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World View in the 21st Century

There are more things in heaven and earth Horatio Than are dreamt of in our philosophy. —Shakespeare’s Hamlet

Anima Mundi

Lest we allow our world view be shaped by scientists’ shallow materialistic view of a disenchanted universe, let us remember that the Earth is a living, breathing entity with a soul.  It is the human species that has become disenchanted with its home among the stars by maintaining a materialistic view of the Earth, along with the entire Universe, a view that has turned living, soulful matter into potential resource to be harvested and ripped from the bowels of Earth—with eyes now on her sister planets—and used to build, power and feed a civilization that has overrun its boundaries in an exponential explosion of population, with its towering skyscrapers, sprawling subdivisions, and commercial and industrial complexes.

The good Earth is burdened with concrete plastered all over her fertile, breathing soil, and with structures fabricated of iron and steel erected to refine oil and minerals drilled and dug up from her bowels to pave the way for commercial traffic and to fuel the engines of “progress,” a progress designed to enrich the few on the backs of the many.  It hurts my heart to watch the cold, rigid iron and concrete paraphernalia of the oil industry intrude upon the wet and tender marshlands here in the South. Not a very pretty sight.

But “It’s what it is,” to borrow a coded line from The Irishman used to order a “hit”on some expendable gangster. We have reason to suspect our species may be expendable, seeing as how we are so susceptible to plagues such as the current outbreak of the coronavirus. Richard Tarnas paints a rather bleak and ominous picture of the modern world view in COSMOS AND PSYCHE:

The disenchanted cosmos impoverishes the collective psyche in the most global way, vitiating its spiritual and moral imagination—“vitiate” not only in the sense of diminish and impair but also in the sense of deform and debase.  In such a context, everything can be appropriated. Nothing is immune. Majestic vistas of nature, great works of art, revered music, eloquent language, the beauty of the human body, distant lands and cultures, extraordinary moments of history, the arousal of deep human emotion; all become advertising tools to manipulate consumer response. For quite literally, in a disenchanted cosmos nothing is sacred. The soul of the world has been extinguished: Ancient trees and forests can then be seen as nothing but potential lumber; mountains nothing but mineral deposits; seashores and deserts are oil reserves; lakes and rivers, engineering tools. Animals are perceived as harvestable commodities, indigenous tribes as obstructing relics of an outmoded past, children’s minds as marketing targets. At the all important cosmological level the spiritual dimension of the empirical universe has been entirely negated, and with it any publicly affirmable encompassing ground for moral wisdom and restraint. The short term and the bottom line rule all. Whether in politics, business, or the media, the lowest common denominator of the culture increasingly governs discourse and prescribes the values of the whole. Myopically obsessed with narrow goals and narrow identities, the powerful blind themselves to the larger suffering and crisis of the global community.

In a world where the subject is experienced as living in—and above and against—a world of objects, other peoples and cultures are more readily perceived as simply other objects, inferior in value to oneself, to ignore or exploit for one’s own purposes, as are other forms of life, biosystems, the planetary whole. Moreover, the underlying anxiety and disorientation that pervade modern societies in the face of a meaningless cosmos create both the collective psychic numbness and a desperate spiritual hunger, leading to an addictive, insatiable craving for ever more material goods to fill the inner emptiness and producing a manic techno-consumerism that cannibalizes the planet. Highly practical consequences ensue from the disenchanted modern world view. . . .

Defined in the end by its disenchanted context the human self too is inevitably disenchanted. Ultimately it becomes, like everything else, a mere object of material forces and efficient causes: a sociobiological pawn, a selfish gene, a meme machine, a biotechnoligical artifact, an unwitting tool of its own tools. For the cosmology of a civilization both reflects and influences all human activity, motivation, and self-understanding that take place within its parameters. It is the container for everything else.”

The point Tarnas makes throughout his book is that we create our cosmology in our psyche and project that image out into the cosmos. We see the cosmos and our world not as they are but as we are. 

Now is the time to remember our immortal Identity in Spirit and let go of our mortal identity in form; identity in transcendent Reality beyond and encompassing our humanity. The Spirit of God is moving upon the face of the sea of our collective consciousness commanding: “Let there be Light.”  We are the Light-bearers for our world.  It is the Spirit of God that inspires and enchants the cosmos.  The presence of God, however, is not enough to lift the human psyche out of its fear, hatred and despair.  Spirit needs to be expressed to be known. To have love in one’s heart is not sufficient. Love must be expressed, in words, with feeling and with action.

Cosmological Context for the 21st Century

Changing gears now, let’s have a look at what we may expect from the planetary configurations this century according to Richard Tarnas’ research. 

For my readers who are not familiar with astrological terms for planetary alignments, here is a crash course. Planets in conjunction are lined up on the same side of the earth; in opposition on opposite sides; square alignments are at 90°; sextile at 60°; and trine at 120°.

Tarnas writes: (Emphasis mine)

We have discussed the various upcoming dynamic or hard-aspect alignments of the outer-planet cycles. There still remain the trines and sextiles of these cycles. Of these, by far the most significant is the century-long Neptune-Pluto sextile, which began in the mid-twentieth century and will continue until near the middle of the twenty-first. This long sextile takes place once each five-hundred-year Neptune-Pluto cycle, beginning about a half-century after the conjunction. Its unusual duration results from Pluto’s eccentric 248-year orbit, which twice each Neptune-Pluto cycle brings it close to and, briefly, even inside Neptune’s orbit—the first time as a sextile, the second as a trine. Historically, such sustained sextile or trine alignments of Neptune and Pluto have coincided with long epochs in which a certain profound evolution of consciousness appears to be propelled and sustained in a gradual, harmoniously unfolding manner, moving beneath and through the fluctuations and crises that might occur at a more immediate empirical level. The grand trine of Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto in the 1760’s and 1770’s cited in the previous chapter, which coincided with the peak of the Enlightenment, the birth of Romanticism, and the beginning of the American Revolution, occurred as part of the most recent much longer Neptune-Pluto trine of the eighteenth century. These century-long epochs generally seem to impel the collective experience of a more confluent relationship between nature and spirit, between evolutionary and instinctual forces (Pluto) and the spiritual resources and idealistic aspirations of the pervading cultural vision (Neptune). The archetypal dynamics involved characteristically provide, at an almost subterranean level in the collective psyche, a sustained stabilizing impulse.

This particular category of alignment has special significance: first, because it involves Neptune and Pluto, the two outermost planets; and second, because it lasts longer than any other planetary alignment. The current sextile is also historically noteworthy because of its role in the larger cyclical movements of all three outermost planets, since it coincided with the first Uranus-Pluto and Uranus-Neptune conjunctions to occur after the Neptune-Pluto conjunction of the 1880-1905 period. From a long-term historical perspective, therefore, we are living today at the moment when all three of these cycles, the largest planetary cycles known to us, have just completed their conjunctions in succession, marking the full initiation of the corresponding archetypal dynamics for the next several centuries.

If we consider, then, the unfolding cycles of the three outermost planets, taking into account the current alignment between Neptune and Pluto, the number of years since the most recent Neptune-Pluto conjunction a century ago, and the completion of the subsequent Uranus-Pluto and Uranus-Neptune conjunctions of the 1960’s and 1990’s, respectively, our present moment in history is most comparable, astronomically, to the period exactly five hundred years ago with which we began the book: the era that brought forth the birth of the modern self during the decades surrounding the year 1500. This too was an epoch of extraordinary turbulence and uncertainty, and also of great cultural creativity and dynamism. It was the moment of the High Renaissance of Leonardo and Michelangelo, Erasmus and Thomas More, in the immediate aftermath of PicodelIa Mirandola’s new vision of human possibility in the Oratia and Ficino’s Platonic Academy in Florence-a period shaped by the rapid spread of a powerful new medium of universal communication, the printed book; the first expeditions to a vast new world that, at enormous human and ecological cost, led to the opening of the global community to itself; and the immense spiritual and cosmological transformations, still unfolding, represented by Luther’s start of the Reformation and Copernicus’s conceiving of the heliocentric hypothesis.

Our postmodern age of ceaseless flux and irresolvable complexity, for all its metaphysical disorientation, and despite the collective entrancement produced by the mass media and corporate marketing, has nevertheless brought forth new conditions and possibilities that could prove invaluable for our future. As a result of the many extraordinary changes—cultural, psychological, spiritual—that have unfolded in the past half-century, the collective psyche has undergone a pervasive and in certain respects deeply benign transformation that cannot easily be measured and yet, for all its subtlety, is no less pregnant with historical significance. The rapid dissemination during this era of a fundamental new openness to the perspectives and realities of different cultures, eras, religions, races, classes, genders, sexual orientations, age groups, even different species and forms of life has been an essential characteristic of our time. It is perhaps not too much to say that, in this first decade of the new millennium, humanity has entered into a condition that is in some sense more globally united and interconnected, more sensitized to the experiences and suffering of others, in certain respects more spiritually awakened, more conscious of alternative future possibilities and ideals, more capable of collective healing and compassion, and, aided by technological advances in communications media, more able to think, feel, and respond together in a spiritually evolved manner to the world’s swiftly changing realities than has ever before been possible.

