Taking Pleasure in The Turning Wheel

I've been thinking a lot about 'pleasure' this month - seems appropriate as we are in the Sagittarius phase, which has plenty to do with loosening up and having a good time. I've been reflecting upon just how much pleasure I have derived from my experiential encounters with the astrological wheel over the years - my deepening awarness of, and rootedness in the wheel. It's a learning journey that can never be exhausted, just revealing more and more layers of depth and subtlety - and with it, ever greater possibilities to simply enjoy the transformational ride!

The 16th century German mystic Jakob Boehme said: "The essence of God is like a wheel...the more one beholds the wheel, the more one learns about its shape, and the more one learns, the greater pleasure one has in the wheel." I've spend a lot of time contemplating this quote and the more I work experientially with the astrological wheel and with the wheel of the year, and the seasonal transformation it relates to, so it continues to reveal even more profound layers of meaning. The "wheel that turns" is a common motif in many traditions. In Buddhism, it is most often related as the wheel of samsara into which the immortal soul incarnates to experience the transformational cycle of birth, desire, suffering, death and re-birth. It is the wheel of karma, where we experience ourselves "in the world", the aim being to find balance or peace, to become aware of the turning wheel of samsara that we are bound within, and, in doing so, free ourselves from suffering. The wheel of samsara reflects, of course, the turning wheel of the year through the seasons, Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter, and then relates this directly to the human experience.

The Still Point at the Centre

One of the primary features of a turning wheel is that it has a point at its centre that remains still - yet is the fulcrum point from which all the energy from the turning wheel emanates. I have come to equate this still point at the centre of the wheel as the point of awareness, where we are aware of the turning around us, yet, as we hold our presence at the centre, can remain unmoved by it. In the Samsara model, I equate this point with an experience of nirvana, an experience of simply being, that we access through the stilling of the mind. The more able we are to access the stillness at the centre of the turning of the wheel, the more able we are to move back out into the wheel and simply enjoy its turning for what it is. If we are not practised in accessing this centre, then we will tend to experience the wheel as dangerous, frightening, and its inevitable turning as something to be fought against and resisted. As Boehme says, the more we learn about the wheel and how it functions, the more awareness of the cyclical nature of life's wheel and its irresistible turning, the more pleasure we can have in that wheel and so we can become free of suffering. This, for me, is that heart of true alchemy, as I believe it is the heart of all true spiritual practice.

The Zodiacal Dance

Ten days ago, Anthony Thorley and myself ran a weekend introduction to The Alchemical Journey in Glastonbury, called "Awaken the Alchemist Within". It was a magical weekend with huge amounts of learning all round - and as I have reflected upon it, so many insights have been dropping - like golden raindrops! The weekend was based upon an experiential journey around the whole wheel of the year - through each one of the 12 signs of the zodiac. We did this primarily through music and movement, envisoning our playspace (the upstairs room at Glastonbury Conservative Club!) as that ever-turning wheel with the still point marked at its centre. And so, on the Saturday, we danced our way around the wheel from Aries to Pisces, responding to music and visual cues that resonated with each zodiac sign and each of the 12 stages within the annual seasonal round. We began our journey by focussing at the centre of the wheel, and after we had experienced fully the energy of each zodiac sign, we returned to the centre, consciously releasing our involvement with the energy of each sign. By following this structure each time, we were able to realise deeper and deeper within our embodied experience, how, no matter how far we have abandoned ourselves to each stage of the unfolding drama, we can always return to that still place of awareness at the centres. Indeed, what we all found was that the more we rooted our experience in that centre point, the better able I think we became to consciouly abandon ourselves to the dynamics of each sign, dancing ever more passionately, whether to the bright harmonies of Libra, the discordant rhythms of Scorpio, or the off-the-wall jazz beats of Aquarius. I would say that the more connected we became with the centre, the more pleasure we we were able to experience in the wheel.

The Sagittarian Finger That Points to The Centre of the Wheel

On the Sunday of our workshop, we focussed on the sign of Sagittarius and the day culminated in Anthony guiding us on an extraordinary walk around the figure of Sagittarius in the Glastonbury landscape zodiac, a series of 12 figures stretching out across 10 miles of the Somerset Levels- marked out by rivers, roads and field boundaries, and identified by artist Catherine Maltwood in the 1920s, and ever since linked with and identified Arthur's knights of the round table - the round table being the reflected in the perfectly flat landscape of the Somerset levels, in which these figures are found. The Sagittarius is by far the largest of the 12 figures, rather unsurprisingly perhaps for this larger-than-life, Jupiter-ruled sign. Depicting a centaur (or else rider and horse), this figure has been indentified as Arthur himself and all sorts of clues in the landscape features and place names suggest some kind of shamanic-healer figure, not unlike Chiron, the mythological shaman-centaur of Greek mythology. The arm of the Sagittarian figure reaches deep into the heart of the zodiac and his finger almost touches the very centre point of the wheel. This point is marked in the landscape by a dense and rarely visited wood, called Park Wood. We ventured into this wood on the Sunday afternoon and stood around a particular tree at the centre point of the zodiac. It was an extraordinary experience and I personally felt the most incredible sense of peace and stillness there. Again, an embodied recognition of the power of the still centre. It was our starting point for the ritual journey around the profile of Arthur / Sagittarius that was to follow. Having stilled ourselves, we were ready to venture out into the fiery energy of the Sagittarian figure - better able I believe to really abandon ourselves to the pleasures of walking in the wheel.

