Tag: time

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And Awakening In Springtime

Saturn Sunrise

Seek ye the openings at the edges.
Places where water comes from nowhere.
The doors invisible at first sight,
Only noticed in passing.

I am, at least for this week, back from my temporary sabbatical . I did not get to do most of what I took the time off to do, but I did do some of it, and in the doing found sufficient inspiration to return here, again, at least this week. And probably next. And then we’ll see.

Yesterday was my second Saturn return. As I write this on the day before that, I can’t offer any specific recollection of the passing of that milestone, save to offer what I posted the other day on threads.

It’s not a date, it’s a process.

Although I have had an interest in astrology since I was first acquainted with magic and the occult in childhood, it remained for many years outside my practical grasp. For those of you without recollection of the pre-internet era, once upon a time, the construction of natal charts, and from thence the progression toward a predictive astrology, was done without the aid of software.

One had to have at least one ephemeris. Considering that most clients would have been born in the 20th century, a good one for that century centered on midday or midnight was essential. Ephemerae for early periods were available, used for calculating the charts of various famous personages, organizations and states, whose nativity predated the current era. Sometimes this was for instructive purpose (“see here, you have your Moon in Aries squared by Mars in Leo, just like Mozart”), and sometimes you would be called upon to cast a horoscope for something like a corporate merger so you needed to create a “birth chart” for the involved corporations whose origin may have predated 1900.

I don’t recall how much mine cost, but I know I considered it expensive as a first year college student trying to get by on a meager stipend and acquiring potentially expensive habits beyond the already pricey ones of art supplies and books. There was also a need for a Table of Houses, at minimum, and a set of fairly accurate mathematical instruments. Fortunately I had some of those already left over from high school trigonometry and/or art class, and I had possession of an antiquated (even in the early 80s) slide rule. Doubtless many people reading in 2024 will assume this has something to do with measuring, but before computers and calculators became ubiquitous, the slide rule was a precision instrument for dealing with complex calculations out to many decimal points. In fact they were more accurate and capable of handling bigger numbers with greater precision that most affordable electronic scientific calculators making the rounds.

If you’re not a math nerd (guilty) things like significant digits and scientific notation will possibly leave you staring at me like a doomed deer on a lonely country road. But let me take you through the steps of calculation a planetary position for a natal chart as I had to do it in the 1980s, and you’ll get some sense of the weight of this process, and why software is a wonderful boon to the practice of astrology.

Titan Saturn Chesley Bonestell 1944
Saturn and I are old friends. This illustration by the great Chesley Bonestell of Saturn as seen from its moon Titan, was part of a solar system map that hung on my wall in early childhood. My interests in things that were beyond the mundane was part of me from the very beginning, and I am happy to say, that interest has not waned. If anything, it has become stronger with age.

An ephemeris is a table of planetary positions taken from a fixed point in space and time. That is, depending on the ephemeris, it will tell you at what degree, minute, and second of arc a planet occupies on a given day at a given hour when viewed from a specific latitude and longitude. The one I bought was set for midnight (’cause I’m a night person) at the Naval Observatory of Greenwich, England -home of the Prime Meridian. These were compiled by the Observatory for the purposed of aiding naval navigation, because it could be used with a sextant and trigonometry to plot one’s position out of site of land in the days before GPS. The data has also been handy for astrologers, who no longer had to watch the skies directly and extrapolate this information.

We’ll start with talking about the Sun’s position, since our “Sun Sign” is generally what everyone in the 70s and 80s sort of understood about astrology. So we look up your birthday in the ephemeris and find out what degree, minute and second of arc the sun occupied at midnight in Greenwich, England.

Which, of course was not where or when you were actually born. So the first thing we need to do is figure out your birthplace.

Did I mention you need an atlas, too? A very good one with lots of detail, so that little bitty town in Eastern Kentucky where you were hatched shows up close enough to the big latitude and longitude lines to make calculating it’s true position less difficult. Because that’s what we’ll do now, using the nearest main line, and the map’s scale, correcting for the convergence of those lines as they get further from the equator.

Got it? Good.

So now we just have to figure out the difference in time between that location and Greenwich. This is generally a little easier, because we have time zones. If you live to the west of Greenwich Mean Time (or GMT) then it’s a negative number. East is a positive number. What we call Eastern Time in the United States is GMT minus five hours. Be sure to correct for Daylight Savings Time (which is different here than it is in Europe, but GMT doesn’t change for DST, so Eastern Time DST becomes minus 4 GMT). Also remember that modern ephemerae may use UTC instead of GMT, but it is nearly the same thing. That is, UTC is the same zero hour as GMT which preceded it, but is derived from precise atomic decay clocks kept by the observatory, and synchronized with other such clocks around the world as a basis for determining the local offset time zone.

Luckily, the chart I am working with is a winter chart, and in the Eastern time Zone, so I take Midnight GMT and subtract five hours. This means that I now know which degree, minute, and second of arc the sun was occupying at 7:00 PM (or 19:00 on the 24 hour clock) at the birth location. We’re making progress. Unfortunately, the subject was born at 3:30PM so we’re going to need to calculate where the sun was four and a half hours earlier.

Saturn Brooch
I got myself a little something for my second Saturn return. It was auspiciously on sale last week. I have a whole box full of costume jewelry like this that I swap out on my cape and other magical wear as the mood strikes, but I had yet to have an image of Saturn. Which is surprising considering the image of the ringed planet is quintessential to the attire of any self-respecting wizard depicted in fairy tale illustrations.

For the record, I do have a pointy satin blue hat with stars, crescent moons, and of course, Saturn, on it in my costume closet. And one of the earliest pieces of magical clothing I made still bares the faint impression of the giant planet on the back of it, so none of this is new.

The sun transits the zodiac once every 365.2422 days. The zodiac is divided into 360 degrees of arc. Each degree is then divided into 60 minutes, and 60 seconds, just as we divide terrestrial maps in order to translate the vast distance between the degrees on land and sea into something specific. We’ve already done that with the location of birth. To get the sun’s rate of travel, we divide the 360 degrees by the 365.2422 days and get a velocity of .9856473321 degrees per day. Then we need to divide that by the 24 hours in a day to determine how far it moves in an hour, which is .0410686388 degrees of arc, or rather, 2.464118328 minutes, or 2 minutes, 2.784784709080 seconds.

This is where we get to those significant digits. With a slide rule and scientific notation actually compute those numbers out to the ends of those decimal points. And a quality astrology software program currently available on the market is doing that for you. We couldn’t do that in 1980 unless we used the slide rule. But even then, it starts coming out with numbers that are frankly, impossible to plot a chart of the size that one would prepare for a client, which might at most be the size of a standard letter size sheet of paper. I did bigger poster style charts for the few I did, because, the art was as much a part of the service as the chart, and it also made it easier to draw all the lines.

So at some point, I default to saying that the speed of the Sun through the zodiac is roughly 2 minutes and 3 seconds of arc per hour. So in four and a half hours (GMT Midnight and 7PM local) the Sun will be a little over 8 minutes and 12 seconds of arc ahead of where it really was at the time the subject was born at this location. I then take the position of the Sun and subtract 8 minutes and 12 seconds of arc, and I know where the Sun is at the moment of birth.

Now I just need to repeat this process for the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, and the Ascendant (position of the Eastern Horizon). Most general texts didn’t even talk about asteroids, or the Arab parts, or any of the number of other calculations to be made in a complex natal chart.

Oh, did I cover the part about sidereal versus tropical zodiac? Natal charts in the west are usual done with a tropical zodiac that has a neat division of twelve signs of 30 degrees each. It is locked to the solstices, so the Sun moves from Gemini to Cancer on the Summer Solstice and from Sagittarius into Capricorn in winter. The latitude lines where the sun is visible directly overhead on these dates are called the Tropic of Cancer and Capricorn respectively, and relate to earth’s 23-ish degree wobble on it’s access over the year. Without the wobble, we’d have no seasons.

Sidereal time, however uses the position of the sun (and subsequently the other planets) in relation to their location in the constellations taken at sunrise on a given day. The Vedic astrology practiced in Hinduism uses the sidereal system. Lucky for your, the switch is a simple option in most modern software. But if you happen to have purchased a sidereal ephemeris and you are making a tropical zodiac, you’re going to have to work out the math. The variance between the two is 23-24 degrees on average, but it’s another layer of calculation, and is a big enough number to put planets and your Ascendant in other signs.

Saturn Devouring His Son
I can’t think about Saturn and especially not the portents of a Saturn return without recalling this haunting image by Francisco Goya. This is far and away my favorite painting by that mad Spaniard (followed closely by the etching “The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters” from his Los Caprichios series).

He painted this, along with a number of other mystical and magical “Black Paintings” on the interior walls of his home in the 1820s. Proclaimed a pariah by both the ruling class and the Inquisition, and on the outs with his own family, some speculate he may have been experiencing a deep depressive episode. Still, these works are unquestionably genius.

He’d have been a bit past his own second Saturn Return, which was the day before my birthday in 1804. He died some years short of his third one, but at 82 was at a respectable old age for the 18-19th century.

So now that we know where the planets and the Ascendant are, we can start to plot the chart. We start by scribing a circle on the page. We’ll then draw a horizontal line through the center.

The Ascendant is where the sunrise horizon is at the moment of birth. In the case of our test subject, that’s about one and three quarter degree into Aries. So the point where the left side of the line intersects the circle is marked as 1 degree, 44 minutes of Aries. Now we’re going to take a protractor and locate a point 1.75 degrees above that center line. A line drawn from the edge of the circle to the center now represents the start of the Sign of Aries. From that line, we measure 30 degrees counter-clockwise, mark a line, and label that the beginning, or cusp, of Taurus; 30 degrees counter-clockwise from Taurus is Gemini, the next is Cancer, and so forth, until 30 degrees from the cusp of Aquarius/Pisces is the beginning of Aries.

