Gemini 19° (June 8)

 

It actually scares me how much content I’ve written and then long forgotten about. The Blagues I stumbled on today to repost were all themselves excerpts from a proposal I wrote which no longer even appears on my hard drive, begging the question: where the hell did it go? I hope I have it on a back-up somewhere. I’m assuming I do I might even go and check that out. Anyway it is an interesting read and I am weening myself off of talking to you about pretty much anything this year as I am full on into a book project and you’ve never seen the sorts of things I’ve been posting over the last five years and a few months. So enjoy…

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 386-390 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

The first astrological house, as an umbrella covering a number of related attributes, is still most often distinguished as the house of Self. This speaks volumes. So many enclaves of society, not to mention those organized religions, though they entertain the notion of selfhood, regard it as something that must obey and conform to the collective in its myriad manifestations. The pitfalls of selfishness are forever being pointed out, while missing the point entirely: That true selfishness is actually the most selfless of acts. The more independent we are the less we need rely on others, self-concern, even a surplus of it, staving off pesky imposition on our fellow earthlings. This is a good example, incidentally, of the brand of singularity-thinking that we all must get our brains around in courting the 1st Cosmic Energy—that is, that some thing or notion and its opposite are essentially the same, more than paradoxically, one. Let’s take this astrological first-house concept of selfhood a wee bit further.

Think of Adam and—we won’t say Eve, but rather Adam’s first wife—Lilith. (Yes, Eve was wifey mach two, as shall be revealed in her archetypal influence over the 2^nd Cosmic Energy, detailed in the next chapter). Adam, as we know, had total carte blanche. White (blanche) symbolizes both a clean slate and essential goodness. Along with red, for blood, it is the color associated with the 1^st energy and Aries. Its planet, Mars, rules the blood, which, of course, is made up of white and red cells. The name Adam (Adamah) actually means bloody clay. The stuff of which we creatures are made. The 1^st Cosmic Energy is focused on what is, both literally and figuratively, in our blood. It is concerned with our essential, primal selves. It seeks to fully form and fortify us in the face of the infinite influences. Those that can cause us to forget who we are, unadulterated and unabridged, and what we truly want, without extraneous voices in our heads. And as we grow in life, this energy powers our ability to continually wipe the slate clean of all such externals, so that we can always know our own mind. The 1^st Cosmic Energy sees who we are and what we want as one and the same.

Adam, our model-A man, imposed his will freely. He was empowered to name all he surveyed. Doing so is an act of creation, logos (not Grease) being “the word.” Life was what he made it, or, more accurately, how he called it, without any concern for conflicting ideas or derision. Adam, alone, comes up against no obstacles. Likewise Lilith. They cannot stay together because they each need that carte blanche. Essentially, so do we all. Genesis, the opening chapter of the proverbial good book in which Adam appears, is, like the first house of the zodiac, a mirroring of the first chapter of every individual’s life. And whether you are a closed book or an open one, this must remain the beginning of your story—intact, to revisit again and again. Or else, as many of us can sadly attest to doing, we all too easily lose the rest of the plot. The Arien first house is associated with the age-span of human life from birth to age seven. This a time when we are the subject of every sentence as yet unstrung together in our own minds. Everything else, including other people, are objects for our own use, pleasure, comfort and other innumerable purposes that fall under the heading of our own survival. Thriving is our singular aim. What we often fail to realize as we “grow” is that this should remain the case. It seems that, while we do need to negotiate other aspects of life, neatly catalogued by the ensuing eleven energies, we tend to lose our grasp on this premier one. Cosmically, you might say, so many of us all too easily throw our selves under the bus as a result of others’, and life’s, demands of us. The upshot being that none of the subsequent eleven cosmic energies can properly take hold in our life unless we maintain our connection with this primary force. Think of the 1^st Cosmic Energy as the hard drive of our being upon which all the other energies, like so many software programs, run.

