So here we are, March 22 nigh on 2° Aries and the Sabian Symbol for today is A Comedian Reveals Human Nature. I have to say I’m pretty darned happy to discover—and I do mean discover, because I am largely unfamiliar with the individual symbols in this system—that comedy has already reared its head in this process. For this Cosmic Blague is meant to entertain (the notion of humor); and it’s a wee synchronicity all its own that day two brings a little co(s)mic relief. Or is it something else? If yesterday’s first Sabian Symbol is about the emergence of new forms and potentiality and “the impulse to be”, then today’s symbol is hinged on our initial awareness of nature, the human kind specifically, which seems to be something of a joke that needs ‘splaining to us by some kind of funny man. One can’t help but think of the jester or the fool, one who, at court, can point to the ills of the realm, and even the shortcomings of the king, to be laughed off and away in self-reflection and self-realization. We have just emerged, full of new purpose, and yet we have to immediately check ourselves, first, by having a sense of humor about our intentions and our actions. We mustn’t take ourselves too seriously or be too rigid. The jester is a mercurial character in every sense; most significantly, he is versatile and adaptible. Perhaps what he reveals is that All is subject to change. We set out with goals in mind but if we aren’t willing to compromise, negotiate and navigate a variable nature—that of our environment, others’ and our own—we mightn’t succeed. We cannot control everything, nor should we want to. We should only meet our experience half way. Thus , we allow for serendipity and blessed synchronicity. To do this we might immediately have to let go of that which is unnecessary, as one discards in gin or poker, life likewise being a game of chance where retiscence or rigidity can be a recipe for failure. So, in some way, today might be about killing our darlings, already letting go of best laid plans and accepting the way life is unfolding, lotus-like. It begs the question: What do we gain when we lose, let loose or let go, whether it be by choice or design, and can we play it as it lays? I’m thinking about people born on this day in Aries and if they portray any such interpretation of this Sabian Symbol, just as I try to laugh at the cosmic blagues that have been played on me and what I’ve had to discard to get, what obstacles I’ve had to remove, or the sacrifices I’ve made, whether intentionally or not.

I’ve certainly experienced greater loss in my life than I have of late; and yet this past year I did see certain key relationships fall by the wayside. The cosmic joke about this experience was that it had the nature of a set up. That is to say that I had set my intention on having healthier relationships, less dysfunctional ones, overall. I was determined to represent myself more truthfully in certain bonds and to say no to invitations I might’ve accepted in the past for f.o.m.o. or fear of not doing enough to foster these so-called friendships. But the upshot was ostracization from such quarters for not being totally available, all the time, as I might have been, detrimentally to myself, in the past. Here I was trying to establish healthy boundaries and to rid said relationships of any codpendent residue; and that was perceived as a problem. I was accused of being parsimonious, unavailable, even erratic. To wit, I found my inventory being taken, dating back nearly a decade, by those who needed more ballast for their argument that I was ripe for the discard pile. In simple terms: Assuming I was dumping them, which I wasn’t, they had to beat me to the punch and ditch me but good so it could be their move. You know how that goes. It’s sad and it’s painful but there is naught to do; and I am not without ego, and am way too proud and principled to dignify such situations with an attempt to disentangle the labyrinthian disinformation that characterized them. I simply walked away. But, not made of stone, it bothered me for months on end; and I wrote endless emails I never sent getting it all off my chest, which worked quite effectively to a point. I do indeed believe that I posses the plots of several plays in draft form, and some pretty Albe-esque dialogue to boot, should I ever want to manifest these thoughts and feelings and literally see it played out before me, not to mention devise the endings of my choosing.

Then this winter I lost my wedding ring. I’d lost about thirty pounds since I bought it and it was my own damn fault for not having it resized. There were moments of foreshadowing when I’d wake up with it not on my finger only to find it had been flung across the room when I turned abruptly in my sleep. But on one of the blizzard days in Boston a month or so ago I returned home from a walk with it gone from finger. I couldn’t quite feel my fingers because it had been so cold—it may have come off with my glove, or just fallen from my super shrunken frozen digit. I was very upset. Very upset. Despite the fact it wasn’t one of the set of rings we actually exchanged at our wedding, it had more significance still. I mean, we were married in 1989 so our first rings were what you’d expect: wide silver Robert Lee Morris jobs; mine was so thick i couldn’t bend my finger for years. If I didn’t have an allergy to it, I had an energetic repulsion. It never felt good on me and I stopped wearing it not many years after marriage. For more than a decade we didn’t wear wedding rings until one day…yes it’s about to happen, folks!: a big synchronicity is making it’s way into my storytelling, albeit not unheavy-handedly:

