Gemini 20° (June 9)

 

More excerpt blasts from the past and then some. Have at it! Meanwhile, the last couple of days have been about getting my brain around the new book I’m reading. In the background there are battles raging in the street and on the internet, pitting close friends of mine on either side. I am not wading into any of it. I have a buttload to do. But, again there are some fabulous bits of text here to play with….mazeltov.

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 391-395 I am reading through all my Blagues, five per day, and posting some samples here. Now, in my sixth year of writing this Blague, but the time I get to my seventh, I will have through all the daily Blagues of my first five years. If that’s confusing I apologize:’

Originally posted April 7, 2016:

Still excerpting from….wouldn’t you like to know.

All the cardinal forces, whether they be fire, water, air or earth, are concerned with initiative and pioneership, as we’ll also see, in the fourth, seventh and tenth chapters of this book. The warrior knight, or knightess (to coin a term), doesn’t give up the fight, something that, for this archetype, is never settled. And so, just as this premier energy applies to our own sparks of interest or inspiration, the unforgettable fires that burned within us, often from childhood, we must realize that had we the good fortune of actually flaming them the whole of our lives, never deviating from the singularity of their purpose, we would nonetheless still need to continually kindle them, vigilantly, to keep those sparks crackling. The first astrological house, home of the 1st Cosmic Energy, is often called that of new beginnings. If you think about it, this defines each dawning day, indeed every moment, spent pursuing our quests or attacking experience in general. Though some attributes of the astrological houses are quite literal, others are more cryptic than they appear on face value. Case in point: even though we can take new beginnings literally, encoded in it is also the notion that the present is paramount. Living in the now is a cornerstone of most spiritual practices—and what the zodiac tells us is that every instant is, thus, a fresh start. Indeed, we ourselves need to be new to our experience in order to further it. This sort of freshness never fades. It is the spirit of newness, the energy that cannot get old. Goals, once achieved, must be replaced by subsequent ones, even when set further along the same überpath toward achieving a larger objective, which some of us are fortunate enough to stick to for the best part of our lives. It comes down to forever setting your mind on forging that much more ahead. Your attitude, your outlook, is thus powered by this cosmic force, as it requires constant renewal to keep us moving forward. Pushing ourselves, even in intellectual pursuits, requires the summoning of physical stamina. Alternately, ever increasing our physical strength supports our ability to cope with emotional, mental or even spiritual challenges. Moving Mars-ruled blood around and building Mars-ruled muscle is great for the Aries-ruled head. As with most things which have been purported by metaphysicians, often dating back to antiquity, which science eventually proves true: Bodily fitness, we now know, not only staves off or helps to eradicate physical disease, but it also combats mental disorders such as anxiety and depression which, though taking root in the physical, often originate from what we might call the emotional body, or indeed the astral one. The physical self is a teacher. For as we attend to it’s fitness, building and maintaining real muscle, we always develop as much if not more figurative sinew.

The physical self, your very own personal hard drive, must be maintained and cared for in order to become the you you want to be. Not to say that everybody and their stepmother must sign up for spin classes. By the same token there are many athletes who aren’t (even naturally) in touch with the 1st energy, which no doubt makes their undertakings more difficult than they need to be. It is the spirit in which one approaches even the most strenuous physical activity that can truly make the difference, not only in the performance itself, but in the mind’s ability to both enjoy, excel at, and exceed expectations of it. Picture that vigilant knight/ess. Know doubt there is an element of asceticism in your vision of this figure. So too is there a Spartan ingredient to the 1st Cosmic Energy. Indeed, when it comes to our physical selves, less does tend to be more, specifically in regard to food and drink. Going without puts us in touch with want in a physical way, which attunes us to the 1st energy, a force of want on every level. Hemingway clued into this when he wrote, “hunger is good discipline.” Sparsity makes room for concentration cum meditation, whereby ones batteries recharge on a deeper level than a digestive one. It is an expression of 1st Cosmic Energy as the Will-to-be, sacrificing to the now so to amass power for achieving in the immediate future. Moreover, the knight/ess’s forgoing revelry for quiet vigil shows the kind of character, and literal integrity, that instead revels in ones own company. The realization that each of us are born alone and die alone, we might suspect, enters into the consciousness of such solo contemplation. In accordance with this archetype, we all possess the ability to stay, focused, on our path and to embrace the power of our aloneness as it propels us ever further upon it. A body in motion staying in motion, one is more likely to win the label of “active individual” if he or she is pursuing interests native to his or her very being. When not thus engaged, people tend to fill the so-called empty spaces in their psyche with, well, stuff, whether it be distracting situations or relationships or substances which ultimately snuff your spark-le.

