Watching the Time Lords

2007-01-02T23:42:00.000+10:00

“What’s the time?”. The glib, yet ultimately correct answer, could always be “NOW!”. But that in essence avoids a deeper question that persists, despite our attempts to remain eternally present. “What is time?” seems a perpetually worthwhile query, yet it leads into intriguing and slippery territory. It can become a philosophical, scientific, or cultural bone of contention for a thorough chewing over. We can stand on the shoulders of giants, contemplating their efforts in this regard – be it Einstein, Hawking, Descartes. Any number of mystics recommend themselves, whether they’re latter day saints or hoodoo gurus, with timely reminders of what’s illusory and what’s real and what’s a mystery. Creation myths, deeply embedded in all cultures, offer various understandings through beauteous storytelling and compelling resonant symbolism. The very scale of the beast that we’re dealing with is overwhelming and perplexing, from nanoseconds to geological ages, from the birth and death of stars and galaxies to infinity and beyond!

What I continually remind myself of, to the best of my limited ability, is that time and space are fused. That as space is created so is time – however it’s perceived or measured. And it’s a revelation to realise that time itself is apparently elastic, and can slow down or speed up for any observer. Many people experience this strange and disconcerting phenomenon, whether in the split-second before an accident, under the influence of mind-altering drugs, in yogic practices or shamanic rituals. But what has always gripped me, from a human perspective, is how one moment is different to the next and why things happen when they do. So rather than digressing into territory where I hold or proclaim no particular expertise, let me share a paradigm of time which has been a profoundly satisfying one for me.

As an astrologer, the basic substance with which I work is time. And it’s not a measure or apprehension that is a contemporary invention. Nor is it as it appears, fully blown in the pages of every magazine and newspaper worldwide in the guise of sun-sign columns and clueless chicanery. Ancient astrology offers us elegant mythopoeic designs for perceiving and ordering the timeliness and meaningfulness of our existence. While this may seem archaic, primitive, and outmoded to modernist thinkers, one wonders how thoughtful they are being, really. The well recognised signs of the zodiac have emerged over millennia from one of the cradles of civilisation, the Middle East, in roughly an area that we now know as Iraq. These signs were measures of cyclical phenomena such as specific star risings, culminations and settings. They also became associated with the equinox and solstice points to provide a regular yardstick of experience, measuring what is the passage of the Earth around the Sun. There also exist earlier, prehistoric observations carved on bones, recording the phases of the Moon. These external cosmic phenomena, Sun, Moon, and stars above, provided an awesome backdrop to human life on earth.

For any scientist or rational, materialist thinker, one moment is undiscernible from the next except by it’s label. The label is provided by whatever calendar and clock is used. In those terms, I am writing this on 14 February 2006 CE at 3:40pm on the east coast of Australia. There is nothing special or distinctive about this empirical date and time. It’s about as informative as the street number of your house, which tells you little or nothing about your home itself other than its whereabouts in a grid. In this worldview, time is homogeneous, a featureless landscape, where no one moment has any qualities different from another. It’s about as soulful a measure as the decay of a caesium atom can be.

The astrologer sees time quite differently, presenting a landscape as varied as any physical landscape, with its rising mountains and rolling plains, dry deserts and dense forests. Whatever happens at any point in space-time inherently displays and expresses the particular and unique quality or essence of that moment. From there it is possible to make the leap/link that even you yourself, being born at a particular, special moment and no other, can derive meaning, insight and purpose from an awareness of the essence of that moment. What astrology does is to describe the individual nature of moments of time as they exist in particular places by reference to the relative positions of the planets. And depending on the context of any situation, certain moments recommend themselves as significant. This may be a birth, death or marriage, the start of any enterprise or a journey, accident or illness, a successful accomplishment or public recognition, and even a heartfelt question. Through apprehending and understanding the essence of a specific moment, an informed judgement can be made as to what is likely to follow. This is no mere sleight of hand. Rather, once it is accepted that time differs as much as space, the possibility of prediction follows. By knowing the quality of a piece of land and the current season, one can reasonably predict what will grow there and how it will flourish. Equally, by knowing a moment of time and what act is intended, one can attempt an informed astrological prediction of what will follow and how successful it will be.

