First I just need to say that the synchronicities are starting. I found yesterday’s oracle had a practicable takeaway, that is to say that The Serpent Coiling…, one interpretation of which is Kundalini energy coiled at the base of the spine, came in handy during yoga yesterday as I really focused on releasing it throughout the twenty-six postures, and especially the two breathings we do in Bikram. Then, at the end of the day, we went for a little stroll to get some air—I’ve been nursing a cold and it was finally warm enough to amble here in Boston—and I was just telling Stella how I was trying to work The Serpent Coiling… oracle into my yoga when, at that exact moment, under my feet, on the sidewalk of Commonwealth Avenue, this appeared in the concrete:

Needless to say it was an arresting signpost and I thought, a-ha, some cosmic validation.

Today’s symbol, for 15° Aries is An Indian Weaving a Ceremonial Blanket which I find uplifting on the whole. It feels like a little bit of magic which always invokes some Thoth cum Hermes cum Mercury energy, which would be apt if the third sign of Gemini had something in its bag of tricks relating to this day, date and degree. It feels fitting, given it’s “Holy Week” and those around us seem to be preparing for ceremonial holidays. Of all the Christian ones, Easter is most associated with special garments. The word vestment comes from the goddess Vesta (Greek: Hestia) and her devoted vestal virgins wore ceremonial garb as do most individuals, in most religions or magic or ritual practice. The Magician in the Tarot comes to mind as does Samantha in Bewitched—how I used to love it when she’d drop her housewife mantle and don her black robes; and of course it would have been the shaman of the tribe weaving that blanket, which was worn for life changing events, rites of passages, milestones, celebrations. So at this degree of Aries we are getting ready to ritualize experience. This means we are conscious of the importance of something impending, but we are also making it important in our weaving, real or metaphoric. We are fully participating in our experience, empowering ourself in that process.

The ceremonial blanket is something specific. Most notably, Native Americans from the Pacific Northwest as well as “plains Indians” created these wearable objects. They completely circled the individual, with no edges or seams showing, and they were particularly worn for ceremonial dances. Imagine an entire party of dancing people, all completely encircled in their blankets, ritually embroidered with stars and cosmic totems and imagery, the colorful designs lighted by a sacred fire, people spinning—as if humans were transforming themselves into pure spiritual form or particles of energy, a flash mob all decked out as string theory. Dane Rudhyar believes that Elsie Wheeler “produced” an “Indian” in this symbol because there was a need to stress an individual who lived more in harmony with the cosmos. That may be so, but I think it irrelevant. Both Jesus and Mary are spoken of as being seamlessly robed by the universe, the Milky Way, specifically. Mary is depicted as having three stars on her veil. Unlike the members of that “Indian”‘s tribe, we, the people, aren’t privy to so transplendently celestial a wardrobe, even on our highest holy days. I think that’s why the “Indian” was produced; because we have an example here of a culture who believed that a magical woven blanket could transport anyone, not just the priest in the pulpit or the Pope in his fancy silk robes, cap and slippers.

One cannot talk about weaving without speaking of fate. The Fates were weavers. Penelope wove and un-wove whilst waiting all those long years for Ulysses’ return. In the Libra Woman chapter of Sextrology we talk about The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, a nod to broderie, French for embroidery, and how that character, an archetype of that sign, weaves the fates of her girls, reciting Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shallot”, whose namesake is weaving at her loom all the while. Libra is the “high priestess” archetype, the white-witch Samantha Stevens of the Zodiac who does most poignantly embody the power that weaving figuratively implies—designing, intending, charming, spelling. The great Libran sage, Florence Scovel Shinn wrote the new-thought treatise Your Word is Your Wand, and indeed we weave with words just as we weave with imagery, in both ways, endowing the “work” with our intention. The ceremonial blanket is only made a power object by the weaver endowing it with that power with every turn of the loom or stitch of the thread. Stories are called yarns, are they not? We weave our plots and they can be simple or elaborate just as can be a multi-starred design on a robe or blanket meant to transport us to new heights, spiritual or otherwise.

Read Sextrology?

Copyright 2015 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.

I remind you that when Marc Edmund Jones and Elsie Wheeler produced the Sabian Symbols, he had numbered blank index cards and shuffled them and held each blank card up to Elsie with the number hidden on the back. Yesterday, with lucky symbol number thirteen, I pointed out the first repeat of the twelve zodiac signs’ association through this system of 360° as another potential Aries big bang of An Unexploded Bomb Reveals An Unsuccessful Social Protest and, voila, today’s oracle for 14° Aries is A Serpent Coiling Near A Man And A Woman, which is a Taurean fixed-earth Edenic image, so my theory of these sign-associations, in turn, continues to bear out. Needless to say there’s a lot going on in this image. It’s not a classic temptation scene of Eve and the Serpent, it’s more of an acceptance of that snake in the grass by both the essential male and female, yang and yin. Dane Rudhyar points to Ish and Isha (Adam and Eve’s Hebrew names, which, c’mon, are fabulous) as encountering not a tempter but an “individualizer” in the form of the snake. Only the couple got cold feet and didn’t go through with it. But in this image, the story is rewritten: Ish and Isha—seriously, these are going to be my new pronouns in referring to people—are totally down with their pet snake.

I see spiraling DNA, thus evolution, in this image; I see Kundalini, therefore enlightenment, in this image. In both senses we are pointing at unconscious, essential forces that reside within us, potential but perhaps dormant. In the case of Kundalini, which the Upanishads describe as being coiled at the base of our spine like a sleeping serpent, it is something to be awakened. In its best light, the serpent brought the gift of consciousness, it was only Ish and Isha who turned that into self-consciousness. Rudhyar sees the acceptance of relationship by polarized beings here, stating, “there must be polarization before there can be fulfillment.” And this is something we preach to our clients (especially when we encounter planetary oppositions in their charts) as we find it to be a universal principle. Just as the presence of paradox in our experience often points to a breakthrough or breakout moment, involving some kind of awakening.

