiritual terms there is the collective mind, the noosphere, but there is something beyond: what is known to mystics and esotericists as the White Lodge, a very Libran world, one imagines. And, as this oracle would be ruled by Cancer in a twelve-fold sequence, we know that emotionality is highlighted here. Emotions are the gateway to our spirituality, and the higher consciousness associated with Libra, a sign of the mind, is ironically directed by emotional, moral compass. If ever you’ve experienced a sense of oneness, even for an instant, you have felt the assurance that you are not alone and this isn’t all there is to answer Peggy Lee’s eternal question. I have had my own experiences with the notion of the White Lodge and its inhabitants, and I can tell you that it is a temple within us. And so the assurance we seek, our yearnful sense of belonging, isn’t satisfied via the outside world.

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We are still in the sky as the sign of Libra winds down. Here today at Libra 27° we encounter An Airplane Sails High In The Clear Sky which is about transcending the polarity of duality and is fittingly ruled by the sign of Gemini in a twelve-fold sequence. Through our gift of consciousness, we are able to rise above the conflicts and pressures of our personal life. We embrace our latent capacity to see the issues that plague us (as a result of duality) from so high a level, that we gain new persepctive and reach a place of peacful freedom. As the supernal air sign, Libra emphasizes the boon of celestial-level consciosness and indeed urges us to live in this high state of understanding as a means of right-sizing our problems. Ruled by Venus and hinged on the notion of balance, Unity is the key note of the sign and of this particular image in particular which seeks to find harmony between Gemininan opposites. There is always unity beyond polarity. Everything is itself and its opposite. That is the transcendent realization we alight on here.

So here I am in the south of France which will sound very glamorous which it is in some ways. Meanwhile, I’ve been working constantly, getting writing projects along with Starsky + Cox and Afterglow business mapped out for the year ahead. The Fall is always my most ambitious time, business-wise, and I find it’s not in conflict with travel but rather I gain the right kind of persepctive on issues that seem to crowd me when I’m back at home. Something about flying away and working on things in a different landscape from a different level of consciousness naturally prioritizes not only what needs to be done next but what new direction life should take. Along with this detachment also comes the realization of who are the radiators and who are the drains in ones life, a metaphor borrowed from a London friend of mine. If you’ve been paying attention I divide people into those who celebrate and those who tolerate. I find this is one polarity that remains rather black and white; although radiators can be drains or vice versa, but mainly they stay in one camp. I find that travel gives me a perspective on this particular issue as well. Being away makes me want to return to my usual surroundings to live life in a new way.

There are always things too that are better about Europe (or anywhere) than about America and the inverse is also true. And what is considered good or better also shifts like the sands of Cape Cod or the Mediterranean. The trick is to alight on that which remains true north in our experience and to channel energy into that which makes us most happy. I don’t like moving sideways in life although I am aware that is how much of the momentum manifests. And I’m not one to push to make things happen (despite what donors to my non-profit arts company might think); I”m more about helping the pieces ease into place at this point. And removing any square pegs from the pile before I start doing so.

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Is it me or has this Blague gone to the birds?…and butterflies and falling leaves. Libra is the cardinal air sign so it would be little wonder that all the images are airborne, except when we remember they were divined randomly, out of order. It’s pretty cool. At Libra 26° we discover An Eagle And A Large White Dove Change Into Each Other. Here we see the Love principle interacting with the Spiritual Will. Libra and Taurus are both ruled by Venus, named for the goddess of Love, whose totem is a dove. The eagle is the totem of the chief god, the crowning representative of spirit. This oracle is ruled by Taurus in a twelve-fold sequence—Venus rules Taurus on the earthly plane and Libra on the astral.

The yang and yin of the primal male and female energies herein mix because we have moved beyond this greatest duality of Will and Love, represented as male and female, seeing them combine, both within our selves and in our actual relationships with others. The spiritual marriage of the will within us and our transcendent capcity for love constitutes a great adeptness, one of the highest order. This is major enlightment energy, surely of the Gandhi level but probably even of the Gandalf variety. When our will becomes love and our love becomes will we have transcnded the limits of physical reality, time and space. At this level of consciousness anything is possible. We can move mountains, we can heal the sick, we can walk on water, we can do anything in the will-love state.

