Harry Potter and the Joyful Child, Part 3: A midlife paradox
December 6, 2010
The Sun, the Saturn Cycle, Harry Potter – and the Joyful Child
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Part Three
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The Sun God - spark of immortality
http://www.maverickscience.com/saturn.htm
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Point of entry
From the Saturn return at 29-30 onwards, the major underlying task changes: from discovering the overall shape of who you are in relation to your own life, to beginning to use the platform you have built as support in offering your unique contribution to the wider world.
By this stage, the balance achieved between necessary realism and the joyous, inspirational, creative aspects of life is crucial to how the next 15 years unfold. The poet Dylan Thomas senses and honours the presence of the child he was, in his marvellous
“Poem in October”, written on his thirtieth birthday:
“ And I saw in the turning so clearly a child’s forgotten mornings……where a boy…..whispered the truth of his joy
To the trees and the stones and the fish in the tide.”
In the poem’s last verse, he writes
“And the true
Joy of the long dead child sang burning
In the sun.” (iv)
For Dylan Thomas, as for many poets and even more of us ordinary citizens, being in nature can powerfully evoke that within us which never ages, which rejoices in being alive, and is powerfully connected to the endless cycle of birth, maturation, decline, death and return.
The thirties and forties are decades where a major challenge lies in the grinding process of reality testing our hopes, wishes, dreams and ambitions against the world as it is. Most of us eventually get to the Saturn opposition of the mid-forties: we are still here, we may still be functioning tolerably well, but we’re not young any more.
Midlife
From the mid-forties on, we only have to look in the mirror, or realise that our idea of a good Friday night is increasingly of going to bed early, not with a hot lover, but with a good book, to be aware of the relentless advance of mortality
It becomes harder at this stage for most people to keep in touch with the Joyful Child, keep its energies flowing. For many people, brutalities of an environmental, political, social or personal nature have borne down so hard that the vital spark of life borne by the Joyful Child can now fuel only the dogged survival instinct.
I have found that one of the compensations of middle age is deeply paradoxical, and was first alerted to it a few years ago by a comment made by my late mother-in-law, then approaching eighty. The way she dealt with an old age full of physical infirmity was inspiring. She had a lively sense of fun and humour, maintained great interest in the wider world as well as that of her own family and friends, and kept up a prodigious correspondence right up to the end of her life.
The Joyful Child in her was alive right to the end, sustained in her case by a strong, ecumenical religious faith. “You know”, she said,“occasionally when I’m not thinking about anything in particular, I catch sight of my face in the mirror and get an awful shock. I see an old woman’s face looking out at me – but inside I don’t feel old at all – I feel just the same as I did when I was young.”
The paradox is this. The body ages to the point where you are faced with increasing physical evidence of the passage of time; but an opportunity can also slowly arise to perceive, with a clarity not possible in youth, that this aging body has been carrying something else through life which is different, ageless, separate from the physical – that spark of immortality which comes in sometime before birth, flying free at physical death.
Thus, as mortality’s approach becomes more and more difficult to ignore, a major compensation can be offered by that which is clearly immortal becoming more and more evident by contrast.
Midlife can be a depressing time. Vitality declines, children have either flown the nest and you miss them, or have their own problems which can bring yet more responsibility to you at a stage in life where you are tired of being responsible. Careers can pall. Dear friends die. You realise how fleeting life is, and how little of it you have left. But as always, there are choices. The paradox noted above brings a great opportunity for reorientation and renewal.
Increasing trust in the immortal spark within, that Joyful Child which has survived the batterings of life and still retains a sense of the importance of making a creative response, can strengthen existing belief that life continues in some form when the body dies – or help that belief to grow.
Conclusion
I would like to conclude this essay by returning to what I have called the Otherworld, that magical domain which is the natural habitat of the Joyful Child. Its importance was highlighted in the 18 March (2000 – AW) copy of the magazine The Week, where Jolyon Connell was writing about a current “golden age for children’s fiction” with reference to an article by S.F. Said. (v). The success of current children’s authors led by Roald Dahl and J.K. Rowling, “owes much to the way they appeal to grown-ups as well as children – and not just for nostalgic reasons.” .
Connell’s observation a decade ago is still very much relevant now. He observed that in those writers one finds good old-fashioned storytelling, strong plots, and that quality which is present in all the best children’s books, but often missing in adult ones, ie a sense of wonder, of “being alive to the world.”
He concluded by putting forward Said’s view that many adult readers to their own children are discovering afresh, through the works of Dahl and Rowling, what great writers have always known: children’s stories can touch “those parts of us that haven’t yet become bored, damaged or embarrassed by existence – and can help those parts that have.”
A prescription for helping to keep the Joyful Child alive ? Go and read the Harry Potter books…….. ! Then go check out the latest of the movie series, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” – currently breaking box office records across the world.
References
(iv) “ Poem in October “ from Dylan Thomas Collected Poems 1934-52, Aldine Press, 1972 Edition, pp 96-7
(v) in The Daily Telegraph, week beginning 13 March 2000. Quoted in The Week, 18 March 2000, p 3.