These are my reflections for now on this experience. I will perhaps add more to them over the coming months. I really welcome any comments and feedback. You can respond by clicking the 'comments' link below.

Visit www.thealchemicaljourney.com for more information about The Alchemical Journey - and come on board for the ride of your life!

all good wishes

John x

The Alchemy of Sagittarius - A Time to Rekindle The Inner Fire

People often ask me why the hot and fiery sign of Sagittarius should appear in the wheel of the year just as we start pulling on the winter woollies and getting our wood stocks in for the winter. It might be easier to understand the seasonal association of Aries with its spring burst of life and Leo appearing in the heat of summer. Sagittarius, it would seem expresses the energy in a slightly more subtle way (that said, Sagittarians are not exactly renowned for their subtlety!).

I have come to understand the Sagittarian turn of the wheel through an understanding of the Christian festival of advent and its pagan predecessor. During Scorpio, we experienced the cycle of decay and "rotting down". If we are honouring the wheel, then we have, symbolically, "buried our dead" in Scorpio, and let go of that which can no longer be sustained on this turning of the wheel. Around the time we enter Sagittarius, nature begins to turn its attention away from death and toward the possibility of new life rising again - even though we don't see it so obviously, it is happening within the soil and within the plants and trees themselves, as elements recombine to warm and protect the seeds of life to allow a new cycle of gestation to begin. As humans, I believe we pick this up psychically, and experience this phase this of the year as the beginning of a new gestation cycle, as we turn our attention turns toward a time when the Sun or "saviour" will be born anew. The Christian festival of advent anticipates the birth of Christ, and celebrates the new hope that will bring. It's interesting to note that this seems to be marked also in the Chinese Taiji wheel, where receptive yin energy has reached its most saturated point (in the cycle corresponding to Scorpio) and, more-or-less as we enter Sagittarius creative yang energy is simultaneously being re-conceived.

Personally, I sense the alchemy of Sagittarius re-opening my heart, releasing my spirit and offering me the freedom to dream a new dream. It seems right to turn my thoughts to the future and celebrate that immortal, spiritual part of me which I know survives death (this is something I believe we all know intuitively, even if we have learned to doubt it). This inspirational fire is essential, I believe, to lift us free of our material attachments, and, like the phoenix rising out of the ashes, it can re-inspire our creative impulse, stretch our minds and open up new worlds of possibility.

I see Sagittarius as a time for contemplation and wonder, a time for sacred journeying and the potential revelation of a divine connection. As the archer takes aim and fires his arrow toward the far horizon, so might we naturally look to the stars for guidance, just as the three wise astrologers did as they followed the star in the east that led them to that much fabled manger in Bethlehem.

On The Alchemical Journey programme this month we are seeking to expand our perspectives and explore the bigger picture of our lives, ritually journeying into a future of our own intentional creation. We are exploring our relationship to God, the Universe, Allah, Great Spirit (or whatever name we choose) and questioning what we mean when we use these terms. Having confronted our shadows in Scorpio, visited the underworld and offered the ferryman his toll, it is time for us to regain our wings and take shamanic flight, prepare to meet our spirit guide and ready ourselves for initiation at the winter solstice in the next sign of Capricorn.

This cycle marks a time of the year when you we are likely to be more responsive to dreams and visions, new ideas and possibilities for the future. It is time to wonder, to contemplate the deeper mysteries of life; to broaden our horizons and adventure into the unknown. It is to laugh and be merry, to let our hair down and have a good time.

So here are some things you might want to try as a way for getting the most out of the Sagittarius cycle:

1. Keep a Dream Journal by your bed - and write down whatever you remember as soon as you wake up and pay attention to symbols.
2. Create a Vision Board - Think about the bigger picture of your life and imagine the things you like to draw into your life. Then find images to represent this. You can do this by cutting pictures out of magazines and downloading images from the internet - and sticking them on a large piece of card or stiff paper. Then put this up on your wall - somewhere you will see it regularly.
3. Observe the practice of a cultural or religious tradition other than your own - you might want to visit a mosque or a hindu temple for example, and their something of their culture and tradition - or observe a particular practice - just as a way of broadening your own cultural and/or religious perspective.
4. Laugh more! It's good for the soul.

We also have a number of introductory talks line up in the new year:

See: http://www.thealchemicaljourney.com/news3.php for details.

Wishing You All a Happy Sagittarian Advent-ure,

Alchemical blessings,

John

www.thealchemicaljourney.com

Confessions of a Gemini Moon!

Well, I'm experiencing this month of Gemini as varied and unprecictable as one might expect of such an buzzy, fluttery and elusive sign. I am born with my moon in Gemini and I would say I am particularly sensitive to Gemini energies - I have always been tremendously magnetised toward Gemini-type people, unceasingly rivted by words, thoughts, ideas, associations and connections between people and ideas. I can also relate very deeply to the erratic nature of this sign - up one minute, down the next - compelled and fascinated by an idea or relationship one day, and bored or disinterested by it the next. This might be viewed as a fault, or a mark of faultly attention, and there have been times in my life, when I am certain that such a judgment would have been justified within a particular context, yet I also identify a deep need (as expressed always by the moon) for colour, variety, diversity and a continually shifting re-interpreting of reality. I have been reflecting on the phenomena that when I find the Gemini energy of communication is getting too much for me, it may be more that I'm losing presence to the truth of the presence of this moment that is always-already there underpinning the contunually shape-shifting phenomena I encounter. When I lose my energy, and feel depleted is when I identify primarily with the phenomena, and I forget to hold my presence within it.

