A Critique of the Horse's Mouth

In my last post I quoted at length from Tenzin Palmo, the Englishwoman who spent 12 years in a cave on her own in the Himalayas, meditating within the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. Her last 3 years were entirely solitary. It’s provided quite a lot of food for thought. On the one hand I have a lot of admiration for what she did, and the insight she gained. Much of what she says corresponds to what you can read in books, but there’s a flavour to it that shows she’s talking from experience, and that’s what I liked, and why I quoted from it.

I spent 18 years as a practising Buddhist myself in a kind of full-time way – that era ended 10 years ago – and I’m still sifting through it. I was never much of a meditator. Since then I’ve lived a much more ordinary kind of life, as well as involving myself in different non-ordinary things such as astrology! This has helped give me perspective, but it’s still work in progress.

There are certain things I love about Buddhism. Its philosophy of emptiness makes complete sense. It is saying that everything is part of an interconnected flux in which there are no separate ‘things’. That includes the sense of ‘I’ – hence the famous ‘no-self’ doctrine.

The sense of ‘I’ is a good place to start. It certainly seems very solid and real, and it locates us experientially at the centre of the universe, to which we reach out and relate. But that sense of ‘I’ is usually based on identifying with what we think and feel – that is what makes us ‘us’. What a lot of people don’t realise is that you don’t have to identify with, and act on, what you are feeling. We have a choice. If you are angry with someone, you don’t have to torment yourself with it, the mind circling endlessly as it tries to justify the feeling of anger. Nor do you have to go into therapy and try and find the root cause of it (though that can have its place.) We can make the decision to stand back and observe the feeling. This is a deeply transformational act.

This principle applies to all sorts of limiting, painful emotions which we all experience every day. And it is a different self that does the observing. This new self is not rigid and protective, for there is nothing to protect anymore. It is spacious. You no longer need take events so personally. You are fully present and aware, fully emotionally responsive to others, fully connected in a way you never were before, because you’re no longer seeing the world through the veil of your own reactions to it. You are, in other words, more aware of the interconnected flux to which in reality we all belong.

OK, fine words, and I sometimes manage a bit of it. But at the same time, I think it describes the fundamental inner act that makes us conscious beings, and that lies at the root of all spiritualities and religions, whatever the cosmologies and dogmas they surround it with.

So ‘emptiness’ (sunyata) can sound like an abstruse philosophical doctrine. But actually it’s immediate and practical. And that is why I like it so much. It has both a metaphysical dimension and a practical dimension, and they both make sense. And it is about a different kind of fullness.

As an astrologer, I respond to symbols, they take me more deeply into an intuitive apprehension of myself, other people and world events. And Buddhism (like any religion worth its salt) has this aspect. Buddhism has figures that are not ‘God’, that are not about obedience, that embody the deeper patternings within the human mind, the ‘archetypes’. These figures have accumulated significance and power over the centuries as generations of practitioners have successively contemplated them. Just like the planets, and the gods behind them, in astrology.

When I write about Pluto, Lord of the Underworld, he often gives me his blessing by turning up in the room behind me. Something of him comes closer to me, he starts to become, in a way, part of me. And it’s the same with the Buddhist archetypal figures when you contemplate them, or when you call upon them to help in a practical situation. One such figure is Vajrasattva, who embodies who you are when all the dross is out of the way, when you remember who you are and why you’re here (the North Node?) He is our 'original face', the fullness that is left when the infatuation with being a ‘somebody’, with ‘achievement’, recedes. I call on him when I need to open up the gap in my experience, when I’m in the grip of some painful emotion that is distorting my equanimity and steady judgement. I only recently began to look at him again, and after reciting his mantra, or sound equivalent, for a while, I began to have these words go through my head: “I am a brilliant human being!” Well we all are underneath it all, and this is what he was pointing me to.

Another figure is Avalokitesvara, in his form with 1000 arms, each holding a different implement. He embodies compassion, and the 1000 arms symbolise the different gifts, the different vocations that we all have that both nourish us and that one way or another impact positively on others. This is something I have come to believe in strongly, that life is about discovering the particular gifts that you have and using them. This is what I find a lot of astrological readings are about: helping people identify, and have courage in, their own gifts. Often people come to me at the point where they know what they want to do, but they are afraid they’ll be no good at it, afraid they’ll look stupid in the eyes of others. But that is a kind of initiatory fire that many of us have to go through, it often seems to be part of the process.

So this is kind of nudging me on to my points of disagreement with Buddhism, at least as it has come down to us. And it starts with the idea of the historical Buddha as a perfect human being. Was there something special about the period 2-2500 years ago when these ‘perfect’ people, like Christ and the Buddha, appeared? Anyone who called themselves perfect, or allowed themselves to be called perfect, would nowadays be rightly laughed out of court. I’ve never met anyone who is anywhere near ‘perfect’, and I’ve been around long enough to have confidence in my experience. There are people with more insight than most, yes, and such people can be pretty helpful. And I reckon it's the same now as it was then.

And yet Buddhism, for an orthodox Buddhist of any school, is rooted in the faith that the historical Buddha, about whom we actually know very little, was inwardly perfect (or ‘Enlightened’). The orthodox Buddhist then bases his or her life around the aspiration to replicate that perfection for themselves. Tenzin Palmo is one of these people, and very upfront about it. And so all the practices, effective and inspiring as they may be, take place in what seems to me to be this inauthentic context, a context that ultimately disempowers people. Because realistically, which of us has ever encountered perfection? It's a nice ideal, but is it something you can realistically feel is possible for you? Or for anyone? It's not part of being human.

Who knows what is the destiny of human consciousness? Who really knows what happens after we die? These are great imponderables and I, for one, am not looking for answers. The important thing is to try to be real while we are here, and the Buddhist tradition at its best (e.g. Dzogchen) has a firm grasp on this. But it is also a religious tradition which has inevitably accumulated all sorts of other dross on the way, 2500 years worth.

There is also the tradition of renunciation as providing the most effective conditions for spiritual progress, if you are up to it. This attitude comes across very clearly with Tenzin Palmo. I’m bothering to criticise her because I think she has some real attainments, and I admire her 12 years in the cave. You also get this in Christianity, where the monks and nuns and celibate priests are the ‘real’ practitioners.

Now I have no problem with people going off and meditating in caves for periods of their lives. For the right people at the right time in their lives, this can be very appropriate. In my experience most people are not talented meditators, including myself. It is a talent like any other, even though a certain amount of meditation seems to help most people. Yet this particular talent has been raised above all others as a sort of royal road to ‘perfection’ (how does one begin to untangle this one?)

If you are going to head off to a cave, or its equivalent, for an extended period, you’d better make sure you’re happy doing without the pleasures and involvements of ordinary life, that the pleasure and sense of meaning that a contemplative life gives you is commensurate. It’s a purely pragmatic decision. For, as any half-educated Buddhist knows, sense pleasures and personal relationships are in no sense harmful in themselves. It is how we deal with them that counts, and they can indeed be transformative. For most of us they are the stuff of life, they give it meaning, they are the charnel ground where we encounter ourselves at our best and at our worst.

But no. The renunciates, however ‘encouraging’ they are about the possibilities of progress in ‘worldly’ life, they still put it down, subtly or unsubtly, as second best. Renunciation for them is not just a pragmatic decision, it is a philosophy. And this is despite basic Buddhist teachings to the contrary, such as the fetter of seeing particular practices as ends in themselves, rather than as a means to an end. Tenzin Palmo has this philosophy (“relationships, let’s face it, can be pretty distracting”.) And it was there in the Buddhist set-up I used to be around, where the teacher encouraged celibacy as a superior path (while not being able to keep to it himself); you’d consequently get these poor people, usually young, wearing it as a badge of honour, when you knew they’d love nothing better than to get their ends away.