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To read the first two parts of the Joyful Child series, CLICK below:
The Sun, the Saturn Cycle, Harry Potter – and the Joyful Child
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1100 words copyright Anne Whitaker 2010
Licensed under Creative Commons – for conditions see Home Page
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Harry Potter and the Joyful Child, Part 2: Growing Up
November 29, 2010
“……..A prescription for helping to keep the Joyful Child alive ? Go and read the Harry Potter books…….. !……”
To read the first part of the Joyful Child series, CLICK below:
The Sun, the Saturn Cycle, Harry Potter – and the Joyful Child
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Part Two
Saturn - welcome to the Real World!
http://www.wordsources.info/saturn.html
Leaving the Otherworld – and meeting Saturn
The advance through adulthood alters one’s perception of what it is to be young. Having been scarred by life as we all are, watching a pre-school child absorbed in play is delightful, but also poignant. Delightful because it demonstrates clearly that there is another world than the one we usually inhabit which is full of deadlines, duties and demands.
This Otherworld is full of goblins and fire engines, magic bubbles and imaginary friends, bright green tigers who speak, and amenable adults happy to give you the keys to the scary castle, where you can spend days of adventure without anyone telling you that it’s impossible for giants to keep a special pocket full of ice cream that never melts, just waiting for you to come and eat it.
Poignant because we wonder, looking at this absorbed child, how s/he will cope with an adult world whose entry tariff is extracted from the struggle between the fantasy world of childhood where anything is possible, and the reality testing which takes place as we grow and confront the limits which life sets for us.
The 29-30 year Saturn Cycle offers a helpful containing context within which to explore how the Joyful Child within us fares as life’s journey unfolds. There is a case to be made for not starting children at school until the first square of the cycle, at 7-8 years. Five or six, the common age, seems too early to remove children from the Otherworld of play and unbounded imagination. Shakespeare vividly expressed the average child’s response to being dragged from the Otherworld :
“And then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel,
And shining morning face, creeping like a snail
Unwillingly to school.” (ii)
If we did start children at the later age of seven or eight, socially disruptive though that would be in many ways, perhaps it would give more time for the Joyful Child’s domain to become established. Thus it might be easier for the growing person to retain contact with the Otherworld as a source of inspiration throughout life.
As we step across the boundary of family from the time of starting school at age five, through to the first Saturn square at 7/8 years of age, the Joyful Child begins to hide; its energy becomes redirected as we become more aware of ourselves in relation to what the outer world expects. By and large, that outer world is more interested in us being able to tie our shoelaces, read, tell the time, and be truthful, than it is in knowing what a wonderful chat we had in Chinese last night with the bright green tiger who sleeps under our bed.
Early adulthood
The first Saturn opposition at 14/ 15 years is the point where we take bigger steps out of family, begin to challenge parental authority, and move towards greater identification with the peer group. The need to play and daydream which is fundamental to the Joyful Child’s world, and the creative energy fuelling these activities, gets sublimated further at this point.
It channels into the pursuit of achievement of an academic or vocational nature, and exploration of the exciting, troubling world of relationship and emerging sexuality as bodily changes propel the young person towards physical adulthood. The Joyful Child’s impetus towards discovery and exploration of the new, engages in a complex dance with the tough realities also emerging. Too much time spent playing, not enough on taking responsibility, can have a high emotional cost, eg exam failure or unwanted pregnancy.
The waning square at 21/2 years brings with it the world’s expectation that we should begin to assume adult responsibility, get a job if we’ve been studying for years – get serious. Many people marry or enter into long-term partnerships at this stage, perhaps out of unconscious fear of facing the adult world and its responsibilities alone.
I have gained the impression from my varied professional work with people of differing ages over a long period of time, that part of the vulnerability of this life stage comes from a realisation that childhood is, indeed, over.
Recently I came across a scrapbook of newspaper cuttings from a column I wrote in my early twenties. In it was a piece called “Thoughts on Childhood” which supports the view just expressed :
“ I am close enough to childhood for my memories still to be clear and reasonably untainted by the rosy hues of nostalgia, although I realise now that as soon as we have ceased to be children, the world of childhood becomes a closed world to us, one which we can never recapture except through flashes of memory and watching our own children grow up. As adults, no matter how hard we wish to recapture the feeling of childhood, we must always remain
‘ watchers by the threshold.’ ” (iii)
This is a critical age. Engaging with the world as it actually is, challenges the emerging individual’s capacity to retain that spark of vital creative energy which ensures that the Joyful Child is not stifled: it has been curbed by now, knows that much of the time it’s not safe to be too overt.
But it is important that the rechannelled energy continues to flow. It can express itself in passionate commitment to a career, as opposed to working purely to provide life’s necessities. It can manifest through joy in good friends, or absorbing hobbies and interests outwith work. For some people, early parenthood brings, along with responsibility, the opportunity to view the world again through the eyes of their growing children.
There is also a direct route for expression through the sheer animal vitality of youth, which all by itself can make life feel worth living. I recall a middle-aged male friend of mine’s recent comment on seeing a young man running effortlessly up several flights of stairs recently, not because he had to, just because he could. “I can’t do that any more – my back’s too bad !” he remarked. “It made me feel wistful, reminded me of the youthful grace and energy which I once had.”
References
(ii) “As You Like It ”: (1599) act 2, sc 7, l 139, The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 1999 Edition, p 658, par 26
(iii) “Thoughts on Childhood” from Personally Speaking column, Stornoway Gazette, September 1970
TO BE CONTINUED……Part Three follows shortly….
