The Zodiac Memory Theatre

When we open ourselves up to astrology through the imaginal realm and get can our whole body involved through play, movement, music, dance - acting out mythical stories, stories of the seasons - we start to remember the possibilities of who we are, where come from, the opportunities open to us. It can give our lives a profound sense of meaning and purpose, as it opens our imaginations to a richer, more meaningful narrative. Through connecting with the mythical images and symbols, we re-connect to our soul.

The work we do on The Alchemical Journey programme draws out this rich vein of symbolic resonance. The work is full of soul. For me, the Zodiac like an archaic memory theatre – a storehouse of cultural, psychological and spiritual knowledge. In alchemical terms, it operates as an alembic, a coherent vessel that can contain the pain, the suffering, the confusion that we experience in life, without judgment or analysis. Instead it offers us stories, stories that we can act out, play with, identify with and allow ourselves to carried away by - within a ritual setting. I see this as a powerful form of alchemical gold-making, or in James Hillman's terms, "soul-making". It enables us to transform our perspectives, and realise that there are many perspectives – when we do that, miracles happen.

I love Thomas Moore's analysis Ficino's astrological ideas. He shows how, for Ficino, illness comes in the form of monotheism, life dominated by a single god, imagiantion fixated in a singular consciousness. The beauty of astrology, engaged with as ritual theatre is that it maintains its polytheistic integrity. Each season has its own characteristic, as does each god, each zodiac sign. They have their entrances and their exits, and by honouring each appropriately at the appropriate time, we encourage the natural diversity of life to express itself.

I talk a lot about embodied learning, experiential learning. We all carry this incredible knowledge and wisdom within us, and when we engage the body as well as our minds, I believe it allows us to access a deeper knowing. When I first discovered astrology 20 years ago it was a very embodied and highly charged experience. It was like being flooded with memories – I was in a real crisis at the time - and it really helped me to weave my life back together in the most magical way. It helped to place my story into a mythic narrative – and that seemed to absorb the pain I was going through and enabled to me to re-create myself again – it was incredible – it helped me come out of a deep depression. It really brought me back to life. And that’s the value of experiential astrology, astrodrama, astrological theatre. It's a way of us bringing ourselves and the world around us back to life: re-animating our experience of the world.

The Imaginal Zodiac

I consider astrology to be an imaginal art and the role of the astrologer, I believe, is that of artist weaving the threads of this mythic imagination in a meaningful and coherent narrative. The Imaginal Realm is the realm of Soul and it is irreducible plural in its perspectives and outlooks. The 12 perspectives of the zodiac cannot be reduced to one another, and neither the planets that govern them. The Zodiac belongs to the realm of soul, and is by its very nature a mystery that it will unfold its wisdom to us, only through our own imaginative participation. As James Hillman says: "the soul is not a sustance, but a set of perspectives..it is the imaginative possibility in our natures, the experiencing through reflective speculation, dream, image and fantasy - that mode which recognises all realities as primarily symbolic or metaphorical."

The Zodiac has formed the basis of mystery traditions, and initiatory journeys throughout the western world – we see this in incredible sculptures, mosaics and bas reliefs from all over Europe and the middle-east. The traditions have been carefully preserved in mythic memory, and through our own imaginative participation, we can still take that initiatory journey today.

On the Alchemical Journey, we’re really walking in the footsteps of countless ancient mystery traditions, following follow a twelve-fold path of initiation. It’s an alchemical training following the path of the Sun through the seasons, through the twelve months of the year and through the twelve astrological portals or gateways – the 12 signs of the zodiac. It’s really one of the richest and most coherent imaginative frameworks we have available to us as human beings. We’re working with a really ancient form of magical work, and we’re making it really relevant to the challenges we face in our modern lives, but without losing the magic. We’re really careful to honour that magic straw that takes us into the other world, the imaginal world.

We find the theme of the journey through the Zodiac repeated in the Greek, Babylonian and Egyptian iconography, but also in Christian, Jewish and Islamic art also. We find it in the stories of Arthur and his 12 knights, the 12 labours of Hercules, Jesus and his twelve disciples, the 12 tribes of Israel – they all carry a memory of this twelve-fold journey. They are relate directly to the Zodiac. The idea of an initiate taking a cyclical transformation journey around a wheel of animal figures – it has a powerful coherence for our imaginations – and it seems to be deeply woven in our collective psyche.

So The Alchemical Journey is a journey through the Imaginal Sky, the Imaginal Heavens. It is about re-connecting to the heavenly half of our experience, that more-than-human half, that we have neglected so much with our modern secular thinking. The heavens are the place of soul, they are a place where our imagination can play and these fabulous animals and beings in the night sky – they can enchant us – reconnect us to a meaningful cosmos.

