I Love Springtime in a Paradigm Shift

Though every moment in time is new, and every breaking day is as well, there are some times when new is even newer. Springtime is an example of extra newness. So is the beginning of a new age.

On March 23, 2023, just days past the spring equinox, powerful Pluto moves into Aquarius where it will stay until it retrogrades back into Capricorn for the summer, and then back for good by the fall.  Pluto will continue traveling in Aquarius until the year 2043!

History itself can become new through the eyes of foresight. The last time Pluto traveled through Aquarius was at the end of the ‘long 18th century’ better known as the Enlightenment. Scientific discovery was yielding so much exciting truth, it filled the atmosphere with questions. Both the French and American Revolutions occurred at this time. There was an unprecedented atmosphere of ‘thinking for oneself’. For their salvation no longer was in the church, but somewhere else.

This period gave way to the Romantic era of the 19th century, which pushed back against the Scientific reductionist view. Poets such as Wordsworth and Blake insisted on the ‘aliveness’ of nature; a potency beyond the measurable world. The only way of knowing this potency was through one’s private viewpoint; thus the spirit of individualism carried its way deep into the heart of the artist, which is everyone’s birthright.

Over 200 years later, we find ourselves in a new atmosphere that demands a new kind of “thinking for ourselves”. It used to be that physical space and imaginal dream space were the only spaces in which we could move about. Now, digital space is such a part of life that it has one questioning the nature of reality in a new way. We know we want connection, but we also know that connection is not a game of numbers. What is it that we seek? New ideas and old ideas are more accessible than ever. Less accessible are the instincts of nature that we are not only born with but born for. We were meant to perfect these natural powers of creativity and productivity and carry them to new heights and depths.

We navigate the digital space everyday amidst a sea of screaming salesmen wielding a thumbs up. The paradoxical freedom and alienation of a digital age is similar to the freedom and alienation of the Enlightenment. People were free of the church’s authority, yet alienated from a familiar and secure worldview. 

But the alienation is productive. It drives one towards a stricter grasp of what is meaningful and towards what is real. Some very interesting modern physicists argue that time is the realist thing in the universe.

Time’s arrow moves forward. Within every emerging moment is the spirited reality of newness. 

The question becomes not ‘what is life’ but rather: how do you want to live in a world that is, in essence, a continual Springtime?

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First Week of February Metaphorcast, 2023

Groundhog’s day is on its way this week, featuring the appearance of Punxsutawney Phil, one of the most unusual celebrities. Aside from being a groundhog, his fame rests upon a one simple yearly question: will he see his shadow or not? To this answer is ascribed an outlook for the rest of us as to whether or not we can soon ditch our coats and open some windows. Although Phil receives much publicity on his special day, his fame is centered on a most private thing: what he sees in a moment.

Time is ultimately a flow of moments. Continuous and forward reaching. In each moment there are things to be seen, thought about, anticipated and reflected upon.

A couple years back I was in love with the show, This Is Us. The plot was driven by one dramatic theme, a father’s love. The show was made powerful by dramatizing the flow of time, in other words, rendering the flow of time more real. Continuous flashbacks support the character’s present moment sense of direction. The drive they find inside is born of something real and authentic. The audience has special seats into their lifetimes of subjective responses slowly magnetizing them towards a sense of destiny.

I say it rendered the flow of time more real because in reality, the flow of time is dramatic. The past is charged, the future is free! And the only thing that is real is now. (What!?)

Time is more bizarre than anything, even famous groundhogs. Yet it is also fundamental. You are never not in a moment in time. The moment and you are perpetually flowing, like the wavy lines of Aquarius’ glyph. I see time’s drama to be a hint that time is rooted in something immeasurable. No one can quantify the dramatic performance of Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire. Because drama is not a measured thing. Although it is measured in many ways, time is ultimately something dramatic and immeasurable. Its essence must be in spiritedness and creativity.

A full Moon in dramatic Leo lights our stage on Sunday, providing a glowing limelight for anyone who sees it.

Will you see it?

Will Winter be gone soon?