 All of this is, of course, occurring below the radar of the mass media. To paraphrase Shakespeare’s line from Hamlet: There are more things in heaven and earth than are reported by the media.  There is a saying about the content guidelines for media coverage: “If it bleeds it leads. If it tells it sells.”

Attunement with the material world has kept human beings earthbound in a “dust-to-dust” mindset.  We are called to a Light-to-Light level of consciousness and to a greater awareness of being more than “only human.”

Consumed by Fire 

There is a groundswell of spiritual awakening that’s been growing since the 1960’s.  Many who have sufficient resonant substance are being drawn by Love to find attunement with the Tone sounding in the center of our Milky Way Galaxy where the design for a New Earth is established in a New Heaven.  With the current cosmic configuration of stars and planets in our solar system and galaxy, we have the support of the entire Universe to move to a higher dimension and to transform our world by the fire of love into a Paradise—the topic of my next blog series.  Until then,

Be love. Be loved.

Anthony

tpal70@gmail.com  

 

 

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Archetypes, Astrology, Astronomy, Collective Mind, Conscious Evolution, Consciousness, Cosmic Consciousness, Current cosmic event, Dr. Palombo's blog, Healing Tones Blog, Planet Earth, Planetary Alignments, Solar System, Transformation

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Planetary Archetypes . . . . . . . . . . Man in a Cosmic Context

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass the world is too full to talk about….  Rumi

Thank you, Rumi, for your rumination. The world is indeed too full to talk about, so I will simply write about it.  In this series, I’ve been considering the history of archetypes and its parallel evolution with that of human consciousness. The source of my research is Richard Tarnas’ epic book COSMOS AND PSYCHE, which I am finding incredibly fascinating and enlightening a read and study.  

In the previous post I shared Tarnas’ research into the history and evolution of the concept of archetypes and how human consciousness has evolved with it, as though the archetypes and human psyche are intimately blended and impacted by one another. (It may well be that the human psyche itself is the originator of the concept of archetypes.)  In this post, I will share the planetary aspects of the author’s perspective gained in his exhaustive and detailed research.

Listen to the Message of the Planets Aligned

It is not by happenstance that this material has come into my hands just prior to the time of the current planetary alignment, which will end on February 20th, two days before this post will be published. My consciousness is attuned to the energetic messages being transmitted to Earth at this pivotal and chaotic time when the most powerful person in man’s world is about to be chosen by the citizens of the United States of America—who are divided amongst themselves with fear and hatred governing hearts and minds. There is an encoded message for us in the music streaming from these aligned spheres, and one message I am hearing is

“Nothing is wrong. Everything matters. Let not your hearts be troubled. Let love fill them and radiate without concern for results.” 

As I write, I am aware that some of my readers may not have space in their minds and hearts to think and care much about these cosmic events. There is so much to keep up and deal with in our lives these days. And with one’s “nose up against the grindstone,” so-to-speak, one is understandably oblivious to the larger drama of life taking place in the cosmic context.  I say this not in judgment or criticism but with compassion for the busy human state. For reasons that are emerging even as I write, these larger events taking place in our cosmic habitat have projected themselves into my consciousness for consideration at this time.  So I will indulge them and give them due consideration—and I do welcome and appreciate comments and feedback from my readership, which fluctuates up and down with the subject matter.  Currently it’s up, so I’ll keep moving with this consideration—the next one already presenting itself in the back of my mind and having something to do with myths and memories of Paradise.  Hmm, sounds inviting.

Asking your forbearance, I burden you once again with an excerpt from COSMOS AND PSYCHE for your consideration and, hopefully, your edification and intellectual pleasure.  My mind loves to be engaged by truth—not that what follows is true at all levels, as there is always a higher truth.  This author writes from a higher level of consciousness than simply scientific and mental. It’s his spiritual perspectives, which he shares amidst all the astronomical and astrological data, that draws me to his writings—and to sharing them here. (Emphasis mine) 

PLANETARY ARCHETYPES

The astrological thesis as developed within the Platonic-Jungian lineage holds that these complex, multidimensional archetypes governing the forms of human experience are intelligibly connected with the planets and their movements in the heavens. This association is observable in a constant coincidence between specific planetary alignments and specific archetypally patterned phenomena in human affairs. . . . It does not appear to be accurate to say that astrologers have in essence arbitrarily used the mythological stories of the ancients about the gods Jupiter, Saturn, Venus, Mars, Mercury, and the rest to project symbolic meaning onto the planets, which are in actuality merely neutral material bodies without intrinsic significance [I cannot agree with Tarnas here, as all material forms, especially the planets, have spiritual, or vibrational, significance.] Rather, a considerable body of evidence suggests that the movements of the planets named Jupiter, Saturn, Venus, Mars, and Mercury tend to coincide with patterns of human experience that closely resemble the character of those planets’ mythical counterparts. That is, the astrologer’s insight, perhaps intuitive and divinatory in its ancient origins, appears to be fundamentally an empirical one. This empiricism is given context and meaning by a mythic, archetypal perspective, a perspective that the planetary correlations seem to support and illustrate with remarkable consistency. The nature of these correlations presents to the astrological researcher what appears to be an orchestrated synthesis combining the precision of mathematical astronomy with the psychological complexity of the archetypal imagination, a synthesis whose sources seemingly exist a priori within the fabric of the universe.

Here is where the distinction between the ancient philosophical (Platonic) and the modern psychological (earlier Jungian) conceptions of archetypes becomes especially relevant.  Whereas the original Jungian archetypes were primarily considered to be the basic formal principles of the human psyche, the original Platonic archetypes were regarded as the essential principles of reality itself, rooted in the very nature of the cosmos.  What separated these two views was the long development of Western thought that gradually differentiated a meaning-giving human subject from a neutral objective world, thereby locating the source of any universal principles of meaning exclusively within the human psyche. Integrating these two views (much as Jung began to do in his final years under the influence of synchronicities), contemporary astrology suggests that archetypes possess a reality that is both objective and subjective, one that informs both outer cosmos and inner human psyche, “as above, so below.” 

In effect, planetary archetypes are considered to be both “Jungian” (psychological) and “Platonic” (metaphysical) in nature: universal essences or forms at once intrinsic to and independent of the human mind, that not only endure as timeless universals but are also co-creatively enacted and recursively affected through human participation. And they are regarded as functioning in something like a Pythagorean-Platonic cosmic setting, i.e., in a cosmos pervasively integrated through the workings of a universal intelligence and creative principle. What distinguishes the contemporary astrological view is the additional factor of human co-creative participation in the concrete expressions of this creative principle, with the human being recognized as itself a potentially autonomous embodiment of the cosmos and its creative power and intelligence. 

In Jungian terms, the astrological evidence suggests that the collective unconscious is ultimately embedded in the macrocosm itself, with the planetary motions a synchronistic reflection of the unfolding archetypal dynamics of human experience. In Platonic terms, astrology affirms the existence of an anima mundi informing the cosmos, a world soul in which the human psyche participates as a microcosm of the whole. Finally, the Platonic, Jungian, and astrological understandings of archetypes are all complexly linked, both historically and conceptually, to the archetypal structures, narratives, and figures of ancient myth. Thus [Joseph] Campbell’s famous dictum: 

It would not be too much to say that myth is the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human cultural manifestation. 

. . . .  For conceptual clarity, then, when we consider the meaning and character of each planetary archetype in the following chapters, it will be useful to understand these principles in three different senses: in the Homeric sense as a primordial deity and mythic figure; in the Platonic sense as a cosmic and metaphysical principle; and in the Jungian sense as a psychological principle (with its Kantian and Freudian background)—-with all of these associated with a specific planet.

For example, the archetype of Venus can be approached on the Homeric level as the Greek mythic figure of Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty and love, the Mesopotamian Ishtar, the Roman Venus. On the Platonic level Venus can be understood in terms of the metaphysical principle of Eros and the Beautiful. And on the Jungian level Venus can be viewed as the psychological tendency to perceive, desire, create, or in some other way experience beauty and love, to attract and be attracted, to seek harmony and aesthetic or sensuous pleasure, to engage in artistic activity and in romantic and social relations. These different levels or senses are distinguished here only to suggest the inherent complexity of arche­types, which must be formulated not as literal concretely definable entities but rather as dynamic potentialities and essences of meaning that cannot be localized or restricted to a specific dimension.

Finally, alongside this essential multidimensionality of archetypes is their equally essential multivalence. The Saturn archetype can express itself as judgment but also as old age, as tradition but also as oppression, as time but also as mortality, as depression but also as discipline, as gravity in the sense of heaviness and weight but also as gravity in the sense of seriousness and dignity. Thus Jung:

The ground principles, the archai, of the unconscious are indescribable because of their wealth of reference, although in themselves recognizable. The discriminating intellect naturally keeps on trying to establish their singleness of meaning and thus misses the essential point; for what we can above all establish as the one thing consistent with their nature is their manifold meaning, their almost limitless wealth of reference, which makes any unilateral formulation impossible.

