Aries 6°

It’s been awhile since I’ve had a full on panic attack; but this weekend just after falling asleep I was awakened with extreme existential angst. In attempt to unpack these feelings in the light of day I think these episodes have always derived from the same core reality: Each one of us is alone. Sometimes this notion hits my hard. Having neither parents or children; and only an evil sibling I’ve no intention of ever seeing again; and no contact, let alone relationships, with wider family at large I can find myself very much hoping that I die before Stella, who does have a loving immediate family.

Cheery subject I know but I find this very much to be in keeping with the sign of Aries which hits home the fact that, when it comes to it, we fly solo. What has made this realization more poignant in recent years was the necessary loss of certain bonds which didn’t serve me and the conscious decision, regarding other friendships, to stop doing all the work—always being the one to reach out—to see just who would or wouldn’t make the effort to nurture a relationship.  Sadly, more often than not, I heard crickets.

But don’t get me wrong—this is no pity party. Au contraire. It is very liberating to know where reciprocity exists and where it doesn’t. Quality bonds are priceless, while a quantity of them has never meaned much. I don’t have a work environment that includes any other person than the one I love and live with. I have never been part of a team. I don’t belong to any mafia. And though I do consider myself as belonging to a couple “communities”, creative ones especially, I have mainly witnesses a ramping up in narcissism in these realms. The so-called “downtown” artistic community, for instance, has only seemed to increasingly ape milieus we all used to pooh pooh. How it is that a large number of people I know live under the delusion that they are perpetually on some red carpet or behind some velvet rope is not only depressing it’s literally revolting.

And nobody needs me around feeling disgust. Admittedly, I’m a social cynic but it’s not because I’m a pessimist but because I’m an idealist with great expectations which, it goes with the territory of having them, are regularly dashed. Moreover I never expected to get to my advancing age and feel that my peers were all still playing out a high-school popularity game. Instead of locker lined hallways where the drama of heirarchy is played out, it now happens along the twisted corridors of social media. I seriously doubt that my “friends” who have really been swept up in this sort of reality-show living think I see through to how desperately sad and lonely and insecure they are. They likely don’t even realize themselves that their perpetual display of puffery is symptomatic of the emptiness they refuse to let themselves feel, let alone embrace.

I am so thankful for the panic attack of existential angst that awakes me. It is a reminder of the emptiness that underscores all reality. I find the emotional work that stems for this experience so important and necessary. It reminds me to look to my books, to read the great ancient works that have always guided and sustained me on the solo journey that is my life. I am so grateful to have grown up in the anonymous seventies and eighties where we didn’t have a mobile audience—says the Blaguer who will post this installment in a matter of minutes. Truly, I can’t imagine what it’s like for young people who have grown up with phones and laptops attached to their bodies. My idea of happiness is still getting lost in a city neighborhood, out of reach to anything but serendipity or walking an endless beach where I can’t get a signal.

I know people who can’t be alone. I’ve never been one of them. If anything I have to be careful not to isolate too much. Even in my youth I often felt like that Rhesus monkey then kept in a separate cage who freaked out when put in a cage with a bunch of others of its kind. I’m no stranger to social anxiety and yet, time and again, I am always suprised at how comfortable I actually am in the company of others. Why that is forever a shock I’ve no idea. I never need to bolt from a party or anything like that; but I’d be a liar if I didn’t admit that I would always rather be alone than in company where I feel far more alone than when I actually am.

Emptiness is a contradiction in terms; because I believe that if you were to youremove everything you can see and touch that there would still be “something” there. Call it spirit or energy or a creative intelligence or what have you—when I’m alone I feel a natural communion with the All which isn’t nothing. It’s Everything.

Copyright 2017 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Aries 5°

We recently took part in a group art show and presented this spontaneous love spell.