To read the first part of the Joyful Child series, CLICK below:
The Sun, the Saturn Cycle, Harry Potter – and the Joyful Child
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1000 words copyright Anne Whitaker 2010
Licensed under Creative Commons – for conditions see Home Page
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Harry Potter and the Joyful Child, Part 1: the Sun – and Saturn
November 22, 2010
“……..A prescription for helping to keep the Joyful Child alive ? Go and read the Harry Potter books…….. !……”
Last week saw a tidal wave of Pottermania sweeping across the Western world once again as “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” hit the silver screen on 19.11.2010. Coincidentally that week I came across Issue 5 of Apollon, the Journal of Psychological Astrology, in which an essay of mine, inspired by the Harry Potter books, was published ten years ago –not long before the first Harry Potter film sprinkled its magic over the world in November 2001.
I thought this would be good timing, therefore, for giving the slightly edited and updated essay another airing – just to keep Harry Potter and his friends company in the blogosphere!
The Sun
A Celebration of the Joyful Child
“…..he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in Eternity’s sunrise.” (1)
Introduction
Twice in the year, in February and July, I used to go on retreat for a week to the Orkneys, a storm-tossed scattering of green, fertile islands between the far North of Scotland and Scandinavia. It was an eagerly anticipated treat: hotel living and no domestic responsibility, surrounded by the sea and an ever-changing panorama of skies which are an artist’s dream.
An enjoyable evening during this February week ten years ago was spent visiting old friends: one a distinguished pillar of the local community, still vital in his eighties, the other an extremely witty, erudite Sheriff in his sixties. We had a splendid time – talking politics, learning about local history, indulging in that favourite island pastime of storytelling; having a good laugh.
Our stepping outside to return to the hotel revealed a magical night – thick snow floating down in the still, cold air, trees blanketed, ground covered. I couldn’t resist it. Making a few snowballs, I threw them at a tree at the far end of the garden. Pretty good aim still! The Sheriff and my husband joined in – three middle aged folk, happily hurling snowballs around like a bunch of six year olds. We strolled back to the hotel, feeling very cheerful. “That kid in you is still alive and well, isn’t she?!” my husband remarked. I realised that she was, and felt so grateful for it.
Defining the Child
A great deal has been written in recent years about the Inner Child, so much so that a whole branch of the therapy industry has grown out of it, along with inner child workbooks, weekend workshops, etc. The emphasis tends to be on the wounded, vulnerable Inner Child carried to a greater or lesser extent by all adults; the focus, on attempting to heal that injured aspect.
Having been asked to write about The Child, and having reflected on the topic for some weeks, I wanted to celebrate the spontaneous, resilient, Joyful Child within all of us, explore how it fares as we mature. If we are lucky, this part manages to survive the batterings, brutalities and tragedies of existence, continuing to provide inspiration and faith that life is worth living.
Who, exactly, is this Child?
The basic stuff of which s/he is made is the element of fire, that which the gods prized so much they wanted to keep to themselves. But Prometheus stole some, hidden in a fennel stalk, and gave it to us. He was savagely punished for his misdemeanor – but ever since, we humans have had at least one chip of that magical, divine substance lodged in us. Everyone has some: some people have too little, others have too much.
What is it?
Prometheus - the bringer of fire to humans
It’s the spark of divine light, that which tells us we are special and immortal, that we’re here for a reason, that our lives have a purpose, that we have a future worth seeking out. It fuels wonder, injects the passion of inquiry into mere curiosity, causes learning and exploration to be a joyful end in themselves.
It gives the capacity to look out at the world with a fresh set of eyes, take pleasure at what’s there because it’s new, exciting. It brings spontaneity and the gift of laughter. It fuels play, which is at the core of a response to life which is fundamentally creative and imaginative.
It is highly protective and supportive of life, especially when the going is rough, giving the hope that things will get better. It enables tough times to be survived through the unquenchable belief that suffering may be awful, and protracted – but it means something, it is not just the random brutality of quixotic gods, or fate.
It brings the capacity in extremis to laugh at the sheer absurdity of life, and oneself. This capacity can drag one out from under the worst of times for just long enough to reaffirm that life, despite everything, is worth living.
The precious creature formed from such magical substance never grows up in the sense of assuming worldly responsibilities, and never gives up on life’s possibilities and delights. It cannot be ordered forth – just appears, then disappears: will o’the wisp…….
References
(i) William Blake MS Note-Book, The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 1999 Edition, p 120, par 8
TO BE CONTINUED……Part 2 follows shortly…..
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850 words copyright Anne Whitaker 2010
Licensed under Creative Commons – for conditions see Home Page
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Astrological help – from The Beyond! by guest writer John Townley
November 15, 2010
One of the delights and privileges of being a 21st century astrologer is the ease of making links of friendship, support and learning through the Web. This is how I “met” master astrologer John Townley, who with his wife Susan runs one of the Web’s most lucid, intelligent and wide ranging astrology sites : ASTROCOCKTAIL.
During our conversation earlier this year – concerning the difficulty of synthesising and presenting perspectives from science, spirituality and the paranormal within a cultural phase dominated by the reductionist paradigm – John sent me a number of links to articles he had written over the years. I was knocked out by the one I am happy to present as the Guest piece this month.
