To simply consider the Full Moon invites Luna directly into your head.

The evolutionary process has burrowed her image deep into our cerebral cortex. We can’t escape her colossal, fat roundness — pushing out the boundaries of our inner vision.

After Father and Mother — the two defining primordial images in our lives — there looms the Sun and the Moon. Our consciousness develops and is sustained by this quadrant of forces. And between the Sun and the Moon life on Earth thrives and dies.

The Sun radiates and sustains whereas the Moon reflects and craves, as Martha Heyneman writes, always the Moon “…is tugging at everything on her side of the surface of the earth. She sucks on the very rocks. As she passes overhead the earth’s crust rises a few inches beneath her and is elsewhere compressed, kneaded as a cat kneads your stomach.” Read more

Filed Under: Astrology andGurdjieff

It’s the perfect moment to learn something new. Consider it a Gemini-like experience for tonight’s New Moon eclipse in the sign of the Twins.

Astrology takes events, both mathematical and apparent (like the ‘appearance’ of the Sun moving around the Earth) and translates those ciphers and symbols into a kind of meaning, narrative or — better yet — poem. This sounds cryptic for non-astrologers, but it needn’t be. If you go step by step with the syntax (New Moon [eclipse] + Gemini =) you can derive your own meaning. Ultimately this level of understanding is more satisfying, more so than anything I could try to scrawl here. And really, with Gemini as the featured theme reverberating through the cosmos tonight, I couldn’t write this any other way. Read more

Filed Under: Astrology andNew Moon Watch

Learing astrology is not difficult. In fact as Plato taught, we never really ‘learn’ anything in life — what we call learning is actually a kind of remembering. A wisdom that is inherent within each of us can be awakened by intention and full-bodied understanding. This means each center within us is involved in the process of remembering: the head, the heart and the hara (the center associated with the belly). It makes sense: when all of you is present, so is the totality of your understanding.

Because astrology is a symbolic language, we begin with its alphabet: the twelve signs of the Zodiac. Each sign of the Zodiac is a particular archetype — or universal style — with a particular function, color, slant and flavor. And as each ‘letter’ is recalled you’re soon able to evoke, read and ‘speak’ the various concepts (the planets, Sun, Moon, angles, and the houses) that comprise the astrological lexicon.

I teach in a very immediate style that involves dialogue exercises and meditations. Again, this is to foster remembering. An example: If you can sense your essential expressions of strength, vigor, and courage then you already know many of the qualities associated with the sign Aries and the planet Mars. Or, when you consider parts of your nature that are supressed, contracted or fearful you would be contemplating issues associated with the planet Saturn. See how it works?

Awaken your inner artist, mystic and poet. Explore the magnificient notion that the terrestial is in constant communication with the celestial, and that each of you has a unique expression within this dance. You can register with me online or call the number listed on the above flyer, which you can download here.

See you in May.

Filed Under: Astrology andClasses

It’s time to talk about time.

The four cardinal signs of the zodiac — Aries, Cancer, Libra and Capricorn — all of which are active during tonight’s Full Moon — have jurisdiction over the experience of time. As the place holders of the four seasons, the cardinal signs push time forward (in the spring and fall) and rearrange time (in the summer and winter) when time ‘stops,’ as the Sun changes its course during the solstice. Read more

Filed Under: Astrology andFull Moon Watch

Years into the craft and I still struggle with finding concise ways to explain to clients and friends how and why astrology works. More often than not I shorten my effort, believing that brevity is the key to holding anyone’s attention for longer than, oh, five seconds. Especially when someone is confronted by a subject as potentially intimidating as astrology. I’m still trying to devise the perfect one-minute explanation.

After practicing and teaching astrology for over thirty years I’ve come to understand that the planets and the signs do not ‘do’ or ‘make’ anything happen. This then forces me into the position of trying to define quantum physics, for those of a scientific bent — or, more challenging, the mystic’s vision of the universe: a longing for the ineffable tethered to a visceral sense of a unified reality that is almost impossible to describe; thus volume after volume of a poet like Rumi‘s poetry. And, well, we won’t go there right now.

Usually I will explain that astrology, being ‘up there’, mirrors the various ways reality manifests ‘down here.’ Though there isn’t any sort of gap or lag. A movement ‘below’ is part and parcel a ‘movement’ above. To step outside of this mechanistic framework is to leave the dualistic universe and move straight into the humming heart of acausal ‘is-ness.’

The spiritual teacher U.G. Krishnamurti was even more blunt in his effort to explain the seamless nature of ‘one’ unfolding reality, and the ego’s deluded notion of having a distinct, separate volition. He once said to a particularly pushy student: “You are just a computer. There is no individual there. It is all one movement in the cosmos. The movement of even a leaf affects you.” Read more

Filed Under: Astrology