Spiritual Astrology: Your personal path to self-fulfillment (1988)
Cover courtesy of Goodreads
Here’s another of Kate’s go-to books. I suspect her version was the 1985 edition. Mine is later.
I’ve discussed Inconjuncts before (as I’m sure you’ve noticed) but now I want you to see what’s been written by the authors, Jan Spiller and Karen McCoy:
Quincunx (Inconjunct)
This is a karmic aspect. You have accepted the responsibility of teaching your fellow beings to become more aware. You are among those bringing in the New Age — the agitators, the healers, the new thinkers. It is a lifetime of “pearl and oyster”: Through constant adjustments to the irritations of life you are able to create much beauty and awareness for yourself and other people. Because you are so sensitive to irritations you learn to adjust so that you can heal them quickly; this creates a great deal of growth in one lifetime, which is what you wanted. Your realization that through aiding others your own growth pattern is speeded up is the reason you can be one of the light workers and help to lay the foundation for the New Age.
This is a “serve or suffer” lifetime. The most growth and awareness comes to you when you are providing a service and helping others to grow and understand. When you are not, you can be deteriorating in one of three areas: your physical health, your mental and emotional health, or your financial situation. More than any other aspect pattern you are subject to these types of instabilities if you neglect your responsibilities to your own growth.
Your own insights do not come directly through the people that you are aiding and teaching in this lifetime, however, but in other ways. Your duty is to assist where you can, and the universe will reward you with another source to provide the knowledge you need, either directly through your own spirit or through some other person. As you help others to gain the awareness they need to grow and adjust to their personal life circumstances, you open yourself to receiving the awareness you need. You recognize that your rewards do not come from those you assist.
You are happiest when you are involved in some sort of service, and you are best suited for a profession that involves healing on some level. This could encompass many areas: working in a health-food store or being a dietitian, farmer, or doctor; assisting with psychological healing as a psychiatrist, psychologist, or astrologer; working with spiritual or emotional healing as a minister; or healing other people’s financial, moral, or spiritual values.
You are one of the “worker bees” on the planet. You are preparing the way for the New Age in the same way a farmer clears the ground and makes it ready for the new seeds. You are learning a sense of humility in your role on the planet. You are also learning to appreciate the honor of being able to play a part in the evolution of the race and the access this gives you to higher sources of information.
In this lifetime you are gaining a larger perspective of the inter-relatedness of all things. You are incorporating the feelings of equality and appreciation that come from realizing that everything on the Earth is part of the same life force. Just as the plants are food for us now, we will someday become food for them. Understanding this kind of relatedness keeps you humble, free, and happy in your life role.
Everybody has an opinion: that’s a fact. But is that opinion based on fact or propaganda? In times of war, or even ‘Special Military Operations’, the people need to be behind their leaders or else it will all fail miserably. The Russia-Ukraine ‘war’ is especially telling these days, especially telling of lies.
This was probably the worst documentary series in three parts to watch on the night of a full moon. I can’t sleep, and different scenarios keep running through my head. I’m writing this in the middle of the night to get it out of my system. Then, maybe, I’ll be able to sleep.
The Netflix limited series focuses on Ian Bailey, a local journalist who found himself in the middle of the Gardal investigation of the killing of Sophie Toscan du Plantier, a documentary film maker from France. She was murdered on December 23, 1996, just outside the house she was renting near Schull, Ireland. Bailey didn’t help himself, or perhaps he couldn’t help himself: he made a lot of mistakes.
Don’t Set a Precedence
His partner, Jules, suffered a significant injury after a night of drink with Bailey, six months before the murder.
Don’t Try to Control the Narrative
As the local journalist, Bailey wrote articles for several newspapers, speculating on what had happened to Sophie.
Don’t Admit to Anything
All suggestions by the police were countered with alibis and excuses by Bailey.
Don’t Try to Intimidate a Witness
One of the local women saw Bailey at a bridge near Sophie’s house @ 3 am that night. He threatened her with exposure of an extra-marital affair.
Don’t Court Publicity After Your Arrest and Release (Twice)
Bailey went out of his way to discuss the Gardal case against him with the Press.
