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In the beginning, astrology was alive. Life and especially that aspect of life we call mind, is shaped by the recurrent patterns of relationship between the living and the surrounding world. As humankind evolved it was always in the context of an existence upon a whirling sphere, cyclically exposed to sun, moon, planets, and stars, and interactive with them. Thus we may truly say that the patterns of heavenly movement are inherent in life, in mind, and in humanity. And as men and women further regarded the stars as their wandering companions, the diverse regularity of the heavens continued to inform them of the subtleties of pattern, as they in turn laid upon the stars a template revealing the qualities of emerging mind.
Human life at the beginning was not separate from creation. The stars must have been an intimate part of day to day life. Yet so little remains to inform us of our ancestors earliest attempts to grasp the heavens. Did they climb mountains to place themselves closer to the stars? Did they pile up bricks or stones to mark their course through the skies? We know that they did so as much as 4000 years ago in ancient Mesopotamia, and at least by 1500 BC at Stonehenge--and who can say how long the Great Medicine Wheel, with its precise astronomical alignment of stones, has stood high in the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming? In any event we are safe to assume that in the splendor of the dark, quiet nights, gazing into the starry vault, early man was transported; lifted to the realm of the gods. Many centuries later the Roman poet Manilius (first century AD) captured what early men and women may have felt:
Those moonless nights when even the stars of the sixth magnitude kindle their crowded and gleaming fires, seeds of light amidst the darkness. the glittering temples of the sky shine with torches more numerous than the sands of the seashore, than the flowers of the meadow, than the waves of the forest. If nature had given to this multitude powers in proportion to its numbers, the ether itself would not have been able to support its own flames, and the conflagration of Olympus would have consumed the entire world.
And later yet (c.1150 AD) Ptolemy wrote, "Mortal as I am, I know that I am born for the day, but when I follow the serried course (of the stars), my feet no longer touch the earth;I ascend to Zeus himself to feast me on ambrosia, the food of the gods." Even with the refinements of Greek and Roman civilization, humans remained close to the earth beneath then, the stars above. Men and women had a relationship to the natural world, and their contemplation of the heavens was a vital, primal communion which brought meaning to life.
Today, we can see that we have lost touch with this primal experience. And astrology, child of this union of the contemplative urge with light from the heavens, is in danger of losing its primal vitality by becoming too abstract, theoretical and analytical. Brain researchers have made us aware in the last few years that we have not one brain but two, with, to risk over-simplification, an analytical, verbal, rational left hemisphere and an intuitive, visual, holistic right one. Our culture's traditional way of educating has cultivated and encouraged the left brain, touting abstraction, while ignoring the development of our intuitive, imaginative right brain. Math, science, and verbal skills are taught at the expense of art, music, and creative expression. Although enlightened educators have responded of late in recognition of this fact, such programs are the first to go when funds are cut.
It is important to point out that many of us do not learn well with words or abstract symbols, but depend on that part of the brain that "paints pictures." "Numerous studies have confirmed the fact that vividly experienced imagery, imagery that is both seen and felt, can substantially affect the brain waves, blood flow, heart rate, skin temperature, gastric secretions, and immune response--in fact, the total physiology." The tyranny of left brain domination has gone too far. Is it any wonder that most children's artistic impulses start disappearing at age nine, when they have been "brainwashed" from age six onwards to use only their left brain? The present educational system abandons children who may be naturally visual, imaginative thinkers.
The conduct of our education in astrology has been no different. In the beginning most of us sat before a teacher, passively memorizing the planets, signs, houses and their meanings. Then we passively sat in another class learning how to synthesize those planets, signs, and houses into meaningful interpretation. What other means of learning do we currently have? We have books to read and conferences to attend. Again, most conferences are set up in familiar left brain learning style: one active participant, the lecturer, speaking to a passively compliant group of 25 listeners. And our books are too often a dry parody of the same form. We have been--are still are being--educated only to think about astrology. By now the conclusion must be obvious: to teach an astrology of the right brain we must use its language, a language not of words but of images.
