Whenever I see the word banquet, I immediately think of the sign of Sagittarius. The outsized Auntie Mame, for instance, with her “life is a banquet” delcaration is the very emblem of the (female) Sagitarrian psyche that sees the world as an abundant place, and we’ve employed the fictional(ized) Mame Dennis as an archetype of the sign. So when I awake to find that the oracle for today at Cancer 15, ruled, in a twelve-fold sequence, by Sagittarius, is: In A Sumptuous Dining Hall Guests Relax After Partaking Of A Huge Banquet, it provides a small sense of divine order and faith in my imposing this twelve-fold overlay. It is an image of certain substantial fulfillment which, perhaps ironically, comes on the heels of yesterday’s image of a very old man staring down a vast darkness.

I have always been curious how the sign of Sagittarius, whose symbol is the third-eyed shape-shifting centaur-sage, is associated with material wealth, being ruled by over-the-top planet Jupiter. Grandeur and delusions thereof. What I’ve always cited was a sort of reverse snobbery; as if material abundance, in the form of wealth, was to be pooh-poohed in the larger scope of plenitude. Why? Abundance is abundance, no matter on which metaphysical plane it might manifest. Billionaires like Warren Buffett (whose name is akin to buffet) or J.K. Rowling or many others who take great pains to transform their material bounty into the morally uplifiting or spiritual sort is proof in the pudding that abundance, in the form of a bankroll, can be a mighty means for proliferating plenty on every human level.

Maybe this is what stems from gazing into that vast darkness of yesterday. It strikes me now that that image was also one of pure meditation. And what might have been gleaned in mediation was the sense that the universe, which is expanding (Jupiter energy), is essentially abundant. So what can a(n also) mere mortal do but try to echo that spiritual abundance in the material world. This is where that reverse snobbery comes in: Some look down on those who live abundantly and, yes, of course there is conspicuous consumption and waste (the shadow side of the Sagittarian experience, which is why it is followed by Saturn-ruled Capricorn, the energy of conservation, to reel in that glut); but I find, in my own experience, that those who go out of their way to deride the haves are those who have a have-not mentality, don’t see the world as naturally abundant and who, given half the chance, would be the greediest of gluttons if their poverty flipped to the opposite polarity.

Ancient Sanskrit Chant of Abundance :
Om Gum Shrim Maha Lakshmi Yei Swaha

Yes I understand the evils of gentrification. I fight it every day in my own experience. But I also believe that abundance in any form is not only not an evil, I think it is all our birthright. And I believe it begins on the spiritual plane. We must see with our Sagittarian third eye that the universe is bountiful. The rich douche-bag for whom nothing is ever enough—all of us have a Mr. Potter, from It’s A Wonderful Life, in our own. That person is the poor sucker who is starving to death even though his own bankroll could strangle a bull. Why? Because he can’t enjoy what he has. Why? Because he can’t share it. Why? Because he doesn’t see himself as an agent or vehicle for the bounty. The buck, literally, stops there. Oh he might pretend to share, but there will be strings attached. How many of us can do what our friend J.K. Rowling does and not only give so much money away but work tirelessly in charitable endeavors, helping the disenfranchised and underprivileged and forgotten, sharing the wealth so that more of us might come to see that not only is the world an abundant place but we are the catalysts and conduits thereof.

The banquet is metaphoric. But can also be real and that’s okay too. So long as everyone goes home with a doggy bag.

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I have had the joy slash made the mistake of trying to explain to a live audience what the procession of the equinoxes entails, that which defines the Ages—we are transitioning from the Piscean to the Aquarian age—each age lasting two thousand and some odd years, such that we would work through a cycle of all the ages in about twenty-six thousand years. This is related to today’s oracle at Cancer 14° A Very Old Man Facing A Vast Dark Space To The Northeast, the keynote of which is: Fulfillment in transcending and changeless wisdom. Here, let Dane Rudhyar confuse you further:

” In occult terminology the northeast is the direction from which spiritual-cosmic forces enter the Earth-sphere. This is probably because the polar axis of the Earth is inclined by some 23 degrees away from the exact perpendicular to the plane of its orbit. Thus the actual pole of our globe not only differs from the permanent pole of the Earth’s orbit, but constantly changes its direction, successively pointing to several large “circumpolar” stars during the so-called processional cycle (or “tropical year,” or Great Polar Cycle), which lasts somewhat less than 26,000 years. Because of this inclination of the polar axis, we have the phenomenon of seasonal change. Supposedly during the early Golden Age no such change occurred; a “perpetual spring” reigned. This is the (traditionally) spiritual state.”

