Capricorn 19° (January 9)

Today was a client day and the morning session was magical. I’m struggling a bit I think with anxiety suddenly, which I suppose has been brewing under the surface for some time now. I was thinking how when you go to the doctor, the eye doctor say, we are shocked at the fact that we aren’t exempt from say the eyesight changes that occur around the age of forty. In fact we pretty much aghast at the idea that that which applies to everyone somehow also applies to us. And doctors are so brutal. There is a joke in here somewhere but I’m not now quite finding it. Anyway, I’m still on holiday so here:

There is nothing subtle in the energy today at 21° Aries, characterized as A Pugilist Enters The Ring. We have to fight to win in whatever arena we find ourselves. This is an image of total commitment and vigilance; we have presumably prepared for the task at hand. It’s all about survival of the fittest. But how do we judge fitness?

 We attended a charity fundraiser at the Rainbow Room last night as guests of our friends. It is pretty fair to say that the place was filled with the richest people in New York. Fitness, in that setting, was measured in wealth and in the influence it provides. This was not my ring. In my experience, typically, fitness is measured in creative output and success in and validation for artistic expression. That is more my arena. At least I think it is. This oracle makes us realize we should have some fixed field we can enter to pack a serious punch. Moreover we have to be totally convinced of ourselves in this milieu. It certainly makes one think and wonder if we are trained enough to be up for the task, whatever that might be.

Sometimes the things we’re good at aren’t necessarily the areas in which we wish to excel. Dane Rudhyar talks about the fighters as yin and yang. But I think he’s off base on this one. There is only one fighter in this story. Perhaps the other is waiting for him, but maybe not. Victory might be assured, by default. There may be no risk of defeat or disfigurement. This is a singular fight. And I believe it’s a symbol of readiness to take on the world. We just have to ask ourselves….are we similarly prepared to do likewise.

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree of the Sabian Symbol may be higher than the one listed here  as the symbols cluminate in the next degree. There are 360  degrees spread over 365 days.

 Typos happen—I don’t have time or an intern to edit.*
Copyright 2018 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Get your HAUTE ASTROLOGY 2019 Weekly Horoscope ebooks by Starsky + Cox

Capricorn 18° ((January 8)

I don’t talk about sex much. Even though people associated us with Sextrology and think it’s some kind of a special area of ours. It really isn’t. The astrological archtypes don’t get checked at the bedroom door so we were able to go there; but it really was a publishing “sex sells” idea more than it is some area of expertise on our part. I have always considered myself bisexual which is a known fact, mainly by way of acceptance of my earliest sexual experience(s) which was somewhat imposed on me by an older male. It didn’t in any way repulse me, but I wasn’t shall we say “mature” enough to actually enjoy it. Still I became fairly blasé about sex and gender as I came of age and never made any bones about it, forgiving the pun. And it was the 1980s so it was perfect timing to be all troisieme sexe about it all. I might have mentioned that when I moved back to France, to Paris, in 1985 I was somewhat bent on the prospect of performing a sort of cabaret act as Pan, just Pan. I really should have done that; if I were 21 now, with this brain, I woudn’t have hesitated for a moment. But then I had zero confidence about myself as a singer or actor even. Funny that it would only be two years later that I’d move to New York and study acting, ultimately with the so-called great Uta Hagen who didn’t much like me. I did sacrifice for that art, I really did. And I still do I feel. I mean, look, my Broadway career didn’t take off even though I was in two productions; I wasn’t Danny Burstein who, actually, then, would never sing at a gathering. In the two years I worked with him back to back I never heard him sing. Crazy. Anyway, I have an idea about all of this that I might be exploring soon, in book form. Will keep you posted. Meanwhile I’m writing less and posting (old Blagues) still because I’m considering myself to be on a holiday, still, a mental health holiday to be exact.

At 20° Aries we encounter A Young Girl Feeding Birds In Winter. As many of us still still cope with Winter in Spring, we have perhaps felt compassion for those birds, unlike our migrating geese, who have had to remain and endure the elements. Little wonder Dane Rudhyar speaks of this oracle as “overcoming crises through compassion”. Today we think of helping others survive through difficulty. A young girl might be more prone to sympathy for gentle living things—unlike boys they aren’t prone to hunt and kill. The feminine spirit is one of a nurturing source of life, in contrast to masculine energy which can seek conquest and dominion. We are distinguished from the animals for our charitable natures, accepting the guardianship of all living things. There may be an unconscious understanding that helping the helpless is ultimately helping ourselves. It certainly doesn’t cost us. We can’t control Nature but we can employ a higher principle of Love to ameliorate her negative effects.

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree of the Sabian Symbol may be higher than the one listed here  as the symbols cluminate in the next degree. There are 360  degrees spread over 365 days.

 Typos happen—I don’t have time or an intern to edit.*
Copyright 2018 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Get your HAUTE ASTROLOGY 2019 Weekly Horoscope ebooks by Starsky + Cox

Capricorn 17° (January 7)

This is the last so-called holiday week. I need put a great many things in motion. Typically we have our in-house meeting on Mondays but neither of us are up to speed enough on what’s what to really make any difference so that will be postponed. I’m not even going to pretend I have the energy to write today I’m just going to post this from years past:

The theme today, as magically happens, is recuperation, in part. The image for 18° Aries is An Empty Hammock Stretched Between Two Trees. The fact that it is empty means that this isn’t actually a time to rest. The would-be inhabitant (us) of the hammock is off doing what needs to be done. But we get the sense that s/he knows that repose is waiting; meanwhile, the image represents the relaxed state of mind in which the “off-camera” action is taking place.

 Our dearest friends bought us a hammock as a house-warming present when we first moved to Cape Cod. And we did indeed stretch it between two trees. And, though bitter sweet to think of it now, that image is never truly far from my mind. I would put the hammock out in the morning and go about my busy day, knowing, at any point, I could stop and just stare up through the trees. It’s an image of savasana, the “dead body pose” where one gets most benefit from lying completely still, letting the body absorb the action performed in other active postures. We have to know when to let the body’s intelligence take over, and mindfully release all our tension, which can be an obstacle to natural recuperation. In Bikram, one does savasana pretty much after every set of every posture. There is a natural rhythm to it, where you exert effort and then receive the benefit of it. The hammock reminds us, in the midst of our busy life, that it is unnatural not to include repose in the process of our industry.