Consider this: You are an astrologer, holding a consultation with a client about transiting Neptune. Instead of talking, you show her a picture of San Francisco shrouded in fog to illustrate her upcoming encounter with that planet. Or with a group of students you hand out crayons and have them draw what Mars square Uranus "feels like," or you lead them blindfolded around the block to give a direct experience of the Neptune square Mercury aspect. Or, to better communicate the essence of Pluto, you work together on a sprawling collage of Pluto images, replete with magicians, world leaders, atomic explosions, and erupting volcanoes. Going even further with a group, you might stimulate the use of the holistic right brain by having members enact their internal images of Mars--with the aid of some energizing dance music, contacting the Mars, and expressing it through movement and dance. (The term astrodrama has been given to this form of acting out the planetary energies.) The group may further refine the process by exploring how different the Mars energy feels in Scorpio or Taurus or by noticing the different feeling tones between expressions of Mars/Jupiter, Mars/Saturn, or a Mars/Uranus conjunction.
Music is perhaps the most time-honored means of communicating to the right brain. Music that elicits the particular energy of each planets can be found. Holst's The Planets and Tomita's re-interpretation are classics. the album, Deep Breakfast, by Ray Lynch suggest Venus/Jupiter, and the song "Icarus" by various artists conjures up a beautiful Venus."Hearing Solar Winds, by David Hykes and the Harmonic Choir, profoundly evokes Neptune and Pluto.
Even without these more expressive techniques, you can enhance right brain response by the use of verbal images through the skillful employment of metaphors, analogies, and fairy tales. For instance, you might tell a client or a class that Neptune is "like wearing glasses with the wrong prescription." Or illustrate a Saturn return as "a baby chicken breaking out of its shell." Hypnotist par excellence, Milton Erickson, and the NLP (Neurolinguistic Programming) psychotherapists have shown that the proper use of metaphor more than illustrates--it heals. To sharpen your skills in this area you might, for example, learn to tell the story "The Frog Prince" from Grimm's fairy tales to bring to life the transformative nature of Pluto, or you may draw upon Greek and Roman mythology for those stories in which the planetary archetypes themselves are the primary characters.
That ancient tales contain expression of the astrological archetypes is, of course, no accident, for the understanding that both the planetary energies and the gods have profound influences upon humankind (if indeed they are not identical) springs from the same ancient sources. In fact Astrology Alive! will make the argument that the "new" astrology described here is in reality a re-emergence of the very old, from a time in which the archetypal energies were readily available and deeply felt. Chapter One illustrates this point with the Demeter-Persephone story that was for the Greeks the founding myth for the "the Greater Mystery" of Eleusis, a ritual repeated in spectacle, pageantry, and reverence at each consecutive fall equinox for 2000 years! Every year the residents of Athens abandoned the city to walk the 14 mile Sacred Way to Eleusis to partake in this "sacred theater" and its rites. As we will see later, this myth had extraordinary power within Greek culture and in the unconscious minds of the Greek people.
Our focus need not remain on the Western traditions alone since astrology has flourished in the East for centuries, often integrated with spiritual tradition. You will find evidence of my background in yoga especially in the latter chapters of the book.
Astrology Alive! will show the relevance of these myths and rites for a new kind of astrological practice that provides a corrective to the "left brained bias" of both astrology and culture at large. Myth contains, in story form, the deepest truths of the culture. Today, in the West, we seem to have an impoverished mythology, weakened by a too strict adherence to the Newtonian-Cartesian scientific world view. And we should suspect that astrology, as an "institution" which participates to some degree in that culture, is in a weakened state as well. We who have an interest in astrology have been carried along with the technological tides of our time, often to our benefit with new methods of computation and research, but also to our detriment in that we have forgotten that our original encounter with the heavens was immediate, direct and alive. Are we not hungering for a deeper knowledge of ourselves and others? Isn't that precisely what astrology purports to do? Doesn't it put us more in touch with our true nature? All too often, it seems, we have simply gone along with our culture, just thinking about astrology. Shouldn't we begin to feel about it as well?
With means such as metaphor, music, myth, spiritual practice, and dramatic and artistic expression, we can move into more direct contact with the planetary energies, and in so doing we rediscover the depths of ourselves. Astrology becomes, then, not just a tool for abstraction and intellection, but a way of self-knowledge and a means to vital, primal communion with that which is beyond. And that brings us to the purpose of this book: Astrology Alive! is intended to introduce and to teach what has come to be called experiential astrology. It is a book for all of us who are bored with traditional approaches, who want to revive our feelings of planetary connection and communion, and who are willing to pursue deeper levels of experience. The book is designed to be of value to anyone learning or teaching astrology, or to anyone from the arts or psychology who is at least conversant with the language of astrology. If our aim is true, the material will be particularly useful for the growing number of individuals who are beginning to combine astrology with other fields such as Gestalt, psychosynthesis, mythology, the Arts and spiritual practice to yield new healing forms.
