Coming up in September
September 1, 2010
Thanks to all my readers for supportive emails and comments since “ Writing from the Twelfth House” was launched in Summer 2008. It has now evolved into four sections, presented through four interlinked blogs. Enjoy!
I have just returned from holiday and will soon be posting new material on all four sections. In the meantime – have a browse, there’s plenty to check out!
NOTE: to enlarge the print on all sections, simply press command key (bottom row left on keyboard) and + key (upper row right on keyboard)
1. on “Writing from the Twelfth House”
Articles on writing, in-depth astrology, positive ageing, experiences of oneness: Guest Slot: Book Reviews, Favourite Quotes, two new Cartoons….and who knows what else! Just keep dropping by – and do leave a comment now and then!
Read Latest Post :
Astrology – beyond the sun signs
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2. on “MoreBitsFallOff.com”
Read Latest Post :
Hold that facelift! Some serene thoughts on Mid-Life….
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3:
Excited about the new Jupiter/Uranus 14-year cycle which began in 0 degrees Aries on 8th June 2010? Wondering what may lie ahead as the conjunction repeats in autumn 2010 and winter 2011? Curious about the impact of the conjunction on the lives of those “plugged in” to late Pisces/ early Aries? Want to read Anne’s definitive 2009 book on Jupiter/Uranus conjunctions?
Check out her popular site 3. “Jupiter meets Uranus” - recently included in Best Astrology Blogs – to read Anne’s whole series of in-depth articles on the Jupiter/Uranus conjunction – the most left field combo of the whole zodiac….
Read the latest post (2.9.2010):
Jupiter/Uranus 2010/11 ‘Tales from the Wild Ride’ : Part Four
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4. on ‘Wisps from the Dazzling Darkness – a sceptic’s take on paranormal experience’
Read Latest Post :
And now for something a little different….
Top Paranormal Blog 2010
I am delighted to let my readers know that “Wisps from the Dazzling Darkness” has just been voted “Top Paranormal Blog 2010″ by the Online University.
(Note to those readers who used to follow this serial on “Writing from the Twelfth House” – I have at last caught up with myself on the new site, and from 4.6.10 will be posting new material !)
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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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Jupiter/Uranus 2010/11: here come the stories!
August 7, 2010
"Jupiter meets Uranus" by Anne Whitaker (2009)
(for more information, click HERE)
Those of you following the “Jupiter Meets Uranus” section of this 4-part site will know that I have been writing a series of preparatory articles, orienting readers toward the 2010/11 Jupiter/Uranus conjunctions, since the beginning of the year.
Last month I selected 12 volunteers strongly “plugged-in” to the late Pisces/ early Aries energy of the new conjunction. Then I sent them preparatory notes, followed by the first of six Questionnaires. They obligingly sent back varied and colourful feedback, and I hope now will continue to do so right through until next Spring 2011, by which time the new Jupiter/Uranus cycle will have become established.
By next Spring, then, through following the unfolding of those 12 lives, we should all have a better grasp of just how many branches can spring from the same recognisable core of the Jupiter/Uranus combo. Seeing this vital, unique essence shining through all 17 of the varied lives of my 1997 researchees made the slog of doing the research worthwhile then.
Having now stopped banging my head off the wall, moaning “Why, why, WHY am I doing this?” (Saturn/Pluto, anyone?) I am now surfing that unique wave of enthusiasm, excitement and anticipation of the new (and probably weird) which Jupiter/Uranus brings at its best.
Do join me and a great band of volunteers in following their unfolding drama over the next few months. Installments One (6.8.10) and Two (13.8.10) are now out there!
Check out
Jupiter/Uranus 2010/11: “Tales from the Wild Ride” Part One
AND
Tales from the Wild Ride ii) : Jupiter/Uranus 2010/11
And finally, I leave you with a trenchant observation on the ups and downs of the unique, turbulent energy field we are all currently moving through – from one of the volunteers, “Fiona”:
‘ I feel like the scales keep falling from my eyes on any number of fronts. But off we go – into the wild blue J/U yonder…..’
350 words copyright Anne Whitaker 2010
Licensed under Creative Commons – for conditions see Home Page
I saw some google ads appearing with this article. I did NOT authorise them and want them off!!!
Where does the longing come from?
Early memories may carry clues – tucked up in bed, cosy and warm, safe and sound, listening to the winter North wind tearing the world apart. Night after night after night. Other nights, clear cold, wintry, still. Standing on the concrete of the garden path, gazing at the clear night sky above the roofs of the houses at the top of Ellison Road hill, awestruck with delight at the blaze of radiance dancing in the heavens. The Northern Lights, heavenly dancers.