Scorpio - Journey into the Underworld

"The dimension of soul is depth (not breadth or height) and the dimension of our soul travel is downward" (James Hillman)

Scorpio offers us a poignant reminder of how the zodiacal journey can serve a process of soul retrieval. It is the experience of the three water signs that most suitably reveal the qualities of soul in the zodiac, as we have already experienced in the sign Cancer. In the sign of the crab, we first level of initiation, through reconnecting with the ancestors, with a deeper sense of home, memory, roots and origins. But in Cancer, we were still in the season of the light. Now in Scorpio, the season is darkening, and it is time for us to take responsibility for our deepest fears, desires, and destructive impulses, if we are to proceed along our soul’s path and re-discover the truth about who we are. In all traditions of initiation there is a journey into the underworld that must be undertaken in order for the initiate to know her/himself. In our alchemical journey process, this is it!
Image courtesy of Josephine Wall

The Sun wears a dark cloak in its Scorpio phase, Samhain marking summer’s end, reminding us that Mother Nature has exhaled all that she can on this turn of the wheel. Revealing the thin veil between worlds, she prepares now to breathe in, focussing deep within herself. While the beauty of her turning colours may have distracted our senses during the Libran cycle, so the stark reality of Autumn’s mission now confronts us in Scorpio. Nature’s once verdant mantle rots down on the damp forest floor, and fungus devours the leaf corpses.

Scorpio is the phase of the zodiacal wheel that we in the west seem to have collectively chosen to ignore, failing to acknowledge our own shadows, or deal with our waste; turning away from decay and death and refusing to see this as essential to the sustainability of life. We have created unsustainable structures based on perpetual growth and increase, which break the essential life cycle of transformation, and pile up toxic debts for ourselves and the planet. Our fast-disintegrating monetary systems pervert nature’s gift of abundance with their artificial reliance on debt and scarcity rewarding the few and condemning the majority to poverty. As Scorpio’s ruling planet Pluto moves now into Capricorn, I believe the self-destructive potential of the corporate structures that prop up these systems will be exposed and, ultimately, transformed.

This phase of the year teaches me the importance of learning to die well, so that I might be able to live more fully, relinquish my dependence upon what I already know and have the courage to face that which I may once have feared. It confirms something for me about the true nature of alchemy. Far from attempting to control nature and bend it to his own human will, the alchemist is always seeking to submit himself to nature’s power and mystery. Through practice, she learns to transform the hard shell of the human ego so that she might enter that liminal realm between worlds and experience the very common ground that we share with plant, animal and rock.

On The Alchemical Journey programme, we seek to penetrate nature’s deep mystery by cultivating an attitude of ‘wonder’ toward it, exposing our imaginations to a range of initiatory processes, which draw on astrological and seasonal myths and traditions. In this way, we seek to complete the cycle of transformation, and thus learn to live both magically and sustainably in our everyday lives.

"One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious." (C.G. Jung)

Tensed Like the Strings of Amphion's Lyre

There is a new moon in Libra this weekend and the Sun, Moon, Mercury and Venus conjoin in that sign.  The image I have for this line up is of a four-string lyre, played by one of my favourite characters from Greek myth, Amphion.  Libra holds taut the tension of the strings, without which there could be music.  I'll tell you the story of Amphion who I see an archetypal Mercury/Venus in Libra character.  It's a beautiful Libran story!

Amphion and Zethos were the twin sons of Zeus and Antiope.  Like many of the herous of Greek they were raise in secrecy of a remote mountainside to avoid the malevolent forces that sought to destroy them in their infancy.  While they were growing up on Mount Cithaeron, Amphion, the more sensitive of the brothers, attracted the favour of Hermes (Mercury) who gifted him a lyre.  Amphion became devoted to the instrument and played it night and day.  Zethos, his more practical brother taunted him and accused him of being lazy and good-for-nothing.  As far as he was concerned, Amphion's love of music prevented him from doing anything useful.

But later, after the two brothers had conquered Thebes and were set the task of rebuilding and fortifying the city, it was Amphion who had the last laugh.  For while Zethos toiled to shift the mighty stones, Amphion simply played his lyre and the resonance of his music was so perfectly in harmony with the cosmos that the stones simply slid effortlessly into place.  So it was that Seven-Gated Thebes was raised through the power of music!

This weekend is a perfect time to come together with someone you love and experience the creative tensions that exist between you, not by trying to make something happen and move the stones into place - but by tuning into the cosmic music and allowing it to happen naturally.  It's a time, where you can experience the world of possibility that opens up when you really allow that person's unique "otherness" to meet you head on. Often, we relate to the significant others in our lives simply as a projections of the judgments and assumptions that we already hold about them.  So take the opportunity during this beautiful Libran line-up to open up to this "other" really is. 