Now we take those hard won positions of the planets and put all of them in on the chart, since we now know where the signs begin and end. It’s time to take a well-earned break, have some lunch, and maybe even a long nap.

The next steps are both necessary but don’t necessarily have to be performed in a specific order. We need to calculate the aspects for the planets, and we need to calculate the positions of the Houses. In order to give our brains a bit of a break, I’ll go with the aspects first.

Planetary aspects are simply the distances between each planet (and sometimes calculated positions, like the Ascendant, Descendant, Mid-Heaven (abbreviated MC for Maximus Coeli, the “top of sky” or Zenith) and Immum Coeli (“bottom of sky” or Nadir), Part of Fortune, and other Arabic Parts. These aspects are in degrees of arc, and generally are on divisions of 30, or the breadth of a full sign.

Objects said to have Square Aspect are 90 degrees apart, or three full signs different, and these are considered difficult or unfortunate. At 60 degrees we have a Sextile aspect, and at 30 degrees a Trine aspect, which signal better cooperation between the planets and a positive relationship in general. Objects at 180 degrees are in Opposition, and work against each other, and objects that are within a degree or so are considered to be in Conjunction and have the most beneficial aspect. There are several minor and special ones, but this is just the basics I would go for in a hand-calculated chart.

Planetary Aspects are arrayed in a grid which has the planets across the top and down one side, where the intersecting boxes are marked with the glyph for the type of aspect. These are generally also drawn of the page with the chart, for quick reference.

Before we bring the Houses into the picture, it may be also helpful to make a note of the Elemental positions, and the Modalities.

Each sign has an elemental nature, in that it corresponds to Fire, Earth, Air, and Water, in that order, starting with Aries, and moving counter-clockwise around the chart. Thus Taurus is considered an Earth Sign, Gemini Air, and Cancer the first Water Sign. Leo is the next Fire, Virgo, the second Earth, and so forth. Four elements means that this happens three times in a 12 sign zodiac and sometimes these groups of signs are called Triplicities.

The Modalities speak to how that Element interacts with the Sign, and any planets within it. These are Cardinal, Fixed and Mutable. Cardinal signs represent the first full blush and power of the element. They frequently mark the beginnings of the seasons, but do not necessarily fall in line with the first time the element appears in the zodiac. For example, both Aries (Cardinal Fire) and Cancer (Cardinal Water) mark the beginnings of Spring and Summer. But Taurus, while being the first Earth sign, is considered Fixed, because it represents that element as it is established and in it’s fullest natural influence. Likewise Scorpio, as Fixed Water, represents a world that is firmly in Autumns grip, which began with Cardinal Libra and the Autumnal Equinox. Mutable signs are the endings of a season, when the Element in one is beginning to transition into the Element in the next, thus Mutable signs precede Cardinal ones, and Fixed signs precede Mutable. As there are four seasons this occurs four times in the zodiac.

These natures are used to describe the Signs, and so they influence how a planet’s nature will be interpreted when entering into them. In drawing a chart, it is sometimes helpful to make a notation of element and modality at the rim or down nearer the center for reference when the actual reading begins.

At this point, we can begin to overlay the Houses. The Houses reflect various parts of our personality and our life, as well as the world we live in. This is where we can look for indicators of personality, aptitude, relationships, children, career, health, longevity, and spirituality. The most basic system of Houses is that of the Equal House system, where each house, like each sign, has 30 degrees. The houses begin at the Ascendant, and move counter-clockwise around. Depending on the position of the Ascendant, this may mean that an equal house system matches, or nearly matches, with the signs, as is the case of our test subject. By having the Ascendant only a hair inside of Aries, the first house will overlap most of Aries, the second most of Taurus, etc. such that the houses, who share many traits with the underlying signs, would not greatly vary the reading of the planets and their aspects. Aries and the First House speak to the I, the Ego, the Individual.

However if the Ascendant were over in Gemini, which is concerned with communication and interaction (as is the Third House) planets here might be analyzed for their influence on how well the person speaks and presents themselves. Such a shift places Gemini’s native Third House, over in Leo, which then may be reviewed as to how our subject commands, leads, or influences. These are over-simplifications, not so much as one gets with a daily newspaper horoscope, but they serve here simply to illustrate the connection between the nature of a given sign, and the nature of a given house, and then how the houses have different origin points than these signs. Houses change as a factor of location, since the position of the Ascendant is related most directly to where the subject was born.

This further complicates matters though, because the lines of longitude converge at the poles, so the distance between them is shorter the further one moves from the equator. This brought about the first calculations of the unequal houses, to compensate. Possibly the eldest, and potentially the most common, is called the Placidian, and is calculated based on degrees of latitude. When these houses become known, you get a chart where the houses are wider on one side than the other, and thus their influences can vary. For example, one might have a fourth house that spanned two or even three signs, in which case the planets and signs there would all be taken into account in terms of expressing tendencies in home and family life. Consequently on the other side of the chart the seventh, eighth, and ninth houses might share portions of a single sign, such that the planets and the sign would govern issues of marriage, business, death, and life goals.

In extreme northern latitudes (which thankfully I have never had to create a chart for) the various forms of unequal houses can cause some to collapse entirely, and frequently astrologers simply revert to an equal house system. This, of course, leads skeptics to pronounce that if the calculations are this quixotic, then the whole thing must be an utter sham.

Again, that is not my point, I am just trying to give the texture of the experience of working with astrology prior to the advent of small personal computers, and accurate natal astrology software.

Where once creating a serviceably accurate natal chart could take days or weeks, not even considering the study and contemplation to interpret it, I can now get a reliable result inputting a few key data points into the computer, or even into my mobile device. While arguably this has made the practice of astrology much easier and more accessible to those who have a true gift for reading a chart, I would counter that that is also something to be gained from the experience of finding and placing all that information oneself.

Because this task was so onerous, I admit to have only done a very few charts, and since Tarot and numerology were much simpler and more readily available, my career as a world famous astrologer never really took off. I did follow my horoscopes and such in the mass media, and I tried to keep enough of the skillset to smell when these were gilding the lily. Somehow I never won the lottery, had a windfall inheritance, or was an overnight sensation, so I took it with a grain of salt.

A few years ago, I ran across the Planetdance software which I have mentioned in previous articles, and started digging more deeply back into the charts. Particularly my interest was in why the majority of the new friendships I was making in the witch community on social media were mostly Piscean women. One of them told me it was that Pisces in Saturn in the 12th House placement. I’m still trying to work that all out, but it started me looking into this whole Saturn Return business.

Saturn takes around 30 years to get through the zodiac back to where it started. The actual orbit of Saturn is about 29.5 years, but because of retrograde motion, your Saturn return could vary a year or more. But generally speaking it hits us first as we are exiting our 20s, looking at the “big 3-0” and wondering just what the hell we are going to do with our lives.

I’ve only learned recently (like yesterday) that there is a secondary cyclic process called the Inverse Nodal return that hits around age 27, and so consequently the approach to that first Saturn return, with all the changes it portends, appears also to be a while. I am still looking into that as it applies to the second time around, as if it runs in a 27 year cycle it should have hit right around 2019 and thus just before the upheavals of 2020. Yet when I am cycling through my software, I see this event as happening in 2011. In fact, it looks like after the initial 27 year cycle that preceded the Saturn return, it now seems to be running on 19 year intervals. That’s actually somewhat concerning and I am going to ask some folks more familiar with astrology than I am to puzzle that one out.

At any rate, the second return hits as one is approaching that Big 6-0 and wondering just what the hell we have done with our lives, and thinking, quite significantly, if we’ll manage a third pass with this enigmatic outer planet as we approach our 90s.

When I was in my twenties, that idea never occurred to me. A life span of three-score and ten seemed to be around the norm. My great-grandmother passed at age 83 when I was in my early teens. My grandfather died of cancer in his early 70s a few years after that, so the perspective of a longer game seemed highly unlikely. When he died, my own father was not yet 40. When my father passed in 2022, also of cancer, I was almost 57, and already had a different perspective of that road.

As I have delved deeper into the supposed influence of Saturn’s return, I see some the impacts of reaching my age. These are, I believe, perhaps common to my peers. Many of us are beginning to lose our parents. Some of our contemporaries are also passing away. We are experiencing a sense of the clock ticking, of an urgency to our actions, that impacts our choices. We are thinking about that last hurrah, the big swing at that thing we always wanted to take a swing at. Maybe it’s writing a novel, maybe it’s touring the world. Maybe it’s finding a quiet corner of the world and letting go of the day to day frustrations and simply being able to breath deeply and listen to the birds sing.

Whether we as humans are doing this because the milestone of age 60 is driving it, and that has become associated with Saturn, or whether Saturn’s influence causes us to start thinking this way is really irrelevant. We have made this journey together, Saturn and I, and for now, I plan to keep on traveling.

We’ll see what I come up with next week. I may also move the day this article gets regularly posted so I can spend time getting it done without it impacting my other recent art projects, which are the reason I got into this thing in the first place. Also, I plan on making them shorter articles, which I am sure will please my readers immensely, so that they have the time to do their other projects.

Please Share and Enjoy !

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Time Traveling

Timetravel

Owing to my Good Lady Wife’s completing certification last week at the National Fire Academy, we found ourselves in the vicinity of Gettysburg for the weekend.

For the record, we are history nerds. We have the shirts and the hats that say that. And we enjoy a bit of time travel now and again, as a break from the multifarious pressures that come with the responsibilities of our day jobs. So we had booked ourselves a lodging at an antebellum bed and breakfast for a couple of days wandering about the various historical landscapes.

