Neptune in Pisces

The social environment, mercurial by nature, has become so divisive that it now feels dangerous to speak one’s mind. This dangerous sense of consequence has not, however, suddenly popped up like a jack-in-the-box. It has grown out of a deeper problem: the undermining of our ability to share understanding and jointly know things. The epistemological foundation of our society has all but evaporated. Most of our discussions, most of our assertions, are based on hearsay, and those sources of information have now been called into a storm of question.

That in itself wouldn’t be so bad were it not for the fact that our intellectual culture has grown steadily unhinged, having long since broken from its mooring in traditions of introspective wisdom. Bobbing about, adrift amongst the clashing currents, confusing the whitecaps of looming waves for the firmament of snow-capped mountains, our intellectual life as a society is now thoroughly without sure and trustworthy points of reference. Is it any wonder everyone aboard is freaking out? Desperately trying to ascertain what is real and firm within this tempest, the stakes feel high and everyone is ready to destroy anyone who, by their mere utterance, disturbs the foggy mist-like image they’re trying to cling to for security. This has to be the doings of Neptune.

Of Mercury’s two signs, I take Virgo to be the one most concerned with epistemology. The intellective process is turned in upon itself in Virgo: the mind sensing itself. Hence Mercury’s exaltation in that sign. Perception and thought are themselves the object of perception and thought, which is entirely consistent with the question of epistemology, the question of how we know what we think we know. Being an earth sign, the details become important, the material facts, for they are understood as the moorings by which knowledge is anchored.

And yet, Virgo is tied to Pisces just as one side of a coin is to the other. There is a distinction between the two, but to consider them separate is to ignore the limit of our own perception and consider as real only what we can see at once. So, if Virgo has to do with epistemology so too must Pisces, but in a different way. For all the details remain but that—a mass of details—until the faculty of pattern recognition (entailing judgement and, thus, will) is applied to the otherwise endless white-noise parsing of detail. The myth of Virgo is that it is the facts, but actually it is but the parsing and cataloguing of facts, the parsing and cataloguing of material perception (earth). Like a civil servant clerk wearing fisheye glasses, their nose deep in an endless register of listings, Virgo cannot see the forest for the trees. It can’t connect the dots. That’s what Pisces does. Like the politician who asks the clerk to look through the registers for justification of his claims, Pisces deals with what is to be known. The question of how we know (epistemology), which is Virgo, has no relevance outside the question of what we know, which is Pisces. And so the two, like a single coin, must be taken as one.

When the facts can be arranged to justify any statement, this isn’t a problem with Virgo but rather with Pisces. So, now, with Neptune passing through Pisces, the entire coin of knowledge is in shambles. The tempest of Neptune has made an utter chaos out of what is to be known, and down in the basement beneath the maddened court, in the registrar’s office, the clerks are running around like headless chickens satisfying search requests for listings of facts to justify a folly of conflicting arguments. It’s mayhem.

A computer laden down with too many tasks will slow to a crawl, as though stalled out, even as its fan begins whirling at top speed. Unable to complete the appointed task due to a backlog of pending related sub-tasks, computational preoccupation overwhelms occupation. How can one carry on an open conversation now when the utterance of every word, like listed facts called upon by warring factions, is fraught with implications? The mind boggles to lay out a thread of sense that won’t render itself more deeply into crisis.

This is what it feels like to live in the Tower of Babel. It’s far worse than simply being in a place where everyone speaks a different language. At least then, that simple fact would be known and easy enough to recognise and agree upon. The Tower of Babel really comes into its own when, speaking the same language—“our” language!—and using the same words—“our” words!—in glorification of Lovely! Beauty! Unity! (the exaltation of Venus), all of us mean something different. Speaking the same about what is different, we’re broadsided by conflict. What a surprise… This is the Tower of Babel: where ignorance parades as knowledge, and knowledge dares not venture.

What we’re looking at

Words are meaningful only because they stand for something greater than our conception. Like salmon swimming upstream, my thoughts keep trying to retrace their steps back to the source. We’ve become so accustomed to the words we use, we’ve forgotten what it was like without them. They’ve now supplanted that experience—the very one that gave them birth—and have usurped its place as the basis upon which we found conception. 

Before they came, we did not know. And when they came, we learned to know. Both were present then. The words of knowing stood, each in sharp relief upon a firmament of not knowing. They were treasured as exceptions to the norm. Overwhelmed by our unknowing, we approached the words of knowing with great care, always asking, “What do you mean?” 

This is what we’ve forgotten. We now approach words thoughtlessly, like masters dispatching slaves. “We know what they mean,” we tell ourselves, “what further regard do they merit? Get to work!” We trample on our words without respect—for how can we respect something whose reason for being we have forgotten? Cobbling them together as mere pavements for our strident purposes, we disregard them as base reality; homogenous bricks for satisfying our desire. 