As an author who loves to explore the connection between the sexy and the sublime, the so-called gutter and the stars, the notion that unconscious, instinctual, libidinous energy lodged in our rootsiest chakra is what gives rise to blissful enlightenment not only excites it just makes total sense. The serpent is the acceptance of the relationship between those two seeming polar opposites too—we are not seeking to transcend some baser self to reach enlightenment, we are letting that natural, untamed, untapped force coiled with in us spiral up and power the awakening, without apology to some punishing God. Blasphemy. Not at all. Rudhyar calls it “the cosmification of desire”—Word—that is to say accepting, embracing our desire, including but not limited to our sexual desire, (which, c’mon people, is the impetus to life) as a sort of sacrament living within us that we must, by rights, let spiral up, and be the energetic anatomy of a transpersonal state, thus one devoid of ego. As westerners we’re not wont to believe that Christ consciousness could consist of desire of any kind, let alone a libidinous form. But we beg to differ.

Stella and I are always prescribing the notion of connecting our desires with our destiny, those two words sharing more than an etymological link. That is a cornerstone of our cosmic ideology. Desire isn’t want. I often say desire is like Lichtenstein or Monaco or Vatican City, it is a bit of real estate within a larger body that doesn’t belong to that body. I believe that desire is a portion of universal divine presence that resides within us—which is why we can’t choose or unchoose what our desires are. True desire. Again not want. The serpent symbolizes desire, but, you see, desire has been demonized. We do not accept and harness the pole-to-pole power within ourselves, we see ourselves as conflicted, fallen, our desires being puppeteered by demons. The lizard kings of the world seek to suppress and manipulate our true desires every which way; and organized religions that tell us we are sinners possessed by demons are the greatest tool to that end; putting us at odds with desire breeds frustration, which is a a negative power that can be harnessed as hate and militarized. Yesterday, we looked at how we might be time-bombs waiting to explode, on some level; but how doing so would actually be counter productive to honoring our true, ever-unfolding desires. Today, we accept our polarizations so that we needn’t feel divided.

Over dinner last night Stella cracked me up. She launched into this routine employing the lingo of Scientology in describing her day to day doings and encounters with people and I thought it was so perfect and hysterical. Their whole concept of reaching different levels of “Being” via audits designed to become a “Clear”—which does the opposite of what that pseudo religion professes—meanwhile all religions are pseudo religions—because you cannot eradicate desire, you can only repress it further or release it. And we thought how great it would be if people just casually tossed around Scientology lingo in describing the most banal aspects of their lives, taking the power and the piss out of that silly cult and its teachings.

So, on that note, I have to meet up with this total OTVIII yoga instructor right now who’s going to audit the crap out of me because I’m feeling like the biggest SP on the planet. I only hope that the complete Ish that does Bikram in his underwear isn’t there because he’s Fair Game if so.

Copyright 2015 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.

When the Sabian Symbols were first, shall we say, divined, the one associated with 13° Aries mightn’t have had the same import, on the surface, as it does now. An Unexploded Bomb Reveals An Unsuccessful Social Protest is the oracle for the day; and it’s impossible for us to ignore the real and terrorizing correlations associated with this image and the sense of real relief that stems from such a crisis being averted. But let us turn the clock back ninety years when these symbols were first produced and the world wasn’t universally gripped by terror. Not to say that, in 1925, there wasn’t upheaval and that bomb scares didn’t happen—it’s just that the impetus was more localized and isolated to specific, not globally sweeping, causes. It’s more difficult to read this symbol metaphorically today than when it was originally meant to be. It now seems in bad taste.

For, to get the most out of this symbol, one needs to identify in large part with s/he who placed the bomb in the first place. We are all of us revolutionaries in part. Today, we’re reminded of that fact and, by extension, we might see if those who are actually born on this day personify that particular spirit. I found it personally prophetic that this was the symbol waiting for me to explore and expound upon this morning; because I’ve been feeling pretty itchy, lately, for some radical change. I feel that I am every element of this symbol. I am s/he who put the bomb there, and I am also s/he who discovered and dismantled it. There is a part of me that wants to overthrow the entire regime of my own existence, one which I’ve painstakingly cultivated into place; I want to blow it all up and start a completely new order and way of life. Unsurprisingly, the number thirteen is that of new order—I suspect it might be why it can be seen as unlucky. It would be for those steeped in the old guard. The number twelve is that of cosmic order, not just in terms of astrology, the zodiac consisting of twelve signs; but there are twelve apostles; twelve gates to the celestial city; twelve tribes of Israel, twelve years until adulthood in Judaism; twelve superior angels; twelve stations of the cross; twelve articles of the creed; twelve simple letters in the Hebraic language—the initials of the zodiacal names in Hebrew!; twelve labors of Hercules; twelve supreme court justices; twelve semitones derived from the seven notes of a scale; and twelve gods in the Greek and Roman pantheon—when the thirteenth god, Dionysus hit the scene, the goddess Hestia offered him her throne and thereafter sat at the center of the circular thrown room, tending the fire. But I digress…

The point is that when you get to thirteen, you’re at a new number one. No suprise that this symbol carries a double Aries energy, you might say. We are talking more than a spark, we are looking at a potential explosion. And yet, it is averted, begging the question: How are you an unexploded bomb?; and how are your social protests unsuccessful? Let’s talk impersonally for a moment. In post-Patriot-Act America, one does have trepidation taking a stand, as I always seem to do, on touchy subjects on social media. It’s very meta, but sounding off about Edward Snowden and what a true patriot he is, whether on Facebook, or in this Blague, does, as he has shown us, leave one open to scrutiny if not real consequence. It’s the same thing with sounding off about Scientology and their “Fair Game” policy of harrassing anyone who criticises them. This holds true for or any entity with access to retaliatory muscle. Anna Wintour—it’s all the same.