Do you remember what you did last groundhog’s day?

Where are you heading now?

Aquarian Age Dawning Still with a New Moon

Even though the 5th dimension said it best over 50 years ago, this is still the dawning of the age of Aquarius. 

With a New Moon today in Aquarius just as Aquarius season kicks off, and a powerful join up of Venus and Saturn in this sign as well, it is a good time to consider ‘the mind’s true liberation’. 

50 years ago, the Aquarian Age was celebrated as a hopeful future of ‘harmony and understanding’. The year the song was released was 1969, a most momentous year of change. 

Every time I hear that song on the radio I prepare myself. If it’s raining I even remove myself a bit from the song by not turning it up too loud. For I can’t help but sing along with tears streaming. Maybe it’s the images of Treat Williams marching off to war, bewildered, while the peace protesters storm Washington (as depicted in the end scene of the movie ‘Hair’). Maybe it’s that simple suggestion; “let the sunshine in”. Above all it is the momentum of the song, and a reminder of the momentum of 1969. 

I didn’t even live through this time. Yet, like anyone else who loves Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix, I am deeply connected to this time. There was awful stuff happening like Vietnam and the assassinations of the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King, but there was a momentous unity emerging that was undeniable. And the music reflects this as perfectly as water reflects moonlight. 

Now in 2023, the idea of the future is dissipating into anyone’s best guess. We will need to go deeper into the archetype of Aquarius in order to get a grasp on this new age, and perhaps even attain a “mystic crystal revelation”. 

Aquarius is not only the sign of future, innovation and change, it is also the sign of the individual. Not everyone loves the song that drives me to tears in traffic. The reason for this is that each individual has their own subjectivity. 

The philosopher F.W.J Schelling saw human subjectivity to be the highest potency of nature. 

The momentum of the changing times are easily recognized in a song. But what about the momentum of an individual’s changes? The changes that generate measurable changes in one’s chemistry? Is there a sense of future here? 

Aquarius is the waterbearer, the subjectivity-owner, the one with a capacity to be moved, changed and affected. As the song chants towards the end “you’ve got to feel it”. 

Heraclitus said “it is the tension between each opposite end of a harp string that allows us to hear the music”. 

Time is also a kind of tension between ‘the times that are a changin’ and the changes that occur within you. Instead of Woodstock we have the world wide web. It is a bit harder to hear the music that unites us, but the uniting capacity of ideas and people across the globe has never been more robust. 

New moons are more quiet than full moons. The introspective tone that they emit is similar to the harp player tuning her strings. She needs quiet, she needs focus, she needs to establish her correct tension. 

Aquarius wavy lines are like the vibrations on a string. Will the tension be right to produce music? Can you find the right tension between the changes within you and the changes of the times ? The Age of Aquarius might still become an age of ‘harmony and understanding’, but not if we don’t establish this first as individuals.

Today’s new moon might as well be a new moon for the ages. This is to say, a new respect for ‘the highest potency of nature’; human subjectivity. We bear this potency, and with it comes responsibility. The evolution of nature is the evolution of human nature. The ‘mind’s true liberation’ is the liberation of nature and its freedom to create and build.

But first, you’ve got to feel it.

The Planets Align, But How Are They Mine? Quadruple Formation in Aquarius.

Have you ever experienced the sublime satisfaction of tidying up a room? Have you ever been near-mystified by the way things just “worked out?”, or how things just, “fell into place?”

This Wednesday evening, the sky display a pretty pattern of order and meaning. Three planets will line up perfectly in an ascending diagonal line, with the Crescent Moon nearby.

The faintest light on the bottom will be Mercury, followed by Jupiter, the brightest. At the height of the diagonal will be Saturn. All of them, and the Moon, will be in the existential sign of Aquarius.

Writer philosopher Colin Wilson said that existentialism was a “philosophy of intuition”. Unlike Sartre and Camus, he saw the world as inherently meaningful, with the only thing blocking us from such meaning being our own “sensory blinders”. Ultimately, his existentialism was based on optimism just as much as realism. He saw the “feelings of inner freedoms” to be intimately bound with an effective “grasp on reality”.