This variable quality of time is part of our common-sense experience. Yet in our “modern” life it’s generally ignored, as we march to the beat of many and varied artificial drums, whether they’re imposed by our own habits and patterns or the external exigencies of a demanding material world. The words of Ecclesiastes are worth repeating here. Bear in mind they do not mean that everything happens some time or another. What’s meant is exactly what’s said: there is a specific time to every purpose.

“A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; a time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.”

The only way to see time is by observing things that change with predictable regularity, like the digits of a clock or the movement of the planets. Yet we must distinguish between “clock” time and “real” time, a very difficult feat in a world of electricity and light on demand, 24 hour commerce, all seasons produce, jet lag, instant communication and immediate gratification. It’s as if we are trying to conquer time and beat it into submission, as we have done with the natural environment. Astrological time is different to the time in daily use. Now don’t take me mistakenly– there’s nothing wrong with clock time, just as there’s nothing wrong with astronomy. It’s just that they are both devoid of meaning, a profound gap which astrology has sought to fill for millennia. The relationship of astrological to clock time is the same as the relationship between esoteric and exoteric truth. Both are true, one does not deny or falsify the other, but without the esoteric the exoteric is a mere husk.

Astrological time is a series of interlocking cycles – the daily cycle of the Sun through the sky as the Earth turns; the monthly cycle of the Moon around the Earth; the annual cycle of the Earth around the Sun. Approximations to the rhythms of these three cycles give us our day, month and year. There are longer cycles, over decades, centuries and millennia, which relate to social movements, historical epochs, the rise and fall of faiths and empires, inventions and technology, cultures and civilizations. The days of the week each have a planetary ruler, one of the seven traditional, visible planets (including the Sun and Moon). Saturday is Saturn’s day, Sunday is the Sun’s day, and so forth. This arrangement predates the Genesis story for the creation. At a more immediate daily level, we divide our time into the ever familiar hours and minutes.

The “astrological” hours are not uniform like clock hours. Instead they are the division of the time between sunrise and sunset into 12 “day” hours, and the time between sunset and sunrise into 12 “night” hours. These will inevitably vary in length with season and place, making for very long hours in polar regions and quite regular ones at the equator. Each hour is said to be ruled by one of the seven traditional planets, just as each day is. The qualities of that planet will be most apparent during an hour that it rules, and especially on the day that it rules. The ancient Chaldeans are said to have arranged the planets in this order (now called the descending Chaldean order): Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon. This is the order of the passing of the planetary hours. After every Moon hour, a Saturn hour starts the cycle over again. Sunrise on Monday ("Moon” day) begins with a Moon hour, followed by a Saturn hour, a Jupiter hour, etc. Once 24 hours have been allotted in this fashion, we find ourselves at the Mars hour on the sunrise of Tuesday (“Mars” day – in French “Mardi”). And so the week unfolds.

At some point in the distant past, a sunrise or sunset defined the first planetary hour in history. It has run on uninterrupted in this manner (as far as I know) longer than recorded history itself. Beneath a seemingly simplistic and childlike appearance, lies much greater meaning and truth in living practise. This article was commenced on a Mars day at a Mars hour, excellent for motivation, drive, and getting something done. However, the piece really came together through the hour of Mercury, a planet strongly associated with writing and the communication of ideas. It was finally polished to it’s conclusion during the night hour of Mars on the very same Mars day. The strength and exact nature of any ruling planet’s influence on their hours will vary according to the day and according to the current astrological condition of that planet. For example, those malefic planets Saturn and Mars have recently been capable of doing their worst, because they are occupying signs, Leo and Taurus, inimical to their essential nature. It makes you wonder about some of our experiences on certain Saturdays and Tuesdays at certain times of late.