Sometimes you just have to detach in the face of circumstantial drama. One gets the sense of things beoming complicated, on many fronts all at once. Maybe things seemed all to be going right, and your attitude was sanguine and focused on all the positives you could affect moving forward; and then there is a sense of an unraveling. Problems with people, places and things begin to creep in—suddenly everything seems like a bit of a chore, or that nothing is working, and you capture that same rosy outlook for powering through. You just want to chuck it all. Welcome to 19° Aries and the Sabian Symbol of The “Magic Carpet” of Oriental Imagery. It just seems to scream “road trip” whether it be a real journey or a metaphoric one of transcendence, if not escape. We need to feel the magic of life today, so the slings, arrows and rotten tomatoes you might be ducking can be viewed as inspiration to take a flight of fancy. When we’re feeling down or persecuted we can overcompensate, in a good way, reaching heights we never would have achieved if all was going swimmingly. “No Manure No Magic” was the theme of that great film by that awful human being David O. Russell—and I say awful from first-hand experience. Being pushed to new heights by negative experience, even abuse, was the theme, too, of the recent film Whiplash, but sometimes abuse is just abuse, like Russell in the below clip with Lily Tomlin during the filming of Huckabees. You’ve probably seen this? He’s such an asshole.

But there are a lot of assholes out there. In fact, sometimes, you can see nothing but them. It’s always about money and status. That’s what’s usually driving the mean-spirited of the world. And living in a culture where social and financial competition are so prevalent can really wear on a kind person who isn’t designed to approach life as if it’s some kind of fight for fame or money. Not to say that success isn’t a goal for kind, compassionate people who might be more type B. It’s just that in a world filled with so many grabby sharks running rough shod over others, those who are quietly and selflessly getting their life are obscured by those who are more cut-throat Machiavellian in nature. But you can comfort yourself with the knowledge that those people rarely experience any magic at all. How can they? Their vision of life is too myopic, fixed on their own narrow need to succeed. And it’s a disease. Enough is rarely enough for people for whom life is a competition on every seeming level.

 Up until recently I maintained a (one-sided) friendship with a fellow who had become fairly successful in business. We knew each other when we worked at restaurants in the late 1980s in Boston, when I was fresh out of college; and circumstance threw us together once again and it seemed that Fate had more in store for us to work out together. Well, what struck me about this person was his compulsive need to play games, actual ones, nearly incessantly, and his sinister need to win at them, which he would cheat to do at the drop of a hat. He approached life and human interaction the same way. If he differed with you on a matter of opinion, he would go to great lengths to try to discredit your position, subjective though the challenge may be, because he had to win every argument. He had to be right about everything. This tenacity in competition masked a serious lack of confidence, of course; and resulted, too, in overt social climbing and an increasingly superfical character. Gaining the reputation for being condescending and cruel, he systematically alienated friend after friend over the years, the only people remaining in his life being people in his actual employ or those who feel that somehow his worldly success will rub off on them; so they suffer his abuses for that sake. It is a losing battle.

There is a difference between those who may your enemy and those who are your nemesis. The goddess Nemesis, was that of divine retribution. And in life we may view others as nemesis when they represent the non-you; when we might silently whisper to ourselves “there but for the grace of god(s) go I.” People and circumstance that we deem negative, or blatantly negating, are our cue to go higher, despite the pleasing worldly trappings they represent, or indeed due to them. The “Magic Carpet” of Oriental Imagery, is that of our own mind’s ability to imaginatively transcend the world of appearances and its dualistic dynamics of illusory heirarchies and terrestrial competition. We give over to know that there is more to life than that, and we leave it to the unimaginative minds to fight for scraps on the ground as we go higher. The Oriental Imagery points to geometric patterning as figurative portrayals do not factor into Arabian art. And so we know that the carpet is woven with our own abstract designs for living, our thought forms making up the fabric on which we may soar. We’ve been dealing with a great deal of weaving metaphors these past several days and it all seems to add up to taking flight now on what we’ve fabricated for ourselves. We must detach (with love) from static situations and allow our dreams to manifest more fully in our waking life, letting those choosing to play on the ground amass and hoard all their earthly riches and rewards like dragons bound up by avarice and self-loathing, ever fearful that their treasures will be taken away. Those who live in constant fear of being cheated or taken advantage of are always those who cheat and take advantage of others.

But we have the ability to transcend notions of competition and contention; there is nothing holding us down but attachment itself. We don’t need anything. And once we feel we do we risk being incarcerated by that need. Today we are reminded that there is no strife if we don’t struggle. We can’t hang on to anything in the end, so why would one seek to do so in the process of life. We must let go loosely, all the time, not only to material things but to our limiting thoughts. King Solomon had a flying carpet with which he could transport his entire retinue; and yet, if he exhibited excess hubris, the carpet would give a shake and scores of his people would fall to their demise. Pride is forever threatening to bring about our falls. Dragons get slain, the greedy miser loses all he loves. The flight of the Magic Carpet is a selfless one. I liken this image to a lucid dream. When we awake into a dream, knowing we are dreaming, we are tempted to make something we want happen, but expressions of selfish want dissolve the dream. If we are aware we are lucidly dreaming, the way to keep the dream alive is to relinquish any need to impose our wants on it and to, simply, go along for the ride. This is challenging of course but worth the non-effort.

Life is truly but a dream so it’s more than mere metaphor to extend the notion into life. Magic is belief in the unfolding. How can we participate in life’s unfolding if we are viewing life as a competition we must manipulate and “win”—that is anti-life. So step off and hop on the magic carpet of your own soaring participation in life as a dream. Be swept away on the winds of your total faith and belief in the power of our own imagination and design as it is one and the same as that of the divine plan unfolding its patterns. Let go of your wants and so-called needs that keep you in static status quo. And by all means take a road trip of sorts if you can, even if it’s a short hop and a skip to stare at something scenic, or an inner voyage, closing your eyes, allowing your mind to wander, perhaps, through an inky landscape of twinkling stars, feeling yourself fly through outer space to the farthest reaches of the cosmos. Let yourself go.

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree of the Sabian Symbol may be higher than the one listed here  as the symbols cluminate in the next degree. There are 360  degrees spread over 365 days.

 Typos happen—I don’t have time or an intern to edit.*
Copyright 2018 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Get your HAUTE ASTROLOGY 2019 Weekly Horoscope ebooks by Starsky + Cox

Capricorn 16° (January 6)

It’s little Christmas, but I think we need the magic of the tree for one more evening and will take it down tomorrow. I started watching Dix Pour Cent which is now my new favorite show wow. And it is so good to hear French. Stella says there is “slow French news”—it’s a thing apparently—which is geared toward people trying to learn or brushing up on French. I will definitely do that. It was raining yesterday and we watched a few films and just took the day to rest. Strangely there were all these synchronicities in doing that; themes ran through pretty much everything we watched it was kinda weird. But in that good way. Look I think I really need to find a way to put everything into context this year. I’ve made a good start. We are doing what needs doing so to clear the runway for taking off in new directions. I am operating on faith that certain financial factors will fall into place. I don’t know anybody better equipped than we are to take on the challenge that is ahead of us. There is magic in this year—I can feel it—despite the drums that are beating in Mordor. I am determined to move around and enjoy things and to host and entertain people and all of that, widening my social circle which has been weeded out these past several years. And rightly so. Anyway, I am still inclined to post some re-runs of Blagues past which I am re-reading, re-configuring and potentially re-merchandising.