(I have never seen them since childhood. It is my keen wish to see them again before I die.)
I used to ask myself : what vast Power generates the destructive energies of the wind, the visual delight of the Northern Lights? What are they for? Who performed the long, hard labour of setting upright on a Hebridean moor that great Neolithic astronomical calendar, the Callanish Stones? Why did they do it? What rites were performed there? What gods were honoured ?
Where does the longing come from?
For as long as I can recall, I have longed to know why we are here, why the world with its staggering diversity of teeming, turbulent life is here. I have tried to find out what our presence here may mean, whether it is random or not.
During my lifetime, the vast scale of the Universe has been visually confirmed by the explorations of science far beyond the boundaries imagined by Darwin or Einstein. I have the Hubble images on my wall, and gaze at them every day. Their beauty, and the vastness they invoke, goes beyond the power of words to express.
We now know that our Universe is one of many, that there may be a vast Multiverse: matrix from which arise countless Universes. We are so minute, here on planet Earth, the Solar System, The Milky Way Galaxy, home to millions of other stars. Why am I standing here, wondering why we are here and what it all means?
New Hubble Image: Carina Nebula
(http://blogs.sacbee.com/photos/2009/09/hubble-telescopes-latest-image.html)
It’s a long way from the Metaverse to the eccentric Rev. Dr. de Sousa in his green plus fours and his rusty bicycle, teetering precariously from his gloomy rectory to his sombre church during the late nineteen fifties.The small island town in which I grew up, a place of some five thousand souls, was remarkably well served for churches in those days. There was no shortage of Christian establishments in which I could place myself in an attempt to find some answers to my big WHY.
The Episcopal church was regarded with suspicion because of its uncomfortable perceived closeness to Rome.
There was the United Free Church, where Popery would have shrivelled to a cinder had it ever crossed the threshold. Serious Christianity was practised here. No flowers, no music (apart from precenting), definitely no graven images. An old testament God hung out here. Fun and laughter were not encouraged.
Then there were the Seceeders, whose precise denominational and doctrinal position remained a mystery to me throughout my youth. I knew they had split off from some other lot, and therefore regarded themselves as “a cut above” – but above what, I never quite established.
Then there was the plain old Church of Scotland. The minister, a mild, thin, bookish looking soul who had been at school with my father, bore the distinctly uninspiring nickname of “Optic” which had stuck with him since his very short-sighted schooldays. His spectacles, I was convinced, really were made out of the bottoms of milk bottles.
I used to attend his sermons with hair rollers under my Sunday hat as a mute and invisible but satisfying form of protest. He had had a charisma bypass, and took boredom to punishing levels. However, I always liked the Benediction at the end “…...In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost…” it always seemed to come from somewhere other than him, although he was saying the words. This sense never failed to confuse me…..
We went there on our intermittent forays to Church, depending on whether inertia or guilt dominated my mother’s frame of mind on a Sunday evening. Trips to Church were usually minus my father, apart from hatches, matches and despatches.
A spiritualist medium, describing my father’s wayward character to me with remarkable and eerie accuracy not long after his death, said he was a man “who knew his God.” Wherever Dad’s God hung out, it was not in any of the establishments on offer in our mid-20th century small Scottish town.
Personally, long before my encounter with the medium, I always thought my father’s God was out there in the distant hills where he went to poach deer, or in the eye of a storm at sea. Not that we ever talked about such matters. The only time we ever discussed my spiritual life was when, aged twelve, I realised that I could not face replacing the utter tedium of seven years of Sunday School with the probable continuing tedium of Bible Class, which is where you went on entering secondary education.
An epiphany prompted my nervous and tentative approach to my father. We had recently aquired a Readers’ Digest World Atlas, a huge book which I could barely lift. I was riveted by a double page spread of the whole world, with countries coloured in according to religion. I realised that day how many world religions there were.
Although Christianity appeared to hold its own across the world, it was visually clear that the great majority of the world’s population – which was a mere two and a half billion in total when I was doing my big religious sums – believed in something else altogether.
I then looked for the tiny isles of the Outer Hebrides, coloured Christian pink. Next, the top island where I lived, barely discernible in the context of the whole world. A wave of inescapable logic washed me away that day. It simply did not make sense that a few thousand members of eg the Free Church of Scotland considered themselves to be right and saved, leaving almost the total remaining population of the world wrong and damned regardless of the integrity and sincerity of their differing beliefs.