“It is as impossible to exercise freedom in an unreal world as it is to jump while you are falling.”

Colin Wilson, The Outsider

With the planet of optimism and intuition blazing the brightest in the center of the lineup, its a perfect evening to ponder the vital hunches of a cheery existentialist.

Our perceptions are Mercury, the faintest light at the bottom. Faintest by design, for they keep the chaos of stimulus ordered for us. We can walk down the street without feeling bombarded by sounds, sensations and sights. Our selectivity saves us, yet it also keeps us away from our full reality.

For full reality, we have to find places of correspondences; how our physical reality corresponds to us in a personal, meaningful way. In this way we can sense our interior power, which Wilson also refers to as our reality.

Sensing our interior power is to abolish the notion that we are passive creatures. In fact, he correlates passivity with an increasing sense of unreality. If we can, for a moment, embrace his maxim that “perception is intentional”, we can begin to see how passivity really can blur reality.

“The sense of order and meaning is a direct stimulus of the will, and even mere perception springs from a will to perceive .”

Colin Wilson, Existential Criticism, The Chicago Review 1959

What does this twinkly display of order correspond to in you?

Can you feel an interior power arise in recognizing this correspondence?

Can you feel… your reality?

Saturn the planet of reality winks from the top of the line.

Happy star-gazing and as always, happy astro pondering!

Astro art by Johnnie Day Durand.

https://www.happyastropondering.com/

Nothing Happens Until Something Moves. New Moon in Aquarius

In 1936 a not-yet-famous Tennessee William sat in the audience of Ibsens’ play “Ghosts.” But he didn’t sit for long. The play soon moved him so much that it moved him straight out of his seat and he had to pace up and down in the back aisle.

This Thursday the 11th, we have a New Moon in Aquarius, the sign of the Water Bearer, the sign of us, of human beings, with full potential to feel things and allow ourselves to be moved.

You can practically see movement in Aquarius’ glyph of two wavy lines.

Einstein said, “Nothing happens until something moves. When something vibrates, the electrons of the entire universe resonate with it. Everything is connected.”

Most of the planets in the sky are currently buzzing in Aquarius. Uranus, the planet associated with Aquarius is in the self-sustaining sign of Taurus, along with Mars, resonating like a Tibetan singing bowl over the rest of the buzz.

Taurus, often associated with money, is also the notion of taking stock in something. Just think what would have not happened if Tennessee Williams put no stock in the emotion that propelled him off his seat.

What has been moving you lately? Anything worthy of taking stock in? Anything worthy of cultivating?

The movement you feel might be strong enough to propel you off your seat, but it also might be more subtle. A special shift, and all of a sudden some chemicals inside stir. Maybe you feel a quickening of energy. Maybe the other side of the universe feels it too!

The movement of Aquarius’ wavy lines hint at the magic of feedback loops, always at work in the present moment.

Alfred North Whitehead said “What we perceive as the present is the vivid fringe of memory tinged with anticipation.”    

That sure adds a dose of dynamism to the moment! The fringe of memory and the tinge of anticipation, fringe and tinge! Vibrating sounds, vibration abounds!

These feedback loops show the logic of an optimistic attitude (i.e don’t let that fringe sabotage the tinge and vice versa!) Such a correspondence also shows the grand potential of letting art, love, or anything else move us.

Put some stock in those special emotions!

Happy Astro Pondering!

Astro Art by Johnnie Day Durand

https://www.happyastropondering.com/

Uncommon Common Sense. Venus Enters Aquarius

Voltaire said, “Common sense is not so common”. Venus, the Goddess of the senses glides into Aquarius today, the sign of the uncommon, but also the common, as in the common good.

Aquarius strives towards a universal brotherhood and also celebrates the uncommon qualities that makes an individual unique.

Your own uniqueness is, in a sense, your own otherness. What happens when Venus enters the scene, with her magic love potion?

Does a love for the otherness of yourself also inspire a love for the otherness of others? Is this part of the evolutionary recipe for universal brotherhood?