Aries, You are the Warrior of Love
Objectifying with Life-giving Lust
Jabbing Us with Burning Spear orCooly Pitting Us in Battle Over Rich Delta—Ever Leading the Charge, You Are most Enviable, Primal Self Love

Taurus, You are the Guardian of Love
Drawing Us To Your Green Garden of Delight To Sniff and Pluck—You Will be Appreciated and Cultivated; Belong and be Worshipped as We All Should The Flower God’s Green Earth

Gemini, You’re the Booker of Love, Buzzing with Sweet Provocation and Confusion—or what Confucious said? You’re the Apple tossed, the question mark—the Divining Mind of Duality The Love of Community all Cunning

Cancer, You are the Mystic of Love Waxing and Waning Pure Intuition Your Prince or Princess Will Come As You Prepare The Way to Recover What Is Lost and Let What Should Be Yours a Love Raining on You and Me

Leo, You are the Magesty of Love Building Castles and Moats to Passion Locking Heaviest Doors of Loyalty Creating Children, Real and Brain You Endure Eternal Ecstacy and Pain
Endowed with Loving good Authority

Virgo, You’re the Conscience of Love Healing Humbly, Critiquing Sharply Oft Deffering, Demurring, Digesting You, the Catalyst of Loving Change, Make Lemons out of Lemonade, the Love in Service to those Most in Need

Libra, You are the Equalizer of LoveSpreading Yourself Thick and Even
An abstract Artist of Aesthetic Beauty You Seek Harmony in Composition Blending Voices So We’re All Heard
Figuratively speaking: Fairest of them

Scorpio, You are the Miner for Love
The Buried Treasure of Deep Desire
Stinging Us with our Own Truth and, Meaning Not That Much Harm, You Unearth, Excavate, Out Damn Spots! Cleanse as you Slither into our Hearts.

Sagittarius, You are the Joker of Love Jovial Wild Card, We Risk On You Striking Anywhere, Rarely Twice You Ignite Multiple Fires of Love and Understanding. What’s So Funny? Oh, How You Burn and Blind Third Eyes!

Capricorn, You’re Container of Love. A mountain of Faith, all limit to Fear.
Bathing our brow from placid resevoir You lay down strict Laws of Devotion Using All in Your Power to Love; and Urging Us To the Highest Peaks of It

Aquarius, you are the Beacon of Love Iluminating its renewable resource, all diversely, indiscriminately dispensing Plenty to go round. A trip to bountiful Tie-dyed, rainbow suspender Unicorn Love Universal, dirty stars atwinkling

Pisces, you are the Essence of Love
Dissolved in fog, foaming longing. Behind veiled curtain you call, Siren Breaking us on tender infinite shore, Home to total Love, spirit awash in unerring nutritive detritus of dreams

Copyright 2017 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Louis Alphonse, Duke of Anjou, the legitimate pretender to the French throne, who would be Louis XX

Aries 4°

Aries is the sign of the Self. But this is not to be confused with selfishness. It’s more like putting the oxygen mask on first before you can help others. But help others you might.

As I watch the mostly older white men on the right shuffling in and out of meetings in D.C. all I can think is that they couldn’t be more divorced from the concept of helping or serving others. They don’t even pretend anymore like they might have done forty years ago. Reporters are seen as an annoyance. It’s like these lawmakers are part of some royal family. Meanwhile, the British royal family, for instance, is suffused with the understanding that they are born to serve the people, despite their trappings of wealth—and really they’re not ostentatious.

I was reading Edmund White’s  The Flaneur recently, one of a thousand books Stella has put in front of me knowing I half-jokingly admit “I don’t read.” But it was a thin book and it was about Paris and I could knock it off in a morning. There is a bit about a loyalist bar on the rue de Rivoli. And how the crowd there wants to bring back the French royal family, such as it is. The notion seems absurd at first. Until you realize that the royalists’ argument is that a royal family would do more for the people than those elected. It’s starting to make more sense to me.

Just because the people in power didn’t get there by divine right doesn’t mean they don’t act like it.  Perhaps its not a divine right endowed upon them by a god but rather a lobby but they still act like they are appointed as if on by high. And they tolerate the rest of us whom they seek to oppress. Noblesse oblige now seems more modern a concept than what is passing these days for democracy wherein those who have don’t feel obliged to provide to those less fortunate. No. Even the income-based Affordable Care Act (that’s the name of it) where the rich pay a little more to cover those who have not is too much to ask from these entitled assholes.

