Aries 13°

(For last year’s meditation on the Sabian Symbol for this degree: click here)

Another excerpt which name-checks William’s Wordsworth, who couldn’t have been more aptly named, and whose birthday it is today by synchronicity.

 In closer consideration of the cardinal-fire nature of the 1^st Cosmic Energy: The element of fire is symbolic of spirit or life force while the cardinal quality is primary, essential, initiatory—the spark of our spirit. Yet the 1^st energy is based firmly in the physical experience. (The first three signs/houses comprise the zodiac’s first Quadrant, that of the physical level of human experience—the ensuing three relating to the emotional, mental and so-called spiritual planes. Aries and the first house point to the blood, guts, muscle and sinew of the body and objective, aggressive, action. Taurus and the second house are associated with the senses and subjective responses. Dual Gemini and the third house relate to the nervous system, output and input, a combination of those two forces which precede it on the cosmic wheel.) Anyway, if you’ve been reading our meaning, thus far, you’ve already gleaned that, vis a vis Arien 1^st energy, that emphasis on the body and the spirit isn’t a contradiction, but rather points to a singular truth about life: that the physical, tangible level of existence is inherently transcendent, spiritual and indeed miraculous, as we’ll see. It is from the 12^th Cosmic Energy associated with the sign of Pisces, that of mutable-water, expressing the most misty mystic nature of existence, that this 1^st Cosmic Energy is born. The zodiac is, despite our traditional two-dimensional way of viewing it, an infinitely dynamic spiral, not a flat and static circle. The twelfth house of the zodiac is that of non-material existence. Mutable water points to the literally dissolute state outside of time and space. The opposite-facing fish of Pisces portray yin and yang, the alpha and the omega, the womb-tomb from whence we come and to which we must return. Fishy, tadpole-y Pisces represents the real and metaphorical primordial soup or embryonic environment from which physical human life miraculously bursts forth in all its bloody, violent Arien splendor. But let us for a moment consider that there is but One essential Cosmic Energy, not many, which morphs into various manifestations that we can best discern as having twelve distinct forms. Out of the most immaterial, “spiritual” form evolves the most material, blood-and-guts one, such seemingly opposite energies being so organically able to emerge, one from another. So from the vaguest primeval bog of the 12^th comes the 1^st Cosmic Energy, one of sharpest individual self-distinction, “But trailing clouds of glory do we come.”[1]

What we are urged to do and to be should be characterized as an expression of that glory. Let’s revisit our mythical common ancestor for whom navel-gazing was an impossibility. What Adam wants is the same as what creation wants. And we, as creatures, all possess the potential to be that simply aligned. We just need to mete out which urges are actually those of all existence working through us. Certainly, if you have the impulse to drown kittens that’s not one we would consider your birthright to act upon. Most of us do find, if not bemoan the fact, however, that our first instincts are typically our best. The enormity of that truth cannot be overstated. For many people it is a use-it-or-lose-it situation. What strong instincts we have must be acted upon lest we squander our talents or resources. The good news is that, as George Eliot put it, “it is indeed never too late to become the you you might’ve been,” despite anxiety-producing cautions not to, say, Blink, (by Malcolm Gladwell, whose own first instinct, apparently, was to parrot Emerson’s Self Reliance.) In truth, after a lifetime of compromise, it can be a challenge to trigger in our minds exactly what that original yen was that once served as the seed of what was to become the overall theme of our life purpose. And this is what 1^st Energy work is determined to do. In our private practice guiding individuals to reclaim their birthright(s) we have found that this is actually best achieved by re-activating a person’s physical life. Which, we find, nine times out of ten, is also in some state of atrophy. Either that that or the role that physical exercise plays in ones life isn’t all that healthful on closer examination.

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[1] From William Wordworth’s poem Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood, the title of which perfectly encapsulates the particular thrust of 1^st Cosmic Energy.