I’ll be posting on this eclipse tomorrow. A veritable gateway eclipse, showing the biosphere to be mutating into something akin to the Tibetan bardo. In the meantime, thank you C.I.A.:

Bonus: Also, don’t miss these animated eclipse maps by graphic artist Larry Koehn.

I’m back from a long, extremely hot, nine-day Ridhwan retreat on Maui. Believe it or not, I had a hard time uprooting myself from Vashon to head to the Valley Isle. Summer was just beginning to bloom in Washington, and folks who live here know that when summer starts displaying the goods, you gotta savor each golden day. Still, I made it to Hawai’i.

The retreat’s theme, the material presented, was incredibly challenging to articulate, and once again I’m in awe of the teachers’ focus and presence. Guidance on the subject of absence can easily devolve into acid trip-like meanderings (ask anyone that’s ever attended a bad Buddhist retreat on the subject). But our teachers’ transmission was crystalline, palpable and impacted me in a profoundly deep way.

This is all part and parcel of the process of the attempts to understand absence. The mind can’t absorb and hold on to the concept of emptiness because the observed and the perception of what is observed (in absence) are one and the same — there is no mind present, weighing and touching and parceling reality into familiar boxes. In fact ‘you’ aren’t even there to ‘have’ the experience — and yet there is the moment. So you can see the mindfuck of the whole subject.

But rather than ramble any further I’ll shift gears and go to a segment of one of Mary Oliver‘s poems, What Is There Beyond Knowing? — one of my favorites. Poetry being a fine way to trace the mind’s finger against the outline of emptiness (which is the best the mind can do — poor thing). Read more

While Americans are doing what Americans do best with their grief — shopping — the French are analyzing and dissecting.

Americans purchased so many Michael Jackson albums last week that Billboard‘s top three spots are currently held by erstwhile Jackson classics. Bug-eyed and ga-ga with tabloid-fueled news shows, each of which continue to beam soundbites of the macabre into the atmosphere every fifteen minutes, we can’t seem to turn off the TV. Meanwhile the French are interpreting Michael Jackson’s existence through a fascinating semiotic lens.

The philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy wrote a Baudelaire-like analysis on Jackson’s life that was translated last week over on Huffington Post. It’s crazily titled The Three Stations of the Cross in Michael Jackson’s Calvary. And it’s a mesmerizing read; incantational with dramaturgical word play.

Too, there is a particularly fascinating quote related to Jackson that was lifted from Michel Houellebecq‘s book Platform that’s circulating the internet as well. I’ve garnered more insight about Jackson from these two gentleman’s short interpretations than a week’s worth of Nancy Grace and her yapping ilk.

Both men inadvertently address what happens when the sign Virgo has its fundamental impulse go awry. Thwarted or mutated, Virgo’s admirable call to purity becomes downright phantasmagoric.

Michael Jackson, as I’ve noted earlier, was a Sun conjunct Pluto Virgo. Unless given almost shamanic-like life training, Sun Pluto individuals approach existence from an impetus that most of us can barely fathom. And if we can’t understand it, imagine what it must be like for them to actually live it. Read more

George Orwell once said that a man has the face that he deserves at age 50.

And while I’d agree with that sentiment as it relates to just about every single post 50-year-old walking the planet today — think Dick Cheney — I’d have to take exception with how that curse applied to Michael Jackson.

Dead at 50 and possessing a face with which no one should ever have to contend. Mike’s adult face was actually a mask. A direct creation of self-hatred, plain and simple. That and the way our own ghoulish fascination with his self-loathing spurred him on. An obsession that was prodded, secretly I think, by that part within each of us that dislikes parts of ourselves: wrinkles, sags, spots, dots; imperfection. Given unlimited wealth and time, Michael could nip, tuck, tweak and freak to his heart’s content. Only he could never get away from the self-loathing.

But enough bummer talk. Michael was a genuine puer aeternus. And no self-respecting puer, worth their essence in gold records, should ever live into his fifties. Michael was just taking leave on cue, true to his mythology. It makes perfect sense to me.

Mike’s key astrological signature reads like this — and is cosmic code for us to understand just about every aspect of his career: Uranus conjunct Venus in Leo. And Pluto conjunct his Virgo Sun. The Uranian aura — the dazzle, electricity and ingenuity to his performance style — mixed with a distinct charm and innocence. And the strange shadow catcher condition represented by his Pluto Sun conjunction. As I mentioned earlier, Michael’s Frankensteinian relationship with his own body and face fostered the perfect condition for the public to project their own obsessions with youth, beauty and perfection — and how those always remain elusive. Read more

Tonight’s full moon in Cancer is perigee again (as it was last month). This makes the moon appear gigantic at the horizon and also connotes big emotions, big turmoils and big revelations and resolutions.

In a bit of cosmic irony, Saturn turned retrograde exactly on New Year’s day, dampening the sense of enthusiasm we usually associate with the start of a new year. This reinforces the unavoidable fact that we’re still entrenched in a cathartic re-arrangment of our culture, politics and economy. We need a mystic’s perspective to navigate our current predicament — meaning a deep faith that despite the collapse of existing structures, the loss and turmoil, a Phoenix will rise from the ashes. And, wow — ask and you shall receive:

The arrangement of planets during tonight’s full moon create what is termed a ‘mystic rectangle’, involving the Sun in Capricorn with Saturn in Virgo, Uranus in Pisces, and the Moon in Cancer — all water and earth signs. A mystic rectangle features two oppositions, two trines and two sextiles. That combination of aspects is enough to unravel our best efforts to control or become too literal-minded, and perhaps this is why Dane Rudhyar interpreted this pattern as being one of “practical mysticism.” We’re forced into a non-secular orientation that takes us out of our box, our modus operandi. Surprisingly, we discover that we can function just fine from this new place. We underestimated our capacities. We need this particular type of soul training, this kind of reminder right now, to take on the task of the year ahead. Read more