There are strengths and pitfalls to both ordinary life and to the contemplative life, and I think it is invidious to start implying one is better than the other: it creates inflation in monks and nuns, and it discourages people living ordinary lives. (In religions you get unwritten rules, and I have encountered a teacher who taught equivalence between ordinary and renunciative life, but in practice gave seniority to the more renunciate.) Broadly speaking, you could say that the strength of a contemplative life is depth of experience, and the pitfall is narrowness and naivety. Tenzin Palmo admitted that in some ways she got very dry during her 12 years in the cave, and immersed herself in music and literature when she came out. She described it as a rupture that needed healing. The pitfall of ordinary life, of course, is that so much is going on that we can forget about what gives a deeper sense of meaning. Its strength is that there is an ongoing challenge from the environment not to react in habitual ways, to look with fresh eyes, and when we succeeed we know it is for real, for it has been tested.

I could go on. There is the obvious issue of authority, around which any organised religion is to a large extent based. Adherents can find it very difficult to see, let alone admit to their compromise with authority, and the payback involved. It is substantially present (though of course not universal) in organised Buddhism just like anywhere else. But it did take me aback with Tenzin Palmo, for as far as I could see she had very much gone her own way, and gone where others would not have gone, in the context of a healthy and heartfelt relationship with her own teacher. So far so good. But her first instinct on deciding how to benefit others from what she had done was to think in terms of founding a nunnery where the young women would intensively study the relevant Buddhist texts in the original Tibetan, prior to heading off and becoming yoginis in their own right. Just like she did. Once it was set up, Tenzin Palmo would leave and resume her solitary meditational lifestyle. This struck me as naïve.

It is clear from her website that she is pretty much creating for women a copy of the monastic training for men that already exists. The women are joining as young as 15 years old, many with hardly any education, and subject to this narrow and intensive full-time training for years. No doubt they will benefit in some ways. But many of them will at the same time be subsumed by this system, they will be overawed by the teachers and their grand titles and the weight of tradition. In other words, authority. This is not what people need, and Tenzin Palmo seems as much as anything to be fighting a political battle to achieve equal status for women, at the expense of the women themselves.

It is clear to me that to this extent she doesn’t understand people’s real needs, the conditions they need to develop, despite the real insight she has gained through meditation, and the genuine goodwill she has towards people. And this is often characteristic of organised religion: there is ‘faith’ in its methods that blinds the teacher to what people actually need. You get this with the paedophile scandal in the Catholic Church. It’s partly caused by the arrested development of the priests, who as teenagers are shunted off to single-sex seminaries and told that sex is bad. The Pope has apologised on behalf of the Church for the scandal (in which he had been complicit), but seems unable to question the methods that have brought it about in the first place.

In the East, authority has always lain with the monks, who are organised hierarchically. This system is in its own way being replicated in the West, where you get these large Buddhist organisations held together by the authority of the teachers and senior disciples. And what the followers experience as 'faith' is often the hidden surrender of their own independence. Faith is a mixed thing: it is both healthy and necessary, but other more needy emotions also tend to jump on the bandwagon, and this is what makes it to that extent blind and resistant to a critical awareness of the tradition and of the teachers.

It’s a mess, and I accept that for some people finding their way out of this mess is part of their path; and for others who are dysfunctional (you get a high percentage in religious groups) the organisation and hierarchy provide a psychological security that enables them to cope.

(The astrological world is not immune from this. What I found at conferences was that you would get an over-emphasis on hierarchy, a clear division between 'names' and everyone else, that you could even spot in the dining-room. And the 'names' would award each other prizes (yes really!), and they would take it in turns to deliver the Dead Name Memorial Lecture. You could also spot the 'wannabe names'. I found this class-ridden context distasteful and disempowering. Which I why I like the blogosphere, because it is everything the self-styled 'establishment' is not!)

This brings me back to the 1000 armed Avalokitesvara and what I think the real purpose of a religious/spiritual grouping needs to be: it needs to be an informal network that helps people unfold their individual gifts and talents, for that is where their passion lies and their sense of purpose in being alive. The Buddhist practices and philosophy can be a very useful adjunct to this. But if, as in Tenzin Palmo's nunnery, you are a young person and all your time is taken up with philosophical and meditative training, and learning arcane languages and rituals, or working for the good of the organisation, and you are surrounded by people learning and doing more or less the same things, then where is the room for the individual and his/her talents? The words brain and wash come to mind. You end up with people who are sincere and well-meaning, but who lack the confidence to progress in the world, and substitute for this an inflated sense of themselves as ‘spiritual’ beings, unlike the rest of us who are immersed in the ‘mundane’ and doomed to endless rebirth.

And that’s another thing: Buddhism needs to ditch the notion that you find in the Tibetan Book of the Dead, that after we die we eventually flee back to a human body because we cannot handle naked reality. There is a certain truth in that, but it gives entirely the wrong emphasis. It is part of a Buddhist mindset that says earthly existence is basically a trap we need to transcend (Tenzin Palmo's view). I do not have a problem being embodied, and my aspiration is to feel entirely happy about being here on this beautiful earth before I die. And I’m here because there are things for me to do, and things to be learned, rather than because I am terrified of ultimate reality, or because I’m not ‘Enlightened’. I think it’s Buddhist scaremongering, just like the Tibetans do with their endless descriptions of hell (Tenzin Palmo agrees with me on that one), in a misguided attempt to get people to engage in spiritual practice. The Roman Catholic Church does the same thing.

Once when Tenzin Palmo was with her teacher, Kamtrul Rimpoche, she asked him a question. He replied well this is what the book says, and this is what I say. I liked that, the ability to function within a tradition without feeling beholden to it. Like any old tradition, Buddhism is like this pile of dross with the odd nugget of gold in it. And it’s only ever going to be a free-spirited minority, who have maybe been burnt by taking the dross too seriously, who will be able to be discerning. Like any religion.

I'm away till Friday, so I will join in the comment scrum at that point!

From the Horse's Mouth

I finished reading Cave in the Snow a few days ago, the story of the Englishwoman Tenzin Palmo, who spent 12 years (1976-88) 13,000 foot up a mountain in the Himalayas, meditating. She had first trained for many years within the Kargyu school of Tibetan Buddhism. She was inspired by its founder, Milarepa, who spent decades in solitary meditation. Part of her mission was to prove that women also could do this.

In the chapter called ‘Yogini’ she reluctantly discusses some of her inner experiences during that time. As she says: “Frankly, I don’t like discussing it. It’s like your sexual experiences. Some people like talking about them, others don’t. Personally I find it terribly intimate.” The author, Vicki Mackenzie, had to press her.

“Of course, when you do prolonged retreats you are going to have experiences of great intensity – times when your body completely melts away, or when you feel the body is flying. You get states of incredible awareness and clarity when everything becomes very vivid.”

There were visions too, but as she says: “The whole point is not to get visions but realisations. And realisations are quite bare. They are not accompanied by lights and music. We’re trying to see things as they really are. A realisation is non-conceptual. It’s not a product of the thinking process or the emotions – unlike visions which come from that level. A realisation is the white transparent light at the centre of the prism, not the rainbow colours around it.”

“There are states of incredible bliss. Bliss is the fuel of retreat. You can’t do any long-term practice seriously unless there is inner joy. Because the joy and enthusiasm is what carries you along. It’s like anything, if you don’t really like it you will have this inner resistance and everything is going to be very slow. That is why the Buddha named Joy as a main factor on the path.

The only problem with bliss is that because it arouses such enormous pleasure, beyond anything on a worldly level, including sexual bliss, people cling to it and really want it and then it becomes another obstacle.