This discussion is directly relevant to the outcome of our earlier consideration of free will and determinism in astrology. If I may summarize that thesis in a single statement: It seems to be specifically the multivalent potentiality that is intrinsic to the planetary archetypes—their dynamic indeterminacy—that opens up ontological space for the human being’s full co-creative participation in the unfolding of individual life, history, and the cosmic process. It is just this combi­nation of archetypal multivalence and an autonomous participatory self that engenders the possibility of a genuinely open universe. The resulting cosmological metastructure is still Pythagorean-Platonic in essential ways, but the relationship of the human self and the cosmic principles has undergone a metamorphosis that fully reflects and integrates the enormous modern and postmodern developments.

Our philosophical understanding of archetypes, our scientific understanding of the cosmos, and our psychological understanding of the self have all undergone a profound evolution in the course of history, and they have done so in complexly interconnected ways at each stage in this development. Our experience of all these has evolved, century by century, and thus our theories have as well.

Theories abound in the mind-made world, but they only tend to confuse rather than clarify understanding. The questions I ask are: “Who is it that is trying to understand? And what self?”  It seems that the self who is looking IS the self who are trying to “psychologically” understand.  However, as we know, a state cannot observe itself.  I am reminded of words attributed to Saint Francis:  “What you are looking for is who is looking.”

There is one final excerpt I wish to share from Richard Tarnas’ book in which he speaks to where we are now in the 21st century relative to a century-long planetary configuration.  I think you will enjoy his take on the archetypal profile presently at play in the human psyche shaping human behavior and global events.

In the next series I will do my best to offer clarification and enlightenment from a higher perspective. Until then, I greet you in Rumi’s field “beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing.” 

Be love. Be loved.

Anthony

Email: tpal70@gmail.com

 

 

 

 

 

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Archetypes, Gods and Planets and The Evolution of Consciousness

“The earth is the LORD’S, and the fullness thereof: the world and they that dwell therein. For he hath founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the floods.” (Psalm 24)

The Heart Nebula

Our conscious presence in a cosmic context has been more vividly and visually brought to our awareness, as well as recalled to remembrance, by pictures of the vast cosmos made with the Hubble Telescope and shared with the world by our tenaciously adventurous astronomers who keep peering deeper and deeper into the “dark space” around us. 

What they have brought to us is virtually overwhelming, certainly unfathomable. The greater wonder of it all, however, is our ability to take it all into our consciousness through our very tiny eyes and our very tiny brains. This speaks to the largeness of our Being and our shared Consciousness. We are truly Gods in the midst of Creation enjoying what We have co-created with the Great Spirit Creator, the Lord God and heavenly King, whose Earth it is, “and the fullness thereof, the world and they that dwell therein.” 

ARCHETYPES, GODS AND PLANETS

With that inspirational preface, I will continue from where I left off in my previous post with a consideration of the nature of archetypes and their planetary associations as explored by cultural historian and philosopher Richard Tarnas in his epic work COSMOS AND PSYCHE.

[A graduate of Harvard University and Saybrook Institute, Tarnas is also author of The Passion Of The Western Mind, currently holding professorship of philosophy and cultural history at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, where he founded the graduate program in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness, and at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara.]

As we were considering, archetypes in Greek mythology were gods and goddesses who were enshrined by heavenly bodies, such as planets and constellations. As the Greek mind evolved out of “myth to reason,” archetypes lost their divinity with Plato’s philosophical mentality: (Emphasis mine)

Plato gave to the archetypal perspective its clas­sic metaphysical formulation. In the Platonic view, archetypes–the Ideas or Forms–are absolute essences that transcend the empirical world yet give the world its form and meaning. They are timeless universals that serve as the fundamental reality informing every concrete particular. Something is beautiful pre­cisely to the extent that the archetype of Beauty is present in it. Or, described from a different viewpoint, something is beautiful precisely to the extent that it participates in the archetype of Beauty. For Plato, direct knowledge of these Forms or Ideas is regarded as the spiritual goal of the philosopher and the intel­lectual passion of the scientist.

In turn, Plato’s student and successor Aristotle brought to the concept of universal forms a more empiricist approach, one supported by a rationalism whose spirit of logical analysis was secular rather than spiritual and epiphanic. In the Aristotelian perspective, the forms lost their numinosity but gained a new recog­nition of their dynamic and teleological character as concretely embodied in the empirical world and processes of life. For Aristotle, the universal forms primarily exist in things, not above or beyond them. Moreover, they not only give form and essential qualities to concrete particulars but also dynamically transmute them from within, from potentiality to actuality and maturity, as the acorn gradually metamorphoses into the oak tree, the embryo into the mature organism, a young girl into a woman. The organism is drawn forward by the form to a realization of its inherent potential, just as a work of art is actualized by the artist guided by the form in the artist’s mind. Matter is an intrinsic susceptibility to form, an un­qualified openness to being configured and dynamically realized through form….

The Aristotelian form thus serves both as an indwelling impulse that orders and moves development and as the intelligible structure of a thing, its inner nature, that which makes it what it is, its essence. For Aristotle as for Plato, form is the principle by which something can be known, its essence recognized, its universal character distinguished within its particular embodiment.

The idea of archetypal or universal forms then underwent a number of important developments in the later classical, medieval and Renaissance periods.” It became the focus of one of the central and most sustained debates of Scholastic philosophy, “the problem of universals,” a controversy that both reflected and mediated the evolution of Western thought as the focus of intelligible reality gradually shifted from the transcendent to the immanent, from the universal to the particular, and ultimately from the divinely given archetypal Form (eidos) to the humanly constructed general name (nomina) after a final efflorescence in the philosophy and art of the High Renaissance. The concept of archetypes gradually retreated and then virtually disappeared with the modern rise of nominalist philosophy and empiricist science. The archetypal perspective remained vital principally in the arts, in classical and mythological studies, and in Romanticism, as a kind of archaic afterglow. Confined to the subjective realm of interior meaning by the dominant Enlightenment world view, it continued in this form latent in the modern sensibility. The radiant ascent and dominance of modern reason coincided precisely with the eclipse of the archetypal vision.

The concept of archetypes evolved further over the decades, which Tarnas details further. I will conclude with his summary of its evolutionary journey: 

It was not until the turn of the twentieth century that the concept of archetypes, foreshadowed by Nietzsche’s vision of the Dionysian and Apollonian principles shaping human culture, underwent an unexpected renascence. The immediate matrix of its rebirth was the empirical discoveries of depth psychology, first with Freud’s formulations of the Oedipus complex, Eros and Thanatos, ego, id, and superego (a “powerful mythology,” as Wittgenstein called psychoanalysis), then in an expanded, fully articulated form with the work of Jung and archetypal psychology. Jung, as we have seen, drawing on Kant’s critical epistemology and Freud’s instinct theory yet going beyond both, described archetypes as autonomous primordial forms in the psyche that structure and impel all human experience and behavior. In his last formulations influenced by his research on synchronicities, Jung came to regard archetypes as expressions not only of a collective unconscious shared by all human beings but also of a larger matrix of being and meaning that informs and encompasses both the physical world and the human psyche….

Finally, further developments of the archetypal perspective emerged in the postmodern period, not only in post-Jungian psychology but in other fields such as anthropology; mythology, religious studies, philosophy of science, linguistic analysis, phenomenology, process philosophy, and feminist scholarship. Advances in understanding the role of paradigms, symbols, and metaphors in shaping human experience and cognition brought new dimensions to the archetypal understanding. In the crucible of postmodern thought, the concept of archetypes was elaborated and critiqued, refined through the deconstruction of rigidly essentialist “false universals” and cultural stereotypes, and enriched through an increased awareness of archetypes’ fluid, evolving, multivalent, and participatory nature. Reflecting many of the above influences, James Hillman sums up the archetypal perspective in depth psychology:

Let us then imagine archetypes as the deepest patterns of psychic functioning, the roots of the soul governing the perspectives we have of ourselves and the world. They are the axiomatic, self-evident images to which psychic life and our theories about it ever return …. There are many other metaphors for describing them: immaterial potentials of structure, like invisible crystals in solution or forms in plants that suddenly show forth under certain conditions; patterns of instinctual behavior like those in animals that direct actions along unswerving paths; the genres and topoi in literature; the recurring typicalities in history; the basic syndromes in psychiatry; the paradigmatic thought models in science; the worldwide figures, rituals, and relationships in anthropology.

But one thing is absolutely essential to the notion of archetypes: their emotional possessive effect, their bedazzlement of consciousness so that it becomes blind to its own stance. By setting up a universe which tends to hold everything we do, see, and say in the sway of its cosmos, an archetype is best comparable with a God. And Gods, religions sometimes say, are less accessible to the senses and to the intellect than they are to the imaginative vision and emotion of the soul. They are cosmic perspectives in which the soul participates. They are the lords of its realms of being, the patterns for its mimesis. The soul cannot be, except in one of their patterns. All psychic reality is governed by one or another archetypal fantasy, given sanction by a God. I cannot but be in them. 

There is no place without Gods and no activity that does not enact them. Every fantasy, every experience has its archetypal reason. There is nothing that does not belong to one God or another.