This article is a treat for anyone of an open-mindedly sceptical bent, for anyone who enjoys a great story – but especially for astrologers. How often do we have our colleagues reach out to us with helpful information for a current problem, not from across the Web, but from beyond the grave?
Says John: “Back in the middle ’70′s I was privileged to enjoy a series of remarkable events which quite altered my opinion of the presence of the dead among the living……” Read on, and enjoy
‘Professor Seward’s Foray from the Beyond’ by John Townley
John Townley
For John’s BIO, click HERE
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Don’t forget to return here with a comment or an email – let me know what you think of this amazing story.
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250 words copyright Anne Whitaker/John Townley 2010
Licensed under Creative Commons – for conditions see Home Page
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An autumnal treat from ‘The Mountain Astrologer’ magazine
October 13, 2010
A real treat awaited me on my return from holiday today. In my office mail was the first of six free issues of “The Mountain Astrologer” – recognised as the world’s leading astrology magazine – and a free CD of The Mountain Astrologer’s “Editor’s Choice” : 43 previously out-of-print articles from TMA in the 1990s, now available on CD. What had I done to deserve this largesse? My 1997 article on “The Saturn Cycles” had been included in the pick.
And what a treat it is! The blurb on the CD tells us that the articles are written by ….” Rob Hand, Dana Gerhardt, Bruce Scofield, Donna Cunningham, Bill Herbst, Jessica Murray….and other leading writers”….
Having had a very quick skim through the articles list, and an appetite-whetting dip into some of them, the great strength of this collection is immediately evident. It demonstrates that the astrological paradigm can usefully illuminate the whole range and depth of human experience, way beyond the shallow scope of the Sun Sign columns.
The Mountain Astrologer : Oct/Nov 2010
Article titles reveal this range, from Michael Thurman’s brilliant Big Picture exploration of overlaps between “Astrology and the New Physics” , through Bill Herbst’s careful and constructive tackling of the not uncontentious combination of “Astrology and Psychotherapy”, right down to what happens (or should happen!) in “The Astrological Consultation”– seen through the lens of the long experience, expertise and professionalism of Jane Ridder-Patrick.
The history of astrology is also explored, as is symbolism and synchronicity, creativity, questions of fate and free will, Vedic astrology, traditional methods, different astrological techniques, interviews with influential astrologers – even astrological gardening. In short, this is a collection which no serious astrologer can afford to be without.
Importantly, many of the articles will also hold value and interest for the open-minded general reader.
At a practical level, the CD works in an entirely easy manner: I stuck it in my Macbook, and off it went without a hitch. Contributors are listed in alphabetical order of first names, which pleased this “Anne” no end! And the final treat in an unmissable collection is the front page of the very first issue : for December 1987/January 1988, featuring ” Astrology explained” by Tem Tarriktar – still with us, both of you, after all these years!
To order this wonderful collection, go to www.mountainastrologer.com (using the back issue order form and typing in “I want the CD” instead of back issue numbers.)
Introductory prices through December 31, 2010 : $19 for current TMA subscribers, and $26 for non-subscribers.
The Mountain Astrologer : Oct/Nov 2010
450 words copyright Anne Whitaker/The Mountain Astrologer Oct/Nov 2010
Licensed under Creative Commons – for conditions see Home Page
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Astrology – beyond the sun signs
August 20, 2010
I am just about to depart to the South of France (Mercury Retrograde, ash clouds and general planetary mayhem permitting!) for a week of family celebrations and simply have not had time to think up something new to offer my expanding band of readers here at Writing from the Twelfth House.
Always being keen to demonstrate that the great and ancient art and science of astrology has much more to offer than its popular face in the sun sign columns would suggest, I thought I’d re-publish the following article which appears on this site on the “Not the Astrology Column” page, but which a number of new readers may not have come across. It is written for the general public with no formal knowledge, but an open-minded interest in astrology.
Check it out, and let me know what you think! See you all again early September.
11th Century Horoscope
My career as an astrologer began in a launderette in Bath, England, in the 1970s – although I didn’t realise that at the time ! Befriending a little girl who came to chat whilst I did my washing, I met her parents, Gloria and Seamus; they were astrologers, they said, and would I care to come back to their place for a cup of tea? They’d like to draw up my horoscope, to thank me for entertaining their child. Well, I remember thinking, nothing better to do for the next hour…….at that stage I was scornful and dismissive of astrology, basing my judgement on the Sun Sign material in the media which struck me as general, banal and trivial. I did not know then that there was a subject of great depth and power beyond the Sun Signs.
I was puzzled by my new friends’ dismissal of the Sun Sign columns – wasn’t that what astrology was all about ?. “We’re proper astrologers” they said firmly. “ Your Star Sign (Leo, in my case) only puts one character on the stage of your life. It’s impossible to describe who you are from only one factor.” They wrote down my date, place, and apparently vital TIME of birth, produced various reference books and did complex-looking calculations. Then they drew up my Birth Chart or Horoscope : this was a map of the heavens for the precise time I was born. It was apparently an unusual chart – lots of planets in the twelfth house, whatever that meant, and strong Pluto, Saturn and Uranus influences. So what, I thought.
Anne W's Horoscope
Then came their interpretation into character analysis of the planetary symbols in my Birth Chart, in considerable depth and with a high level of accuracy. The experience shocked me to the core. How could they be so accurate about my career aspirations? How could they know what my deepest fears were ?How COULD they manage to describe my parents’ core characteristics and some of the key effects they’d had on me ? How could they describe so vividly the restless spirit which drove me ? I had met them less than an hour ago. They knew nothing of my personal history or life experience.