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 Any acting teacher worth her salt will tell you that to recreate life on stage, in film, or any medium, the actor must have an objective firmly in mind; and then take action after action, physical, verbal or what have you, to realize that goal. Now, this key nugget of thespian wisdom rings so true because it is taken and deconstructed from life, all the world being a stage and we would-be players, even in the most modern vernacular sense of that word. We had a client who had difficulty approaching life thus objectively. Rather he viewed himself through the lens of what he thought, and often feared, others perceived about him. And so he got lost in playing others’ agendas and objectives, mainly, in order to be liked. He had also lost touch with his initial what-I-want-to-be-when-I-grow-up intentions, even allowing himself to be led into relationships based on the importance of how said bonds looked on the outside, to those around him, rather than being driven by his intrinsic loving and lusting desires. Now, to varying degrees, many of us suffer from a similar separation from self, which, like in this case, threatens to weaken the foundation of our very being. But we can ill afford to let this happen, even in the smallest of ways. The 1st Cosmic Energy has nothing to do with how we are like others, and it couldn’t give an owl’s hoot about being liked, that favorite little birdie of Athena being an avatar of her wisdom. The myths of both Mars and Athena entail their continually going against the grain, the former personifying outright conflict, the latter more subtle controversy, while neither dynamic is something we can always shy away from. These archetypes embody the universal knowledge that life is, in so many ways, a matter of contest from which is wrought the spears we must all, at any point, take up.

            Circling back to the purely physical aspect of this 1st energy, we find that if one is engaged, body and soul, in their life’s objectives, taking action after action to achieve them, that life itself becomes practically enough of a work-out precluding the need to allocate set hours of gym time—provided, of course, ones main objectives aren’t of a strictly athletic nature or require the physical fitness as that of a cosmonaut. In a nod to the first astrological house’s association with early childhood, a time when play and exercise were one and the same, this premier cosmic force reignites the notion and the practice of expending this renewable energy, bodily, while in the process of playing the game of life as you divine it. For more of us than one might imagine this (life) is the only exercise required. You’ve heard the old saying, “the more you do, the more you can do,” but we find this only holds true if you are your objectives, the Aries motto “I am” elliptically waiting for you to fill in the blank. And like the knight who knows he can only do his small part, nonetheless keeping the larger goal of fighting the proverbial good fight in mind, it is only in galloping toward our goals, once achieved setting new ones, or even never quite fully realizing them, that we come to embrace the verb of living: the means not the end. This is the source of our greatest confidence, which cannot help but translate physically.

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Show us a person suffering from low-status body language, and we’ll show you a person who isn’t in hot pursuit of her dreams. Show us a person who cultivates high-status body image and we’ll show you an individual with a better shot than most of reaching her goals. It all comes down to constitution, which elegantly carries the dual meaning of the body’s ability to remain healthy and withstand hardship and the formal creation or establishment of something new. Etymologically, we see that these seemingly disassociated notions of physical integrity and the putting forth, the statement, of a mission are intrinsically linked. One’s self-image, which a person might actually mask to varying degrees of success from others, can’t help but be affected by the ability to stick to whatever program one sets out for oneself. Again, it is crucial that we disconnect self-image from the fruits of our labor, instead allowing ourselves to draw power from the effort and determination itself. As the Buddhist nun and author Pema Chodron prescribes, we should indeed “abandon all hope of fruition,” not strictly to save ourselves from disappointment but rather in the acknowledgment that fruition is an indefinable term. And, whether one is too lazy to get up and go after what they want in life or someone for whom enough is never enough, we realize that fruition is mostly an illusion. What we want to cultivate, energetically, first and foremost in our lives, in any case, is a continual lust for life via our most primal instincts and interests, as well as our enthusiasm for new ones. Though we may not be dealing with the individual on the soul level here, we are undoubtedly speaking to the spirit in all of us designed to solely cheer on one participant toward his or her personal Good.

