Zodiacs – CREDO CXXXIV

 
There is a big flap going on about astrology in the news. It is based on ignorance. To clarify matters: there are two zodiacs. The sidereal zodiac which is Sun centered and the tropical zodiac which is Earth centered. Astrologers use the tropical zodiac as we live on the earth! But that is only part of the wonder. At the moment of spring, when the sun appears to cross the Earth's equator, stop the clock, and observe. That moment is called the Point of the Vernal Equinox. Imagine a clock hand at this moment pointing out, past the Sun, to the actual stars of the constellations; you would find that it is moving counterclockwise 1 degree every 72 years. Where it lands determines the Age we live in, and it is moving backwards into the constellation of Aquarius, through the spatial interface, from that of Pisces. (This feature was discovered by Hipparchus of Alexandria in approx. 200 BC!) This motion is called the Precession of the Equinoxes.

The Earth-centered tropical zodiac moves through the signs yearly in the natural clockwise direction of Aries, Taurus, etc., so, you have a wheel within a wheel. It takes approx 26,000+ years for the Point to traverse all the constellations, and this is referred to as a Platonic Year.

The flap is caused by confusing the sidereal zodiac with the tropical one, which astronomers frequently do! The Ages have a collective impact on our history, mythology, and psychological evolution that I have outlined in my book The Heavens Declare: Astrological Ages and the Evolution of Consciousness. What is fascinating is that there is physical proof in history, archaeology, and mythology. For instance, during the Age of Taurus, the Bull was worshipped all over the world, and this coincides with the first evidence of humanity moving from a nomadic to a settling down in one place, thanks to agriculture, providing for “civilization.” People had land, and presumably prayed for good weather and no plagues, etc., thereby projecting a sense of property. Even today, we speak of the market being “bullish”!

However, the individual horoscope is based upon the tropical zodiac and is determined by the time, longitude, and latitude of an individual’s birth and gives a psychological guide to how a person is likely to process experience.

I realize that this is a complex explanation but, hopefully, it sheds some light on the matter!

lovingly,
ao

UFOS – CREDO CXXXIII

 
There was a piece on AOL recently about UFOS (Unidentified Flying Objects), and I feel the need to express my experiences with them. My husband Walter and I not only saw them 7 or 8 times in the late 1980s and ’90s but discovered that a number of other neighbors also saw them but were too shy to mention them because they were afraid to be considered nuts! My husband was convinced they were aliens but, as a Scorpio, I am reluctant to define them, so what follows is an accurate description of what we saw, and I ask that you trust my veracity. I kept notes in a red book, which has since vanished, when I was moved from my upstairs bedroom when I became ill and was presumed to be dying.

The first time coincided with the night we watched The Pink Panther. We had gone to bed and the lights were out. We happened to look out the large picture window adjacent to our bed, and Walter noticed a very bright light, about the size of Jupiter, shoot across the sky and stop in mid-air, change direction and shoot across the treetops and stop again, totally motionless. This defied gravity! I volunteered to go down for our binoculars. In my absence, Walter noted that a plane moved slowly across the sky with blinking lights and the UFO went dark, but the minute the plane vanished, the UFO lit up again and continued to zap to and fro across the sky. I called two neighbors and they also witnessed it. None of us had seen such a spectacle before. Finally, my husband tired and said he would sleep but I watched for another half hour in a total daze of shock, thinking of the implications of what we had seen.

I will mention another time, a few years later that was outstanding. We were driving home from Connecticut, and, as we approached Monterey, we saw two of them over the treetops, so we stopped on the shore of Lake Garfield and turned off our car lights. This time we had a much clearer close-up view. These were pinkish in hue and were shaped like frisbees and rotating. It was as if they had windows around the rim. They continued to dance and dart around joyfully. At no time were we afraid.

My darling husband died in 1998, and I saw the last one after his death. I was still upstairs, and this UFO was very large, and came closer, and frightened me a bit with its brilliance and proximity. Since then I have not seen any because I fell ill and had to be moved downstairs. My teenaged grandson Cameron saw one later but since it moved in a straight line, I think it might have been a satellite orbiting on a mission?

Now years later, there are photographs, reports from airline pilots, and other witnesses in abundance, so there is no longer any doubt of their existence, and the general public no longer scoffs at them, it seems.

Winston Churchill confessed that he saw one years ago, but felt that revealing this would cause needless alarm in the British public.

Hopefully, in the coming years, scientists will come up with a plausible explanation but for now they remain Unidentified Flying Objects!

lovingly and truthfully,
ao

Candles – CREDO CXXXII

          
As I have hinted before, archetypal processes are also hidden in physical objects, which suggests that looking at them symbolically can be positively illuminating (sic!). Nothing could be more apt therefore than a candle.
All the major religions have rituals connected to candles, so what is the reason?
(I suggest reading the following slowly and giving each line a chance for you to listen to your inner Self!)