But once they were not answers; they were questions. They stood like bookmarks, reminders: “Here is a mystery to be examined.” The entirety of the unknown was just too vast to take in whole. So we parsed it out into smaller units. Any mathematician solving for multiple unknowns understands this approach. While the fundamentally unknown is unknowable, its various elements—all mysteries unto themselves—appear to relate in knowable ways. This perception of pattern gives rise to ratio (a is to b as c is to d), and ratio, which is reason, to word. This is what we’re given. All that we have named, all that we think we know, is nothing but our equational notations organising the patterns we see swirling in the ever-abiding mystery of our existence.

To Consider

Consider (v.) from the Latin considerer, “to look at closely, observe”; literally, “to observe the stars,” from com “with, together,” and sideris “heavenly body, star, constellation.”–https://www.etymonline.com


To see according to Reason,
As spoken through the Cosmos,
This is to consider.

And what joy to know that we are not alone,
But always in the company of One Who Knows!

So…how and when should we approach such Presence?

When humbled by our question.
When, at the end of our own wits, we pray
For His companionship and guidance.

That should be the moment of our consideration.

The oracle may conceal as much as it reveals

There’s a well-known story about the Oracle at Delphi in which a prominent king, wanting to invade a neighbouring kingdom, approached the oracle to know what would happen if he went forward with his plan. The oracle replied, “If you invade, a great king will fall and his subjects will be rendered into slavery.” Overjoyed at hearing his ambitions so clearly affirmed, the king proceeded to invade his neighbour.

He was defeated. He lost his kingdom. His subjects were made slaves. The oracle’s prophesy was 100 percent true. Only the king was mistaken… Passion had so inflamed the bias of his perception that it obscured the full possibility of Truth.

To quote Robert Schmidt, from whom I first heard this story: “The oracle may conceal as much as it reveals.”

Casting out to hear the Word

If astrology is a language, its purpose is to connect us with that higher substance that orders not just our lives but the entire domain of their existence.

When communication breaks down, the parties still remain. The other doesn’t vanish into nothing simply because we cease having faith in our understanding of them. Our whole conception of the other may collapse into rubble, and yet the other remains, able as ever to rekindle the conversation should we care once again to take it up. And it seems to me that what causes things to crumble is always the same: a vaporously subtle arrogance of vanity and pride that slips in between oneself and the other, tempting us to believe that we know. Becoming self-enamoured for knowing, we mistake our own reflection for the other. Talking to ourself, we think we talk to them. Before we know it, we’re in free fall… It’s so easy to offend, to miss the point and fall away. 

The human endeavour of astrology is but one side of the equation. Its premise is all-important: that the whole of creation speaks. What we call astrology is simply the attempt from our side to hear and comprehend the Cosmic Word. And that Word continues, according to its own sweet will, regardless of the forms through which we attempt to hear. Every human language has a slightly different way of describing phenomena. This doesn’t change the phenomena, nor its amazing ability to be described. This is the personal Mercy of the Cosmos: that it so generously lends itself to our description. It completely proposes us. We are mere beggars of existence. And yet it lends itself to our conceptions, permitting us to grow familiar with existence. Our challenge is to remember that our ability to describe doesn’t translate to ownership. The map is never the terrain—which is ever infinitely more than the map could ever hope to contain.

I’ve come to think of astrology (and language in general) as a net-like fabric of conceptions we weave for ourselves. We do so in order to cast it out upon the otherwise overwhelmingly mysterious and incomprehensible array of phenomena we experience as existence. As this fabric is of our own making, we are familiar with it. So we cast the familiar out upon the unfamiliar, hoping that by the contours it assumes while draping over the phenomena of existence, this woven net of our conception will help us to confer familiarity upon the unfamiliar, helping us to recognise something in the shape of the otherwise infinitely mysterious Other. It’s our attempt at understanding. “If I use this language, will You deign to use it and speak to me?” This is our prayer. 

For this reason I don’t consider there to be only one legitimate form of astrology. Just as different people in different cultures have developed different languages to describe this one same world, so too do different forms of astrology exist. But with that said, understanding that astrology is not the Cosmic Word but simply our attempt to hear that Word, we can critically compare various forms of astrology to understand their relative biases. Just as certain languages are better suited for describing technical details and others better for expressing moods of the heart, each of astrology’s forms has its own virtues and limitations. As each is a differently woven fabric, each will have its own characteristic way of draping to reveal the contours of the Cosmic Word. 