As in a lucid dream, we are in the ultimate flow state, but if we try to impose our will for selfish purposes or gain the dream dissolves. It’s the same in our waking life at this highest level of consciousness—Libra represents the height of conscious being—where we might perceive ourselves, and indeed everything, as pure light. The reality is that’s what we are. If you break us, and all life and matter (for that matter) down to it’s most essential, divisible by smaller and smaller particles, what are we? We are energy and we are light like the stars from which we are born. When we can have our will and our love merge into one by removing the obstacles to this fusion (most readily through the energy of forgiveness—of ourselves and others and society and the world—surrendering the entirety of our will to the purpose and power of love, all moves through us; we are the agents of this Libran pale pink light of love.

Being an adept thus requires no teacher, no guru, only that inner oracular guidance system that is most poignantly associated, via archetype, with the sign of Libra which we will in a matter of days leave. Being a Libra it is a special sign for me and I must say that via this Blague and meditation on these symbols I have learned a lot about my own particular sun sign. It is not just the abstract, conceptual, artful energy of the zodiac it is the animating force, the light, that powers all love. And its rule by Venus sees the love as light that can be directed, via the mind, in highest consciousness, out, universally, into the world. Libra’s motto “we are” points to the interconnectedness of we beings via this light love. The dove and the eagle can change bodies because they are the one and the same light that animates all physical being. We can direct our energy of love and light into the bodies of other beings to bring about healing, we can travel to the stars, our original home, we can seek to enter the hearts and minds of those who are not yet even slightly awake and whose wills are bent by greed and hatred; we can cast out those demons by filling the space they occupy with our light love. This is what it meas to be an adept. This is what it means to be a magi or a saint or a shaman or a wizard or a demigod.

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In astrology, there really isn’t any notion of death. All is cyclical and even the eighth house which “rules” death along with sleep and sex, encompasses all of these under the umbrella notion of regeneration. The Sight Of An Autumn Leaf Brings To A Pilgrim The Sudden Revelation Of The Mystery of Life And Death is the Sabian symbol for Libra 25°, and it points to our ability to see in every experience a transcendent, cosmic meaning. In my simple superimposition of a twelve-fold sequence, this image is ruled by Aries, the first sign of the Zodiac, which governs the advent of birth.

Like Newton’s apple, the leaf falls and inspires revelation, if the aspirant is open to the wonders of natural process and understands the cosmic resonance it carries. In the falling leaf we see, as we approach the end of Libra and the start of Scorpio that, externally, we perceive an ending, a death, while in fact the energy (of the tree) is being reverted to its unseen root level. Libra rules the world of appearances (consciousness) and Scorpio the unseen (subconciousness), that sign’s planet Pluto being named for the god of death who wears a cloak of invisibility. Yes, there was a cloak of invisibility long before that lady in Edinburgh made it such a fashion statement. The leaf falling is just one move in the grand choreography of the great cosmic dance. If we don’t perceive the all in the small then we are constantly seeking; but we must remember the message of the great Libran lady, Glinda, who reminded us that the power was within us all the time to find the answer, the solution we seek.

The falling leaf is an omen of the budding leaves of spring, so to we might perceive our own deaths or those of our loved ones as portents of new life—however you interpret that is most definitely up to you. Seeing through the small to the all is the true meaning of the world clairvoyance. Dane Rudhyar puts it thusly: “This world is illusion only to the individual who cannot see through its phenomena and fails to apprehend the reality these phenomena reveal even as they conceal it.”

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I should have pointed out that yesterday’s Cock A Doodle Do symbol was ruled by Aquarius in a twelve-fold sequence. Aquarius is associated with the dawn and renewal so it was yet another score for these randomly divined oracles fitting the Zodiac signs in sequence thirty times over. Today’s symbol, at Libra 24°, is A Butterfly With A Third Wing On Its Left Side. We have mutated, spiritually, via our rebirth and revelations. The left side is the heart side; it also refers to our instinctual side. We are developing new faculties (well I am; I don’t know about you) via our experiences. They aren’t just observed, they infiltrate our being and cause mutation, changing our spiritual body, that which the butterfly, who goes through literal transformation of being, given flight, symbolizing spiritual lift, represents.