Once when I was with the Togdens [an elite group of yogis, trained from a very young age] there were two monks who were training to be yogis. One day they were standing up outside shaking a blanket and they were so blissed out they could hardly stand up. You could actually feel these waves of bliss hitting you. The Togdens turned to me and said: “You know, when you start, this is what happens. You get completely overwhelmed by bliss and you don’t know what to do. After a while you learn how to control it and bring it down to manageable levels.” And it’s true. When you meet more mature practitioners they’re not completely speechless with all this great bliss, because they’ve learnt how to deal with it. And of course they see into its empty nature. You see, bliss in itself is useless. It’s only useful when it’s used as a state of mind for understanding Emptiness – when that blissful mind is able to look into its own nature. Otherwise it is just another subject of Samsara [mundane, conditioned existence]. You can understand emptiness on one level but to understand it on a very subtle level requires this complement of bliss. The blissful mind is a very subtle mind and that kind of mind looking at Emptiness is a very different thing from the gross mind looking at emptiness. And that is why one cultivates bliss.

You go through bliss. It marks just a stage on the journey. The ultimate goal is to realise the nature of the mind. The nature of the mind is unconditioned, non-dual consciousness. It is Emptiness and bliss. It is the state of Knowing without the Knower. And when it is realised it isn’t very dramatic at all. It’s like waking up for the first time – surfacing out of a dream and then realising you have been dreaming. That is shy the sages talk about all things being an illusion. Our normal way of being is muffled – it’s not vivid. It’s like breathing in stale air. Waking up is not sensational. It’s ordinary. But it’s extremely real.

At first you get just a glimpse of it. That is actually only the beginning of the path. People often think when they get that glimpse it is the whole thing, that they’ve reached the goal. Once you begin to see the nature of the mind then you can begin to meditate. Then after that you have to stabilize it until the nature of the mind becomes more and more familiar. And when that is done you integrate it into everyday life.”

There was the occasion one spring when the thaw of the winter snows had begun and her cave was being systematically flooded. “The walls and the floor were getting wetter and wetter and for some reason I was also not very well. I started to feel very down. Then I thought: “Why are you still looking for happiness in Samsara? And my mind just changed around. It was like: That’s right – Samsara is Dukkha [the fundamental unsatisfactory nature of life.] It’s OK that it’s snowing. It’s OK that I’m sick because that is the nature of Samsara. There’s nothing to worry about. If it goes well that’s nice. If it doesn’t go well that’s also nice. It doesn’t make any difference. Although it sounds very elementary, at the time it was a real breakthrough. Since then I have never really cared about external circumstances. In that way the cave was a great teaching because it was not too perfect.”

She remained deliberately vague about the precise nature of the practices she was doing. “I was doing very old traditional practices ascribed to the Buddha himself. They involve a lot of visualisation and internal yogic practices. Basically, you use the creative imaginative faculty of the mind to transform everything, both internally and externally. The creative imagination in itself is an incredibly powerful force. If you channel it in the right way it can reach very deep levels of mind which can’t be accessed through verbal means or mere analysis. This is because on a very deep level we think in pictures. If you are using pictures which have arisen in an Enlightened mind, somehow that unlocks very deep levels in our own minds.”

In the end, had it all been worth it?

“It’s not what you gain but what you lose. It’s like unpeeling the layers of an onion, that’s what you have to do. My quest was to understand what perfection meant. Now, I realise that on one level we have never moved away from it. It is only our deluded perception which prevents our seeing what we already have. The more you realise, the more you realise there is nothing to realise. The idea that there’s somewhere we have got to get to, and something we have to attain, is our basic delusion. Who is there to attain it anyway?”

Back in the world again, had there been a transformation?

“There is a kind of inner freedom which I don’t think I had when I started – an inner peace and clarity. I think it came from having to be self-sufficient, having nothing or no-one to turn to whatever happened. Also while I was in retreat everything became dreamlike, just as the Buddha described. One could see the illusory nature of everything going on around one – because one was not in the middle of it. And then when you come out you see that people are so caught up in their life – we identify so totally with what we’ve created. We believe in it so completely. That’s why we suffer – because there’s no space for us. Now I notice there is an inner distance towards whatever occurs, whether what’s occurring is outwards or inwards. Sometimes, it feels like being in an empty house with all the doors and windows wide open and the wind just blowing through without anything obstructing it. Sometimes one gets caught up again, but now one knows that one is caught up again.

It’s not a cold emptiness, it’s a warm spaciousness. It means that one is no longer involved in one’s ephemeral emotions. One sees how people cause so much of their own suffering just because they think that without having these strong emotions they’re not real people.

Why does one go into retreat? One goes into a retreat to understand who one really is and what the situation truly is. When one begins to understand oneself then one can truly understand others because we are all interrelated. It is very difficult to understand others while one is still caught up in the turmoil of one’s emotional involvement – because we’re always interpreting others from the standpoint of our own needs. That’s why, when you meet hermits who have really done a lot of retreat, say 25 years, they are not cold and distant. On the contrary. They are absolutely lovely people. You know that their love for you is totally without judgement because it doesn’t rely on who you are or what you are doing, or how you treat them. It’s totally impartial. It’s just love. It’s like the sun – it shines on everyone. Whatever you did they’d still love you because they understand your predicament and in that understanding naturally arises love and compassion. It’s not based on sentiment. It’s not based on emotion. Sentimental love is very unstable, because it’s based on feedback and how good it makes you feel. That is not real love at all.”

Later we read: “There is the thought, and then there is the knowing of the thought. And the difference between being aware of the thought and just thinking is immense…. It’s enormous. Normally we are so identified with our thoughts and emotions, that we are them. We are the happiness, we are the anger, we are the fear. We have to learn to step back and know our thoughts and emotions are just thoughts and emotions. They’re just mental states. They’re not solid, they’re transparent. One has to know that and then not identify with the knower. One has to know that the knower is not somebody. The further back we go, the more open and empty the quality of our consciousness becomes. Instead of finding some solid little eternal entity, which is “I”, we get back to this vast spacious mind which is interconnected with all living beings.

Once we realise that the nature of our existence is beyond thought and emotions, that it is incredibly vast and interconnected with all other beings, then the sense of isolation, separation, fear and hopes fall away. It’s a tremendous relief!

I’m reading ‘Cave in the Snow’, the story of Tenzin Palmo, an Englishwoman who spent 12 years meditating in a cave in the Himalayas. I have a mixed response to Tibetan Buddhism. On the one hand I feel quite a strong affinity with it, you can see people around it who have a lot of power and insight and compassion, and yet who are also unassuming and down-to-earth. But I just don’t get the whole renunciative thing, it seems to me like cutting off limbs that are there to be used. And I don’t get strange notions like aiming for perfection, for Enlightenment. That’s like imposing an idea onto our lives, and life is far too vast and unknowable to be able to do that. Nor do I get the first Noble Truth, that life is inherently uncomfortable and painful, and that we need to do something to end that (the 3rd and 4th Noble Truths). I’m quite happy to live with a certain amount of discomfort, and anyway discomfort is often creative, it’s like an astrological square.

When Tenzin Palmo (then Diane Perry) was about 20 (in the early 60s) she bumped into the soon-to-be famous – and notorious - Chogyam Trungpa in London. He was still a young man and had only just arrived in the West. He said to her that he’d been used to being a high lama in Tibet, and that he now had no disciples, and needed one, so could he teach her? She was only too pleased, and benefitted from his teaching. The book continues:

‘But Tenzin Palmo also experienced at first hand the more controversial side of Trungpa. She was neither upset, nor outraged (unlike his recent detractors), nor did she take the high moral ground. Quite the contrary. ‘I can remember the first time I met him. As I walked into the room he patted the seat next to him on the sofa, indicating I should sit beside him. We were in the middle of afternoon tea, eating cucumber sandwiches and talking about deep Buddhist subjects when I suddenly felt his hand going up my skirt. I didn’t scream but I did have on stiletto heels and Trungpa was wearing sandals! He didn’t scream either, but he did remove his hand very quickly,’ she said laughing as she recalled the event.