Don’t Be the Worse for Drink with Buddies
Subsequently, Bailey admitted to several people (sometimes in tears) that he had gone too far and had ‘done it’.
Don’t Sue the Press for Defamation of Character
Hoping to obtain judgement against the reports of his arrest and other speculations, Bailey caused the whole world to learn the details of the case against him. The one eye-witness (at 3 am) got to testify, but she recanted her testimony, casting doubt on the truth. Bailey’s case was thrown out.
Do Ignore All Judgements of Foreign Courts
A French court tried Bailey in absentia and found him guilty. 23 years after the murder. The French magistrates accepted a ‘bouquet’ of evidence, which the Irish courts would have found circumstantial.
During our annual Good Friday get-together, I overheard several discussions among family members of how the cost of everything is skyrocketing. Three couples from one family unit are building homes in the French River area, south of Sudbury. The cost of building material is almost double what it was two years ago. Food prices are steadily climbing, due to disrupted delivery systems. And everyone’s affected by soaring gas prices (‘ we blame it on the Russians’). In other words, we are beginning to see the arrival of another one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: the rider of the Black Horse; the one with the scales.
Did you know that this verse in the Bible is an echo of one from the Old Testament?
Then Elisha said, Hear ye the word of the Lord; Thus saith the Lord, To morrow about this time shall a measure of fine flour be sold for a shekel, and two measures of barley for a shekel, in the gate of Samaria.
2 Kings 7:1 KJV
Hmm. Remember what I said about time being cyclical? This seems to be another example of that.
Another translation of the Revelation 6:6 verse says ‘for a day’s wages’ instead of a penny (which would have been the equivalent in King James I’s time). A denarius is also the currency quoted in yet another translation.
The puzzlement of this quote is the statement about the oil and wine.
ESV Comment – Do not harm the oil and wine: Local crops such as oil and wine are unaffected, showing that the scarcity is limited, not comprehensive. Some think the command not to harm the oil and wine may have a social significance, since the rich were the primary consumers of oil and wine. It could also be a prediction of events like that of A.D. 92, when the emperor Domitian during a grain shortage ordered the vineyards cut down to make room for more wheat fields. This caused such a backlash that he rescinded the order. In other words, extreme measures would have to be taken due to the progressive pouring out of judgment.
Maybe the mystic in me sees something more sacred in the admonition about the oil and wine: the Roman Church’s sacraments of anointing (oil) and communion (wine). But whatever this warning is about, it is only with hindsight that we can see better.
Blame it on the US tax deadline, blame it on the full moon, blame it on too much food yesterday. Whatever. My dreams last night were full of witnessing events in the White House.
By themselves, the events seemed insignificant, at least to me. But as a sequence, I could see what kind of President Joe Biden is. At first, in whatever bookkeeping role I was inhabiting there, I took a look at some of the documentation of the American federal assets and their depreciation schedules. Biden wanted to write some of them off far quicker than the tax laws allow, so we had a discussion about that.
Then one of his assistants, a striking beauty with long beautiful hair, interrupted our discussion to lament some indiscretion of hers, the morning after at somewhat chaotic party the night before. I averted my eyes when Biden put his arms around her to comfort her. After a few minutes, she left and then Biden launched into a task he wanted me to undertake.
This task involved obtaining a copy of the latest Rolling Stone magazine which had an article about some gift to the States: evidently, the country that had given a millwheel to Niagara hadn’t weatherproofed it for the freezing cold climate there. So off I went on my errand.
On my way to a local newspaper shop, I caught up with another civil servant, a fellow who was feeling like he was about to be fired for something he’d done wrong. I commiserated with him for a moment…
Karmic Astrology: The Moon’s Nodes and Reincarnation (1975)
Cover of the 12th printing (1985)
Aries North Node: Libra South Node
Here the soul is learning the lessons of self-consciousness on the most elemental levels. Experiences in prior incarnations did not permit the Self to form as a singular identity. Now the individual is paying the price for the indecisiveness of his former lives as well as learning how to rise out of his confusion by developing “one-mindedness.”
