Capricorn 1° (December 22)

OK so that was a funny night and yesterday was fantastic because and I can’t believe I didn’t write about this yesterday but our we sat and did a tiny little meditation ritual for the conjunction and yeah following up on what I said yesterday started a really kind of a good energy in a sense which is ironic because I actually didn’t wake well I fell asleep early ish watching that Keith haring American Masters and then I woke up at 1:00 o’clock in the morning and not only did I know I couldn’t get back to sleep but I kind of didn’t wanna go back to sleep and so I watch the Pamela adlon show which was really great but the point is I never went back to sleep so I watched the Pamela adlon show I watched the whole first season and then 45 episodes of the second season so yeah that happened and then I was like Oh well you know kind of figure out my day and then stello it’s like remember we do have a client and did forget actually um parked whenever we have client day they always have to make the client activity the most important thing so here I was thinking I was going to like you know figure out a way to sleep in the day and do some writing that was already going to be challenging enough but with food preparation and all the things that we have to do now that we’re in our little individual spaceships floating around but now I did I watched the entire program and then I just made my peace with the fact that like I’m gonna give over to the client and I did kind of mini hour 40 minute meditation on my own to sort of like balance out my energies and that was really pretty godamn great 

Is an Aries whose motto is I am the most challenged at simply being they do need a lot of attention delete do need an audience but it’s different from tourist horses cultivating an audience Ares is coming at you tourist is taking you along with or even going with you strange enough 

I feel like what we don’t talk enough about is this whole onslaught weather by laptop or phone booth which are probably not even probably most definitely listening to you because like suddenly you’re like you know Reuben sandwich and then it’s like we have the best Russian dressing and sauerkraut and Rye bread for you but also just these horrible like China 19 count on messages Chinese people or the ones that are like you better your Social Security card is you have to contact us immediately take Oh my God like Pelican I got one of those like in a video game or something like constantly these obstacles like or I’m like having to constantly not respond act you’ve ever accidentally opened something just because like you know your hand is just like this past and yeah but I like the ones where they send you your own email address like you’re getting email from yourself like why would you click on email from yourself first of all but like are they trying to like trigger like a narcissistic impulse like hoe that’s me did I ever contact me well that’s certainly enough too.

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1326-1330. I am reading through all of my Blagues, five per day, and posting some samples here. Now, in my sixth year of writing this Blague, by the time I get to my seventh, I will have journeyed through all the daily Blagues of my first five years. If that’s confusing I apologize. Year seven, I’ll only have to read through year six, once a day.

Open Sleigh is the name of the show we are performing tonight at Joe’s Pub. We aren’t really rehearsing this morning because last night got a bit messy. Exhausted, I fell asleep at like 7 or something and did miraculously wake up feeling rather rested. The vibe, though, wasn’t conducive to plowing into one last rehearsal; rather it was all about backing off and, in our separate corners, coaching ourselves to bring the best work we can to the stage individually. Unlike when you do solo work, you have a responsibility to a partner on stage; and when a piece is largely improvisational (just following certain guidelines in your separate mind) one only hopes that the direction the discourse will carry you will be flowy and/or jazzy or both, at turns. Anyway…we shall see what we shall see. Meanwhile the Blague reruns continue…

Okay, so, the Sabian Symbols. I can’t say they were invented, but rather perceived by a Libran astrologist by the name of Marc Edmund Jones (1888-1980) with the help of a clairvoyant called Elsie Wheeler. Stella and I first came across Jones in our formal astrological study through the London Faculty, but he’s an American, from St. Louis. To paraphrase that substitute for our own brain we call Wikipedia: Jones was interested in formulations he observed in nature and in the environment—as a fellow pattern queen, I totally relate—and he developed his own systems of thought. He was influenced by Christian Science and Theosophy (me too—the latter not the former) and set out to reformulate astrology. He devised the seven (Libra number) patterns in astrological chart interpretation we use everyday—and he published The Sabian Symbols in Astrology, “a book that renders a specific symbol and interpretive character for each of the 360° of the zodiac” and then, of course, he’s a Libra renaissance man, he wrote screenplays for early movies, became a Presbyterian minister and got his PhD from Columbia. You know, as you do.