I'm doing just that this weekend.  I'm off to a couple's tantra weekend with my wife Colette.  I'm slightly apprehensive (I have an exact Venus-Saturn conjunction after all), but nonetheless open and ready to experience our relationship again, as if for the first time.  How appropriate that it should be happening over a Libra new moon, with Amphion hitting the sweet spot!

Beautifully Balanced in the Claws of the Scorpion

It is worth remembering that Libra has not always been represented as a pair of delicately balanced scales. There was a time when that constellation was actually marked as the claws of the Scorpion. The memory of this is beautifully depicted in this image of the constellation. I've been thinking a lot about this symbolism and would like to share the follow insights that have come to me about this.

I think of Libra as the sign in the zodiacal journey around the wheel where we become conscious. If we think in terms of its association with the 7th house, then, it is the sign where raise our head above the horizon for the first time. It is the sign where we first encounter opposition (in its opposition to the first sign, Aries). So it is the sign through which we become conscious of ourselves in relation to the other, where "otherness" comes to meet us!

So here we have a threshold point, where dwells the threshold guardian, whose persective is directly opposed to that of our own most personal, Arien / first-house identity.  I somemtimes think of it as personal blind-spot in the wheel.  And this "otherness" that both opposes and mirrors us, might appear in our lives as a lover, a business partner, a soul mate, or a worthy opponent. But whichever it is, there is an irresistible attraction that draws the other into our midst during this stage of the journey. And the spirit of Libra throws us another prop too - a very fetching pair of rose coloured spectacles through which to view our "mate".

During this period of attraction and seduction is the Autumn season greets us first in its more balanced Libran phase.  And it meets our gaze with the most remarkable natural beauty and quality of light as leaves turn a rich array of colours and shades. But remember the scales are really a pair of Scorpion's claws. Autumn is possessed of a darker intent, and will reveal its true identity in the next sign.  The pans, or the claws? Either way, they hold us transfixed in the immutable grip of death and re-birth, that so characterises this extraordinary season.

Capturing the Sunset
Again when we consider the Libra association with the seventh house and, thus, the setting sun, we find powerful imaginal resonance. One is at once enthralled by the beauty of the sunset, and capivated by its myriad colours. There's a kind of nostalgia held fast in that moment of the day as light it fades and darkness approaches. It seems to me a perfect mirror of the seasonal moment. So the Libran artisan attempts to capture the beauty of the sunset, the beauty of Autumn, trying to hold the tension in the colours as they turn. What we want, it seems, is to preserve that moment, freeze it, dedicate it to memory, capturing it with our camera, or on the canvas or in a musical score.

So it is in this confrontation with that which opposes our known identity, through having to dance with the tension in the opposition that we are prepared, nature-readied for the unfolding process of death and re-birth. For six months, since that first Arien bud broke seed pod on the first cherry tree, we have been shown nothing but visible signs of life, that are so obvious that they overwhelm us with their vitality and presence. Now on that cusp of death, of night, of dreamtime. We are readying ourselves for the journey of the soul into the underworld-wonderworld, where we will need very different instruments of navigation that we required during the 'light' phase of the year. We must learn much about our shadow if we are to make a successful crossing, and embrace death as an essential part of life. Through this we come to know that the opposite of death is not in fact life, but birth - and that life indeed has no opposite, for it is all-embracing, all-composing, all-engaging.

From the Wedding to the Marriage
Life, then, is the journey and re-birth is a stage in that journey that we will learn about as Autumn's true mission begins to confront us now.  In Libra we are still flirting with commitment, playing the mating game. And we may try to play along with that Libran lightness, long after the colourful leaves are composted in the ground, and we are left dancing with shadows - mourning the lack of response that we receive back from the other. We may marry in Libra, quite appropriately too, for it is the sign of the wedding and nature's backdrop could not be more poignantly beautiful.  As we enter Scorpio, though, we are confronted, inevitably with the truth of that marriage - as the confetti withers and the albums of memories begin to gather dust, and the real work of marriage - transformation - begins. The marriage that is unable to foretell, or embrace, the shadow and when it inevitably arises, unable to experience the depths of its transformational power, is liable to suffer the confines of a lightweight, compromise union. Or else have it played out repeatedly to some form of conclusion through the dark arts of the divorce lawyer or criminal investigator.

