The River of Death...

Not many comments here yet but I'll begin to forge ahead, slowly, more deeply, into our solar system—my book, Astrological Repair Manual (which is a free download), is structured as a flight back into the solar system from the depths of space...

To gain the most from this and the next few posts, I recommend you backtrack and read the posts about Xena and the Hordes...

Pluto, discovered in 1930 (near the beginning of the Great Depression), with a spacecraft due to arrive in 2015, has been a great challenge for the understanding of astrologers.

From the second chapter of the book:

"Did Pluto cause the Great Depression? How loud can I holler, "NO!"?

"Right here, we're at one of the most crucial Repairs of Perception I hope to offer. The planets and their cycles do not cause events. The best that can be said is that humans are born into the solar system and all of its interlocking cycles and, because whatever is included within something else participates in the rhythms of the larger structure, we have cycles in our lives that mirror the cycles of the planets. It's as simple as that. No horrible fates, no in-bred bad traits, no mumbo-jumbo."

And, further:

"...while we're still out here where the meanings are so deep, the important thing to remember is that we all have these nearly-unfathomable meanings in our lives and it can take most of a lifetime to gain even a small amount of understanding. Still and all, knowing about them can often be enough to help us weather the changes they can induce in our lives. And, again, I'm not saying the planets are causing these changes. It's the synchronistic and mirroring cycles in our deeper minds that bring these ponderable changes."

From deeper in the book, here are some basic, positive meanings for the Plutonian cycle:

Getting to the Depths of
Transcending
Purging
Regenerating

Now it's your turn! Comment to your heart's content...

Astrology and the Unconscious

This may be the last post about the first chapter in my book Astrological Repair Manual ( Free Download ).

I'll probably be soon moving into the chapters on Pluto, Neptune, and Uranus—unless folks start to post comments that tell me otherwise...

Let me just say, from that first chapter:

"What I do want to stress...is the fact that humans do have this unconscious realm and that the more we pay attention to it, or 'woo' it, the healthier and happier we'll become. Sure, it takes effort and can lead to some fantastic struggles but life without struggle is death...

"It may have entered your mind to wonder, 'Why is Alex starting way out in the unknown to help me change my perception about astrology?' Well... I could have started on Earth and I could have gone even further toward an earthly approach by saying things like, 'Saturn is the planet of limitation and grief.', or, 'Venus is the planet of love.' But, this jamming of large concepts and energies into narrow boxes is very unhealthy. I'd rather start out here with Xena and make her my friend 'cause she could change into Hercules or Pan, she could give me some secret knowledge, she could help me even when I'm not paying attention to her. Better have her on my side than ignoring her and having her blast into my consciousness and wreak havoc!"

What are your thoughts and feelings?

Xena and the Hordes

Many astrologers have been far too ready to accept whatever scientists say. The recent demotion of Pluto from it's planet status is a good example. Some astrologers worry that they now have to not use Pluto in their readings.

In the first place, there are plenty of astronomers who still think Pluto is a planet; and, in the second place, astrologers are not astronomers, in most cases...

The first chapter in my book, Astrological Repair Manual (which is a free download and which this blog was created for—to get a larger amount of feedback on the book's ideas as I revise and expand it), takes a look at the solar system body called Xena. The astronomers first gave her the designation, 2003 UB313, and she's now called Eris, but the discoverers called her Xena and I'm going to keep calling her that.

Xena travels around the Sun in a 560-year cycle on the outer edge of the Kuiper Belt, a region of space well beyond Pluto that's considered to hold thousands of, dare I say, planets. In the first chapter, I say, (to the reader who I've put in a spacecraft coming back from the depths of space), "You’ve seen some of the Horde—the thousands of other 'planets' that orbit the Sun, so far out that the Sun itself is just another bright star." And further, "With the discovery of Xena (and her moon, Gabrielle), humanity is repeating, on a vaster scale, what it went through around 1781, 1846, and 1930 (the times when Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto were discovered). Each of those discoveries signaled a coming-to-conscious-potential of aspects of the unconscious that humanity had 'earned' the right to use more objectively. Of course, earning the right to use and using are two different things. Xena and her Hordes present the symbol of a HUGE potential for the human race—an entering into the powers of the unconscious like no time in the past—a chance to use energies (multiple and deep ) that have been, so far, little understood." I also say, "Basically, since we know so little about any of the planets beyond Pluto, about all we can hope to do with them in astrology is think of a sheath or aura around us, a non-localized group of potentials and energies that each individual can tap into IF they can manage to begin using the other planetary functions consciously."

Whew! What a mouth-full, or mind-full...

The point of this post is to hint at the concept of groups of bodies (like the ol' asteroid belt) that astrologers have yet to deal with properly...

To take a handful out of thousands of solar system bodies that share similar cycles and try to attribute specific, individual meanings to that mere handful is totally unfair, to the structure of the solar system's cycles and to the minds of the astrologer and their clients.

What are Your thoughts and feelings?

Would A Scientist Lie To You ?

One thing that needs more discussion in astrological circles is whether astrology is a science or an art; or, some of both.

The trickiest part of this issue is whether the science some astrologers try to incorporate into their work is Real Science...

I hadn't imagined that my other blog would be contributing to this one since this blog is all about You helping me with the huge task of revising and expanding my little, free astrology book. I'll definitely be exploring this relation of science and astrology in the new version of my book.