My mind buzzing with this powerful realisation, I told my father that I didn’t want to go to Bible Class. I now wanted to do some of my own reading and work out religion for myself. “Fine” he said. “Don’t go, then.”
At the age of twelve, that was it for me and Christianity, for a very long time, although I continued under pressure to attend church intermittently and always enjoyed singing the hymns at hatches, matches and despatches.
The longing, however, continued, like a barely audible ghost of a sound, echoing my heartbeat….
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Night Sea Journey
(http://www.flickr.com/photos/magnusvk/166233536/)
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To read the first two parts of “Swimming in a secret sea” click HERE
The next episode will be
(iv)
Not Finding
“Fortunately, it was a peat bank we hit. That cushioned the impact, saving the car from much damage. Uncle Patrick had stopped singing “Abide with me”: for once, he was completely silent. Perhaps he was wondering how to get the car out of the ditch. Aunt Maria, white faced, was leaning over into the back of the car where I had been jolted onto the floor behind the driver’s seat. No one had heard of seatbelts in the 1950s. “Are you all right, dear?” she said anxiously. “I think so,” I said. “Maybe I’ve bruised my knee, that’s all.” ….“
to be continued
(note: inspiration for the title of this series of posts was taken from a book which I read a very long time ago but whose haunting title I have never forgotten: “Swimmer in the Secret Sea“ by William Kotzwinkle)
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1300 words copyright Anne Whitaker 2010
Licensed under Creative Commons – for conditions see Home Page
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In the late 1990s Carole Bone turned up in my daytime astrology class: red hair, big eyes, bright mind, very eager to learn, fast talker, very hard to keep her quiet. Irrepressible. A great student to teach. Ten years on, and I was at last emerging from my 2001-8 retreat. Carole had just left my house, staggering under the weight of a bag full of poetry books…. T.S.Eliot, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Dylan Thomas, Archy and Mehitabel, e e cummings, Anne Stevenson, Tom Leonard, Liz Lochead.….she had kept in touch throughout my time out, sending messages of support, sending me her poems to read. She is a born writer. I remember thinking that day “She’ll be getting published before long.”
Here is her second published poem,“Sisterectomy”, which appeared in May 2010 in the Poetry Anthology 2010 published by United Press Ltd.
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Sisterectomy
I’ve had a sisterectomy
There’s no wound
or scar to show
No empty sleeve
to neatly fold and pin
in badge of loss
Elusive sibling ache
I carry it somewhere still
In head, in heart or gut
No scale can weigh its pain
No gauge can measure
The depth of its careless cut
Unhealed sorrow
flows through blood
that once ran thick
Its devastation hidden
In fractured bonds
Of severed root and tribe
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(Carole’s submission for the Poetry Anthology 2011 has been shortlisted. Our fingers are crossed, Carole!)
(carolebone@hotmail.co.uk)
Carole’s Biog : “…. mother of two magic boys – wife for thirty three years to a Capricorn who is without doubt my rock. Would be astrologer; this subject has kept me (relatively) sane by helping me to understand the contradictory pulls existing in my nature between the home-loving dreamer and the restless seeker after knowledge. And – a shy Virgo Rising…“
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ps….I am delighted to report that ‘Lilith and the Devil’ – the first of Carole’s poems to be published on “Writing from the Twelfth House” in February 2010, was re-published on 16.3.10 on the Write Anything site as part of a fine reflective piece by Carole, offering advice to would-be poets. To read it, and some more comments on Carole’s work, check out
http://writeanything.wordpress.com/2010/03/16/lillith-and-the-devil/
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350 words copyright Carole Bone/ Anne Whitaker 2010
Each morning since a week last Tuesday I have stepped out of our third floor flat onto a very silent landing. No kids’ clutter outside the door opposite. Double doors firmly shut. Our next door neighbours and friends are in Australia for a month. I miss them. Second floor next. More closed doors. Since a week last Wednesday another family of neighbours and friends has been gone, en route to California for six months. Wee Lauchie has just started to walk. I miss them too.
It is a blessing to have neighbours who are friends, to have neighbours with lively twins who aged 10 make you cakes and yorkshire puddings. These things are precious and we should not take them for granted.
Another of my communities is in shock. One of our members, only 51, died suddenly last Saturday. We all grieve for his wife, family and friends. We are brutally reminded of how fleeting life is – a fact we do not care to face in western society which likes to insulate itself from life’s rough edges, from risk, from death, from transience.