Consider this book as an invitation to a feast, at the broad table of which you will find the kind of fare that both tempts the senses and sticks to the ribs--that is, practical, direct ways for you to work and play at bringing astrology alive. Any such table needs support, of course. Thefour "legs" of our own table include three major thinkers and a "movement." The first thinker is Dane Rudhyar, whose lifelong effort was to develop a "humanistic" astrology. The second is Carl Jung, who gifted us with an enormously fruitful journey into the workings of the human mind. Without his concepts of the archetypes, the self, and the personal and collective unconscious, we would scarcely have a way to talk of important matters of consciousness. The third supporting member is Jacob Moreno and his psychodrama which was a direct stimulus for astrodrama, a particularly well-developed form of experiential astrology. As chapter two will detail, the fourth source of support is the 'human potential movement" that brought psychology to popular culture in the 1960s.
Astrologer Stephen Arroyo has noted a major stumbling block for both students and practicing astrologers: the lack of guidance on synthesis of the many disparate elements of an astrological inquiry. It is a rare astrology text that succeeds in teaching the blending of chart symbols. However, synthesis yields swiftly to experiential methods that teach by doing, as will be illustrated by techniques gleaned from my own experiences in experiential performance and theater, teaching, counseling, and marathon group therapy sessions.
To summarize: Part I of Astrology Alive! will, after a suitable dose of background and theory, concentrate on conveying to you the basic skills that will help you learn from experience. Part II is an even more practical and concrete Resource Workbook, with suggested specific exercises, divided for easy reference by planets, signs, and elements. Each workbook section concludes with a list of widely available musical selections that evoke the energy of the particular planet or sign. At the back of the book is an Appendix which offers tips and techniques for working with groups and particular suggestions for facilitating astrodrama.
Especially important is that you let this book stimulate in you a sense of exploration, participation, spontaneity, and just plain fun. Harvey Cox states it well: "Man's very survival as a species has been placed in grave jeopardy by our repression of the human celebrative and imaginative faculties.... Man is by his very nature a creature who not only works and thinks but who sings, dances, prays, tells stories, and celebrates. He is homo festivus." I invite you, then, to join the merrymaking. But be reminded that our play may have serious purpose: Pluto is now transiting through Scorpio, and with the consequent stirrings deep in the psyche people are increasingly in need of ways to bring about emergence, from the depths, of those forces that transform and illuminate. Experiential astrology, as described here, may serve as a tool for that emergence. I invite you to use it wisely, well, and with pleasure.
Scene One: A young man in a red cape swaggers aggressively
up to a large, robust woman. She holds her body rigid, arms folded across
her chest, and stands her ground. In the background the Mars movement from
Holst's "The Planets" blares from a hidden speaker. As if swept into action
by the frenzy of the music, the young man tries repeatedly to force his way
past his opponent. The more he pushes, the more the woman is unmoved. The
"hotter" he gets, the "colder" she becomes. Curbing his frustration, he
changes his tack, trying to seduce her with sweet words. "Come back when
you're grown up!" she commands. As the scene progresses, a look of recogniti
on flashes in the woman's eyes. She suddenly begins to understand the
creative impasse she has experienced in her work as an artist during these
weeks that Saturn has been squaring her natal Mars.
Scene Two: A group of astrology students are fanned out on
a broad, newspaper-strewn floor, sensuously expressing, with fingerpaint on
posterboard, the energy and character of the planet Jupiter. With sticky
blue hands, they swirl and spiral through a series of grand, sweeping
movements. They are obviously having great fun!
Scene three: Sitting in the center of a circle (her natal
chart), a young woman is surrounded by the eager faces of ten "planets,"
positioned as they appeared at the moment she was born. One by one, they
introduce themselves. Beginning with the first house cusp is her Moon in
Cancer. Cuddling at the woman's feet, she coos, "I'm your Moon in Cancer.
I'm shy, quiet. I like to pull back from the world to nourish myself. I
love herbal baths, walks with my lover, and hugging my cat."
Each planet, after completing its introduction, begins interacting with the
others, according to the aspects in the woman's chart. The Moon enters the
circle joined by her Pluto in Scorpio. (The woman's Moon trines Pluto.)
Responding to Pluto's influence, the Moon moves more sensuously,
gracefully, passionately. Then comes a sudden interruption by an
belligerent Mars in Aries. (Our subject's Moon squares Mars). Taunting the
Moon, he roars, "Don't be such a pushover! You're always giving in because
of your insecurity and need to be liked. Who cares if they like you?