Archetypes thus can be understood and described in many ways, and much of the history of Western thought has evolved and revolved around this very issue. For our present purposes, we can define an archetype as a universal prin­ciple or force that affects–impels, structures, permeates–the human psyche and the world of human experience on many levels. One can think of them in mythic terms as gods and goddesses (or what Blake called “the Immortals”), in Platonic terms as transcendent first principles and numinous Ideas, or in Aris­totelian terms as immanent universals and dynamic indwelling forms. One can approach them in a Kantian mode as a priori categories of perception and cogni­tion, in Schopenhauerian terms as the universal essences of life embodied in great works of art, or in the Nietzschean manner as primordial principles sym­bolizing basic cultural tendencies and modes of being. In the twentieth-century context, one can conceive of them in Husserlian terms as essential structures of human experience, in Wittgensteinian terms as linguistic family resemblances linking disparate but overlapping particulars, in Whiteheadian terms as eternal objects and pure potentialities whose ingression informs the unfolding process of reality, or in Kuhnian terms as underlying paradigmatic structures that shape scientific understanding and research. Finally, with depth psychology, one can approach them in the Freudian mode as primordial instincts impelling and structuring biological and psychological processes, or in the Jungian manner as fundamental formal principles of the human psyche, universal expressions of a collective unconscious and, ultimately, of the unus mundus.

The Evolution of Human Consciousness

I bring this consideration of archetypes and the evolution of their meaning to the human experience of life on planet Earth forward for the overview it provides of the evolution of human consciousness and how we human beings viewed the larger cosmic context in which we live and have our being. For one thing, how we have desperately sought out God and our origins in the external world, hoping to find both “lo here or lo there.”  

Finally, after all these decades, our consciousness has evolved sufficiently to bring to our awareness the awakening realization that the “image and likeness of God” is within us and is who and what we are.  The Archetype of all archetypes is the Light from which all things are made. I love this passage from The Gospel of Thomas:

Jesus said: “The images are revealed to people. The light within them is hidden in the image of the Father’s light. He will be revealed. His image is hidden in the light. . . .  You are pleased when you see your own likeness. When you see your images that came into being before you did, immortal, invisible images, how much can you bear?” 

The Archetype of Man is God, is Spirit, and is hidden in the Light of Love. Our Sun is the origin of the light that encompasses Earth and all the planets. In that light is the essence, the Truth, that makes all things created what they are, what their purpose is in the larger Design, and how they function as integral and essential parts in the One Whole.  As the current planetary alignment draws to a close in six day on February 20th, let us let Love be the Archetypal Spirit that moves us forward as we co-create the New Earth.  

I will conclude this series with my next post. Until then,

Be Love. Be loved.

Happy Valentine’s Day !

Anthony

tpal70@gmail.com

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Archetypes, Astrology, Astronomy, Conscious Evolution, Cosmic events, Current cosmic event, Dr. Palombo's blog, Evolution, Finding God, Global Events, Love, Music of the Spheres, New Earth, Planetary Alignments, Solar System

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Astrology, Free Will and Determinism

“In my Father’s house are many mansions.”

I rarely ever read my horoscope in the daily newspaper. Born on the cusp of Taurus and Gemini, I’m usually undecided about which sign is more influential in my life. Most likely Gemini, as I tend to avoid making decisions and simply do what’s obviously needed in the moment.

In considering the astrological influences of zodiac signs and planetary alignments in our lives, the question naturally comes up as to how much control we have individually and collectively over our lives and the unfolding of global events. A friend recently responded to my previous post addressing this very question.  

When I consult someone regarding their astro-chart (which I do occasionally) I always preface what I say with advice that there is no ‘good’ or ‘bad’ astrological influence, although, through personal interpretation/judgement, such opinions are often made. I say things like, “You are the master of your own ship”. The focus on mastery/maturity allows for proper conscious behavior as these cosmic influences ebb and flow around our little ‘ship’ of being. Cymatics is an interesting subject in this respect which confirms that there are larger patterns within which we live and have our being. We don’t control the larger pattern of life, our sun/solar system/universe…we can only align with this reality, or continue to try resisting it, to our eventual demise! One wants to ‘go with the flow’ here…or expect a capsized/cataclysmic experience. — Donald White

Don echoes the words of the poem Invictus: 

“It matters not how strait the gate, how charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul.” 

Richard Tarnas bumps up against the issue of free will and determinism in his research into the history of planetary alignments and their impact on the human psyche, which he published in 2007 in his epic book COSMOS AND PSYCHE, Intimations of a New World View. I think he addresses the issue quite thoroughly: (Emphasis mine) 

Free Will and Determinism

Because the question of free will and determinism has long been the most exis­tentially and spiritually critical issue in all discussions of astrology, I will offer a few preliminary remarks here.

There is no question that a substantial part of the Western astrological tradi­tion supported a relatively deterministic interpretation of cosmic influence (a tendency even more marked in Indian astrology). For numerous schools and theo­rists of ancient and medieval astrology, the horoscope revealed a person’s destined fate, and the celestial powers governed human lives with a more or less rigid sovereignty. The widespread reemergence of Western astrology in the course of the twentieth century, however, arising in a new context and at a different stage in the West’s cultural and psychological evolution, brought with it a deeply trans­formed vision of both the human self and the nature of astrological prediction. The most characteristic attitude among contemporary astrologers holds astro­logical knowledge to be ultimately emancipatory rather than constricting, bring­ing a potential increase of personal freedom and fulfillment through an enlarged understanding of the self and its cosmic context.

In this view, knowing the basic archetypal dynamics and patterns of meaning in one’s birth chart allows one to bring greater awareness to the task of fulfilling one’s authentic nature and intrinsic potential, as in Jung’s concept of individua­tion. The more accurately one understands the archetypal forces that inform and affect one’s life, the more flexibly and intelligently responsive one can be in deal­ing with them. To the extent that one is unconscious of these potent and some­times highly problematic forces, one is more or less a pawn of the archetypes, acting according to unconscious motivations with little possibility of being a co­creative participant in the unfolding and refining of those potentials. Archetypal awareness brings greater self-awareness and thus greater personal autonomy. Again, this is the basic rationale for depth psychology, from Freud and Jung on­ward: to release oneself from the bondage of blind action and unconsciously mo­tivated experience, to recognize and explore the deeper forces in the human psyche and thereby modulate and transform them. On the individual level, as­trology is valued for its capacity to articulate which archetypes are especially im­portant for each person, how they interact with each other, and when they are most likely to be activated in the course of each life.

But in addition to the psychological evolution of the modern self with its in­creased sense of dynamic autonomy and self-reflective interiority, perhaps the most significant factor in the emerging emancipatory understanding of astrology is a deepening grasp of the nature of the archetypal principles themselves, the subject to which we now turn.

So, let’s have a brief look into the nature of archetypal principles—and the first thing to do is define what archetypes are. For that, we have Richard Tarnas to fill us in on the history of archetypes, at one point considered by the Greeks to be gods who populated an enchanted Universe. In other words immortals embodied by material forms, such as planets and constellations. In the more contemporary mind, the archetype is the prototype that informs things and events, the immanent “form” that makes things what they are and shapes their behavior.  Tarnas explains the concept within its historical context giving us a view into the evolution of the word “God.” (Emphasis mine)

Archetypal Principles

The concept of planetary archetypes, in many respects the pivotal concept of the emerging astrological paradigm, is complex and must be approached from several directions. Before describing the nature of the association between planets and archetypes, however, we must first address the general concept of archetypes and the remarkable evolution of the archetypal perspective in the history of Western thought.

The earliest form of the archetypal perspective, and in certain respects its deepest ground, is the primordial experience of the great gods and goddesses of the ancient mythic imagination. In this once universal mode of consciousness, memorably embodied at the dawn of Western culture in the Homeric epics and later in classical Greek drama, reality is understood to be pervaded and struc­tured by powerful numinous forces and presences that are rendered to the hu­man imagination as the divinized figures and narratives of ancient myth, often closely associated with the celestial bodies.

Yet our modern word god, or deity or divinity, does not accurately convey the lived meaning of these primordial powers for the archaic sensibility, a meaning that was sustained and developed in the Platonic understanding of the divine. This point was clearly articulated by W. K. C. Guthrie, drawing on a valuable distinction originally made by the German scholar Wilamowitz-Moellendorff.

Theos, the Greek word which we have in mind when we speak of Plato’s god, has primarily a predicative force. That is to say, the Greeks did not, as Christians or Jews do, first assert the existence of God and then pro­ceed to enumerate his attributes, saying “God is good,” “God is love”and so forth. Rather they were so impressed or awed by the things in life or nature remarkable either for joy or fear that they said “this is a god” or “that is a god.” The Christian says “God is love,” the Greek “Love is theos,” or “a god.” As another writer [G. M. A. Grube] has explained it:

“By saying that love, or victory, is god, or, to be more accurate, a god, was meant first and foremost that it is more than human, not subject to death, everlasting …. Any power, any force we see at work in the world, which is not born with us and will continue after we are gone could thus be called a god, and most of them were.”

In this state of mind, and with this sensitiveness to the superhuman character of many things which happen to us, and which give us, it may be, sudden stabs of joy or pain which we do not understand, a Greek poet could write lines like: “Recognition between friends is theos,” It is a state of mind which obviously has no small bearing on the much­ discussed question of monotheism or polytheism in Plato, if indeed it does not rob the question of meaning altogether.