Trungpa was not to be deterred. ‘He was always suggesting I sleep with him. And I kept saying “No way,” she continued. ‘The fact was, he was not being truthful. He was presenting himself as a pure monk and saying that meeting me had swept him off his feet etc, which I thought was a load of baloney, although I did think he was ‘pure’ because I couldn’t see how a high Tibetan Lama would have had the opportunity to be otherwise. And I certainly was not going to be the cause of any monk losing his vows. I didn’t want anything to damage Mahayana Buddhism. If he had said to me “Look, my dear, I’ve had women since I was thirteen and I have a son, don’t worry about it,” which was true, I would have said, “Let’s go,” because what would have been more fascinating than to practise with Trungpa? None of the men I knew were anything like him,’ she said with surprising candour, referring to the fact that in the higher stages of Tibetan Buddhism in tantra, one takes a sexual partner to enhance one’s spiritual insights. ‘So, he lost out by presenting that pathetic image!’ she added.

Of Eclipses and Crop Circles

This is the latest Visual Astrology Newletter from Bernadette Brady. It's free, and you can subscribe here.

The Eclipse, the Swallows and Crop Circles -
Cosmos and Culture in the wheat fields.
Bernadette Brady M.A.

Every summer the south west of England is awash with the most magical and beautiful phenomena known as crop circles. Reported since the seventeenth-century, these circle have defied researchers as to how to understand them. Considered by most to be hoaxes, the simple fact stands that although some may well be made with ropes and planks, others are so large, so perfect and so mysterious in their geometry and appear so quickly that most unbiased viewers are left only with awe and wonder.

Independent of the nature of their creators, these circles are a cultural part of an English summer. The circles vary from one year to the next but this particular summer there has been a collection of astronomical circles suggestive of this current eclipse season [1].

Figure 1. Formation (left) at Winterbourne Bassett, England, on 18 June, possibly showing an eclipse, solar or lunar. Formation (right) at East Kennett, England, on 7 July appeared to give the correct timing to the lunar eclipse due on 16 August 2008.

The first of these cycles [2] appeared at Winterbourne Bassett, England, on 18 June (see Figure 1). It was rough which suggests that it is not made by the “crop circle artists” but it seemed to be showing an eclipse image. If we considered the large circle to be the sun with its corona, then this might be talking of the total solar eclipse on the 1 August 2008. If the large circle is the shadow of the earth and the smaller circle is the Moon passing through this shadow, then this might be talking of the lunar eclipse due on 16 August, 2008. Within a few weeks of this crop circle appearing, the eclipse theme was taking shape with the clearest example being a formation at East Kennett, England, on 7 July which shows "forty days or two Mayan months" until a near-total lunar eclipse on August 16, 2008” [3]

To possibly underline the Mayan message of this circle, on 15 July at Avebury Manor, Wiltshire, the “crop circle artists” then gave an almost standard Mayan signature - a circle which was a orrery in the wheat field showing the orientation of the solar system for the date 21 December, 2012 (Figure 2).

A crop circle orrery for 21 December 2012 seems to be referring to the ever-growing concerns for the year 2012. At the heart of these concerns is the ending of a Mayan calendar great cycle. The Mayan calendar includes the great cycle of precession where the north celestial pole slowly rotates through an ellipse which takes around 26,000 years to complete. In the year 2012 the current pole star Polaris will be as close as it can get to being exactly on the north celestial pole. Pole stars are rare, the last one being in approximately 2790 BCE with Thuban in Draco. This alignment of the pole with the star Polaris was, apparently, for the Mayans the marker for the beginning and end of their great cycle of ages.

Figure 2. Formation in Avebury, UK, on 15 July showing the solar system for 21 December, 2012.

Many people believe this to be apocalyptic but one must remember that, as with all cycles, they do not have shape edges but tend to slowly emerge as they step through their stages. thus any so called endings could take several thousand years to manifest.

Here the crop circle artist is capturing the cultural interest in this date – a literal cosmos and culture phenomena in the fields around Avebury, UK, and possibly suggesting the early eclipse crop circle is indeed based on the Mayan system of months.

So what are the eclipses of this current season that someone seems to be wanting to draw in the landscape?





The August 2008 Eclipses

The eclipse season of July-August 2008 produces a solar eclipse at 100 Leo on 1 August. This eclipse is from Saros Series 10 South which began on 10 March 1179 and will not complete until 13 April 2423. This series, based on its "birth" chart, is delineated in Predictive Astrology, the Eagle and the Lark as:

This saros series concerns itself with breaking out of a very negative situation where no hope can be seen to a more positive space containing many options. A worry that may have been affecting a person will suddenly clear. [4]

Already this theme is emerging with the Serbian ex-leader, Radovan Karadzic, who has been in hiding for the last 13 years, being found and bought to trial. On a smaller more personal level many clients have been reporting that their old problems, large and small, are emerging again but now with clarity and solutions. However, it is not the solar eclipse that is the theme of the wheat fields in the west of England.

The Lunar Eclipse on 16 August 2008

The lunar eclipse on the 16 August is at 240 Aquarius and belongs to the lunar Saros series labelled with the van den Berg number of 138. The series began on the 5 October 1503. [5]

This first eclipse, in 1503, occurred with the Moon located in the Babylonian constellation of “the swallows” which we now know as the fishes of Pisces.

Figure 3.The lunar eclipse series began (5 October, 1503) with a lunar eclipse in the stars of Pisces, known as "The Swallows" (Left). On the 10 July in Alton Priors, Wiltshire, a formation containing six birds appeared called the "Swallows" which expanded on 22 July to contain twelve swallows.

On 10 July 2008 a beautiful crop circle appeared on the hills around Alton Priors, UK, and it was named by the crop circles image collectors as “The Swallows”. It contained six swallows. However, by 22 July the crop circle had grown to contain twelve swallows. This formation was over 100 meters wide and 150 meters long and drew bus loads of foreign tourists to its beauty. I visited this formation myself and had the joy of watching swallows perform low flying swoops along the “rivers” of flattened wheat.

Various websites suggested that this huge formation was associated with the eclipses in August. However, the three way link between the eclipse, its origins within the Swallows in the sky on the on 5 October, 1503, and the crop circle formation of "The Swallows" is probably more synchronistic than planned. Nevertheless, it set me off on a journey of research of this particular lunar saros series. For me the zeitgeist was "speaking".

The Lunar Saros Series #138

The series, like a solar eclipse series, will produce a new lunar eclipse every 18 years 9 or 12 days (depending on the number of leap years in the 18 years). Each eclipse will occur 11-to-12 degrees further along in zodiacal degrees. At the beginning of the series the lunar eclipses (the position of the full moon) occurs in front of the transiting node (greater zodiacal longitude) but at each occurrence the orb decreases by around half a degree. Thus the lunar eclipses slowly become total and then move out again to partial and final complete and in this way the series unfolds over a period of 1481 years.

The dates of the entire Lunar Saros series (van don Berg #138).

1503 Oct 05 1521 Oct 15 1539 Oct 27 1557 Nov 06 1575 Nov 18 1593 Dec 08 1611 Dec 19 1629 Dec 30 1648 Jan 10 1666 Jan 20 1684 Feb 01 1702 Feb 12 1720 Feb 23 1738 Mar 06 1756 Mar 16 1774 Mar 27 1792 Apr 07 1810 Apr 19 1828 Apr 29 1846 May 11 1864 May 21 1882 Jun 01 1900 Jun 13 1918 Jun 24 1936 Jul 04 1954 Jul 16 1972 Jul 26 1990 Aug 06 2008 Aug 16 2026 Aug 28 2044 Sep 07 2062 Sep 18 2080 Sep 29 2098 Oct 10 2116 Oct 21 2134 Nov 02 2152 Nov 12 2170 Nov 23 2188 Dec 04 2206 Dec 16 2224 Dec 26 2243 Jan 07 2261 Jan 17 2279 Jan 28 2297 Feb 08 2315 Feb 20 2333 Mar 02 2351 Mar 13 2369 Mar 24 2387 Apr 04 2405 Apr 14 2423 Apr 26 2441 May 06 2459 May 17 2477 May 28 2495 Jun 08 2513 Jun 19 2531 Jun 30 2549 Jul 11 2567 Jul 22 2585 Aug 01 2603 Aug 13 2621 Aug 24 2639 Sep 04 2657 Sep 14 2675 Sep 26 2693 Oct 06 2711 Oct 18 2729 Oct 28 2747 Nov 09 2765 Nov 19 2783 Nov 30 2801 Dec 11 2819 Dec 22 2838 Jan 01 2856 Jan 13 2874 Jan 23 2892 Feb 03 2910 Feb 15 2928 Feb 26
ENDS

Poison, popes and power - the first eclipse.

