Sunday 28 September 2014

The threads of thinking

Lyn Bell’s excellent address to the Astrological Association centred on the fact that in Islamic State we have an organisation that fundamentally rejects our current mode of thinking in the west. She pointed out that this feels like a shock to us because we assume that everyone thinks like we do; that everyone shares our view that others are entitled to their opinion even if we might not agree with it. She pointed out that this focus on empathy, compassion and kindness, Nietzche and Hegel described in terms of a slave or servant mentality because a servant or slave is dependent whereas a master mentality, with its indepdendence encompassed values such as nobility, pride, strength. Her main point was that ISIS considered our western offer of democracy and freedom as a form of slavery and that ISIS could be seen as a provocation for us to consider where we had become enslaved. She linked this to the current mutual reception of Pluto in Capricorn and Saturn in Scorpio and also the 6th and 12th houses. She noted that our current economic system built on huge debt, where young people are faced with the choice of going to University and thus incurring immediate enslavement to paying off debt or not going to University but thereby being limited in terms of career opportunities does look like slavery.

This got me thinking about the difference in viewpoint that Lyn was describing. My friend Chrissy Philp outlines the great ages in her book The Golden City as being more like tree rings emanating from the centre rather than bookends with fixed start and finish points. She also sees them as having a masculine and feminine polarity – thus we are on the cusp of the Aquarius-Leo age and the age of Pisces-Virgo came in about two-thousand years ago with the birth of Christ.

What struck Lyn Bell very forcibly was the way that ISIS was rejecting our modern western thinking – the notion of empathy, kindness, compassion – the right of others to hold a different view from us. She said it was easy for us to assume that everyone holds this same way of thinking, yet it is shocking to find that an organisation like ISIS completely rejects what feels to us like an obvious shared mindset. Yet, when viewed through the lens of the great ages this starts to make some sense.
If we start with the age of Pisces-Virgo, it is easy to see that the qualities of kindness, empathy, the right for others to hold a different view are very much Pisces-Virgo age values – which is very fitting. What also fits is the fact that Lyn Bell associated these values with the 12th – 6th house of slavery and servitude. Yet, if the idea of tree rings is right then we are constantly dealing with thinking from previous ages – it has not gone away. That is what is confusing; that we are dealing with a jumble of thinking from previous ages, rather than a straightforward collective shift to a commonly held view.
It is easy to see that in the new Pisces-Virgo thinking the issue of master-slave relationship takes on a shift. Perhaps some of the more notable expressions of this collectively come in the form of Ghandi in India – non-violent resistance, the Dalai Lama in his response to China and Nelson Mandela in South-Africa.  All these individuals echo the response of Christ in the original symbolic story which began the Pisces age – a willingness to suffer personally in order to transcend the current conflicts and oppositions – note the physical element to the suffering – Virgo does rule the body (“take, eat: this is my body which is given for you…”).

In thinking about this I was also drawn to consider whether there might be a link between the physical location of the issues and the great ages. So with Islamic State in Iraq (former Babylon) Taurus-Scorpio issues are playing out. Certainly, many commentators point out that the real motive for the wars with Iraq are more to do with oil (Scorpio) and money (Taurus). In similar fashion, the recent conflict in Israel/Palestine echoes the themes of the Cancer-Capricorn age with arguments over homeland, who has the historical right (Cancer) and the relationship between state (Capricorn) and homeland (Cancer). Again this takes place in the very area in which this age’s central themes and history may well have taken place if dating of the Old Testament is accurate.

So, when we look at a challenges we face in a chart from a mundane perspective, is it possible that the transits of the outer planets confront us with thinking emanating from different ages? Is it also possible that the Earth is the physical matter on which the energies of the heavens are reflected much like a hologramatic representation – a 3-D screen?  Astro-locality suggests that our individual charts are triggered in particular locations and if so, then this suggests that the Earth may be the physical entity on which the influences of the heavens take form – a true marriage of Heaven and Earth.
In the current conflict with ISIS it is possible to see the jumbling of the different ages in our thinking. The Aries-Libra age seems particularly embedded in the myths of the Trojan wars – heroes fighting over a beautiful maiden taken from her rightful husband to form a love triangle. The only response to such despicable action was war – the enemy clearly needed to be taught manners. One can see this theme of a war to civilise others and bring justice continuing through the Roman Empire, then passing on the baton to the Byzantine Empire, the crusades, the Ottoman Empire, the British Empire and now the USA’s crusade to bring democracy to heathen countries. Perhaps each age brings a new level of consciousness which is provoked by the previous age? Certainly in the Arthurian myths (a very Aries-Libra myth with it’s knights, courtly love and central love triangle), the holy grail – the cup which caught Christ’s blood from the spear wound of the Roman soldier, has a suitably Pisces mystical and purifying quality which transcends the quest for honour through battle.

Listening to Afghanis and Iraqis that I have met and soldiers returning with PTSD, it is clear that while we may see ourselves as espousing very different values in the west, the reality could not be further from the truth. The actions of ISIS are no more brutal than those of our own soldiers. Yet we continue to believe that we have justice on our side much as the middle age amalgam of Christian countries justified their wars against the Arabic states.  Perhaps the global nature of the challenges we now face and our discovery of the outer planets will sow the seeds for a global consciousness where we recognise our common humanity? It would be nice to think that even if it takes thousands of years we will become more conscious of these collective forces and play them out with more wisdom.  If the AA conference talks reflected our potential we certainly have the ability!

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