I've been thinking a lot od bumblebees this month - that beautfully apt symbol of Geminian buzz. Through spreading the pollen, this "accidental hero" of nature ensures the rich variety and diversity of life continues. However essential the process is to life and how ignorant to think that we should be trying to controlling that natural process through genetic modification of plants and crops - now being put forward as a likely reason why bee populations are declining so much. The bees movement as it buzzes from flower to flower is so apparently erratic, yet at a level we probably cannot appreciate, it is a perfectly choreographed expression of the dance of life, perfect for that moment, perfect in a way that cannot be entirely replicated or copied. The movement of the bee, like all aspects of nature has a pattern to it that we can discern and identify, yet within that pattern is the essence of that particular moment. The essence of that moment ensures that the bee will not tire of his dance, but he is being endlessly replenishes by the unseen web that enables his dance. I've been feeling a bit frazzled the last few days - lack of sleep and an excess of buzzing - this is something I am reminding myself of today. Remember the invisible web that supports all the patterns and apparently erratic movements that I make. Remember the web that gives me my life, the web supports my breath, the web that connects to me every other living thing in the web.

Bumblebee, when you enter the flower, I know you are not thinking already of the next flower - you are fully and completely present with the life giving nectar that feeds you in that moment. Bumblebee, when you and buzzing in the air between flowers, I know you are not thinking of the last flower you alighted upon and mourning its loss. Neither are you anxious for the next. I know you are fully present in your buzz, in the flutter of tiny wings. Bumblebee, let me into your secret. Let me bee with you.

Love John x

The Question of Intellectual Property

Does The Alchemical Journey belong to me? This is a question I have been asking myself over the past few days. Is it “mine”? Do I own it? And if I do own it, what does that mean? Does that make it exclusively my property, and what happens as it starts developing its own identity out there in the big wide world of possibilities. Gerard and I are currently involved in a fascinating discussion about intellectual property and its implications, and looking at the idea of “creative commons” as a potentially more progressive model for the thorny and complex issue of IP rights. The Creative Commons movement enables authors, scientists, artists, and educators to mark their creative work with the freedoms they want it to carry. It allows a person to change their copyright terms from "All Rights Reserved" to "Some Rights Reserved." See www.creativecommons.org - it leaves me with these questions: How do I honour my own creative input and ensure that I am properly remunerated for that? Do I give it away in trust, or carefully license it and how do I guard against my work being used by others without proper license and perhaps in ways which I deem inappropriate?

Protecting What You Have
I did a fantastic training recently called “Leadership Presence”, which took skills from the acting profession and applied them to leadership. It was full of superb material, beautifully facilitated and I got a huge amount from the experience. However, I almost pulled out of the training beforehand because I was so appalled by what I saw as the organisation’s fear and control around their intellectual property. This came to a head when a friend of mine was told she would not be allowed to participate in the workshop because she was promoting herself as a corporate coach and trainer. The organisation were afraid that if she participated, then she might steal the material and use it in her own work. I was really quite shocked by this and lost a lot of respect for the organisation. I’m glad I did the workshop, because the material was brilliant, but what about this issue of intellectual property? It began an enquiry for me in relation to my own programme.

Originality
I have created The Alchemical Journey – it’s an original project, but it naturally draws on a huge number of variables that aren’t exclusively original to me. Yet my formulation of the material and the way I’ve put it together makes it pretty unique in both the field of astrology and in the field of self-development. And, yes, it is something I naturally think of as my intellectual property. Yet, here I am in putting ideas forward, running courses, seeking collaborations with other trainers and facilitators, making my intellectual property extremely vulnerable! I run the obvious and very real “risk” of it being changed, re-interpreted, mis-interpreted, used and potentially abused in other contexts, even without my knowledge.

The Alchemical Formula
What should I do about this? One response might have been for me to keep the ideas to myself (bit late for that, now!) until I had broken down each element of it, copyrighted each element, patented it, trademarked it. Then that would need to be policed and a lot of time and energy put into making sure others weren’t pinching what I had developed. To stand any chance of preserving it in a recognisable form, I would need to standardise the course with very clear set practices and delivery requirements and I would need to formularise it, so that the IP of each component can be readily recognised and legally identified. This seems shrewd and I’m sure that if I was being strictly business-like about it all, I’d probably attempt to do something like that. I haven’t though. Why not?

I’ve thought a lot about this issue and wondered at how I might protect myself. After all, I have developed this and put a huge amount of time, energy, money and resources into it. I don’t just want someone to pick up my years of research and then churn something out that isn’t in line with the ethos or intention of what I’ve created. So there is a need for balance here. I recognise that I need to hold the integrity of the programme. But what would I lose, and what would The Alchemical Journey lose if I were to turn it into a more easily identifiable formulaic process. Well, I figure there would be a loss of spontaneity, a loss of creativity, a loss of participation. Basically, I would destroy it as a living, transforming, evolving entity. I have been part of the process of giving birth to The Alchemical Journey, and it now lives and breathes in the world. I can’t control each step of its growth – any more than I could or would want to control the growth and development of a child. But I can gently guide and support it; respond to its own transformational journey and let myself be guided, supported and responded to by the journey. I want to stay in relationship with it, keep my love for it alive, allow it to evolve in a way that is going to make the most difference in the world, in a way that is going to enable learning, healing, community, love.