Ten years ago when Stella and I would perform shows and describe, with tongue in cheek, how it is we descend from a long line of mystics who were forever antithetical to the Lizard Kings who’ve controlled everything for eons, from the banks, to governments, to all the media, people would laugh in that sort of-you-guys-are-so-wacky type of way. Fast forward to the present and those same jokes aren’t as ha-ha funny because they ring more absolutely true. So, why does the bomb go unexploded? Fear. Fear that a motorcade of shiny black American made cars all being driven by Hugo Weaving with an earpiece is going pull up outside your house and you’ll be gently but firmly escorted away. It’s not going to happen. Probably. But, just a hair’s breadth of possibility of something like that happening is enough to keep most people’s revolutionary spirits in a perpetual state of nondetonation. Thus the metaphor of social protest isn’t just a metaphor at all, but let’s take a closer, personal look at today’s oracle:

Most of us live in a regime of our own making. If we’re lucky. I mean, we all know people way richer and way poorer, for starters, and yes, no doubt, people living in poverty or boxed in by societal limits of race or socio-economics are subject to a lifestyle largely not of their own making; so some of us have more restraint put upon us than the confines of a career and a lifestyle we’ve carved out for ourselves. The rich and famous have their own problems, and I don’t say that in an off-handed manner; from experience, with very few exceptions, the richer, more famous the person the more miserable s/he is. For real. It’s people who have enough, but not too much, who tend to be the happiest. But even they have undetonated bombs. And just because the bomb didn’t go off, it doesn’t mean it didn’t still point out the unrest, the upshot of which is going to be inevitable. We live under an order we created for ourselves and yet there will always be the seed of a new order in us. An undetonated bomb might be likened to an ungerminated seed. Dionysus is knee-jerkedly called the god of disorder, but not so; he is the god of a new order, the one to whom are given the keys of the kingdom. He just has a bad-ass party atttitude that belies the serious power he is divinely packing. But that makes sense, too.

Oftentimes, when we want to break out and break down our own old orders, such urges are often accompanied by visions of dancing on the table tops in a Parisian restaurant, well past closing with a bacchanal of wildly imaginative artists and intellectuals and fashion models and a winning football team, and of course Bryan Ferry is there, paying the tab, and hailing us cabs to whisk us off to a club privé for more dancing or to a gleaming all-night Champs Élysées brasserie for tiered platters of lobster, crab, oysters and assorted winkles . Okay maybe that’s just my vision but, when we get itching for a new order, we don’t often experience our desire for change as a safe, slow, barely perceptible shifting of a paradigm; we envision it as explosive and entailing a good blow out to mark our revolutionary change. That is how Dionysus archetypally lives in us. And this is why the detonation is thwarted. Our revolutionary motives are wildly inspiring, and they will inevitably surface in establishing a new order, but it does have to happen slowly over time, in fact. A violent reactionary move against the present order we’ve set up for ourselves would be retaliated upon by the police-state part of our own psyche, and it might actually set back our cause. The explosion is an adolescent bucking of our own inner authority; we don’t need it; we have more mature ways of instituting change, even the radical kind.

So what’s the message here? Maybe: Know where you’re going but don’t be in a rush to get there. Use your radical vision as the framework for a new order and then see what steps you can take, now, toward making it happen. And do be quick about it. It is still totally rad to create a total paradigm shift in your life over the next three to five years, say. Maybe you can do it within six months or a year. Depends on how practical you wish to be, and how itchy you are for change. Just don’t do nothing. That is the only possible crime. So ask yourself: What for you constitutes being a radical right now? How pressing is it to give that spirit life? And what you can do right now, in your present regime, toward setting the wheels of a new life into motion.

Oh and do remind me to tell you the stories, sometime, of when I was whisked off, on separate occasions, by different football teams, one Italian and one French, to some crazy doings at some wild establishments, both of which were on the Champs Élysées!

Copyright 2015 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.

The cosmic order of the day is, well, cosmic order. And boy am I grateful. I just want to let go and let universe. I had so much to accomplish this week, I was meant to perform in a new monthly show on Thursday, and what I thought was a passing cold has knocked me for a loop. So I had to just let it go and let nature take its course, which included four hours of non-stop shivering in the night, and a day of watching classic 1970s movies on Netflix, just like the gods intended it. The Sabian Symbol associated with this day at 12° Aries is A Triangularly Shaped Flight of Wild Geese. And the first thing that strikes me, after al these days of geometric shapes and triangles, is that even the most abstract images can be derived from nature or expressed by it. Today is just about letting the intelligence of the natural world dictate the agenda. It speaks to there being more essential things than what’s on the menu today at the White House or who’s said the wrong thing about Bruce Jenner.

Flight is always an expression of the soul; and because this flight pattern is etched upon the Sky, it naturally makes us look up in awe. Little known facts about wild geese too: They won’t leave any of their kind behind in the migration, and if a goose should become ill or injured in the journey and need to land, one other goose will volunteer to keep that ailing goose company, on land, until it recovers or expires. Try to find that kind of loyalty and devotion among we humans. People born on this day, says one source, are open and willing to embrace their lot, without preconceptions of what that actually should be. Doesn’t that sound super relaxing. I think we could all use a little bit of that brand of mindset. Most people seem to bemoan their lot, or talk with their mouths full of sour grapes.

I was thinking this morning, after seeing a familiar character on social media go off on the notion of celebrity that: My sense is that the down-and-out characters that are always complaining about the famous would leap at the opportunity to be a revolting celebrity themselves given half the chance. Ego is ego. Whether you’re a bubble-headed (booby) booby like pick-a-Kardashian-any-Kardashian or a poverty-loving misanthrope whose always pooh-poohing these people, you’re basically the same thing in my book: not a wild goose. The goose isn’t silly, it’s the emblem of constancy, something I find is pretty rare in people in a larger social context but also in intimate bonds. The upshot being that the true gooses really distinguish themselves. Those are the companions in life whom we should value and emulate.