Evolution-savvy Aquarius is freely unique without ever losing sight of the humanity that unites.

Unique yet united in humanity. Seems like common sense.

Sometimes however, we forget to look for otherness. Our robotic selves tell us that there is no need for otherness, and just to look for ourselves in what we see, hear and read.

Fran Lebowitz said “A book is not supposed to be a mirror. It’s supposed to be a door.”

What uncommon common sense this is!

And so much more romantic!

A door opens one up to learning something new, a mirror shows you, yourself! A door opening is like a horizon resuming its stretch, a unique musical score uniting an audience! Where you are is different, but there is a mysterious warm glow of unity.

With so many planets already buzzing in Aquarius, Venus is fashionably late to the party. Her eyes wide and perfectly original. Like a salt-lamp disco ball, Aquarian-ruled Uranus puts a dynamic square on the party, upping the existential questions of what truly matters and strengthens us.

By the 25th of this month she will float into dreamy Pisces- but until then- it is the uncommon common sense that propels her look, listen and reach out for rejuvenating otherness.

Appreciation is a wonderful thing: It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well. Voltaire

Happy Astro Pondering!

Astro Art by Johnnie Day Durand

https://www.happyastropondering.com/

Back to the Future; Mercury goes Retrograde in Aquarius

Philosopher William James first coined the phrase “stream of consciousness” to describe the full range of thoughts that we can be aware of at any given time. He called it a stream, observing that thoughts tended to flow from one to another and another.

Here we are at the end of the first month of 2021, and Mercury, the god of thought, is decidedly reversing the stream’s current, in Aquarius, the sign of awareness, foresight and future.

Are we going back to the future?

In a sense, maybe.

As we go about our days we are immersed in many droplets of rich subjective life. Moments when something speaks to us, moments when we feel good or bad, moments that we share, moments that we rush, moments that we savor.

With winged-sandals, Mercury, God of thought swiftly weaves facts out of these moments. Facts that may be recalled in the future about what happened in the past. The facts are what survives, the feelings are fleeting, and disappear like the Moon. Facts weave and connect into the mysterious network of memory. Awaiting a reason to resurface, and be reflected on. Once reflected on, feelings may arise again, and feel like those original feelings, but they are still new, and based on these facts.

As Mercury moves retrograde, the stream of consciousness goes back on itself. It’s like using one of those now obsolete microfiche machines in libraries, where newspapers can be flashed through in search of that pertinent piece of information. Thought goes back on itself, in search of something.

Mercury has been in Aquarius since the beginning of the year leaving many Aquarian-esque facts weaved into our neural networks. Aquarian-esque; existential, pertaining to future, off the beaten path and in question of some basic assumptions.

You found something in these weavings, what was it?

Maybe you will find a fact worthy of reflection. By reflecting on these resurfaced facts, perhaps you will better shape your future! Time flows just like the trickster. Maybe you can manage to go back to the future!

Mercury will be retrograde for the rest of Aquarius Season. The Trickster God will go direct on February 20th, two days after the start of Pisces Season, and remain in Aquarius until March 15th.

Happy Astro Pondering!

Astro art by Johnnie Day Durand.

https://www.happyastropondering.com/

The Promise of Tomorrow; Aquarius Season Begins

Tomorrow, tomorrow. I love ya, tomorrow,  it’s only a day away… that a new president steps into office. It was only a day ago that we gave tribute Martin Luther King, a great leader who believed in the promise of tomorrow.

Aquarius Season has begun.  The promise of tomorrow.  The creative life of the future that is always accessible in the present moment.  A shift in perspective.  A shift in momentum.  A whole lot of shaking going on.

The word future stems from the latin root fu which means “to grow” or “become”.  This puts the magic of the future more directly in the body, and renders it less of an abstraction.  The warm glow of optimism that floods the body would be Annie’s sun of tomorrow.  As the 5th dimension sings: Let the sun shine in.

To put the emphasis on growing and becoming is to welcome all experience as a learning tool.  The current buzzword for this is growth mindset, but Goethe would have called it bildung; education from life experience.