Guardian
In my more philosophical and altruistic moments, I question whether it was really me who created it at all – wasn’t I simply the vehicle through which it manifested – my particular dimensions of body, mind and spirit just happened to be a fit for it to be born through me! So, wouldn’t it be more accurate for me to consider my relationship to it more as a carer or guardian?

Perhaps, by calling The Alchemical Journey “mine” in any kind of exclusive sense I run the risk of robbing it of its own autonomous life force. Yet, just like a parent, if I didn’t nurture it, water it, protect it through its early development, it would die of neglect and be exposed to unnecessary dangers before it is strong enough to cope. So I guess what I’m doing by carefully delineating the distinctions of each phase of the journey, and being specific about the way I’m using language, images and stories in particular contexts, I am helping to support its integrity, firming up materials and resources, becoming clear about a pattern of delivery of the programme.

So, more and more, I am seeing myself as the guardian of The Alchemical Journey, rather than its owner. And the beauty is, that, as its guardian, I can have so much more access to gratitude and appreciation, because I am so much more sensitively awake to the relationship I have with it. I can respond to its needs, it can respond to mine; it can surprise me in ways that it couldn’t if I was busily controlling every aspect of it. Running this programme becomes a joyful privilege that I can never take for granted.

The Consolidation Phase
With regard to The Alchemical Journey, we can see that each stage of the journey has its own theme and dynamic. We are currently experiencing the second stage. This stage is about recognising what we have and consolidating our resources. It is actually about saying “this is mine”, and experiencing it as such. My sunflower has been doing that in the last couple of weeks – claiming the soil for its own, becoming more established in its pot, after that initial burst of life when it broke the shackles of its seed pod and pushed its way through the soil. This is only a phase of the journey though – the energy will change and become something else soon – what was clearly experienced as “mine” in Taurus will become less clear as we enter the mutable sign of Gemini, and the realm of Mercury, the language trickster, in a couple of weeks time. For when we start thinking and speaking about what we have and engaging in dialogue, our experience of what we have will change. I find my awareness of this immensely helpful in this whole question of IP, and what to do about it. It reminds me that there is a need to consolidate and strengthen my resources before talking about them too openly and sharing them with everyone I meet.

The enquiry continues…

John x

Taurean Resistance

One of the great things we are learning through the Taurus perspective is the value of gratitude and appreciation for what we have. This principle is clearly at the heart of alchemy and the process of creative manifestation. As Lynne Twist says “What you appreciate appreciates”. However, when this appreciation is limited to those things that we have come to identify as being exclusively “mine”, as being opposed to “yours”, then surely we are doing precisely the opposite, and actually resisting and stifling the creative process. Perhaps there is a fine line between gratitude and smugness.

For example, I might value and appreciate and love the house that I live in. I might love it so much in fact, just so, the way it is, that I take steps to preserve it that way at all costs, ensuring that others don’t come in and ‘mess it up’, rearrange things, disrupt the perfect order of it. I might love and appreciate it so much that I forget to live and let live in it, so anxious that it might become something else that doesn’t fit my picture of perfect order and contentment. I might love it so much the way it is that I forget that it is alive with possibility, alive with participatory presence.

If I try and keep something the way it is and use gratitude and appreciation as a way of resisting the natural cycles of life, then it would seem that I am inhibiting or restricting the dynamic of transformation necessary for the processes of life to occur. The “thing” that I appreciate only has value when I experience myself as being in relationship with it, and I can only be in relationship with it, if I experience its aliveness. By restricting its own transformational potential by attributing exclusive ownership to it and guarding it against the interest and attention of others, I will actually strangle the life out of it, and end dragging it around with me, like the proverbial “dead horse”.

When we are living our lives from the Taurean perspective, then we can become very comfortable with what we have. After all, if everything was really fine just the way it was, why would we want to change anything? This is really part of the paradoxical quality of this sign. Does it mean that gratitude and appreciation is really a double-edged sword? Through reflecting on this, I have been reminded me of the need to be inclusive with my gratitude. I mean, it’s one thing to be grateful for the all the things I obviously love and cherish – but what about all things I don’t ordinary welcome or enjoy. Can I be equally grateful for those? Can I be grateful for the things that upset the status quo and disrupt our sense of contentment? Can I welcome in change and transformation over settlement and security. Can I feel secure in the midst of uncertainty? Can I remain in touch with the centre of our being, even as the wheel turns and crushes the old form? I strikes me that these questions lie at the heart of our alchemical enquiry and should thus certainly be included in our practices of gratitude. Again, the story of the Buddha is instructive, that great Buddhic realisation that the circumstances need not determine your inward experience of being. And it is this inward experience of being which is the alchemical gold sought by the true alchemists and misunderstood by the “puffers”.

So the Taurean perspective can very easily become one that resists the journey of transformation. Certainly, the element of earth offers a natural resistance to fire. In Aries, it was all about creativity and sparks of life. Taurus has a settling influence, but can easily become too settled! After all, when the element of earth is well nourished it is a natural extinguisher for the creative fire. So it is worth asking ourselves this month where in our lives we may be getting complacent with our current situation in life and afraid to change.

John x

Thank You Mum!

I'd like to share with you my most profound Taurean revelation of the month so far.