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This chief Aries cardinal-fire power is our primal impetus to life, our purpose. Here we reclaim our freedom from outside influences, distractions or detractors. This energy of singularity urges us to approach life as if we were, each of us, the only person on the planet, thus entitled to take from existence what we want, on our own terms, without apology or second guessing. This premier cosmic energy is focused on our basic raison d’être, our initial aim, design and inalienable determination, with which we often lose touch on our path through life. So many of us ask ourselves, what is the point?, what the ef am I doing here? Well, accessing the 1^st Cosmic Energy allows you to discover, indeed reclaim, those answers for yourself. Cardinal-fire denotes the flame of our own individuality, our unquenchable fire that nobody can snuff. Easy for Adam and Lilith, as sole terrestrial inhabitants, who refused to even live with one another—sexually, and otherwise, they each demanded the top position. But the rest of us live in a world of innumerable relationships, where we constantly come up against others’ opinions and agendas. Which explains why Adam and Lilith’s counterparts in classical mythological are the war gods, Mars and Athena. These armed deities are even more vivid personifications of the 1^st energy. They embody the individual offensive (fight) and defensive (flight) manifestation of this energy in human form. Adam and Lilith, too, may well have evolved into war gods if they were likewise thrust into a pantheon of such divine egoists as the Greek and Roman gods. (These gods were originally worshipped locally, monotheistically, by clannish cults before being slammed all together.) So why are we delving into all this myth stuff anyway? Because: These figures embody archetypes that live within us all. They are the humanized forms of cosmic energy to which we can relate more personally, making our connection to this energy less abstract.

Our potent yet under-appreciated mandala, the Zodiac, symbolically rich and steeped in archetype, provides us easy, organic access to these prototypical personas upon which we may imprint in our efforts to channel each of the twelve cosmic energies. The primo sign of Aries, associated with the 1^st Cosmic Energy, is indeed ruled by Mars, named for the aggressive and often bratty god of war whom the Greeks, no big surprise, called Ares. He was, also fittingly, the first-born male offspring of the Olympian gods just as his slightly older sister the war goddess, wise Athena, was the first female progeny, emerging from her father’s head, the body part governed by the sign of Aries. We all must suit up in their armor and grab hold of their spears to fearlessly stake out our individual fulfillment. Mars and Athena were likely hunter gods to begin with, taking on warrior status once their individual cults locked horns with neighboring clans. Hunting is an act of survival and of competition, both elements applying to the war field as well. The gender difference in these gods points to pure “masculine” aggression and prudent “feminine” defense and diplomacy. Both these aspects must in fact be channeled by all of us, despite our sex, although Athena’s archetypal nature is more valuable to females in general, just as Mars’ is more applicable to males. We see the Mars archetype echoing in popular culture from GI Joe to Gladiator, Superman to Ironman, just as Athena’s incarnations include Xena the Warrior Princess and even Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

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 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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The goal is to get those cardinal-fire sparks flying. The 1^st Cosmic Energy is outward and directive. And as we’ll see in the third section of this chapter, it is possible to consciously focus this energy and move it around. Indeed, 1^st energy is one which you can see manifest in a real way. Chi masters have long been able to direct (this) their energy, even igniting fires through shooting this force from their fingertips. Now, we are certainly not expecting our readers to put the Bic lighter company out of business—although one should never say never—but in the practice of consciously moving this 1^st, very physical, energy around one is actually also developing the mental muscle it takes not only to connect with a deeper sense of purpose but to feel fearless in the face of the challenges necessary to bring desired circumstance about. Taken together the first house, Aries and Mars rule the head, the blood, the muscles and the adrenals that control fight or flight. The Ram obviously fights with his head. We are born headfirst. Metaphorically speaking, the 1^st energy is about diving headlong into experience without second-guessing. Of course we can be too headstrong and brash and rash and not look before we leap. But the 1^st energy cannot, by nature, be concerned with such cautions—other energies work with the 1^st energy to keep it in check. For now we are only concerned with getting you to plunge into life, head first, as if there is nothing to stop you. Psst, hey, psst: There isn’t!

