It is perfect that the New Moon in Libra is so close to the Equinox because Libra represents balance and during the equinoxes, the day and night are of the equal duration. The light and the darkness are balanced.
The Fall Equinox is on Monday, the New Moon on Tuesday and Wednesday.
The power potential for this period is increased with Pluto stationing direct on Monday.
Whatever has been brewing is ready to come forth.
Today on KPFA two of the hosts on separate programs, interviewed people who had pursued their dreams despite hardship and ridicule for the past 40 years plus. One, Malcolm Margolin author, publisher and founder of Heyday Books in Berkeley, CA and the other Chris Strachwitz founder of Arhoolie Records. Both these guys became fascinated and obsessed with cultures other than their own and dedicated their life’s work to bringing forth those cultures. Malcolm’s fascination was California Indians, while for Chris it was African American music especially blues.
Through their efforts the rest of us came to know and appreciate the accomplishments of these two groups which were in turn benefited.
Since I am an Evolutionary Astrologer, I will start with Pluto. Pluto went retrograde on Tax Day in the US, April 15 and now it will go direct the day after the People’s Climate March in New York, September 21. Over 100,000 people and are expected to march in support of the environment on that day. Let us use these two events (tax day and the climate march) as the bookends of this Pluto retrograde period.
Listening to the two shows on the radio brought me back to a recurrent thought I have been having for the past several months. What I have done for the past 40+ years? This thought has been coming up a lot for me now that I am in the Fall of my own life and possibly motivated by the Pluto retrograde which opposes my natal Venus in the 11th house. There have been many death during this past 5 months, of famous people and of loved ones.
One thing I have done for the past 40+ plus years is to be aware of my own impact on the planet. An undercurrent of fear related to the environment, has always been present in my life. I decided while still a child that I would not have children as I feared cataclysms and collapse that I felt were inevitable. I did not want to see my children or grandchildren suffering. I didn’t think we would last this long.
Forty years ago, I knew we were on a collision course. I couldn’t and still can’t believe anyone is surprised by climate change, rising sea level, melting ice caps, etc. Hello where have you been?
Human life on this planet is a cancer. It destroys everything in its path. It grows and grows eating everything in its path. Someone said the other day, “the planet will survive, but we might not.” I have lived the past 40 years knowing that. Thus, it is not surprising that I have felt the impermanence of the things. I have not accepted the myths of consensus society. I did not believe I was here to get a job, get married have children. My life has been about the search for meaning and wisdom. As I have said before, I got the final piece of that from a movie years ago (I don’t remember what it was). “Meaning is not something you find, but something you give.” This changed everything (to paraphrase the title of Naomi Kline’s latest book…This Changes Everything).
Nothing has meaning intrinsically. All the laws, rules and guidelines….are all man-made. The only laws that matter are the laws of Nature. The hubris of human beings has brought us to our current state of affairs. We will be humbled.
I think we have already gone too far. Cascading effects are now in motion. Even if we never manufactured another plastic bag, ‘clamshell’ or shampoo bottle…we have already produced enough plastic (floating in five huge garbage patches in the ocean), to destroy all life in the ocean and thus the planet. This stuff will never be gone. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch
I could go on….but I won’t. I’m sure if you are reading this blog post, you are aware of what’s going on.
So now what? This is the big question. All my life I have felt like I was waiting for something, like sitting at a bus stop. What to do while we wait. Kind of like: “how will you spend the time between the cradle and the grave.”
What I have chosen is related to a poem I read while living in a Gurdjieff community. I am a witness to the Creation. Libra….love, harmony and beauty. Find something that sparkles and follow it where ever it takes you.
The Ninth Elegy
Rainer Maria Rilke
Why, if this interval of being can be spent serenely
in the form of a laurel, slightly darker than all
other green, with tiny waves on the edges
of every leaf (like the smile of a breeze)–: why then
have to be human–and, escaping from fate,
keep longing for fate? . . .
Oh not because happiness exists,
that too-hasty profit snatched from approaching loss.
Not out of curiosity, not as practice for the heart, which
would exist in the laurel too. . . . .
But because truly being here is so much; because everything here
apparently needs us, this fleeting world, which in some strange way
keeps calling to us. Us, the most fleeting of all.
Once for each thing. Just once; no more. And we too,
just once. And never again. But to have been
this once, completely, even if only once:
to have been one with the earth, seems beyond undoing.
And so we keep pressing on, trying to achieve it,
trying to hold it firmly in our simple hands,
in our overcrowded gaze, in our speechless heart.
Trying to become it.–Whom can we give it to? We would
hold on to it all, forever . . . Ah, but what can we take along
into that other realm? Not the art of looking,
which is learned so slowly, and nothing that happened here. Nothing.
