Today’s the big New Moon eclipse in Taurus. It’s a peculiar one. I’ve had a hard time wrapping my mind around it because with Taurus — the thickest, densest, weightiest  most substantial part of the Zodiac (imagine picking up a bull) — we have to see what the bull will offer us, rather than trying to peer into his bovine brain. So I took a zen approach to this eclipse and let it come to me (Cancer astrologers can do this better than, well, you can.)

Lying in the bathtub this morning I received a text message from a friend on his way to a big Kabbalah conference on the East Coast. He’d cut and pasted the entire Sabian Symbol reading for the eclipse degree, from grandaddy Dane Rudhyar, into the message. What a revelation! Look it up for yourself (20 degrees Taurus) because I’m going to talk about other stuff now. But his text completed the download that started several days ago, just as the eclipse point began to perturbate.

The first sputterings arrived when I encountered the above painting of the Bull of Zaandam. The painting’s flat earth tones are keenly complimented by its geometric beauty; and just staring at it opened a tiny doorway into my brain through which a baby bull entered. So I knew I was on to something. Gurdjieff would deem a painting like this an example of conscious art, a form of art designed to illicit a distinct, specific emotional or spiritual response. Most art does not do this.

The painting depicts the legend of an unfortunate meeting between a bull, some kites, a father and a pregnant mother. The outcome of the disaster is an airborne newborn. The story is hedged round with chthonic flavorings — death, birth and magic. New Moon eclipses have a similar confluence.

Something of the primordial realm is afoot during an eclipse, the stable door’s left open you could say. Our response to an eclipse stretches back to the origins of time —  alarm vibrates in our cells — our visceral response to the darkening of the Sun. At such times chiefs, kings, tribal elders — all were put on the spot to get the fucking Sun back on track. Something’s awry in the biosphere, set it right! But now the corrective measures must be our own. Mom and dad aren’t here for us. They got killed by a bull.

How do we do it?

Follow the snorting, feel the gravitas — give it a project worthy its potency. Like all of the fixed signs, access to Taurus’s power is protected, hidden deep — you must either burn, drown, suffocate or be buried alive to get to the gold of the fixed signs. Taurus is no exception. When you engage with the fixed signs you’re engaging with tantra. And this is why most folks do not understand the power of Taurus, Leo, Scorpio or Aquarius. Of all the zodiacal signs these four are shrouded with hackneyed keywords. All of the cliches protect the fixed sign’s esoteric nature. Power is rarely used for constructive purposes once encountered or unleashed. Google ‘Hiroshima’ someday.

Taurus marries virility to steadfastness. So you have a fount of rich loamy soil, still and brown black, allocated for fecundity. It’s stock still seed-shelter, the sort of thing that makes birds go wild with song and weeds appear en masse overnight. But this force needs a plow and driver. Harnessing.

Disengaged, Taurus involutes. Lethargy and indulgence bloom and empty Cheetos bags and porn site passwords litter the floor and computer desktop. It’s a slippery slope with Taurus because, again, people do not have a clear relationship with power — much can go awry. Which, as we’ll see, this eclipse will reveal in the coming six months as the degree point is set off by transits.

So engage now. Use alchemical mixing to optimize the staggering weight of the bull. How? Locate Neptune in your natal chart and marry the two.

Neptune’s vespers are completely antithetical to Taurus’ virility  I don’t even know if Neptune even exists per se. I mean, it might be the size of a tennis ball and the rest is all fog, smoke and haze. This same something-nothing translates over to the house Neptune occupies in your natal chart.

So, an example: If Neptune is in your 3rd you’ve a colorful imagination but no real feel for being able to do anything tangible with it, there’s a book in there, say, that no one will ever read. Neptune in the 7th conveys a longing for relationship that can open your heart to all of humanity — but this seems too lofty an aim — so you never engage this part of your life; all of your relationships feel incomplete; someone’s always missing.

Wildman astrologer Al H. Morrison said of Neptune: “Wherever you have Neptune” in your chart, “you have to grasp the opportunity. You have to establish an entity, you have got to organize the thrust of what you are going to do…” to give form to this area of life. We respond to each other’s Neptune, we sense a lure or charisma but often this remains vauge and nascent — far from manifestation. Always a deep longing, always something promised but missing — so fill it in, fill it up.