October 1503 was a time of intrigue in the Vatican The Pope Alexander VI had died, believed by poison, and the newly elected pope Pope Pius III was dead within ten days of being anointed. Into this time of upheaval, the power-hungry cardinal, Della Rovere succeeded by dexterous diplomacy to trick the weakened college of cardinals into supporting him.

Della Rovere was elected to the papal dignity by the near-unanimous vote of the cardinals. He became Pope Julius II and his reign was marked by an aggressive foreign policy, ambitious building projects, and patronage of the arts and literature. Indeed in 1506 he laid the foundation stone for the new Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome and Michelangelo painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel for him.


Figure 4 - The Lunar series #138 origin chart of 5 October, 1503.

The first Lunar eclipse in the series captured a cardinal grand cross of a partile square between Neptune and the eclipse and a Mars-Jupiter-Saturn combination.

Issues of poison, the arts, and religious military power and intrigue within the Vatican or any halls of power all seem to sit comfortably with chart. However, being the "birth" chart of an eclipse series, these themes, I believe, become embedded within the whole series.

We can follow this theme through history by looking at events at times of other occurrences of eclipses of the series. Here follow are some interesting examples:

June 1990 - The Boxer Rebellion in China - China in conflict with westerners.

13 June, 1900 - This was the period of the Boxer Rebellion in China when troops from the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Austria-Hungary, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, the United States, Russia and Japan were all under siege in an area near the Forbidden City in Peking (Beijing) and the provincial governments of China was declaring war on all westerners and Christians in the city.

Figure 4 - (left) A Chinese Boxer rebel (1900) waving a banner supporting the imperial armies conflict with ALL foreigners; and (right) a Chinese member of the Olympic ceremony waving a banner for the games.

This same series which is linked with the Boxer rebellion, where the Chinese declared war on all western countries, is now returning With the Chinese staging the Olympic games, athletic teams from all the different nations of the world are "invading" China and the Chinese, being the host country, are openly in "conflict" with them all in order to win medals.

The Partition of Vietnam and its reuniting in 1972.

The series also occurred in mid July 1954 and this was the timing of the Geneva Conference which partitioned Vietnam into North and South Vietnam. This partition was in place until the very next occurrence in the series on 26 July 1972, when the last US troops were removed from Vietnam on 25 July 1972.

The Gulf War - the last occurrence of the eclipse series.

The last occurrence of this series was on 6 August 1990, the date when Iraq invaded Kuwait which lead to the first Gulf War and began the still-continuing conflict in Iraq. A time of military conflict fuelled by the lust for oil which dragged many nations into the conflict. Added to this and largely missed by the world press which was occupied with the conflict in the Gulf, there was an announcement by the Germans that East and West Germany would reunite to form one country once again.

The forthcoming lunar eclipse

There are many other occurrences of this eclipse without the death of popes, partitioning or rejoining of countries and the emphasis on the arts and literature. However, if we consider the crop circles (regardless of their origins) as an expression of a theme or idea in the the collective, the current zeitgeist, then this implies a focus on this particular expression. But there is another interesting feature of this eclipse. If we look at the sky maps for the original eclipse in 1503 and compare this to the sky for the time of the forthcoming eclipse - 16 August 2008 - there are some interesting similarities. Both eclipses haveNeptune and Uranus in the same location amongst the stars. (see figure 5).

Figure 5 - Above - the sky map for the first lunar eclipse in this series with Neptune approaching the stars of Capricorn and Uranus amongst the stars of Aquarius. Below - the sky map for the forthcoming lunar eclipse on the 16 August, 2008, showing similar positions for Neptune and Uranus.

Intrigue in places of power

The Olympic games in China will, I feel, embrace the conflict nature of this eclipse particularly with its association with the Boxer Rebellion. However, is it possible that in this summer we may see the return of some papal intrigue, some Vatican mystery or this intrigue could occur in other halls of power.

At the moment the UK Prime ministership sits uneasily on Gordon Brown's shoulders. Further, one can only guess at the issues of power within the dynamics of the USA political system with an outgoing President and two presidential hopefuls. Or will a return of the eclipse of "The Swallows" bring with it division or reunion of countries? After all "The Swallows" are traditionally two animals (birds or fishes) moving in different directions but held together by the knot star Al Rescha.

The crop circles may not know but they may still be valid symbols of things to come -let us wait and see what the lunar eclipse of the Swallows brings.


---------------------------

1. Astronomical, lunar emphasis, crop circles have also been reported in Korea.

2. All crop circle images are from www.cropcircleconnector.com accessed 30 July 2008.

3. http://www.cropcircleconnector.com/2008/eastkennett/eastkennett2008a.html accessed 30 July 2008

4. Brady, Bernadette (1992, 98). Predictive Astrology, the Eagle and the Lark. Samuel Weiser; Maine, USA. pg 323. All the solar Saros Series are astrologically delineated in this text.

5. For all the lunar eclipse series information see http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/LEsaros/LEsaros138.html accessed 30 July 2008.

The Cult of Celebrity

“The contemporary cult of celebrity was born in the sixties. All developed societies lavish attention on a small number of favoured people, rich, beautiful or talented. In eighteenth-century Europe it might be duchesses and court composers, in classical Rome orators and gladiators, in nineteenth-century Japan, warriors and courtesans. Details of their clothing, personal lives, foibles, family successes and disasters are gossiped about and vicariously enjoyed. They form a fantasy extended family, prettier and wickeder and more brightly coloured than the rest of us.

What has changed in recent decades is the scale of celebrity devotion, this cargo cult of modern Britain.It has elbowed aside rival forms in television entertainment, invaded and occupied popular newspapers and produced racks of magazines breathlessly following the face-lifts, marital break-ups, boob jobs and births of celebs. All of this originated in the mid-sixties. The cloying, ingratiating tone of contemporary magazines such as Hello! and OK! when interviewing or describing some frozen-faced doll can be found in the write-ups of the young set in British newspapers, supplements and the arch glossies of the sixties. The origins of ‘Big Brother’ television exhibitionism are buried in game shows and agony aunt columns half a century old. The raising of footballers and musicians from being tradesmen-servants of the public to misbehaving gods began then too.

Celebrities are often mocked for being talentless. Some are, some are not. A tribute paid to the young and beautiful by the rest of us, the circle of celebrity is paradoxically both very small and very open.From the outside the celebrity world seems to be a closed, charmed place, a marquee guarded by men with shaved heads and sunglasses inside which rock stars and footballers, actresses and princesses, all magically turn out to know one another. Yet what the sixties discovered was that celebrity must be open too in the sense of letting in new people from the streets, or it congeals into a resented elite. Modern celebrity has no time for a Samurai class or for haughty duchesses – it must be a fantasy island we could all paddle our way to, at least in theory. Cultural democracy rules, even while parliamentary democracy struggles.” (From A History of Modern Britain by Andrew Marr).

I think the cult of celebrity has been given extra power in recent years by the mutual reception of Neptune in Aquarius and Uranus in Pisces. Each planet is in a sign that the other rules and Neptune and Pisces are both associated with celebrity. And Aquarius/Uranus reflects the increasing democratisation of celebrity, where it almost becomes a virtue to have no talent (e.g. Victoria Beckham and Jade Goody): it shows that we could all do it.