Highly susceptible to flattery, he goes far out of his way to do the things be believes will please others, but because he has not yet himself gone through ego identification, he becomes confused as to what course of action to take. Always trying to balance those around him, he finds himself to be the eternal referee between two or more opposing ideas, people, or conditions. Standing in the middle, he assumes the role of the buffer trying desperately to bring harmony to both sides at the same time. From moment to moment and day to day, he seesaws from one side to the other, hoping that he will never be required to take a definite stand!
In prior lives he judged his happiness by the successes or failures of those close to him. Now he continues to identify his life through others. His confidence can easily be shattered for he hardly yet knows who he is. By confusing the collective needs of others with his own unrealized desires, he makes himself susceptible to long states of depression. Still, no matter how drained he feels, he continues this past-life pattern of seeking people with whom he can identify.
At times he develops resentment at his inability to pull the opposite parts of himself together. Yet he is so used to entertaining solutions to contrary ideas that he keeps creating more.
He is attracted to music and the arts, feeling comfortable in an environment that is gracefully delicate. When circumstances around him become coarse or brittle he loses control.
He doesn’t like to live alone but desires to be left alone. For his own peace and tranquility he must learn to overcome his enormous sensitivity to all the disharmonious needs of those around him. He does this best by dropping the attitude that he must fight for his very survival and refocusing his attention on what positive thoughts help him to develop his own identity.
In past incarnations, there was great sacrifice to others which was not fully appreciated. Now the soul reincarnates with traces of resentment at not reaping the rewards of its efforts. This brings out the contrariness of the Libra South Node and actually prevents the individual from finding his real Self! The North Node can come out only when the South Node is brought to the highest possible karmic level. Thus, this individual will achieve his greatest potential after he learns to serve willingly, without desiring any rewards beyond his own self-growth.
He was impressionable in other lifetimes. Now he spends at least the first half of this life coping with the leftover residue of his own gullibility. As the years pass he becomes an avid reader, which helps him to crystallize his thoughts. Still, there are so many past-life habits of indecisiveness that he finds it extremely difficult to make concrete decisions.
Always liking to see both sides of everything, he divides himself in half at every crossroad. When these divisions become so painful that he can no longer bear his own indecision, he starts to reach for his Aries North Node.
Ultimately he learns not to be afraid of taking a stand for what his higher Self senses is Truth. He reaches this by teaching himself to be an individual, rather than the extension of somebody else. Still, he must build on his prior incarnations which taught him how to love rather than hate. Thus, as he starts to find himself, he must still be mindful of how his newly-discovered assertiveness influences those close to him.
For short periods of time he will have to isolate himself in order to gather his strength.
His biggest lessons center around learning how to make his head rule his heart for he still melts too easily at the slightest attention.
Of all the zodiac, this individual has the least amount of past-life experience in examining himself. Now he must find out who he really is!
In the current life he is destined to make the transition from the reaper to the sower, whereupon every thought becomes a creative seed for his new beginning.
Third House North Node — Ninth House South Node
These Nodes represent a karma in relationships. The individual is here to learn how to fit the inter-twinings of people and ideas into the scope of his understanding.
The ninth house South Node shows an accent on growth in former lives. Literally millions of hours of thought were spent on developing an abundance of wisdom. Much was sacrificed to do this, particularly the enjoyment of meaningful relationships with others. So that a large amount of soul growth could be accomplished, a freedom to explore without restriction or limitation had to be developed first.
Now in the current life the individual is habitually linked to his past incarnation sense of freedom, which although he feels he must retain, he can no longer consciously remember why.
From time to time he feels a wanderlust to visit different horizons for somewhere off in the distance is the rainbow he is used to seeking. He is a mental nomad, constantly travelling through the great expanse of his consciousness, stopping only for rest at each oasis which offers temporary shelter from his restless urge.
Always he is seeking yet it is difficult for him to define exactly what he is looking for. He finds others puzzling as he curiously tries to understand what makes them tick. Herein are some of his major karmic lessons. He must learn how to interact with people. Though he may be happily married or involved in close relationships, he still retains a sense of bachelorhood in his thoughts. He must learn how to make his life fit into the exact puzzle slot allowed by all the other lives around him.