Not that Britain is any great shakes these days but, despite the fact they have a royal family, they are way more (social-)democratic than we are—their health care and education system is a testament to that. Remember the Age of Enlightenment? The Social Contract? Reason? (All Apollonian/Libran terms in my astrological view). How about the Declaration of Independence? The founding fathers took a page from the royalists’ book: They were going to play the role of father to the nation and thus take care of and provide for others as an outcropping of their own inalienable fullfillment of selfhood.

Now we have to look at Paul Ryan’s smug mug. Or that giant orange pig face which, I’m sorry, shows signs of constant drug abuse. We have to stomach the chinless droolings of Mitch McConnell, the ignoramity of Rick Perry, the impatient, “tolerating”, violent insouciance of pretty much the entire GOP. We’re sorry to bother you we’re just trying not to starve, be enslaved and die. Sorry. We know you’re busy being paid healthcare on our taxes and getting lobbyist kickbacks and book deals and industrial contracts. Our mistake. Sorry, sorry, sorry.

Copyright 2017 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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3° Aries, March 23, 2017

My mother used to tell me how she had to fight and, I think, ultimately, drink to silence her “impressions”, empathetic Pisces that she was. Sometimes I would catch her unawares sitting in a kitchen chair staring unblinkingly, only her gaze seemed to direct inward not out. I didn’t experience what she experienced as a child.

I do remember moving objects when I was very small, something I never repeated, though I’ve tried. And surely I did enter the fairy world, for lack of a better term, through duvet covers and sometimes even the odd pillow case. But there was nothing in my youth or teens of the psychic about my experience except so far as my mother was concerned. I would get a flash that she was about to phone me and I would suprise and entertain friends and roommates by saying the phone is about to ring and it would be my mother which it was. I chalked that up to her not me.

In Rome in 1984 Stella and I met an old man who spoke in tongues whom we “understood” on a transmissionary level; in our Hoboken apartment in 1988 we saw plasmic scenes of partygoers from the 1920s superimposed upon the visual landscape of our interior. We had a ghost cat that visitors would also see and almost trip over. But it wasn’t until the early 1990s, living in New York’s West Village, where we did for a good long time, that my so-called gift emerge.

In clubs and in bars with a good buzz on was how it began. Inevitably the struck-up conversations with acquaintances or veritable strangers, I would start getting messages. People wouldn’t think I was crazy because I was eerily accurate in my verbalizations; in the moment I didn’t judge, while, next day, I chalked it up to quasi drunken stupidity. Now I know that drinks would relax the veil between me and it. I wasn’t a professional astrologer then, never mindsome form of metaphysician. These little episodes were foreshadowing. But, slowly, over time, I did begin to trust these impressions which  were being received increasingly in sober moments. I simply thought: cool, I have inherited something of my Celtic mother’s gift which might amount to a tiny party trick perhaps. No further expectation.

Year’s later as we began doing astrological readings for people, the sharp focus of doing so seemed to have the same effect as the fuzzying out that drinking enabled. Impressions were coming to me through the very opposite end of my mental spectrum—that of a concentrated openness to the symbolic patterning on a individual’s astrological chart. We were (and are) continually trained to read people’s charts, the result of which is already forever astonishing—the accuracy of a technical astrological reading will always remain inexplicable as to the why it works. But, more and more, there was something extra available to me. Training my mind technically, consciously, intellectually via the complexities and intricasies of one’s chart at hand seemed also to open a window somewhere in the back (or, to be accurate upper-left side) of said consciousness where these flashes, impressions, or rather, imperatives were asking to be articulated.

I pick a Tarot card every morning. Doing so is never the same twice. Our minds are never exactly in the same state when we do some ritual behavior—they state always varies at least by tiny degrees. This morning I was shuffling absent-mindingly to the point that I forgot what I was doing, lost in some early morning daydream, the to-dos of the day yet to creep their way in. Suddenly I “heard” a pick me from one of the cards I remembered I was fondling. I did. It was the Magician. And its appearance immediately inspired the theme of today’s installment. In a way my so-called psychic ability, as transient as it can be, is the Universe’s ultimate Blage on me.

The Magician. Not sure from which Tarot deck, but it has a certain transappeal.