Venus is the planet of union, its energy being attractive. I like to imagine those geese in the sky giving us a V for that planet of love. When we are unified, in romantic, familial, fraternal, brotherly or sisterly love, in that V-formation, we are equals and in the proverbial It together, whatever obstacles or hardships may come. Indeed we are more able and even willing to accept what comes our way because it would be for no lack of love or protection. It’s only when we feel abandoned that we might act out in an abandoned way. Life is a journey and it sucks thinking you’re always having to be on it alone or worse, in competition with others. Besides a single year in little league, I never played on a team; I went to a huge college and mainly lived off campus; I haven’t worked more than probably a total of two years, my whole life, in an office, on a team; and those who know me will tell you. I have no family to speak of. So this aspect of life is something I really have to work at as it doesn’t come easy. I do tend to isolate and I have a morbid fear of cliques let alone cults. It is nice to have a V-formation of loyal loved ones in your life, but it really isn’t something you can manufacture—it is something which comes naturally, if we are fortunate enough to have found true birds of a feather with which to flock.

Note: The title of this installation is a quoted line from The Roches song “Quitting Time”.

Copyright 2015 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Today we look at power, and worldly power at that. They symbol for 11° Aries is The Ruler of a Nation or The President of a Country. I think the original might be the former and yet the latter expresses the nature of the symbol. For we are not looking at the energy of a monarch or a dictator but the ruler of a democracy for the most part. A president presides, he has the power to execute the will of the collective, but he also has the responsibility to do so. I think of the energy of a president being very Libra, whereas that of a king is super Leo. Democracy and social order, balance of power, harmony among people, are hallmarks of the sign of Libra the mottos of which are “I balance” and “we are”. And being the 11°, one might equate it with the 11th sign of Aquarius in that sign’s Utopian vision. When one is the ruler or president most energy goes to keeping the peace, not just with other nations, but within the ranks of ones own, and among ones people. Where are you the ruler? In your family? At work? In some department? When you are in charge, mainly you deal with the censure of not doing things correctly. Or perhaps you are one who points out how those in charge are deficient; but if you were put in the lead role you would likewise be a target for criticism.

I was watching the documentary on Scientology, Going Clear. And besides the abuse of power by leaders of that “church” what struck me was how the IRS caved and gave Scientology tax-exempt status mainly because they were worn down by lawsuits. The IRS took the lazy route. And as a result that “church” has gotten away with murder, probably literally. The litany of abuses, the brainwashing, the blackmail is staggering. The documentary really left me angry at our powers that be, which allow this type of organization to proliferate. The billions of dollars Scientology pockets while those in its ranks suffer abuse is one thing; but the fact that “we” allow this organization to exist—which it can only do as a tax-free entity—is beyond me. My hope is that this documentary triggers some kind of upshot the way the documentary on Robert Durst brought about his arrest. I know it’s not as specific as the Durst situation—evidence coming to light—but seriously we have to crack down on this crazy cult. There was so much to the story that wasn’t in the documentary. The disappearance, for instance, of Shelly Miscavige, wife of the so-called religion’s leader David Miscavige—she hasn’t been seen in seven years.

In a democracy, we can all be Ruler of the Nation, theoretically. Any organizations that exist within our democracy that disallow that same capability for self-empowerment should be shut down. How is it that Scientology is protected by the First Amendment but Edward Snowden isn’t? If I were ruler of the nation, if I could, I would throw the money lenders (lobbyists) out of the temple (halls of Congress); I would impose caps on campaign fundraising; I would create a new-deal type works program for repairing our infrastructure; I would pardon Snowden; I would revoke any cult’s tax exempt status; I would outlaw GMOs; I would break up big Agro; I would impose oversight on big Pharma; I would tax the one percent at the same rate Eisenhower did in the 1950s, I would do a lot of things…if I could. All impossible, you say? That’s the real issue. Why is doing right by the people impossible? Why are venal, oppressive maneuvers all highly possible? Why do bad people in power always seem to win out? The main answer is: That, for the most part, anybody who needs to be in a position of power probably has a screw loose somewhere anyway. They are driven by ego. I love me some Hillary Clinton but really why does she need to be president so pressingly? I don’t think the prime answer is: to do good. I’d like to say I love me some Obama, for the most part, and he has attempted some good things; but he has also kow-towed to some of the worst people and entities on the planet, like Monsanto. Why? Maybe not because he wants to. Maybe there are threats involved.

That’s be the way Scientology operates: on threats. They have a dossier on “church” members yay high, one that “church” members provide them, admitting all sorts of shit in their audits. The irony of religious participation taking on the form of a visit to the IRS not withstanding, “church” members give their power over, or they believe they do. They are no longer the Ruler of (their own) Nation. And when you’re a celebrity Scientologist, the “church” uses you for their own PR purposes, and you get major perks and payoffs. Would that we could all boycott any project made by these celebrity Scientologists, or better yet: If we could send memos to Tom Cruise and John Travolta and Elizabeth Moss and Beck and Laura Prepon and Greta Van Susteren and Giovanni Ribisi and Kristie Alley and all the other famous “church” members saying that we don’t care what sexual proclivities they might be repressing. This isn’t the 1950s actually; and some spicy tales from their boudoirs might actually make them more interesting because, at a glance, this isn’t the most exciting bunch ever to appear in the same sentence.

Seven years before Graydon Carter and Vanity Fair published the story on Scientology’s search for a wife for Tom Cruise, the magazine included us in their “L.A. Intelligence Report” in the Vanities section in the front of the book. To be fair, it is a tongue-in-cheek page that mixes fact with fiction. Although, in our case, it was mostly fiction. First of all we don’t live in Los Angeles. Anyway, we were deemed “Psychics to the Stars” and one category in the chart-format piece was “Skeleton in Closet”. They said that ours was “Scientology referral swaps”. This immediately made us uneasy. And then came the questions all on the theme of “is this true?”; and despite putting out a statement that none of it was, our business is built upon a real consultancy with real paying clients, most of whom would not be comfortable if we were actually in bed with that awful cult.

I wrote Graydon Carter a letter pointing out the problem. He refused to print any kind of apology or retraction which, to be honest, I didn’t expect. His editors were vaguely sorry, especially Matt Tyrnauer who actually availed himself of guidance from Starsky + Cox on a regular basis, and yet, as often happens in this situation, we seemed to be personae non grata for speaking up about it. As if we should be so lucky to have any mention at all by Vanity Fair. But I do think the magazine was concerned with the legality of the situation, printing something not only untrue but potentially damaging. I then received a letter from Graydon’s office barely apologizing for any distress this had caused and how they planned to make it up to us with the publishing of our next book, which they would champion. They never did. In fact, they pretty much cut off all communication with us. Scientology calls it: To Disconnect. As a Ruler of a Nation, in this case a sensational magazine which is indispensable on long flights, Graydon Carter is well aware of his power, but perhaps he understimates the abuses thereof. When he raised the ire of Scientology, himself, I thought there was something karmic in it. The cult of celebrity vs. the cult to end all cults. If only.