The last couple of days I've felt really good about myself and the world and really in a profound state of gratitude - and I'm it putting down to listening to the Taurus soundtrack that I've created for myself. I've been playing it over and over and a lot of the songs are ones that I wouldn't normally listen to. They are unashamedly happy and positive Taurean songs, and the thing is, many of them are my Taurean mother's favourites! More than that, even, they are songs which I grew up listening to as a child. My mother's mission in life is that she and everyone around her should be happy and positive. I grew up with this message - we listened to happy songs, watched happy films, and read happy stories. When I was young, my Mum would read me and my brother a happy story, or sing a happy lullaby, would kiss us goodnight, and say "see you in the happy morning" - every night, without fail. I don't think I've ever really appreciated what a gift that was. By the time I was a young teenager, I was rebelling against all of it. I was asking difficult questions of the world, focussing on all the things that were wrong with it, all the things that were wrong with me and all the things that were wrong with my mother! I was questioning everything, listening endlessly to The Smiths (such classics as "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now") and fighting endlessly with Mum and what I saw then as her overprotective control and anxiety, and her inane "sing-a-happy-song" approach.

When I discovered astrology at age 21, it all made perfect sense. She was a Taurus (a double-Taurus in fact)! I was an Aries - two sets of horns locked - one set focussed on trying to burn bridges and change things, the other set on preserving what she had, a propogandist of positivity resisting change at all cost! A battle that couldn't be won but both set on trying to prove the other wrong! But what if neither persepective is wrong? What if both - set appropriately within their own context - are "right"? I've been thinking a lot about this for the past two days and really getting in touch with how grateful I am for the exposure to all that happy, loving, supportive, positive, nurturing attention I received as a child, especially within this phase of Taurean enquiry. I have always tended to look back on it with a lot of criticism and say "oh, she tried to wrap us in cotton wool", "protect us from the world" - well maybe she did to a certain extent, but as I contact these memories now, as I listen to these songs, I just feel incredibly grateful. The Carpenters, Abba, Don Williams, Leo Sayer, Val Doonican, Julie Andrews, Showaddywaddy - (I mean how inane, and middle-of-the-road can you get?!!) - this the music we would play on the car as we drove off to my Grandpa's holiday house on the Norfolk coast, and we would all sing along, play I-Spy, and try and be the first to see the sea, across the flat Norfolk landscape. They were idyllic times - up to the age of 10 or 11, I remember. It was a real age of protected innocence and it's only in these last few days that I've really let myself get in touch with what a wonderful childhood that was. So thank you Mum!

It's her birthday on Sunday, and I've decided to drive up to Nottingham to surprise her, and as a birthday present, I'm going to present her with a Taurus soundtrack with all those inane, middle-of-the-world, yet wonderfully positive and innocent songs. It's a long way to drive up there just for the day, but I'm really excited about it and I'm going to share my revelation with her.

John x

Taurean Reflections

So we’re into the sign of Taurus, the first of the three earth signs and what a contrast to Aries! While the impulsive Ram goes chasing after what it wants with wild abandon and irresistible charisma, Taurus quietly draws toward itself what it needs for its own sustenance and well-being. Taurus draws on the magnetism of Earth, and the attractive power of Venus, our brightest and most beautiful planetary neighbour and fabled goddess of love, also known as Aphrodite. So through connecting to the energy of the sign Taurus, we can learn to attract and magnetize things to us, by being really attentive to and appreciating what is right in front of us. Taurus teaches us about abundance by teaching us the value of “enough”; that we actually have everything we need to live a happy and fulfilled life already, if we could only appreciate it! The power of manifestation from the Taurean perspective, then, requires us to fully embody and inhabit an experience of gratitude and appreciation for what is already here.

Taurus is the Spring Bull, focused on sensuality, pleasure, enjoyment, ease. Pleasure-seeking and pain-avoiding, Taurus favours what is nice, what is sweet and what is easy. It stands for that basic drive within us to pleasure, satisfy and gratify the body, bringing an acute awareness of the five senses: Of Sight, of Sound, of Touch, of Smell, Of Taste. The Bull is a horny beast, erotic and sensual. Taurus desires cornucopia - the horn of plenty in all things. Taurus is expectant of the Great Full-Ness of Life; voluptuous, fertile, seductive, embodied, rich in spirit and gratefully abundant. Taurus has great affinity to food and sustenance and enjoys the best of culinary delights. This is a slow, deliberate, stubborn and conservative sign. Taurus is concerned with appreciation and what you appreciate appreciates. Taurus is concerned with money and security, assessing assets and resources, taking care of what it has and is concerned with the prosperity of life. Taurus is a sign of beauty. Physical beauty, artistic beauty, beautiful music. Taurus is associated with the throat, with the dulcet tones of the voice. We find Taurus well-expressed in the professions of farming, banking, accountancy, fund-raising, music, massage therapy, sports which involve physical prowess and patience, beauty and nursing to name but a few. We meet Taurus in the kitchen, in the garden, in the accounts department, in the art gallery, in the auditorium, in the restaurant, in the well-kept home, in the gym, in the dressing room, and in the bedroom!

Lessons of Taurus

Everything I've written above sounds great, of course, but then every sign has its shadow perspective, the perspective that is rooted in fear, rather than love. The shadow of Taurus can be seen in the tendency toward acquisitiveness and the hoarding of money and resources, driven by fear of poverty and the belief in scarcity and lack. Security expressed in such a way becomes a way of closing down from the natural abundance, or "enoughness" of life and acquiring as much stuff as possible and feathering your own nest, to protect yourself from the uncertainties of life. This may be culturally acceptable of course, and considered shrewd, sensible budgeting and so on, but if it is driven by the fear of scarcity, then it is actually closing down relationship and shutting off the possibility that the universe will naturally meet your needs. I think Lynn Twist's perspective in "The Soul of Money" is really valuable here.