I know when I was a student in school, the battle that took place in this area on the first few days of July 1863 was taught as a very significant event. That was some time ago, and our schools keep adjusting what is historically important. Perhaps that’s as it should be.

I am a great believer that history should not be presented with blinders on. Nor should it be controlled and coerced into serving any particular agenda.

Things happen. We all experience things happening. We are all traveling through time at the pace of now becoming next, and now became then, in exactly the same unrelenting instant.

And what we experience, and how we react to it, and how we remember it is an absolutely personal thing. So it is safe to say that we may view any event we directly experience very differently than another person who experienced it with us.

This is part of the otherness that defines our human existence. It’s a consequence of being part of a universe that wants to know itself and all it’s potential selves. We can only hold that passing moment in memory, and memory is purely internal.

The American Civil War, and the slice of it that is the Battle of Gettysburg, is one of those things that has so much impact that it’s still being “contextualized” over 160 years later.

As a proper history nerd I try to follow two basic tenets.

Firstly, information should be analyzed to the extent that any bias that is likely to exist can be excised from the data itself.

That is, if you know one account was written by a Northern Abolitionist and another by a Southern Slave Holder, the information needs to get pared down to times, quantities, etc. Certainly the perspective can and should be accessed, to give us all some idea of the human experiences and ideas involved, but it’s not history, it’s the way the author viewed history at the time.

Which brings us to the second rule, people in history cannot, and should not, be judged or understood by the modern views we now hold.

Our present sensibilities are vastly different from the combatants of the American Civil War, from the Spanish Conquistadors, from the Roman Centurions, or any other person that has lived in a different period of time. Social media is rife with commentary about the differences between “Boomers”, “Gen X”, “Millennials”, and “Gen Z” and this is just among generations that we’re born since the Second World War. How then do we have the hubris to presume we “understand” the motivation of an Antebellum population?

This is why I prefer time travel to historical research. As the Doctor has said, we time travelers point and laugh at archaeologists.

Time travel is not an easy thing to do, of course. Absent a flux capacitor, temporal rotor, or warp drive, you really are tasked with finding someplace where the forces that perpetuate the illusion of linear time are relatively weak. These are becoming harder and harder to find in a modern global world interconnected with telecommunications equipment. But you can find them. And you can learn to ignore the distractions that can remind one of calendar dates and modern tech.

Find the ghosts can help.

I’m still not sure personally if ghosts aren’t simply other time travelers. Certainly we have the stories of ghosts that echo the horrible circumstances of their deaths. To the spiritualist and medium these sad beings remain because of the trauma they experienced, leaving a permanent imprint, or the presence of an unquiet spirit.

But there are lot of ghosts who simply are seen engaged in the normal activities of their life, or perhaps engaged in an emotionally intense event, like a pitched battle. In these cases, it is not impossible that we are simply peering past the walls of linear time and viewing the events that are happening just over there in the cosmic everpresent.

Several of the ghosts I have run into in my life look just like regular people. They don’t look “dead”, still have their heads and hands and aren’t bleeding profusely. As they walk past, some of them nod and smile, just as we would if we met in the hallway or on the street inside the same space-time.

They’re just slightly outside that space-time, and as such these moments can be brief and end abruptly. Almost as soon as one perceives the true nature of the encounter, one turns to look again and they’re gone.

We understand about as little of the true nature of time and space as we do the nature our own spirits. The tangibility of the meat suit, and the apparently “real” material world it inhabits, is, even to modern physics, not an entirely absolute thing. Physicality as we experience it may simply be another illusion, a limitation our our perception of the universe around us.

Time and space in our dreams is nothing like what we live in daily. It is non-linear, it is certainly non-physical, and frequently defies logical causality. Imagination is as ephemeral, so it’s a very difficult proposition to prove that the existence of the mind is bounded by the physical world and the apparent flow of linear time.

If you’re not a history nerd, it may surprise you to learn that the Spiritualist movement has it’s roots in the period following the American Civil War and in Europe following the Crimean War a couple of decades later. In both cases, there was an horrific loss of life on a scale not experienced before. Many of the dead were lost far from home, sometimes interred in mass graves with few markers. And still others were listed as “missing” which means the bodies were never identified.

In the era before modern embalming had become viable, there simply was no way to ever bring these dead men home. Such methods as existed (and they were largely experimental) were open only to the rich, who had not lost their wealth to the fortunes of war.

This left loved ones with no sense of closure. Spiritualism, with the trappings of the séance, table turning, spirit trumpets and talking boards offered mourning survivors a solace that they did not find in traditional religion. With the belief that the dead could be contacted, a wider acceptance that they remained in semi-tangible form as visible ghosts became more and more prevalent. Soon, spirits and ghosts began to expand beyond the shades of those passed on to include the shades of things that had never been alive.

The “ghost” of Abraham Lincoln’s funeral train is a widespread story across the parts of the country where his final journey passed on the way from Washington, D.C. to Illinois. Even for the animist, it’s hard to expect that the locomotive and cars that made that journey are spending eternity repeating the trip, particularly since the ghost of Lincoln himself rarely features in the stories.

We can accept that this is a mass delusion, of course. We can say that the trauma of the war and the culmination of that in the assassination of the President created a national myth that caused people to see that ghost train.

Or we can suggest that this same trauma has weakened the walls of space-time in some locales, and that we are still seeing the train as it passed on that fateful trek.

The same may be said for the phantom patrols and the ghost battles and other hauntings reported at Gettysburg and other battlegrounds of the American Civil War. It is not an exclusive experience to that event, either. I had a friend tell me they had a similar response to the battlefield of Culloden, in Scotland.

When we spill that much blood and pain and hate, it may not be possible to close the wounds for a very long time.

Culloden was the end of the Jacobite Rebellion. Gettysburg, though the war would continue for almost another two years, would signal the ultimate defeat of the Confederacy. In fact, there is one moment that historians will point to as the turning point in the war. That is what is known as Pickett’s Charge.

On July 3rd, after two days of battle with territory changing hands several times, it looked as though the Army of Northern Virginia under Robert E. Lee had the upper hand. There were still a handful of entrenched positions held by the Federal troops, but if they were broken, and put to retreat, Lee would command the supply lines that fed into Washington, D.C. and capturing the United States capital would have been much more likley.

If that had happened, the Confederate States of America might have continued to exist for some time, been recognized as a legitimate entity by other world governments, and institutionalized African slavery continued for some time, financed by the desire to feed cotton into the burgeoning mills of the awakening Industrial Revolution.

Alternatively, the area of North America between Mexico and Canada might have splintered into a number of small nations similar to Europe. The Westward Expansion that followed the Civil War would not have occurred as it did, and the vast wealth of natural resources would not be harnessed under a single banner, but squandered and fought over for decades. Alliances and pacts like those that precipitated World War I in Europe would surely have similarly volatile results in the Western Hemisphere, and the Twentieth Century could easily have been marked by constant international warfare with very little progress.

I’m sure some of us could argue that the Twentieth Century was marked by constant international warfare, and frankly we don’t seem to be making much headway in the Twenty-first, but we sew the seeds and see what will sprout in the future. Time travel doesn’t always help us see what’s coming. Because it’s complicated.

On July 3rd, 1863, General Pickett ordered his men forward against the enemy line, to “take the Yankee position” at a place called the Angle. To get there, they had to run down a rise across open territory, cross over a fence, a ditch, a road, and a stone wall, before reaching the enemy position.

If you stand on that terrain today, you wonder at what possessed them to attempt something like this. It’s clearly suicidal. It was a really bad idea. The commanding officers should have known that. They may have known it, but they chose to ignore it.

picketts-charge
This low spot on the battlefield is where Pickett’s men met the Northern line, sword to throat and bayonet to belly, while minié balls and grapeshot whizzed around them like buzzing flies.

The din of battle is long gone, and as one descends into this shallow depression, it becomes eerily quiet. The birds stop singing. The crickets don’t chirp. There is nothing but the whisper of a lonely wind. The walls of time grow thin here. The land still weeps, despite more than a century and a half is past.

When Lincoln said those gathered to dedicate the cemetery located nearby had not the power to consecrate this land as deeply as those who died upon it, he may have peered behind the veil of time, and felt this long lasting scar. The Lincolns were early believers in Spiritualism, having lost a child at an early age. In 1865 the President related a dream where the boy took him through the White House to show Lincoln himself lying in a casket. He would be dead within a few weeks from a bullet to the brain.

We can analyze this and say it was the bravado of a Southern Empire drunk on it’s success and resting against the wealth brought to it by the subjugation of other human beings. We can assign a reliance on military training referencing the Napoleonic Wars as recent to Lee and his generals as we are to Viet Nam. Pickett, who survived the slaughter, responded when asked about why it failed said “I believe the Yankees had something to do with it.”

Not far from this site is a farm owned by former U.S. President Eisenhower. The period of the Eisenhower presidency is a source of much nostalgia in this country. During this time the more or less intact U.S. industrial complex was tasked with rebuilding both Allied and defeated nations. The economic growth was unparalleled, and propelled the U. S. A. to the top of the world scene, challenged only by an injured but pragmatic Soviet Union.

Eisenhower, before becoming president, was Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in the European Theater of Operations. He is widely considered to be the primary architect of the June 6, 1944 invasion of Europe commonly called D-Day.

I did not have the opportunity to see the beaches when I was in Normandy back in the 1990s. I was there on business, and never got that far west. But I am familiar with what was called the Atlantic Wall.

I can only imagine Eisenhower and his advisors looking at the obstacles they faced. They had to land on an open beach, covered by machine gun and artillery placements, a vast trench and tunnel network, barbed wire, land mines, and heavy concrete obstacles. Should they survive that they had to get up cliffs in some cases, and then take those fortified positions.