Kennedy and Obama: Dreams from the Father

In my Saturday post Obama the African Chief, I may have lost my point to some people by the way I put it! Because to bring in the spectre of African dictators is like bringing in Hitler: discussion easily comes to an end amid what seems to be an extreme and harsh position. (That said, the great lesson of Hitler is that all collectives have the potential to subsume themselves to heartless authoritarian leaders. I don’t think Obama is one of them, but I think George Bush has a good streak of it, and no shortage of followers.)

Using astrocartography we see that on the one hand Barack Obama has a Moon line running through Washington, so he will feel comfortable as President; and on the other hand we see a Pluto line running through Kenya, his father’s country. Natally Obama has Moon square Pluto, so these Moon and Pluto lines are connected, we have to make something of this connection. It tells us that Obama will bring some sort of inheritance from his Kenyan roots to his Presidency. And because his Moon is in hard aspect to Pluto, it may be creative, and it may also be problematic.


Click to Enlarge

My favourite comment from the Saturday post was Neith’s, that this coming Presidential election is politics as usual! I agree with her, it brings everything down to earth. And it reminds us that a persistent theme in politics is that of the idealistic new leader who will do it all differently: that also is politics as usual. Which is not to say Obama might not also do some genuinely good stuff, like Blair (in the UK) and Kennedy did.

So I take this into account when considering Obama’s Moon square Pluto (and Sun square Neptune). There will be problematic dimensions to these aspects, which will emerge over time. Like many creative, larger than life people, both his positive attributes and his faults are likely to be BIG. He may well do brilliant things, and may well also be impossible in some ways. And afterwards we will think if only he hadn’t been like that, he could have done so much more!

John F Kennedy had a Saturn-Neptune-MC conjunction: his career (MC) was an expression of the leadership dreams (Neptune in Leo) of his father (Saturn). This is quite interesting, because 48 years later we have another Democratic Nominee who is attracting a similar kind of idealism, and has written a book called “Dreams from my Father.” Obama has Neptune (Dreams) square his Sun (Father).

I think there is a difference, however, between the 2 men. Obama is a bit older than Kennedy was, and I think his connection to his father is more reflective. Kennedy was the product of a political family with a dodgy history, where politics was what you were expected to do. JFK was expected to be President because his older brother, who’d been lined up for it, died in the War. And Obama does carry the dream from his father and his father’s father of success and of changing the world. Even though he only met his father once, these dreams still have a way of being passed down. Both men have/had the name Barack Hussein Obama, both went to Harvard and both have/had political idealism. But unlike Kennedy he doesn’t have an ambitious family mafia behind him, or the actual mafia.

When he was 29, Obama Senior wrote a report that was sharply critical of Kenyan government policy, and the resulting conflict with the President destroyed Obama's career, and he took to drinking. With Obama junior's natal Sun square Neptune, we could also read an attempt to redeem (Neptune) the father (Sun).

I saw a TV programme recently about the meetings between Kennedy and Krushchev. Kennedy, like a college student, waded in on an ideological level to try to prove to Krushchev that the capitalist system was better than the Communist system. The much older and more experienced Krushchev was not impressed, and was easily able to dance around Kennedy, reminding him of the dodgy foreign activities that the US got up to. You couldn’t imagine Obama being that naïve, but at the same time he does seem to slip up on foreign policy, like saying Jerusalem must remain the undivided capital of Israel, or that as President he would be open to discussions with all foreign leaders. It makes me bang my head a bit, and wonder how much wisdom he has.

Back to his Pluto line. Running through Kenya, this also describes the ‘Dreams from my Father’ (along with Sun square Neptune). I haven’t read the book, but the title is very significant. One American Obama supporter was saying to me the other day how the Kenyan inheritance was not relevant, as he didn’t know his father. And then in the same breath she praised his book. I said look at the title!

Pluto is not just his father, it is his ancestral inheritance from Kenya. It describes the ancient currents running through the culture, for better and for worse. I do not know this culture, but what we all know is that African countries tend towards dictatorships, Kenya included. This is one element in that Pluto, and what Obama will make of it when he attains power remains to be seen. More positively, there may also, for example, be a sense of divine kingship, an ancient sense that the leader needs to be connected to some other Source (Sun in Leo square Neptune), but not in the gross Bush/Blair sense of taking orders from God.

Being President inevitably kicks in ancient archetypes of kingship (Democracy? Ha, Ha!) Obama's are as much African as they are American/European. This will be interesting.

Incidentally, his Progressed Chart currently has a Jupiter Rising line running near Washington and a Jupiter IC line through Kenya!

The Dalai Lama and Western Religion

The Dalai Lama has been doing a number of gigs in Nottingham, UK, in front of thousands of people. Every day he emphasised the importance of continuing in one’s own faith. “It’s better to keep your own tradition, Catholic, Protestant — better, safer,” he said.

I found this an interesting, even quite extraordinary position to take. He was speaking primarily to modern westerners. On the one hand it says a lot about his tolerance and his understanding that Truth can be found in all traditions. It’s not something you’d hear coming out of the mouth of a radical Islamist or a Pope. It’s not even something you’d hear from a moderate, pleasant, civilised Sunni (I have one in mind), who states as a simple matter of fact that the Shias are not real Muslims. With moderates like this, who needs extremists?

As an aside, this was one of the film-maker Anthony Minghella’s (The English Patient) points. He had noticed how perfectly reasonable, civilised people from different cultures could easily hold incompatible viewpoints which could ultimately lead to conflict. Part of his mission was to explore this through his film-making.

I am sure, for example, that there are many very reasonable and humane Israelis who think that Israel has every right to exist pretty much in its present form, and that if a wall round Gaza is the only way to keep the suicide bombers out, then so be it. I am sure at the same time that there are many very reasonable and humane Palestinians who feel that Israel has pushed them out of their homeland, that their conditions are intolerable, and that action needs to be taken.

You don’t need extremists to get wars. You just need ordinary, decent people who have the usual failing of finding it hard to see the other’s point of view – and who will also succumb to group pressure to see issues one-sidedly. So let’s not blame the fundamentalists for everything!

Back to the Dalai Lama. He has Saturn in the 9th House (like the present Pope), which is a classic aspect for a spiritual leader/ teacher. It is also in the sign of Pisces, which describes his tolerance and inclusivity towards other religions, his teaching that at the end of the day, it is the development of a compassionate heart that matters.

At the same time, his position here is very Piscean, it is not something that the opposite sign of Virgo would say! Virgo would point out, in its usual analytical style, that there are differences between religions that we need to be aware of, and to tread carefully. And that people are different: some will find it most helpful to stay with their own tradition, while others will need to explore different paths.

The Dalai Lama’s Saturn is opposite a 3rd House Moon-Neptune conjunction in Virgo. This is the main challenge in his chart (the other is Mars in Libra square Pluto, which describes his quest for non-violence). With Moon in 3rd House Virgo and Mercury in Gemini trine Mars, there is no doubting the sharpness of his mind. But there is a tension here between Virgo and Pisces that is basic to the Dalai Lama, and I think it is the Moon, in its conjunction to Neptune and in the context of a very watery chart, that is likely to get swamped.

I think the statement he made about everyone sticking with their own religion is one-sidedly Piscean. It is common sense that some people, even many people will need to explore other paths. So I don’t think I am imposing my own opinion onto the Dalai Lama’s astrology when I say that his statement is an example of Pisces getting the better of Virgo. Not just his Moon being swamped, but also his Mercury in the watery 12th House. (For more on the Dalai Lama's chart, see my post of 7th April.)

I assume, given context and audience, that the Dalai Lama very much has in mind westerners aligning themselves with the Tibetan Buddhist path. I have to assume also that his experience of this has overall not been a happy one!

I think he has a point. One Buddhist group I have visited, for example, is run by academics/intellectuals, and the audience/congregation are classic timorous church mice. I thought why bother switching from the Church of England? It’s no different.