But today there was an uplifting email from a young friend, a former student of mine, whom I have not seen for a long time. After many difficulties, she has just been allocated a flat she can afford, in a part of London she loves, within a supportive community. Better still, her art work is coming together in a wonderful way. She sounds joyful; at last her direction is opening out.
Many years ago I read her horoscope, telling her she needed to paint her life on a big canvas – that symbolic art, perhaps astrological art, could be her forte. She got in touch to tell me that her work is now taking off in just that direction. She also said kind things about my first book, which she has just read. Her email made my day.
As I walked to my office, a passage about the richness and transience of life, and our connectedness with one another, floated into my mind and lodged there. It expresses beautifully and poignantly how I feel today. Aware of the rich weave of dark and light which is our life: very, very aware of the importance and also the underlying frailty of all our relationships. Truly, we are but on loan to one another, should cherish one another….
Beautiful Rainbow Obsidian
(http://www.statemaster.com/encyclopedia/Obsidian)
“ There is an ancient Aztec Indian prayer that reflects on the preciousness of life and the fleetingness of it. As the Aztecs thank the Creator for their life and breath, they acknowledge that they are only on loan to each other for a short while, and just like the drawings that they have made in crystalline obsidian fade, so, too, will their life quickly be gone.
‘Oh, only for so short a while you have loaned us
to each other, because we take form in your act
of drawing us.
And we take life in your painting us,
And we breathe in your singing us.
But only for so short a while have you loaned us
to each other.’ ”
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Grateful thanks to my friend C.M. for reading me this passage recently, thereby inspiring me to use it too!
(from p55, PRAYING OUR GOODBYES The Spirituality of Change by Joyce Rupp 1988)
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550 words copyright Anne Whitaker 2010
Licensed under Creative Commons – for conditions see Home Page
No, you probably don’t have Altzheimer’s….!
June 24, 2010
This post should probably be appearing on my new site
MoreBitsFallOff.com
However, being an uncharacteristic hive of industry today, I have posted something new there already – check it out! What was I saying? Oh yes, NOW I remember…..which brings me to the friend in whose honour I am republishing a book review which appeared here on ‘Writing from the Twelfth House’ last year. I spoke to her this morning. She was (once again!) so worried about incipient Altzheimer’s that she wanted to re-borrow the book I had lent her last year which she had found incredibly reassuring. It is called “Where did I leave my Glasses?” and is absolutely wonderful. No-one over the age of fifty should ever leave home without it.
Here is my review:
“Where Did I Leave My Glasses?”
The What, When and Why of Normal Memory Loss
A few weeks ago my husband dashed off to an evening meeting. Shortly afterwards, he rang me, sounding stressed. “Can you please find my glasses for me? A friend is passing by shortly – she can pick them up and bring them along to the meeting.” My irritation with him dissolved into fits of laughter when I eventually found the glasses. Where were they? Yes, sitting right on top of the book he was then reading, called “Where Did I Leave My Glasses?” by Martha Weinman Lear.
Exhibit A - the glasses!
One of the realisations which don’t dawn until the fifties – I speak for myself here, maybe you are ninety-six and still in denial! – is that it’s all downhill physically from now on. I think writer Richard Holloway is right when he talks in one of his books (surprise, surprise, can’t remember which one….) about the importance of starting to cultivate fortitude once you reach your fifties. Time is going to win, and you, small speck of ephemeral matter, are going to lose – no matter what you do to try and stave off the aging process.
An indestructible sense of humour is a huge asset in facing this truth. So is information which cheers you up rather than depressing you. Everyone over the age of fifty should therefore read this book. It succeeds in being simultaneously very informative and very entertaining on the topic of normal memory loss, a subject which generates intermittent worry for, I would estimate, at least 99 per cent of us who are baby-boomers and older.
Martha Weinman Lear, former articles editor and staff writer with the New York Times Magazine, is well qualified to research and present information and opinion on the topic of memory loss, having written extensively before on social and medicine-related topics.
I infer from the book that she is a person past the first flush of youth. Here she is, inviting us to
“Consider our own memory situations, yours and mine.
Here is mine:
Adjectives elude me. Verbs escape me. Nouns, especially proper nouns, totally defeat me. I may meet you at a party, have a long, lovely conversation with you, be charmed by you, want to know you forever, and a day later not remember your name….”