Three is a symbol of fullfillment, just as the twelfth house of the zodiac, associated with Pisces which rules this oracle in that twelve-fold sequence, fulfills all the other houses. It is the “spiritual” house, Pisces’ mutable-water translates to a sort of vapor or ether or gas that which is unseen but most powerful. Neptune, the sign ruler, is signified by the trident, a symbol of the triple goddess who, in triplicate, is personified by the Muses. The entire landscape of Pisces and the twelfth house in hinged on transcendence and spiritual uplift, just as the Muses bestow us with divine power. Here we see, with that third wing, that we’ve been endowed with extra spiritual power. The first thing that comes to mind for me is forgiveness, the ideal put forth by those like Jesus (Fish) who is a primary archetype of the sign of Pisces. Forgiveness is spiritual power, make no mistake. And it’s important, first, to engage in the self-sort. The heart reference here important in that forgiveness makes our own hearts sacred, sanctified and purified, it provides us wings to fly because, without it, we are attached to that which we resent or which has hurt us.

Exposure to a revivifying life-force (see previous posts) can result in the creation of new faculties within us. We may not yet know what that third butterfly wing is for, but its purpose will be revealed to us. For now it’s important to recognize how it is we are spiritually mutating for the better. I believe that forgiveness is the recognition of that faculty. That’s my own little spin on this Sabian symbol.

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I just knew today’s image was going to feel special, because I am experiencing such a sense of rebirth it’s unreal. Chanticleer’s Voice Heralds Sunrise is the Sabian Symbol for 23° Libra. I had to look up Chanticleer and so an unexpected synchronicity. I awoke in Switzerland yesterday. It was very windy along lake Geneva and the birds are migrating, to Africa I suppose, in large swaths of winged sky. I thought, as the cat—we were cat sitting somewhat—dragged in a mouse at 3am that I hoped it wasn’t a bird. I thought no because birds roost at night. Then I thought of the word rooster for a male chicken and couldn’t make the link. (Yesterday’s symbol was about birds); and Chanticleer is apparently the proper name of the rooster character in fables about Reynard the Fox, which is related in the Nun-Priest’s Tale in Chaucer’s Canterbury tales. When I was in fourth grade and first learned French and all about Charlemagne and the earliest history of that realm, which led to my studying medieval French literature and university and ultimately studying abroad in France, I wanted to change my name to Reynard. Yes, at ten years old, I imagined I would grow up to be a mercurial auburn haired fellow with a pointy beard and moustache and I thought Reynard would be a fitting name for that character version of myself.

Dane Rudhyar:

The cock that crows as the first coloring of dawn appears at the eastern horizon is a beautiful symbol of the ability, demonstrated by all pioneers and cosmically attuned individuals, to give voice to what is as yet unmanifested, but is on the way to manifestation. At the ego level, chanticleer may feel that he makes the sun rise; but someday he will learn through painful experiences that to create is only to reveal what essentially is. It is the vivid recognition of the as-yet-unknown in the known.

I hope you all read that a dozen times. We arrived yesterday afternoon in Grenoble where we met on our study abroad program, exactly thirty-two years ago this month. As we drove from Lake Geneva, down, through Annecy, and arrived in this Alpine city, the gateway to the south, where we go today, I had butterflies like crazy. I was expecting to find a dreary, dull town, worse off than when I left it, with little interest but vague nostalgia, but I discovered the opposite: a culturally rich and beautiful little city along a river, that used to be neon green with industrial chemicals, now clean and pure, it’s ancient fish returned. I know this because my “french family” told me. When I was nineteen here I lived with a young couple, Gérard, who was 30 and Christine who was twenty-eight and their two and a half year old boy, Laurent. On this study-abroad program, as I said, I met Stella-Lynne. On the last night in Grenoble we baby sat Laurent so that Gérard et Christine could go out (for once) and they did, all night. We had a train first thing the next morning and Laurent kept us up all night. I had to mimic his father’s voice to keep him in line but I thought of that trick to late. No sleep. Gérard was fresh as a daisy at four a.m. when they came home and by five he was driving us to the train station. “Dites pas au revoir,” he said, “mais à bientôt.” Okay, so thirty-two years later I arranged with Laurent to suprise him and Christine, and we met at a restaurant last evening near our hotel and didn’t take a single ussie because we forgot, no, we, didn’t think of it because it was a genuine experience.

