Astrologers
are nothing more than poets of real time.
They take organic time and space and turn it into story and verse that
make these alien phenomena which we understand less since the invention of
clocks, even though we continue to be created and shaped by these limits as in
the days when we studied the changing heaven to see how our lives evolved under
the lights in the darkness turning around and around us; they make these intimate
realities, so strangely alien and frightening to us, a delight at least as
often as a horror to ponder. They talk
about the comings and goings of heavenly bodies as though we really are all
one. They elevate us to the whirling
variations, syncopations, reversed ambulations, little dropping or hopping
perturbations, among and over all the determined directional constants. Plato called them the circle of the same and
the other. He talked about how they
cross each other and make an X which they referred to in his time and place as
Chi. Kai?
He talked a
lot about psyche. No kidding. I was surprised to see someone so associated
with early scientific thinking so thoroughly expostulate on psyche like it
was some kind of cradling breath of the universe or something; psyche is actually one of the main concepts
discussed from many perspectives in Timeaus.
I’ve always wondered what exactly that word means. I was in psychotherapy for a couple of years
all together with two very cool, professional therapists. I learned more about love from them than
anywhere else except among loving friends and family. I learned a lot in church. But there were a lot of things that baffled
me, and it was these two very sober minded therapists with a glimmer in their eyes, who
helped me learn to reconcile the welter of thoughts swirling around in my
restless mind. Since they were called
psychotherapists and what we were doing when we got together every two weeks
was called psychotherapy, I had some idea that psyche had something to do with
the mind.
Then there
is the word psychic used nowadays I guess to refer to someone who tells you
what is in your mind. Plato refers to
something along that line when he discusses the oracular priests at
Delphi. He explains that someone else is
trained to interpret what the oracles say.
The interpreters sound a bit like government trained psychoanalysts. Reading someone else’s mind or predicting
which ship will sink sounds like aggressive advertising. Most actual stories that I’ve read from those
times make it sound like the Delphic pronouncements appeared unrelated to the upcoming
events that seekers were anxious about. It was only after the events unfolded that a
definite meaningful connection was made between the words of the oracle and the
outcome of events. This sounds like
hindsight being more accurate than foresight.
Geez, now I
am thinking about the difference between Aquarius and Scorpio. Aquarius is far seeing into the eastern
heaven, with little view of the western heaven, while Scorpio is the
opposite. In Scorpio the future’s field
of view is short compared to the view of what’s disappearing under the horizon.
The Aquarian
scientist and the Scorpio sleuth of the past, especially a past that is sinking
lower and lower under the horizon.
I know I
will be horrified if I live to see my dream come true, still I wake every morning
thinking of how to make this language as thrilling to people as learning to do
a set of sun salutations from a yoga manual.
I don’t know how I will be horrified but a few Edgar Allen Poe stories
flit regularly through my mind. I know
the whole experience will be far more complicated than anything I can imagine,
that there will be at least as many parameters that I did not consider in my
hopes and fears as the ones whose direction and speed I tried to control. I know the ones I failed to think of will
surprise me and make me rethink my best laid plans. This is learning to live as a limited
individual with a certain amount of time to experience existence in a certain
way, under the unique perspective of a certain set of chronic limitations,
different in some ways, in others similar, to those of my peers. Others like me, but not exactly like me.
That’s my
meditation today for Mercury entering Libra.