Well, the unexpected happened! I just finished a post on the other blog that speaks to the whole issue of whether the science practiced in the mainstream can be trusted...

Check out Would A Scientist Lie To You ? and come on back and leave Your Thoughts and Feelings!!

Way Out There . . . and, Way In Here...

We're staying out here in the realm of Xena for a while. If you don't know what I mean by Xena, please download my free astrology book.

This blog is dedicated to exploring the ideas in the book and, hopefully, learning from all of you the "flavor" and "style" of the revised and expanded version I'm working on. I could very well learn a lot more than just "flavor and style" from my readers here... We shall see...

So, in Chapter One of the book, Xena and the Hordes, I say, "...the meaning of Xena's full cycle could only be useful in understanding things like the rise and fall of civilizations." Of course, with that said, I must add (for those who have yet to read the first edition of my book) that Xena (officially known as Eris) takes about 560 years to make a full cycle around the Sun, putting it about 97 times farther from the Sun than we are. I go on to say, "...we’re in the space [since, in the book, the reader is in a spacecraft coming back into our System] that symbolizes the deeper unconscious mind—the part of our minds that sends us dreams and answers questions we haven’t thought of yet—a mind we all share and which underlies the shaping of humanity's largest social structures, deepest concepts, and most spiritual forces."

Chapters Two, Three, and Four deal with Pluto, Neptune, and Uranus (also cycles of the unconscious) but, like I said, we'll linger out here in the deepest space of our unconscious for a few posts.

The last post talked briefly about "boundaries" and I hope you caught my ironic attitude toward them. Thousands of years ago, Saturn was considered the boundary of the solar system; then the traditional Transcendentals: Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. Now Xena is the most distant known object. But is she a boundary? I'd rather call her the latest portal to an endless journey into the deepest and highest aspects of our human spirit!

To quote Carl Jung again:

"'All that is outside, also is inside', we could say with Goethe. But this 'inside', which modern rationalism is so eager to derive from 'outside', has an a priori structure of its own that antedates all conscious experience. It is quite impossible to conceive how 'experience' in the widest sense, or, for that matter, anything psychic, could originate exclusively in the outside world. The psyche is part of the inmost mystery of life, and it has its own peculiar structure and form like every other organism. Whether this psychic structure and its elements, the archetypes, ever 'originated' at all is a metaphysical question and therefore unanswerable. The structure is something given, the precondition that is found to be present in every case. And this is the mother, the matrix—the form into which all experience is poured."

To tie this into astrological practice, I would only add that this unconscious Matrix (the outermost portal of which is Xena) mirrors the outside conditions of the solar system. We humans have a 560-year cycle, as well as many more a bit longer and a bit shorter. In 2015, humans will witness the passage of the New Horizons spacecraft through the environs of Pluto. Then it will head into the zone that Xena inhabits. I contend that this passage of a human artifact through that arena of space will coincide with a few eager and open individuals becoming more deeply aware of human potential but, definitely, not through some physical sensing of the spacecraft; rather through the synchronicity between the spacecraft's passage and the growth of human awareness. I also contend that humanity will mirror some of the meanings that cycles of the 500 year and longer variety reveal...

What do you think?

Setting The Boundaries

Just barely into this venture and here I am setting boundaries...

Not to worry though because the most important boundary in astrology is the Universe.

Next would come our home galaxy, the Milky Way.

Then, our solar system. Sadly, far too many people think the boundaries of astrology end here.

In my book, which I hope you'll download and read (free), I begin by putting the reader in a spaceship coming back from "somewhere" and dealing with one of the outer "boundaries" of our solar system.

In that first chapter, Xena and the Hordes, I mention this idea:

"This is where astrology begins. Further out, between the stars, is the space that symbolizes 'contact' with 'other souls' that inhabit a purely spiritual dimension. Once inside the atmosphere of the Sun, we’re dealing with aspects of ourselves that relate to life on a very solid earth, even though Xena and the Hordes are aspects of our minds that we rarely think about."

In that chapter, I'm dealing with what are called "archetypes"—psychological energies that we all have to deal with, sometimes creatively but most often (due only to lack of experience) in a manner that causes us grief and unnecessary pain.

One person I respect in regard to explaining the "deeper" parts of ourselves is Carl Jung. And, since any valuable practice of astrology needs a solid psychology behind it, I'll give Carl a chance to say something about this realm:

"Anyone who wants to know the human psyche will learn next to nothing from experimental psychology. He would be better advised to put away his scholar's gown, bid farewell to his study, and wander with human heart through the world. There, in the horrors of prisons, lunatic asylums and hospitals, in drab suburban pubs, in brothels and gambling-hells, in the salons of the elegant, the Stock Exchanges, Socialist meetings, churches, revivalist gatherings and ecstatic sects, through love and hate, through the experience of passion in every form in his own body, he would reap richer stores of knowledge than text-books a foot thick could give him, and he will know how to doctor the sick with real knowledge of the human soul."

Your feelings and thoughts?

Hello World!

This is the first post in an exciting adventure!

I'm doing the research to revise and expand a book about astrology that I wrote three years ago. It was the result of 40 years of study, counseling, and teaching but it was only a beginning...

You can download the book for free from Lulu.com.

This blog's purpose is to create a space to explore the concepts in the book and stimulate discussion that will feed into my personal efforts to make my statement about astrology as helpful and productive as possible.

I'm actively seeking your thoughts, feelings, opinions, knowledge, and experience!

I'm extremely open to accepting your comments!!