I don't care if they don't!" The young woman's chart unfolds before
her eyes, bringing with it the feeling that each combination of aspects
produces in her unconscious. By the end of her living horoscope, she is
deeply affected, entranced by her uniquely personal drama.
Scene four: In a gymnasium theater-in-the-round,
surrounded by an expanse of window glass, the full moon is rising in the
night sky. On the lawn outside, a procession of ten "planets," actors in
costume, approach. Though many in the audience know no astrology, each
planet, from the Sun out to Pluto, teaches and amuses, and presses each
onlooker toward recognition and understanding of the psychic function
within.
Scene five: With learning about the four elements your
objective, you and your students have taken an overnight journey into a
forest. To commune with Earth, the group sits on the ground, meditates, and
imagines the strength of the earth flowing from the ground and into each
still body. To experience Air, all climb to the top of a breezy ridge and
take in deep, full breaths of the windy air. To encounter Fire, you scatter
to fetch kindling and firewood and build a roaring campfire. To experience
Water, you take the path to a hot springs and relax tired muscles as the
the new moon welcomes you in the East
Scene six: A young woman contemplates the
kaleidoscopically colored circle of images and symbols on the paper before
her--a "birth mandala" of her horoscope. She has spent the last two hours
in an artistic and reflective process to create this vivid, rich
representation of her psyche.
Scene seven: An earnest young man, sitting in the center
of his own natal chart, spine erect, deeply meditative, attunes to the
planetary psychic energies within. He knows he has an upcoming transit of
Saturn opposite his Sun, and he is about to perform a ritual he himself
created to help soften and neutralize that imbalance.
Each of the above vignettes is an example of a contemporary approach to
astrology that may be new to you: the field of experiential astrology These
innovations in an ancient discipline show great promise in adding impact,
depth, and meaning to astrology's already extensive repertoire. The chief
defining characteristic of experiential astrology is that its methods offer
direct participation in the vital energies symbolized by the horoscope. By
taking the astrological chart off the page and into movement, encounter,
art, drama, and dance, we allow not just participation by the intellect but
involvement of the senses and emotions as well. While its methods can be
studied, experiential astrology is in essence an adventure to be
experienced!
My own personal trail of adventures began in 1979 while teaching a basic
astrology class. We were talking about Saturn and its correspondence with
old age. Caught up in a desire to get my message across, I stopped talking
and just began to walk back and forth in front of the class. Beginning as a
blithe young girl with a bounce in my step, I slowly allowed my gait and
demeanor to shift toward middle age, a little restrained, more bent over,
nursing some new pain in my back. Then, even more wearied by Time, I crept
and staggered, until as an old crone, I collapsed in a heap on the floor,
clearly dead. The effects of this two minute drama were palpable. For
myself, in my attempt to communicate a planetary symbol I had actually
envisioned my own death and had enacted it, thus having a taste of Saturn's
bitter pill. And the discussion with my students that ensued after a hushed
silence showed that their encounter with Saturn had been real, too.
Several months later, while leafing through a magazine, I spotted a photo
of an exploding volcano. There was Pluto!--more clear now in my mind's eye
than any verbal description could make it. Thus inspired with the
recognition that images can teach the astrological principles, I spent that
week pouring through a stack of old magazines, creating collages of images
and photos for each of the ten planets. I put the "imageboard" I had
created of Mercury in front of a group of new students. With no previous
understanding of the planet Mercury, they told me what Mercury
meant!
With these insights came teaching methods that brought a level of interest,
energy, and sharing in my classes that I had noticed only fleetingly in my
experience as a teacher and student in the traditional mode. Because my
classes encouraged spontaneity and play, the students became more relaxed
with each other and found it easier to be themselves. They were more
inclined to "tell their own stories" and share their insights with the
others. This created an environment of increased group participation,
deeper sharing and intimacy.
Some time later I read an article in Astrology Now by Jeff Jawer
about astrodrama and the work he was doing in Atlanta. In "Living the Drama
of the Horoscope," Jeff described his first experiences with the acting out
of individual aspects in the horoscope, for both teaching and counseling.
He cites J. L. Moreno's work with psychodrama and the work of Dane Rudhyar
as influences on his practice. Jeff's article gave me new inspiration and a
host of ideas to try. He confirmed my own sense of excitement with the
potential of an "interactive astrology"--an excitement that we shared, then
as now, after ten more years of invention and discovery.
