Franco Santoro's Blog: Astroshamanism, page 62

2 December

“An opera begins long before the curtain goes up and ends long after it has come down. It starts in my imagination, it becomes my life, and it stays part of my life long after I’ve left the opera house.”

(Maria Callas, born on 2 December 1923 with Sun in Sagittarius, Moon in Virgo and Ascendant in Sagittarius)

 

“Fate is how your life unfolds when you let fear determine your choices. A path of destiny reveals itself to you, however, when you confront your fear and make conscious choices.”

(Caroline Myss, born on 2 December 1952, Sun and Ascendant in Sagittarius, Moon in Gemini)

 

1 December

“God is silent. Now if only man would shut up.”

“If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans.”

“Confidence is what you have before you understand the problem.”

“If you’re not failing every now and again, it’s a sign you’re not doing anything very innovative.”

“Bisexuality immediately doubles your chances for a date on Saturday night.”

Woody Allen, born on 1 December 1935, Sun in Sagittarius, Moon in Aquarius, Ascendant in Virgo, American film director, actor, and comedian

 

 

30 November

“Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.”

(Jonathan Swift, born on 30 November 1667, Sun in Sagittarius, Moon in Libra and Ascendant in Aquarius)

Born in Dublin on 30 November 1667 with Sun in Sagittarius, Moon in Libra and Ascendant in Aquarius, and Neptune Instrument (Neptune conjunct Ascendant), died in 1745. Swift is best known for his Gulliver’s Travels, the account of a multi-dimensional voyage into other realms, originally titled Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. A less known work is A Tale of a Tub, which is the story of three sons – representing a trinity of Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter – who misread the text of their father’s last will (Bible) so as to in order to sabotage the original purpose of a coat (religion) left to them by their father (God). The story is repeatedly interrupted by the Hack, the alleged author of the story itself. Swift also coined the term Yahoo, which appears repeatedly in Gulliver’s Travels to indicate a degraded human being. A major feature in Swift’s works is the relevant attention given to excrements, compost and whatever is filthy or degraded. In Gulliver’s Travels, Swift offer regular details of evacuation practices in Lilliput and Brobdingnag, while in Lagado a member of the Academy claims to detect a man’s involvement in plots against the government by examining the physical properties of his excrement: “[b]ecause Men are never so serious, thoughtful, and intent, as when they are at Stool.” Swift also wrote a large series of excremental poems, such as “Strephon and Chloe”. This is a couple forced on their nuptial night by the richness of the wedding to relieve themselves, bringing the purity of romantic love down to physiological reality.

28 November

“Imagination is the real and eternal world of which this vegetable universe is but a faint shadow”

(William Blake, born 28 November 1757, Sun in Sagittarius, Moon and Ascendant in Cancer)

Advent Sunday

Sunday, 29 November 2015, is the first day of the Advent season, which coincides with the annual peak of darkness. The Sun is lower during these days, creating longer and higher shadows, which reach out to the sky.

The paradox of Advent is that we can find the greatest luminosity in the darkest and least likely places. Nazareth, which is now a holy place, was in biblical times an obscure location, where nobody could think of finding anything valuable. “Can anything good could come out of Nazareth?” (John 1:46).

We often fail to acknowledge and embrace the greatest blessings simply because we assume we cannot find them in certain places. Those places, far from being distant, are often just round the corner.

One of such places is the shadow side, whatever we are afraid and ashamed of, and repress or deny in ourself and others. This is the realm of the unknown, a dark tunnel. When we manage to honestly acknowledge this tunnel, it inevitably, yet unexpectedly, leads us to its creator: the Light. This is the trust and patient hope of the Advent.

“The descent into the shadow is inescapable and essential to the authentic Birth. It is one of the holiest of mysteries, the place where the greatest treasures are to be found. When you discover the diamond hidden at the heart of this paradox, it irradiates your whole being with an ever-expanding joy, wisdom and hope.” (Andrew Harvey, A Guide to Sacred Activism, p. 190)

“Patience, capacity, or tolerance is the helpful attitude toward accepting and working with the difficulties of existence. Basically, patience is simple; it means waiting. No matter how good our conduct or practice, expecting or grabbing at some reward or result is a hindrance. When we do our best without any particular expectation, we can actually be ready for whatever happens. Patience is flexible, open, and ready to respond to the world before us.” (Taigen Daniel Leighton)

Image: XV century painting of comet Halley

Franco Santoro

Full Moon in Gemini

The Full Moon in Gemini is at 22:44 GMT on 25 November 2015.