Worse was to come. “You tell me you’re a total sceptic,” Seamus chuckled . “But your Horoscope shows that you have a deeply sensitive, spiritual side to your nature which you’re currently refusing to acknowledge, preferring to identify with the intellectual and the rationalist in yourself. But I can see from your Chart, and where the planets will be in a few years, that in your early thirties the spiritual dimension will come calling. You are very likely to end up doing something like this yourself.”
What nonsense, I thought. But I had no acceptable way of explaining in rational terms what had happened. Uneasily, I filed the experience away in the pigeonhole reserved for the many incidents occurring in my twenties which did not fit my existentialist world view.
For my birthday that August, a friend gave me an odd present considering my scepticism – an astrology book. It was intelligently and sensitively written; I found myself compelled. My feelings were an uncomfortable mixture of attraction, rejection, fascination and embarrassment. What COULD I say to my friends and family?
Saying nothing, I carried on reading. After a year, astrology still fascinated me. By this time – and by a series of odd coincidences – I had found out about the Faculty of Astrological Studies, based in London. It offered a year-long correspondence course with some lengthy exams at the end of it, leading to a Certificate of the Faculty.
I embarked on my studies in an empirical spirit. If astrology WAS indeed merely superstitious nonsense of little value, at least I would have arrived at a conclusion based on knowledge and practice, rather than ignorance and prejudice. I had moved on sufficiently from intellectual arrogance to the awareness that it was very unscientific, and highly irrational, to dismiss a whole body of knowledge without ever having studied it. I obtained my Certificate in 1983, by which time my studies had demonstrated to me that the astrological model had worthwhile insights to offer.
(I was to further my studies much later on, at the Centre for Psychological Astrology, by commuting by plane from Glasgow to London from 1995-1998 to complete a three-year Diploma in Psychological Astrology with renowned teacher, writer and astrologer Dr Liz Greene.)
The teaching and practice of astrology became a major strand in my self-employed career from 1985 until 2001 when, following a long health crisis, I gave up all work (except writing!) for several years.
This wonderful universe
Working with the symbolic descriptions of collective and personal life provided by astrology was, and continues to be, a source of much insight. It offers a route towards integration of the rational dimensions with the intuitive, symbolic and spiritual. Time and time again my clients used to tell me that their Readings helped them to see and to accept who they were more clearly - and to make better use of the gifts they had been given.
Good astrological practice encourages people to take responsibility for their own lives, and supports their courage to be themselves.
We have not yet found anything which provides the ultimate answer to the puzzle of our existence on this earth. Astrology is no exception – although it is a fine way of asking intelligent questions about what life may mean. It is NOT a religion. The insights it offers do not interfere with whatever religious beliefs individuals may hold. But its perspective offers two very important things.
Firstly, a picture of an holistic universe in which our movement through space and time is not random, but meaningful. Astrology’s great insight is that the shaping forces or archetypes which govern all of life including human experience, are symbolically connected with the planets and their movements in the heavens as time unfolds. This is enormously comforting to those of us who cannot bear the idea that the turmoils and struggles of this life are capricious and pointless.
Secondly, from the horoscope drawn up for the date, place and exact time of birth, astrology can give individuals very useful insights into the characters who are enacting the drama of their individual life story. But it cannot tell who the director is, what the exact details of the plot are, or what the outcome of the play will be. Astrology, like quantum physics, can only deal with ranges of probability. The rest is as it will probably remain – a mystery known only to the Deity.
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Note : this is an updated and slightly altered version of an article first published in Scotland’s Glasgow “Herald” as “Future beyond the Sun Signs” on 20.8.96. Copyright remains with the author.
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1300 words copyright Anne Whitaker 2010 Licensed under Creative Commons – for conditions see Home Page
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Lord Rees, president of the UK’s premier scientific organisation the Royal Society, has just made a provocative public statement in a Sunday Times (UK) interview, featured in an article by Jonathan Leake in that newspaper on 13.06.10. He ‘suggests that the inherent intellectual limitations of humanity mean we may never resolve questions such as the existence of parallel universes, the cause of the big bang, or the nature of our own consciousness.’
Rees, who is also professor of cosmology at Cambridge University, is ‘one of Britain’s most respected astrophysicists’. His warning, reports the article, is ‘partly prompted by the failure of scientists working on the greatest problem of modern physics – to reconcile the forces that govern the behaviour of the cosmos, including the planets and stars, with those that rule the so-called microworld of atoms and particles.’
To read this fascinating article by Jonathan Leake, which is bound to stimulate heated debate, click ‘D’oh, we may never decode the universe’
I found it heartening: to read about such an eminent scientist exhibiting some humility was most refreshing. It was also timeous from a personal point of view. I have now been running ‘Writing from the Twelfth House’ for nearly two years, its mission statement being ….
…. to support, encourage, inspire and entertain open-minded people who, like me, are exhilarated and amazed by the beauty, mystery and complexity of the worlds we human beings inhabit – and for those writers and readers who share my preoccupation with questions of meaning, pattern and purpose….