Mechanical time and planetary time existed side by side from very early on. However, as the dictates of commerce began to overrule other human considerations from the late Middle Ages on, mechanical time came to predominate and ultimately exclude other “versions” of timekeeping. Perhaps we are better served by accommodating ourselves and our desires to the nature of time as it flows by. In this regard, I’d like to share an amusing anecdote concerning one celebrity’s attempt to dictate life on his own terms. John Barrymore, whose birthday happens to be February 14, the day of this writing, was a famous early 20^th century American actor of stage and screen. He kept track of the planetary hours and days, and was reputed to time the performance of his love scenes during appropriate Venus (goddess of love) hours, and fight scenes in Mars (god of war) hours. These natural rhythms of time, which human organisms respond to by their very nature, are not suited to the unsympathetic rhythms of machines. We still inhabit a “factory” age – it’s only the nature of the factory that’s changed. The rise and dominance of clock time coincides with the loss of an understanding of “essence” – beingness – that divine spark within creation. Human beings are like an endangered species, where time is our environment which is being degraded and destroyed. And with the sands of time running on, it may be salutary to end with the words of Plato:

“Time came into being together with the Heaven, in order that, as they were brought into being together, so they may be dissolved together, if ever their dissolution should come to pass.”

REFERENCES:

God (well, actually his human reporters): The Holy Bible - Ecclesiastes. 3.1

Plato: Timaeus

John Frawley: The Real Astrology (London; Apprentice Books; 2001)

Benton Bobrick: The Fated Sky (New York; Simon & Schuster; 2005)

Kristen Lippincott et al: The Story of Time (London; Merrell Holberton; 1999)

Titus Burckhardt: Mystical Astrology According to Ibn ‘Arabi (Louisville, KY; Fons Vitae; 2001)

Mercury Retro – Predictably Unreliable!

2006-11-14T16:56:00.000+10:00

As much as I don’t want to be conditioned and restrained by apparent planetary motion, there’s little doubt in my mind and in my experience that Mercury retrograde – a thrice yearly phenomenon – always catches you out somehow. This current retrograde period, with Mercury sliding backwards through a planetary stellium in Scorpio, has delivered the goods despite me attempting to disregard it. Had my car serviced recently, only to have all the electric windows cease functioning! All of a sudden my computer mouse stopped working. And today my voice microphone which I use for client recordings and Skype calls just gave up the ghost. Bottom line is that I will wait until Mercury turns direct before replacing these “mercury ruled” items. For those who would push the envelope during Mercury retro periods – be warned! The upside is one can learn patience with intractable devices, and come to expect a degree of breakdown etc during these times – so plan accordingly….

On Reception

2006-01-19T22:22:00.000+10:00

Reference:
Masha’allah (c.740-c.815): On Reception
Edited and Translated into English by Robert Hand (from Joachim Heller’s 1549 edition of John of Seville’s Latin 12th century translation of the lost Arabic original)
Arhat Publications 1998
- available at robhand.com

In modern astrology “reception” is a little used and misunderstood concept. Generally, a sufficient understanding of a planet in a sign is left pretty much at that – 10 astrological planets assigned keywords and key concepts through each of 12 signs, in lego block style, to be memorised in rote fashion and parroted as needed. If “reception” is considered at all, it’s only in a sense of each sign having a “ruling” planet and possibly being in “mutual reception” to one another. How moderns approach and interpret planetary “rulers” is generally unclear. Every planet is “ruled” by the planetary “ruler” of the sign they occupy (for example Saturn in Leo is ruled by the Sun). The existence of “mutual reception” between two planets, each planet being “ruled” by the other (for example Saturn in Leo and Sun in Capricorn are in “mutual reception”, i.e. in each other’s signs), is sometimes noted without clear interpretation or judgement.
In contrast, the tradition regards “reception” as a key element in the condition of a planet which can significantly effect testimony and judgement in a horoscope.

The Mission

2004-12-23T16:35:00.000+10:00

In brief, the mission of this initial blog is to further discussion and promote understanding of the revision of so-called modern astrology through awareness of ancient, medieval, and traditional techniques. Hopefully this may evolve a contemporary and authentic western astrology for real life in the 21st century. It could also be seen as a "How Not To Learn Astrology" manual as I detail and review my own, stumbling, self-taught path over the last 25 years.
Perhaps a working title might appropriately be Tips and Tricks for Beginning Astrologers - Thoughts and Reflections for Old Hands. As topics emerge for consideration (a wonderful astrological word), it is my intention to illustrate theory and technique with current biographies and events.
Many of greater talent and dedication precede me in this endeavour. So this is merely a small personal contribution. As time goes by, I hope to honour those living astrologers whose work has educated me so much and whom I admire and support.

Retromancer - Astrology for the 21st Century

Watching the Time Lords

Mercury Retro – Predictably Unreliable!

On Reception

The Mission