In one perspective, “monotheism” and “polytheism” can be understood as one and the same reality. “Out of one many,” as we are reminded of this oneness on our currency by the words “E Pluribus Unum.” The Master Jesus stated this truth in his final words to his disciples before his departure: “In my Father’s house are many mansions.” Today we call these “mansions” levels of Consciousness.  Consciousness is, in reality, all there is. One Consciousness with many levels, or differentiations. Out of the One God spring many “gods,” or points of Light, focal points that differentiate the One Light of Love, of Truth and of Life.  And so, we have one Sun in our solar system that focuses the Light of the Galactic Center, which focuses the Light of the One Consciousness for creation in this corner of the Universe.  Is this differentiation perhaps the foundation upon which the concept of archetypes is based? 

This, in my view, is all indicative of the process underway of remembering the “Truth” that makes us free of our current limitations in consciousness and awareness.  We are remembering that we ourselves are focal points of the One Light of Love, of Truth and of Life. We are awakening to the larger cosmic context of our journey through time and space as angels, if you will, or gods, in our Father’s House of many mansions.

I will continue with this discussion in my next post. Until then, 

Be love. Be loved.

Anthony

tpal70@gmail.com

 

 

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Archetypes, Astrology, Conscious Evolution, Consciousness, Cosmic Consciousness, Dr. Palombo's blog, Mythology, Planetary Alignments, The Science of Mazzaroth

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“Cosmos And Psyche” page 3 . . . Mazzaroth and Original Man

“Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season?” (Job)

In this series I am exploring the heavens and cosmic influence of the stars and planets upon human consciousness and behavior, sharing excerpts from Richard Tarnas’s book COSMOS AND PSYCHE — Intimations of a New World View.  I must acknowledge that the current alignment of five planets is having a noticeable impact on my mental and emotional realms. I’ve been experiencing what I would describe as the “Job syndrome” of disillusionment and discouragement, along with a deep sadness about the human condition, globally and especially here in America where we are so divided. On the plus side, cosmic energy is greatly intensified, accelerating the rhythms of transformation and ascension of consciousness. This alignment will last until February 20, 2020, so hold on to your seat. 

The Book of Job has been my favorite Old Testament read.  At a hauntingly deep level, I identify with the story or Job. From what I was taught in Bible class many years ago, Job was not a single individual but rather a people, a remnant of the inhabitants of Eden, who, in spite of much tribulation after leaving Paradise, Job continued to call upon the Lord. When the Lord did finally answer Job, it was “out of the whirlwind,” and his answer was in the manner of a reproach to Job and his three friends after much complaining, useless advice and arguments had passed between them:

“Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me. Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hath understanding . . . Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened; or who laid the cornerstone thereof; When the morning stars sang together and the sons of God shouted for joy?” 

These questions have haunted me over the years — like we’re supposed to know the answers to them, and the many questions that follow in this encounter between Job and the Lord . . . such as:

“Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades or loose the bands of Orion? Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season? or canst thou guide Arcturus with his sons? Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven? canst thou set the dominion thereof in the earth?” (Job 38:31-33)

The cosmos holds much history for Man to remember.  Job is/we are being queried and challenged in this passage about things relating to stars and constellations in the heavens.  Arcturus, for example, is a giant red star that travels around in the Milky Way Galaxy and enters our immediate neighborhood every nine-hundred years. It’s presently in the constellation of Bootes. I think of Arcturus as being a giant tuning fork that goes around tuning up his countless suns in the galaxy, similar to the violin and oboe used to tune up the orchestra before a performance. The Music of the Spheres is kept in tune and on Tone by Arcturus — my thoughts only of course. 

I’ve recently learned that the Hebrew word for the Zodiac is Mazzaroth, the original divine science of what has devolved into modern-day astrology; and the constellations of the Pleiades and Orion, that play pivotal roles in the steadfast positioning of our solar system in the galaxy, exert a magnetic gravitational influence on our sun and the entire solar system. 

Then there are questions about the natural world over which Man was given dominion; about animals he actually named, even created. Apparently Job had forgotten his role in God’s Creation, which is Man’s creation as well, and he was being cajoled and pushed by the Lord to remember and reconnect with his origins and with the Creator. 

Man at one time knew and engaged the Science of Mazzaroth. I spell “Man” with a capital M for a reason. Original Man, made in the image and likeness of God, has long been absent from Paradise. What we are today, and who we are in outer form, is a remnant of Original Man now fallen from grace and stature, disconnected from Divine Consciousness and from the natural world, itself being in a fallen state.

However, these outer forms are not who we are.  They are but vehicles for our incarnation as divine beings — “sons of God” who once “shouted for joy” when the “morning stars sang together.” Original Man is a spiritual being, made in the image and likeness of God, who is a spirit. These earthen forms are, by design and function, temples for the presence of the Spirit of God on earth. They are not Man. Man is a spiritual entity who is embodied by the entire solar system, as I considered in a previous post.

There’s obviously a lot more to this scenario and Biblical story than what has been handed down to us. However, this is far too controversial a subject for a blog. Suffice it to say there is another story in Genesis not being told by our Biblical scholars, perhaps not even recognized.

Along this line of thought, I received an interesting letter in response to my last post from a friend and fellow wayfarer, Peter Watson. With his permission, I will share it here, as he articulates essences that preempted where I was headed in this series. So, without further introduction, here is Peter’s letter:

Dear Tony, it is indeed a great pleasure, and a privilege to read and resonate with the thoughts of others in agreement.

Having been hoodwinked by the subtlety of the trickster, (and seen how others are blindly led, by patriotism, to commit atrocities of war), a thoughtful person becomes wary of profiteering politicians with good intentions that defy the wise commandment to “love thy neighbor.” We are, after all, one race of people on one planet, sharing the same sacred blessing of one life.

How humanity became divided by the trickster is still undoubtedly a mystery, since so many otherwise decent young people are still easily led astray, to indulge in acts of violence, against neighbors they have never met, and would probably treat honorably as friendly guests in non-political and non-denominational encounters.

I’d venture to say it is the true nature of all people to be as little children in a school playground when first meeting others of different creeds and colours. What happens to trick people into thinking otherwise, and adopt fiendish attitudes, between the playground and the killing-fields should be exposed ASAP if humanity is to somehow avoid extinction by self-destruction.

Just think of the waste of time, energy, and material-resources that would be eliminated if the arms-race could be officially ended in a tie, leaving the fear-motivation to die!

We can pin-point that motivation, which so easily leads nice decent young people astray, to indulge in acts of violence against neighbors they have never met, by honestly seeing the point at which seeds of hatred originate. It is not at all hidden, and in plain view for everyone to see as and when we expose it to the light-of-truth. You’ve got it, if you’re on the same thought-wavelength; it’s the human heart, right at the centre of the emotional realm. And you’ve said it Tony, “We have ventured inward to explore the realm of spirit and consciousness, only to realize there’s an invisible One around which the Cosmos and all of Creation orbits—and the “ordinances of heaven” are being set in the earth by this One without our help or interference.”

This is certainly so at a microscopic level, on up through the mineral kingdom, and to some extent in the kingdom of vegetation, but above that, in the animal kingdom where many pedigree species survive by tooth and claw, the ordained reflection of the One-who-dwells – the creative-animator – our ordinances-of-heaven become blurred and eclipsed by human diversion.

Unbeknown to humanity-in-amnesia (and we shall need to look into the origin of that state at some point to see the past cause sustaining the ongoing low-consciousness syndrome), the purpose-of-consciousness, and indeed the purpose of the miraculous capacity of the human mind it encompasses, remain to be properly understood.

Job, as rightful representative of the remnant of man in his true stature, is asked several questions – relating to cosmic consciousness — which some theologists have assumed is God’s way of mocking and belittling mankind. And, where consciousness is at such a low ebb-and-flow, it’s an entirely logical and reasonable view of how far mankind has fallen, from the grace and stature of original man, male and female made in the image and likeness of God, to the warring creature who’s highest aspiration is a dust-to-dust reunion, and which apparently is all it merits since it insists upon riding the satanic merry-go-round (eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die), in the carnival-of-death.

That mortal material merry-go-round is an apt adage of the fallen state-of-consciousness, in which humanity worships it knows not what, instead of being in the peaceful and sweet creative consciousness of the One who dwells.

During the Golden Age of Man, prior to the initial disruption and the subsequent patterns of civilization attempting to be as God, and starting with an unordained garden eastwards in God’s Eden in which “there was not a man”, Man, male and female, shared the consciousness of God, knew the ordinances of heaven, and so of course set the dominion thereof in the earth, thus realizing and manifesting the will of God in heaven on earth, precisely as should and would occur if so-called Christians understood, and admitted into consciousness, the sacred meaning of the Lord’s Prayer.

Instead, religion and politics have been used to sow seeds of hatred rather than love, and science is devoted to exonerate, or at least mitigate, the unholy mess mankind thrives and dies in.

However seeds of hatred cannot originate in the heart unless they slyly slip by the unsuspecting and naive mind. Political and religious emotional manipulations are the two main tools in the armoury of the trickster.