            Let’s imagine again that you are the only person on the planet. The human experience is thus determined by you alone, which, for most people would be impetus enough to do things “right”; then again there’s nobody else to whom to do, or even wish, ill. There’s no lying or stealing or any other misdeeds the Judeo-Christian western world has received commandments against perpetrating. We wonder if Sartre had this particular thought in mind when he said, “hell is others.” Alone in the world, you are the protagonist, if only by default. So you get to wear the white hat because your personal good invites no comparison; but, let’s face it, left to your own devices, with a striking dearth of vices, you’d want to create as good a world as possible. It’s just for you after all, and don’t you deserve it? In the metaphysical landscape of “Genesis” where the first cosmic energy “lives”, there is nary a seven deadly sin, let alone an original one, in sight. Lust is no no-no, but rather a most natural drive, whether it be for life purpose or sexual fulfillment. In the latter incarnation, obviously, it behooves us to revisit the existence of others.

            In consideration of the 1st Cosmic Energy, we must understand that our libidinous drives aren’t separate from the other manifestations of lust in our lives. Ask any non-heterosexual person, even those who were aware of their orientation since the playpen, if the repression of ones sexuality is limited to that one aspect of their existence and they will surely tell you: No. It impacts the whole of ones being; and that coming out has a sweeping, freeing effect on their entire life. Forthrightness—a word that combines the notion of forward motion with the might of doing right—is thus more than just simple honesty or frankness about oneself. Rather it denotes the ability to further ones own personal good. Sexuality, which is at the core of our being, is the clearest example of that cardinal-fire spark within us, perpetually being ignited, that which most poignantly animates us. Sex is life, which cannot exist without it; and so our sexual energy, associated with the first “root” chakra, incidentally, should be our prime mover, not simply for the intention of pouncing on whomever strikes our fancy, but in our approach to what we must pinpoint as our purpose(s) on the planet, whether it be a vocation or series of avocations.

            When we casually say that this or that activity turns us on, few of us realize how literally such a statement is meant to be uttered. And the manifestations of desired enterprises, or lack thereof, can have reverse effects on us as well: It is a documented truth that people who don’t pursue their true callings, instead settling into some imitation of the life they ought to lead, often experience a dwindling of their sex drive. The libido (Latin for desire, synonymous with wish) is typically the first casualty in a life of compromise. We dare say, then, that it is as important to admit to yourself what it is you truly want to be in this world as it is to come clean about your sexual identity. Not doing so is tantamount to leading a closeted life of a different sort, if not a brand of suicide, bringing about a kind of spiritual death.

            What stops us from embracing our destiny callings are all the myriad “reasons” against pursuing them by which we are barraged. But these warnings and justifications are only ever a product of our so-called nurture, not our intrinsic nature. They are learned, from outside influences, whether they be discouraging parents or teachers or, more overreachingly, societal groups with handy statistics stacked up against the probability for our achieving success, just another word for illusive fruition. Those people or institutions that discourage us do so out of fear, presumably, for our future unhappiness. When, in truth, it is a fear projected from typically well-meaning but nonetheless toxic detractors who were themselves no doubt discouraged by others, and so on and so on, back through the annals of time. There is also an argument for believing that society has been purposely designed to derail our individual dreams and herd us into fearful collectives to suit the purposes of a select few puppet masters, but we needn’t delve the realm of conspiracy theory to get the crucial point across: It is called discouragement for a reason. For it takes away our courage, which is the very essence of our beloved warrior archetypes still ever-ready to rally their forces within us as embodiments of the 1st Cosmic Energy. To take it a step further, the word courage itself simply means the moving forward along a specific course. And what exact course that is only you know, but…have perhaps let slip your mind. Well, dear reader, we are in the business of putting that head for self-realization back on courageously squared shoulders.

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I’m back on the female archetype of Aries today, that great goddess Athena, whom I’m seriously going to invoke today. There are a few myths involving her that most people don’t know. For one, she designed the flute, made out of a deer bone; but when she played it for the other gods, Aphrodite (Venus) and Hera (Juno)—her rivals during the Judgment of Paris—laughed at her because her cheeks puffed up. Athena stormed out (very Aries woman) and played the flute while gazing into a reflecting pool and saw what those divine broads were on about. So she stopped playing. Vanity and imperfection are rather ironic flaws for so armored and steely a goddess, no? Well not really. One must wonder why it is that Athena is so armored and steely. She is defensive to a fault. And that is most true about Aries women who mainly draw upon her otherwise pretty flawless archetype. I think of Athena almost as personification of the temple, in light of it being a metaphor for the body; whilst that pure Mars (Greek: Ares) energy, personified as the overt, active, aggressive war god, is the brawn and might embodied within that temple.