If the assault failed, if they didn’t clear the beaches before sundown and make it possible to bring ashore more troops and tanks and supplies, then they might never be able to break the Nazi grip on Europe. The horror and oppression of the Third Reich and the Holocaust would remain unchallenged. The Allied Nations ultimately might fail, and certainly could not maintain against it.

It was going to be a bloody violent action, and there was only a slim chance of success.

But in the end, there was no other option open to Eisenhower, so he made the decision to order the attack.

The same way Pickett sent his men down that hill toward the Northern lines.

In the end, the outcome of both battles was the better one for humanity. The oppressor lost.

The failure of Pickett’s charge was the end for the South. They withdrew on the Fourth of July, and essentially remained on the run back to Virginia, where they were ultimately forced to surrender in 1865.

The Confederate States of America ceased to be a nation, and was subject to re-admission to the United States of America. As a consequence, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, made in January 1863 before Gettysburg, served as the impetus for the 13th Amendment which actually abolished the slave trade in the U.S.

That’s the short version we got in grade school. Over the years I have learned about martial law being declared in New York City to put down draft riots, the fact that the Emancipation Proclamation only applied to the states that were no longer under Lincoln’s control, and numerous instances of political compromise and military ambition that may have prolonged the conflict and increased the suffering.

This is not to say that the cause was not just and right. But we are harming our ability to learn from history by oversimplifying it. We encourage the growth of falsehoods that become rallying points for bad ideas. We tend to learn to put things in binary terms. Black and White. Us and Them.

That never ends well.

gubment-cow
After the pronounced weight of the battlefield, it was an amusing irony to find that the cows on Eisenhower’s farm were obediently standing in the same location as the guide map showed them.

The period of his presidency is looked back upon as a time of relative order and stability, but beneath the surface the Cold War and the turmoil of the 1960s seethed and bubbled, waiting only for a spark to set it off.

In only a few years the world would come the closest it ever has to an all out nuclear war, and another U. S, President would be assassinated as he drove through the streets of Dallas.

Well behaved cows aside, we are always just one second away from collapse. Physicists say that holding the universe together uses more energy than letting it fall apart. We see the falling apart -entropy- as the arrow of forward time. This is one of the reasons that modern science initially spurned the idea of time travel. It takes more energy to reverse things than there is in the universe, so you can never go back.

However, “back” and “forward” are potentially the limitations of our perception, much like our inability to see wavelengths of light in the infrared and ultraviolet with our poorly evolved meatsuit eyes. Everything exists in the now, but our wee brains can’t take it all in. We have developed a kind of psychosis to shield us from the incomprehensible everpresent, and that is this notion of unidirectional linear time.

Which is why I prefer to time travel. I hope that this little trip has been entertaining to you. I understand it may be a bit heavier fare than you expected, but we are descending down into that Winter Dark, when thoughts of death and doom are closer to the surface, and it is never a bad thing to remember how close we are to the footsteps of chaos.

The American Civil War did not begin with the attack on Fort Sumter. It did not begin with the election of Lincoln, or numerous political appeasements from the beginning of the 19th Century. In some sense the Civil War began with the inclusion of institutionalized slavery in the Constitution. But it is our own long history of barbarity that fuels it, and that has sadly not been resolved.

As I have traveled across the country in the last few months I have seen and heard much to indicate that we are by no means safe from repeating the mistakes of the Confederacy or the Third Reich, or the myriad tyrannies and oppressions that mark our human history. The path forward is never straight, and sometimes it goes through dark territory. Choosing to ignore that creates a certainty that we will stumble upon it.

Back next week.

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The End of All Songs

Death

For God’s sake let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings:
How some have been depos’d, some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed,
Some poisoned by their wives, some sleeping kill’d,
All murthered—for within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps Death his court, and there the antic sits,
Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp,
Allowing him a breath, a little scene,
To monarchize, be fear’d, and kill with looks;
Infusing him with self and vain conceit
As if this flesh which walls about our life
Were brass impregnable; and, humour’d thus
Comes at the last, and with a little pin
Bores thorough his castle wall, and farewell king!

Richard II – Act 3, Scene 2 – William Shakespeare

Card XIII is one of the most dreaded cards to see in any reading. It is simply called Death, and carries with it all the foreboding baggage we attach to that word in our communal culture. Death is without doubt one of the most feared parts of the human experience. It is an inexplicable enigma that haunts our steps from the day we enter into the world. Yet it’s place in Tarot is very much open to discussion.

death-rws-tarot
I took this scan from my own RWS deck, which is approaching 40 years old now. The reproductions are not nearly so clear as the digital versions I have been using, but I had the deck handy and thought I’d use it.

The Rider-Waite-Smith version departs from previous imagery of the Reaper mowing down humans indiscriminately. Instead, Pamela Colman Smith chooses to show the figure of Death as the Black Knight, mounted on horseback, with his black banner dominant over all. The banner is marked by a five-lobed white Tudor rose. That this may be seen as an inverted pentagram is not without intention. His horse is white, its red eyes mark it as an albino. The bridle barding is a sequence of skulls and crossed bones. The horse and rider are taken from the Apocalypse of St. John, in the book of Revelations. “ And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.” This figure of Death on horseback is something we begin to find in the Renaissance, particularly in the work of Northern painters like Albrecht Durer. He is perhaps not so nobly depicted as he is on the 14th trump card, but the figure clearly is the Pale Rider. Much of the rest of the tableau depicted here comes from older memento mori imagery. Before the horse stands a bishop or other prelate, praying for Death to spare him. On her knees next to him is a swooning woman, and a child. They are both crowned with roses, and the child holds a bouquet of these flowers. Just in front of the child is the bishop’s crozier. The front right hoof of the horse is poised above it, ready to stamp down and smash it. Underneath the horse is the body of a king, his crown upside down in the dirt behind the horse’s other foreleg. In the background is a landscape, at the rear of which is a river. A single boat is in the middle of the river. Behind the bishop we see the suggestion of a waterfall, and above the waterfall the river leads toward two towers, with the sun setting between them. The sky is a uniform gray, and the part of the landscape from the river’s edge backward, is covered in the shadow of evening, as the light is dying.

This card is positively ripe with symbolism, probably because we have been working with visual metaphors for death since our earliest human consciousness. Death, as a thing, is both easily expressed and yet completely unexplainable. It is a cessation of a number of biological processes that we use to determine if something is “alive”. Although when we get down to the level of something like a virus, these processes are much simpler, for human beings we think of things like breathing, having a heartbeat, walking, talking, eating, excreting, making babies and similar things that we all have in common. When we stop doing that, we are considered dead. The body ceases to operate. The meat suit is no longer inhabited by us, and begins a number of other biological processes which are the result of other life now regarding the meat suit as just meat.

death-pulp-tarot
This rendition is from the Pulp Tarot by graphic designer Todd Alcott. The deck is a novelty theme based on the old paperback book covers from the late 20s into the 1950s. Some of the designs are more successful than others. One thing I will say for them is that in most cases they are keeping the key pieces of the RWS deck while playing with the format. Although the king is still living here, and the knight is trying to defend against the looming giant figure of Death, the pieces are there to look at, and the message is the same, even to the novice reader.

The thing that makes Death such a mystery is that it is inherently and almost always a permanent state. It is, in fact, the only permanent state that human beings experience. Everything else about us is changeable. We grow, we age, we move, we hunger, we sleep, we reproduce. Nothing is ever exactly the same way twice. But when all that stops, well, it stops forever. So in our modern culture we tend to consider that forever as Death, when really what we mean is loosely termed the “afterlife”.

Afterlife as an idea has been around a long time. It’s hard to say whether our near neighbors the chimps and bonobos have some concept of loss when a member of their community stops functioning. In my personal experience, though, I believe that animals do experience a sense of death, and of loss, both for other animals and for their humans. My grandfather’s dog died the day he did, even though my grandfather died in a hospital several hundred miles away. We found the little dog, who had been healthy and really should have lived for several more years, quietly passed in his pen. I have heard numerous such stories from friends and family.

But as humans, we seem to have become aware of something significant occurring as far back as the Neanderthal times. It is in this culture that we start to see what archaeologists call “grave goods”. That is, there are things buried along with the bodies of the people. Let’s examine what that may tell us about those early humans.

The reason to bury the dead is actually fairly basic. It’s sanitary, and keeps the decomposition from attracting big scavenger/predators to the rest of the tribe. But when it comes to a reason for burying things with the dead person, it becomes a bit more complicated.

Firstly , it may simply be that those things belonging to the dead might have been related to the death. That is, there was some fear of contagion. This potentially grew from folklore passed down when someone did get sick and die when they kept poor old Ugg’s mammoth hide cape. Now to a culture that doesn’t have sophisticated bacteriology, this idea of quarantine is as much about spiritual causes as it is about the bug. True, it may have been a nasty bacillus that brought down Ugg and sadly young Groont picked it up from the fleas in that mammoth hide. But to the people of the tribe, this was the work of an evil spirit, or an angry god, or something like that, because they didn’t have any idea about the bacillus. Hence for the future, all mammoth hides would be buried with their owners when the time came.