You’ve heard some astrolgists, and detractors of the art, tell you how we are no longer aligned with certain signs at certain times, or that there is some thirteenth sign. Well that’s true, in a sense, for a time. But we are not concerned with the post-it notes of the constellations (which due change over the 26,000 years only to return to their original position) but the energies they are meant to mark which are immutable. The point is that even our system of the zodiac is in a state of circular motion, but it isn’t, I assure in a state of flux. Seen from outside time and space, the particular shifts are rather insignificant, give a take a few 26,000 years.

The Old Man knows this. He comes from that spiritual state of perpetual spring, just like the mythical Saturn, whose son Zeus overthrew him, ruler the Golden Age, before duality or duplicity entered into existence. In simple terms, the wise old man is an archetypal figure inherent in all mythologies, as, it is meant to be, in life. He is faces true north not that which is subject even to cosmic reorientation—that there is something even more permanent, essential and immutable than the movement of the planets or stars. This is the vast dark space he faces. It is no surprise, thus, that this symbol is ruled by Scorpio in a twelve-fold sequence. In contrast to the previous sign of Libra (Light), Scorpio is Darkness but we must explore the paradoxical nature of this dichotomy just as we look at the obvious meanings in the polarity: Libra can be the world of appearances, thus illusory, whilst Scorpio can point to the unseen, mysterious but essential and inalienable. Scorpio is ruled by Pluto god of death and god of riches, the lord of the underworld which is at once abyssmal and yet where the worlds riches (gems) are buried. The “dark space” might be thought of as death, whilst Scorpio and it’s 8th astrological house speak in terms of regeneration, rebirth, reincarnation, cycles, upon cycles. Even the number 8, mysterious like the mystic eight ball, forms the shape of the lemniscate, a symbol for infinity, endlessly looping. So the “vast dark space” isn’t, in this vernacular, a void, emptiness, but something where truth and meaning are revealed, at least, to the wise who cast their case their or “face” the unknown so it might be knowable.

Scientific discussions on dark matter not withstanding, we do know that the opposite of a star that burns brightly, becoming a supernova, before it dies and becomes a black hole, is one and the same, thus with that void. Ultimate light and ultimate darkness being two incarnations of that same stellar experience. It’s the same with us. We may burn brightly as stars in our world but we rarely gain wisdom in doing so. If anything the wisdom comes when we are not squinting in the limelight but on the other side of our shiningest moments, when we are facing down our own fears or void or what have you. Rudhyar speaks of “that apparent Darkness which is an intense Light invisible to our senses.”

Ever since I was a child I wanted to travel north and east. Boston and New England beckoned as did the northern cities of Europe. They still do. I used to have this vision, this hope, this dream of meeting a really old man, an alchemist, someone who may have transcended the cycle of life and death. I still do. Only now I also see this figure as being one and the same with myself. If I’m on a journey toward wisdom I know that i have taken a single step on a road of infinite leaps. At the same time I’ve never felt so convinced of the fact that we either all live forever in various forms or that we reincarnate. But I’m almost certain there is no death, just as the Zodiac says, only regeneration. I feel like I’ve been having some brushes with so-called disaster as of late but what is dis-aster but the coming apart of those very stars, a symbol of ultimate fame and achievement, which we know collapse upon themselves in Time. But what do they do outside of It?

The best way to become wise is to wise up to ourselves. I find that my own patterns of so-called mistakes generally derive from my inability to transcend, oh I dunno, certain bad habits or desires the indulgence of which only ever seem to cause me more pain than joy, even if the goal was pleasure, or indeed, especially so. So what I’m thinking is that you have to transcend first. You don’t achieve transcendence just be sitting around hoping and wishing, and certainly not by indulging in all the temptation that the limelight might bring you. Transcendence isn’t the end, it’s the means by which it breeds itself. I can have my vision of some wise old man with white hair whom I might magically encounter in some northern European city, an alchemist who will take me under his wing and impart all the wisdom I might be able to take in. Or I can be that man myself and, like any true alchemist “get the lead out” in my own journey toward true north, the true light hiding in all the density of darkness.