When Stella and I graduated university we moved to Paris where we established a group of friends with whom we are still quite close. Jo was one of that number and just over a decade later she would begin publishing a slew of books under a penname. In 2005, she was already world famous of course and though we had been in touch with her, recently-ish, it had been a year or two; and so when we had a two-night trip planned to Edinburgh for the first time, from London where we were staying with our friends and godchildren, we weren’t about to let Jo know that we were coming, as it was going to be a quick thirty-six hours; and it would have taken some doing to reach her as her lifestyle had changed a bit to say the least. So we didn’t try. As it was, we had just one full day to explore the whole city and I was resolved that we shouldn’t even stop to eat—we should just keep moving and grab snacks and streetfood along the way. So, of course, being the Libra I am, by noon I was famished and wanted a sit-down lunch. We had stopped into Harvey Nichols—I think I needed to buy socks—and we thought, let’s go upstairs to the cafe. Well it was a crush. The place was jammed and the host pointed out that he only had one small table for two free, which was smack up against what looked like a univeristy student, scribbling away in her notebook, head down, and I asked: Is there not a more private table opening up? There wasn’t. So off we trundled, my left upper lip in a sneer, to sit down next to the scribbler twisting her hair. Stella didn’t sit but dropped her bag and beelined for the loo as I sat down, with my attitude, harumph. I noticed the scribbler was dressed all in shades of acquas and blues as I swivelled my eyes left and down. Nice boots for starters. And as I started to scan upwards, planning to sneak a peek, if I could, at the face, she was doing likewise, and our eyes met in a dead on stare. We both gasped or at least we thought we did. In fact we screamed, and Stella came running back thinking I’d had some sort of seizure or attack. Then we all three screamed more, quite audibly, which drew over the host and waiters who thought perhaps that the two Americans newly seated were accosting this lady customer whose identity was not unknown to them. While, in truth, the Universe had simply arranged a surprise lunch for Jo, Stella and me in so wonderfully easy a manner that we could never have planned for ourselves. We slammed our tables together and sat and ate and chatted for hours. Jo asked why it was we didn’t wear our wedding rings. We told her. And she said we had to go directly to her jeweler on George Street, Hamilton & Inches—she had just come from there as she was having a real golden snitch made for a charity event—and we were to tell the head clerk that “the golden snitch lady sent” us, and that we did, to which he, replied, “yes well, let me sharpen my pencil,” meaning let’s see what kind of discount I can offer on the two rings we’d picked out. I loved my ring. It looked like the ring. As in The Lord of the…but I lost it this winter after nearly exactly a decade.

But here’s the weird thing. First, since I lost my ring, it made the loss of those aformentioned people pale in comparison and it completely cured me of any pangs or angst on that subject. The second thing that happened was that I kept getting the phrase in my mind: The ring is a Horcrux. Now I’d like to say I know so much about the Harry Potter world that I could immediately rattle off to you what a Horcrux is, but I couldn’t, and I didn’t bother to even look it up until this morning, despite the fact this phrase has been being repeated in my brain since my ring’s loss. What I did have the greatest sense of, though, without knowing what a Horcrux really was…was..that somehow the ring being flung out there into the snowy world amplified a certain spiritual power and connectedness. I can’t quite put it into words but I’ll try: It has something to do with my mother who passed around the time I purchased the ring. Okay, however strange this sounds, my sense was that the ring, flung out there somewhere, instead of being on my finger, was taking on the form of a remote receiver, like a power station, and that it is actually functioning as a transmittor between not only me and my mother, but me and whatever powers from which I draw my own brand of psychic ability. And that the loss cum sacrifice of this ring, which I came to possess in the first place by way of a very lovely and entertaining cosmic joke, not only provided healing and closure on some pretty serious emotional pain, but it has become far more a source of strength and power than it ever could have been in my sweaty-palmed possession.

So, as I said, I looked up the term Horcrux this morning and it does serve a similar function to what I sensed my ring was providing, in that it is an object of power in which is hidden a fragment of the soul of the person who created it. The Horcrux anchors one’s soul to the earth if the body is destroyed and the more one makes the closer one gets to immortality. The upshot is they’re evil and only created by a Dark witches or wizards. Any opinions on my person from certain quarters not withstanding, I am a very white warlock and so I believe my ring to be the Light version of a Horcrux, designed not for some future immortality but for a very present sense of divinity. Interestingly, the Greek root hor- has two meanings: the first being boundary, as in the word horizon, which seems to define J.K. Rowling’s Horcrux, being that it is bound to its creator, and it binds him or her to the earth; the second meaning of hor-, however is hour, as in the word horoscope, something not unfamiliar to me. I cast my horoscopes as I cast my ring.