Secondarily, such a culture might determine that it was Ugg himself that had caused the harm to Groont, because he had really liked that mammoth hide, and he didn’t feel like Groont was going to take proper care of it. This idea that the spirit of the dead, once out of the meat suit, could still affect the affairs of the living folks, is something that evolves throughout our history. There is some point in time where the giving of grave goods served the dual purpose of appeasing the spirits of the dead, and providing them with access to their stuff once they’d shuffled off the ol’ mortal coil. If there was no more Ugg, why would he care if Groont got his cape or not. But, if Ugg was still hanging around, even though the Ugg meat suit was taking the long dirt nap, it might be very important to keep him pleased. Who knows what sort of mischief an irritated invisible Ugg could get up to? And, well, how do you get rid of him if you can’t kill him?

death-shadowscapes-tarot
Of all the Tarot decks I own (somewhere around 50 now) this is the only one that presented the concept of Death as transformation in a more pleasant light. The Shadowscapes Tarot of Stephanie Law is so unusual that you will only know this is Death by looking at the label. This is the benu bird of Egypt, the Phoenix, hatching from the egg found in the ashes of its former self,. The gentle spirals, expanding in the natural expression of what is called the Golden Section, express the endless magical order of this cycle of birth-death-birth.

So offerings get made, stuff gets buried, and the dead become the Venerated Ancestors because somewhere in our early caveman days we began to conceive of this concept of afterlife. Afterlife is heaven and hell and ghosts and zombies and vampires and the numerous other incarnations of the unquiet dead. It’s also reincarnation and karma and past lives and the search for Nirvana.

But it’s not Death. Death is a moment. Death is the moment where the meat suit goes from being us to being meat.

And as with many moments that exact point is still sort of nebulous and mysterious. And scary. As people progressing through our living years, we all create or internalize some sort of belief about afterlife that gives us a shield against the inevitability of Death itself. But no matter how assured we are of inhabiting the spiritual Disneyworld promised by many religions and beliefs, that actual moment of Death still shakes us down to our very cores.

So when that card marches out in a reading, you still hear the sudden intake of breath. The pupils dilate. Sweat forms on the upper lip. No, surely, it is not my time. No!

Oh, no. It’s just symbolic. A sign of transition. Of changing from one state to another. That’s the usual response. Please don’t panic, Death isn’t really Death.

Except, of course, when it is.

The origin of the images on this card is the Middle Ages, and the Black Death. The Grim Reaper, who is more plainly drawn on the Tarot de Marseilles, is another emblem of this terrifying time in European history, when at least one quarter of the local humanity died. The great Bubonic Plague coincided with widespread belief that the time of Christ’s return was at hand, as it had been about a thousand years since the Crucifixion and the Resurrection. As an invisible Angel of Death swept whole villages from the earth, it was very easy to believe that the end times had come.

death-deviantmoon-tarot
At the other end of the spectrum in the Death card from the Deviant Moon Tarot. This deck has a darkness about it, possibly even a madness about it. I recently got a copy of the artist’s companion book that not only contains the Tarot meanings/prompts, but also discussed his personal journey in arriving at the images. It affirms my impression that these are at least loosely inspired by the Venetian Carnival masks, though there are clearly layers beyond such a simple attribution. Death here, is Death. There’s no hopeful light on the horizon, no glorious or great beyond awaiting. It is just brutal, and bleak, and final. But perhaps we may look upon Her swollen belly as being a presage of new life. I have a hard time not seeing it as the distention of the corpse as it decays.

Ironically the mass extinction event changed the economic structure of Europe. Feudalism, based on a large population of people to work the land, was no longer sustainable. Labor and skills were in short supply, and in basic economic fashion, when supply is less than demand, the price goes up. People were able to rise in personal property and social status, by contracting themselves to the highest bidder. This brought about the flowering of art and culture we call the Renaissance.

So in it’s way, even the big bad Black Death on that XIII card was a transitionary force. The old society died with it, but the new one grew from the ashes.

The plague killed without distinction. Young, old, rich, poor, noble, slave, pious, and sinful. The figures surrounding the Black Rider represent this idea that Death was the great equalizer. No amount of money, or power, or faith, could protect you.

The catchphrase of the time was “Memento mori” – “Remember you will die”.

While this may have begun as church propaganda to convert the heathen, it could certainly have been a bumper sticker on the daily death wains that roamed many Medieval towns and cities calling for people to bring out their dead.

The injunction, of course, was aimed at cajoling the populace into proper Christian behavior, since, at any moment, they too, could make that final journey. In the climate of the day, real fear was attached to dying with sin on your heart, unable to make final confession and atonement, before facing the final judgement.

But consider this message in a different light.

Let’s say you’ve been told you have a fatal incurable disease and your have that proverbial six months to live. Assuming this illness doesn’t impair your abilities terribly, and is not contagious, what choice would you make to do with that six months?

Some people, sadly, would spend the entire time in fear, depression, and anger, bemoaning whatever mad fate put upon them this horrible doom. They would be miserable, and they would make everyone around them miserable, and when they were gone, their loved ones would carry that misery around forever as their last memory of the person.

Some people will pull out that bucket list, crack open the bank accounts, and live life to the fullest seeing and doing all those things they dreamed about until the very end when the dark comes upon them. That leaves behind a better legacy with their families and friends, unless, of course, they were hoping to inherit what got spent on that last blast of gusto.

But there is the third option, to do something that lasts. Maybe they make a painting, or write a novel, or go spend six months feeding the poor in the some wretched forgotten corner of the earth. But they give up that last measure of their days to leave something behind, so that when the meat suit is fully consumed, and the material nature of the life they lived is gone, something remains in the world that is a mark of their having been in it.

death-journey-into-egypt-tarot
I don’t want to leave you with such a hopeless version of the card, so consider this offering from the Journey Into Egypt. The subject is the Pharaoh Hatsheptsut, one of the few female pharaohs, and certainly the most powerful. Her funeral temple is the structure shown in the background at the base of the cliff at Dier El Bahri. It is lit internally by torchlight, as our own bodies possess an internal light. In the foreground her body lies inside a splendid golden coffin, but her own inner light, the Ka, looks back at us. She is beginning her journey into the realm of Osiris, where she will live a life of ease and playfulness for millions of millions of years. The Death of the Ancient Egyptians is drawn on the column, leading her to the court of the Lord of the Dead. His name is Anpu, rendered via the Greeks into Anubis. As noted with last weeks image, there is an astronomical notation to these cards. This one references the full moon in Scorpio, which occurs when the sun is in Taurus, roughly the month of May, or the full flowering of the spring time. Scorpio is connected to Pluto and thus the underworld, but the Full Moon is when the moon is opposite the sun, thus in this we have both Death, and Birth.

The Renaissance, for all the secular humanism and often hedonism, is this bright shining of life and light as compared to the long dark fear of Death that marked the world of the Middle Ages. In many ways, our modern world still has not fully come to terms with that phobia that rose from the Plague Years. Nor do we always live up to that promise of using the time we are given to best effect.

The sun is always setting somewhere. And always rising somewhere. While the funeral ship is sailing into the lands of shadow, there is another ship setting off to meet the dawn.

Our entire existence is a world that is dying or dead. The majority of the stars we see above burned out a long time before our earth even spun in space. It is the merest memory of their life that makes up our reality. It is fair to say that we are constantly in that moment of Death, moving from the things that were to the things that will be. The past lies lost behind us, and the future is never quite reached. The now is what we have, and we better make use of it.

The Death card is not simply a marker of transition or change. It is the proof of the inevitability of change. Nothing that is, remains. It is a goad to get up and go out and live while we can, to not wait for the moment when we are asked to hop up on that horse, and only then beg and lament our wasted days.

I do not fear Death. Even the pain that may accompany it, if that be my fate, is transitory. It ends. Death is over quickly, and what is beyond Death, I cannot say. What is on this side of Death though, lies within my willingness to act. And act I will.

I hope this has helped you understand a little more about this complicated and often dreaded card. Next week we shall explore Temperance, which is not only a rather odd card to work through, but also sits in a strange place in the sequence of trumps. I hope you will join me again.

As a footnote, I would like to thank all those brave souls who asked me to read the cards for them at the Writers for New Orleans event this past weekend. I know there were some that time did not permit me to visit with, and I hope we will have a future opportunity to explore the Tarot together.

I’ll be back next week.

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Light Unto The Path

Hermit

Card IX of the Major Arcana is one that I find myself drawn more and more to as I get older. This is, to my thinking, something of a natural progression, and we’ll look into that. For those who have not read my earlier articles where the Hermit is discussed in various contexts, this will likely all be new territory. For those who have followed me for a while, I trust you will forgive any repetition of concepts mentioned in those earlier articles as we delve into this week’s topic.

The Hermit card shows a lone figure standing on a snowy mountain summit against a blue sky. He wears a hooded grey robe, and has long white hair and beard. In his left hand he holds a simple staff, and in his right he holds a lantern. In the midst of the lantern is a hexagram star, giving off rays that travel only a short distance. There are the tops of other mountains seen in the distance. His gaze is cast downward.

hermit-rws-tarot
In keeping with austerity of a life in isolation, this is one of the most minimalist designs Pamela Smith offers us.

The design here is one of the simplest of all the Major Arcana. That is appropriately in keeping with the subject as an ascetic engaged in isolated contemplation. Because, as we have discussed, Waite’s charge for this deck was intimately connected with Christianity, the figure is portrayed more or less as a lone monk.

Monasticism in origin was not the movement that it later became. The practice began with individuals withdrawing from the word and living completely alone, often in caves in the desert. There were no orders, and there certainly were no monasteries. The “mon” in monastic, and indeed in monk, is derived from monos- one, or lone. Supposedly Benedict was the first of these early monks to put forth the idea that they could all be alone together, and thus formed a monastic order. Later such orders would be approved as official by the church, and charged with specific duties and obligations. I imagine similar developments occurred within Buddhism, but there are still hermit monks in many traditions, who seek personal wisdom and enlightenment by a quiet withdrawing from the world.