Candles, like people, come in various, shapes, colors, and sizes. They all, however, have something in common: a central individual wick. (This wick can also be symbolic of Jung’s Self.) It is passive, until lit by a flame.

We have to light a candle! Invite Spirit . . .

The wick is at the center of every candle, regardless of shape.

When lit, the flame on every candle is the same flame. It is symbolic of Spirit.

The flame is fire, which links it to the Sun, the source of all Light, Heat, and Life. This fire is symbolic of the mystery many call God. And especially Love!

Transpersonal Love, or agape, is how we can express that “Vast Certainty” many call God. Every atom of manifestation contains that Light.

Darkness per se holds the Light, but cannot put it out.

A candle, therefore, is a symbol for the secret of what Love really is:
     With a lit candle another can be lit many times.
     Its Light helps us and others to see.

This flame has been handed down through cosmic time and space. It unites us to the bright starry universe. We do not know its origin.

The candle measures the fire safely. When fire is not controlled it is destructive.

The sun shines and does not count its rays. It needs darkness to be seen.

The sun shines. It didn’t have to!

Love is a mystery, shining through us not out of us.

     The fires of hell are the flames of God’s Love rejected.
          – Dorothy L. Sayers. (Oxford theologian and author)

So say a Blessing this holy Solstice Season and light your candle for the eventual true illumination of all humanity, for Peace, and for our understanding the preciousness of nature, and that we may increase our individual consciousness and spiritual awe of Love.

It is so simple to share. Even a kindly smile and wave will do! Kindness is the beginning.

Just remember this:
     Love thy neighbor as thy Self for we both carry the same flame!

lovingly,
ao

P.S.: Don’t forget the animals! Especially these days!

Solstice – CREDO CXXXI

 
The first Sunday in Advent marks the beginning of the Christian year. The four Sundays in Advent always come around the time of the Solstice on December 21, and there is a reason why. The Solstice, an astronomical feature, falls on December 21, and marks the entrance of the Sun into the earth sign of Capricorn, ruled by Saturn and which gave rise to the riotous pagan Roman celebrations called the Saturnalia. So the early Christian fathers, therefore, chose December 25th not only to supplant the Romans’ but also the birth of Mithra, founder of a rival religion. What all of them celebrate really is the event called the Solstice. And the outer materialism manifest at this time really implies something far more significant. If you think about it, it is the culmination of nine months from the first sign of Aries and it takes usually nine months for the gestation and physical appearance of a baby!

But there is an emphasis on materialism as well, and I am certain that few of us have missed the incredible, almost exclusive, emphasis today in the media on the importance of material sales, profits, and competitions for every penny. Not a word about the Solstice let alone the symbolic spiritual implications involved, So it seems important for us to remember what the Solstice really is and to regain the symbolic import given it by all cultures in the Northern Hemisphere through thousands of years.

It marks the shortest darkest day in the year! This year it will be for those on EST at 6:39 pm. This marks the moment when the Sun appears to stop and move northward (Sol-stice is Latin for Sun-still), bringing Light and the promise, through the coldest months, that we are moving towards spring, Aries! Slowly, by increments of 2 to 3 minutes each day this is the message of hope that new life will bring the greening, blooming, and fertility of the earth again. All of this in reality is caused by the motion of our Earth as it orbits yearly the Sun.

The event is recognized consciously by all the religions and is spiritually celebrated by Christians as Christ’s Mass; by the Jews, as Hanukkah; by people of color as Kwanzaa; by the Norse as Yule; by the Hindus as Diwali. Moslems, Zoroastrians, and Orientals all recognize it, as did the ancient Egyptians and Babylonians. Hope comes afresh with the return of Light.

It seems therefore, that we should and could lift our eyes from the bargains being touted everywhere, and realize the grandeur of our Solar System that, despite the never-ending wars and conflicts of humanity, continues to remind us that Light, Life, and Love are still there for us, and that there is a far deeper meaning to this recurring event. So maybe we could stop and remember that we have, like every candle, a center for Light in our hearts and like the wick, it carries the same flame of Spirit.

Thus, these four Sundays of Advent give us the time to appreciate the wonder that awaits us. Despite all our rushing around, it is comforting, unconscious or not, to know that this moment links us literally with the manifest depths of our Solar System, So Happy Solstice! It unites us all.

lovingly,
ao

Yes/No – CREDO CXXX

 
We tend to think of these two simple words as opposites but they are not. Why? Because there has to be a YES for a No to deny it!

