Sagittarius 30°: The Pope, blessing the faithful.

10:47, 12/23/2014, Sagittarius 30°

pp. 227-228     AN ASTROLOGICAL MANDALA

by Dane Rudhyar (1973)

PHASE 270 (SAGITTARIUS 30°): THE POPE, BLESSING THE FAITHFUL.

KEYNOTE: The need to pay homage to traditional values upon which the Invisible Community of the spirit is built.

The concrete integration of myriads of human individuals within a great religious institution with a long tradition that reflects, as well as having produced century after century, an invisible spiritual Community. The "flag bearer" has now become the "Pope," who assumes the role of God's representative on Earth. It is a role, but culture is based on embodying great Images and deeply moving symbols in physical reality. The symbol asks of the individual: "Are you willing to live a transpersonal life as a symbol?" This is the final and supreme statement of that section of the year represented by Sagittarius.

This concludes Scene Eighteen. A collectivity of human beings is seen having "transferred" their sense of spiritual value to a man who has become an incarnation of their common ideal. Keywords: PERSONALIZED WORSHIP. It can be a blessing or in some cases, a curse.

Girlcapsule's Response:

What an interesting question: Are you willing to live a transpersonal life as a symbol? Or will you opt to transfer your sense of spiritual value to another being?

My personal answer is: bring it on. I have no idea what it is we're talking about when we say live a transpersonal life as a symbol, but I am very curious. I'm also curious to discover what PERSONALIZED WORSHIP looks like for me.

Today I changed the title of the blog series from "Girlcapsule's Astro-Ponderings" to "Girlcapsule's Protean-Ponderings". It seems more descriptively appropriate.

Here's something random from my protean ponder-stash of happenings:

Today as I was making my winding way towards my computer I experienced a strong thought impression, which came in the form of this phrase: danger is afoot.

This led me to discover this image:

I would call this a "direct hit", in terms of being tapped magically into the same kind of thought-field Rudhyar was indicating. It is, perhaps, the astrological equivalent of an archetypally informed best-guess: Start here!

And today's Sabian Symbol I depict here sideways in order to remind myself to explain also the backstory, which begins with a kind of carrying-over from yesterday's materials: Jung's The Red Book and the book by Plum Blossoms entitled Zhu Wei's Album of Ink Paintings as put together in the image below:

Yesterday's blog includes a video that establishes a spooky resonance between these two books. If you can suspend judgment—this is the stuff of protean pondering that leads to the prismatic unfolding of synchronicity's way of speaking. Let me tell it as a story that started with the thought impression: danger is afoot.

Comparative study of The Red Book by C.G. Jung and Zhu Wei's Album of Ink Paintings, 1988-2008

Danger is afoot. It came yesterday in the form of my friend who was momentarily deeply annoyed with me, or deeply disturbed by the seeming depth of my ignorance or height of my pride and arrogance, or the stubborn density of my skull. The energetic-reactional blow-back of my immediate resistance at being criticized came like a lioness lashing out as it sprang forward, propelled by the power of its self-righteous logic and desire to be found blameless at the end of the day.

The danger in this case involved getting a very long lecture about what behavior and ideals were more acceptable and less perpetuating of divisiveness. And I have greatly benefited in coming to a new kind of understanding.

Here's a picture story version of how I came to find the pope image. Look at the previous image—in the picture far right: the female figure turning to say something and giving the next guy a complex look. My sense was she was saying something of importance is still missing. So I went looking around for what it might be.

Here is the new connection. From Taschen's The Hermetic Museum: Alchemy & Mysticism compiled by Alexander Roob. It says inside:

A fantastic journey through
the history of esoteric lore
The Hermetic Museum takes its readers on a magical mystery tour spanning an arc from the mediaeval cosmogram and images of Christian mysticism, through the fascinating world of alchemy to the art of the Romantic era. The enigmatic hieroglyphs of cabbalists, Rosicrucians and freemasons are shown to be closely linked with the early scientific illustrations in the fields of medicine, chemistry, optics and colour theory. 

Look at the image on the jacket cover. Look at the intensity of emotion on the pair of faces. One of these is asking a question with an urgency of concern, the other seems to be up to something. What's going on? Let's check some pages of significance. How about 137 (for Pauli & Jung) and 42 (for Douglas Adams).

Here's a shot of page 137 (next/below):

Here we land in the middle of a mystical narrative involving a three-headed bird. The text reads:

Genesis in the retort
As the number of heads of the bird reveals, the matter has now been thrice sublimated, and is in a gaseous state. Bellicose Mars arrives. His attribute, the sword, and the warrior's lance are symbols of the fire that is now intensified so as to condense the material and "separate the pure from the impure and thus to renew the elixir."

S. Trismosin,
Splendor solis,
London,
16th century
The dissolved bodies have now been brought back to the true spirit.

Opus Magnum: Genesis in the retort 



The next image shows page 42. Notice the Pope image at the top, and next to it again the close-up shown on its side:

This story-like weaving that brought me to this point is so saturated with variables, that all I'm willing to say is it pays to be playful!

The payoff: this last image, below all the others is of my niece born this past November. This picture was taken when she was three weeks old. She's like: "Hey, dudes, I think I've got this figured out!"