Copyright 2015 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.

This is going to be a short one today folks. At least I hope so. I’m on day twenty-one of a thirty day Bikram Yoga challenge and, though I made it through a Boston winter without getting sick, with basically no heat in this impressive looking but ridiculous apartment in which I find myself, I now have some combo platter of Dickensian illnesses that would seem to combine consumption, rickets, pleurisy and gout. I jest (ish), but oucha-magaoucha do I feel like pooh warmed over; and Monday is a big client day and I must be sparklingly alert. Snap out of it.

I’m not sure what it is in my newly emerging personality that is manifesting as daily challenges—the yoga, this Blague—plus the horoscopes and other writing, our priority consultancy, the production and direction of a new Afterglow Festival, for which I must now begin fundraising in earnest, not to mention a number of upcoming shows by Starsky + Cox, both separate and together. Believe me I’m not complaining, I’m going somewhere with this: Today’s Sabian Symbol for 10° Aries is A Teacher Gives New Symbolic Forms To Traditional Images and I immediately think of re-branding, changing the headline, and reinvigorating old modes with powerful new widgets.

So the above litany: That was the old me feigning to be dragged through the new normal. In truth, I’m not planning to stop daily yoga after just a thirty-day challenge—I hope to do it every day for the rest of my life. I’m not shying away from the Cosmic Blague, it requires at least a year of my attention and so I have to sit back and enjoy the ride; and, as has always been the plan, I’d like to die in the wings during a live performance where I’m, forviging the pun, killing it. So I’m giving over to these new forms, now, in my daily existence and letting myself, if not my brand, be changed by them, so I can meet the future more as I see myself. Gosh I hope that made sense.

Dane Rudhyar speaks of today, 10° Aries, as embodying a “revision of attitude at the beginning of a new cycle of experience”; the traditional images we have of ourself and our circumstance might be outmoded, and we need new forms that suggest a wider range of meaning. This isn’t personal. We needn’t have an emotional take on, or reaction to, what is our new design for living We’ve made decisions and we’re sticking to them. This is us now. And we need a new abstract form to mark this shift in our outlook. And it all begins with that ‘tude.

Short of pulling a Prince and branding ourselves with some kind of unpronounceable symbol, or taking on a Ziggy Stardust persona, or inventing a new pronoun to which others might refer to us—all valid moves that great artists and thinkers have done to mark their development—we should at least think about, today, what might emblemize us. What have we stood for? How has that changed? What do we mean (to ourselves and others), now? And what might be our logo. Did you know that the first ever logo to be trademarked was the Bass red triangle in 1876. Thank you Wikipedia.

The fact is that the meaning and interpretation behind any symbol are endless. Especially this symbol which is about new symbolic assignations being added to, or replacing, older “traditional” ones. And it’s awfully generous, isn’t it, for this teacher to be shedding new light on some old forms. Gosh, I wonder if I know anybody like that? Hmmm. The point is we are making progress. We are not static beings. We are not locked into our own traditions and so, every so often, we need new symbols for ourselves, even, to mark or growth in wisdom.

When I was twenty-one I toyed with calling myself Pan and moving to Paris to be an androgynous cabaret artist. Well I did move to Paris but I have never been that androgynous due to hairy Italian genes; and it took me another twenty years to attempt cabaret. But it didn’t not happen. I had the symbol, the form in my mind, way back when. And as most do, I took on a new name when I began working as a professional astrologer-metaphysician. Granted, we had invented the His & Her Horoscope column for Teen People and I didn’t want my New York Times editors to know that it was me writing it, but still there was a tradition of doing this. Alan Leo. Athena Starwoman. Linda Goodman. Dane Rudhyar. The name happened first and then I sort of grew into it. I think that’s how it works. We change our attitude and we mark it with some word or picture, if only in our mind, and then we grow in that direction. Esso just sounds so mid-twentieth century—but Exxon, now that’s a name that could travel into the new millenium.

So, today, ask yourself: What’s your attitude? And how would you characterize it in a word or in an image. What emblemizes the new you? I think I’ll be a big blue ball. Interpret that to your hearts’ content.

Copyright 2015 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.

The Sabian Symbol for 9° Aries is A Seer Gazes With Concentration Into A Crystal Sphere. The correlation of this to the 9th sign of Sagittarius, the motto of which is “I see”, and the sign’s association with the third-eye, is fairly evident. It is written that the crystal sphere represents wholeness, I would suggest that it is the third-eye itself, activated by insight. The third eye, tertiary perception, is that which sees beyond duality and embodies the notion that there are three sides to every story, a fully rounded view. The crystal ball is all-seeing, not only in the sense that it sees everything, but that it sees all sides of any one thing. This is the opposite of navel gazing, which is synonymous with a myopic self-obsession. Here, we don’t know at what we’re looking when first we gaze—our eyes and our understanding are open to every and all possibility. What slowly comes into focus is the sum total of possibility so that we might act from a vantage of considering all factors—this crystal (clarity) is a sphere, suggesting full 360° circumspection. We can be assured of what we see, and we also must accept whatever that might be, for better or worse or both

In this symbol we see the merging of our intellect with our intuition, and we must use the former, in this case to serve the latter, creating a power line between the two. This constitutes “seeing situations as a whole”; intuition and intellect on their own might each tell part of the story. There is the Seer and there is the Sphere, the Seen. It is the Concentration, which, like concentric, etymologically points to “bringing to a center” that unites them. Concentration isn’t projection of will, but a circling in on a larger truth.There is a marriage needing taking place between text and subtext, between conscious and subconscious motivations, between surface actions and underlying intentions. We are seeking to awake the superconscious. For me the takeaway of today’s symbol is there being more at play than the naked eye can see. We mustn’t take situations at face value, we must consult the oracle of our own intuition—our emotional intelligence—and let our brain develop a cinemascopic picture of a situation based on its understanding, as difficult to articulate it as it might be. We must employ that spacious mind of yesterday, symbolized by the Large Woman’s Hat. We can’t have prejudice and we can’t read into situations to serve the smaller aspects of our mind.