This Full Moon, with the Sun in Sagittarius opposing the Moon in Gemini, can be most exciting and decisive for it holds the potential of confronting us with the direct implications of our soul’s purpose, which may not necessarily coincide with our conditioning and belief systems, or with whatever we do in order to fit with consensus reality.

Sagittarius is often regarded as the multidimensional gateway between ordinary third-dimensional reality and higher dimensions, the portal to the centre of our galaxy, the access point where beings from other dimensions, star systems and parallel universes slide or incarnate into third-dimensional reality.

A multidimensional gateway is a setting through which multidimensional beings can pass in order to immediately access locations far away in time or space. In previous times this gateway was the axis Capricorn-Cancer, which still formally is. Yet, due to the precession of the equinox, this point has shifted to Sagittarius-Gemini, with the Gate of Capricorn now being located between the constellations Sagittarius and Scorpio. This is acknowledged as the Galactic Centre, where scientists are aware of a mysterious black hole. This is esoterically regarded as the portal to higher dimensions, the birth canal leading to the Lower World, rather than, as it is often advertised, to Heaven.

Sagittarius is considered as the stellar womb from which the current separated reality was conceived and born. Hence, when the Sun transits Sagittarius there is potential for conceiving and giving birth to alternative configurations.

If you wish to browse around and be further confused, there is now ample literature on the topic, yet you may risk missing the Sagittarius darting energy aiming herewith at a precise target. And this target may be what your intention is, right now, what in this moment you choose to create and accept in your mind as the best possible dimension you can conceive for yourself and others, without any limit regarding what gives you joy, peace and any quality you value.

Aim straight at the highest target, get out of the smoke zone of your false limitations, open up to the flames of your heart and use fire arrows to hit the centre of your being.

The Sun is in Sagittarius and the Moon is in Gemini. The Sun and the Moon reach their maximum distance from each other, and yet the Moon receives from the Sun the maximum amount of light. Hence, let’s get down to business… No matter how remote your greatest dream appears to be, today you can start this week with total trust that there is unlimited light for whatever you wish. In these days you can repeatedly aim at your highest targets, letting go of compromises and choosing simply and only the best. The Light supports you with the Full Moon and the Winter Solstice in two weeks.

There is no limit to the Light we can receive, because this Light is us. Its perennial flame burns in our hearts. Do not allow anything or anyone to hide this fire from your sight. Release your fears and the miserable blackmail of this corrupted world, aim straight at your highest target with fire arrows, and hit the centre of your being.

Franco Santoro

If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world. (C.S.Lewis, born on a full moon in Gemini)

19 November

“In the case of lived experience, there is no difference between an object that is perceived and the eye that perceives it.”

“What is experienced from within cannot be categorized in concepts that have been developed for the external world of the senses.”

Wilhelm Dilthey, born on 19 November 1833, Sun in Scorpio, Moon in Pisces, Ascendant in Cancer, German philosopher.

18 November

“The main thing that I learned about conspiracy theory is that conspiracy theorists actually believe in a conspiracy because that is more comforting. The truth of the world is that it is chaotic. The truth is, that it is not the Jewish banking conspiracy or the grey aliens or the 12 foot reptiloids from another dimension that are in control. The truth is more frightening, nobody is in control. The world is rudderless.”

(Alan Oswald Moore, born 18 November 1953, Sun in Scorpio, Moon in Aries)

16 November

There’s light at the end of the tunnel. The problem is that tunnel is in the back of your mind. And if you don’t go to the back side of your mind you will never see the light at the end of the tunnel. And once you see it, then the task becomes to empower it in yourself and other people. Spread it as a reality. God did not retire to the seventh heaven, God is some kind of lost continent IN the human mind.

Terence McKenna, born on 16 November 1946, with Sun in Scorpio, Moon in Virgo and Ascendant in Scorpio. Most popular psychedelic author, techno shaman and skilled orator. McKenna devoted his life to the study of the ontological aspects of shamanism and the effects of food and drugs on human states of consciousness.