Today’s symbol is giving me pause. Two Dignified Spinsters Sitting in Silence is the oracle of 17° Aries. Today seems to be about embracing a certain renunciation and not only accepting the things of life that passed us by, but somehow finding the meditative serenity in that. I think of the Miss Allens in A Room With A View—they were dignified but they surely weren’t silent. Still, there seems to be an elegance and yes a dignity that is reserved for the spinster, as if her station is by choice rather than chance. 

The fate-goddess assignation to the term spinster is endemic, since, spinning wool was the only profession available to unmarried women of yore. And, like Jean Brodie and, to a certain degree, the character of Aunt Charlotte, also from A Room With a View (both portrayed by Maggie Smith), spinsterhood was often the result of having an over idealized view of love, or perhaps a very realistic one, knowing that the state of marriage would only disappoint, in the literal sense, of disempowering. In this way the spinsters can be read as co-conspiritors of feminist freedom whose serenity stems from choosing their own life path and not being subject to the legal confines of contractual partnership. They are paired nontheless and who knows what love affairs their memories provide. 

Rudhyar points to this image having a narcissistic character. That may be true. But I interpret their silence as more than mere self-reflection; I get a sense of meditation or prayer. They figures are inwardly focused their energy isn’t vacant or dormant, it is centered and probably purposeful. I believe they are powered by their renunciation. Like saints or ascetics, they might be offering up usual worldly trappings in sacrifice and dedication to something larger. Nuns wear black because they are absorbing all the negativity of this world on behalf of us all—that’s the concept anyway—just as they or monks, whether Christian or Buddhist or what have you, pray for the salvation of all mankind or enlightement of all sentient beings. They’ve not escaped life, they’re working. I feel that to be true with our spinsters. They have a plan and they’re hatching it. Like Obie Wan sacrificing his life to make the force more powerful, these ladies are affecting more positive change in their stillness and silence than they could have done in the typical dance and drama of life.

It’s Monday so this uncelebratory image is rather fitting for the day. I think the oracle cautions us against too much activity, especially that which we feel is expected of us. We can sacrifice some of the usual shenanigans and approach the day, more, as a silent meditation. Let’s not junk it up with overcommitment. We may demur, even, in a dignified manner. We can be self-possessed and not only live with our sadness or rejections, we can see them as choices; we are not victims of circumstance. We often tell our clients to repeat the phrase I Want What I Have (another Starsky + Cox mantra for you!) all different ways, emphasizing this word and than that. The Spinsters are saying something similar: I Don’t Want What I Don’t Have seems to be their message to us. And they are not alone. They mediation seems to be synchronized as to make it all the more resonant. We hear you sisters!

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree of the Sabian Symbol may be higher than the one listed here  as the symbols cluminate in the next degree. There are 360  degrees spread over 365 days.

 Typos happen—I don’t have time or an intern to edit.*
Copyright 2018 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Get your HAUTE ASTROLOGY 2019 Weekly Horoscope ebooks by Starsky + Cox

Capricorn 15° (January 5)

Today is the New Moon in Capricorn conjunct Pluto and Saturn (and Sun of course). And so it’s time to turn the corner a bit and segue into “second semester.” When Stella and I returned from our study abroad in France to finish up our senior year in Boston, the “second semester” concept became a thing. I had actually initiated it, I think, dating back to my freshman year when, after the first spent in the clutches of a controling (and obnoxious) Scorpio roommate, I moved out of that room, trading with our third “friend” Chris who was at that time becoming much more suited to his friendship with Mike the Scorpio, Chris being the Virgo that he is, and a poster child for that sign at that. I roomed with a Korean guy who spoke very little English and whose really name I don’t think I ever knew but he went by Chris as well. At least that is my vague recollection. He wore those black plastic sandles with the thick cross strap, kind of like Dr. Scholls, and he shuffled in them, just to push the stereotype. I never saw him naked. I never saw Mike naked for that matter. We once all joked about how he got dressed inside the shower, taking actual bits of clothing in with him. In the same conversation, it was revealed that everyone had seen me. I think I was proud of my body then in a way I no longer am; and I do remember feeling that much more average (or rather “textbook” enough) in the penie-department that I didn’t mind flaunting what I had, as boys typically do when they can. I remember saying to Mike and Virgo Chris, “well we all know who has the smallest one”—I meant this guy Marek from Connecticut who was naked more than most, and very comfortable with the fact he had a micro-one apparently—and Mike knew who I meant. But Chris suddenly burst into this rant of “okay, okay et ” thinking that we meant him whom neither of us had ever glimpsed. Oops, we didn’t mean you Chris.

Anyway, “second semester” signalled a marked change from the first. I lost the fifteen pounds I gained in the first; I spent more time alone. But it was really my sophomore year when the seeds of what I now, still, call “second semester” were born. It was then, while sitting around with Chris and Mike smoking bongs, I suddenly shot to my feet and called the study abroad office asking “got anything going to France?”; they had, but it was already booked, but I managed to squeak in, a move that changed my life. I also upended the single dorm in the Earth House I was inhabiting. I hung the metal box spring on the wall as a sort of industrial art piece and put my mattress directly on the floor, I made “shelving” from metal milk crates, attaching cafeteria trays I swiped from “Veg” (the vegetarian cafeteria where I now ate) onto them as shelving doors; I bought a used 1960 something red columbia bicycle; i wore thermal leggings with shorts and sweaters with brooches and big rain coats and floppy hats; I smoked a lot of green pot with red hairs in it and went on a few mushroom and/or acid trips. I started listening to Fripp and Eno and the like.

In France, junior year, second semester was all about pushing Spring and making weekend trips to le Cote D’Azur instead of the weekly trips to Paris; putting on shorts and espedrilles way to early. Nobody wore shorts in those days in France. In fact, two years later, when I was living in Paris, I wore bermuda shorts from my apartment on the rue des Halles all the way through the rues pietons to le Beaubourg and people followed me and hung outside of cafes-bars to gawk at the site of some American male in plaid bermudas. Oh how I loved my collection of bermuda shorts, but back to the story at hand….

The year between the two living in France, our senior year in Boston, second semester meant way more than ever, building on the energy, I think, I had channeled that year in the Earth House. I wore either tux pants with suspenders over rotating muted green and orange turtlenecks; and over that I would wear those thick red-black plaid wool ankle-laced hunters? pants, also with suspenders, so that my bottom half was never cold. I would take them off in class. We ate pretty much nothing but red bean soup made in a wok or the usual stirfry. I grew my hair to look as much as possible like Sting’s in the Do They Know It’s Christmas? video, wearing hats for several hours before going out so to make my curly hair straight and wispy. Second semester was spare and intellectual. As it was, just like with sophomore year, I got straight A’s only now, in senior year, I was taking all graduate level courses. (My junior year abroad completely wrecked my grade-point average because I pretty much failed everything as I pretty much didn’t even speak French and pretty much had no reason being on this program in the first place. But senior year “second semester” was about becoming empty (spacey) , lean (manarexic), exquisite (precious) and supreme (smug). Endless tea with lemon. There is so much more to say about this but I’m not going to.

