The Unity Problem and the HGA

While I was having my morning coffee at my favorite coffee house today, a man approached me.  He had a plan for the salvation of the world.   He was going to fix everything, and everybody.  He asked me if I was right with Jesus, but he didn’t actually listen to the answer.  He wanted me to know that he had a direct connection to God himself; he didn’t need Jesus because he had God’s phone number! 

I asked him what his plan was, and he asked me my profession. When I told him I was a teacher, he started telling me about his solution to the cocaine problem, how he was going to start up an education system and re-educate people about drugs, and fix the drug problem through education. And all this plan would require, of course, is that people give him all the money. Oh, and he was going to unite the churches.  And make one religion.  Oh, and he was going to unite all the charities.  And he was going to shrink the government so that it didn’t matter any more, and there was going to be one government for everywhere, and for all things.

And I told him I wasn’t interested any more. 

He asked if I was dismissing him. I said, “yes, I am.  I’m sure you’re a nice person and all, and you’ve got great ideas… but I’m not interested in there being only one of anything.”

So he started talking to my friends, and I shut my eyes while he continued to blab on about the unity of everything.  I couldn’t tune him out completely, but I did my best to make clear that I wasn’t interested.  And eventually his charioteer came by, and they went away together.

Sigh.

Everywhere I turn these days, I encounter the problem of unity: we need one solution for the schools. We need one solution for the political problems.  We need one church. We need one charity.  We need one tax plan.  We need unity, we need to be united.  It even comes at me in the form of street-side fanatics.

Respectfully, I disagree. 

If there’s one thing that working on the Kavad has taught me, it’s that we need diversity. I mean, think about it:  There is the First Father, the Author of All Being, the Grand Architect of the Universe, in Hermetic philosophy, and he’s in the kavad, as he should be.  But under him (in a very real sense) are seven governors — the seven traditional and visible planets.  Below them, there are four archangels, four princes of elements, and four princes of demons offensive in the elements.  There are thirty-six Decans of the Solar Zodiac, and twenty-eight Mansions of the Moon. There are seven Olympic Spirits. There is Mother Nature herself, and the Angel of the Fixed Stars, and two Angels of the Countenance.  That’s just shy of a hundred beings of grace and power in this solar system, and I haven’t even mentioned the Logos or the Demiurge yet.  Or the Guardian Angels of every single human being in the world.

And every one of those beings I’ve just mentioned is just the captain or president of their own nation of beings — spirits of animals, of fish and frogs; spirits of trees and stones and processes; egregores of organizations, lodges, churches and towns; ancestors and hungry ghosts of all shapes and sizes… the Hermetic universe is utterly and completely crowded with beings of grace and power and dignity.

And this guy — who appeared to be Sun-touched — thinks that the problem with all this diversity can be solved by making it all one.  I got news for him.  It is all one.  But when it was all smushed up together, it was boring.  So we agreed to spread it all out a little, and leave lots of empty space for lots of different things to happen, and we added a little chaos and a little carbon to the mix.  And now we have diversity — beautiful, elegant, complicated, difficult, amazing, wonder-full diversity — in the unity of everything in everything … just as my grandfather’s elemental table says we have.

I felt bad to be so dismissive of the guy, and so obviously dismissive of him.  He was mildly put out by my rejection.  But I think we need less unity, and I’m not ready to hear out the claims and petitions of yet another false prophet of the One.

Taiji Day 124: Gently and with Much Patience

This morning, I awoke in bed lying fully stretched up and on my back.  This was unusual.  I hardly ever wake up like this, first of all. I’m usually in a ball or curled up in some way.  Second, this is the way I’d gone to sleep: flat on my back and stretched out.  Which suggests that I didn’t do much tossing and turning when I went to sleep. This is good: I credit the daily taiji — five gold coins, eight pieces of silk, and the form this morning.

The third thing though was cause for alarm.  I was aware, lying in bed, that my hips were turned slightly. My right hip was riding higher, and under tension, than my left hip.  There was a twist in my body somewhere that prevented me from lying flat.  And I could feel the tension in my front right hip, and in my right gluteus muscle.  What caused that? I wondered, and immediately I got an answer… “that’s the spine-twist in your life caused by your wallet in your back right pocket.” Even now, with just pajamas on, I can feel that strain and pressure on my body, as if my wallet were there, when it’s not.  Time to start carrying my wallet elsewhere.

These are the kinds of changes that the body suggests to the mind in the course of a tai chi practice — they come slowly, and gently, and they arrive in response to small awarenesses rather than elaborate changes all at once.  There’s a nagging tension in my left calf that’s telling me, “me next, me next!” and maybe it will be next after the wallet-issue eases itself out.  But in the meantime, I’ll do what’s currently on the radar — stop carrying my wallet in the back-right pocket, and keep doing the work to ease out the tension that’s pulling my hips out of alignment.

Slowly, and with much patience, is the work accomplished.

Kavad 4.8 – rectifying a Decan

Kavad 4.8 – rectifying a Decan
Originally uploaded by anselm23

Well. This was interesting. First, I talked with a friend of mine who’s been through Chris Warnock’s astrology course, and my friend gave me some pointers on looking at the Decans. First, most ‘modern’ traditional astrologers (or is that most modern ‘traditional astrologers?’) don’t use the decans at all, or simply use them to determine certain ways of reading the data about the planets. Second, it’s important not to mix Sidereal and Tropical data — thus, limit the information borrowed from Hindu sources, unless you want to precess the data from Hindu stuff back 25 degrees (putting this beach scene in the first Face of Libra). And third, use the Chaldean order of the planets for determining ruling sign of each face, so that certain other rules continue to apply further down the road. Fourth, have fun with the images as best you can within the previous limitations.

So, I tried to do that. I don’t know that I succeeded. Given that this is an image of disappointments and plotting, it seemed appropriate to combine a lot of information here: hence, we have the Hindu snake, but also Picatrix’s man with a lance a a severed head. She’s not being struck, as Agrippa suggests, but she’s clearly being threatened, and the violent threat is clearly a real one. The woman isn’t eating, but she is on a beach and the sea is in the background — a lightning storm behind her and a sunset makes this a dark day for her.

All in all, it’s a striking visual image, even in rough sketch. It’s also clear that a student, or a storyteller, could work with this image quite well, and tell a rollicking good scene. Someone working with this image magically would want to go a step further, and meditate on the image or even ‘skry’ the image — imagine themselves stepping into the image, walking around the scene, and seeing what else there is to be seen from another point of view, and using that information to expand on the meaning of the image.

I’m going to have to go through this process for a lot of the Decans, I think, before I can know what comes next for the Kavad.