This context is central to a number of the meanings and associations ascribed to this card. In a Christian scenario, the withdrawal is to place oneself away from sin, or at least, from the temptation to sin. In this way the Hermit purifies himself from the flesh, and thereby encourages the spirit. The wisdom imparted here, of course, is the absolute truth and rightness of the Christian teaching, and thereby the hermit monk has his soul saved, while his body suffers.

Mortification is practiced in multiple cultures for purification, but also for the creation of trance states and the getting of visions. Living in a cave in isolation, subsisting on a diet of “locusts and wild honey” could certainly induce psychologically altered states of consciousness. If one is bent to be looking for signs from God, those altered states can take on the character of a profound religious experience. Ironically, of course, these experiences are frequently depicted as ecstasy, general of the physical kind that the hermit has moved out into the wilderness to avoid.

The Hermit is traditionally given the Sign of Virgo astrologically. I find this a rather simplistic reading, equating virginity to the avowed celibacy of the monk. The two are not identical, nor are they interchangeable. It’s simply convenient to make the attribution if you are looking for some place in the Tarot to attach Virgo. The fact is, as I have mentioned before, that the Hermit in earlier decks is a personification of passing Time, and this Chronos being confounded in ancient days with Kronos the Titan, makes Saturn a more apt connection than Virgo.

hermit-Wildwood-tarot
This Hermit Card from the Wildwood Tarot is one of my favorites. The figure is reminiscent of Dicken’s Spirit of Christmas Yet To Come. It is faceless, and the robe is worn. The wreath and the faded adornments on the lower part of the robe identify this figure as the Holly King, the spirit of winter, and a potent symbol of the fate that awaits us all at the end of the path. Yet it carries a bright light in that Winter Dark, and shines it upon a lone little bird. The bird, along with the blades of grass piercing the snow, remind us that the future holds the promise of rebirth, and even when death awaits, it is a transition to

I have personally always seen the Hermit as analogous with both Father Time and some Saturnine aspect, and as I age, this is even more apparent. My own second Saturn return is now less than a year away, and astrologers suggest that this brings with it contemplation of deeper meanings, the path that we have taken, and the potentially shorter path that lies ahead. Old Saturn with his 29 year cycle, was rarely met more than twice by our ancestors, and sometimes no more than once. Thus associating him as I do with the aged figure on the mountain top, perhaps looking back along the trail he has climbed, is not so arbitrary as the monkish renunciation of carnal activities.

I personally identify greatly with the Hermit card. It is not that I am anti-social, at least in the sense that I live in a cave in the desert and eat bugs. But I have for more of my life than not, been very insular and private. My world has almost always been more of the inward one than the outer one. The cave I inhabit is internal. As a precocious and odd child, my social isolation was very common. I had few friends and most of them were similarly odd. I cannot with any accuracy say if the experience of being an outsider or loner led to my inclination toward silence and self-contemplation, or if I had a bent for quiet meditation that limited the ability of other more outgoing types to bond with me. Whether it was the chicken or the egg, the result is that I generally prefer pursuits of a personal nature rather than a collaborative one.

That is not to say that I am incapable of interacting with others, but it does require a great deal of energy and focus, even with persons whose company I enjoy sharing. This, I believe, is what they are defining as introversion these days. There is possibly also some overshadows of the autistic spectrum that may be applicable. The difficulty inherent in expressing oneself, combined with the discomfort, or even fear, of being misunderstood, and a compulsion to pre-run the outcomes of any and all scenarios, creates a synergy where communication is a complex and stress inducing task. The result is frequently exhausting, and therefore the appeal of the quite moments alone. The obligations of my life as I have lived it, and as the result of the choices I have made along it, require me to adapt and develop coping mechanisms to address these stresses. I have been doing so for the better part of half a century, but as I get older, I am becoming more selective as to when I need to employ those mechanisms, and when the outcome is equal or even better if I simply make the choice to be that Hermit.

Of course, my life would probably be much simpler if I had not self-imposed the need to author a weekly article on various subjects to an audience who may or may not be out there.

But that brings us to the Hermit’s Lantern.

hermit-lantern
My “genuine official” Hermit’s Lantern, or a reasonably close facsimile. Like many of the odd things in my collection of odd things, it is both a prop and a magical object. This is not unusual in the history of occult practice. The knife and cookpot and the hearthstone and walking stick are all mundane objects, with mundane uses, that the village witch of yore would have employed both for practical and more esoteric purpose. The idea that we have to have a sacred set of special tools that can’t ever ever be used for what they actually are would have been ludicrous to our ancestors. Certainly, owning a “magic wand” or “witch’s cauldron” would have brought considerable risk in the days of the persecutions, but most houses would have had staffs, clubs, switches, and other sticks, and of course there was a big black iron pot over the fire. My lantern can be used symbolically, and in spell craft. But it can also be used to light my way in the dark.

I have one of those, you know. Found it at one of the discount stores that deal in leftover merchandise originally offered in the high-end department stores. I also have a staff and the monks cassock. Sometimes things just click like that.

But the Hermit’s lamp first and foremost is the analogue for the wisdom he has gained, the secrets that he has teased out of the dark bosom of the universe during the nigh endless hours of lonely seeking. Because, frankly, the point of wisdom is to pass it on. We are potentially alone on this planet in our ability to communicate our experiences to others in a fashion that expands and extends their value.

While there are a good many creatures that exhibit the ability to pass data instinctively, there are, at least as far as we know, none that can record that data in perpetuity. The monasteries of all faiths seem to affirm the need to chronicle what comes from contemplation, meditation, and isolation. They maintain libraries as a part of their function, and through that we have preserved the collected musings of the ages. It is a sad fact of history that many such libraries were lost to war, disaster, and accident, yet what remains, though meager, is wonderful.

The purpose of the Hermit is therefore not to leave this world, but to know it. This ties card IX to card 0, the Fool. As I stated early, the symbolism of the Fool is that state of Unknowing, that exists in the Unformed. It is that moment of Becoming, that is precipitation by the I withdrawing from the Not I , that is the creation of all. The edge of the cliff the Fool strides toward is where the Universe divides from itself in order to know itself. The death presaged by the card is real. The Universe as it was before will die, and never be again, because as the full plunges over the edge a new Universe begins that has the capacity to be experienced.

hermit-Shadowscapes-tarot
Stephanie Law gives us an ethereal and elfin Hermit in her Shadowscapes Tarot. Her mastery of watercolor and deep knowledge of anatomical forms results in unique and wonderful depictions that preserve the spirit of the card, while giving us a gateway into a whole new kind of world. The symbols seem derived from Celtic myth, but walk far closer to the walls of Faerie than something like Wildwood, which is more directly a restatement of Celtic Shamanism. I work frequently with both decks, depending on mood. The Shadowscapes have a kind of music about them, and are far easier to travel into and through.

And here is the Hermit withdrawing from the world, to know himself, and in doing so, to know the greater truth that lies beyond that edge, to return, perhaps to the Unknowing, beyond that event horizon where the original Idea was made form. It is a parallel intention.

While the Fool simply does, and the result becomes the intention, the Hermit intends. I made a distinction earlier between virginity and celibacy. This is exemplified in the relationship between these two cards. Virginity is an initial state of the origin of things, that once lost, may never be again. Innocence cannot be regained. Celibacy or chastity is the result of an intended act of restraint that may be constant or practiced in intervals. While the two can exist together, that is, one can be virginal and also chaste, it is not necessarily required for the chaste to be a virgin.

Virginity is the condition of our beginning. The Fool is the first card. When we reach the Hermit, we are presented with an old man, who we hope is wiser, but is likely no longer innocent. He chooses to be apart from the world because he has known it. Yet this choice makes it all the more present in his mind.

Anyone who has gone on a diet has experienced the stronger craving for something they are forbidden, even though they were not so desirous of it when they could have it. This is what makes the changing of habits difficult.

The Buddhists say that this is why we can’t free ourselves from the desire to be, and return to the nothingness that is. We are no longer the Fool, the Unknowing, and while our objective as the Hermit is to deny it, that denial makes the desire for it even stronger. We can be as celibate as we want, but it doesn’t ever make us a virgin.

So faced with this contradiction, the Hermit re-enlists in the world, at least to the extent that those rays will reach. The light from the Hermit’s Lantern is dim, not because it does not burn brightly, but because, as a consequence of the experience only known to the Hermit, is incredibly difficult to communicate with others who lack his frame of reference.

hermit-Ghosts-and-Spirits-tarot
A final variation on our theme, this from the Ghosts and Spirits Tarot by Lisa Hunt. This deck is certainly one of the most unique ones I have, and not for the faint of heart. The imagery is frequently dark and disturbing, even when expressing images that typically are considered positive in the Tarot literature. It departs significantly from conventional designs. Like Shadowscapes, it offers complex swirling tableaus where faces seem to peer from everywhere. This reflects an animist perspective, but it also signals that we are looking into a world behind the mask of simple mundane reality. The Hermit from the usual card stands here at the rear right of the image, The lantern aloft, the eyes closed in some internal reverie. But the spirit of the Hermit is a sparkling whirlwind in the middle of the wilderness of hidden realm. It is also a realm we can step into, if we are willing to take the risk.

This is why scholars and writers on esoterism and philosophy make a distinction between intelligence and wisdom. We can easily impart facts to one another. We can express that two and two are equal to four, and that four and four are equal to eight. We can explain how to properly conjugate verbs in all the languages of the human race. But when it comes to sharing our insights into the sublime wonders of the Divine our mouths fall silent. Our tongues are still. The words are simply not enough.

The Hermit’s Staff is his knowledge. He leans upon it. It is firm. It is strong. He can hand that Staff to another and it will be unchanged. It will be firm and strong and equally useful, but it is not the Light of the Lantern, with the shape barely visible within it, the simple, but also phenomenal “As above, so below”.