The sufferings, then. And above all, the heaviness,
and the long experience of love,– just what is wholly
unsayable. But later, among the stars,
what good is it–they are better as they are: unsayable.
For when the traveler returns from the mountain-slopes into the valley,
he brings, not a handful of earth, unsayable to others, but instead
some word he has gained, some pure word, the yellow and blue
gentian. Perhaps we are here in order to say: house,
bridge, fountain, gate, pitcher, fruit-tree, window–
at most: column, tower. . . . But to say them, you must understand,
oh to say them more intensely than the Things themselves
ever dreamed of existing. Isn’t the secret intent
of this taciturn earth, when it forces lovers together,
that inside their boundless emotion all things may shudder with joy?
Threshold: what it means for two lovers
to be wearing down, imperceptibly, the ancient threshold of their door–
they too, after the many who came before them
and before those to come. . . . ., lightly.
Here is the time for the sayable, here is its homeland.
Speak and bear witness. More than ever
the Things that we might experience are vanishing, for
what crowds them out and replaces them is an imageless act.
An act under a shell, which easily cracks open as soon as
the business inside outgrows it and seeks new limits.
Between the hammers our heart
endures, just as the tongue does
between the teeth and, despite that,
still is able to praise.
Praise this world to the angel, not the unsayable one,
you can’t impress him with glorious emotion; in the universe
where he feels more powerfully, you are a novice. So show him
something simple which, formed over generations,
lives as our own, near our hand and within our gaze.
Tell him of Things. He will stand astonished; as you stood
by the ropemaker in Rome or the potter along the Nile.
Show him how happy a Thing can be, how innocent and ours,
how even lamenting grief purely decides to take form,
serves as a Thing, or dies into a Thing–, and blissfully
escapes far beyond the violin.–And these Things,
which live by perishing, know you are praising them; transient,
they look to us for deliverance: us, the most transient of all.
They want us to change them, utterly, in our invisible heart,
within–oh endlessly–within us! Whoever we may be at last.
Earth, isn’t this what you want: to arise within us,
invisible? Isn’t it your dream
to be wholly invisible someday?–O Earth: invisible!
What, if not transformation, is your urgent command?
Earth, my dearest, I will. Oh believe me, you no longer
need your springtimes to win me over–one of them,
ah, even one, is already too much for my blood.
Unspeakably I have belonged to you, from the first.
You were always right, and your holiest inspiration
is our intimate companion, Death.
Look, I am living. On what? Neither childhood nor future
grows any smaller . . . . . Superabundant being
wells up in my heart.
The Fall Equinox is on Monday, the New Moon on Tuesday and Wednesday.
The power potential for this period is increased with Pluto stationing direct on Monday.
Whatever has been brewing is ready to come forth.
Today on KPFA two of the hosts on separate programs, interviewed people who had pursued their dreams despite hardship and ridicule for the past 40 years plus. One, Malcolm Margolin author, publisher and founder of Heyday Books in Berkeley, CA and the other Chris Strachwitz founder of Arhoolie Records. Both these guys became fascinated and obsessed with cultures other than their own and dedicated their life’s work to bringing forth those cultures. Malcolm’s fascination was California Indians, while for Chris it was African American music especially blues.
Through their efforts the rest of us came to know and appreciate the accomplishments of these two groups which were in turn benefited.
Since I am an Evolutionary Astrologer, I will start with Pluto. Pluto went retrograde on Tax Day in the US, April 15 and now it will go direct the day after the People’s Climate March in New York, September 21. Over 100,000 people and are expected to march in support of the environment on that day. Let us use these two events (tax day and the climate march) as the bookends of this Pluto retrograde period.
Listening to the two shows on the radio brought me back to a recurrent thought I have been having for the past several months. What I have done for the past 40+ years? This thought has been coming up a lot for me now that I am in the Fall of my own life and possibly motivated by the Pluto retrograde which opposes my natal Venus in the 11th house. There have been many death during this past 5 months, of famous people and of loved ones.
One thing I have done for the past 40+ plus years is to be aware of my own impact on the planet. An undercurrent of fear related to the environment, has always been present in my life. I decided while still a child that I would not have children as I feared cataclysms and collapse that I felt were inevitable. I did not want to see my children or grandchildren suffering. I didn’t think we would last this long.
Forty years ago, I knew we were on a collision course. I couldn’t and still can’t believe anyone is surprised by climate change, rising sea level, melting ice caps, etc. Hello where have you been?
Human life on this planet is a cancer. It destroys everything in its path. It grows and grows eating everything in its path. Someone said the other day, “the planet will survive, but we might not.” I have lived the past 40 years knowing that. Thus, it is not surprising that I have felt the impermanence of the things. I have not accepted the myths of consensus society. I did not believe I was here to get a job, get married have children. My life has been about the search for meaning and wisdom. As I have said before, I got the final piece of that from a movie years ago (I don’t remember what it was). “Meaning is not something you find, but something you give.” This changed everything (to paraphrase the title of Naomi Kline’s latest book…This Changes Everything).