The book is laugh-aloud entertainment, rooted in real conversations with real people all of whom including herself have funny disclosures to make centering round the five top responses to the question she put to all the lay and expert interviewees in the book, ie ‘What can you most reliably depend upon yourself to forget?’
These five were:
Where did I leave my glasses?
What was I just saying?
What did I come in here for?
What did I ask you to remind me to do?
What’s her(his, its) name?
Lear’s book may be wittily written, but it is also thorough and well-informed in exploring aspects of normal memory and memory loss, including why we are actually wired to forget. She covers a range of topics including sex differences in memory function and deterioration, different types of memory, how to train the aging brain into being more efficient at remembering – and most fascinating of all, the future of memory enhancement in a culture where increasingly we are living longer than biology built our bodies to last.
I found “Where Did I Leave My Glasses?” enormously comforting and reassuring in the face of the spectre that haunts our increasingly long-lived Western populations – Altzheimer’s. Lear’s book’s central message is that most memory lapses beginning in middle age are universal: a normal part of the inevitable process of aging.
In short, don’t worry if you don’t know where you left your glasses. But do worry – and seek help – if you can’t remember what your glasses are for….
Exhibit A - the glasses!
(this is the slightly edited and re-published version of a book review published on this site in 2009)
800 words copyright Anne Whitaker 2010
Licensed under Creative Commons – for conditions see Home Page
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
Jupiter met Uranus 8.6.10. We’re still here……
June 11, 2010
…. a fresh Jupiter/Uranus 14-year cycle has just begun…..
AND – a new astrology study is about to commence (the sequel to the one I did in 1997), with a brilliant new group of volunteer researchers joining me to share their experiences over the next year.
But first, let me set a sensible context (astrologers? sensible? It is possible…) by quoting from one of the articles I wrote and published on this site in the run-up to the Great Event of 8.6.10 : (18.5.10: Jupiter meets Uranus, sky falls in: Yes,no….or merely maybe?)
“……It is an ancient human tendency to imagine that the end of the world or civilisation as we know it is just around the corner. Maybe it is – or maybe not. We don’t really KNOW what the upcoming Jupiter/Uranus conjunction and its attendant pattern will bring. It certainly represents a perfect backdrop onto which to project our burgeoning collective anxieties about the deteriorating condition of our culture and of our planet. But human life has always been turbulent, dangerous and often fatal, regardless of where the planets happen to be. So can we all calm down and just get on with life?
I trust that those few moderating paragraphs will have at least temporarily helped to reduce your blood pressure, and injected a rather needed note of philosophical detachment into your contemplation of the Summer of 2010……”
We also need to remember that, with any planetary cycle, the first time the two planets meet, as Jupiter and Uranus famously did on Tuesday, is just the beginning.
To read the rest of this article, click HERE
(Please NOTE: this is the last Jupiter/Uranus article to appear on “Writing from the Twelfth House”. There is a new series running, following the ups and downs of the first year of the new 14-year Jupiter/Uranus cycle and the fortunes of a bold band of researchees, on my popular “Jupiter meets Uranus” site. See you there!)
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300 words copyright Anne Whitaker 2010
Licensed under Creative Commons – for conditions see Home Page
I have in recent days committed myself (am I mad or what?!!) to doing a follow-up study from the one I did on the Jupiter/Uranus conjunction of February 1997 “Jupiter meets Uranus – from erotic bathing to star gazing“. (UK buyers, click HERE ) Have you got your copy yet?
Jupiter meets Uranus - from http://www.cainer.com
I am approaching my quota of 20 volunteers who are “plugged-in” to the late mutable/early cardinal energy of the upcoming Jupiter/Uranus conjunction in Aries, and will be sending me their feedback on how it was for them as the observational year (March 2010 – February 2011) unfolds. It is fantastic that they are prepared to do this – and I will be treating their feedback with appropriate care and confidentiality, as I did the 17 participants in the previous 1997 research. So – keep watching this space to see a research study being invented before your eyes!
And there are still a few more places for volunteers with planets/Angles/ Moon’s Nodes in late mutable/early cardinal signs. Just leave a comment and I will contact you.
I have acquired some interesting and lively commentators, most recently Shana – of http://www.shanatinglipton.com/blog/. In response to a comment of hers, I have written a short piece on some contemporary events for my Jupiter meets Uranus site, which I thought I’d share with the many readers of this site – in the spirit of “here it is – as it happens.”
To read the rest of that post, click HERE
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Jupiter meets Uranus
250 words copyright Anne Whitaker 2010
Licensed under Creative Commons – for conditions see Home Page