So the Sabian Symbols: It’s fairly esoteric stuff. But here it is in a nutshell. There already existed a symbol system, associated with astrologer Alan Leo, that derived from occult divination, via meditation, and “intermediaries” (ooh, scary) working with an early Egyptian schema, from which the zodiac is originally based. If you didn’t follow that it doesn’t matter. Jones wasn’t into that existing system. So he and Elsie Wheeler, who had become his student and turned out to be pretty wildly mediumistic, headed to San Diego for energetic reasons—okay‑and he basically numbered 360 index cards, one for each degree of the zodiac, from Aries 1° through Pisces 30°, and kept shuffling them so neither he nor Elsie actually knew which was which when they were set before them; and she got pictoral interpretations via her spidey sense and they wrote them on the card. I think it all happened in a day. I hope you’re getting this…

Each degree on the astrological wheel was thus assigned an interpretation. For instance, the interpretation for today, 0-1 degree Aries is: “A Woman Just Risen from The Sea; A Seal is Embracing Her”. Seriously, that’s it. And, actually, this one I get (and to think Elsie didn’t know that this was 0-1° Aries is totes cool; because we have just left the mega watery womb of the sign of Pisces, ruled by Neptune, whose trident is that of the Great Triple Goddess of the Sea, and “emerged” into the sign of Aries, associated with birth and life, a pretty bloody affair—Aries rules the blood, governed by Mars, the war god, life being the ultimate fight. And, so, okay, this Sabian Symbol suggests that the energy of this day is about the birth of the new—something real, tangible, perhaps even if just a thought or emotion. And there’s that seal. I immediately hear Donovan’s “Celia of the Seals”. From what I know, seals are symbolic of inner guidance, privacy, insulation and protection—they are slippery and don’t like to be pinned down— while they are also emblematic of an amorous nature, as this animal is fervently driven on that score. This makes sense too: The sign of Aries is about individuality and being true, if not just plain old keeping, to oneself; and of course, Mars ruled Aries is about lust and libido, as well. I read somewhere that the seal was also approval. But I find that just too punny for words.

If I were to embrace the noble lie that the Sabian Symbols are “true”, which I’m going to do, for the most part, for the purposes of this year-long exercise, to see what doors of perception doing so might open, then my own Libran psychic take on this image would be thus: Today is a day of emergency. We are stepping into a new life, dripping from our past experience, perhaps, even refreshed by it. So much so that we needn’t go back. We must seek to stand on solid ground today; we must be delivered from the murkiness of our past experience, having let any primordial soupiness formed a new directive. On this day, we are one with a new mission—tell me about it—and we are reminded by the seal, who does indeed inhabit both the inner (water) and outer (land) worlds, that we can go forth “trailing clouds of glory”; for, yes, the water can also symbolize our original state of divine being which we mustn’t lose in our earthly pursuits. I find it wonderfully paradoxical, too, that the first moment of Aries, the premier masculine sign, is mainly characterized by the female experience. But that has some pretty primal significance too, as all life begins as female, doesn’t it? And we all come from the mother. Perhaps, we are more that seal, slippery and heavy lidded, fresh from the womb. Perhaps we are clumsier on land than we are in the sea. That is to say, we are bound to stumble and make mistakes in our terrestrial endeavors, a bit out of water—we aren’t from here per se, and we inhabit this planet but for awhile, bound to return to the sea of vast divinity. And hopefully we can avoid being clobbered and skinned alive by stupid, venal, brutish people driven by profit and greed. So maybe today we are meant to reflect upon and embody these thoughts. Just as we enjoy a more banal understanding that we have just emerged from winter and we can let ourselves be, like the season, fresh and new, full of promise and burgeoning growth. Are the notions of emerging from some divine womb or our winter cache really so dissimilar. Is winter not better viewed as a time that incubated us anew, rather than something we were dragged through. What was bred in us this winter that we can now activiate, what purpose can we now personify? Is getting where we want to go not generated from a deeper sense of coming from somewhere utterly divine. If we can embrace our own divinity, would that help us seal the deal of fulfilling our worldly destiny. Are we not the intersection of the inner and outer world made manifest—are we perhaps the seal that can open between the two.