And as without, so within. He lives in the internal world, his eyes downcast. What does he see? What does he not see?

He may be looking toward the path he has climbed. He may be looking at the deepening road before him.

But one thing is certain. He does not, at least, look at the Lantern.

Is it because he has already seen the Light, or is it because the Light is too bright to bear. It stands out from him. It is separated from him, unlike the staff which he holds close to the body. Is this to make it a beacon unto others, or is it because he cannot stand it being too close, because the brightness is a pain and a distraction? Does it light his path, or does it obscure it to his aging gaze?

I can only say that walking along that path myself, there are times when the light is too dim to make anything out, and times when it is too bright to make anything out, and in the end both results are same. You have to put your next foot forward carefully, and hope for the best.

If you are lucky, you won’t step off that cliff.

Join me next week for Fortune’s Wheel and the inexorable turning of the days from spring toward summer. Thank you for your continued patronage.

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The Solstice Article

Solstice2022

I’ve been trying to place these articles just ahead of the major Sabbats and Esbats but today we have the great good fortune to land smack dab in the middle of the Winter Solstice, longest night of the year, and the time when all good ancient pagans lit great big campfires to bid the sun return.

The date is so significant that many ancient peoples around the world built stone calendars that marked the sunrise or sunset. Stonehenge is probably the more famous, but there’s one in Machu Picchu high in the Andes. As far as we know these two cultures were not friends on Facebook. If we discount that they both learned the ritual requirements from some long lost mother civilization like Atlantis, Mu, or Lemuria (and I tend to), we begin to see that the shortest day held special importance throughout human memory. And this means that it probably was known and marked as far back as our time in the cave.

If you’ve been reading my articles for a while, you know there’s ample evidence that we observed and understood the cycles of the earth and sky in at least the time of Cro-Magnon man if not earlier. My first awareness of this came when I discovered the so-called Venus of Laussell while studying early human art in college. The horn she holds has 13 marks, equivalent to 13 lunar months in a solar year. This interpretation comes from my awareness of magical practice and symbology, and you may not find a similar viewpoint expressed by art historians or anthropologists. But these articles are aimed at an audience interested in exploring the possible roots of magical practice in humanity, so we’ll go with that.

It’s actually not too much of a stretch. When you are utterly and completely dependent upon the raw, wild, scary, indifferent, and dangerous Nature around you for your very survival, you need to become an expert on that Nature. And since you don’t have the distraction of social media, cable TV, or the mall, you actually have time to observe Nature and operate in the context of it.

Winter Solstice 2022
The chart for the moment of the Cusp of Capricorn, which is astrologically the Solstice. This is for my location in the environs of Houston, Texas, so time and space (at least as far as the placement of the Primary Directions and the Houses go) will vary depending on your place in the universe.

I think it fitting that the transition here is from the Mutable Fire of Sagittarius to the Cardinal Earth of Capricorn. We have a metaphor for the Solar deity descending into the Underworld, at the nadir of it’s annual journey. Here it will become transformed to rise again. From this time the hours of daylight grow, until they peek on the opposite side of the Zodiac, between Cancer and Leo. Thus the Great Spring of Water gives way to the Establishing Summer Fire, and the Throne of the Sun.

According to the Chaldees, who charted these stars well before the discovery of the outer planets of Uranus, Neptune and Pluto (only a little over a hundred years ago), both Sagittarius and Capricorn were ruled by old Saturn, that Elder Chaos of the Outer Dark. I know the moderns associate Saturn with rigidity and institutional convention, mainly due to a symbolic connection with antiquity. His reputation as devourer of his children speaks to an angrier and darker memory, one pondered on cold winter nights when fires were lit on hill tops to bid the Sun return.

I see a number of articles and documentaries discussing this idea these days. We modern humans see ourselves as distinct and separate from nature (small n intentional) and therefore seek to dominate, control, plunder, monetize, and ultimately consume it. I don’t disagree with this assessment of our present culture, and I think it is the root of many of the major problems we face as a species.

We have recently reached over 8 billion in population. I think that is astounding and terrifying. There are probably not 8 billion of any other species on this planet. If there are, they are only an insect or a microbe or possibly a virus. In any case, there are not 8 billion of any species with an effective lifespan of nearly a century crawling around, making even more of itself on a world that is finite, under stress, and starting to fight back.

The simple fact is that, regardless of our vast technological civilization, the almost instantaneous hyperknowledge of the Internet, and global interconnectivity, Nature, with a capital N, will eventually consume us.

I don’t believe we can go back to the garden, regardless of how charming that idea may be. If you are reading this, you are consuming fossil fuels, heavy metals, rare earths, and quite probably whole nations of slave labor. And so am I while I write. We cannot simply turn off the switch, dump it all into the river (more than we already are) and “live in harmony with Nature”. As soon as our big brains figured out that they were bigger, we have been on this unbroken path toward dominance or oblivion.

We have evidence of mass extinctions occurring multiple times on this planet. Whole ecosystems have died off, and only a handful of surviving creatures were left to carry on, evolve, and occupy the altered world left unto them. So will it be with humanity. Even if we correct our course, even if we find a way to stop hewing at Mother Earth with mad blind abandon, our brief light might still go out.

Meteors whiz by every day with the potential to not only end civilization, but wipe out most, if not all life on this tiny blue world. Multiple supervolcano sites around the world seem poised to erupt, blackening our skies and shutting off the all important sunlight. The recent global pandemic is hardly as horrific as the Influenza Epidemic of a century ago, and both of them pale in comparison to the Black Death of the Middle Ages, but we shouldn’t pat ourselves too well on the back for “fixing it”.

In Nature, when a population exceeds the ability of it’s environment to support it, that species experiences a die-off. Nature always wins.

Nature will go on without air conditioning, high-speed rail, or interstate commerce. We will not.

Nature will consume us.

This fundamental truth was closer to our ancestors who looked upon the Winter Solstice with great dread that the growing night would go on forever. They did not “live in harmony” with Nature. They had no choice. They could not ideate that their little fire might someday embrace the secrets of the atom, or the great furnace at the heart of that waning sun. All they could do was hope that the spirit up there in that pale orange ball might see a kinship in the bonfire, and once more come back.

And to insure it did come back they learned to count the days and mark the movement of the sun and moon and stars around the sky. They needed to know when to light the fires, and when to make the sacrifices, and when to call the magic.

SmartSelect_20221220_132139_Armillary Sphere
I wanted to use a screenshot of my armillary sphere app to illustrate the Solstice, but discovered that the makers apparently copied the band of the Ecliptic from an antique original that was made before the advent of the Gregorian calendar. Thus the Solstice on the 21st of December is past the Cusp of Capricorn, and off by about 12 days.

On the right is a more modern system, used by photographers and filmmakers to forecast the placement of the sun (and moon) for a given location at a particular point in time. While the goal is different, the idea is the same as the ancient instrument.

Like the Zodiac in the first picture above, these are calibrated for my location. Were I located on the equator, the systems would show the sun moving overhead from East to West at the Equinoxes. At the Summer Solstice, the Sun would arc over about 23.4 degrees to the North, and at the Winter Solstice would be inclined southward by the same amount, due to the tilting of our planets axis during the year.

If I stood at 23.4 degrees North at the Summer Solstice, I would see the Sun directly overhead at noon. But any further north, like the roughly 30 degrees I currently inhabit, and I will always see it trending toward the southern sky. In winter it will not come up very high because of this, which is why in farther northern locations the days appear to get shorter. In extremes near the poles the sun never rises above that southern horizon in winter.

The lines on the globe where the sun appears to reach the limits of it’s travel north and south with the seasons are called the Tropic of Cancer (and the Summer Solstice is the Cancer/Leo Cusp) and the Tropic of Capricorn (Sagittarius/Capricorn Cusp in Winter). Summer and winter as seasons are arbitrary, of course, depending on whether you live north or south of the equator. But within the “tropics” the sun stays more or less direct year round, generating the high temperatures associated with those areas.

The movement of the earth betwixt and between the two Tropics is the origin of tropical cyclones, which distribute heat around the planet and make it livable. Current theories suggest that we are tampering with this system by our use of fossil fuels, altering the mean temperature of the planet and causing shifts in the thermal regulation patterns that are impacting climates worldwide.

From this simple need not to starve and freeze to death, magic arose among humans, and ritual grew to religion, and religion built temples and ziggurats and pyramids and civilizations. We have good evidence now from places like Stonehenge and Gobekli Tepi that these early ceremonial centers may actually have fostered the need for domestication of grain crops and food animals, simply to insure that the ritual feast was supplied to keep the sun from going out.

It’s ironic that the cooperation required to propagate a Solstice ritual might have led to our current culture of conspicuous consumption that threatens to plunge us all into perpetual night. Our leap from 7 billion humans to 8 billion took only a few years. That is untenable, regardless of our technological breakthroughs. We simply cannot sustain this rate of growth. The inevitable outcomes is war, famine, pestilence, and death. Those harbingers of the end times from the Biblical Revelation are the natural consequence of too many of us on a world with finite resources and a long regeneration cycle.

We can’t go back, but we absolutely have to go forward as better stewards of this planet. We must all realize that simply because a few nations have “cleaned up” their industrial pollution, they have done so by moving it elsewhere. The toxicity associated with American industrialization prior to the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts of fifty years ago is now spreading across Asia because their hunger for growth easily dominates “environmental concerns” just as it once did in the U.S.

We need a greater cooperation, and a greater awareness, than even “green” movements are giving us. We need first and foremost to find reliable renewable energy sources that do not rely on consumption of resources and creation of toxic waste products. Secondarily, however, we need to find a means of creating all the devices and equipment we demand to live our modern lifestyle, that also do not rely upon consumption of resources and creation of toxic waste products.