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The power of the will in shaping character is the key note of the oracle at 13° Cancer, A Hand With A Prominent Thumb Is Held Out For Study. This is ruled by Libra in a twelve-fold sequence and, if you’re read our book Sextrology, you’ll know that the Libra Man chapter is entitled The Character, pointing to that sign’s focus on the development of personality shaped by principle, asserting the notion that we are whom we become.

We think of Leo people as being the most wilfull, indeed the sign’s motto is “I will” and it’s planetary ruler, the Sun, rules the will (just as the Moon rules the want) among other things. But, and perhaps this is why, men of these signs especially clash: Libra has just a strong a will as Leo only it is focussed on the mental, ideological plain, such that Libra people come to embody their principles, which can smack a Leo as phony or pretentious. But we are in the sign of Cancer, I know, you needn’t remind me.

What I love about meditating and musing on the Sabian Symbols divining/assigning governance over each of them in turn by the twelve signs of the zodiac in sequence, is how we see the complexity of any given sign in the influence other sign’s have over it. Perhaps Cancerians born on this day are rather Libra like compared to their fellow Moonchildren. Maybe they embody more character or are indeed more willfull and self-determined. Food for thought.

It is interesting to note that “the thumb” in palmistry is the will. And we can only truly express our character by means of a determinant will. If, when reading an individual’s chart we see this particular point in ones astrological wheel being effected we might understand that a strong will is necessary in regard to the situation. We know that our will is expressed by either a thumbs up or a thumbs down. Dane Rudhyar says that the original symbol suggested that the thumbe was “slightly flexed” which would indicate some versatility in regard to will. I do think character is more apt to be developed through ones own flexibility, being more the willow then the oak. Rigidity can be a character defect. And I think there is far more room for spiritual development if we put our will in service of our destiny in so far as that relates to living life on life’s terms.

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A Chinese Woman Nursing A Baby Whose Aura Reveals Him To Be The Reincarnation Of A Great Teacher is, in a twelve-fold sequence, the Virgo-ruled oracle for 12° Cancer. Symbolically it represents inherent or latent value in an experiece, the revelation of it’s deeper meaning. In the preceding symbol we needed to laugh at pomposity, to take well-known personalities down a peg; here we have the opposite experience, in the undeveloped being, a babe, who doesn’t have a great put-on personality but an inherent power and importance. Just as we are the pompous figure needing the piss taken out of us; we are also all potentially enlightened (or at the least, enlightenable) beings. In this case the baby is an avatar of a great teacher; the notion of Virgoan service being intrinsic in that role.

Dane Rudyar feels that the Chinese nationality of the woman might be a mistake. That the psychic Elsie Wheeler who divined these symbols might have seen a Tibetan woman. I think it is of little importance other than we are meant to understand the eastern provenance of the image where reincarnation, the most occult manifestation of a cycle of life, is espoused most readily. We might ask ourselves what our true purpose might be or why it is we were (re)incaranted into this life. To what are we in service. What have we to give or to offer. Surely we aren’t meant to be just big personalities needing a good toppling from the worldly pedestal on which we might find ourselves plopped—our true greatness is spiritual greatness which the form of the baby cannot bely. Our great personalities are indeed masks that might cover our latent power. Can we let yesterday’s oracle provide catharsis and strip away our pride so we can be, metaphorically speaking, as naked as a babe, that we might glean deeper, essential purpose to our being?

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A Clown Caricaturing Well-Known Personalities is the oracle today at 11° Cancer. We need not take ourselves so seriously. In fact we might do well to bring ourselves down a peg or two. Humor is a powerful means of letting the steam out of pomposity just as it is a tool for tackling social ills. We are all fallible and we all make mistakes. It’s important to laugh at ourselves and this symbol is a good reminder of the fact. We can be the clown and mock our own aspects of self that smack of some form or other of superiority. It is interesting to note that this oracle is ruled by Leo in a twelve-fold sequence. Leo is associated with fame and being the center of attention. It is also, in its link with the astrological fifth house, about fun and amusement and men (or boys) of the sign are often class clowns, a form of bucking authority. Like crying (associated with the sign of Cancer, cardinal-water, tears) laughter, part of the Leo estate, also provides catharsis. We may have been conditioned to be high and mighty, and we certainly want to have a healthy ego, however self-deprecation in small doses can let the steam out of outsized egos.