As I write this Stella’s iphone alarm is “ringing” with Nina Simone singing “Here Comes The Sun.” Read Dane Rudhyar’s words one more time because there can be no better summation of the key to today’s symbol and I would fail if I tried to top that. All I can say is what I kept saying yesterday as I walked along the Isère and through Grenobles winding ancient streets: “I feel reborn. I feel like this is a new beginning. I feel alive. I feel revitalized. I feel like this is a fresh start. I feel like a giant thread has been woven back through the most essential fabric of my being and I’m no longer holding onto some mythic past because my present is suffused with all that is essential and relevant about it. I am filled with love and hope and renewal. I am the fox. I am the rooster. I am the dawn.

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At 22° Libra, we find A Child Giving Birds A Drink At A Fountain which expresses the concern of simple souls (children, or, as ye should be like them) for the welfare of more helpless beings who thirst for life as we do. Yesterday we communed, all together, with nature, the source and originality of our collective being. Today, we see the expression of our guardianship, as wardens of this world, and we, the human child, are empowered to give life to other beings of our planet. We thus become agents of creation, not mere creatures. Unlike the original source, the fountain is a man-made thing that emulates the source. [I write this while looking across Lake Geneva to Evian, I might add] Through the skill that Mother Nature has wrought in us, we are thus endowed with the power of giving life. The disingenuousness of an image connecting a child with birds is striking. There is a such innocence and love and a natural sense of providence. The child doesn’t think he just acts. Our human nature, un-adult-erated is one of caring and protection and nurture. We are indeed the children of our Mother, whose vast expanse, as sea or outer space, we met with yesterday.

This oracle would be ruled by Capricorn in a twelve-fold sequence. Where as its opposite cardinal-water sign of Cancer is Source (the sign ruled by Mother Moon, the controller of tides), Capricorn is the power of re-source, the sea-goat emerging from the water to climb every mountain. [Again, here I am at Lake Geneva, a mountain resource created by the encircling Alps—an Arcadian Capricorn landscape if ever there was one] Capricorn is the cardinal-earth sign, emblemized by a mountain, a symbol of the seat of our spirituality. The child’s contact with the birds is like the point of connection between the fingers of God and Man (Adam). Yesterday we said As Above So Below; now we see that motto echoing through all existence. In our childlike simplicity we are the loving gods of the other creatures of this world. We have the power to create or destroy our world. “What you received from the Infinite, you can give to the finite beings that thirst for it. Man does not need to destroy nature’s wilderness through greed and carelessness; he can transform this wilderness into a garden, whose signing fountains will attract birds”—Dane Rudhyar.

Let us make Solicitude our word for the day. It means, quite simly, the state of being concerned—attentive care and protectiveness—a cause of care or concern.

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The Mother force of nature meets the social togetherness you’ve come to expect from a Libran oracle, starring in today’s Sabian Symbol: A Sunday Crowd Enjoying The Beach. The watery Mother source is revivifying; we know that the ociean is a “vast matrix” from which living organisms first emerged—it also symbolizes the collective unconscious, the matricial field in which consciousness takes hold. Here nature meets nurture, given the fact that our individual human consciousness is indeed molded by the culture in which we live, and, by one another. And so it is extra invigorating and healthful for a chunk of that culture to gather all together at the source of our ancient originality, the Mother, who is limitless and uncontrollable. This oracle is ruled by Sagittarius in a twelve-fold sequence.