I’m not talking about magical thinking here, in fact the opposite: Something pragmatic and very Taurus. As Pluto continues to move through Capricorn and reality keeps rearranging and shifting with shadow inflation creeping and job numbers stagnating — the Neptune fuzziness needs to focus. It’s a tricky Catch 22. Neptune hints at the magic — what the world is longing for — but also there’s the madness. People can sense it, but can’t see it. Help yourself (and conversely them) to see it.

So rub the genies lamp during today’s eclipse. Out pops a baby bull. Put him to work for you.

• “Science has failed. Science, as we understand it, is too flabby, too simplistic…”

• “Collective unconsciousness? No. That’s flatly rubbish.”

• “Ink on paper survives. Electrons don’t.”

• “Ordinarily, organized religion is the most powerful thing on the planet, but in the Aquarian Age, gays are.”

Welcome to astrologer, publisher and online entrepreneur David Roell‘s world. Those are his quotes above. I promise you a stimulating, occasionally infuriating but always consciousness-twanging read.

What’s that classic Bette Davis line from All About Eve? It’ll be fitting. Oh, yes: “Fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy night.”

Some preamble:

David and I met a decade ago. I’d tumbled into his online bookstore Astrology Center of America one evening and went missing for hours; hopping from book review to book review — my eyes popping, brain smoking.

Dave’s critiques were piquant — often blunt and eviscerating — and he never shellacked bull to make a sale. I didn’t always agree, but Dave’s disregard for polticial correctness was refreshing. The astrological world could use more of this tough love approach. Too much New Age babble occupies the mainstream while worthy tomes are shoved into the backwaters of academia. And — oops, Sylvia Browne just released a new bestseller.

I fired a fan letter off to Dave that same evening and he responded almost instantly, in that eerie way that makes you wonder if Aquarian people ever sleep (it must have been 3AM in Maryland).

A wild rapids discussion followed. From Mozart’s suspicious death, to planetary nodes, to demigoddess Liz Greene‘s PhD. Somehow we dovetailed from a Venus in Taurus deconstruction into David comparing the weary faces of overworked female opera singers to those of beleaguered California porn vixens. At first I couldn’t follow his logic, but eventually grasped his point regarding the occupational hazards of a throat-based craft. With this later bit of wisdom I knew I’d met a kindred spirit.

Dave’s wonkiness is similar to my own. And who doesn’t like corresponding with someone who is just like you  — only better? I also sensed that Dave and I would remain in touch for life.

Although my first teacher was Ivy Goldstein-Jacobson, I’d progressed over the years into the tar baby of psychological astrology. David’s application of traditional astrological techniques impressed me. This goaded me, eventually, into studying William Lilly, John Frawley, Geoffrey Cornelius, Deborah Houlding and others. I kept asking David: “OK, so what should I read next? Send it to me.”

This interview took place over a three week period. Before we’d even started, and in typical Roell fashion, our exchange was darkened by his cup-half-empty appraisal. Dave had revisited the synastry between our charts. His concern: “Hmmm, your Jupiter is conjunct my South Node so this interview will probably turn out to be a whole lot of nothing.”

And of course, in typical Roell fashion, it became the exact opposite.

Enjoy the rabbit hole you’re about to enter. Revel in Dave’s revolutionary ideas about an earth-based zodiac, the near-uselessness of modern medicine, homosexuality and the Aquarian Age, and then go buy some good books.

Please, leave your comments and questions below the interview, even if it’s four in the morning you’ll probably have a response from Dave in an instant.

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The sun can only be seen by the light
of the sun. The more a man or woman knows,
the greater the bewilderment, the closer
to the sun the more dazzled, until a point
is reached where one no longer is.

I met a woman once and asked her where love had led her.
“Fool, there’s no destination to arrive at.
Loved one and lover and love are infinite.”

— Farid ud-Din Attar
 

When people ask me to recommend my favorite biography on G.I. Gurdjieff I instantly mention Fritz Peters‘ My Journey With A Mystic.

Although the title is a tad provactive and lacking (G. was much more than a ‘mystic’ — I’m not sure a fitting term has been compiled too encapsulate the man accurately), though the book is an honest to goodness journey. A wild, fun, heartfelt ride for certain. The book’s tenor is very human, the language simple and Peters’ recapitulation vivid and objective, alive. You won’t find a more engaging recounting.