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My hundredth post at 10° Cancer: A Large Diamond In The First Stages Of The Cutting Process. It is about the training for perfection in the manifestation of an ideal. I don’t have much to say on the subject today. It’s not exactly triggering ideas. So I think i’ll let it be today and move onto the next symbol.
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It really does boggle the mind sometimes how seamlessly these symbols fall in line with the twelve-fold sequence of the Zodiac. Yesterday we mused upon the Taurus-ruled image of the Garden’s favorite inhabitants, the bunnies, Taurus (fixed-earth) being akin to blissful Edenic existence; and today we turn to an oracle that would be ruled by Gemini, at Cancer 9°, that of A Small, Naked Girl Bends Over A Pond Trying To Catch A Fish the keynote of which is “the first naïve quest for knowledge and for an ever-elusive understanding of life”, the exact aim of Eve and Adam that saw them expelled from said Garden. Gemini’s motto is “I think,” and it is the a curious and provocative sign. The girl in the image is naked because she is still in her Edenic state, on the brink, perhaps of a fall of the personal kind, if not wholesale, from grace. And yet reach out she does to catch the fish which symbolizes the comprehension of life which is a rather slippery affair. The pond represents the pool of said comprehension which is as yet small and contained.

We can ask ourselves what the value is in reaching out in this matter, in our small ways, into the unfathomable. The key here is the mind of the girl which is fresh and unjaded. We must all rid ourselves of preconceived notions to have a pure experience in any form of mind expansion or acquisition of knowledge. What new thing will you allow yourself to learn today with this kind of unfiltered interest? Full understanding might paradoxically require ridding ourselves of past knowledge that leads to expectations. We should be fresh, at all times, to any new opportunity for wisdom or understanding. And I don’t just see knowledge as coming from an external source. I see the pond as a realm of inner knowledge into which we might reach to catch hold of some inner truth. Indeed all that we need to learn from our outside experience might very well be found within us.
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Nothing would have prepared me for today’s oracle at Cancer 8°: A Group Of Rabbits Dressed In Human Clothes Walk As If On Parade. I love the idea of this, don’t get me wrong. The surreality suits my head today. And of course the interpretation is “the tendency in all forms of life to imitate higher forms as a stimulus to growth.” I think people with pets will agree that their furry friends do seem at times as if they are striving to emulate their owners. And last evening on PBS there was a show about Crested Black Macaques entitled “The Funkiest Monkeys” thematically hooked on how similar they are to we humans (so people should stop killing and eating, yes eating, them). But where does that leave us. I have ideas.

Let’s pick up where we left off with our hippy lord and savior Jesus Christ. He and others like Buddha and the saints and any enlightened being are human incarnations for us to emulate. But we can find examples closer in reach: People in our own lives who express themselves as naturual exemplars. I for one happen to be married to such a person. But there are others with whom we come in contact, intimately or casually, that embody being further up the metaphorical food chain. We, as seekers, sometimes actively, well, seek out, such individuals—I find this can be problematic and lead to landing an imperfect guru—while, as seeker, I think it best to be actively open to allowing such an individual to manifest in ones life. Ye olde “when the student is ready the teacher will appear” adage. And of course, we might all play the role of enlightened being to anyone else at any time. It comes down to ego, typically. Being too attached to that tiny word with the swelled sense of self-importance is a recipe for finding oneself at the low-end of said metaphoric human food chain.

This symbol, set in the sign of Cancer, would be ruled by Taurus in a twelve-fold sequence. And I think of Taurus as the guardian, warden energy of the Zodiac, particularly in regard to our earthly existence as it is one and the same with the heavenly. Taurus (fixed-earth) is the Garden. It’s Eden. And it is suffused with the energy of innocence and, yes, ignorance as it is tantamount to bliss. (The following sign of Gemini signifies the Fall from this state of being via “consciousness”, characterized as duality—right v. wrong, naked v. clothed, good v. evil, mortal v. immortal—Gemini’s motto is “I think”.) Still ,Taurus’ own polarity is hinged on being blissed out v. oblivious to the reality of suffering. Taurus, with it’s motto “I have”, is about appreciating what positive attributes are in our possession that would make one’s garden grow, Mary. In that garden, we are meant to be fruitful and multiply, remember.