The Story of the Buddha

One of great lessons of Taurus, then, is non-attachment – and this is famously woven into the story of that great Taurean figure of Gautama Buddha. The teaching of the Buddha emphasized the nature of desire and attachment and how, by trying to secure the pleasures of the senses, and the desire for more, we perpetuate suffering. The Buddha was fabled to have been born on the full Moon of Taurus (when the Sun is in Taurus and the moon in Scorpio), also known as Wesak. If we think about the Buddha's life, it really sums up the Taurus-Scorpio tension very well. Born into outrageous Taurean affluence, he is taught how to appreciate what he has and is protected from harsher aspects of the world outside the walls of the royal palace. It is only when he leaves the safety of the palace and ventures out that he realises the suffering of the world, and this compels him to renounce the stuff of the world and he famously decides to live on a grain of rice a day. Importantly though, he renounces this too and decides he can enjoy the wonders of the phsyical experience without becoming attached to it. So the fat, happy Buddha, as we often see him represented, comes to stand as a symbol for that condition of joy and abundance that we can experience through the sensuous experience of being in a body, fully engaged in the world, but without attachment to it. Circumstances will continually change, as we learn from the wheel of life, and nothing of the physical world can truly be possessed or owned. The physical experience is not permanent and if we identify with it alone, we cannot achieve lasting security or real happiness. The story of the Buddha teaches us that when we come to embody this realisation and inhabit this way of knowing a deep level within us, then we have access to true joy.

The Taurus Enquiry

So what I'm finding is a really good way to engage with the Taurus enquiry then is to really let myself experience the pleasures of the body this month, to experience myself as a physical, sensuous being, to really explore my relationship to money and wealth, to really look at my relationship to what I have, to what I own. And, even if what is revealed is uncomfortable, let myself acknowledge how attached I am to the desire for money, stuff, or physical pleasure. That's why the money exercise we did is so great, because it throws up those dynamics that we often try to keep hidden from others in our attempts to "look good" and look like we don't succomb to such things! So the enquiry is to notice our reactions and responses to all these themes, but also to notice what we really value beyond the money, the stuff, the physical indulgences. What we we really place value on? What are our true assets? What's it like to trust at such a deep level of knowing that all our needs are being met perfectly by the universe? Can I trust at such a deep level that I can release the need to own, the need to know where the next pay cheque is coming from, and remain grateful and appreciative even when the evidence for my abundance doesn't seem to be obviously forthcoming? Easy to be grateful when things are going in my favour. What about when they're (apparently) not?

In many ways, this month is a meditation on the experience of ownership. When we say that we own something, what do we mean? It's a good question to ask ourselves. What do I own? What can safely say is "mine" in this world? And how do I define "mine"? The common cultural defintion would define "mine" as 'belonging to me, not you'. We confront this question again very directly, and with more depth and stark consequence when we get to Scorpio in October, but it is an important enquiry for us to open up here, lest we become too smug in our Taurean affluence, too cosy inside the safe walls of the royal palace.

Looking forward to your comments and reflections on this.

love John x

Definitions of Passion

Just looked up the dictionary definitions of "passion". Quite interesting range of assocations, worth reflecting on.

From the Oxford Concise Dictionary...

1. Strong, barely controllable emotion
2. An outburst of anger
3. Intense sexual love
4. a) Strong enthusiasm; b) a thing arousing this.
5. (the Passion): a) the suffering of Christ during his last days. b) a narrative of this from the gospels; c) a musical setting of any of these narratives.

The word "passion" actually has its roots in the latin word "passio" meaning "to suffer or endure". The earlier meanings of passion, are to do with fire and with the suffering of martyrs who die and are resurrected - its association with sexual desire was not attested until 1588. It is also strongly linked to fire from way back, and fire in Chrsitianity is primarily associated with the devil, purgatory, the fires of hell, blame, retribution, suffering and so on. Fire in alchemy, by contrast, gives access to the creative power itself, yet is also dangerous work accessing the power of fire. Remember Prometheus? - he stole fire from the Gods, and, for his enterprise, was chained to rock for eternity with vultures pecking at his immortal liver! It was his passionate love for humanity that motivated him! Jesus, too - we are told it was his passionate love for humanity that ave him the strength to to endure on the cross.

I have called the Aries cycle "The Passion of Spring", and I think of the passionate endurance required from the life force of nature to break through the shell of winter (encpasulated in the "passion" of the bud) . Through passion comes resurrection, whether we see that as Jesus resurrection or the resurrection of the life force in the natural world. Many religions celebrate a dying and resurrecting god (e.g. Dionysus of Greece, Attis of Phrygia, Osiris of Egypt, etc, etc) and the vernal or spring equiniox is always the time of the year when this god experiences the passion and resurrects. It's worth considering that these religious traditions may in fact be narrating the story of the fetility of nature, the reawakening of the seed of life, and the resurrection of the life force. Many scholars now attest to this. These gods are all very passionate characters!

And was Jesus really without anger? As passion and anger are so intricately linked, I very much doubt it. Anyone seen The Last Temptation of Christ? - one of my absolute favourite films - really shows a passionate Jesus with very human doubts and fears, not to mention his sexual passion - and a lot of anger - another "must see" for Aries, really!