Copyright 2017 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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2° ARIES, March 22

I love being in the sign of Aries. All new beginnings. Two days ago, the Spring Equinox, was International Astrology Day, the start of another trip around the Wheel. Whereas the previous sign of Pisces is the watery womb-tomb, Aries is bloody, bleating birth. It’s unapologetic in terms of existence. Here I am, world, ready or not (the world or the speaker). Aries is a fire sign (symobolizing spirit) but it rules the physical body—fusion of the two being our natural state. And it rules the head. Not the brain mind you. Just the head.

I imagine myself being suffused with Mars-ruled Aries energy. Fierce warriors Ares and Athena (all Greek to me) are they archetypes to embrace. And so I find this the perfect time to focus on fitness and to embrace a certain ascetism, a warrior spirit, a vigilant knighthood, in a quest for as much physical integrity, as the embodiment of true spirit, as I can muster. For me that is a/k/a being able to see my toes, not to mention, other bits of my anatomy, when I look down. I exaggerate; or do I?

I do love Aries people. I was going to say I do love my Aries friends but I don’t have any. Okay that’s not true but I find I have very “important” Aries relationships but I can’t say I have contant Aries companions. I have dear, close Aries friends. Aries people occupy key spots in my heart. I just don’t hang around with Aries people much or rather they don’t hang around with me. All my Aries bonds have been fast and furious for the most part. That is to say that they were established quickly, in a few days and, though I might consider a great many Aries folk loving fixtures in my life, I mainly experience them from afar. Proximity seems to be counterproductive to our getting along. I seem to be very quickly turned into audience and I’m not all that good at nodding or screwing up my face into a scrunch of affectionate validation.

Seriously, I suggest to anyone reading this to use this next month ahead to align with the energetic estate of the sign of the Ram. The Golden Fleece was stolen by Jason from a grove sacred to the god Ares (Mars). The whole metaphor of that quest is one of self-propulsion (if not fulfillment). Aries energy is headstrong, initiatory, ignitive, adrenal, muscular. It isn’t necessarily about follow-through. It’s about intention, which should be pure. Who are you? What is your purpose? For what should you quest? These are Aries questions. If the answers are dunno, dunno and bagel with a schmear, you have some work to do. The work mightn’t be easy but it is basic. That is to say, you just have to get your head screwed on properly and try not to deviate from what you see as your prime objective.

Aries people are the best at this. Which is why they don’t seem to much take into account what you’re doing. They approach life (and love, too) like a battering Ram. But I love that about them, the little lambs. Mary had a little one. You do realize that nursery rhyme is all about Jesus right? The lamb.  Easter. It falls into the sign of Aries. Pass the mint jelly.

So I use a lot of food imagery. So what.

Two years ago, I began this Cosmic Blague project of writing here daily for an entire year, after which I began a second year, only to throw in the towel not quite halfway through another turn around the whell. The thrust of year one was to meditate and muse upon the Sabian Symbols which are images, divined by a blind seer, that illumine the cosmic energy of the day slash astrological degree of the Zodiac. I can’t do that again—and yet I probably won’t completely avoid doing so. As with the aborted seconed year of this project I provided a link to the corresponding day. Here is that original post entitled “I’m A Homo Sabian Too”  (there is an introductory one that precedes corresponding to the Equinox.)

Yesterday morning we hit zero degrees of the Zodiac, the Spring Equinox, a time for new beginnings, but I wasn’t feeling very beginnerish. The first degree of the Zodiac’s Sabian symbol is “A Woman Just Risen from The Sea; A Seal is Embracing Her”. And, like Aphrodite/Venus, we all emerged fromt he Sea sign of Pisces into the birth sign of Aries—the Seal is a symobl and totem of dreams and imagination. We emerge from the misty dreams of Pisces with those reveries clinging to us still. Sometimes nightmares cling, too. Which is why I was rather reluctant to start this project once again: Because I haven’t been feeling all that optimistic as a result of universal external influences. But I’ve come to realize in the last twenty-four hours that this is all the more reason to commit again to this enterprise. We don’t always reenter into our experience suffused with dreamy inspiration—sometimes we have nightmares to shake and, yes, from which to learn.