This involves a paradoxical metaphysical question which I certainly cannot answer, but who among us can put out LIGHT? Genesis I raises the same question and offers an answer in the First Day of Creation, when God says, “Let there be Light!”

This Fiat! begs the question, and the ego simply cannot answer.
I probably have related the huge attack of insight I had sitting on the fire escape in Greenwich Village in New York, in 1945.

    The Sun shines and it didn’t have to!

It still boggles my mind. It is the ultimate question: The source of existence itself, the primal YES!

You can see the idea in a poem I wrote: “The yes must come before a no sounds.”

The immensity of this is such, I have no further comment, only the desire to share the wonder!

lovingly,
ao

The Wisdom of Zippers – CREDO CXXIX

 
I thought I had already written a Credo on this topic, but am unable to find it. As it is such a fun way to share some insights, here goes.

One day in meditation, I wondered about the antonym for the word symbolos, which means joining together, and in Grk. that would mean diabolos [!!] which means separating. And these two archetypal processes come together in the zipper!

The wee tab of my last Credo, the Transcendent Function, obviously has a Descendent Function, so it was time to reconsider the Zipper. And this is what I learned: it is the best example for Jungian symbolic understanding.
Ask yourself, what makes one out of two going up? And two out of one going down? A zipper.!So the wee tab is ruled by Mercury and going up, it becomes the psychopomp [love that word!], leader of souls, and the Trickster, or worse, going down.

Well, I shared this insight with my beloved Polar Bear, my husband, and from then on, he would gleefully put on his pants in the morning and shout “Symbolos!” and at night, with a wink, reverse the action and whisper “Diabolos!”So this soon became a part of my lectures and showed that Jungian psychology can be a source of humor as well as wisdom.

Now to be serious, Jung called this function the coincidentia oppositorum or the coming together of opposites of any kind, showing the psychological importance of keeping both our positive and negative emotions in full sight, rather than the usual Christian choice of owning the good and denying the bad. Then the negative is cast back into the Unconscious and gets projected out onto someone else! Collectively, the enemy. This insight of Jung’s is vitally important, and it is the energy then that fosters our individual spiritual growth or the ascent of the zipper. It implies a profound humility on the part of each of us to acknowledge that we are not perfect on the one hand nor hopeless cases on the other, as long as we maintain the balance. Duality rules our existence in this manifest world except at the miraculous apex of union or what I call the occasional pook of insight given when a lesson is learned.

I believe I have shared what happened to me when I smugly became conscious of some mistaken attitude – I learned to my dismay I could not claim it until I had applied it! Christ is described as wearing a “seamless garment” or a whole aura. That image translates into a sort of sheath that the rest of us have with holes in it – not spots – and so to become conscious of our lack we need to be wholly present in order to become holy! Ouch!

So the danger is inflation and the wise course is to assume that, okay, I filled that hole, where’s the next one? At 88 years of age, I am no longer able of committing grave active sins, but I know what it is to “sin” on the installment plan!

I honestly think that ‘sin’ is an outmoded word. I prefer this definition: A mistake is a loop in consciousness made to expose a greater surface to experience. [Sayings of Gezeebius] Or the image of a tree whose vertical ascent is dependent on horizontal branches which grow, thanks to leaves exposed to the sun, each leaf crying Aha! Aha!

As I am now a very oooold tree, I am dropping my fruit willy-nilly, always remembering:

    What you would grasp
          let go,
    only those seeds that fall
          grow.

lovingly
ao

The Transcendent Function – CREDO CXXVIII

 
As the archetypal processes work on all levels, I am going to show how simple some of Jung’s ideas can be explained by using simple things. So with apologies to those who already know, let me demonstrate the nature of the Transcendent Function.

Looking at the triangle above:

The base line can stand for the matter in question.
The side lines can represent any opposites: pro/con; conscious/unconscious, etc. Thesis, antithesis, synthesis.
The apex represents the solution!

It is like the little tab on a zipper, as it pulls the opposite sides together, it acts as a sym-bolos (joining)

This is another proof that the archetypal processes can be found all around us hidden in things! The secret is to look at any physical object (noun) and turn it into a verb by asking it, “What do you do?” (verb). Then listen to what it reveals . . . !

Try this with a pen, or wrapping paper, a cup, or a candle!! This is a great secret! Nothing is hidden, we are blind! “Having eyes, you do not see,” as Christ remarked.

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Have been ill, hence delay in CREDOS, but I did want to share this thought! Will be 88 on the 13th! but as mentioned before, got A+ in cackling lessons!

lovingly
ao