I can do this all day. And in fact I have, off and on. I’m wont to explore how people born on this day might personify this particular Sabian Symbol. But Facebook tells me I don’t know many people born on this day. In any case that provides me an excuse not to compare and contrast the humans in my life with my own interpretation of this symbol. I certainly don’t have an extra Birthday Book hanging about, so I will have to let this one-sided dualogue of a conversation dangle. Maybe you have people close to you born on this day and you can draw comparisons between them and “A Woman Just Risen from The Sea; A Seal is Embracing Her”. I have to go rethink my own purpose I’ve emerged with on this first full day of Spring. I suspect it might entail saying a lot less per day about Sabian Symbols in these posts and to make sure I get to some storytelling on the vast subject of what I find to be weirdly synchronic and cosmically jokey about this life.

So last night went really well. We had a decent (not huge but…) audience of over seventy folks. And the show went around ninety minutes so people got a nice big chunk of us. And then we met those who were to be met, upstairs, at the Library, which was super fun. Lots of good Aquarian energy in the room I must say. I was absolutely floored by some of the folks—Robby L. and Frankie F among them; Frankie really dug in with us for the remainder of the evening and she was so super funny; so much so that it lent to a comedic retelling later. Anyway I continue my remembrances:

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 bunch 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 the name J.K. Rowling. 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.

Yesterday, S had to go to Frankie’s. And I had the day to really space out and make up for lost time. Met for lunch at Quotidien then had a little lie down before our appointment with an old client we hadn’t seen in many years. Like all our clients, this one leads an extraordinary life but perhaps a bit extra so than most. I don’t know. We had dinner at East Pole which was meh. Anyway continuing from yesterday’s rememberances:

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.

We had the worst weather for driving yesterday. It was so stressful. There was no visibility. And I was a bit nervy from all these nights out in a row. So we decided to stop some place on the water in Connecticut. It was horrible. First they put us on the same floor, in the same block of rooms, with a family reunion with a surplus of badly behaved, loud children who made the hallway their personal playground. No. So we moved to two more rooms until it was palatable. We ate in the “lounge” for lunch which was not good. They also had a “tony” Italian restaurant where we had dinner at it was almost worse. Couldn’t not wait to get back on the road. And now we return to more remembrances and inferences on the Sabian Symbols from Blagues past in honor of the fact that if I have to write another word I’m going to have a nervous breakdown.

Excuse me, waiter? There’s a Macrocosm in my Microcosm.I’m already sensing a pattern within a pattern. That is to say that I think the twelve signs of the zodiac might very well impact these 360 degress of Sabian Symbols in turn. I just read brief synopsis of the first twelve, and I can easily see how each of the zodiac signs, Aries through Pisces, influence the first twelve interpretations, in sequence. So, without jumping too far ahead, I’m going to be looking for that pattern to repeat. If this turns out to be the case, or just the signature basis of my interpretation, well, I’d be happy either way. I’d like to feel, of course, that I’m not just doing a Julie & Julia, serving up recipes of interpretation by rote, but rather just taking the title of the recipe and freestyling. But yes: 1° Aries was all about birth and emergence and objectivity (all very Aries stuff) while 2° Aries was about self-reflection and our nature and subjectivity (so Taurus) and today, moving into 3° Aries, the Sabian Symbol for which is The Cameo Profile of a Man Suggesting The Shape of his Country, the theme of which is intersection, identifying with community, sussing up immediate surroundings an understanding the playing field (very Gemini indeed).