It has been wonderful to make contact with so many open-minded folk like myself, who share my great appreciation for contemporary science and cosmology for revealing over the last few centuries the fantastic cosmos we know we inhabit thanks to the truly mind-boggling achievements of science. But we are very aware now of the shadow side of scientific progress which has immeasurably improved the lot of much of humanity but has also – in the hands of we all-too-fallible humans – wreaked havoc and destruction on our beautiful, fragile, tiny planet.
In my view, we all need to be humble in measuring what little we actually know against the vastness of what we contemplate. We need all the help we can get in our attempts to make sense of a vastness which a great and respected scientist has just admitted may be beyond our comprehension. (He could be wrong, of course!) We need to co-operate with one another, as we all go about honing and sharpening the particular lenses through which we look out at mystery.
We need the perspectives of rationalist, reductionist science. But we also need the perspectives of those non-rational dimensions of the ceaseless human journey towards understanding where we came from, why we are here, and what, if anything, it all means. The great myths, the great religions, the arts – all these also give us a partial glimpse of The Big Why.
So my Really Big Why is this: WHY can we not learn to respect each other’s different lenses/disciplines, instead of – as so often happens – descending irrationally to the primitive level of the tribal carnivores from which we have slowly evolved over the last 100,000 years, and taking up fundamentalist, tribal positions – in which the futile attempt to declare only one lens right and all others wrong, is doomed forever to utter failure?
The great and ancient art and science of astrology has combined those realms of logos (reason) and mythos (imagination, story-telling, creating of metaphors which help us to live with our deep flaws as humans, as well as celebrating our wonderful creativity) for at least six thousand years, since, in Arthur Koestler’s vivid words from “The Sleepwalkers”:
“Six thousand years ago, when the human mind was still half asleep, Chaldean priests were standing on their watchtowers, scanning the stars.”
So I find it most refreshing, as a life-long appreciator of the wonders of science, to read Lord Rees’ admission that we may never be able to decode the universe. But let’s pool all our knowledge, shall we, on both sides of the current mythos/logos divide, and concentrate from now on what unites us – rather than what divides us.
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At this point I would like to hand over to my friend and colleague from New York, fine astrologer, Renaissance woman (check her Bio on her site!) and keeper of The Inner Wheel blog Dawn Bodrogi, my latest Guest on “Writing from the Twelfth House”, who has just written a deep, well-informed and eloquent piece on the very theme which has been preoccupying me even more than usual of late! Over to you, Dawn…..
- William Blake “Ancient of Days”
The Measurers versus The Metaphysicians
Dawn says : ” I don’t often get angry if I meet folks who find astrology incredulous, or even ridiculous. I find their worship of science and technology as the answer to everything faintly ludicrous, and am happy to agree to disagree about fundamental life views. I know my method makes sense, they know theirs does, we’re all happy. Science is a system which proposes to impose meaning on the random and chaotic. So does astrology. The mandate of astrology is that life has an underlying pattern we are trying to discover. So does science. Astrology declares that there is an underlying direction that can be discerned by understanding astrology’s laws. So does science, with its laws. Both are based on mathematical principles. Looked at through a slightly skewed mirror, astrology and science have a lot in common…..“ To read the rest of this article, click HERE
Please note: comments on this post are welcome, but abuse and ranting have no place on this site and any such comments will be deleted.
1000 words copyright Anne Whitaker/Dawn Bodrogi 2010
Licensed under Creative Commons – for conditions see Home Page
(i)
“Six thousand years ago, when the human mind was still half asleep, Chaldean priests were standing on their watchtowers, scanning the stars.”
( from The Sleepwalkers by Arthur Koestler )
I love knowing that the rational, mythical, symbolic and empirical art of astrology has been around for at least six thousand years. Our increasing contemporary awareness of the interconnectedness of all things was well known in antiquity: the ancient maxim “As above, so below” still applies. Astrologers operate on the margins of our fragmenting, reductionist culture. But we represent an unbroken line to a time which in many ways was wiser than ours is now. Being a tiny thread in that weave gives me a deep sense of pride, connectedness and rootedness.
(ii)
I love being able to look out at the night sky, seeing the beauty of the lunar cycle and the visible planets in their ever changing, ever repeating patterns, knowing that being an astrologer offers one the privilege of perceiving not only astronomy but also symbolic meaning out there. I can still recall the exhilaration I felt on a freezing cold, clear night in January 1986 on a visit to the Outer Hebrides. My brother, a Merchant Navy captain, was able to point out Saturn to me – the first time I had ever seen that venerable planet with the naked eye. Saturn’s meaning was also present that night; we were on our way back from the wake for an old uncle who had just died.
(iii)
I love the fact that I started out as a dismisser of our ancient art, and ended up its devoted practitioner – having set out to confront my embarrassment at the inexplicable fascination I had developed for a subject which I considered to be beneath my intellectual consideration! This is the typical position of ignorance combined with arrogance from which many people dismiss astrology, not realising there is a subject of great depth and power beyond the Sun Signs of astrology’s public face. I embarked on a course of study with the Faculty of Astrological Studies in the early 1980s – to prove to myself through study rather than ignorant dismissal that there was nothing in astrology – and although I am no longer a practitioner or a teacher, have kept up an unbroken interest since then for nearly 30 years. If you want to read the strange story of how my astrological career began in a launderette in Bath, England, UK, check out the link below!