In terms of time, of course, the astrological year is a metaphor for our life's journey, but not "just" a metpahor, for its cycle is relentless and existentially 'real'.  We may spend years, or lifetimes, predominating our attention in the Libran phase, vaguely glimpsing or consciously avoiding the successive phases. The power of following the year in this ritual way, as we do on The Alchemical Journey allows us to imitate Nature's extraordinary teaching in an embodied, processional way.  As we start to weave that deep understanding back into our lives, so we begin to recognise the symbols, the metaphors, the deep, timeless archetypal stories when they appear to us, in our dreams, and in our everyday encounters.

So, here we are in Libra - held fast in the pans of the scales, in the claws of the Scorpion, illuminating the tension in our lives between light and shadow, such that we might know a deeper truth of our destiny and be prepared to surrender the known for the unknown, the identity for the Soul.

PostScript:  The Southern Hemisphere
As you might imagine, I am often asked the question "what about the southern hemisphere?", where the seasons are reversed and thus not in synch with the symbolism of the signs, or else opposed to them.  I have done quite a bit of deep thinking about this and have some quite passionately held views about it - which I am more-than-happy to converse about here or any other other internet platform for that matter.  And I may write up my ideas as a blog topic in the future.

A Time To Consider. To Be with the Stars

Libra holds a unique place in the zodiacal wheel. It is a sign full of paradox. As the only sign in the zodiac not represented by an animal or human figure, we might expect it to be less possessed of animal instinct than the other signs, somewhat aloof, too from the emotional roller-coaster of human experience. It is possible to recognise both of these traits in the Libra, yet here we have the sign that is the representative of relationship and marriage in the zodiac. It is through the Libran perspective that two people are drawn together in union, in matrimony. Libra is the sign of marriage, the marriage of opposites. It is the sign that holds the tension of the polarities - male and female, light and dark, yin and yang.

People born under Libra often describe how they cannot make their minds up, find it difficult to decide which way to go, which lover to choose, when to act. During my 18 years as a practising astrologer, I have observed a predominance of clients with strong Libra (and 7th house) themes in their charts, looking for guidance. Whereas a strong Aries type will just act, and then work out the consequences later, the Libran must consider the consequences first, weigh things up, assess the pros and cons, and perhaps seek guidance for others as to what to do.

During our recent Libran weekend on The Alchemical Journey, we addressed this issue through experiential play, and what emerged was quite revelatory, especially for the two strong Libra-types that we had present in our group. The gift of the Libran perspective is to resist the tempatation to act, to suspend judgment, to hold the opposites in tension, to hold the middle ground. This is why Librans make natural mediators of course, why they can facilitate individuals and groups with violently conflicting points of view to sit down at the table together and "air" their differences. Libra belongs to the element of air, the element of communication, dialogue and exchange of ideas. People who can stand authentically in the Libran perspective have to ability to hold up a mirror for each side and enable each side to cultivate an attitude of reflection, to see themselves reflected in the other, to enable self and other to remain engaged, in relationship. This is Libra's great gift and it is a profound one. It is little wonder however, in a culture that values action over reflection, that Libra has such a hard time!

This does mean, of course, mean that Librans should just avoid make decisions. But it does seek to honour value of reflection and consideration. Libra is the 7th sign of the zodiac, and it offers us the first opposition in the wheel, the opposition with Aries, the first sign. So the "I" of Aries becomes the "We" of Libra. The desire (de-sidere - to be separated from the stars) of Aries becomes the consideration (con-sidere - to be with the stars) of Libra. As astrologer Darby Costello has noted in her beautiful essay "Desire & the Stars", (http://www.darbycostello.co.uk), the gift of consideration, is the gift of union with the other half of our being, the heavenly half. Our two Librans found this realisation to be extremely helpful, as they were both anxious that they should be making a decision - and perhaps hadn't really given themselves permission to truly "consider" their options before resting upon an actual decision.

As with all the sign perspectives, the gift of Libra is not just for Librans. It is a perspective that we all have the ability to hold, and during the month when the Sun travels through that sign, as it is now doing, we can draw strength from nature, which mimics the Libran disposition and thus teaches us how to integrate that perspective into our lives. That great Libran figure from Greek mythology, Themis, teaches us that the social order is derived directly from natural order. Themis is always depicted blindfolded with a pair of scales in one hand and a sword in the other. As daughter of the original pairing of Ouranos (sky-god) and Gaia (earth-goddess), she is close to the centre of things, and it is her wisdom of balance and natural justice to which the divine hierarchy of the Greeks must always defer. In the Libran cycle of the year, initiated by the equinox of equal day and night, Summer turns to Autumn and nature is held in a delicate balance. So the Spirit of Libra invites us to imitate this situation in our lives, and consider what is in the balance for ourselves, and to both recognise and allow the tensions to exist, for these are creative tensions, tensions out of which beauty, insight and opportunity may emerge.

Bless you Libra!