Funnily enough I’ve owned a crystal ball. And the story surrounding it does touch on the shadow side of gazing into it, for real, or metaphorically speaking. It was given to me by someone who, it just so happens, was a master of subtext and subterfuge, which can characterize the shadow side of a Scorpio personality. The sign’s ruler Pluto is named for the god of the underworld, a metaphor for a deeply profound personality who is miner for meaning and hearts of gold, on the positive side; while expressing an undermining nature on the negative. We see this in fearful, insecure and un-evolved people of the sign. There were always two conversations going on simultaneously with this individual in question. The one he had with people —in person, by phone or by text—and the one he had about them, via, shall we say, subtext. With people of a character such as this, one is naturally leery, and should never get too close until they hopefully develop out of this behavior, which most shadowy Scorpios actually do. Meanwhile, ironically, it is the sense that people don’t want to warm up to them that fuels their detrimental scheming below the surface. Although this person’s put downs of others were barely subliminal, I assumed them to be isolated and petty, and didn’t give them any power. Until I saw the subtextual web this individual was capable of weaving. The scorpion is an arachnid lest we forget; and the kiss-kiss of some spiders, man or woman, as well as their idle surface chatter, can be designed to mask—Pluto wore a helm of invisibility—the stealthy time-released character assassinations they make against those they target.

Symptomatically, this individual in question was a paranoid, as one might have to be to cut so undercutting a figure. As people know I’m wont to do, I’ll post inspiring, uplifting, motivational messages on my Facebook page, from time to time. There was a spate a few years back when I did this daily. Then I noticed this individual had disappeared from Facebook; he hadn’t, actually; he blocked me. When I asked him about it, he said that he thought my posts, meant to universally empower all my cyber friends, were barbs pointed specifically at tearing him down. He was taking my new age-y or Eastern mystical, inspirational quotes personally…and as insults. Now that’s paranoid. The point I’m trying to make here is that sometimes we gaze into our metaphorical crystals with fear in our hearts and ill intent in our noggins, and that’s the picture that will come into focus. Self-fulfilling prophecy. If we go looking for problems, bent on reading ill intent into others’ conscious or subconscious motivations, we will always find them. Not to say we should gaze into our crystal wearing rose-colored glasses either. We must keep that superconscious line between the subconscious and the conscious free of any imposition of will, hope or fear.

Incidentally, I never used that crystal ball that was sent to me. First of all it arrived with a broken pedestal, which I took as something of a sign; but also, probably because I’ve read too much Tolkien, I was concerned the object could read me on some level, so it was ultimately banned from view, put into a dark corner of a basement; perhaps, one day, it will be resurrected, cleared of negative energy, and employed for its intended purpose; but none too soon, I can assure you.

Copyright 2015 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.

I started writing the Cosmic Blague a week ago and in some ways I feel like Lucy and Ethel at the chocolate factory, needing to get into a rhythm, not letting the process get away from me. Also I haven’t done much in the way of outreach to let people know about this new project—not to say I’m writing anything so earth-shattering that people are missing out on something monumental. But I think I might do a bit of promotion today so that people get wind of it. Today’s Sabian Symbol for 8° Aries, A Large Woman’s Hat With Streamers Blown By The East Wind, seems to fit the mood —mine, anyway. I want to be a bit breezy today, I don’t want to get too heavy into it; as I write this I hear in the back of my brain the following phrase: Famous last words.

What strikes me most about today’s symbol is the fact that it’s a hat, belonging to a large woman, but the woman herself is not necessarily in the picture. It seems like an image from a dream sequence in a film, or one you’d have just falling for a brief moment in the middle of the day. There is something cool, calming and Spring-like about it. And, I can’t not equate the image with an Easter bonnet. This date and degree of Aries is surely one on which Easter has fallen. And so we must consider the energy of rebirth and regeneration. I mentioned yesterday that this random site I found online—fatmountain.org.es—lists all the Sabian symbols, labeling them with titles, all of which, in Aries, begin with the word Integrity. Yesterday was labelled: Integrity Light; today is tagged Integrity Regeneration. The description goes on to say that “the main quality of this person”—I’m assuming “person” refers to someone who has a planet in their birth chart pinioned to 8° Aries—”is his spaciousness of outlook.” I like that.

The fact the image is a hat belonging to a large woman suggests that the energy of the day is “feminine” in the sense that it is an energy of receptivity, those streamers reading something like antennae, picking up messages and vibrations. The largesse of the woman would suggest that the capacity for receptivity is vast, that today we might be of an expansive mind and attitude. We can also be open to have our minds blown on some level. But safely so. The hat is a symbol of protection from the elements, specifically the “masculine” Sky elements of Sun (fire) and wind (air)—fire and air signs, in astrology are masculine, whilst water and earth are feminine. An east wind symbolizes new beginnings and also spiritualizing forces. The streamers are there to sense and signal direction, like a weather vane. The hat is receiving the revitalizing forces. The message here is not to blow like the wind but to be open and flexible to new ideas and even sweeping change. Streamers are designed to catch the wind, they suggest a certain rejoicing in doing so. Today we celebrate our ability to go where the winds of change are taking us; doing so could very well characterize our own rebirth or regeneration. We let undeniably strong unseen forces, symbolized by the wind, move us. Interestingly, in biblical symbolism, the East Wind is one that disperses falsities and evil.