I’m tempted to say that I won’t be mentioning certain people, or rather a specific person, in this Blague. He who must not be named indeed. But that would be unrealistic and counterproductive. We have to name the nightmare and that name is Trump. It’s a terrible name which is fitting. I think it’s important to name him because he is perhaps the last gasp of the patriarchy diminished to an orange mass of spoiled brattiness. He has done terrible things and we have only begun to learn the extent of them. But what struck me most sharply was his refusal to shake Angela Merkel’s hand. He will shake any man’s hand, even if he has made enemies with said man. But he won’t acknowledge a powerful woman. Trump, I’ve come to infer, has mother issues.

The woman rising from the Sea, each year, with the first tick of the Wheel, is a reminder that Nature, both Earthy and Cosmic, is Female. She is the source of life. She is the dream from which we all emerge. The dream that is existence. We are figments of her imagination. We are details of her reveries. And some of us are terrors—tangerine dreams—errant emanations who have turned their back on the dreamer, whistling in the fleeting graveyard of a lifetime, imposing futile will, investing in their eternal retirement in hell. Ultimately powerless, such terrors must be checked, our recurring nightmares cured once and for all. We don’t do this by any other means than by examinine and excavating our own psychology, the traumas that give rise to ingrained patterns, repeating and repeating. That is not renewal. That is self abuse, self inflicted.

How can Trump be president you ask? Because that nightmare—a haunting, of the our collective negative behaviors that now torment our conscience—this is the demon of our own cultural creation. This is what we get for not being unerringly kind and kindred. Every time we turned a blind eye to racism, to sexism, to oppression, to greed, we had a hand in creating this coral hobgoblin. This is the slimy seal with which we have emerged this time around the Wheel and its best not to ignore it but to shine the brightest light upon its salmon skin. In full glare of loving and compassionate activism It will dissolve like Capn Crunch in the milky environment of true Mother Love, the witholding thereof being the ultimate culprit for this sleazy condition in which we uneasily, temporarily find ourselves.

Autum Path II by William Carroll

It’s not like I don’t have enough (writing) to do, but I must bring back the Cosmic Blague as a daily practice, now, if only for my own sanity. And maybe some bits of yours. Let’s hope. The knee jerk reaction is: Today is a dark day. And in large part that is true. That said, it also feels like an opportunity to stop doing things the same way and expecting different results—the definition of insanity. My first go-round of the Cosmic Blague was in exploration of the Sabian Symbols. I will link to those former posts corresponding to the degree-point on the astrological wheel for each day; but I’m not going to get into to that. I hope the remain helpful—you’ll tell me—but I can’t go back and read them at this juncture. I must be all forward movement. Though I do think the title of today’s Sabian Symbol does match that sentiment.

Trump won the presidency a few short hours ago. I have moved from shock to a sort of quiet resolve not to watch any cable news—I will watch Judy Woodruff on PBS and that’s about it. I’ve not just had enough of the constant news coming from the television screen or the screen on which I’m currently typing this. I’m in a sense tired of my own blind optimism, not just on a grand scale, but in my own life as well. As I type this I am awaiting responses from a number of emails from “friends and colleagues” who are keeping me in a holding pattern. And with this sentence I release them. And the next: Anybody whom I empowered with decision making over any subsequent next moves in my life is hereby absolved of that responsibility. I’m doing it for myself. And I’m chasing noone.

I feel for Hillary. I feel for Bernie. I feel for Stella. I feel for anyone like myself who invested time and energy and upper-case Hope in an outcome over which we had scant control. We voted. We did our best. We lost. That’s the reality. And though the way my molecules feel newly arranged today was not of my choosing, it is so. I am not just mourning the lost of this election, I am mourning a large part of myself, whom I was, and whom I shall never be again. And for that I’m strangely thankful.

Mars entered Aquarius this morning and so we shall probably see a great deal of anger and revolt played out on large scale—in protests and demonstrations—as well as unrest and upheaval shifting to humanity at large. Paradoxically, as Americans voted narrowly for isolationism, they have thrust themselves onto the world stage, no longer safe within the bubble of some shining mansion on the hill. We are no longer a beacon. We are evidence of undereducation. Nothing romantic about it. Just the plain truth: We are two nations. Unfortunately, the other nation here all turned out to rally around a common orange cause from their rural strongholds. While much of our nation stayed at home in their cities, failing to get out the vote as they did, twice, for the now present lame duck president. But what are you going to do.