11th Century Horoscope
(iv)
I love how literal astrology can be. Saturn met Neptune in November 1989 and the Berlin Wall came down. There was a Jupiter Uranus conjunction in Libra in July 1969 when a huge co-operative effort of unique scientific endeavour put the first human on the Moon. The day Pluto first went into Sagittarius in January 1995, there was a massive earthquake in Japan and the city of Kobe went up in flames. At that same time, John Paul, the best-travelled Pope ever, preached to an open air audience of over a million people in Manila in the Philippines. To lower the tone somewhat, I was having lunch with a bank manager friend of mine on the day Saturn turned retrograde on my Scorpio IC. For no apparent reason (being sober at the time!) I passed out, just as another bank manager and friend of my friend was passing the restaurant window. They both ended up carting me home between them.
(v)
I love the impossibility of ever getting on top of, or to the end of, one’s astrological studies. I have never applied myself to eg Chinese or Hindu astrology, not yet feeling I have enough of a grasp of the Western tradition into which I was born….and you can do hundreds or thousands of horoscope readings, teach hundreds of classes with thousands of students, and someone will STILL come up with a manifestation of eg Venus combined with Saturn or Mercury combined with Neptune, which you have never before come across or thought of.
(vi)
I love astrology for the help it has given me (and countless other people who are willing to look within and try to be honest about themselves) in understanding the quirks and complexities, the gifts and pains of my personality and life pattern. My studies began as the next step in a lifelong quest to prove that our existence has some meaning, that we are not just butterflies randomly pinned to the board of fate, that we are each here because we have something unique to contribute to the Big Picture. Astrology has provided me with that proof. For that, and to that unbroken line of students and practitioners of our great art stretching right back to those ancient Chaldeans on their watchtowers, I will be forever grateful.
Thank you.
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800 words copyright Anne Whitaker 2010
Licensed under Creative Commons – for conditions see Home Page
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Kreativ Blogger Awards 2010
February 18, 2010
It is not Xmas. It is not New Year. It is not Valentine’s Day. It is still cold in the Northern Hemisphere. It is not yet Spring. So I thought I’d introduce a note of celebration and good cheer this week, by posting Anne Whitaker’s Kreativ Blogger Awards 2010.
Kreativ Blogger Awards 2010
Kreativ Blogger Awards 2010
Thanks first of all to my cyber-pal from Georgia, the prestigious and prolific blogger extraordinaire Jude Cowell, for including ‘Writing from the Twelfth House’ in her list of Kreativ Blogger Awards for 2010. A list of all Jude’s blogs encompassing art, astrology and fearlessly outspoken politics, as well as her selection of January 2010 KB Awards, can be found here:
Krehttp://www.starsoverwashington.com/2010/01/kreativ-blogger-award-for-stars-over.html
Now here are the 6 rules for the Kreativ Blogger Award which you will need to follow if you are chosen:
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1. Copy/paste the Kreativ Blogger Award picture onto your blog
2. Thank the person who awarded it to you and post a link to her/his blog
3. Write 7 things about yourself we do not know
4. Choose 7 other bloggers to award
5. Link to them
6. Notify your 7 bloggers of their award
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7 things about me you ( unless you are one of my family/friends/former astrology students in which case you have probably heard it all before TOO many times!) do not know:
1. I have far too many planets in Leo.
2. Just as well they’re in the Twelfth House!
3. I was actually born in the 12th House – 12, Plantation Road – on the street in which my parents were living at that time
4. My birth was so premature and I was so tiny that I was anointed in olive oil, wrapped carefully and placed in a drawer – too small for a cot – and not expected to live. Wrong!!!
5. I have my Honourable Discharge Papers from the British Merchant Navy
6. At a time when I was utterly dismissive of astrology, an astrologer I met by accident in a launderette drew up my chart and predicted that I would become an astrologer in my early thirties. Right!!!
7. I am still asking the same question I started asking when I first opened my eyes to the world: “Why are we here?”(answers, under a plain wrapper, to this site. Reward for most original response)
That’s enough of that! Here are my Kreativ Blogger Award recipients, in alphabetical order. As Jude Cowell has pointed out, there are a considerable number of high quality blogs on the Web, and I am acutely aware of only knowing a small selection well enough to nominate them. A large part of the purpose of this award is to encourage our community to spread the net by our own nominations, enabling other great bloggers to have their work picked out and highlighted.
Kreativ Blogger Awards 2010
1. Dawn Bodrogi – runs a new blog in town, less than a year old. But it is full of thoughtful, quality writing from an accomplished astrologer and teacher. Check Dawn out at The Inner Wheel – Living with Astrology
2. Jude Cowell – a generous spirit, sharp and funny – already mentioned and linked! Find Jude, in true Mercurial style, in several places, including Jude’s Threshold
3. Donna Cunningham – will already be known to many of you as a world class astrologer, writer and teacher – and is now a brilliant blogger at her SkyWriter blog. Check out her online writing seminars at Moon Maven Publications, along with her books in e-book form or hard copy. I hope to be featuring Donna’s writing on my Guest slot next month.