From 1982 to 1984 I convened a series of extended workshops in Chicago in
which we weekly enacted the natal charts of at least two group members,
astrodrama style. One particularly exciting group included two tall,
strong, and handsome male students, one dark-featured and the other light,
who were also superb dancers. Instead of using their voices to enact their
roles (usually the Sun, Mars, or Jupiter) they danced the energy with their
bodies! I remember one day while we were warming up in our Mars characters
with John McLaughlin's, "Birds of Paradise" playing in the background,
these two men exploded in the room running from opposite sides toward each
other in great leaps. They were so Marsian the rest of us ducked for cover!
Here was another way to enact the planets--Dance them!.
Approaching the grounds one passed under a huge flashing sign, "The Theater
of Planetary Memory" and entered a space defined by the twelve neon
zodiacal signs strung high in the trees overhead. Entering Mercury, first
stop on the planetary tour, each visitor gave their birth data, which were
entered into a computer that calculated his or her chart and transmitted it
to a monitor in the starry dome.
Inside, ten actors dressed in their planetary costumes had less than three
minutes to find each visitor's key aspects, to talk about how they might be
portrayed, and to scurry into the positions that the planets occupy in the
natal chart. Knowing I had experience with astrodrama and experiential
work, Tom had invited me to be the theater's director. My job was to mold
the ten planetary actors into an effective astrodrama troupe and to direct
the performances in the theater. Only two of the "actors" had theatrical
training or performing experience prior to this weekend.
When the actors were ready, our "psychopomp," the clown Wavy Gravy of
Woodstock Music Festival fame, led the expectant subject into the darkened
celestial dome and seated him in a tall director's chair in the center. As
the lights came up, each visitor was met with the spectacle of his own
inner life, dynamically portrayed. Arrayed in full costume, complete with
makeup and props, the planetary actors played out the particular planetary
struggles and cooperations in the visitor's natal chart. In a bare three
minutes the troupe was able to enact a number of brief vignettes, rapidly
moving from one natal contact to another. By revealing their inner nature,
the troupe by turns delighted the participants and moved them to tears. Not
having anticipated the power of astrodrama, many left with a look of sheer
wonder.
If the effect of the encounter was so great for the visitors, you might
imagine the impact it had on those who created the astrodrama. In the two
nights that the theater operated, we performers must have presented well
over one hundred enactments of natal charts. Each of us played a planetary
energy throughout the twelve signs and in every possible aspectual
relationship. We were, by mid-performance, virtually humming with
our planet's energy, and though time constraints were sometimes stressful,
we felt exhilarated, not overwhelmed. Long after the theater had closed for
the night, the energy of the actors seemed still to be bouncing around the
dome, and we stayed long after the performance, reliving our experiences
with an astrology few had encountered before. The impact of our experiment
with astrodrama spread throughout the conference as well, and we players,
incognito without our costumes, overheard many a conversation praising our
efforts. And maybe this and other presentations of experiential astrology
are having an even broader effect: We are, slowly, beginning to see more of
our conferences include some form of theater or performance as well as
workshops in experiential methods.
The conference weekend was to prove especially important to me for a
another reason. At some point Tom Brady mentioned, in an offhand way, a
tidbit of information that was to propel me into an investigation that, to
some extent, was to culminate in this book. While researching in the
University of New Mexico's library, Tom came across a sampling of early
Greek Orphic writings, with a cryptic reference to "horoscopes being
danced." This notion so captivated my imagination that I began extensive
research into the origins of Greek sacred theater and the Graeco-Roman
mystery schools. (Oddly, the reference itself has remained a
mystery--neither Tom nor I have been able to find the quote.) Ultimately I
was to spend a month in Greece at a number of the sacred sites. Though
Delphi, Epidauros, and Delos each had its magic, I was most drawn to the
sacred theater and to the healing rites and ceremonies of Eleusis.
I was in Eleusis at the Fall Equinox, 1985--the very day on which, so many
centuries before, the annual celebration of the "Greater Mystery" in honor
of the Great Mother was held. I spent long days alone--envisioning,
meditating upon, and "feeling into" what we know, and what we must imagine,
of those sacred events. From the spectacle of the fourteen mile
processional walk on the Sacred Way to the ritual dancing at the
Kallichoron well, participants in the mysteries danced in the ceremonies of
initiation, and in the dromena witnessed the reenactment of the myth
of Demeter and Persephone. I had pored over the books of the experts on
Eleusis; now I walked the grounds over and over again, hoping my soul might
catch a glimpse of the sights and sounds of the holy dances. I meditated in
front of Pluto's cave, the Ploutonion, and performed my own private ritual.