Kat Borealis in her podcast offered the phrase “If it cannot be farmed, it must be mined”. This is a real assessment of our modern culture. Whatever we do not grow is taken from the planet below us, whether by drilling, mining or other extraction. Computers, so central to 21st century life, are composed of petrochemicals, metals, and minerals. There is no part of the laptop I am typing on that has a living renewable source. It presently cannot be “farmed”, so how do we address the desire to remain technological and interconnected if we have to drag every such device from the womb of the earth for an ever increasing number of people? Recycling of such things in the present state is minimal in comparison to the demand for new ones, and the planned obsolescence of aging tech. And the parts that are going into the landfill can be among the worst sort of environmental toxins.

Our demand for “clean water” drives us to package it in an unimaginable amount of cheap plastic. Despite it being recyclable, in theory, our oceans are teaming with these disposable nightmares. The action of sun and water on these things eventually erode them into microplastics, which are now considered a major threat to all life on the planet as they are being consumed by the edible fish that sustain a number of Earth’s populations.

My point is that we are, in a real sense, experiencing that longest night in terms of our tenure on this planet. We have a choice now, to light the bonfire to call back the springtime and growth, and abundance for all life on this world, or we can let it all slip away into the permanent night.

I look forward to trying to light the fire in my corner of the world, and invite you back next week. Thank you for your attention. I hope it counts for something.

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The Birthday Article

High Voltage

This article is scheduled for publication just before my birthday of November 7th. I’ve always been fond of saying that I was born 7 days after Halloween, but I have only recently become aware that my birthday may be the actual date celebrated by the ancients as Samhain.

The ancient calendar (or so I was told) was based on the Equinoxes and Solstices that divide the year into quarters. The Cross-Quarter Days, were the midpoint between those, which, being a middle space, heralded the Opening of the Ways.

Apparently our modern November 7th is the Cross-Quarter Day midpoint between the Autumnal Equinox and the Winter Solstice. It’s 15 degrees through the sign of Scorpio which sits between the Libra of the Equinox and the Sagittarius of the Solstice. The equinoxes and solstices are 90 degrees apart on the zodiac, and 15 degrees of Scorpio is 45 degrees from either side.

So, like I told the clerk at the store the other day, I am Halloween.

That certainly would explain a lot.

Lab Experiment 2
Since last week’s article fell before the Samhain/Halloween holiday, I thought I would adorn this week’s posting with pictures from my Haunted Firehouse setup. The props are things I have collected or made over the years, employing lighting and basic stage trickery to delight and frighten the visitors. It seems to have been effective. The lab experiment is a hairdresser’s mannequin I acquired in one of my other lifetimes when I worked as a professional stylist. That was between being the cemetery caretaker and international man of mystery.

The good news is, we all get Halloween for another week, and that can’t be a bad thing. I no longer have to call it second Halloween. It’s Halloween. Which I guess makes the other Pre-Halloween, but let’s not spoil it with technicalities. Tis time, Tis Time!

My birthday this year commemorates 57 trips around the Sun. I still have a little time ahead before my second Saturn return, but when you get close, you start feeling it. The first one in our late-twenties/early-thirties usually knocks us on our ass, dropping a load of adultness on us in one fell swoop. I am hoping that this second round is a tad more refined, mature, and circumspect, owing to those changes in myself. I think, perhaps, I needn’t be conked on the head quite so forcefully this time to get the message.

Though if this year is any indication. the conking has begun. My family has been visited by death three times closely, and three more times nearby, and the year still has a few more weeks to work. Despite the months that have passed, I still find myself working through things related to the realization of the permanence of these losses. Regardless of all other things that may come to be, these things will never be altered. They are now a permanent part of the web of memory and thought and emotion that constitute who I am in the universe.

So pardon me, Saturn, if I say I’m ready to get through this return thing sooner rather than later.

This blog is partially due to hearing that ticking of the clock a bit louder every day. Now, I am in relatively good health, I am taking steps to improve my health and hope to see Saturn return at least once more, if not twice (it’s possible). But as you reach certain points in life, you start thinking about things that you’ve put off, or allocated to someday.

My life has been full. It has moved in unexpected ways, and I consider every twist and turn to be one step closer to where I stand now. Some of the things that have happened I planned. Some of them I dreamed. Most were thrown at me by the universe in a mad game of existential catch. I’ve done my best not to drop the ball, though I’d be a liar if I said I hadn’t a few times.

In walking down that road, some things that were the dreams and ambitions of my youth were cast aside, to be filled with more useful, enjoyable, and worthy pursuits. But there are those that linger, that I still find joy in, and thanks to the advent of the Internet and the broad community connected to one another by it, I have opportunities to explore those things.

coffin
The fire department has excellent fog machines. They are used to simulate the conditions inside a burning building and boy howdy do they work. It was difficult to get pics of the various stations of the spooky tour, and this clip from the video is about the best shot I got of my coffin. Yes I have a coffin. Oddly enough I got it at work. Not the job at the cemetery.

The series of articles I have been posting here since around April are part of that. Originally I intended this to be something of an aside to the webstore, which I still hope will appear on this domain. But life, the universe and everything frequently interferes with my plans, and this has become a larger, and hopefully more enjoyable, offering.

I get that even today a written blog is fast becoming an anachronism. In an environment dominated by “influencers” and social media, anyone wanting to be seen and heard has moved on to the podcast circuit, and my friends know I considered that at the beginning. It’s not been completely ruled out, as I have the equipment from my filmmaking work. But the time required to produce, record, edit, and publish a regular podcast is just not something I have right now. Maybe in 2023. Or 2024. Still lots on my plate.

The weekly dribbling from my mind’s eye that you will find here was initially motivated in a previous incarnation by my feelings that many in the modern occult community were getting a lot of surface but little depth. I think that may still be true for a lot of people, but either the tide is turning, or I am just becoming more aware of the deeper voices.

Charlie
This clip is Charlie who you might just make out on top of the coffin in the previous image. Charlie was made for a sculpture class I took in the mid-90s. Over the years, the latex and foam rubber have naturally degraded to give him a wonderfully creepy countenance. He comes out now and again. He was seen briefly in my short film Silent for the 48 Hour Film Festival, but usually he stays in his cage. It’s better for everyone that way.

I have been working with the unseen since I was about 7 years old and got my first Tarot deck. Along with a book on a broad range of esoteric disciplines, and a later book on witchcraft directly, this journey was undertaken in comparative secrecy and on a solitary path. After decades, it is likely that I will always be more or less solitary, but in later years the secret part has slipped away. This is the result of moving from a very restricted rural community in the hills of Eastern Kentucky to the suburbs of the largest city in Texas. There are more weirdos here than me, and I have been lucky enough to meet up with a few.

I am that guy on the Hermit card. While it is relatively easy for me to be loquacious on the most bizarre of subjects here on the internet, in person I am less so. This is a holdover from those years when talk of such odd things was considered evil sacrilege or worse by the local populace. But I still am not entirely trusting of people I meet who present a strange and unusual vibe.

Let’s be honest. Some of them are crazy. For that matter, I might be crazy, too. But there’s a good crazy and a bad crazy, and I have had that experience of sharing perhaps too freely with someone who needs professional help.

There are doubtless some who might say I would probably benefit from professional help, myself. But it’s hard to find a reliable alchemist these days.

See, that flippancy is what the therapists call a deflection. Avoiding the deep complicated stuff by making a joke. There’s the meme that goes around about “sarchotic” being the state where people don’t know if you’re being sarcastic or if you’re psychotic.

I never know either. But it’s usually fun, and it can be entertaining for those paying close attention. For the rest, well, I’m not really all that interested in keeping their company. There’s that Hermit thing again.

The world has over 7 billion people on it, and a lot more in it. You can’t possibly be friends with all of them, and you’ll go mad trying. In my youth, I lived in a community where conformity was the standard. Think about that. Being like everyone else meant you had to be like everybody else. That’s soul-crushing and sadly not isolated to small towns in remote regions.

I chose not to conform, and that rebellion ultimately got me cast out. Figuratively at first – being ostracized from the social groups, both in school and afterward. I was considered as weird by “adults who should know better” as my so-called peers. The kids had to learn it from somewhere. Eventually I just up and left, because there was a wider world beckoning.

And in that wider world, I ran across, from time to time, others who had a similar outlook, and formed connections both short and long. I also ran across people who were utterly despicable, wasters of my time, lost souls, mad, bad, and dangerous to know. I was lucky enough to recognize those encounters and move away from them as fast as was practical and possible. You can’t always tell the boss to shove it.

Fortune Teller
Esmerelda here was probably my favorite setup. The Temple of the Golden Idol had to be drastically scaled back to comply with new fire codes, so the Fortune Teller ended up being a big hit. Of course when you have Tarot Cards and crystal balls around the house, it’s a fairly easy scene to put together. Esmerelda has been seen on my instagram multiple times as Erasmus. It’s handy to have gender fluid props when trying to set up something like this.

I find as the years pass that some of that latter group might simply have appeared to be that way because of who I was at the time. And to be honest, some of the “friends” I made along the way turned out to be that only because of who I was at the time. We change, we transition. we hope that we grow. Or at least learn not to mistake simple change for actual growth. I am as guilty of seeking greener grass as the next person.

The Hermit is not at the end of his path. He is just at a stopping point for this moment.

“The road goes ever on and on, down from the door where it began.”

I use my birthday as a kind of regeneration. I attempt to assess, improve, reject, and jettison any unneeded parts of myself that have ceased to serve. In a way, it’s a personal Samhain. It signals a new beginning for the next year.

I hope that you will continue to join me for it. Back next week with hopefully less introspective content.

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