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree of the Sabian Symbol may be higher than the one listed here  as the symbols cluminate in the next degree. There are 360  degrees spread over 365 days.

 Typos happen—I don’t have time or an intern to edit.*
Copyright 2018 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Get your HAUTE ASTROLOGY 2019 Weekly Horoscope ebooks by Starsky + Cox

Capricorn 14° (January 4)

The car had to go in today for its little check up. I ended up talking to that Brandon guy on Brian’s behalf. Digging into promoting the Dan Fishback show in earnest now, while promoting the books, while trying to move the larger creative projects along. I do feel like butter spread too thinly on a piece of toast. And that is why I am only again working a half a day and making sure to chilax by the fire and binge watch a bunch of movies and tv series. Don’t ask me to do too much thinking right now. I did manage to circulate a lot of gratis books to folks who’ve been supportive, and to friends bien sur; As well I have started putting together my list of artists to perform this year’s festival in Provincetown and next season’s series at A.R.T. in Cambridge in advance of any conversation I have with folks there.

First I just need to say that the synchroncities are starting. I found yesterday’s oracle had a practicable takeaway, that is to say that The Serpent Coiling…, one interpretation of which is Kundalini energy coiled at the base of the spine, came in handy during yoga yesterday as I really focused on releasing it throughout the twenty-six postures, and especially the two breathings we do in Bikram. Then, at the end of the day, we went for a little stroll to get some air—I’ve been nursing a cold and it was finally warm enough to amble here in Boston—and I was just telling Stella how I was trying to work The Serpent Coiling… oracle into my yoga when, at that exact moment, under my feet, on the sidewalk of Commonwealth Avenue, this appeared in the concrete:

 Needless to say it was an arresting signpost and I thought, a-ha, some cosmic validation.  

 Today’s symbol, for 15° Aries is An Indian Weaving a Ceremonial Blanket which I find uplifiting on the whole. It feels like a little bit of magic which always invokes some Thoth cum Hermes cum Mercury energy, which would be apt if the third sign of Gemini had something in its bag of tricks relating to this day, date and degree. It feels fitting, given it’s “Holy Week” and those around us seem to be preparing for ceremonial holidays. Of all the Christian ones, Easter is most associated with special garments. The word vestment comes from the goddess Vesta (Greek: Hestia) and her devoted vestal virgins wore ceremonial garb as do most individuals, in most religions or magic or ritual practice. The Magician in the Tarot comes to mind as does Samantha in Bewitched—how I used to love it when she’d drop her housewife mantle and don her black robes; and of course it would have been the shaman of the tribe weaving that blanket, which was worn for life changing events, rites of passages, milestones, celebrations. So at this degree of Aries we are getting ready to ritualize experience. This means we are conscious of the importance of something impending, but we are also making it important in our weaving, real or metaphoric. We are fully participating in our experience, empowering ourself in that process.

 The ceremonial blanket is something specific. Most notably, Native Americans from the Pacific Northwest as well as “plains Indians” created these wearable objects. They completely circled the individual, with no edges or seams showing, and they were particularly worn for ceremonial dances. Imagine an entire party of dancing people, all completely incircled in their blankets, ritually embroidered with stars and cosmic totems and imagery, the colorful designs lighted by a sacred fire, people spinning—as if humans were transforming themselves into pure spiritual form or particles of energy, a flash mob all decked out as string theory. Dane Rudhyar believes that Elsie Wheeler “produced” an “Indian” in this symbol because there was a need to stress an individual who lived more in harmony with the cosmos. That may be so, but I think it irrelevant. Both Jesus and Mary are spoken of as being seamlessly robed by the universe, the Milky Way, specifically. Mary is depicted as having three stars on her veil. Unlike the members of that “Indian”‘s tribe, we, the people, aren’t privy to so transplendently celestial a wardrobe, even on our highest holy days. I think that’s why the “Indian” was produced; because we have an example here of a culture who believed that a magical woven blanket could transport anyone, not just the priest in the pulpit or the Pope in his fancy silk robes, cap and slippers.

 One cannot talk about weaving without speaking of fate. The Fates were weavers. Penelope wove and unwove whilst waiting all those long years for Ulysses’ return. In the Libra Woman chapter of Sextrology we talk about The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, a nod to broderie, French for embroidery, and how that character, an archetype of that sign, weaves the fates of her girls, reciting Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shallot”, whose namesake is weaving at her loom all the while. Libra is the “high priestess” archetype, the white-witch Samantha Stevens of the Zodiac who does most poignantly embody the power that weaving figuratively implies—designing, intending, charming, spelling. The great Libran sage, Frances Scovill Schinn wrote the new-thought treatise Your Word is Your Wand, and indeed we weave with words just as we weave with imagery, in both ways, endowing the “work” with our intention. The ceremonial blanket is only made a power object by the weaver endowing it with that power with every turn of the loom or stitch of the thread. Stories are called yarns, are they not? We weave our plots and they can be simple or elaborate just as can be a multi-starred design on a robe or blanket meant to transport us to new heights, spiritual or otherwise.

 And not to get all meta on your asses, but this is me, here, at my loom. I’ve decided to devote myself daily to the writing of the Cosmic Blague—this is my ritual experience whereby I’m creating something inspired by what are meant to be symbols divined by clairvoyants capable of producing them. There is precious little written anywhere online about these symbols—be my guest and go and check—but for brief descriptions by Dane Rudhyar, via whom I know about Jones and Wheeler’s Sabian symbols to begin with. I pick up a few threads from Rudhyar and then I sit here and I weave and sometimes, not always, it might transport us, or I might get a little nod from the Universe as I did yesterday with that Serpent in cement. But this is the charm of making. What this symbol really points to is our weaving of what Rudhyar deems the “immortal body” in which we are “clothed in light”. The thing is folks we are weaving that all the time in everything we say and do, our metaphorical looms churning out random shapes and patterns and some pretty ugly designs we might get stuck wearing for all of eternity—yeah, that’s right, most of us have already made spiritual robes for ourselves which are the cosmic version of Lucy and Ethel’s Parisian originals—”what an inspired use of burlap!”