From the hill above the city I gazed down into the ruined outlines of the
sacred precinct, trying with my mind's eye to replace column upon pediment,
to lay knowledge upon intuition, until at last I believe I was able to
arrive at the truth of the place. Eleusis and its mythologically-rooted
healing ritual has long since passed away. Yet, on this day, I was able to
imagine that the mythic archetypes were being summoned once more. This is
what I saw and heard and felt....
Eleusis, Fall Equinox, Boedromonion 20 (530
B.C.)
I dreamed, I danced, as far back as I can remember. For that I needed only
to be alone, among the small mountain creatures around my native town of
Mandra. The flowers, the birds were my audience. The high mountain meadow
where I tended my father's sheep was my stage. I was ten when my mother and
father took me southward down the mountain to attend the great festival at
Eleusis. I shall never forget it. For the first time I saw my secret joy of
dancing shared by others. I remember being barely able to sit in my seat as
I watched the dancing in honor of the Corn Goddess. My heart pounded.
Though I didn't understand much of the secret meaning of what I saw, my
soul was aflame with the magic of the festival.
And tonight, five years later, because of my dream I myself dance for the
first time in honor of the Goddess Demeter. "Demeter"--even her name
teaches us: "De" is the "letter of the vulva," the delta, the triangle of
the female trinity of virgin, mother, and crone. I have worked hard all
year to absorb her teachings, to prepare for this moment, instructed by the
priestesses who demand that the dancers keep the traditions in precise
detail. There are hundreds of dance movements to learn. Errors rob our
ritual of its power. The dance is highly structured and carries us in a
snakelike winding through the passage of life to death and back to life
again.
Yesterday, Iacchos led the long procession from Athens, and I and my
sisters, with thousands of other citizens, escorted the sacred statue of
our Great Mother to the temple grounds, the place sanctified by the Goddess
herself. Throughout we sang the ancient calling song:
Tonight is the sixth night of the festival and the first night of the
temple dancing and of the Dromena, the sacred reenactment. Now I must go.
The dance begins.
I pass, with a hundred other dancers, through the great, stone Triumphal
Arch, with the inscription I will soon know to be true: "Only Those Who
Dance the Mysteries, Know the Mysteries." We enter the new eastern
courtyard of the temple, built over the ancient court on which others like
us have danced for nearly a thousand years. Now outside I can see throngs
of people sitting on the sloped eastern terraces around the courtyard,
facing the altar to the Goddess in the southwest corner of the square. I
feel a gentle breeze from the sea enticing me toward my place at the
Kallichoron well, the "Well of Fair Dances." I stand in my place. I look at
my bare feet. I am both excited and afraid. My mouth is dry. I feel my
heart beginning to beat a quicker rhythm. I keep my eyes on my feet, take a
deep breath and begin with the others.
Slowly, tenderly, with measured steps we move, establishing a rhythm that
lulls perception. We take the time needed to set the pattern, weaving in
and out, in and out, of the labyrinth. I pound out the rhythm of the drums
with my feet. In and out. In and out. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. "There is no
part of me that is not part of the Goddess." Move deeper. Use the ritual
knowledge. I take each step with loving attention, not forcing, but gently
moving beyond my limitations, my weariness, step by step, penetrating to
the place of stillness. "Receive the power of the dance. "Step. Step. Step.
My heart beats in rhythm with the drums and my feet. My feet, no longer
fettered by fear, dance like the beat of steady rain, sensing they have
danced these steps a thousand times before.
There are no longer just a hundred bodies twisting in the dance. Now I can
see and feel many more shapes whirling around and around, communing with
Her, honoring Her. The shades of my ancestors are dancing with us in the
circle.
My feet dart about like fish in tumbling water, my body is the rhythm, the
circle, the dance. I breathe in time to my movements, in and out, in and
out as I spiral deeply into the circle and out again to its edges, each
repeat of the sacred pattern entrancing me more. Out of me, like the cycle
of nature herself, arises an endless succession of new springs from old
winters.