Think about the false notions others might have about you. To be great (or large like the owner of the hat) is indeed to be misunderstood; but instead of fighting falsity or evil mendacity we let them blow over us. The east wind destroys destruction. The good among us have nothing to fear from it, but for the baddies, it’s a bit of g/God’s wrath or judgement. So long as your side of the street is clean, you can welcome today as a wind that will wipe away the unrighteous and leave a renewed sense of innocence in its wake. Irrefutable truth is written in the wind—the answer, my friends—and we need only let it blow. We have no responsibility or cause to impose our truths on others. Our higher mind, the hat pointing to our crown chakra, knows the true nature of everything—I think of J.K. Rowling’s sorting hat—we can huff and we can puff but we can’t blow anyone’s house down, nor they ours. It is not for us to do. We must trust the larger forces at play to do such righteous work for us. The winds may gust and blow, but the weather within us need never change.

Copyright 2015 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.

I woke up thinking, holy merde, I hope I haven’t gone too far in the one direction of exploring the energy of each day via these Sabian Symbols. Not to say they are limiting in any way—au contraire—they are opening a new world of thought to me on one hand and also providing a program to which I can stick, so that I can come to this blague every day with inspiration for something to say. But I awoke worried that I wasn’t exploring the other direction I hoped to: that of the blague cosmique, the cosmic joke element of life that is fairly obvious, in my life anyway. I have a list I’m keeping of stories characterized by strange phenomenon, synchrinicity: outrageous coincidence, seeming divine intervention and also what I sheepishly must admit is my own psychic ability, which comes and goes, and yet, on the whole, grows stronger from year to year. That element of my psyche has always “been there”—I believe it was inherited through my Celtic bloodline—and this extra sense has steadily intensified, crystalized, the more I’ve exercised it via my metaphysical work with clients. When I read people’s astrological charts, for instance, information flows two ways: There is the literal patterning of planets in signs in houses, and how they connect to one another, and what that all means, in an individual’s astrological chart, portrayed, as it is, by the wheel of their zodiac; and then there is what I call “off the page” information whereby “stuff comes through”, the circle of the wheel of the zodiac becoming something of a scrying device, a wonder wall, a magic mirror (I was obsessed by “Romper Room” as a kid), a crystal ball of sorts. Clients of ours know what I mean by all of this.

And lo and behold today’s Sabian Symbol, for 7° Aries is: A Man Successfully Expressing Himself In Two Realms At Once. For starters, seven is a number near and dear to my heart as it is the Libra number, one of Light, Order and Music, seven rainbow rays of in a lightbeam, seven notes to “The Scales”, and many more Apollonian connections. And ways in which any of us lead double lives not withstanding, when I think of two realms I immediately think of the material and on material realms. Yesterday, we explored A Square, With One Of Its Sides Brightly Illumined wherein we are drawn toward that illuminated side, where we might break on through to the proverbial other side. (I neglected to mention that the square, or the cross, symbolizes matter and the material realm.) Today we look at life from both sides now: We have broken through to discover that the other realm or dimension might be immaterial but it is in now way unreal. It is always there, whether or not we are engineered or inclined to perceive it.  And—why not?—it might be empowering to imagine that this dynamic is especially available to us on this particular day. I’ll be curious to peruse a list of people born on this day to see if they personify the dynamic of expressing in “two realms” at once in any way.

There is precious little written online about these symbols. But I stumbled upon an interpretation of 7° Aries being labelled “Integrity Light”, all the Aries degrees being “Integrity something”; tomorrow’s, according to this site is “Integrity Regeneration”, regeneration being the keynote of Scorpio which follows Libra, the sign of (cardinal-air) Light. So, hooray, I’ve just stumbled onto some validation that these symbol degrees may indeed be following the zodiac’s pattern of twelve, times thirty (days in a month) circles within circles, equaling the 360° cycle of the calendar year. It goes to show: sometimes (read: always) leading with our intuitive sense can result in concrete proof in the pudding. Anyway, in this description I found, today’s symbol is characterized as “the one who keeps his lamp alight whatever the price”. We have moved into the light (cue the lady’s voice from the film Poltergeist) and now we are holding that lamplight aloft, or indeed we are the light, shining in two directions at once. I think of the children in C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia, entering that realm for the first time—Lucy (meaning light) first encounters a lampost, which marks the point between the so-called real and imagined worlds.

Whether we are speaking of the world of our imagination, or some spiritual, energetic realm that we can “psychically” visit if not fully inhabit, we are on about the same thing. Back in the late 1980s, right before I had an extraordinary “event” happened to me whereby I was triggered into an altered state—I will try to write more fully about this for you at a later date, though Stella and I have told this story a number of times, live on stage—I had a dream. The dream centered on this giant black book from which I was privileged to read; the book was titled, in giant silver letters: I Magi Nation. Now of course it spells imagination; but it also points to the notion that perhaps I was a Magi and that I wasn’t alone, but part of a larger body, community, nation of them. Within days after this dream the weird event occurred—it may’ve been triggered by a stranger slipping something into my drink—I will never know—but it resulted in my being endowed for a night with super human thought and strength that involved my “seeing the math in my head in blueprint form” for successfully dive-rolling out of a car going 40 miles an hour, landing on my feet and then sprinting faster than a gazelle as well as my “seeing the math” to launch myself into the air and scale an eight-foot fence without touching it; “seeing the math” as well to “find the sweet-spot” in a chain-link gate, embedded in cement, where I could hit it with my vintage Columbia bicycle so that the fence/gate would be knocked over, out of its cement foundation, allowing me to ride my bike over that fence without so much as taking my feet off the pedals—I remember that was important to me—to stay balanced on my bike without putting a foot down. This and more all actually happened on the eve of the Harmonic Convergence, August 16, 1987. I won’t bore you with the rest of this story now; but the upshot was that I learned the hard way, and in a manner I did not invite, that I was capable of perceiving (an) other realm(s) that had heretofore been closed to me. It was violent and forced upon me, and at the time I did not see any good in this having happened. In time, though, I came to understand that, whether welcomed or not, this event provided a breakthrough.