No wonder the word "passion" generates such an emotional charge for so many of us, and hence the enquiry "what are you passionate about?" may not be quite as straightforward a question as it might have once appeared!

Then, the element of fire is hardly benign!

Th Alchemical Journey Begins!

This blog is intended to constitute a record of my own reflections upon The Alchemical Journey programme that I have initiated and am facilitating this year.

I feel it is important, in the spirit of action-learning, that I am open about my own learning process. After all, I have as much to learn about myself through this process as anyone else. So I hope that the sharing my own insights, can be of value to other members of the group as well as myself.

We began the journey with a 3-day weekend workshop on 28th-30th March at The Minerva Centre in Bath.

Here are my initial reflections, from that weekend, and the insights that I have gleaned in the week since then.

First of all, I think we made a great start as a group. I was pleased with the way the weekend went. There are things I would change next time around, but overall I am happy that the balance was about right and that we captured the spirit of the journey well in its initiation.

The Educational Value of The Alchemical Journey (as I see it)
I have been working towards this for a long time and it feels like I am engaged in my life's work through this programme. That is immensely satisfying. I am passionate about the way that we learn as human beings; about how we learn to orientate ourselves in the world, how we relate to those around us, how we make meaning of our life experiences and how we make choices about where we should go in life and what we should do. I believe we learn primarily through engaging creatively with stories, far more than we do through analysis or interpretation. We learn through journeys, much more than we learn through destinations. I have been reflecting on this during the week and I reckon The Alchemical Journey, as it is indeed a journey, provides a incredibly rich context for exploring story. It is a story in itself too, the story of the seasons, of the Sun's journey through the signs of the zodiac. It provides an inclusive mythical framework for us to become aware of the way in which we weave the stories of own lives, and it will remind continually that we are doing that! Because of this, I believe that the alchemical journey has a huge amount to contribute to the field of education as a whole.

Time as a Wheel
I have conceived this programme as a journey of transformational self-enquiry around the twelve-fold turning of the astrological, and the turning of the four seasons, each with its own threefold journey of transformation. We spent quite a bit of time on Friday evening exploring our relationship to the turning of the wheel, to circles and cycles and spirals. I played the song "Turn, Turn, Turn" by The Byrds and we considered what was turning in our lives. We explored the idea of time as a wheel; as a cycle, the perspective common to aborignal peoples across the world. There is clearly a fundamental tension that exists between this view of time and the more familiar, virutally unquestioned idea of time having an irreversible linear character. How different time appears as a cycle. Perhaps time becomes mythic, rather than historical, when we consider it as a wheel, and I have spent much time in reflection on this during the week.

The wheel of time, it seems to me, is more familiar to us at an intuitive level; reassuring, nurturing, strengthening. When we trust our embodied experience of ourselves and the world, time is clearly cyclical. We recognise it in the seasons of the year, the ryhthms of our body, the movements of the Sun, Moon and planets. I feel that time conceived as a straight line is abstract, distant, disembodied, stress-inducing, counter to the rhythms and cycles of our body, counter to our experience of the seasons, counter to our entire phenomenology of being-in-the-world. Yet this is how we have learned to conceive it and it is palpably real to us, however counter-intuitive it may actually be.

This reflection puts me in touch with the sense that things are spiralling out of control in our world, as time and the pace of change apparently speeds up and we seem to compelled to pedal faster and faster just to keep up. It occurs to me that this tension between linear and cyclical time is really at the heart of our enquiry and something we would do well to return to. I think there would be great value in us revisiting the wheel meditation as a way of centreing our experience within this cyclical way of knowing.

I have been reflecting how in myths and stories, the journeys are always cyclical. They return us to the place we began, but in such a way that we can see that place again with new eyes. We enjoyed Martin's story of the plum tree that so exemplifies that. What defines a myth, it occurs to me, is that exists outside of linear time - it crosses that boundary and speaks to us in the present moment. If we ask "but, when did the story happen?", or "but, when did it all begin?" (as we continually do in considering the origins of our world), then we linear-oriented mind can become confused because the question defies an answer that makes any sense within that paradigm.

The Golden Age
On Saturday morning we considered the great myths of a Golden Age, that we find in so many cultures - whether it be the Garden of Eden, the golden age of Greek myth when the gods and goddesses walked the earth and all was abundant, or the golden age of our Kalahari tribe in the film. Equally, we have the golden age mythologised as a future destination - "heaven", "paradise", "nirvana", "the promised land", "the Age of Aquarius" and so on.

Some say there was actually a time that marks historically, and that we can trace this Golden Age back through the astrological ages to a time when the celestial equator and the ecliptic were in alignment. This phenomenon of "precession" was introduced by Anthony introduced so eloquently on Saturday morning, and may indeed stimulate us to another level of alchemical enquiry in due course. Yet, at a mythic level, we found we could engage with the idea of a golden age in our lives, perhaps when we were young, or perhaps as something we can access when we return, even momentarily to a condition of absolute wellbeing, timeless bliss or contentment in our adult lives.