“Why should we not also be conscious of a dynamic state of oneness between the human psyche and the cosmos?” Only due to non-participation in the way life works, as personified by the prophets, and of course demonstrated by man in his true stature during the Golden Age, before the imitation garden where the first labor-intensive slave was fashioned from the material-realm; much the same as modern labor-saving devices are manufactured, only the dust-of-the-ground creature was animated.

So, while the “ordinances-of-heaven” are being set in the earth (of our earth-forms, else we wouldn’t be here), it is despite human help or interference, whereas it would be so greatly enhanced and accelerated with our understanding cooperation, since that is, after all, the purpose of man. Surely this should focus our greatest endeavor at this particular time, when so much else is coming into the alignment of agreement in heaven on earth.

There’s much to explore and develop further here, and I won’t go there at this time. I do wish to emphasize the temporary nature of the human condition. “This, too, shall pass.” I feel that we are headed toward another Golden Age here on planet Earth. In my next post, I will share my thoughts on how the influence of planetary alignments work to draw forth archetypal patterns of behavior from within the human psyche to move the cycles of transformation and evolution forward. So, stay tuned. Until then,

Be love. Be loved.

Anthony 

tpal70@gmail.com

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“Cosmos and Psyche” page 2: Enchanted Universe

“Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven? Canst thou set the dominion thereof in the earth?” (Job 38:33)

I enjoy reading books whose authors agree with my way of thinking and resonate with my depth of knowing. Don’t we all? COSMOS AND PSYCHE, authored by Richard Tarnas, is such a book whose author I’ve come to know and regard as a soul brother and kindred spirit. Although he uses large words and long sentences at times, his spirit flows through the lines and between the pages with unfettered authenticity.  He is a joy to read, and I am happy to share that joy here,

AN ENCHANTED UNIVERSE

There was a time when the cosmos was an enchanted world of mythological characters and soulful presence with which human beings enjoyed an intimate relationship and worshipful communion. The “primal mind” this author ascribes to the Greeks, for instance, knew the cosmos as having a soul. That all shifted with the emergence of the “modern mind” which stripped the cosmos of soul and created a cosmology of  a “disenchanted” universe of lifeless matter, as though Earth were the only planet capable of supporting life.  What ignorance and darkened understanding to limit the vital creative energy of Life to organic matter. Life is everywhere and in all things, organic and inorganic!

Here’s an excerpt from the summary chapter of Tanas’s “epoch making” book that speaks to this evolution of our world view.  In this summation, he addresses the issue of coincidences within the context of accumulated data on the compelling evidence of synchronous events in the heavens with unfolding life experiences on earth, along with his own conviction of a “cosmic ordering principle” governed by a “complex creative intelligence.”

Sources of the World Order

In every field of inquiry, an adequate paradigm reveals patterns of coherent relations in what are otherwise inexplicable random coincidences. A good theory makes observed patterns intelligible. As the physicist and philosopher of science P. W. Bridgman famously observed, “coincidences” are what are left over after one has applied a bad theory. In the course of the three decades during which I have examined  correlations between planetary movements and the patterns of human affairs, I found there were simply too many such “coincidences” evident in the data, which were too consistently coherent with the corresponding archetypal principles, and too strongly suggestive of the workings of some form of complex creative intelligence, to assume that they were all meaningless chance anomalies. Plato’s words from his final dialogue, the Laws, when he criticized the disenchanted mechanistic cosmology of the physicists and Sophist philosophers of the preceding century, now seemed to me uncannily prophetic.

The truth is just the opposite of the opinion which once prevailed among men, that the sun and stars are without soul. . . . For in that shortsighted view, the entire moving contents of the heavens seemed to them only stones, earth, and other soulless bodies, though these furnish the sources of the world order.

Yet the data that has now emerged suggests that what Plato called the “world order” is of a special kind. The evidence points to a cosmic ordering principle whose combination of participatory co-creativity, multivalent complexity, and dynamic indeterminacy was not entirely comprehensible to the ancient vision, even a vision as intricate and penetrating as Plato’s. The relationship between the unfolding realities of human life and a dynamic archetypal order reflected in the planetary movements appears to be more fluid and complex, more creatively unpredictable, and more responsive to human intention and quality of consciousness or unconsciousness than was articulated in the classical tradition.

One important task before us, therefore, is to understand the long development that separates Plato’s vision of an archetypal participatory cosmos from our own. Another is to grasp how the nearly pervasive astrological cosmology of classical antiquity, after deeply influencing the medieval and Renaissance imagination, gradually receded in cultural significance and intellectual legitimacy until it came to appear utterly untenable to the modern mind. Yet another task is to seek insight into why it has reemerged in our own time, radically transfigured. Running through all these questions, I believe, is the great mystery of the unfolding Copernican revolution, which seems to have played the role of cosmological vessel and mediator of a vast initiatory process in the evolution of the modern self.

It was Copernicus in 1543 who proposed a heliocentric model of the solar system, positioning the sun near the center of the then known Universe, motionless, with Earth and the other planets orbiting around it in circular paths. It’s an indictment on the human mind’s myopic and self-centered view of the Universe that less than 500 years ago, a cosmic fraction of a second, we thought the sun and all the planets orbited around us here on Earth.

I would say the human race has emerged from Plato’s “cave” and into the light of day. Since discovering the vastness of the macrocosm, and the bottomless microcosm, we have ventured inward to explore the realm of spirit and consciousness, only to realize there’s an invisible One around which the Cosmos and all of Creation orbits—and the “ordinances of heaven” are being set in the earth by this One without our help or interference. 

Tarnas concludes his findings: 

The current body of accumulated data makes it difficult to sustain the modern assumption that the universe as a whole is best understood as a blind, mechanistic phenomenon of ultimately random processes with which human consciousness is fundamentally incoherent, and in which the Earth and human beings are ultimately peripheral and insignificant. The evidence suggests rather that the cosmos is intrinsically meaningful to and coherent with human consciousness; that the Earth is a significant focal point of this meaning, a moving center of cosmic meaning in an evolving universe, as is each individual human being; that time is not only quantitative but qualitative in character, and that dif­ferent periods of time are informed by tangibly different archetypal dynamics; and, finally, that the cosmos as a living whole appears to be informed by some kind of pervasive creative intelligence—an intelligence, judging by the data, of scarcely conceivable power, complexity, and aesthetic subtlety, yet one with which human intelligence is intimately connected, and in which it can consciously participate. I believe that a widespread understanding of the potent but usually unconscious archetypal dynamics that coincide with planetary cycles and alignments, both in individual lives and in the historical process, can play a crucial role in the positive unfolding of our collective future….

….I have found the archetypal astrological perspective, properly understood, to be uniquely capable of illuminating the inner dynamics of both cultural history and personal biography. It provides extraordinary insight into the deeper shifting patterns of the human psyche, both individual and collective, and into the complexly participatory nature of human reality. It places the modern mind and the modern self in an altogether new light, radically recontextualizing the modern project. Perhaps most important, it promises to contribute to the emergence of a new, genuinely integral world view, one that, while sustaining the irreplaceable insights and achievements of the modern and postmodern development, can reunite the human and the cosmic, and restore transcendent meaning to both.

The oneness of Heaven and Earth is pretty much a given in today’s modern mind that has been awakened to the reality of a multi-dimensional world. Why should we not also be conscious of a dynamic state of oneness between the human psyche and the cosmos?

Since Richard Tarnas published his research in 2007, there’s been a radical shift in our understanding and experience of the oneness of the New Heaven and the emerging New Earth. We have experienced an exponential ascension of human consciousness in the last decade.  And now, with five planets aligning with the earth this month and through February 20, further transformation and awareness are being given an energetic launch into the new decade.

Will we see a Golden Age dawn in the twenty-first century? Not unless and until we include the natural world in it; a world both above us in the heavens and below us in the earth from which we have divorced ourselves. 

“THE WORLD WE STILL HAVE”

I would like to share an excerpt from the SUN of December, 2019, which features a candid and insightful interview by Fred Bahnson with Oregonian “nature writer” Barry Lopez. The title of the article speaks for the essence of the interview: “THE WORLD WE STILL HAVE — Barry Lopez on restoring our lost intimacy with Nature.” His compassion and empathy are inspiring.  

Bahnson: What is it that is looking back at us through the eyes of a wolf, or from a particular landscape? Some would name that God, or some other word for the Divine. How would you name that?

Lopez: I would say it’s an encounter between the two sides of a lopsided divorce. It’s a breach, you know. The agri­cultural revolution was a breach, a divorce. The industrial revolution was a worse breach. The surrounding material world was relegated, in both these instances, to the position of an employee, even a slave; a source of entertainment; a storehouse for natural resources. When wild animals look back at you, I can imagine what they might be thinking if your defense for the massive changes you’ve engineered in their world, and are responsible for, is “But look at this beautiful world we’ve built.” Many divorces are character­ized by incredibly lopsided thinking and misapprehension. I believe one of the reasons our lives are so difficult today is because of the separation from the rest of the natural world that we’ve insisted on having, our insistence on the primacy of human life. Human history, you know, is but one dimension of natural history. It’s not the other way around.