Rabbits are symbols of abundance, comfort, vulnerability, fertility, sentiment, desire and procreation which reads like a laundry list of Taurus attributes as well. No other animal feels the acute effects of Mother Earth’s cycles, especially the advent of Spring (the return of the Earth to its garden state) when these critters are “madder than a March hare” in their exuberance and excitement, which includes the libidinous form. They are surely prolific, perhaps knowing somewhere that, due to their great vulnerability and their peaceful, blissed out natures, they are prey for so many other animals upwards on the actual food chain. Be fruitful and multiply because most of you are going to be picked off. But in this oracle they aren’t poised to run and hide in their warrens, they are on parade which is adorable, yes, but also suggests a certain solidarity in numbers. Now, it was pride weekend in New York and in many places around the globe this weekend, extra fueled by signs of human evolution via the passing of the Marriage Equality Act here in these United States.

There was a time here when, and it still exists in places today, where, walking in a gay pride parade would make one as vulnerable as a bunny in a street lined with wolves and coyotes. And so a parade of bunnies suggest that evolution is embodied not only by the participants in the parade but in the spectators on the sidelines. When the lion sleeps with the lamb. Isn’t that the very emblem of returning to the Garden? I think of Blanche Dubois saying to her sister Stella: “Don’t hang back with the brutes.” Meaning: Evolve, sister! Evolve! So mote it be.

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Just one week ago Stella and I were preparing to perform our show at Joe’s Pub on the Solstice which was a tribute to the Moon and we referenced A Midsummer Night’s Dream and even performed a bit of it for a sketch with Patrick Johnson and Phoebe Legere (Moon Light) playing Puck and Fairy who meet in a wood near Athens. The pair of celestial clowns Shakespeare sends in is followed by another, Titania and Oberon, monarchs of the nature spirit realm. “Ill met by moonlight proud Titania,” is the fairy king’s first line to his estranged queen. The intersecting plots of fairies and humans speak to the vapor thin veil between the worlds, perhaps particularly, at this time of the year. In Summer, beginning with the sign of Cancer on a moonlit summer night, there is no better time to imagine the world alive with nature spirits; it’s actually hard to imagine it isn’t. And, as last week was was a hazy transition from shock to post trauma, performing seems but a dream. Then again, there are those who suggest that the whole of life is but one too.

I do believe in fairies. It’s one of the things I can’t not do. Then again I’m wont to see the animate in everything, inferring spirit and personality in a chair or china cup. The notion that the Sabian Symbol for the day marks a fresh start, through the Zodiac, in a twelve-fold sequence is fitting. Aries presides over today’s oracle at 7° Cancer, Two Nature Spirits Dancing Under Moonlight, “the play of invisible forces in all manifestations of life.” And though Aries and the first astrological house rule the body, it is more accurate to say that the sign rules physical embodiment, for it is the sole cardinal-fire sign of the Zodiac, fire signifying spirit and cardinal meaning premier, primal and initiatory. Thus Aries is akin to a spark of life, the animating force. Aries people personify that sparky energy. Cancer people feel it most accutely. And so their magical superpower lies in their gut intincts and intuition. And their ruler Moon is the amplifyer of all things mystic, astral and etheric.

Are there occult forces at work behind all vital processes? Who’s to say. I have felt quite strongly at times that there are; and other times the notion eludes me. But the fairy world is an elusive one; their stories are often thematically hinged on that concept. You may slip into fairy land quite accidentally, but you might not get back to Wonderland or Narnia or Oz or Brigadoon or wherever Darby O’Gill saw those little people. Now let’s look at all of this as a metaphor for Creative Imagination. The trick and the goal is always to marry our dreams and our ideals with everyday reality, to live the dream: To understand that what you wish for is animated by the spark of the wish itself and what fans it into fire is belief, in yourself and in the dream. One positive result of having gone down a bit of a rabbit hole this past week is that I emerged with a newly improved dream. And I do believe in fairies because it’s my own nature to personify spirit(s), to assign personality. It’s a Libra thing, trust me.