Needless to say, I strongly relate to today’s symbol, but just because I readily imagine my particular two realms to be that of a solid world and that of an impressionistic one, doesn’t mean the duality begins and ends there. I do find it funny that my particular first “psychic break” with “reality” had “physics” overtones. As one who hated math and science growing up, I suppose the joke was on me that my being endowed with extrasensory powers for one evening back in 1987, manifested as a superhuman strength powered by sudden flashes of mathematical, physicist genius. What springs to mind as the two realms in which you express yourself might be drastically different from mine. And, yes, there are simpler, terrestrial dualities that might be portrayed by phrases like “leading a double life” or “juggling two worlds at once” or even “bringing home the bacon and frying it upon in the pan”, which are also suggested by this symbol.

Still, I am inclined to see the Sabian symbol of A Man Successfully Expressing Himself In Two Realms At Once as being pinioned to the material/non-material world dichotomy. I think that we are, all of of us, expressing ourselves in these two realms simultaneously, but I don’t believe that we are all doing it successfully. Even those of us who might be conscious of doing it at all might fall short. I consider myself a auto-didactical metaphysician—metaphysics can be defined as “the science of the immaterial”. Indeed, “there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy” (Hamlet 1.5 167-8). Increasingly, I am made aware of this and, hopefully, becoming more succesful at said expression. And, having looked at life from both sides, now, what I’ve gleaned from my understanding of the unseen world has only inspired me to live more simply, healthfully and sanely, in the seen one. I am conscious of the fact that the expressions of our thoughts and actions don’t just manifest in the here and now, they make an impression on the “other side” as well—call it the spiritual realm, or that of infinite or eternal or, plainly, the energetic—where elements of our being, thoughts and actions are duly noted. Perhaps there is an Akashic record, I don’t know. But when I consider that possibility I immediately flash to my dream of I Magi Nation and the very real experiencing of realms of power and possibility that I encountered in the days that followed, which seemed to defy my own natural laws not to mention those of physics.

A footnote: When we embarked a decade later on writing Sextrology, our publishers assumed we would write a popular, splashy, sex-sells sort of book. We, however, sensed it was an opportunity to write a book that one really couldn’t judge by its title, let alone its cover. Delving into the immaterial but very real world of archetypes and energies as it does, Sextrology itself is a successful expression in two realms. It is at once a real and funny, bawdy and poppy, academic and logical book that makes a strong argument for the validity of astrology; and yet it is also suffused with that “off the page” element, a sense of esoteric understanding, a knowingness and a mystery that speaks to readers on a more transcendent level. And, without getting too specific, I will say that we’ve had some indication that the book has indeed been well received in realms beyond Horatio’s ken.

Copyright 2015 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.

When does our solid foundation, the structures we created, our constructs that provided security become cages, prisons and how will we find a solution, a way out. The Sabian Symbol associated with this day at 6° Aries is A Square, With One Of Its Sides Brightly Illumined. Squares symbolize stability and a sense of completion, so before we set upon dismantling that fact let’s acknowledge it. We can’t deconstruct before we understand our structures. Philosophically, anthropologically, linguistically, upper case Structuralism, as our substitute for a brain Wikipedia puts it: “is the theory that elements of human culture must be understood in terms of their relationship to a larger overarching system or structure.” Basically what this says is that no part of us can be truly understand without looking at its relationship to all the other parts, the whole, of us. Meditations on our our own wholes not withstanding, we all crave solidity in our lives, means of definition, boundaries; and we all put up walls. As I type this I get a visual flash of today’s image being something of a house of cards. What goes up may need to come tumbling down, but not necessarily so.

It’s all about that forth wall. In my mind the top, left and bottom of the square are drawn by solid lines, red lines in my mind’s eye, and the right side of the square is the illumined one, glowing brightly, as if a red line has been drawn over with a yellow highlighter. But that’s just me. That fourth wall is energized, not so much electrified as powered, like a forcefield. Unlike the other ordinary solid walls, this one, though solid too, can be passed through, as if into another dimension. As a thespian whose fourth wall was strengthened by a very strict Uta Hagen, I cannot help but look upon this image as a stage with a pronounced proscenium, the illumination being the flood of the overhead spot- and footlights, where we are compelled to express ourself, giving It all we’ve got. Here we are ready to articulate what needs being said, perhaps to as great an audience as we can reach. Expression is key, whether it be a player on the stage, which all the world is, or someone imprisoned in a cage, shouting convincing pleas into the glare beyond bars. It is here we are ready, perhaps, not only to express but to confess, in either case there is a purge suggested and, by extension of process of purification. The illumined side provides an outlet.

We are all of us contained, if not trapped, within structures within structures. There are walls all around us, designed to protect and/or contain us. There are literal material trappings—we are limited by our physical, mental and emotional spaces and the expression of our soul, thus seems a transcendent outlet. We are constrained by natural laws, by societal codes, by circumstance, by our family origins, by our nationality, by our station or class, by shortcomings, by faults, by our needs, our desires, our addictions, by economic status, on and on and on. However, we have freedom of expression to purge ourselves of so-called restraints by pointing at them, speaking to them, using them as our source material. Whether we are comedians or legislators, activists or gurus, physicists or folksingers, we step through the fourth wall to deliver our observances on the barriers we come up against in our quest for personal or collective growth, freedom and understanding.

Uta used to say: Obstacles should only make your objective stronger. And that is as true in life as it is on the stage, the latter being a metaphor for the former. The more we come up against in life, the more compelled we should be to take to that proscenium, or pulpit or soap box, tearing down that (fourth) wall in an awakening of self, and others, to the Light that needs to be shined into this box or that we find ourselves in. We all feel imprisoned in various ways, by outside influence or inner fears and insecurities. We can hide in the dark corners of society or in the repressed recesses of our minds, or we can run toward that Light and boldly let loose sounds, vibrations, that would shake those walls behind us to their foundations. They will crumble under our jokes, they will melt from the heat of our debate, they will disintegrate and turn to dust, blowing in the wind at the sound of the folk song. There will always be walls, in every epoch. There are walls every day in our individual lives. Feel them, bang your head against them, claw at them and consume what they stand for because they are the confines which to scale; and the containment they are designed to provide should send you over the top in your expression, be it creative, intellectual, spiritual, nurturing, enlightening or all of the above.

Copyright 2015 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.