If you can imagine a divorce in which only one mem­ber of the dyad — modern humanity — made the decision to create a breach, and then enforced it, you can begin to understand what the growing malaise in human culture is about. It occurs to humanity that it has lost its spouse. That’s metaphorical, of course. But if you imagine what happens when divorce is forced on just one person, then you can begin to understand why traditional people are reluctant to make that same adjustment. They don’t want the breach. They see the destructive injustice. Why accept a separation from all the rest of creation? Everybody I spoke with in villages across the Arctic in the seventies and eighties, when I asked them to offer me adjectives for people in my culture, the one word I heard repeatedly was lonely. They see us as deeply lonely people — and one of the reasons we’re lonely, if you agree with that, is that we’ve cut ourselves off from the nonhuman world, and have called this “progress.”

Bahnson: So perhaps those moments of numinous encounter are really moments of regrounding ourselves in reality?

Lopez: Yeah, reconnection. It’s reconnection. And this brings us around to the issue of memory. I recall every day the moments of primal contact I’ve experienced with the nonhuman world — with pronghorn antelope and wild salmon and scarlet tanagers — and with the nonhuman world’s most intimate and knowledgeable interpreters: indigenous people. The memories regenerate me; they
boost my desire to try to work in my writing as a media­tor of some sort between the dehumanized natural world and my own acquisitive culture.

Bahnson: What, specifically, are those moments of primal contact?

Lopez: They’re private moments of animated contact with the world outside the human. Watching animals, just sitting with a friend and watching animals for a long time, not saying much. I think of those moments at Lake Clif­ton in Australia that I describe in Horizon: standing out there on the boardwalk with two friends, drinking it in. Or in Antarctica, at Cape Crozier, watching the emperor penguins. It’s not about interpreting or “figuring out” what these wild animals are doing. You just give in to the spectacle. You become a participant.

Can we save the world we still have? Watching Saturday morning “Nature” programs almost every weekend on PBS, I see many incidences of intimate human contact with the wild kingdoms. It’s encouraging, to say the least, and very heart warming. It causes me to believe that we can do this. We must do it.

 Until my next post,

Be love. Be loved,

Anthony

tpal70@gmail.com   

 

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The Hero’s Journey, part 2 : The Quest, page 2, The Rainbow Body

My Chorale PicI just received copies of the third edition of Sacred Anatomy from the publisher and it looks and feels great in soft cover. This also allows me to reduce the price from $35 to $25.  I did add a description of the “Rainbow Body” to the last chapter of the book “Patterns of Ascension Established” as a way of updating with more current research on the topic of transformation and transmutation of the physical body. I will use this post to share that additional piece with my readers, especially those of you who have earlier editions of my book.  

This excerpt fits perfectly with the current series theme of “The Hero’s Journey” and the Quest for the Elixir of Immortality.  After all, what we all long for is a life without the pains and sufferings of the present human state — joy and life eternal. It appears that the design for such a life is gradually coming back into place as cosmic factors line up around the dawning design of the “New Heaven and New Earth.”  We are moving through a fourth dimensional shift with our planet. More on this in my next post. For now, consider this excerpt as providing a clue for what we’re all in for over the next relatively brief period of time as we know it. Even time and our experience of time will change drastically as we return to a “time when time was not”– a topic recently aired in an LPB television program “How We Got to Now.”  

Here’s the excerpt from Sacred Anatomy.

The “Rainbow Body”

“Tibetan Buddhists practice the “Rainbow Body,” the apparent dematerialization and transmutation of the physical body. The practice may be spread out over many years of meditation until the actual transfiguration is achieved — although more as a gift of spirit than an achievement of mental effort.  A Biblical passage tells of a “tranfiguration” of Jesus wherein he appeared in a glorious form with Moses and Elijah in the presence of three of his disciples, and another of his glorified body being resurrected from the grave.  What follows here may give up some inkling of the potential inherent in our own sacred anatomy.

The Sufi call it “the most sacred body” and the “supracelestial body.”  Taoists call it “the diamond body,” and those who have attained it are called “the immortals” and “the cloud walkers.”   In various other traditions it is called by such descriptive names as “the divine body” (Trantric yoga), “the body of bliss” (Kriya yoga), “the superconductive body” (Zoroastrian Vendanta), “the luminous body or being” (ancient Egypt), “the radiant body” (Gnosticism), “the perfect body” (Mithraic liturgy), “the immortal body” (Hermetic Corpus), and “the Golden Body” (Emerald Tablets of the alchemical tradition).

Here is a description of the process taken from Dream Yoga and the Practice of Natural Light by Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche and reprinted in David Wilcock’s book, The Source Field Investigations.

This is one of many depictions of the Rainbow Body from Tibet:

Body of Light: Tibetan, ja-lus.  Also known as the “rainbow body.”  Certain realized beings . . . achieve the transformation of their ordinary bodies into a Body of Light. . . . In this process the physical body dissolves into its natural state, which is that of Clear Light.  As the elements of the body are purified, they transform from their gross manifestation (body, flesh, bones, etc.) into their pure essence as the five colors: blue, green, white, red and golden yellow.  As the body dissolves into these five colors a rainbow is formed, and all that remains of the physical body are fingernails and hair. . . .

Over 160,000 documented cases of the Rainbow Body have occurred in Tibet and China alone.  David Wilcock cites a most extraordinary event that took place in Kham, a small village in Tibet, in 1998, when a Gelugpa monk, Khenpo A-chos, died leaving nothing of his earthly form behind.  He was described as having . . .

. . . a warm, spiritual nature that touched everyone he met. . . . he often spoke of the importance of cultivating compassion. He had the ability to teach even the roughest and toughest of types how to be a little gentler, a little more mindful. . . . The witnesses reported a rainbow appearing over Khenpo A-chos’s hut a few days before he died, and that “dozens of rainbows appeared in the sky afterward.  He was not sick and nothing appeared to be wrong with him — he simply chanted a mantra.

According to the eyewitnesses, after his breath stopped his flesh became kind of pinkish. One person said it turned brilliant white. All said it started to shine. Lama A-chos suggested wrapping his friend’s body in a yellow robe, the type all Gelug monks wear. As the days passed, they maintained they could see, through the robe, that his bones and his body were shrinking. They also heard beautiful, mysterious music coming from the sky, and they smelled perfume. After seven days, they removed the yellow cloth, and no body remained. Lama Norta and a few other individuals claimed that after his death Khenpo A-chos appeared to them in visions and dreams … Lama A-chos told Tiso that it takes sixty years of intensive practice to achieve the rainbow body. “Whether it always takes that long, I don’t know,” acknowledges Tiso, “but we would like to be able to incorporate, in a respectful way, some of these practices into our own Western philosophical and religious traditions.” … To our knowledge, says Tiso, the bodies of most Christian saints did not disappear or shrink after their deaths …. However, he adds, bodily ascensions are mentioned in the Bible and other traditional texts for Enoch, Mary, Elijah, and possibly Moses. And there are numerous stories of saints materializing after their death, similar to the widespread phenomenon known as the “light- body. 

As I say, time was when we could “fly beyond the rainbow.”  There was a design in place for such spirit and soul travel. That design was lost, along with the Garden State, and had not been present on earth for many thousands of years when the Lord of Love incarnated on Earth. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it was human consciousness that got lost. The design did not go anywhere but was taken away for a season until such time that the Sons and Daughters of God would again emerge on Earth through the sons and daughters of Man.  That time came with the incarnation of the Lord of Love.” (Sacred Anatomy)

The Quest for the Elixir of Immortality has not been without hurdles and challenges to overcome. Immortality itself has been withheld from human experience as some kind of “reward” in the “hereafter” for being “good” and compliant with religious dogma and moral behavior. Religion itself has been the nemesis hiding the Elixir of Immortality from naive and slumbering mortals.   The promise of eternal life has been used to establish and maintain the biggest and most profitable business of modern times — second only perhaps to the medical and insurance industries.  Notice how all three are founded on the concept that we are merely human — mortals that need costly crutches to help us through this “vale of tears” to the other side of the “valley of the shadow of death.” The letter of the law has killed believers’ hopes  for and dreams of a return of Paradise here and now. You have to die to get there, according to the beliefs and doctrines of all the major religions. Tibetan Buddhism may be the only exception.  

In spite of those beliefs and doctrines, a “Golden Age” is scheduled to return on time in accordance with the “cosmic clock” that ticks away the ever recurring cycles of evolution and natural ascension. All things created rise to return to their Creator and origins. Even sound returns to the Silence that gave it utterance.  We will continue along this line in my next post. Until then, 

Be love. Be loved.

Anthony

Read my Health Light Newsletter online at LiftingTones.com.  The current issue features “Don’t Trade Perfect Love for Ebola Fear.” 

Category:

Apocalypse of Light, Archetypes, Ascension, Cosmic events, Dark Night of the Soul, Divine identity, Energy anatomy, Evolution, Fourth Density, Frequency Shifting, Global Events, Golden Age, Mythology, Sacred Anatomy, The Body Electric, The Hero's Journey, The Nemesis, The Quest, Transformation, Transmutation

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The “Hero’s Journey,” part 1: The Story

My Chorale Pic

“THE HERO AND HIS STORY”

I am into my second reading of David Wilcock’s timely book, “THE SYNCHRONICITY KEY – The Hidden Intelligence Guiding the Universe and You.” Chapter nine has captivated my curiosity about how novels and scripts for movies are written. So I thought it would be fun, even insightful, to blog on the topic, which is actually quite fascinating.  I’ll just jump right into the middle of the chapter. But first a little background might be helpful.

