Wow that went fast. At 30° Aries, I am one-twelfth the way through this first year’s Cosmic Blague. I am using the Sabian Symbols which express the energy of each degree of the zodiac slash day of the year, give or take five days, as a sort of guide, because I do believe that archetypal energy can get very specific, not just sign by sign, month by month, but day by day and probably, ultimately moment to moment. But I can explore that next year. These Sabian Symbols are also kindling for me, letting the thoughts and feelings they inspire trigger some metaphysical insights all my own and even some storytelling from the annals of my advancing years. As an aside: despite being layed out by a severe injury by way of t0 much type-A personality yoga, I have never felt more vital or younger; I know people say that but, honestly, I feel more spry and youthful now than I did at nineteen. For real, as the kids say. Still, I woke up at 3am because sleeping isn’t my strongsuit and after tossing and turning I figured I should just get to writing in the palace at 4am.

After yesterday’s oracle of The Music of the Spheres, today’s symbol at 30° Aries is A Duck Pond And Its Brood. Cute. The first thing that comes to mind is that yesterday was As Above while today is So Below. That is to say that we went ultra celestial and rolled around the concept of Cosmic Order on a grand scale and now we have the opposite experience of a small pond emitting quaint quacks. And though the contrast is extreme, from the sound of an infinite universe to that of some daffy ducks, I believe we are meant to see the connection between the two. Also, yesterday we were asked to listen to that celestial music as being expressed by our inner voice—so the notion of inner space and outer space were paradoxically merged—while today we want to be aware of the here and now and the simple habitat of the natural world. It’s as if the quacking ducks have snapped us out of our meditation, our mystic crystal revelation, and we are made to witness how that cosmic order we’ve gleaned is naturally expressed in our organic experience.

You know it’s very easy to be a transcendent spiritual person living, say, cloistered in a monastery with no outside-world distractions, spending your days in silence, harkening to that celestial music, offering up prayers, performing simple tasks, living in a community that will provide you sustenance. But in society, as in the natural world, we don’t have that ironic luxury; we are focused on the rituals of survival and making a living, of building our own lives and relationships and making our way in the world, without any semblance of retreat, and so keeping an ear to the celestial music sung by our inner voice is actually more challenging. We have to hear it in the cacophonous quacking of the other characters living in our pond, big or small; in the uptalking clone with the Goyard tote bag; in the wheeling-dealing junior partner in driving mocassins bellowing into his bluetooth, in the jackhammers and catcallers, in the sirens and sycophants and solicitors. Challenging; but doable. Indeed, what it takes for us to find the still small voice inside us, remaining unruffled, amid the business of our real and metaphoric brood, is an inner peace so profound that the seminarian priest might never achieve. It’s like the difference between Theravada Buddhism and Mahayana Buddhism, the former being reserved for sequestered nuns and monks who seek to become arhats, perfect saints (laypeople can only hope to be reincarnated as monks or nuns) while the latter form is available to everyone, living their lives in the socialized world, and their goal is not to become arhats but bodhisattvas, saints who have also become enlightened but delay nirvana to help others achieve enlightenment.

And so we get a sense of what this oracle might mean by Brood; that is to say the entire family of man. In our transcendent even glimpsing of enlightenment, Music of the Spheres in Sensaround, we then return to whatever our pond might be to inpsire others to experience it as well. Not to sound grand delusional but, in our own way I believe Stella and Itry to do this—I say try because it is all we can ever do. Yoda was wrong. We even have a tongue-in-cheek catchphrase for this: Starsky + Cox, Changing The World, One Creep at a Time. We do like a little levity in our levitation toward Nirvana, after all. And as yuk-yuk as it might sound, the humor belies a serious mission on our part. You’ve heard me say, we are devoted to uplifting spirits. Entertaining Enlightenment™ et al. And we do employ humor as our spoonful of sugar to make the metaphysical medicine go down. And, being radically imperfect (speaking for myself), I am forever being administered medicine by others, mentors, as we all play the role of teacher and student, both simultaneously, to each and every other quack on the pond, which is also a metaphor, I believe, for our contained, I won’t say limited, consciousness.

Dane Rudhyar speaks on this oracle in terms of limits and natural boundaries. He feels this symbol portrays how our glimpse of yesterday’s Cosmic Order and its message of harmony must be brought down to our own “karmic” field of operation. He says, “Peace and inner contentment with one’s essential destiny (dharma) is required to meet the everyday world. The mystic may experience flights of imagination and transcendent vision, but he must return to the concrete earth and to his task in his social environment.” I’m down with that. Expecially if my task in the social environment just happens to be sharing my flights of imagination and transcendent vision—then I’m totally down! But yes, the pond of everyday life is where we make it all happen and we must accept that reality and, as would-be bodhisattvas, take others by the hand, as they take us, and try to take solid action that outwardly reflects, as would a pond, the larger harmonious state of cosmic being that we divine. We have to find our right environment and tribe and, no matter our occupation, perform our tasks with a modus operandi that contributes to creating that much more heaven here on earth. We have to have a focus, let alone a purpose. We have to live in the world and be a catalytic agent for harmony and peace. Even though we may want to kick those sycophants down a flight of stairs, rip the blueteeth from bombastic ears, muzzle the uptalkers, knee the catcallers in the nuts, scrap the Kardashians for parts, lynch the 1%, what have you, we cannot.

Acceptance is the other major message of this oracle. We cannot resist the way things are. Actually to change, to redirect things in the right direction we must first fully accept. I think of certain martial arts. When an attacker strikes, we accept the attack and the assailant’s momentum first and then redirect that force into our own action. It’s like saying “Yes, and..” in comedy improv. I have found this dynamic works in the smallest ways in combatting annoyances. For instance, if I’m riding the subway and some d-bag, within whom I see divinity, sits next to me with his legs splayed out, touching mine, I don’t recoil. Instead, I send an internal, mental message to the point of contact for increased contact, accepting it, welcoming it, and every time, the divine d-bag recoils. Or, say one of those telemarketing solicitors chooses the dinner hour to call, I don’t just let the phone ring or pick up, complain, and hang up on them. Instead, I take it as an opportunity to launch into some soft-core phone sex. What are you wearing right now? Nothing gets you off a call list faster. In fact, it’s been awhile since I’ve had a telemarketing call. One creep at a time, one creep at a time.

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