Aquarius is the water bearer.  An air sign that refers to water.  Experience that refers to feeling. Experience ultimately is subjectivity, the feelings that arise in each moment, the emotions that arise in us and signal what is good or bad for our survival and flourishing.

Aquarius is the evaporated air (thoughts) of our water (feelings), as they descend into the past, making facts from which we will reflect on in the future.  These “facts” will inform our behavior through the subconscious mind.  Wouldn’t it be best to oversee what “facts” make it into the fabric of our being?  

Aquarius has the solution with its gift of awareness and foresight.  Awareness can dawn (there’s that inner sun again) on you in any moment and cause a shift, or a rift, in the steady sea of the subconscious mind.  Writer and philosopher Colin Wilson would call this steady sea the robot,  an evolutionary life-hack that allows us to drive a car or type without much thinking after we’ve learned it.  The robot steps in and does it for you, freeing you to tend to other thoughts, or do other things.  The problem is the robot becomes over active, and in its tendency to take over, it also de-values the moment, by making it overly familiar.

Although it is associated with technology, Aquarius is weary of over-mechanization.  The robotic mindset stands in opposition to the urge to be free.  The awakening of that urge, is awareness, Aquarius’ first step.

Though associated with technology, Aquarius is not robotic!

The next step is to tie in the future through foresight.  It’s not enough just to be aware of the moment, there must be a commitment to cultivation.  There must be a reverence for the fleeting shimmer of water (real feeling) that is active only in the present moment.  This is the sunlight dancing on the water, sparkling in the snow, shimmering in the heart.  The joy and freedom of becoming and growing. 

The evaporated facts that come from shimmering water are quite different from the evaporated facts of stagnant water. They are healthy with electricity, supportive of the life urge to flourish. Knowing this is Aquarius’ foresight, a path for cultivation.

Aquarius reveres the water that it bears, listening to it and cultivating it. 

The promise of future lives moment to moment! 

All art by Johnnie Day Durand

https://www.happyastropondering.com/

The Future of Value. Uranus Moves Direct

 The planet of future moves forward today in Taurus, the sign of value, after having been retrograde since mid August.  

Uranus has been called the Great Awakener.  These awakenings are born from a kind of shaking, a moving, a turbulence, or perhaps a strange moment of wonder that renders us back to a freshness as a beginner.

The past year has shook the entire globe up into a collective new reality.  The question is, from such a change, what is the future of value itself? 

Is there a future where wellbeing is deemed more valuable than money?  What would such a future look like?  John Lennon painted such a future, from his imagination outward.  When he said he was not the only dreamer, he understood full well the joy of the beginner.  Embracing what is fresh, and yet to be.  

Uranus is the planet of future because it is the essence of yet to be.  In Taurus we tie in an element of goodness.  Taurus is the kinds of response we prefer to hold on to, to constitute ourselves, to be secure and strong.  Be it food, thought, relations, environment, tradition, habit, what have you.  Taurus uses whatever it can to continue to constitute itself and make itself strong.

The future lives in every moment, as we are free to shake off the imposing qualities of the immediate past (as philosopher Alfred North Whitehead talks about) and create something new with a “bid for freedom”.  In this way, we step into the realm of yet to be instead of sinking into the swamp of that’s just the way it is.

As the future gains its forward stride, cultivate moments of well-being, that inform you from the inside the true meaning of value.  Lightning visions of intuition may find you in such moments, illuminating this question even more, then gone in a flash, yet hopefully rediscovered through… pondering! 

As always, happy astro pondering! 

Uranus won’t retrograde again until August 2022, and will be in Taurus until April 2026.

https://www.happyastropondering.com/

Hindsight and Foresight, A Full Moon on a Cold Night!