It’s also why I can talk about the natural spirit energy that animates each of the astrological signs through the personification of archetypes, which is a life long passion and a never ending story of discovery. Elves and fairies are akin to the lesser gods of our mythology and they do embody field and stream and orchard and river and hilltop and wood and meadow and tree and flower just as more chief deities work their archetypal energy through we humans. We are not just people but personifications of energy. I try to hit this fact home in every show I ever perform and it tends to go over people’s heads or overloads them somewhat. I suppose it’s not typical cabaret fare. But the fact is that believing in fairies and spirits, allowing oneself to sense, feel or even see them as some have is tantamount to exercising your imagination rather vigorously. So if nothing else believing in fairies is good for your creative health. Imaging is just dreaming while awake.

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Cancer 6° is ruled by Pisces in a twelve-fold sequence. The oracle is Game Birds Feathering Their Nests and it’s about an instinctual dedication of self to new forms of life. Pisces is the womb-tomb the opposite facing fish pointing to that proverbial two-way street, life-death, creation-destruction, cyclical not linear, like all things under cosmic rule. I am not a parent in the literal sense nor do I have any desire to be. For me, any new life form would be a reincarnation of self, not in the sense of past and future lives (although I have recently reaffirmed my belief in this) but in terms of reinvention in this lifetime. I have emerged from recent difficulties and mishaps with a new vision of self which was almost exactly like my prior vision only with more flair and no half measures. As well, though I believed I had mastered the notion that “what other people think about you is none of your business” recent events have hit home that thought-form to such an extent that it seems to live in my bones. To be great is to be misunderstood. And I suppose there is nothing like a brush with death to make one realize what’s important in life and what isn’t. I am thus dedicated to bringing up the baby who resides inside of me. A new wave of life is cresting within and I know that I shall give new life to others by giving to myself. Yesterday was such a miraculous day with the Supreme Court deciding in favor of marriage equality—a miracle because of those who dedicated their lives and perhaps didn’t live to see this happening. But it starts with the personal and then moves to the universal. What is worth giving life to, of benefit to the many, starts with doing right by oneself. We joke about how the LGBTQ community might still continue to add letters to that marquee, whilst the B will still remain silent. I’ve been a fairly loud voice for the B over the years or have tried to be, though there isn’t as much support out there from either the gay or straight communities. In terms of gender equality, we more readily understand fluidity and that we can’t strictly always strictly label people, male or female; likewise, in regard to sexuality, not all of us fall into strictly gay or straight camps. And gender does come into play here too because, we as a society don’t seem to much care if a woman is bisexual, in fact it seems to add to her mystique; yet bisexual men have always gotten a terrible rap when in fact the world is probably, ironically, overpopluted with them…us.

I believe, and say so in our writing and to the press, that transgenderism is part and parcel of our present evolution and I believe it’s the same with bi or pansexuality. The notion that people can’t be attracted to both sexes has always seemed ridiculous to me. Of course it’s my experience so it would. It’s a sad paradox that the most ardent proponents of gay rights often seem to be the biggest detractors of bisexuality. In a movement toward living label free, why are folks so hung up on this? Because it’s not their experience? Well, being gay wasn’t straight society’s experience these past centuries which added up to persecution of gay people. If you’re gay and “don’t believe in bisexuality” then you’re just as much an oppressor as any straight who found your gayness to be a lie or a disease. You should mount a campaign, then, to have the B removed from the marquee. So long as you don’t, however, you must commit to acknowledging the existence of B people. But bisexuals and pansexuals are partly to blame for where they find themselves. Because they are attracted to both sexes it has been less a struggle for them to polarize in a straight direction and to, in a sense, “pass”. It wasn’t wholly displeasurable nor did it seem utter self-denial to do so, but of course it is. So long as bisexuals and pansexuals are casual about their existence, one can’t fully expect the world to take them seriously. Living in the gray area of the spectrum, in half-light, is a half-life.