Mars also rules the active libido and the 1^st Cosmic Energy fuels our lust of all kinds. An expression of the masculine principle, it powers our sex drive in contrast to our ability to attract, which is controlled by the 2^nd Cosmic Energy, one of allure. When we are properly suffused with 1^st energy, we come to pursue love and sexual bonds, or defend ourselves against them, from a primal place. We embody our most basic animal urges and our noblest romantic intentions. That means we don’t put our loves on untouchable pedestals, satisfying our so-called needs with those whom we don’t offer respect. A more prevalent problem that many might think. But the 1^st Cosmic Energy cuts to the quick of divisive personal issues such as this. Just as it re-pairs all such dichotomies between what you truly want and what you have been led to believe you deserve. It also solves the morality problems associated with these dualities. That is to say many of us think that certain natural urges within us are disgusting, the proverbial devil’s work. And certainly not something to be expressed with, say, this perfect pristine mate that you have managed to land despite these natural proclivities. Well, there’s nothing like repression to make prurient mountains out of molehills. Meanwhile that perfect being sharing your life might like a little of that action you’re keeping under wraps. And so the story goes…

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As conduits of 1st Cosmic Energy, we personify enthusiasm and confidence because we become one with our wants. Your body, its health and fitness, are of optimum importance to properly manifesting this energy—it truly is a temple wherein you keep that divine spark lit. But it isn’t really about the degree of our physical fitness. Perception of our physical self is paramount. This is where the brawn of our brain comes in, something that the 1^st energy exercises are designed to build. Acquiring a favorable body image can be a challenge for most people, and in working with this 1^st energy, we become comfortable and powerful in our skin. Our body language morphs, increasingly comprised of magnificent movements. Channeling 1^st energy brings these changes about, physically. The mind recognizes these changes are occurring and thus allows the body to be further and further fueled by it. Working with this one energy, or any of them, is something of a circular process in itself. Here we are dealing with the actual anatomy of self-appreciation in raw, physical terms. And, as the original adage goes, one that has been ever so slightly recently reinterpreted by a certain prime-time television drag superstar: Until you learn to love yourself, you can’t love anybody else.

 The aim of the 1^st Cosmic Energy is multi-pronged but boils down to making you a healthy physical machine that is one and the same as his or her intentions. It aims to maintain the integrity between body and spirit, keeping them in perfect synch. When it comes to the 1^st energy, selfishness is a virtue. By embracing our individual initiatives and independence you realize that, if you had to go it alone in life, not only could you, but you might very well prefer to do so. It’s an empowering place to be. Yet it isn’t the easiest state of mind to purely achieve. There are many people out there who seem to embody this spirit, yet, on closer look, we realize that a good percentage of them do so for the purpose of showing off to others in their life. And thus impressing or otherwise affecting even one significant other, not the maintenance of their strictest independence, becomes the main occupation. Remember, the first astrological house, associated with Aries, rules the ages of birth through seven years. And it is the aim of the 1^st energy to help us retain or reclaim our primal childhood loner instincts, devoid of any notions of having to play nice with others. That comes later—both in childhood and in the zodiac’s sequencing of energy work.

            Possessing a me-first attitude is tantamount to being a doer —for yourself—a leader, a pioneer, and a most vigilant quester for so-called impossible dreams. Quixotic is a state of mind. After all, Cervantes’s Don Quixote, from whose name that term derives—an errant knight, one of innumerable literary manifestations of the warrior archetype of the 1^st energy, a twist on which Quixote may be—was definitely on to something. Doubts in his ability to manifest his dreams originate in the minds of others. There is magic, if not a method, to his madness: Full commitment to his own individual, indeed selfish cause. This is best described as doing good, as does any shining knight who undertakes a quest, being a champion of virtue, personally embodying it, and universally generating it, all in the same go. This holds true for Ironman as well. Just as it does for Xena or Buffy for that matter. Although, when it comes to the female archetypes of the 1^st Cosmic Energy, defending others in the process of championing one’s own autonomous needs tends to be part and parcel of it. Still, results shouldn’t be the focus when it comes to utilizing the 1^st Cosmic Energy, which is all about the pursuit of goals, not the receipt of outcomes.

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!
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