Metaphorcast 12/28/20- 1/3/21

The Mohawk Native Americans would call this week’s Full Cancer Moon, the Full Cold Moon, falling in the cold month of December.  A New Year will find us before the weekend, allowing for the phrase Hindsight is 2020 to not only be a viral meme, but also a re-wakened dream.  If myth’s are indeed, as Joseph Campbell said, public dreams (as opposed to dreams being private myths) there is indeed a pertinent myth to reflect as the new twenties gain their stride.  That is the myth of Prometheus and Epimetheus.  Foresight and Hindsight.

It was both Prometheus and his brother Epimetheus who sculpted all living creatures with clay.  Epimetheus sculpted the various animals and beasts, with their horns, scales, wings, feathers, teeth and fur.  But it was Prometheus that sculpted the humans last.  He had no special gift to give them, as Epimetheus had already given these specialties to the animals, so Prometheus decided to make human beings walk upright like the Gods, and he gave them fire.

Epimetheus, in hindsight, can see the deep seated desire of the tiger, with his sharp teeth and powerful reflexes.  In hindsight he can see the spacial craving of the bird, with it’s delicate and aeordynamic wing.  He can see the swamp king’s alpha dream in the crocodiles scales teeth and giant jaw.  But what of the human?

Prometheus made the human, not in hindsight, but in foresight.  The human, with no horn, wing, or giant jaw, no beak or fur or retratctable claw, no antlers, scales or stinging tails, nothing special here to see, except that speical quality, of vision and fire, from eyes heart and mind, we can be in two different places at the same time.

The past and the future, who’s dividing line is so slight, it makes each tiny moment it’s own fire to ignite.

As Albert Camus said, “With rebellion, awareness is born.”

Tuesday night we will see the Cold Moon, December’s Full Moon, in Cancer during this Capricorn Season.  A Cancer Full Moon is the Moon at it’s Moonest.  Whatever the Moon does for you, it does it more on the Cold Moon, the Full Cancer Moon, in this start of the Winter Season.  

To have foresight is also to have hindsight. To grasp a future is to understand it’s roots.  In the Cold Moonlight of the Ocean of Memory, that forms an endless chain back to the place of myths themselves, can you feel your reality in it’s full mythic sense? Your own private myth of dreams, and your resonance to certain public dreams of myth? What would an Epimethean set of glasses tell you about yourself.  And when Prometheus hands you that burning fennel stalk, in which way would you point it?  What would you hope to illuminate?  

As the Cold Moon begins to wane, it will still be bright and beautiful, weather permitting for New Years Eve, in the sign of Leo, the quintessential party animal.  Though parties will be at a minimum this year, the Leo Moon lights any stage with a healthy dose of drama.  A realistic re-rendering of any setting, living room, hallway, sidewalk, kitchen, as the stage that dramatically swaps out an old year for a new one.  

The newfound Aquarian energy in the sky, with the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn, is a giant twinkly wink from Prometheus and his gift of foresight.

Foresight can make way for important paradigm shifts, like the one that happened in the 16th century, when the Ptolemic Earth-centered model of the universe was replace by the Copernican Sun-centered one.

There is a very interesting article written by astrophysicist Peter D Usher that sees Shakespeare’s Hamlet as a dramatization of this paradigm shift. Hamlet symbolizes the awakening to a new infinite and Sun-centered universe. He is ultimately responsible for the death of the old king, Claudius, who shares Ptolemy’s first name.

Portrait of an Astronomer (Nicolaus Copernicus?) Marco Basaiti
Date 1512 (funny that he also looks like Shakespeare!)

The sky during this time in history shared a key characteristic as it does now, as Jupiter and Saturn go into what’s known as a “grand mutation”, shifting from 200 years of Earth conjunctions to a new 200 years of Air conjunctions. These Jupiter Saturn conjunctions are known as trigons. The full trigon cycle is 800 years, as it passes through each of the four elements.

In Shakespeare’s time the shift was from Water to Fire, and the fire of the Sun indeed became the new center.

Now it is from Earth to Air, as the Aquarian Age truly begins.

Hindight may be 2020, but that’s old news.  Another year over and a new one just begun.  Will we see another paradigm shift in 2021?

Happy New Year all the same!  

And Happy Astro Pondering!

https://www.happyastropondering.com/