Then there are the big Tibetan groups, and again I can see what I think is the Dalai Lama’s point, from my limited experience. The people in them are sincere, but often very guru-focussed at the expense of their own strength and power – lost souls. And they do all this chanting in a foreign language, often without a very clear idea of why. One western Tibetan group has been protesting against the Dalai Lama: the issue is a political one, and whatever the rights and wrongs of it, it goes back hundreds of years and all these poor westerners have been drawn into one particular side of it.

In other words Tibetan Buddhism is an organised religion like any other. People like to accord it special status, but I think that is a mistake. And I think this is where the Dalai Lama is coming from. Organised religion has its well understood failings, but you’ll also find some good teachings in all of them. And within it you’ll also find the mystics, those who have their own direct relationship with the Absolute, rather than having it mediated by priests or monks, to whatever extent.

At the same time, people often have a profound need to leave the religion they were brought up with, and the Dalai Lama for some reason does not appear to understand this. Maybe it is because of the traditional context he grew up in, where you didn’t have this phenomenon of rebellion and alienation that you get in the West.

My experience of the Catholic Church from my very early years was of people who were dogmatic and intolerant, often harsh, and not very intelligent. My subsequent experience of the Church of England, while a relief after the Catholic Church, was of something very dilute. There was no way I was going near either when I grew up. Moreover, they ask you to believe preposterous things.

So this is why I find the Dalai Lama’s statement extraordinary. It suggests that, after all these years, he does not understand the western predicament. It may be, as he said, “safer” to stick with your native religion, and I have seen plenty of examples of young westerners coming to grief through their involvement with Buddhism. But some of them, including myself, learn from that. The West is a melting pot in which it is difficult to find a meaningful and human way to live, and a philosophy to back it up. But it is also open and free and thrilling and certainly not ‘safe’. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Human-Animal Hybrids, Chiron in Aquarius and the Madness of Worldlings

3 days ago the UK Parliament voted to allow the creation of human-animal hybrid embryos for research purposes. In the US, a Federal law is being proposed to ban such practices.

I last wrote about this subject just over a year ago, when the Bill was first proposed. I remain divided on it. I have a visceral response, running alongside a mistrust of the scientific establishment, that says no. But I can also see that a lot of good can come out of it. These embryos will have to be destroyed after 14 days, early enough in my opinion for nothing significant in the way of consciousness to be present. But I can’t prove that, and I may be wrong. So I am cautiously in favour of this research.

At the same time Parliament has passed a number of other related matters: allowing the creation of so-called ‘saviour siblings’, removing the need for a father with IVF treatment, and voting down a proposal to reduce the time limit for abortions from 24 weeks.

What needs paying attention to in all this is the astrology. Chiron is currently stationing in Aquarius, and it is conjunct the North Node and stationing Neptune, also both in Aquarius. This is powerful stuff. Aquarius is associated with Science. Science tends to treat nature one-sidedly as an object of investigation, and ignores nature as subject with which we imaginatively identify. To this extent Science is inhuman. Chiron’s presence in Aquarius is pointing this out, he is saying be careful what you do while I am in this sign, for I am a centaur, I am nature, and I was wounded by the unthinking and heroic Hercules; likewise, you too can do irreparable damage in your heroic but unconsidered quest to manipulate and conquer nature.

With Chiron's conjunction to Neptune, there is the suggestion of the mad (Neptune) scientist, and the crossing of natural boundaries.

With Chiron’s conjunction to the Node, we are talking about long-term karmic lessons for humanity, and often the only way lessons can be learnt is for mistakes to be made. There was a Chiron-Node conjunction in Aquarius at the time of the first oil strike in 1859, and the parallels are obvious. There was also a Chiron-Node conjunction at the time of the first controlled nuclear reaction in 1942. With these precedents we can be pretty sure that Science is going to make some ghastly mistakes around the creation of human life. And probably do some wonderful things as well, like reducing the number of people born with crippling diseases.

As a bio-ethicist pointed out on TV the other night, what you are often dealing with in these situations is competing ‘Goods’. It is good, for example, that a baby has a father, and it is also good that lesbian couples can have children through IVF. People get very passionate about just one side or the other, and understandably so. But I don’t think that is reasonable or helpful, because there ARE 2 sides, and there are usually no easy answers.

There is one issue which for me does have an easy answer, and that is the need to reduce the time limit on abortion from 24 weeks. The pro- and anti-abortion arguments often seem to me to be riddled with wrong-headedness, because they easily ignore the central issue, which is that an unborn baby after a certain (hard to determine) point is a sentient human.

The scientific argument, which carries the day politically, is that abortion is OK if the baby could not survive outside the womb, and as medical treatment improves, so does the time limit go down. This argument is inhuman, it is Science at its worst. It is saying that if Science would not be able to save you once you are born, then you are not human, so we can kill you.

The pro-lifers have a certain amount going for them, but we are often dealing with ideology rather than experience. Does a newly fertilised egg, or even a few week old embryo, have consciousness in any substantial sense? It is hard to know, and we certainly can’t be dogmatic about it. Once you get dogmatic/ideological, you may still be right, but you’re right for the wrong reasons.

I think the ‘pro-choice’ camp also gets wrong-headed, because though choice is an important issue, it is a secondary one. The primary issue is that we are dealing with a sentient human consciousness and the responsibility towards that, in my opinion, needs to come first.

So abortion is complex, and can’t be boiled down to the slogans of pro-life versus pro-choice. It seems to me to be obvious that there is a sentient human being way before, even months before the 24 week time limit that we have in the UK. That said, determining a time limit remains a very difficult problem.

While I am on my soap box, I have had on my mind the Buddha’s saying from 2500 years ago that ‘All Worldlings are Mad’. The saying certainly makes its point. But Indian Buddhism was a monkish religion, and so there are overtones of the superiority of the renunciative lifestyle compared to us mere, ‘mad’ mortals.

All the same, the scientific argument for abortion concerning the viability of the baby outside the womb reminded me of this saying. How could any sane person think like this? Not just one person, but a large collective of people? Similarly, how could a large collective of people take as a moral good the idea of endless economic growth for its own sake, when resources are limited? And when economic activity has the purpose of meeting material needs, why are you promoting it for its own sake? Why does one race of people consider itself superior to another? And so on.

You can see that the Buddha was right, that what he said 2500 years ago applied then and now. Wisdom is about not having these insane attitudes. Wisdom is not about complicated theories, it’s about seeing what’s in front of your nose (which is something the education system can paradoxically knock out of you, it makes you both clever and stupid.) But it can be remarkably difficult to see what is in front of your nose when everyone around you can’t. What society has told you since you were young seems like self-evident truth, and we get a lot of psychological security from thinking like everyone else.

So I think this is the main reason that ‘all worldlings are mad’: that we take our opinions from those around us, and this incidentally means that crazy ideas can take root and become authoritative and respectable. Of course, no-one would ever admit to taking their ideas from those around them. And in my experience this applies just as much to educated people as it does to uneducated people, and to liberal thinkers as much as it does to conservative thinkers. The alleged connection between CO2 and global warming is a perfect example of this. It is a provisional and arguable truth that has been turned by collective thinking into an absolute truth that no 'reasonable' person would reject.

You start to get some wisdom when you have the inclination, and the psychological security, to look independently at what’s in front of you. ‘Ignorance’ comes from the word ‘ignore’, it is a wilful, albeit unconscious, act. Ignorance is thinking that you know when you don’t. Wisdom begins with realising that you don’t know, as Socrates said. OK, I’ll get off my soap box now.

UFOs and Conspiracies

The British Government has just started releasing batches of previously classified UFO files after a number of requests under the Freedom of Information Act. The files document reported sightings of UFOs by members of the public and the RAF. With Pluto about to make its final visit to Sagittarius, the timing is appropriate. Eight files have been released, part of almost 200 to be released over the next 4 years.