 So we want to be mindful with our words, our wands, our embroidery needles. We want to take gentle hold of our loom and weave wondrous and loving intention into the fabric of our lives. We also want to ritualize this shite! All the time. Because, guess what, all of life is a ceremonial dance. And we need to wrap ourselves up in our most transplendent rainbow coats of many colors, wearing our most compassionate attitudes, attuning our minds to the notion that this—right here, right now—is spiritual life seamlessly unseparated from so-called physical existence. Physical? Matter, we know, is no such thing. All is energy. And there isn’t a single element in your body that wasn’t wrought in the furnaces of oh, so many stars. It makes you think, doesn’t it: That, those native people, entubed in their ceremonial blankets, decorated with stars, sparks from the fire flying by, are really just ritually transforming into their truest selves, beings of pure energy and light, whose ancient parents are the twinkling celestial gems. We are all Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. Put that in your peace pipe and smoke it!

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree of the Sabian Symbol may be higher than the one listed here  as the symbols cluminate in the next degree. There are 360  degrees spread over 365 days.

 Typos happen—I don’t have time or an intern to edit.*
Copyright 2018 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Get your HAUTE ASTROLOGY 2019 Weekly Horoscope ebooks by Starsky + Cox

Capricorn 13° (January 3)

We had quite a good time last night, I must say, with Tim and Billy. Some folks are so easy to be around; and these guys are so lively and smart and animated I’m just in love with hanging out with them. More of that puhlease! I mad a simple dinner we would eat on our own—roast chicken, salad, some sauteed cherry tomatoes and a delicious blue cheese and baguette eaten throughout. Then some cups of ice cream. Basta. We have a small entrpreneurial iron on the fire with Tim who has a wonderful shop in Provincetown of original products driven by strong graphics. He really has created his own language which we love; and we were there at the inception so working together will prove extra special. It came out over dinner that the death of a recent someone we all know might have been foul play. It’s one of those things we will never know. It’s not like you can google that shit. Today is one of those days when I don’t truly want the holiday party to end in a sense. In a way it feels like it’s suddenly the first time all our social obligations are cleared for a week, at least, and the tree is still up and we can just build a fire and sip delicious vino; we are watching a ton of movies and I am catching up on some series Stella had seen but I have yet to. Tim mentioned The Struggle which was a fantastic documentary and the atmosphere around here has been, as we generally put it, schmooey.

And so the re-runs of the first batch of Blagues ever to appear is here re-run so I can do less and be more:

Oh and remind me to tell you the stories, sometime, of when I was whisked off, on separate occassions, by different football teams, one Italian and one French, to some crazy doings at some wild establishments, both of which were on the Champs Élysées.

I remind you that when Marc Edmund Jones and Elsie Wheeler produced the Sabian Symbols, he had numbered blank index cards and shuffled them and held each blank card up to Elsie with the number hidden on the back. Yesterday, with lucky symbol number thirteen, I pointed out the first repeat of the twelve zodiac signs’ association through this system of 360° as another potential Aries big bang of An Unexploded Bomb Reveals An Unsuccessful Social Protest and, voila, today’s oracle for 14° Aries is A Serpent Coling Near A Man And A Woman, which is a Taurean fixed-earth Edenic image, so my theory of these sign-associations, in turn, continues to bear out. Needless to say there’s a lot going on in this image. It’s not a classic temptation scene of Eve and the Serpent, it’s more of an acceptance of that snake in the grass by both the essential male and female, yang and yin. Dane Rudhyar points to Ish and Isha (Adam and Eve’s Hebrew names, which, cmon, are fabulous) as encountering not a tempter but an “individualizer” in the form of the snake. Only the couple got cold feet and didn’t go through with it. But in this image, the story is rewritten: Ish and Isha—seriously, these are going to be my new pronouns in referring to people—are totally down with their pet snake.

I see spiraling DNA, thus evolution, in this image; I see Kundalini, therefore enlightenment, in this image. In both senses we are pointing at unconscious, essential forces that reside within us, potential but perhaps dormant. In the case of Kundalini, which the Upanishads describe as being coiled at the base of our spine like a sleeping serpent, it is something to be awakened. In its best light, the serpent brought the gift of consciousness, it was only Ish and Isha who turned that into self-consciousness. Rudhyar sees the acceptance of relationship by polarized beings here, stating, “there must be polarization before there can be fullfillment.” And this is something we preach to our clients (especially when we encounter planetary oppositions in their charts) as we find it to be a universal principle. Just as the presence of paradox in our experience often points to a breakthrough or breakout moment, involving some kind of awakening.

As an author who loves to explore the connection between the sexy and the sublime, the so-called gutter and the stars, the notion that unconscious, instinctual, libidinous energy lodged in our rootsiest chakra is what gives rise to blissful enlightement not only excites it just makes total sense. The serpent is the acceptance of the relationship between those two seeming polar opposites too—we are not seeking to transcend some baser self to reach enlightement, we are letting that natural, untamed, untapped force coiled with in us spiral up and power the awakening, without apology to some punishing God. Blasphemy. Not at all. Rudhyar calls it “the cosmification of desire”—Word—that is to say accepting, embracing our desire, including but not limited to our sexual desire, (which, c’mon people, is the impetus to life) as a sort of sacrament living within us that we must, by rights, let spiral up, and be the energetic anatomy of a transpersonal state, thus one devoid of ego. As westerners we’re not wont to believe that Christ consciousness could consist of desire of any kind, let alone a libidinous form. But we beg to differ.

Stella and I are always prescribing the notion of connecting our desires with our destiny, those two words sharing more than an etymological link. That is a cornerstone of our cosmic ideology. Desire isn’t want. I often say desire is like Lichtenstein or Monaco or Vatican City, it is a bit of real estate within a larger body that doesn’t belong to that body. I believe that desire is a portion of universal divine presence that resides within us—which is why we can’t choose or unchoose what our desires are. True desire. Again not want. The serpent symbolizes desire, but, you see, desire has been demonized. We do not accept and harnass the pole-to-pole power within ourselves, we see ourselves as conflicted, fallen, our desires being puppeteered by demons. The lizard kings of the world seek to supress and manipulate our true desires every which way; and organized religions that tell us we are sinners possessed by demons are the greatest tool to that end; putting us at odds with desire breeds frustration, which is a a negative power that can be harnassed as hate and militarized. Yesterday, we looked at how we might be timebombs waiting to explode, on some level; but how doing so would actually be counter productive to honoring our true, ever-unfolding desires. Today, we accept our polarizations so that we needn’t feel divided.

Over dinner last night Stella cracked me up. She launched into this routine employing the lingo of Scientology in describing her day to day doings and encounters with people and I thought it was so perfect and hysterical. Their whole concept of reaching different levels of “Being” via audits designed to become a “Clear”—which does the opposite of what that pseudo religion professes—meanwhile all religions are pseudo religions—because you cannot eradicate desire, you can only repress it further or release it. And we thought how great it would be if people just cassually tossed around Scientology lingo in describing the most banal aspects of their lives, taking the power and the piss out of that silly cult and its teachings.

So, on that note, I have to meet up with this total OTVIII yoga instructor right now who’s going to audit the crap out of me because I’m feeling like the biggest SP on the planet. I only hope that the complete Ish that does Bikram in his underwear isn’t there because he’s Fair Game if so.