Everything we think we know is actually but a form of desire, merely an invitation to knowledge. We do not have knowledge; it is not ours to own. If I think I know a melody, all I really have is a form that I hope will successfully invite the melody’s revisitation. When I practise the melody, I am actually practising its invitation. All I can do is try to offer the melody some attractive service, attempting to provide it with an inviting form in which to dwell and stay a while. Without its revisitation, no matter how technically accurate my rendition of its form, it won’t be inspired and come to life. Sometimes the muse deigns our efforts worthy of grace, and other times not. It’s our mistake to present our forms of practice as equal to the muse whose realised inspiration we crave. 

The same holds true for astrology. The formal aspect of astrology—its doctrines, methods and techniques—are nothing more than forms of our desire for the Cosmic Word. To be fair, the Cosmos has helped us to build these forms. It has incrementally instructed us all along the way, from the most simple concepts to the more complex ones. Each has been proposed to us by its live impression onto our awareness. Like a parent to its child, the Cosmos has taught us how to count. Speaking to us incrementally, step-by-step within the scope of our understanding, it has proposed how we might understand more. Nothing is really ours. We are the most naked of beggars. Even the forms we use to invite conversation have been given to us by the Other. If we cast our language out upon the mystery of the phenomenal Cosmos, praying that it will use it to speak to us, so too has the Cosmos given us the words of our language, praying: “If I give these to you, will you listen to me?” 

I belabour the point, but it is both beautiful and important. It is not the form of our astrology that speaks, but that live, mysterious and overwhelming presence beyond it that speaks through it. Even if the form has been taught to us by the Cosmos, still it only speaks if the Cosmos deigns to speak. We are not the controllers of prophesy. But like a radio that needs to be well tuned in order to receive signal without distortion, our astrology too must be vigorously “tuned”. Whatever form of astrology it may be—and that form will determine its inherent biases and virtues—its lines of reason and logic must be as clear and distinct as possible, with sufficient internal consistency, that the Cosmic Word may be received undistorted. If our astrology is a hodgepodge of concepts, loosely knit together by inconsistent lines of reason, we’ll never know for sure which of the revealed contours are shaped by the Word and which are but artefacts of our poor logic. So, while we’re reliant upon the Cosmos to speak and inspire prophesy, like a fisherman who spends his time on land carefully mending his nets, we have to tend to the logic of our astrology. Like a musician doing scales, this is the practice of astrology. 

When we seek to read, it becomes performance (process as per the form). We enter into the chart according to the process of form. Since the form is a form of desire, the process is a ritualised act of invocation. And so we pray: “If I use this language You have taught me, please will You speak to me?”

By the dogged pounding of their prose…

By the dogged pounding of their prose, it would appear some writers think the absence of poetry makes writing more clear. In the case of technical manuals, discussing nuts and bolts and which side faces which—yes. But in the case of sublime and subtle matters, such attempt at unambiguous precision blocks from view the very subtlety trying to be conveyed. All writing is meant to point the mind. Nut-and-bolt writing points the mind to nuts and bolts. Subtle matters and things sublime must be written of in subtle terms, the role of poetry, or little is conveyed. Artful ambiguity, always a risk, teases us to awaken our senses higher. It is a kind of grace which allows us to perceive what prior we had no prompt to look for. The nature of such writing is pure generosity, all of its expression given away. Its tell-tale sign is that it simply lets you see for yourself.

How to render astrology in service to God?

Astrology is a powerful form of storytelling, for it uses the steadiest and most reliable movements of our phenomenal existence, the mathematically predictable motions of celestial bodies, to articulate its meaning.

For those who dismiss it as mere fact-fitting, the particular potency of its fitting must still be accounted for. And for those who find its power so convincing as to prove astrology real beyond doubt, without a trace of fact-fitting, as though all were fated, how then to keep astrology in service to God? For to remain in the service of God, astrology must lead to liberation, not entrapment; to empowerment, not resignation. It must clarify freewill, not obliterate it.

The truth is, for one it must do the other. For the skeptic of astrology it must show fate, and for the true believer it must raise question. If only one side is shown, only half the picture is shown. Such cannot be divine reflection. God is the whole story. All of it, not just the part we happen to like. So, astrology must show both sides, both extremes; the whole story. Only then can it show the story itself. And with the story shown, the teller emerges, the listener emerges, and the present, rediscovered anew, emerges.

It’s about you…

The word “about” comes from the Old English word, onbutan, meaning, “on the outside of”. It is a composite of “on” plus “by”, both of which meant then what they do now, and “utan”, meaning “outside”.

About means on-by-outside. It’s about you; it’s on-by-outside you.

In other words, it’s not inside you, it’s not you. Whatever can be said about you is not you, and whatever you can say about another is not them. What we say lies about us.