Here are some drawings made by members of the public. (From the BBC news website.)
They include this diagram, whose author believed alien craft used decoy methods to avoid detection, carrying not humans but "fallen angels".

This drawing of a UFO was made from a description given by a 78-year-old man, who claims he was taken on board an alien craft at Basingstoke Canal in Aldershot during 1983.

This reproduction of a UFO was made by a Metropolitan Police officer after three officers saw an object at Stanmore in Harrow in 1984.

A 1979 government briefing for the House of Lords dismissed the idea of political collusion with aliens:

d. There has been no approach to Governments, and no direct knowledge of UFOs by Governments. Lord Clancarty has an answer: there is a great inter-governmental conspiracy of silence, initiated by the CIA.

15. The idea of the inter-Governmental conspiracy of silence is at once the most astonishing and the most flattering claim of all. On so few things can the Governments of the world agree unanimously, but they have all supposedly agreed to conceal the evidence of UFOs from their peoples. Let me assure this House that her Majesty’s Government has never been approached by people from outer space.

Personally, I have no reason to doubt that these experiences were real. And I'm sure they weren't all just mistaking aircraft for UFOs. Beyond that, I don't know.

It's an excellent subject for conspiracy theorists. I like the point about how hard it is to get governments to agree on anything, so what chance a world-wide conspiracy of silence? Of course there are things we don't get told. But I'm continually disappointed by conspiracy theories, because I'd love it if some of them were true. What I keep finding is that the people who promote these theories make very shoddy use of any available evidence or theories that don't agree with their own theory, and 'facts' are presented which turn out to be anything but. These people clearly have a strong psychological need to believe their theories, quite possibly rooted in a sense of powerlessness.

If anyone knows of a conspiracy theory where the case is well-argued, and both sides presented, please let me know! With Pluto entering Capricorn, a time in which we can expect more government control and secrets, we may be about to enter a Golden Age of conspiracy theories!

Pluto and the End of History

In 1992 Professor Francis Fukayama published his book ‘The End of History and the Last Man’. In it he made the claim that:

"What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such... That is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalisation of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government."

It always seemed to me a bit of a daft and complacent claim to make, but no different in essence to claims such as Jesus being the only son of god: it is religion rather than thought. But it fitted in well with American neo-conservative thinking. 11 years later Iraq was invaded on the grounds of bringing democracy to the Middle East (as well as on the grounds of WMD, Oil, the war on fundamentalist Islam etc).

It could be said that the invasion of Iraq will come to be seen as a high point in Democracy as an ideology, as an absolute truth to which other countries need to be converted. The attempt to convert Iraq to Democracy has failed, and all the US can hope for is an eventual and not-too-dishonourable withdrawal.

Democracy remains a potent idea, but like all such ideas it has a beginning, a middle and an end. It is also a form of government, and with Pluto entering the sign of government – Capricorn – it is timely that the idea of democracy has been coming under question.

Kuwait, for example, is a democracy with no shortage of oil reserves. Yet the country has been overshadowed economically by its dynamic neighbours — Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Qatar — whose economies are booming under absolute monarchies.

According to the New York Times : ‘All this has left many Kuwaitis deeply disenchanted with their 50-member elected legislature. The collapse of the Bush administration’s efforts to promote democracy in the region and the continuing chaos in Iraq, just to the north — once heralded as the birthplace of a new democratic model — have also contributed to a popular suspicion that democracy itself is one Western import that has not lived up to its advertising.’

The neo-conservative Robert Kagan, in his new book "The Return of History and the End of Dreams", admits that history has not turned out like Fukayama said it would. His attitude seems to be exhortatory, a call to further battle against non-democracies. When I read some of his points, which I think in many ways are sound, I drew a different overall conclusion: that the idea of democracy as a universal good, to which the whole world needs eventually to be converted, is now on the wane, a turning point has been reached. Modern democracy is, of course, a western idea. In the Middle East for example, democracy as a universal good never was and probably never will be a potent idea.

According to BBC news, Kagan dismisses Fukayama’s satisfied pronouncement: "History has returned and the peoples of the liberal world need to choose to shape it or let others shape it for them. The world was not witnessing a transformation [as the Cold War ended], however, merely a pause in the endless competition of nations and peoples. Nationalism, far from being weakened by globalisation has now returned with a vengeance."

In particular he identifies autocracy as the new menace and singles out Russia and China. "The autocracies of Russia and China have figured out how to permit open economic activity while suppressing political activity. They have seen that people making money will keep their noses out of politics, especially if they know their noses will be cut off." He portrays the modern world as one of "global competition".

"It may not come to war," he remarks alarmingly, "but the global competition between liberal and autocratic governments will likely intensify in coming years."

What I found very interesting was this idea that “The autocracies of Russia and China have figured out how to permit open economic activity while suppressing political activity.”

The US has the idea that a thriving economy and democracy go hand in hand. In fact, much of the western world has this idea, because since the end of WWII all the richest countries have been democracies. The fact that the USSR went bust and collapsed just seemed to prove the point. (Via Marx, the USSR also had its own erroneous ideology around communism being the end of history).

Now, however, China is booming despite being a dictatorship. Kagan thinks ideologically, so he thinks his truth must be fought for all the harder. If you are not religious about it, however, you can see one of the main props underlying the idea of democracy collapsing. It is no longer the only route to a thriving modern economy.

This is a very significant shift. China’s rise, whether we know it or not, is changing the way the West thinks about its own system. With the demise of Christianity, Democracy has become one of our central, albeit secular, truths. It is not yet time to proclaim ‘Democracy is Dead’, but it is certainly undergoing a tectonic shift.

The US was the world’s first full democracy, in the sense that it did not, unlike the UK, have a monarch. (Though it was still some time before all adults had the vote.) I think that US history, and its idea of democracy, can be looked at in terms of the Pluto/Galactic Centre Cycle.

The Galactic Centre is the point at which our Galaxy revolves around itself, and there is thought to be a black hole there, or perhaps a double one. The GC moves slowly, taking approx 25,000 years to do a full cycle of the Zodiac. It is therefore associated with the biggest shifts in human consciousness. As is Pluto, with its mere 250 year cycle. As Pluto makes one of its rare passes over the GC – which it did in 2006/7 – it picks up new themes for humanity, and lets go of old ones.

Pluto last passed over the GC in 1760, just as revolutionary activity was beginning in the American colonies, activity that would eventually lead to American Independence and its new system of government (which the founders did not call democracy, but whose commitment to the principle of natural freedom and equality is seen as amounting to the same thing.)

Now, 250 years later, Democracy has had an astoundingly successful run, but seems to be reaching certain natural limits which did not seem to be there previously. The sign of Sagittarius under which this cycle has taken place indicates that it is religious truth, rather then e.g. scientific truth with which we are dealing.

This cycle also corresponds to the relentless expansion (Sagittarius) of American wealth and power (Pluto) that we have seen over the last 250 years. (See my post The Galactic Centre and American Power.) And again, limitations are now being encountered both economically and militarily. The US has lost ground relative to the rest of the world in recent years, for the first time ever, and there is no reason to suppose they will regain it. These reversals also correspond to the US Progressed Saturn and Mars both going Retrograde for the first time ever in recent years. Prog Mars went Retrograde during the Iraq War, which suggests this war will come to be seen as the point at which America went into slow reverse as a military power.

With Pluto having passed over the GC and brought the beginning of the end of Democracy conceived as a universal ideology, it is very timely that it is now entering Capricorn, which is a very practical sign. The next 16 years will see an emphasis on government that works and that, in foreign relations, advances the interests of the country. By the same token, Capricorn is about strong boundaries, and so we are likely to see a resurgence of nationalism, as Kagan also said.

To conclude, here are a few quotes about democracy:

Winston Churchill: Democracy is the worst form of government, except all the others that have been tried.

George Orwell: In the case of a word like DEMOCRACY, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of régime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different.

Alex Carey: The twentieth century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.