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree of the Sabian Symbol may be higher than the one listed here  as the symbols cluminate in the next degree. There are 360  degrees spread over 365 days.

 Typos happen—I don’t have time or an intern to edit.*
Copyright 2018 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Get your HAUTE ASTROLOGY 2019 Weekly Horoscope ebooks by Starsky + Cox

Capricorn 12° (January 2)

I have been promoting the Haute Astrology books as best I can these past several days. I know I’m having something of an impact but I have to step up my game a little here. It is a funny limbo time. We have also had to answer a series of questions relating to the accident where we were rear ended in the summer of 2015. There seems to be a lot of finishing old business. Speaking of which I am also trying like the dickens to get the new GLOW entity off the ground, spearheading the project with work of Brian King and his band who are truly great, so that’s fun too. Gosh can it really be four months since we showcased the work in September good grief. Well, though I don’t like the concept of time flying I will say that I don’t mind it doing so in the dead of winter. By the same token there is so much to do in this dying time of year and the prospect of letting the days belong is as comforting as it is maddening. I am not looking to escape, particularly not myself; though I would very much like to have some spates of solo time in town if I can possibly swing it. Maybe when Stella goes to visit family I will take some time to do some serious fundraising. I need to prime the pump quite a bit first before I launch headlong into that plan. Anyway, I continue my re-runs of first ever Blagues from the vaults:

When the Sabian Symbols were first, shall we say, divined, the one associated with 13° Aries mightn’t have had the same import, on the surface, as it does now. An Unexploded Bomb Reveals An Unsuccessful Social Protest is the oracle for the day; and it’s impossible for us to ignore the real and terrorizing correlations associated with this image and the sense of real relief that stems from such a crisis being averted. But let us turn the clock back ninety years when these symbols were first produced and the world wasn’t universally gripped by terror. Not to say that, in 1925, there wasn’t upheaval and that bomb scares didn’t happen—it’s just that the impetus was more localized and isolated to specific, not globally sweeping, causes. It’s more difficult to read this symbol metaphorically today than when it was originally meant to be. It now seems in bad taste.

You Are The Bomb

For, to get the most out of this symbol, one needs to identify in large part with s/he who placed the bomb in the first place. We are all of us revolutionaries in part. Today, we’re reminded of that fact and, by extension, we might see if those who are actually born on this day personify that particular spirit. I found it personally prophetic that this was the symbol waiting for me to explore and expound upon this morning; because I’ve been feeling pretty itchy, lately, for some radical change. I feel that I am every element of this symbol. I am her who the bomb there, and I am also he who discovered and dismantled it. There is a part of me that what’s to overthrow the entire regime of my own existence, one which I’ve painstakingly cultivated into place; I want to blow it all up and start a completely new order and way of life. Unsurprisingly, the number thirteen is that of new order—I suspect it might be why it can be seen as unlucky. It would be for those steeped in anything old guard. The number twelve is that of cosmic order, not just in terms of astrology, the zodiac consisting of twelve signs; but there are twelve apostles, twelve gates to the celestial city, twelve tribes of Israel, twelve years until adulthood in Judaism, twelve superior angels, twelve stations of the cross, twelve articles of the creed, twelve simple letters in Hebraic language—the initials of the zodiacal names in Hebrew!, twelve labors of Hercules, twelve supreme court justices, twelve semitones derived from the seven notes of a scale, and twelve gods in the Greek and Roman pantheon—when the thirteenth god, Dionysus hit the scene, the goddess Hestia offered him her throne and thereafter sat at the center of the circular thrown room, tending the fire. But I digress…

The point is that when you get to thirteen, you’re at a new number one. No suprise that this symbol carries a double Aries energy, you might say. We are talking more than a spark, we are looking at a potential explosion. And yet, it is averted, begging the question: How are you an unexploded bomb and how are your social protests unsuccessful. Let’s talk impersonally for a moment. In post-Patriot-Act America, one does have trepidation taking a stand, as I always seem to do, on touchy subjects on social media. It’s very meta but sounding off about Edward Snowden and what a true patriot I think he is, whether on Facebook, or in this Blague does, as he has shown us, leave one open to scrutiny if not real consequence. It’s the same thing with sounding off about Scientology and their “Fair Game” policy of harrassing anyone who criticises them. This holds true for or any entity with access to retaliatory muscle. Anna Wintour—it’s all the same.

Ten years ago when Stella and I would perform shows and detail our descending from a long line of mystics who were antithetical to the Lizard Kings who control everything from the banks, to governments, to all the media; and people would laugh in that sort of you-guys-are-so-wacky type of way. Fast forward to the present and those same jokes aren’t as funny because they ring and read as absoluttely true. So, why does the bomb go unexploded? Fear. Fear that a motorcade of shiny black American made cars all being driven by Hugo Weaving with an earpiece is going pull up outside your house and you’ll be gently but firmly escorted away. It’s not going to happen. Probably. But, just a hair’s breadth of possibility of something like that happening is enough to keep most people’s revolutionary spirits in a perpetual state of nondetonation. Thus the metaphor of social protest isn’t just a metaphor at all, but let’s take a closer, personal look at today’s oracle:

Most of us live in a regime of our own making. If we’re lucky. I mean, we all know people way richer and way poorer, for starters, and yes, no doubt, people living in poverty or boxed in by societal limits of race or socio-economics are subject to a lifestyle largely not of their own making; so some of us have more restraint put on us than the confines of a career and lifestyle we’ve carved out for ourselves. The rich and famous have their own problems and I don’t say that in an off-handed manner; from experience, with very few exceptions, the richer, more famous the person the more miserable they are. For real. It’s people who have enough, but not too much, who tend to be the happiest. But even they have undetonated bombs. But just because the bomb didn’t go off, it still pointed out the unrest, the upshot of which is going to be inevitable. We live under an order we created for ourselves and yet there will always be the seed of a new order in us. An undetonated bomb might be likened to an ungerminated seed. Dionysus is knee-jerkedly called the god of disorder, but not so; he is the god of a new order, the one to whom are given the keys of the kingdom. He just has a bad-ass party atttitude that belies the serious power he is divinely packing. But that makes sense, too.

When we want to break out and break down our own orders, such urges are often accompanied by visions of dancing on the table tops in a Parisian restaurant, well past closing with bacchanale of wildly imaginative artists and intellectuals and fashion models and a winning football team, and of course Bryan Ferry is there, paying the tab and hailing us cabs to whisk us off to a club privé for more dancing or towers of lobster, crab and winkles at a gleaming all-night Champs Élysées brasserie. Okay maybe that’s just my vision but, when we get itching for a new order, we don’t often experience our desire for change as a safe, slow, barely perceptible shifting of a paradigm, we envision it as explosive and entailing a good blow out to mark our revolutionary change. That is how Dionysus archetypally lives in us. And this is why the detonation is thwarted. Our revolutionary motives are wildly inspiring, and they will inevitably surface in establishing a new order, but it does have to happen slowly over time, in fact. A violent reactionary move against the present order we’ve set up for ourselves would be retaliated upon by the police-state part of our own psyche, and it might actually set back our cause.