One of his most intriguing theories regards the origin of the human mind and culture. McKenna argues that some of our primate ancestors left the branches and took up a hunter life out in the open following around herds of ungulates (hoofed mammals) and eating what they could along the way. Among the new ingredients of their diet were psilocybin-containing mushrooms growing in the dung of these herds.

One of the changes caused by the use of this drug was synesthesia (the blurring of boundaries between the senses), which caused the development of spoken language: i.e. the ability to form pictures in another person’s mind through the use of vocal sounds.

McKenna wrote: “We wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for psychedelic drugs. In terms of the role of psilocybin in human evolution on the grasslands of Africa, people not on drugs were behind the curve. The fact is that, in terms of human evolution, people not on psychedelics are not fully human. They’ve fallen to a lower state, where they’re easily programmed, boundary defined, obsessed by sexual possessiveness which is transferred into fetishism and object obsession. We don’t want too many citizens asking where the power and the money really goes. Informed by psychedelics, people might stop saluting. ‘Take your political party, your job, whatever, and shove it.’

McKenna also believed that tryptamine-based organic hallucinogens, such as those found in ayahuasca and psilocybin, were tools for communication with other forms of life in the universe, either in what he called “hyperspace” or even literally on other planets. He was intrigued especially by the fact that hallucinogen users seemed to go to the same multi-dimensional places, realms inhabited by entities he referred to as “self-transforming machine elves”.

Among his numerous books, Food ofthe Gods is probably the most popular and also the one more closely associated with his birth binary 8.6 (Sun in Scorpio and Moon in Virgo). The book is a detailed account of food and drug use throughout human history. McKenna was particularly against refined sugar for its addictive qualities and negative health effects, pointing out its devastating impact on human consciousness. He stressed that numerous wars were fought over sugar, with entire generations being condemned to slavery in the service of its cultivation, as opposed to the innocent mushroom which only ever wanted to make people happy.

McKenna affirmed that plant hallucinogens are threatening for current cultures because they undermine authority structures by democratically giving all users equal access to the big picture: “Because modern institutions depend on the transmission of a certain world view and then willing acquiescense in the truth of that world view by the populations into which it is being exported. In other words a kind of cultural brainwashing is necessary for modern cultures to work at all. The consequences of the acceptance of this situation of brainwashing is further acceleration toward catastrophe.”

“For monkeys to speak of truth is hubris of the highest degree. Where is it writ large that talking-monkeys should be able to model the cosmos? If a sea urchin or a racoon were to propose to you that it had a viable truth about the universe, the absurdity of that assertion would be self-evident, but in our case we make an exception.”

“Somehow I was finding out that thing that you cheerfully assume you can’t find out. But it felt like I was finding out. And it felt.. and then I can’t remember what it felt like because the little self-transforming tykes interrupted me and said, ‘Don’t think about it. Don’t think about who you are. Think about doing what we’re doing. Do it. Do it now. DO IT!!”

Quotes:

“The problem is not to find the answer, it’s to face the answer”

“You have to take seriously the notion that understanding the universe is your responsibility, because the only understanding of the universe that will be useful to you is your own understanding.”

“The syntactical nature of reality, the real secret of magic, is that the world is made of words. And if you know the words that the world is made of, you can make of it whatever you wish.”

“You are an explorer, and you represent our species, and the greatest good you can do is to bring back a new idea, because our world is endangered by the absence of good ideas. Our world is in crisis because of the absence of consciousness.”

“Ego is a structure that is erected by a neurotic individual who is a member of a neurotic culture against the facts of the matter. And culture, which we put on like an overcoat, is the collectivized consensus about what sort of neurotic behaviours are acceptable.”

“You are a divine being. You matter, you count. You come from realms of unimaginable power and light, and you will return to those realms.”

“The purpose of life is to familiarize oneself with this after-death body so that the act of dying will not create confusion in the psyche.”

“If you don’t have a plan, you become part of somebody else’s plan.”

“My technique is don’t believe anything. If you believe in something, you are automatically precluded from believing its opposite.”

“The shaman is not merely a sick man, or a madman; he is a sick man who has healed himself.”

Sense of life

Strictly speaking the whole sense of life is to prepare ourselves to face the journey through illness and death. In a world based on denial and fright about illness and death life becomes sheer nonsense.

I am aware the above statement may not sell. If this is the case I will keep it for myself, and write something else about the purpose of life.