The ways in which he relates and communicates will constantly be put through one test after another. Ultimately he will find himself enmeshed in a network of people, so that all the knowledge he has acquired in previous lifetimes can be put to practical use.
In his current-life relationships, he feels frustrated with not enough room to move. This enclosure of people around him eventually comes to extinguish his past-life tendencies to be vague and evasive and in its place teaches him the art of pinpoint communication.
He is very much concerned with the values of sexuality, feeling obliged to conquer any grip this force has on him. Now he sees clearly the presence of a higher and a lower self, and it is the pull from both which he must karmically wrestle out.
The individual is less concerned with gain than with protection against loss. He is terribly fearful of losing the freedom he was accustomed to in past incarnations; yet he must risk such loss if he is to interact with humanity. As soon as he is willing to take this risk, he is ready to receive his greatest rewards.
Ultimately he elevates himself through reading and purposeful study, and although he is more used to informal ways of learning, it will be a formal education that now puts it all together for him.
This Nodal position often causes a friction marriage, since the individual is prone to seeking out-of-wedlock relationships in which to work out the understanding of personality interactions that he must develop.
One of his biggest lessons is to learn how to consolidate his energies for each time he feels the urgency to move on with things, he tends to leave loose ends scattered behind him.
His life is wide in scope, not only in areas of knowledge, but also in the myriad of people he meets, and the multitude of places he travels.
He will ultimately be known as a Messenger, bringing to all those who need it the specific bits of information that like manna from heaven are placed in their lap at the moment of hunger.
In essence, he is a teacher’s teacher for although he has little patience with a classroom situation, he is well capable of feeding information wherever and whenever it’s needed. He likes doing this because it fulfills his past-life need for movement. As such he never gets a chance to see how important the information he is disseminating actually is. Nevertheless he has an enormous effect on the awareness of all those whose lives he touches.
His own life is as interesting and full as an encyclopedia, for he tries to live much of what he reads about.
For all of his movement one would think him desirous of having a rest, but underneath he is highly nervous and needs this amount of movement in his life. The nervousness is not to be considered a negative trait, but rather as part of his mission. It reminds him that he has a task to do. Every moment a piece of information comes into his mind the nervousness gets triggered, reminding him that he must deliver it somewhere.
In past incarnations he avoided conclusions. Now he refuses to make a final judgment on anything. This is part of his understanding that if he were to make a final decision it would be premature for he knows that new information will constantly be coming.
He is superficially conversant in almost all areas. Still, on the personal plane he is highly misunderstood, for the messages he delivers are so uniquely disguised that they have a tendency to go over the heads of others who only see him as eternally gossiping about nothing.
The truth is that all of his words are important, but they must be seen to have deeper than surface value before they can be interpreted properly. He is truly the fast-winged messenger of the gods.
This film is “Ghost” for teenagers. On a whim, we watched it on Netflix last night. I’m glad we did.
The survival of consciousness after death is a fact, but is only really provable to someone who has been deeply in love with the departed individual, because LOVE NEVER DIES.
Tessa and Skylar only knew each other for 182 days before they are parted by an accident. The film opens with that tragedy, and then flashbacks to what happened from the beginning of that 6 month period. There are plenty of cultural references at the cinema that they attend during that times, including the “Ghost” poster in the concession area, but the marque titles I found significant, always.
And there is one song which was ‘theirs’ that would indicate when Skylar is around. It plays out on everyone’s cell phone during the SAT test in the gym, after Tessa’s pen draws what looks like a map on her test paper. I believe it is this one by INXS (originally heard on an 80’s mixtape in Skylar’s Jeep).
The story is bittersweet, the acting seems almost real life, and the actor who played Skylar even looks like Patrick Swayze. What more could you ask for?
There is so much we cannot know, mainly because of our disconnect from the Truth, that we have to take on faith. Now, if you’re like me, your faith can be tested from time-to-time. But it stands the test of time, everytime.