In this section, G. describes the missed opportunities of poorly composed questions. Of which, in life, there are few genuine ones:

“You see what trouble I have with students? She ask stupid questions and I give stupid answers, but even though stupid, they honest.

But same is true even when someone—very rare—ask genuine question. When I give true answer, her unconscious already know answer is true because unless already know answer, unconscious cannot ask question. But, even so, she think I make joke, so will not listen.

In teaching is necessary to remember that no one really asks questions. Impossible to ask question about something you not already know, already have good idea. So I only give answers which she already know. Answer to such question everybody already know. Is usual, when person ask me question, to already know two answers: one pleasant, one unpleasant. Not really ask question, only want confirmation; want pleasant answer from other person than self, because already know pleasant answer not right.

But. . . if other person, like myself, give pleasant answer then can say to self that I tell this answer, and so not have to worry with conscience because is my fault.

But for serious man is not necessary find new answers, but new questions. Once you ask question, this mean you already have a very good idea about answer. For teacher is important make student ask new questions.

This reason why education in your country and in modern times upside-down. Teacher in school never make new student ask new question or try to discover new thing. Only answer old questions to which everyone already have answer or can find answer in self without effort.”

Question: What is inspiration?

Answer: Inspiration is an association. It is the work of one center. Inspiration is cheap, rest assured of that. Only conflict, argument, may produce a result.

Whenever there is an active element there is a passive element. If you believe in God, you also believe in the devil. All this has no value. Whether you are good or bad — it is not worth anything. Only a conflict bewteen two sides is worth something. Only when much is accumulated can something new manifiest itself.

At every moment there may be a conflict in you. You never see yourself. You will believe what I say only when you begin to look into yourself — then you will see. If you try to do something you don’t want to do — you will suffer. If you want to do something and don’t do it — you also suffer.

What you like — whether good or bad — is of the same value. Good is a relative concept. Only if you begin to work, your good and bad begin to exist.

From Views for the Real World: Early Talks of Gurdjieff

So a bunch of my clients have asked me about Mercury turning retrograde this week (like, in a few minutes). Most were concerned about ‘spacing out’ or losing emotional control because Pisces is considered amorphic and undisciplined. I don’t understand these associations. Einstein was a Pisces, and he overturned our entire view of the universe. If that way of delineating reality is supposed to be unfocused or undisciplined, well — Jesus — bring it on. We need more of it. Especially now when all the fallout of the Pluto in Capricorn transit keeps breaking free and cluttering the cultural landscape.

Pisces is associated with Jupiter. Neptune has nothing to do with the sign. The outer planets are not aligned with the signs the way the inner planets are. The outer planets hang out in some other neighborhood, though we are able to detect them in our solar system. Dane Rudhyar called them ambassadors from some other galaxy, and I’ve always liked that notion. Why? Because the outer planets’ light does not reach us in the same way that light from our Sun and Moon — and the sunlight that is reflected back to us all the way out to Saturn — returns back to us. Ultimately astrology is all about light and its reception and how that infiltrates and impregnates and makes the world appear ‘here’ — right before our eyes.

Jupiter is similar in some ways to Mercury, if Mercury weren’t so active assimilating data. Which is to say Jupiter works from a level of mind that is associated with wisdom, which is a kind of synthesized understanding of data. What Mercury gathers up and names Jupiter embues with vitality and juice, cooking it up to share with others. Which is what Pisces loves to do: share insights and wisdom — especially if those insights will change up the world around her. As the last sign of the zodiac Pisces is the wisest, the most artistic and the most abstract. Pisces seals the seeming split between the emotional or feeling realm and that of the mind. And shows us that feelings and thoughts are always intertwined and inter-related.

So anyway, Mercury will touch off all of the Pisces transits underway via its retrograde; this is like a mega-vitamin for the mind. All of the brainstorms you’ve had during the last couple of weeks will now get a chance to have the missing ingredients added to the mix to bring everything to consciousness — or not. Allow for messes and mistakes, or as musician Brian Eno once said: “Honor thy error as a hidden intention…” Have fun. Get some smart wisdom.