As I communicate this theory I realize how laborious it would be to do this every day in my interpretations, so I will leave off it moving forward, keeping the nothin in the back of my mind. A cameo is a quick rendering, an outline, an immediate encapsulation and likeness. It speaks to our ability to know where we are and to what we belong. It is associated with the Logos, our ability to name and identify and give life to our identity within a context. Here, today, we identify with some whole and the larger life it expresses. Spiritually speaking it is the connection of our Atman with Brahman—also very Geminian considering that sign’s duality on the theme of divinity. Stop I said. Here we identify so much with a group or even a notion that we become it’s life. When we are representing some whole, acting as it’s agent, and I am borrowing, now very heavily, here, from my hero (and my Julia Child, if I were to have one), the great humanist astrologer Dane Rudhyar, whose birthday it is today (I just realized!), in saying that this Sabian Symbol touches upon leading a transpersonal life. That is to say that we are not mere spokespersons for our surrounding but the conduit through which the whole expresses itself. When we give ourself over to cause or country we do take on a Christ-like nature. We are the face, the “cameo”, of the larger portrait, the collective “country” or environment.

I’m kind of freaking out because, in my calendar, I had set aside this past weekend to work on the cause which I profile: The Afterglow Festival and The Glow Theatre that I founded in Provincetown, Massachusetts. It’s a non-profit arts organization and yet it’s so much more than that; and my assignment this weekend was to communicate, in written form, how much more it actually is so that I might inspire increased support and fundraising in an environment of increasing greed and obstacles. I know my boss (me I thought) is going to have me work nights this week accomplishing this task. But this Sabian Symbol meditation has inspired me and, as I say, it sort of freaks me out. As if the cause of what I’m doing is the real boss. That somehow it found me and made me it’s agent and I’m the conduit it through which it is finding expression and life. Because, really, it is so much bigger than just a weeklong festival in Provincetown or the starting of a sustainable new theatre company, it’s the spirit of the place that is seeking salvation: Provincetown is the birthplace of the modern American stage; this is a fact. And though it’s also noteworthy fine-arts heritage has remained intact for over a century, it’s theatrical heritage hasn’t been so fortunate. People buy fine art because they can own it and it lasts. When it comes to the seeming ephemeral nature of a theatrical experience, people can be short-sighted perhaps. In any case, in what was once a haven for artists living among the local mainly fisherman community has become an enclave of realtors selling second homes to people who barely inhabit them or who bought them for the sole purpose of renting them out to tourists to whom nearly the entire town and its businesses cater. Some establishments cut and run, making bank enough in the summer months to justify their existence; others complain that there isn’t enough year round business and they want more, more, more.

The glare of the on-season is rife with gimmicks and themes to attract collectives of tourists under the guise of diversity whilst really its just serial homogeny that’s being served up. Provincetown is like a great aged actress turned out to turn tricks. It’s artistic theatrical soul is in danger and in need of saving. And, for whatever reason, I’ve become a cameo for this country. Dane Rudhyar says this symbol characterizes Participation in a Greater Life. I’ll buy that. I feel as if my campaign for Provincetown’s theatrical heritage is akin to that of Save Venice. But instead of saving the town from literal rising waters—although something tells me those are coming too—I seek to rescue it from its baser nature and the voracious sea of mediocrity, mendacity and greed. I see a Provincetown, with all its lamplights glowing, all the year round, hotels and inns filled with theatergoers gathered together to experience the creation of theater. And I see theater as the single most profitable and sustainable industry that Provincetown can foster. The Afterglow Festival and The Glow Theatre themselves are just avatars championing what can be this whole industry. Sundance migh have started as a film festival, but it has defined an entire city and revitalized both it and our independent movie industry. I know Afterglow can do that for Provincetown and for the American theatre.

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. Get your HAUTE ASTROLOGY 2020 Weekly Horoscope ebooks by Starsky + Cox.