The phrase “The Hero’s Journey” was coined by Joseph Campbell in his comparative mythology study, which he published in 1949 in the form of his world classic scholarly work The Hero with a Thousand Faces. In it Campbell explores and analyses myths from all over the world, in all different time periods, and finds that they have remarkable similarities to one another. He calls the overall story “The Hero’s Journey.” Wilcock describes the journey:

It’s how we work through our fears, our weaknesses, our limitations—each and every day. It is ultimately the blueprint of our evolution—and the path to a Golden Age. Anyone who writes an engaging, believable screenplay is tapping into the Hero’s Journey story structure, whether they realize it or not. Those who are aware of it have a much better chance of success. . . . Campbell drew heavily on the legendary work of Dr. Carl Jung, who found that these various ancient myths keep repeating in our dreams with certain ongoing themes he called archetypes. 

And that’s a whole other topic which I may explore at a latter date.  But for now . . .

ON TO THE MOVIES

Every successful Hollywood movie story line follows what is well known by all play-wrights – who want their stories to find favor with their intended audiences – as “the structure.” The structure unravels the story between three acts: beginning, middle and ending. The basic “structure” was first spelled out by Aristotle.  The theme of the structure is the telling and retelling of the story of “The Hero’s Journey,” and it is divided into four parts: 1) The hero’s quest, 2) The hero’s initiation in the quest, 3) Facing and defeating the nemesis, which typically leads to the “dark night of the soul” when all is lost, and 4) The final showdown and triumph over the nemesis, and the seizing of the “Elixir of Immortality,” the prize and goal sought in the hero’s quest.

At least this is how movies with happy endings usually go.  There are some “dark” movies where the hero is defeated by the nemesis and often dies. An outstanding example is the bloody comedy “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street”— which we watched last night as a live performance by the New York Philharmonic from Lincoln Center of Stephen Sondheim’s musical masterpiece staring Emma Thompson and Bryn Terfel. The movie version features Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter in the leading roles.  

The setting is 1831 London and the story is about a skilled barber and alleged serial killer named Benjamin Barker who is falsely charged and sentenced to penal transportation from London by the corrupt Judge Turpin.  Judge Turpin seizes Barker’s wife Lucy  for himself and rapes her.  Lucy, who is said to have poisoned herself, shows up in the drama as an old beggar woman. Judge Turpin takes their daughter, Johanna, as his ward and raises her as his own.  

Fifteen years later, Barker returns to London under the alias Sweeney Todd, sets up a barber shop above a meat-pie shop on Fleet Street owned and operated by Mrs. Nellie Lovett. The two concoct a sordid business in which Sweeney Todd murders his customers in a twisted mission to rid the world of useless human beings and drops their corpses down into Mrs. Lovett’s shop, who then processes them into meat pies. His primary quest focuses on avenging himself against Judge Turpin by luring him into his shop for a “shave.” His second goal is to get his daughter back.  

As the complex plot unravels and thickens, Sweeney Todd does finally have his opportunity to avenge himself by slitting Judge Turpin’s throat in a bloody scene in his barber shop upon his fancy new barber’s chair.  So, our hero does achieve his quest. However, the story takes a dark twist and turn when Sweeney Todd realizes he has also slain his “beautiful” Lucy, after the old beggar woman (Lucy) recognizes his familiar face.  Fearing she might blow his cover and announce his return to the village, Sweeney Todd slits her throat as well not knowing it is his Lucy he has slain.  Studying her face more closely and realizing his horrible mistaken deed, he presents his own throat to Nellie Lovett’s meat pie shop-boy, who has by now discovered the dastardly business at which he has been employed. 

In the grand and gory finale, the boy takes Sweeney’s silver razor in hand and ends the demon barber’s ill-intended quest and miserable life.  The hero is defeated by his own nemesis and, of course, fails to achieve the “elixir of immortality.”

(Although the story itself — which may have some basis in legend*– is now immortalized by Stephen Sondheim. Just as a side note, I am intrigued by, and somewhat concerned about, what archetypes in my own heredity makeup find this movie entertaining. And that goes for all movies and novels I seem to enjoy. Hmm.) 

THE NEMESIS OFTEN MIRRORS THE HERO

The lighter movies typically have a sweet ending where the hero triumphs and wins the prize at the end, usually in the form of riding off into the sunset with the beautiful woman, for whom he had to slay a dragon–usually the nemesis of the shadow of his own character flaw, often reflected back to him in the “bad guy” who stands in the way of achieving his quest.  The hero’s nemesis is often mirrored by the villain in movies and novels. 

The hero, of course, is sometimes a woman, as in “Gone With the Wind” — celebrating its 75th anniversary today. This movie is somewhat complex, however, having both failure and victory in the story line. Whereas Rhett Butler (Clark Gable) fails in his quest to tame Scarlett O’Hara (Vivien Leigh) for himself, Scarlet emerges as the hero of the story who has to face her own nemesis: her self-centered, spoiled female ego. Her quest is to find her man, whom she singles out in Ashley Wilkes (Leslie Howard), who marries Melanie Hamilton (Olivia de Havilland), a generous and kind woman with a compassionate and understanding heart.  When that quest proves unobtainable, Scarlett turns her quest toward her beloved plantation home Tara.

Act I: In her futile struggle  with her nemesis, Scarlet  loses everything as Tara is pillaged by the Civil War and her father dies in a fall from his horse while pursuing a thieving renegade, leaving her with nothing but the land and in a pitiful state of having to scrounge for food and tax money to keep Kara from falling into the hands of the carpetbaggers.  Scarlet has her dark night of the soul, swearing to heaven above that she “will never be hungry again!”  (Intermission)

Act II: During her dark-night-of-the-soul experience, Scarlet remembers what her father had taught her about the land being the most valuable thing in life to possess and cherish. The land, then, on which Scarlet’s beloved Tara sits—restored  to its former elegance with wealth she acquired by marrying Mr. Kennedy right from under of her sister’s nose—becomes a substitute elixir of immortality our hero literally and selfishly seizes in the second act of the movie. The genuine elixir that would fulfill her soul’s quest is the freedom to be her real Self in the wake of the demise of her nemesis, her false human ego.

Act III: Scarlet and Rhett, deserving one another, finally tie the knot and bring a daughter, Bonnie, into their lives, whom her father spoils and treats like a princess, buying her a pony as a final measure of his love and devotion, much against her mother’s wishes.  In the end, Rhett is driven away from Scarlet after they lose Bonnie, who falls off her pony in the shadow of her grandfather’s fateful end, a tragedy Scarlet feared would happen and for which she severely blamed Rhett. This final blow led to their alienation and ultimate and dramatic separation from one another.  Rhett returns to Scarlett, as he frequently does throughout the movie, only to be finally convinced of her incorrigibility.

Grand Finale: Neither of our would-be heroes defeat their nemesis, however, which is mirrored back to them each by the other. This failure turns this world-classic into a modern-day tragedy with Rhett closing the front door of Tara in Scarlet’s face, not giving “a damn” what she does with her miserable life, and Scarlet remains unredeemed from and defeated by her nemesis. Rather than facing her dilemma with Rhett – whom she realizes she has come to truly love – and letting her self-centered ego take a back seat to what had become really important to her, she chooses the path of least resistance by putting off the would-be victory with the classic line “There’s always tomorrow,” a sad but realistic ending for a much loved movie – which in itself makes a statement about the human drama.

 All of it is the complex and sometimes frustrating story of the hero’s journey, a story we all apparently love and live to hear told over and over again in movies and novels, and for one reason only: it is the story of our very own lives.  Even larger than that, it is the story of a nation, a people, and the evolution of the human race itself – all of which we will explore in this series.  

The questions I would pose, then, and leave you to ponder, are: With whom do you most identify in the two stories I’ve cited? Do you see your own hero’s journey playing out?  And where are you in your journey? Let’s take each act and part of the hero’s journey and explore where we are in it, as individuals, as a nation, and as a collective body of humanity.

We’ll start with THE QUEST in my next post .  This will give you time to mull over these stories and reflect on your own hero’s journey.  Until then,

Be love. Be loved.

Anthony

Read my Health Light Newsletter on line at LiftingTones.com. The feature article is “Your Lab Numbers Do Not Measure Your Health.”  As always, your comments are most welcome. Thanks for reading and following my blogs.

* The original story of Sweeney Todd was quite possibly based on an older urban legend that found its way into Charles Dickens’ Pickwick Papers (1836–37).  Dickens tells how “the servant Sam Weller says that a pieman used cats ‘for beefsteak, veal and kidney, ‘cording to the deman’, and recommends that people should buy pies only ‘when you know the lady that made it, and is quite sure it ain’t kitten.’” (Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweeney_Todd )

 

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Archetypes, Dark Night of the Soul, David Wilcock, Mythology, The Hero's Journey, The Nemesis, The Quest, The Synchronicity Key

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