My eyes blur as I close them, then open wide, not knowing what it is I see
in the enveloping silvery fog. I come to life in the dream I dreamt last
spring, living the vision that brought me to this moment! I am whirling,
with torrents of moving lights, lights circling around and round, being
drawn into a dark, ancient well. I'm afraid of the dark abyss but cannot
stop my being sucked into the center, being propelled and drawn nearer and
nearer its gaping mouth. I reach inside and sense my strength. With the
pressure of whirling forces against my legs, I am able to stand at the
abyss. No longer afraid of being swept in, my feet stand firm. My eyes
follow a stream of moonbeams up into the night sky to see the full moon
gracefully reaching her summit. I bathe in her soft light. She flows into
me, through me. I feel her gentle but strong soul-arms reach down, embrace
and transform me. As she illumines my face and body, a shadow dances with
me--hand-in-hand we pause, choose, then plunge into the abyss!
I reach my core, Her within me, the solid stuff of earth within. Steady.
Enduring. I merge with the ancient feminine spiritual root, embracing a line
age millions of years old, back to our ancestors who lived the first
principle of harmony. I drink of Her strength and am empowered. I drink of
Her healing and am made whole. The steady, eternal breathing of the Great
Mother sounds in my ears.
I feel my hair streaming across my eyes as I whirl. I feel the tears drying
on my cheeks. The moon overhead overwhelms me. The Goddess is present. The
Goddess is here!
I hear a woman's wailing faintly in the distance. The other dancers hear
Her, too, and as one move toward Her cries at the "Mirthless stone" beside
the Sacred way. The dromena itself begins. Demeter, our Earth Mother, has
just discovered that her daughter, Persephone has been kidnapped by
Plouton, Lord of the underworld. Consumed with passion, he has carried the
young Persephone through the Gates of Hades to become his Queen. Demeter
wails in her grief at the loss of her daughter. I realize I am sobbing too.
I see an image, permanently etched in memory, pass through my mind--It is
the day my father died last winter. I see his last breath, his death
shudder. I feel helpless, wanting to seize his life force and restore it to
him. I cry. She cries. Thousands cry. I rage with the Goddess in anger,
storming up and down, shaking, my body bathed in hot sweat. I journey into
the cold darkness, facing my fear, my terror, shuddering and trembling. I
sink in a heap, utterly exhausted from enduring the mystic catharsis.
I am jolted! A feeling of ecstasy bubbles up within my spine and in a wave
moves toward my head. I look up. I look again with my eyes straining at the
very edge of the visible. I see there the mist and within it the Vision. I
see there the Return. I am jolted again and then transported, lifted a
region of pure light, a place of celestial brilliance, suffused with loving
sounds of the holy voices and surrounded by the sacred dancing of the
Goddesses. I wander free in this joyful realm in communion with Myself...
With Her... With All That Is, fused to the cosmic rhythm. What I truly saw
I cannot tell you. There has been a sacred seal placed upon my lips. I must
speak no more!
And countless lips did remain sealed, so that the secrets which were orally
transmitted for two thousand years died with the death of the last
hierophant. A veil has now descended on Eleusis. The Kallichoron well has
gone dry.
What exactly was done at Eleusis to create such a powerful effect? We do
not know. We do know the rites brought about an experience of the
death-rebirth cycle, stimulating a deeper understanding of the esoteric
spiritual meaning of this collective human event. Themistios, drawing upon
Plutarch, an initiate of the Mysteries, wrote, "the soul (at the point of
death) has the same experience as those who are being initiated into great
mysteries." And Pindar wrote, "Happy is he who, having seen these rites
goes below the hollow earth; for he knows the end of life, and he knows its
God-sent beginning." George Mylonas concludes his book on Eleusis saying
that whatever the substance of the Mysteries was, the fact remains that the
rites of Eleusis satisfied the most sincere yearnings and the deepest
longings of the human heart.
The ritual at Eleusis built to an ecstatic climax in which the accumulated
psychic discord and tension was released. Fear turned to joy, and the
participant experienced a powerful healing catharsis. The rising action
always included intense and repetitive physical activity to produce the
proper receptivity. After hours and hours of chanting, singing, dancing,
drumming and musical rhythms participants were transported out of everyday
awareness and opened to more subtle realms. The dancing was preceded by
days of purification, fasting, and very little sleep, during which all
walked in awe-inspiring processionals with hundreds of like minded souls.
Magnificent ceremonial vestments and holy symbols were displayed, and
sacred words and formulas spoken. The impact of the whole experience
reached its peak in a magic moment, when the inspired participant had a
direct experience of cosmic forces. With participation in this
manner, a divine communion was made, and the individual was no more merely
an onlooker of the cosmos but a dynamic, active part of it. The individual
became Co-creator of the cosmic drama.