The womb-tomb is where evolution happens. If we are evolving as a species then evolution happens on the whole with each subsequent birth of a generation. I think the Pisces fish, synonomous with the Jesus fish, points to the notion of a “new wo/man”, an enlightened and evolved being, a superhuman powered by love and transcendence and compassion as we see embodied in a Christ figure. I also think Jesus was a bisexual hippy who loved Mary Magdalene and “the beloved disciple” John the Evangelist. It was a total whatever situation and I think we can’t divorce the fluidity (opposite facing fish, floating in and floating out) of gender and sexuality from the characterization of an enlightened, evolved being. I don’t think you get to be Jesus if you’re a polarized personality. I understand how radicalized the gay community has had to be in order to fight the oppression of what has been a radically straight and homophobic society. Going to extremes has been an absolute necessity. Still, the original goal is acceptance and compassion, sweeping and ubiquitous. And it just might be time for the silent B people to come out of their cupboards and perhaps even take the lead, along with transgender individuals, in helping the larger LGBTQetc. crowd get beyond any existing dualities.

Personally, this past year, I have had to gravitate away from certain people who were playing the roles of good friends in my life, specifically gay friends, around whom I felt invisible because they sought to ignore and indeed deny my identification as a bisexual. I came out to my parents when I was seventeen years old and despite the fact that my father specifically could be seriously closed-minded and something of a bigot, they totally accepted and understood that this was central to my essential nature. The same holds true in my thirty-plus love relationship with my wife. I can’t divorce any part of myself from the reality of my sexual identification. I’m no spring chicken. So being open an honest about my sexuality to my largely straight male friends all through college and beyond wasn’t the norm for them, but I was never treated like the odd man out or made to feel less than. At times, even, I felt my straight friends applauded me and were intrigued and, who knows, maybe I made it more comfortable for them to accept any gray spectral areas in themselves. Really the only shade came from inside the house of the LGBT(Q) community. And, during the eighties and nineties up to the present, it wasn’t the best time to be perceived as someone who lived anywhere along the spectrum. Extreme times do call for extreme measures, and it’s hard for a person to get their brain around being extremely gray. It wasn’t the bisexual or pansexual who broke through that; it was the transgender individual who did so. But some of us have been living for a long time beyond the binary of sexual identity, mostly invisibly—again due to fault only of our own—while the transgender community has moved past the binary as relates to gender.

I do see evidence of sexual evolution. I believe that a great number of young people don’t feel the need to identify as gay or straight or even bi or pan. They just are. And if they find themselves attracted to members of the opposite or same sex at the same time or at different epocs in their young lives they seem not to judge themselves and therefore invite judgment let alone censure. These are my people. These are people. I like to think that ten or fifteen years ago when I would declare myself bisexual on stage in performance, for instance, that I might have helped them feel that much more at ease. When, in my late teens and twenties, I did the unthinkable and urged (forced?) my straight male friends to hug me hello and goodbye and kissed them on the cheeks that I had something to do with the fact that straight men hug it out all the time now. I think that maybe I have already in my personal history dedicated myself, in some small way, to creating and nurturing new life. I have endured more than my fair share of shade and hate and disdain and sneers and side glances and whispers and all the rest by the other letters in the marquee and it’s only made me stand taller (as much as I can at my height) and look sharper and love more and find increased compassion. I have often wanted to say: you are doing to me exactly what you claim heteroworld has done to you all your life: denying my existence and hating, hating, hating. I can take it but it’s not okay. Just as it’s not okay, I don’t believe, to be a closeted bi or pan person. Especially when sexism comes into it. When it’s Megan Fox or Olivia Wilde it’s okay; but when it’s Billie Joe Armstrong or Michael Chabon or Marlon Brando or Pete Shelley or Leonard Bernstein or Cary Grant or Josh Hutcherson or Pete Townsend it’s not? In an ironic turn of phrase: Bitch, please.

Sociologically, today’s oracle speaks to pioneering efforts dedicated to the building of a new culture. It is all about rebirth. And I dare say it’s about rebranding. These aren’t mere birds, remember, they are game birds; and I will stretch for the intended puns here in that I have a new game face on now, seeing that my own rebirth shall be characterized by a winning resolve; and I’m also game—willing, eager, thrilled—to help to create a brave new world wherein relics of the past with their dinosaur ideologies and twentieth century snark can all gather together and read each other, sharpening their teeth that this new world, not dog-eat-dog, no longer requires. There are no theme weeks or dark rooms in my paradisal vision. Just people doing stuff, adhering to the golden rule while doing it. I am suffused with love for all people. Now let’s feed the hungry, lift the poor, proliferate the arts, depopulate the prisons and educate everyone. That is the new-life dream is it not?

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