I’m certainly not going to spend a second longer than I have to feeling bad about myself or what is assuredly a sorry state of affairs. Fuck it. I’m going to go higher in my personal and would-be shared aspirations and and I’m going to sit deeper into self-reliance and purposeful solitude. I have a profession with many prongs, the first of which is helping others over hurdles via my combined talents as an expert astrologer and metaphysician and as an intuitive with powers that pass through me and to which I can claim no award—as to do so, I suspect, would dull them. And nothing makes me happier or lifts me out of a blue mood (or a would-be deep abyss) more readily than giving of myself to clients who benefit from the work I do as honorably as I might.

I am also a creative. I am an author. I am a writer of all sorts. I am also a performer and an actor, not being one and the same. I love to sing and play music and write and perform things that make people think and make them laugh. I also have other talents that I’ve used for personal and professional purposes. But I say now, with Mars in Aquarius, sneaking up on my natal Moon, that I am going to be far more selective in my work as a producer and promoter of other peoples; and far mor indulgent in arts and crafts that I do in the privacy of my home which, I’m grateful to say, has enough rooms in which I can steal myself away.

I am fortunate. I am fortunate because I made myself fortunate. I am reliant on nobody else for my peace and happiness which is why even the slightest self-destructive move can cause more devestation to me than others. I cannot phone anything in or just subsist and let weekly paychecks roll in. I have to be a warrior. And today, as the warrior Mars is in the reformational sign of Aquarius, that of new orders, I am examining what that means to me, foremost, with a tertiary glance, perhaps, at what that means for the world. I am a  warrior for myself. The path is indeed illuminated as the script of the below Sabian Symbol suggests. But it is illuminated not by blind faith. It is illuminated by my determination. I am a warrior for myself. Then for my loved ones, who are few. Then for my clients, my readers, my audience such as it is.  People say all shall be revealed. That’s great. I prefer to be the revelation. Armageddon? It only means a drawing back of the veil. The veil—the parting clouds of Iris’ rainbow over which we go, the rainbow colored veils of Salome—are endemic to the sign of Aquarius (John the Baptist being one personification of the Water Bearer). Mars rips through the veils and I say: Shred that shit up. I’m thankful for my illusions having been removed. It potentially only makes my own path clearer.

For my past musing on the Sabian Symbol at Scorpio 18° “A Path Through Woods Rich in Autumn Coloring” click Here

It’s been about five months since I last posted here, which is fine, as it was becoming more of a habit read: compulsion. So the break has been good. And I suppose I’ve been subconsciously waiting for impetus to post again. Today I’m meant to be focussing on a project but I am procrastinating, or rather, as I like to call it, productivating—doing something worthwhile instead of the task listed on my to-do list. But I feel I need to write my way into that project and besides something did occur a few days ago that felt like a shift on an unseen level.

It was November 4 and quite cold out. I was running errands in Boston after producing a show in Cambridge the evening before. I got into the car and Stella, knowing that I can freak out about “bugs” (though I can’t kill a fly—going out of my way to shoo them out a door), quietly said: So not a big deal and you can pull the car over, but there is a grass hopper on your arm. Great. Now, even in that moment I knew it was a benign presence—not like a tarantuala or anything—but still I wanted it off me fairly readily and did pull over and calmly exited the car and shook out my jacet whereupon a white-ish grasshopper lept for a safe landing.  I hope it was safe in any case.

So if you were to Google grasshopper symbolism you will discover what I’ve discovered, which is how this is all about good fortune, glad tidings, longevity/immortality, nobility, abundance, forward moving and thinking. It’s about intuition and heeding inner voices. Its appeal to artists is highlighted as it sings and dances, you might say. And it symbolizes connection with our Muse. I’m down for that. Apparently the grasshopper choses innovators, a tribe among which I count myself, for better or for worse (signs show that imitators are more well-heeled than innovators, generally speaking). But its all about feeling your way forward and allowing for good news, if not being it.

We think of turning a corner in life but really the corner turns us. We can stay pinioned to the past or we can leap forward, visualizing with our antennae, which can reveal far more keenly than that which our eyes can see. We cannot become stagnant. Momentum can be momentous, if we go moment to moment. The future is now…now…now. The past is a shadow of nostalgia and regret and it’s gone. It’s a singular journey, which is most challenging for someone who tends to champion others. For me, I’m afraid, this is truly over. Self-propulsion is now what’s called for.