The rites of Eleusis reenacted the death-rebirth experience which
astrologers recognize as the process of the archetype of Pluto in the
individual psyche. The astrological archetypes and the myths of the Gods
and Goddesses draw from the same pool. Mythology contains the particular
manifestations of the archetypes in their various patterns. Astrology
incorporates a basic ten (and many more) of these essential archetypes into
a language for understanding.
It is particularly clear, at least for Western culture, that the same
cultural and historical forces that produced the myths of the gods and
goddesses drove the forge in which astrology was formed. The gods of the
Greeks--Uranus, Chronos, Pluto, Poseidon, Hermes and Aphrodite--are the
embodiment of the distinctive psychic qualities of the planetary forces
that we now call by their Roman names--Uranus, Saturn, Pluto, Neptune,
Mercury, and Venus. Thus, Saturn, which can signal death and destruction in
the horoscope, is the same power represented by the Greek god Chronos, who
devoured his children and who, in the guise of Time, may in truth be said
to destroy whatever has been brought into existence.
Joining in a ritual event and reenacting a myth that resonated with a truth
beyond cultural bounds gave the Eleusinian faithful a peak experience of
cosmic communion. If indeed the astrological archetypes arise from the same
deep, unconscious realms of the mind as the gods and goddesses, then
vivifying the astrological symbol should provide the same kind of
communion. If, for example, we learn to actively express our Pluto,
bringing it to life consciously, then we no longer deny or repress it's
power, and we might avoid the usual explosions of emotion or conflict that
characterize Pluto. We learn to use our own Pluto in more conscious ways by
embodying the symbolic truth of the planet--penetrating into, transforming
and assimilating it's power.
I do not want to imply that astrologers must spend four days dancing and
fasting in order to come to know a planetary archetype, though this level
of intensity might be an appropriate experience for some astrologers. I
am suggesting that, like the ancients, we step beyond the boundaries
of observation and thought and use direct experience to understand our own
internal planetary forces.
In so doing you pass from seeing the planets as isolated mental images, to
actually experiencing the vital rhythms of their interactions which reveal
deeper subconscious feelings and previously unexpressed aspects of being.
The horoscope then, is no longer a static, black-and-white, one dimensional
assortment of data with inanimate glyphs and signs. It becomes a moving
field of planetary action: vibrant, interactive and alive!
One of the truths of our time is this hunger
deep in people all over the planet for coming into relationship with each
other. Human consciousness is crossing a threshold as mighty as the one
from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. People are hungering and thirsting
after experience that feels true to them on the inside. Marilyn
Ferguson. Aquarian Conspiracy.
PLANETARY THEATER
October of 1984 brought an opportunity to test out all these new tools for
astrology. In that month occurred the "New Center of the Moon" conference,
an extraordinary blend of experiential astrology and public theater that
the two hundred or so who made it to Santa Fe still fondly remember. The
event, organized by Santa Fe astrologer, Tom Brady, was played out against
a planetary backdrop of transiting Sun/Mercury/Pluto conjunct in late
Libra/early Scorpio sextile Neptune in Sagitarrius. Tom assembled a unique
cast of characters to create and participate in a outdoor astrological
theater open to both conference participants and Santa Fe residents. This
"Theater Of Planetary Memory" was constructed in Cathedral Park, a spacious
outdoor square next to a magnificent old Spanish Church. The center of the
theater was an inflatable, black domed planetarium the inside walls of
which were studded with a luminescent map of the zodical belt and other
constellations. Around the central theater dome were ten "planetary rooms,"
each creating an experience of a particular planet, complete with lighting,
music and images. With the aid of creative video producer, Bob Shea, crack
lighting technicians, and a crew of carpenters, these rooms came to life.
For example, in the red-hued Mars room a Green Beret soldier in full battle
dress stood at silent attention, conveying strength and an undertone of
menace. Here was Mars incarnate!
ANCIENT MYSTERIES
Come, arise, from sleep awaking,
Come the fiery torches shaking,
Oh Iacchos, Oh Iacchos,
Morning Star that shinest nightly,
Lo, the mead is blazing brightly,
Age forgets its years and sadness,
Aged knees curvet for gladness,
Lift thy flashing torches o'er us,
Marshall all the blameless train,
Lead, Oh lead the way before us.
ASTROLOGY AND THE GODS