I mentioned that Ares is the lover of Aphrodite (Mars and Venus) while Athena shares a temple with Aphrodite’s husband Hephaestus (Roman: Vulcan) a funny foursome taken together. I may also have made mention of a myth surrounding Athena and her other half-brother Hephaestus (full brother to Ares) in which the smith god tried to rape her—she wiped his semen from her thigh with a fillet of cloth and cast it to the ground impregnating their great-grandmother Gaia who bore a son with the unfortunate name of Erechtheus. Athena raised the child as her own.

This from the Museum of the Goddess of Athena:

 Another aspect of Hephaestus’ relationship to Athena comes to fore here where he is not the consuming God of fire, but the bridegroom, husband, and father of the divine child. In the month of Pyanopsion the festival of Apatura was celebrated, at which the youth of Athens, in phratries (brotherhoods) under the protection of Zeus Phratrios and Athena Phratria, received the initiation which they needed in order to get married. At this festival Hephaestus was particularly celebrated: men, dressed in their most beautiful garments, lit the torch at the fire of the hearth, sang in praise of their God, and sacrificed to him. There is no report in the fragmentary evidence of a torchlight procession, but such can safely be assumed, and for the Corinthian Hellotia a report of such is handed down explicitly. 

 On the last day of the same month began the festival which Hephaestus and Athena shared in common, the Chalkeia. This day was celebrated like a wedding: the artisans presented grain swingles to the Goddess. The secret of this festival was not given away, with the result that more stories were told about it, such as that Athena was given to Hephaestus and placed in a chamber for him, or that he followed her and embraced her. All variations allow the Goddess to leave the embrace a virgin, but they allow a child to originate nine month latter from this same embrace. 

 Only in a later period was the festival of Chalkeia – named such after the material and art of the founders and smiths – celebrated exclusively by artisans as though it were a festival of Hephaestus. Earlier it belonged among the most important festivals of Athena and was called Athenaia. 

How I see this archetype manifesting in people born under the sign? Well first I think about Aries women who, for whatever reason (archetype being the only answer) tend to couple with men who are, for lack of a better word, lame. Hephaestus was likewise disabled when he sided with mother Hera against Zeus in an argument and his father hurtled him around the world, several times I believe, breaking his legs upon landing. Hephaestus made the first robots, mechanical men, to help him around; indeed one might say that his industry, of which he is prime godhead, stemmed from his disability—he is the Virgo male archetype for reasons we won’t get into here. Point being, Aries women often partner, if not outright couple or mate, with men who bear an archetypal resemblance to that god. Arguably subconsciously, Aries women don’t wish to be controlled by men, just as Athena didn’t want to marry nor did Lilith play dutiful, submissive wife to Adam. Remember the character Lilith on “Frasier”? So Aries women are archetypically drawn to “consort” males if not outright cuckolds who will play a secondary, even submissive or often subservient role in their lives.

Physically, we see the primal, first-born archetype of the female embodied in Aries women whom I’ve come to refer to as often gorgeous cavewoman because they do portray a certain primitive, prehistoric beauty. They have heavy jaws, sometimes actual underbites, with a jagged twist to their teeth and heavy, heavy eyebrows. Keira Knightly? Emma Watson? Rooney Mara? Kristen Stewart? Diana Ross? Reese Witherspoon? Daisy Ridley? Robin Wright? Lucy Lawless? Lady Gaga? Sarah Jessica Parker? Cynthia Nixon? Michelle Monaghan? Jessica Chastain? Maisie Williams? Jennifer Garner? Claire Danes? Ali MacGraw? Allison Williams? Patricia Arquette? Joan Crawford? Bette Davis? Mariah Carey? Fergie? The list goes on and on and on and on and on and…..

Copyright 2016 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Cosmic Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree point of the Sabian Symbol may at times be one degree higher than the one listed here. The Blague portrays the starting degree of for this day ( 0°,  for instance), as I typically post in the morning, while the Sabian number corresponds to the end point (1°) of that same 0°-1° period. There are 360  degrees spread over 365/6 days per year—so they nearly, but not exactly, correlate.

Typos happen. I don’t have a proofreader. And I like to just write, post and go!
Copyright 2020 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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