Here‘s the Sabian Symbol reading, from last year,  for this date

Taurus 16°(corresponding to May 5, 2016)

(For last year’s meditation on the Sabian Symbol for this degree:  click here)

As I negotiate new projects against a desire to keep this Blague going I will be offering up some bits of ready made text. Here are some reviews by Library Journal and Publishers Weekly for Sextrology dating back to 2004. I love the fact they seriously review this book and mention anal sex.

FROM THE CRITICS

Library Journal

“While many astrologists lump the genders together under the signs, Starsky and Cox, who consult private clients in New York City, here separate the very different male and female qualities. For each of the 12 signs, there is a corresponding chapter that includes subchapters on men and women. Both genders are described in three ways: “Sign + Mind” covers general personality traits, “Body + Soul” indicates eerily accurate physical attributes and modes of expression, and “Sex + Sexuality” details sexual attitudes and behavior, the feature that is the most fun. These descriptions are accurate and entertaining, even encompassing gay and lesbian sexuality. The result is an extremely engaging, detailed book; readers will easily recognize themselves and their loved ones. Libraries that own Linda Goodman’s classic Love Signs will want this winner, a strong candidate for a Valentine’s Day display.-Marija Sanderling, Wells, ME (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.”

Publishers Weekly

“Juicy, gossipy and occasionally titillating, this astrology guide by New York authors Starsky & Cox explores the zodiac signs “from the perspective of gender, sexual identity and sexual behavior.” The authors contend that each astrological sign actually contains two signs-one male and one female-and that men and women of the same sign often manifest their sign’s energy in opposite fashions. Thus, a Capricorn man may be “an unadulterated sybarite who puts the pursuit of pleasure and laughs first in life” while his female counterpart usually sees life as “a long, hard road that requires pacing and careful negotiation.” Determined to give each sex its due share, the authors divide their book into 24 chapters (Aries Man, Aries Woman, Taurus Man, etc.). Each chapter contains a psychological profile of the sign, an analysis of the sign’s physical attributes and expressions and a description of the sign’s sexual attitudes and behavior. This last section can often be quite explicit, describing not only romantic ideals and compulsions but also specific positions and fetishes. In discussing Scorpio’s sexuality, for example, the authors declare that “of all the women in the zodiac, Scorpio may be the most open to anal sex.” In addition to the usual lists of famous sign natives, Starsky & Cox pepper their chapters with allusions to movies and books, artists and writers-J.D. Salinger, Matthew Barney, Sylvia Plath-making this book a good choice for stargazing bookworms and artists. Also notable is their decision to consider both straight and gay relationship matches. In their introduction, the authors declare that the zodiac is “a mandala of human existence,” and their book gives readers a chance to contemplate that mandala in all its variations. (Feb.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.”

Buy Sextrology

Copyright 2016 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Taurus 15°(corresponding to May 4, 2016)

(For last year’s meditation on the Sabian Symbol for this degree:  click here)

After a recent discourse on belonging, I attended an annual party I enjoy so much. Not only are the hosts super gracious but the guests, many of whom I haven’t see but at this party once a year, make for a wonderful mix; and there was an unspoken sense that this group does enjoy some cohesion at this point, based on the serial coming-together year on year.

Many moons ago, in New York City, we could throw a party and it would be pretty packed. Our NYC life, that was something quite throbbing twenty years ago, surely dissolved as so many friends have left the city, either to have kids or to strike out on their own in parts unknown. I still have friends who can send out a tweet for a party and hundreds would show—that’s not me—but it is nice to be able to be a guest in these cases.

It does add up to one’s sense of Value to be included and to made to feel you do Belong. At this point it’s probably that London is the singular location where most close friends reside. But I don’t get there as often as I’d like. I guess it comes down to the fact that we used to do the majority of hosting, something we haven’t done in probably a decade. I miss playing the host but the places where we live are necessarily where we know people.

This time of year does serve a reminder that it’s important not to isolate and to cultivate your garden of friends and relations. It’s partcularly challenging for me.

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