Nothing has meaning intrinsically. All the laws, rules and guidelines….are all man-made. The only laws that matter are the laws of Nature. The hubris of human beings has brought us to our current state of affairs. We will be humbled.
I think we have already gone too far. Cascading effects are now in motion. Even if we never manufactured another plastic bag, ‘clamshell’ or shampoo bottle…we have already produced enough plastic (floating in five huge garbage patches in the ocean), to destroy all life in the ocean and thus the planet. This stuff will never be gone. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch
I could go on….but I won’t. I’m sure if you are reading this blog post, you are aware of what’s going on.
So now what? This is the big question. All my life I have felt like I was waiting for something, like sitting at a bus stop. What to do while we wait. Kind of like: “how will you spend the time between the cradle and the grave.”
What I have chosen is related to a poem I read while living in a Gurdjieff community. I am a witness to the Creation. Libra….love, harmony and beauty. Find something that sparkles and follow it where ever it takes you.
The Ninth Elegy
Rainer Maria Rilke
Why, if this interval of being can be spent serenely
in the form of a laurel, slightly darker than all
other green, with tiny waves on the edges
of every leaf (like the smile of a breeze)–: why then
have to be human–and, escaping from fate,
keep longing for fate? . . .
Oh not because happiness exists,
that too-hasty profit snatched from approaching loss.
Not out of curiosity, not as practice for the heart, which
would exist in the laurel too. . . . .
But because truly being here is so much; because everything here
apparently needs us, this fleeting world, which in some strange way
keeps calling to us. Us, the most fleeting of all.
Once for each thing. Just once; no more. And we too,
just once. And never again. But to have been
this once, completely, even if only once:
to have been one with the earth, seems beyond undoing.
And so we keep pressing on, trying to achieve it,
trying to hold it firmly in our simple hands,
in our overcrowded gaze, in our speechless heart.
Trying to become it.–Whom can we give it to? We would
hold on to it all, forever . . . Ah, but what can we take along
into that other realm? Not the art of looking,
which is learned so slowly, and nothing that happened here. Nothing.
The sufferings, then. And above all, the heaviness,
and the long experience of love,– just what is wholly
unsayable. But later, among the stars,
what good is it–they are better as they are: unsayable.
For when the traveler returns from the mountain-slopes into the valley,
he brings, not a handful of earth, unsayable to others, but instead
some word he has gained, some pure word, the yellow and blue
gentian. Perhaps we are here in order to say: house,
bridge, fountain, gate, pitcher, fruit-tree, window–
at most: column, tower. . . . But to say them, you must understand,
oh to say them more intensely than the Things themselves
ever dreamed of existing. Isn’t the secret intent
of this taciturn earth, when it forces lovers together,
that inside their boundless emotion all things may shudder with joy?
Threshold: what it means for two lovers
to be wearing down, imperceptibly, the ancient threshold of their door–
they too, after the many who came before them
and before those to come. . . . ., lightly.
Here is the time for the sayable, here is its homeland.
Speak and bear witness. More than ever
the Things that we might experience are vanishing, for
what crowds them out and replaces them is an imageless act.
An act under a shell, which easily cracks open as soon as
the business inside outgrows it and seeks new limits.
Between the hammers our heart
endures, just as the tongue does
between the teeth and, despite that,
still is able to praise.
Praise this world to the angel, not the unsayable one,
you can’t impress him with glorious emotion; in the universe
where he feels more powerfully, you are a novice. So show him
something simple which, formed over generations,
lives as our own, near our hand and within our gaze.
Tell him of Things. He will stand astonished; as you stood
by the ropemaker in Rome or the potter along the Nile.
Show him how happy a Thing can be, how innocent and ours,
how even lamenting grief purely decides to take form,
serves as a Thing, or dies into a Thing–, and blissfully
escapes far beyond the violin.–And these Things,
which live by perishing, know you are praising them; transient,
they look to us for deliverance: us, the most transient of all.
They want us to change them, utterly, in our invisible heart,
within–oh endlessly–within us! Whoever we may be at last.
Earth, isn’t this what you want: to arise within us,
invisible? Isn’t it your dream
to be wholly invisible someday?–O Earth: invisible!
What, if not transformation, is your urgent command?
Earth, my dearest, I will. Oh believe me, you no longer
need your springtimes to win me over–one of them,
ah, even one, is already too much for my blood.
Unspeakably I have belonged to you, from the first.
You were always right, and your holiest inspiration
is our intimate companion, Death.
Look, I am living. On what? Neither childhood nor future
grows any smaller . . . . . Superabundant being
wells up in my heart.
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