Ironically, Gnosis is knowing we don’t know. As we progressively free ourselves from the conceptual matrix we have mistaken for reality, we become certain about less and less until we find ourselves living in the Mystery. It is an extraordinary twist that the great Gnostic injunction ‘Know your Self’ most famously finds its fulfilment in Socrates, whom the Oracle of Delphi declares the wisest man alive, because ‘He knows that he knows nothing.’
Gnosis is knowing nothing and loving everything.
Jesus and the Lost Goddess (page 182c)
Life doesn’t make sense. It’s an absolute Mystery.
Yet as we progress on our journey something changes. We begin our search because we are terrified by the fact that we don’t know what is going on. Through the process of awakening we discover something wonderful — the source from which life originates and towards which it is evolving is more perfect, more beautiful, more loving, than words can possibly communicate. Life is essentially Good.
This can sound like glib positivity, but it is not. Gnosticism is not about avoiding the fact of suffering and retreating into wishful thinking. It is expressing our natural compassion for doing all we can to ameliorate the terrible suffering we encounter, yet at the same time knowing that, despite appearances, all is well. It is understanding that ultimately, therefore, good will come from bad, and choosing to play an active part in that process.
We can’t understand the Mystery of Life, but we can come to trust it, and this transforms everything. Ironically, Gnosis turns out to be synonymous with faith. But by ‘faith’ Gnostics don’t mean blind belief in historical events, as Literalists do, they mean complete confidence in the life process. For Philo faith is ‘the queen of the virtues’. Basilides eulogizes: ‘Faith is the best quality.’ Simon Maguis teaches: ‘Gnosis and faith give the soul which chooses them permanent peace.’ The mystical marriage is living with Gnosis of the eternal Mystery and unshakeable faith in the fundamental goodness of the unfolding drama of the temporal world.
This is one post that would be better served if I just get out of the way and quote from Jesus and the Lost Goddess:
It is easy with a book such as this one, full of old myths and philosophical concepts, to get a picture of Gnosis as a heady, abstract theory about life. But the spiritually awake are heady with intoxication, not conceptualization. They are drunk with love, not sober with intellectual understanding. The purpose of philosophy is to open us to the possibility of ecstasy. The followers of the Christian sage Montanus were said to possess an ‘infinite number of books’, but called ecstasy the only true Christianity.
Previously we saw that the Gnostics imagined the motivation behind the Mystery coming into manifestation to be the desire for self-knowledge. This can sound somewhat dry, but it is only one way of picturing something which is completely beyond understanding. Valentinus imagines the motivation behind manifestation to be love:
‘Since the Father was creative, it seemed good to him to create and produce what was most beautiful and most perfect in himself. For he was all love and love is not love if there is nothing to be loved.’
(Page 181)
The nature of the Mystery is love, but this remains only a latent potential unless there is something to love. So the Mystery objectifies itself to give itself something beautiful to love and in so doing becomes love.
We are the Mystery wanting to love and be loved. Everyone is searching for love, whether they know it or not. There is nothing better than love. It feels good because it is the Good. Love is what happens when we connect deeply with another sentient being because love is the way we experience the mysterious paradox of being the One appearing to be many. Love is the Mystery aware of the Mystery, so when we plumb the depths of our being we fall in love with ourselves. Plotinus enthuses:
‘Beauty evokes wonderment, delicious longing and trembling with delight, so when you see that you yourself are beautiful within, what do you feel? What is the Dionysiac exultation that thrills your being? The surging upwards of your psyche? These are the emotions of someone enchanted by the spell of love.’
(Page 182a)
Gnosis is not a theory, it is ‘that love passion of vision known only to a lover come to rest in what he loves’ as Plotinus puts it. It is being content in the state of simple happiness that is naturally ours when we are free from ignorant fear and selfish craving. It is discovering we are more than we ever imagined or could ever imagine. It is a reality shift. It is the world turned inside-out.
(Page 182b)
Say the word and you’ll be free Say the word and be like me Say the word I’m thinking of Have you heard the word is love?