Sagittarius is ruled by expansive planet Jupiter. The mythological figures of Jupiter (Zeus) and his wife Juno (Hera) preside over the sign in an archetypal complex with Dionysus whos own mother, Semele (meaning: she knows), was burned to bits by Hera who appeared to Semele in her full radiance which is blinding at the least (nod to the Tiresias myth) and downright scorching—the astrological Juno symbol is sort of an asterisk on a stick pointing to her radiating in all directions. Semele was pregant with Dionysus at the time, I should add, and Zeus/Jupiter rescued the fetus and sowed it up inside his thigh from whence he was ultimately born. Dionysus is called the twice born, and the thigh is the body part associated with the sign of Sagittarius. Crazy how it all fits together, right? Well what is interesting about Dionysus is that he becomes the only son of Zeus whom that chief god doesn’t fear usurping him; in fact, one senses, he would condone and champion that succession, unlike that of other sons like Mars/Ares, Apollo, Hermes/Mercury (who remains his adolescent messenger) or Vulcan/Hephaestus, whom he made lame.

Dionysus is a culture god (of wine) forever trailed by a company, a retinue, of party animals (some are actually animals). He is Nature personifed as male, you see, something that was unusual in the late-breaking pantheon into which he was introduced as the thirteenth god of Olympus where there are only twelve thrones—Hestia, goddess of the hearth, abdicated hers in his favor, and of her own volition, open seeing him for the first time. Nature as male. The combination of the man-made world of culture and the natural world which, for the most part, has been mainly represented by female. This blending of opposites—it mirrors the Tierisias myth, Tierisias having lived at various time as male and female. The whole of the human race, with its ideas and dominant spirit, rings of a male, conquering energy; while nature remains Mother, female. And in this image we see the one principle returning to be renewed by the latter, like a goddess taking a literally rejuvenating bath in ritual of eternal youth.

The biggest mama in mythology is Gaia, (embodied by the Earth), who is married to Uranus, the universe (though of course he is namesake of a planet which is nonetheless associated with universality). We see reflected in the watery see, the vast sky and universe of galactic space which, too, is Gaia. Starting with the Milky Way, a nod to the nourishment afforded us by the mother in space. So what is the point of all this? As above so below. The way we view the mother source as an ocean, is the same way we shall come to view the great sea of space for one is mirrored in the other. The infinite breadth of subject source and divine mother love will continue to envelop us no matter how far our objective minds take us. We will always be withinside her realm. And she knows. She knows.

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Libra 20° is about “the ability to draw on the power of an ancestral tradition in order to serve and inspore ones fellowmen” in the form of A Rabbi Performing His Duties. It would fall under Scorpio rule in a twelve-fold sequence. What this symbol acknowledges is the power of ritual even in tried and true forms; however we must understand that this power is limited. It will only take us so far. It is a means toward an end, as is any religion in its opening up unto true spirituality, which is beyond tradition. The correlation to Scorpio here is dogma, something which that fixed-water sign represents, just as it fixates in other manners, mainly psychological ones, like compulsion, obsession and repression, all of which take the form of blocks, as in of ice, of overly fixed emotion, the shadow side of that sign’s quality-element combination. Scorpio people, though perhaps seductive and provocative, are nonetheless creatures of habit, in the extreme. It’s about control, which is an element, of course, of any obsessive-compulsive disorder. If I do things in the exact same way then I can keep bad things from happening to me. Thus superstition becomes a factor; and how far from supersitition and compulsive behavior is the more dogmatic rituals of an ancient religion. Is it the thing you’re doing or the doing of the thing that brings about whatever divine or magical or blessed result?

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A Gang Of Robbers In Hiding is the next oracle here, at 19° Libra. It seems the two being arrested yesterday wasn’t enough intrigue. Today’s image is brought to you by Libra in a twelve-fold sequence and, as often happens with that sign, it draws upon its “We are” motto, the keynote of the symbol being “group protest.” Our dear Dane Rudhyar, expert on all things Sabian, wants to stress the goodness of these robbers, suggesting they are like Robin Hood and his merry band or the early Bolsheviks who robbed banks to finance the revolution. The point is that this is yet another image of “outlaws” in a society where the rules don’t protect said individuals; and they must take matters into their own hands. Lech Welesa, Gandhi, Jimmy Carter, John Lennon were all Libras and have fought uphill battles against the oppressive powers that be. Libra is the sign of balance, order and harmony, and so it doesn’t seek imbalance, dis-order or -harmony, but it will seek to unhinge a collective based on inequality.

Beyond that, this oracle isn’t much speaking to me on any level. So I’ll just leave it at that.

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