So what’s the message here? Maybe: Know where you’re going but don’t be in a rush to get there. Use your radical vision as the framework for a new order and then see what steps you can take toward making it happen. And do be quick about it. It is radical to create a total paradigm shift in your life over the next three to five years, say. Maybe you can do it within six months or a year. Depends on how practical you wish to be, and how itchy you are for change. Just don’t do nothing. What for you constitutes being a radical right now? How pressing is it to give that spirit life? Ask yourself what you can do now, in your present regime, toward setting the wheels of a new life into motion.

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree of the Sabian Symbol may be higher than the one listed here  as the symbols cluminate in the next degree. There are 360  degrees spread over 365 days.

 Typos happen—I don’t have time or an intern to edit.*
Copyright 2018 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Get your HAUTE ASTROLOGY 2019 Weekly Horoscope ebooks by Starsky + Cox

Capricorn 11° (January 1)

Last night, New Year’s Eve we drove back from Provincetown and S. had businesses further up Cape still; I had this weird loop of Sousa music in my head for a good chunk of the morning; still feeling the fatigue; it turned out weirdly in that it must have been, what, noon? when I fell into a deep nap, waking up completely disorientated, like multi-dimensional if you know what I mean. Any old wig, we made a delicioso Crab pasta with fine linguine and, then again, I was out like a light before 9PM. But not before having which I hope is one last extinction burst of anger and sadness which are never traveling far from ones own sense of remorse. I was in big need of understanding that what other people think of me is really none of my business, however I probably rid myself of the clawing feeling by giving into it so full that you might imagine I was grief stricken (because I was); being Irish I do know how to keen, which is different than wail, as keen is specifically wailing for deceased people; and, well, it was about people who are dead to me, so…Ha! And now I continue my holiday spate of posting the original Cosmic Blague entries which I am myself just now re-reading.

The cosmic order of the day is, well, cosmic order. And boy am I grateful. I just want to let go and let universe. I had so much to accomplish this week, I was meant to perform in a new monthly show on Thursday, and what I thought was a passing cold has knocked me for a loop. So I had to just let it go and let nature take its course, which included four hours of non-stop shivering in the night, and a day of watching classic 1970s movies on Netflix in the daytime, just like the gods intended it. The Sabian Symbol associated with this day at 12° Aries is A Triangularly Shaped Flight of Wild Geese. And the first thing that strikes me, after al these days of geometric shapes and triangles, is that even the most abstract images can be derived from nature or expressed by it. Today is just about letting the intelligence of the natural world dictate the agenda. It speaks to there being more essential things than what’s on the menu today at the White House or who’s said the wrong thing about Bruce Jenner.

Flight is always an expression of the soul; and because this flight pattern is etched upon the Sky, it naturally makes us look up in awe. Little known facts about wild geese too: They won’t leave any of their kind behind in the migration, and if a goose should become ill or injured in the journey and need to land, one other goose will volunteer to keep that ailing goose company, on land, until it recovers or expires. Try to find that kind of loyalty and devotion among we humans. People born on this day, says one source, are open and willing to embrace their lot, without preconceptions of what that actually should be. Doesn’t that sound super relaxing. I think we could all use a little bit of that brand of mindset. Most people seem to bemoan their lot, or talk with their mouths full of sour grapes.

I was thinking this morning, after seeing a familiar character on social media go off on the notion of celebrity that: My sense is that the down-and-out characters that are always complaining about the famous would leap at the opportunity to be a revolting celebrity themselves given half the chance. Ego is ego. Whether you’re a bubble-headed (booby) booby like pick-a-Kardashian-any-Kardashian or a poverty-loving misanthrope whose always pooh-poohing these people, you’re basically the same thing in my book: not a wild goose. The goose isn’t silly, it’s the emblem of constancy, something I find is pretty rare in people in a larger social context but also in intimate bonds. The upshot being that the true gooses really distinguish themselves. Those are the companions in life whom we should value and emulate.

 Venus is the planet of union, it’s energy being attractive. I like to imagine those geese in the sky giving us a V for that planet of love. When we are unified, in romantic, familial, fraternal, brotherly or sisterly love, in that V-formation, we are equals and in the proverbial It together, whatever obstacles or hardships may come. Indeed we are more able and even willing to accept what comes our way because it was for no lack of love or protection. It’s only when we feel abandoned that we might act out in an abandoned way. Life is a journey and it sucks thinking you’re always having to be on it alone or worse, in competition with others. Other than one year in little league, I never played on a team; I went to a huge college and mainly lived off campus; I haven’t worked more than probably a total of less than two years, all together, with an office team, and those who know me know I have no family to speak of. So this aspect of life is something I really have to work at as it doesn’t come easy. I can tend to isolate and I have a morbid fear of cliques let alone cults. And yet, as I write this, I seeI realize that I have an adopted family of actors and performers, many of whom belong to the Afterglow Festival family of artists, a most cherished one of whom is called V; I have adopted family, in Europe, in the form of one extended brood, who took me under their wing two decades ago, and of course I have Stella’s family which triangulates around a certain red-haired youngster whose nickname just happens to be Vie.

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree of the Sabian Symbol may be higher than the one listed here  as the symbols cluminate in the next degree. There are 360  degrees spread over 365 days.

 Typos happen—I don’t have time or an intern to edit.*
Copyright 2018 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Get your HAUTE ASTROLOGY 2018 Weekly Horoscope ebooks by Starsky + Cox

Capricorn 10° (December 31)

Despite the hurt of yesterday, (I must be all grown up because) I managed to have an excellent time. We did the holiday market and met some grand folks and then we strolled back to the hotel. We opened a bottle of gorgeous wine and sat by the fire. The owners had donated this room to us almost apologetically as it is on the ground floor. But that only meant that our room opened onto the empty common area, a gorgeous living space with mod fireplace et al. I really loved it. And as we arrived back the fireworks were just beginning. We tried to stay and see them en place at The Canteen but it was mobbed and none too comfortable. We climbed the stairs of our imagined private lobby and looked out a glass door where we could see the entire works from the heated comfort of our own private interior. We just chilled until such time as we left to walk exactly a half a block to dinner at Strangers & Saints where our friend Raina has taken up a winter residency in the kitchen. Her own great Baie Bar + Resto isn’t heated, therefore seasonal, so she is collaborating at S & S and that is good news for all the town folk and neighbors. We ordered things we would never order like quahog dip and sliders and other fattening morsels—it was such fun. And, really, this was our New Year’s Eve night out for sure. Apres diner, we weren’t tired and needed to walk off the repast; so we strolled to the west end for a night cap at Joon Bar, another town favorite. We were immediately absorbed by familiar faces, and new, rather lit, ones at the bar. One fellow, who used to sponsor the festival, seemed drunkenly apologetic and when I complemented him on his hat (which was newly purchased from the holiday market) he gave it to me and, despite my endless protests, wouldn’t take no for an answer. Okay. Weirdly (I forgot) that one goal was to buy a hat at the market, a thought that went out of my head as a result of the shade so-called friends were purposefully throwing our way. Anyway, I was in such high spirits that none of that was bothering me now. It would too in coming days only to never bother me ever again. I’m continuing my holiday tradition of posting, now, some Cosmic (Sabian Symbol driven) reruns from the earliest Blague days:

Today we look at power, and worldly power at that. They symbol for 11° Aries is The Ruler of a Nation or The President of a Country. I think the original might be the former and yet the latter expresses the nature of the symbol. For we are not looking at the energy of a monarch or a dictator but the ruler of a democracy for the most part. A president presides, he has the power to execute the will of the collective, but he also has the responsibility to do so. I think of the energy of a president being very Libra, whereas that of a king is super Leo. Democracy and social order, balance of power, harmony among people, are hallmarks of the sign of Libra the mottos of which are “I balance” and “we are”. And being the 11°, one might equate it with the 11th sign of Aquarius in that sign’s Utopian vision. When one is the ruler or president most energy goes to keeping the peace, not just with other nations, but within the ranks of ones own, and among ones people. Where are you the ruler? In your family? At work? In some department? When you are in charge, mainly you deal with the censure of not doing things correctly. Or perhaps you are one who points out how those in charge are deficient; but if you were put in the lead role you would likewise be a target for criticism.

I was watching the documentary on Scientology, Going Clear. And besides the abuse of power by leaders of that “church” what struck me was how the IRS caved and gave Scientology tax-exempt status mainly because they were worn down by lawsuits. The IRS took the lazy route. And as a result that “church” has gotten away with murder, probably literally. The litany of abuses, the brainwashing, the blackmail is staggering. The documentary really left me angry at our powers that be, which allow this type of organization to proliferate. The billions of dollars Scientology pockets while those in its ranks suffer abuse is one thing; but the fact that “we” allow this organization to exist—which it can only do as a tax-free entity—is beyond me. My hope is that this documentary triggers some kind of upshot the way the documentary on Robert Durst brought about his arrest. I know it’s not as specific as the Durst situation—evidence coming to light—but seriously we have to crack down on this crazy cult. There was so much to the story that wasn’t in the documentary. The disappearance, for instance, of Shelly Miscavige, wife of the so-called religion’s leader David Miscavige—she hasn’t been seen in seven years.

In a democracy, we can all be Ruler of the Nation, theoretically. Any organizations that exist within our democracy that disallow that same capability for self-empowerment should be shut down. How is it that Scientology is protected by the first ammendment but Edward Snowden isn’t? If I were ruler of the nation, if I could, I would throw the money lenders (lobbyists) out of the temple (halls of Congress); I would impose caps on campaign fundraising; I would create a new-deal type works program for repairing our infrastructure; I would pardon Snowden; I would revoke any cult’s tax exempt status; I would outlaw GMOs; I would break up big Agro; I would impose oversight on big Pharma; I would tax the one percent at the same rate Eisenhower did in the 1950s, I would do a lot of things…if I could. All impossible, you say? That’s the real issue. Why is doing right by the people impossible? Why are venal, oppressive maneuvers all highly possible? Why do bad people in power always seem to win out? The main answer is: That, for the most part, anybody who needs to be in a position of power probably has a screw loose somewhere anyway. They are driven by ego. I love me some Hillary Clinton but really why does she need to be president so pressingly? I don’t think the prime answer is: to do good. I’d like to say I love me some Obama, for the most part, and he has attempted some good things; but he has also kow-towed to some of the worst people and entities on the planet, like Monsanto. Why? Maybe not because he wants to. Maybe there are threats involved.

That’s be the way Scientology operates: on threats. They have a dossier on “church” members yay high, one that “church” members provide them, admitting all sorts of shit in their audits. The irony of religious participation taking on the form of a visit to the IRS not withstanding, “church” members give their power over, or they believe they do. They are no longer the Ruler of (their own) Nation. And when you’re a celebrity Scientologist, the “church” uses you for their own PR purposes, and you get major perks and payoffs. Would that we could all boycott any project made by these celebrity Scientologists, or better yet: If we could send memos to Tom Cruise and John Travolta and Elizabeth Moss and Beck and Laura Prepon and Greta Van Susteren and Giovanni Ribisi and Kristie Alley and all the other famous “church” members saying that we don’t care what sexual proclivities they might be repressing. This isn’t the 1950s actually; and some spicy tales from their boudoirs might actually make them more interesting because, at a glance, this isn’t the most exciting bunch ever to appear in the same sentence.

Seven years before Graydon Carter and Vanity Fair published the story on Scientology’s search for a wife for Tom Cruise, the magazine included us in their “L.A. Intelligence Report” in the Vanities section in the front of the book. To be fair, it is a tongue-in-cheek page that mixes fact with fiction. Although, in our case, it was mostly fiction. First of all we don’t live in Los Angeles. Anyway, we were deemed “Psychics to the Stars” and one category in the chart-format piece was “Skeleton in Closet”. They said that ours was “Scientology referral swaps”. This immediately made us uneasy. And then came the questions all on the theme of “is this true?”; and despite putting out a statement that none of it was, our business is built upon a real consultancy with real paying clients, most of whom would not be comfortable if we were actually in bed with that awful cult.

I wrote Graydon Carter a letter pointing out the problem. He refused to print any kind of apology or retraction which, to be honest, I didn’t expect. His editors were vaguely sorry, especially Matt Tyrnauer who actually availed himself of guidance from Starsky + Cox on a regular basis, and yet, as often happens in this situation, we seemed to be personae non grata for speaking up about it. As if we should be so lucky to have any mention at all by Vanity Fair. But I do think the magazine was concerned with the legality of the situation, printing something not only untrue but potentially damaging. I then received a letter from Graydon’s office barely apologizing for any distress this had caused and how they planned to make it up to us with the publishing of our next book, which they would champion. They never did. In fact, they pretty much cut off all communication with us. Scientology calls it: To Disconnect. As a Ruler of a Nation, in this case a sensational magazine which is indispensible on long flights, Graydon Carter is well aware of his power, but perhaps not the abuses thereof. When he raised the ire of Scientology, himself, I thought there was something karmic in it. The cult of celebrity vs. the cult to end all cults. If only.

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree of the Sabian Symbol may be higher than the one listed here  as the symbols cluminate in the next degree. There are 360  degrees spread over 365 days.

 Typos happen—I don’t have time or an intern to edit.*
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