4. Lauren Lesko is the most sensitive and lyrical writer on astrological topics that I have had the pleasure to come across and to befriend – and a most generous soul. Check out her writing, and the beautiful art which accompanies it, at ASTROLOGY: the art of awareness
5. Joyce Mason felt like a fellow spirit from the start, and I love her writing – fresh, deep and often very, very funny. Her Chiron and Wholeness: A Primer is a must for all astrology students, and a great reference tool for practising astrologers, informed as it is by Joyce’s lengthy research and reflection on the Chiron archetype. She has several quality blogs, the main one being The Radical Virgo
6. Susannah combines deep, sensitive and insightful articles with art and poetry. In her own words: “I explore astrology with my poems, images and observations. I hope that maybe you can identify with some of it!” Check out her work – and her selection of blogs! – at The Lion and the Lightning Bolt
7. Leah Whitehorse is a multi-talented musician and writer, with special interest in working with tarot and with dreams as well as astrology. I am hoping to have a piece from her on working with dreams on my Guest slot this Spring. Visit her at Lua Astrology – Navigation by the Stars
I’m flouting the rules ( Mars/Uranus in the Tenth House – I like rule-breaking!) with an extra nominaton – one non-astrologer:
Linda Leinem is a writer whose work I discovered very early on in my own blogging career. I was absolutely knocked out by the quality of her writing; here, to give something of the flavour both of Linda’s rich inner and outer life, and her writing themes, is a little clip from the About Me page on her blog:
“Sharing stories, trading secrets, weaving new realities of threads pulled from discarded memories or long forgotten dreams – those are the tasks of a new writer, dedicated to new endeavors.
Living a quiet and hidden life, anchored to my dock like a barnacle to a piling, I varnish boats on the Texas Gulf Coast. My dock provides both things Virginia Woolf recommended for a woman who writes: money, from the labor, and a room of my own – space and solitude for thought, remembrance, and creative reflection on the truths and mysteries of life.”
I never fail to find affirmation and inspiration in her wonderful writing – her blog gathers many comments, and when you visit The Task at Hand you will understand why….
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1000 words copyright Anne Whitaker 2010
Licensed under Creative Commons – for conditions see Home Page
Can the future be predicted?
December 8, 2009
“ Teach me your mood, o patient stars
who climb each night the ancient sky.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Definition of prediction: a thing predicted; a forecast
(p 1140, The Oxford English Reference Dictionary, Oxford University Press 1996)
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The question of whether it is possible to foretell the future is one which has preoccupied humans ever since we evolved into self-conscious beings and began to conceptualise past, present and future – around 80,000 years ago, we now think. Prediction has thus been around for a long time. Economists do it. Weather men/women do it. Politicians do it. Physicists do it. But most of the foregoing direct scorn and derision at the people who have done it for longer than anyone else – astrologers.
(n.b. my comments in this article do not relate to popular Sun Sign astrology which is a generalised form of entertainment based largely on the position of only one planet, the sun)
Measuring the Heavens: The Mariners' Astrolabe
There is at least six thousand years’ worth of recorded empirical evidence, much of it stored on clay tablets, as yet undeciphered, in the basements of museums across the world, demonstrating that the movements of the planets in our solar system correlate with particular shifts in “the affairs of men” both collectively and at an individual level.
This empirical observation continues into the present day in the consulting rooms of astrologers across the world. For example, a number of politicians and economists consult astrologers regularly. They are mostly unwilling to admit it – though we astrologers know who they are!
What is my view on prediction, in summary, after nearly thirty years of observing correlations between individual and collective life on earth and the planets’ movements?
There is no doubt in my mind that astrologers can look at the unfolding pattern of energies through space/time, cut a section through any point or moment of the past, present or future, look at what the essence of that moment is, and speculate regarding what some of the branches manifesting in the wider world, or in individuals’ lives, may be.
However, they cannot predict on a consistent and exact basis how those branches are going to manifest. Our track record on hindsight is much better than it is on foresight, historically!
There have been some spectacularly accurate predictions made by astrologers in the public realm over the centuries; a famous one was made by Luc Gauricus in 1555 to the effect that King Henry the Second of France ( then aged thirty-seven) was in danger of death in his forty-second year, by a head injury incurred in single combat in an enclosed space. And five years later Henry duly died of a lance splinter which entered his eyes and pierced his brain. There have also been some spectacular failures, eg to predict that the Munich agreement of 1938 would lead to war.
We do much better at describing the essence of a pattern – identifying the exact branches through which energies may manifest is much more hit and miss. Personally this cheers me, since it appears to suggest a creative balance between fate and free will in the universe – chaos theory in contemporary physics also has strong parallels with the astrological paradigm. Not everything is pinned down – both the language of astrology and the language of contemporary physics tells us that!
Because of this I am very hesitant about both the accuracy of prediction and the wisdom of doing it at all, especially for individuals, in any more than a “describing the core and speculating about the branches” kind of way. Predicting that a specific branch WILL manifest, in my opinion closes down options rather than opening them up, also taking us into the realm of self-fulfilling prophecy….
I began to study astrology seriously in 1980. Until then, my attitude was not sceptical (ie willing to consider the facts in an open-minded way) but dismissive, to say the least. But in the 1970s I had an encounter with astrologers, involving an unsolicited prediction, which strongly challenged my prejudices.
I leave you thus with the rather interesting tale of how a dismissive, ill-informed maligner of a great and ancient art (me, 1980) turned into a devoted and admiring practitioner. Life sure is full of surprises!
CLICK BELOW
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700 words copyright Anne Whitaker 2009
Licensed under Creative Commons – for conditions see Home Page
