Gemini 4° (May 25)

 

While S. was at her class today I took a little drive. Was beautiful weather and got to sit outside and do some writing by hand. I didn’t buy tickets in time to see show at Provincetown theater which is just as well. I need to reach out to Lea Delaria and see if we can maybe stage our festival at her establishment next season. I had a nice exchange with JVB about gigging and travel and the like; and I’m just happy we are in touch. Otherwise it was pretty damned uneventful. I had a long nap. Then made what was meant to be a chicken dinner which turned into a salmon dinner, switching out the main, but keeping the vegetables for which I was responsible. Zucchini sliced thin in the oven just with thyme, s., p., and greenbeans in the pan with oregano, s., p.. Anyway I won’t bore you with my food intake, although it occurs to me that maybe I should make that more a part of this daily Blague since cooking is up there in my top five joys of living. Anyway on to writing some new thoughts on the Sagittarius experience:

Dionysus represents nature asmale, he is god of ritual madness and religious ecstacy, a liberator and rule breaker and the only Olympian god to have a mortal parent. He isn’t pre-civilization wild, but rather embodies liberation from the restraints of existing society, the returnto a natural state. Thus his rites entailed the drinking of his wine and frenzied dancing, opening up the consciousness to altered, arguably higher states of mind while recapturing the wild animal level of being, all in all, a return to primordial nature. Though it mightn’t have appeased Hera, Dionysian cults and rites were mainly associated with, and driven by women, along with slaves, outlaws, foreigners and the otherwise marginalized. The rites included dancing to rhythmic beats, flinging ones head back, so to break on through to the other side. Sagittarius is the energy of lightning flashess of genius, where it borders on madness, blowing ones own noggin. We still see this same triggering of ecstaticism in evangelical churches, in voodoo practice, and in native american rituals. Sagittarius is the sign of the jazz, rock ‘n roll and the Beats (itself a combined duality of being beaten down and also beatific, raised high, all at the same time).

Dionysus carries a fennel staff topped with a pinecone, called the thyrsus, which, (somehow the ancients knew?), realtes to the pineal gland, where the two halves of the brain meet, the proverbial third eye. Like the opposite sign of Gemini, the Twins being one mortal one divine, pointing to that duality, Sagittarius, here, sees the half-mortal-half-divine Dionysus nonetheless coming together to enter the kingdom of heaven and take a coveted throne. Like the namesake Mercury, which rules Gemini, that messenger god is the psychopomp who can travel from the underworld of Hades to Olympus; and the late arriving Dionysus is likewise the communicant between the living and the dead; and like the androgynous adolsescent Mercury, Dionysus is described as man-womanish, bridging another duality. Juno is famed for blinding wise Tieresias (Dionysus’ high priest) who lived for times as both man and woman, for siding with Zeus as to which gender has more pleasure in sex (ironically, Zeus said women do). Tieresias was given second-sight in recompense—how Sagittarian. In our book Sextrology, the Sagittarius male and female chapters are titled The Maverick and The Maven, respectively, pointing to the wild, outside-the-box element as well as that of the doyenne enthusiast. In the Dionysian rites, the mainly women celebrants (maenads) tore apart live animals and ate raw flesh, reinacting Dionysus’ bloody beginnings of would-be death and rebirth. The word enthusiasm, literally meaning: letting the god enter (oneself), derives from this practice, in keeping with the exuberant energy of Sagittarius. The connection, marriage, of one’s mortal self with the divine is seen too in the notion of genius and lower-case juno, words that originally expressed the notion of an indwellling personal god. The concept of the male genie (god within the male) still exists in our collective imagination while its counterpart juno (the indwelling goddess in women) has been all been eradicated. The Sagittarian mottos I see and I understand both point to a certain divine gift of said genius which happens in lightning flashes. The arrow glyph of the sign suggests an ability to reach further than our human vision can take us—all fire signs are associated with weaponry: Aries (the warrior spear) and Leo (the sword as determines rightful kingship) and the expansive bow and arrow, here, which requires a certain leap of faith in hitting a desired mark. You might say this is one aspect of the Sagittarius superpower, the shadow side of which would be, among other things, blind risk-taking.

In the bliblical line, following wise Proverbs, associated with Scorpio, we come to the most ecstatic book of them all Ecclesiates, which matches the Sagittarian estate. It is the most life-affirming and yet fatalistic of books where we find the phrase “eat, drink and be merry,” so akin to Auntie Mame exclaiming that “life is a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death. Taking huge bites out of life is what Sagittarius is all about. The age group associated with the sign is 56-62, when one is at the height of their worldly power (the realm of goddess Juno), the pinnacle of their professional career, at their most expert with fullest knowledge, preparing as big a golden parachute as they can. The eleventh house is that of omniscience as it relates to learning, travel, experience and all forms of expansion that may nurture one’s most compassionate and visionary nature.

 

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Cosmic Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree pointof the Sabian Symbol will be one degree higher than the one listed for today. 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 or 6 days per year—so they near 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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