We explored that moment when the golden age ends - when Eve picks the apple, Persephone plucks the flower, when the coke bottle falls from the sky - and I've been reflecting on this during the week, in the context of my own golden age reference points. I can identify with various golden age-type experiences in my life, both in childhood and in adulthood when all I knew was a profound at-one-ness with all life - where no separation existed between myself and the world. The end of this golden age experience, if I am to call it that, seems to be marked by a point where I am shaken out of such infinite timeless bliss and thrust into a finite, problem filled neurotic state of affairs, what I probably take for granted as the rough and tumble of everyday life. Yet, in reflection of this, considered in the context of the myths we explored at the weekend, the end of the golden age seems to me to be linked in some way to all of the following:

• self-consiousness
  
• an ability to be both self-reflective and self-critical
  
• shame
• separation
  
• an impulse to hide, cover-up, conceal
  
• an awareness of time as a limited resource, as something that we will eventually "run out of"
  
• an awareness of duality, right and wrong, good and evil
• the belief that there is "something wrong with me" and/or "something wrong with the world".
• anger
• mistrust
  
• the beginning of a journey
• the beginning of a story
• the beginning of a quest to overcome whatever is perceived as "wrong"
• the beginning of a journey to recover the golden age experience.
  

It would be easy, one might imagine, to see this moment where the golden age ends as inherently bad or wrong, and yet, as I contemplate it right here and now, it does not occur to me in that way. In fact, all sense of right and wrong seems, just for the moment, to have dropped away. Even though I can recognise the anger, mistrust, separation and so on, and can remember well being deeply involved with such emotions, I am strangely unattached to it now. This intrigues me and it inspires me too. I feel strangely alert and ready to respond. I feel a call to adventure, a call to return to that so-called "promised land", with a longing to return, yet also a sense that the journey itself may be enough. Perhaps the sense of longing is essential to motivate us to take the journey. I am reminded of my friend David, who walked from Bristol to Jerusalem a few years ago. He had a calling, a powerful draw to go to Jersualem, that mythical destination that seems so deeply embedded in our collective imagination. Yet, he walked, he didn't fly. He engaged with the journey, and what really struck me a few weeks when I saw him telling a story about his pilgrimage to an audience. he didn't once mention his destination - only the stories of what happened on the way. This has stuck with me in quite a profound way.

The Journey Begins in Aries with a Burst of Energy! - the Passion of Spring
So what of beginnings? If time is a wheel, where does it all begin? We have begun in Spring, at the Spring Equinox (or shortly after) traditionally a time of new beginnings, herald of the new year in many ancient calendars. We could have begun elsewhere of course, and different calandars do begin at different times in the year. We can all sense a beginning at this time of year, and did as we made our connection to the birth of spring as we wandered around the botanical gardens in Bath on Sunday morning - the buds on the trees, the sense of awakening in the natural world, mirroring the sense of awakening within ourselves. The new year begins with a burst of passionate energy, a fiery blast of potent creative inspiration. That was what the first weekend meant to me. I took a risk - jumped headlong into the unknown! I launched myself at it with everything I had at my disposal! I spent a lot of time in preparation of the material that we covered during the weekend, but when it came to it, much of what was delivered was of the moment.

I have reflected this week on this word "passion", so indicative of Aries, and this time of year. I reflected upon the exercise where we asked "what are you passionate about?". And, reflected on some of the feedback I've heard about that exercise, I began to think about the limitations of language - and how this word "passion" may mean so many different things to different people, and we may get stuck on the word. Perhaps this happened to you as a participant? If it did, then that is worthy of valuable self-enquiry - and, too, I wonder if you would have been better able to more easily access the spirit of Aries if I had asked any of these questions, instead.

• What lights your fire?
• What wakes you up?
• What gets you into action?
• What fires you up?
• What ignites you?
• What enflames you?
• What gets you angry?
  
• What gets you going?
  

And I wonder if it would make a difference to ask related question in the present continuous tense instead?

• What's stirring in you soul?
• What's firing you up in your life right now?
• What's moving you to act?
• What's pushing your buttons?
• What's making you angry at the moment?
  

So what about this relationship between passion and anger. Should we be asking these questions in the same breath? Isn't anger something we should be avoiding? Well, not if we're being true to the spirit of Aries, no! Aries is the astrological expression of anger. We didn't really look at that much over the weekend. That makes me wonder if something I'm attempting not to look at (mmm...). Perhaps there's some enquiry required for me around that. What is this relationship between anger and passion. I've already identified anger as being associated with the end of the golden age, and the end of golden age with the beginnning of the journey - so it seems only fitting that anger should be a primary factor in getting us started. A lot of therapeutic process begin with the expression of anger, the primal scream, the authentic release of the pain associated with the memory of separation. How many of us really want to look at that? I think there is some valuable enquiry to be had here.

What have I learned myself from the weekend?

One thing I have learned is that I hold back some of my own Arien fire, as hinted it in my previous comments. This was fed back to me by Sue, who suggested that I could have been more Aries-like at certain points during the weekend. It's true, I held back some of the more challenging, more confrontational exercises that I had in reserve. I have learned much about facilitation in my time working as an astrological counsellor and coach, running groups and courses. I have learned to temper much of my Arien fire, drawing more on the Gemini, Piscean and Libran sides of character, to listen, adapt and reflect the experience of the other. Perhaps, as Sue suggests, there may be value in me facilitating the weekend in the style of the sign we are working with. This is not something I had particularly considered, but has now become an important part of my own enquiry.

There's more to say, of course, but I'm going to leave it there for this evening. I realise I've written a lot in an intensive, Arien writing burst. Maybe that's how I most effectively express my Arien side, through words!

Anyway, I hope this inspires others of you in the group to put finger to keypad and share your reflections with the group.

love & best wishes
John