Anne Whitaker's Blog, page 18
January 6, 2016
How I became an astrologer – a lesson in open-mindedness…
Here is the latest post on Astrology: Questions and Answers:
My first horoscope
http://astrologyquestionsandanswers.com/2016/01/04/how-i-became-an-astrologer-against-all-the-odds/
Filed under: 001 – new Posts: January 2016 onwards, Astrology Article Archive 1 – "Not the Astrology Column" Tagged: "as above so below", astrology, horoscope
January 4, 2016
As 2016 begins: some thoughts on light, dark and the curse of being right…
As part of the slow process of emerging snail-like from the tinsel shell of the Festive Season, and preparing to greet the new world of 2016, I checked my Stats yesterday for the first time in a while. They had increased by around 500% at the turn of the year. Why? I wondered, bemused. Here is the reason: Rumi’s wonderfully wise poem “This being human”. Do read it, if you have not done so already. It contains great wisdom regarding the turbulent duality of light and dark forces which constitute not only human nature, but also Life itself.
Hubble throws light on dark matter
Light and dark are inseparably interdependent: maybe, Rumi is suggesting, it would be wise to honour them both, since those dark destructive energies which periodically sweep through, causing havoc personally and collectively, contain messages, guidance from Beyond, which are telling us something we usually do not wish to hear.
I am not alone in having had Life hurl me against the same wall a few times before I eventually ‘get the message’, and with painful slowness begin the process of change which is being demanded of me by a deeper, wiser Self – that chip of divine light which is present in every one of us.
I was moved by seeing those increased stats, and finding the Rumi post to be largely responsible. A year’s turn, no matter what our beliefs, brings with it a deeply-ingrained, archetypal need to take stock, reflect on the year gone by, and perhaps resolve to make some positive changes in the New Year emerging.
Those of you who drop by this blog regularly will know how much comfort and inspiration I take from wise quotes– and from poems. It is good to know that so many folk share my need to turn to quotes, and poems, in reflective moments.
Writers offering comforting platitudes skimmed from a glide across the surface of life, or perhaps digging down a little, do not move me. My help comes from those who look unflinchingly into the world’s dark heart without underestimating in any way the destruction and cruelty to be found there, but who can balance what they see with inspiring affirmation.
Despite all the awfulness of ‘man’s inhumanity to man’ which is an ever-present reality through the ages both personally and collectively, Life is full of opportunities to be ‘surprised by joy’, to seek and find meaning in even the most scouring of experiences. That is certainly what I have come to believe.
Some writers have a way, also, of reminding us of how we need to change by poking us where it hurts. Reflecting on the current dismal-looking state of planet Earth and its denizens as 2016 begins, I was chewing upon one of my favourite anger-generating topics: how our need to be RIGHT – and its world-wide manifestations via religious, political and scientific fundamentalism – has probably caused more bloodshed, mayhem and havoc throughout history than anything else, when I came across this short but pungent poem by the poet Yahuda Amichai.
With thanks to Monica Domino who published it yesterday on symbolreader, I offer you this as a New Year meditation:
“The Place Where We Are Right”
“From the place where we are right
flowers will never grow
in the spring.
The place where we are right
is hard and trampled
like a yard.
But doubts and loves
dig up the world
like a mole, a plow.
And a whisper will be heard in the place
where the ruined
house once stood.”
Yehuda Amichai
600 words copyright Anne Whitaker/Yehuda Amichai 2016
Licensed under Creative Commons – for conditions see Home Page
Filed under: 001 – new Posts: January 2016 onwards, A New Year begins...., Favourite Quotes (archive) Tagged: "This being human" by Rumi, 'man's inhumanity to man, as 2016 begins, fundamentalism, symbolreader.net, Yehuda Amichai
December 24, 2015
Festive Greetings as 2015 closes: an Invocation for the turning year…
O Great Spirit,
as this Northern winter season slowly turns to meet the gradually emerging life of Spring and its lengthening, warming days, help us to live more peacefully with one another on this planet Earth, tiny amidst the vastness of the Cosmos. Despite our insatiable hunger for knowledge, our technological brilliance, who we are, where we are, and why we are here at all remains shrouded in deepest mystery.
Northern Lights at Stenness Stones, Orkney
Help us to be more humble in realising how much growing we must do as a human collective in order to emerge a little more from the primeval savagery of our tumultuous instincts which still appear to dominate the way we live, threatening now the very fabric of Earth herself.
Help us to be aware of the interconnectedness of all things in the Heavens above, and in the Earth below. Help us to realise that what we do to the Earth, ultimately we do to ourselves.
In the meantime, as Susan Cooper’s wonderful solstice poem has told us to do, let’s carol, fest, give thanks, dearly love our friends – and hope for peace.
Blessings, everybody! And many, many thanks to all my blog Followers, Commenters and visitors old and new for your support of my writing, for your wit, and for your wisdom.
Standing Stones in Winter
250 words copyright Anne Whitaker 2015
Licensed under Creative Commons – for conditions see Home Page
Filed under: Festive Greetings : 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014,2015 Tagged: Callanish Stones, Northern Lights at Stenness Stones Orkney, Northern winter, O Great Spirit, planet Earth, Susan Cooper
December 22, 2015
Poetic beauty at the Winter Solstice
We humans in the Northern Hemisphere, beset by darkness and cold, have from long antiquity needed light and celebration to lift our spirits in the bleak midwinter, no matter how much the grimness of world affairs or the pains of everyday life hold us down. At last year’s Winter Solstice, I published a wonderful poem by Susan Cooper which depicts the history and expression of this need with vivid beauty. Many of my readers have requested me to publish it again this year.
It has become an annual event in our house, as we flick malt whisky symbolically onto our Xmas Tree, the modern version of the ancient Sumerians’ Moon Tree, to read Susan Cooper’s poem aloud. I do hope, somewhere, somehow, she knows this.
Happy Solstice, Everyone!
Our Tree 2015
‘THE SHORTEST DAY’ BY SUSAN COOPER
So the shortest day came, and the year died,
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive,
And when the new year’s sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, reveling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us – Listen!!
All the long echoes sing the same delight,
This shortest day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, fest, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.
Welcome Yule!!
******
In the bleak Midwinter…
Filed under: 01 - new Posts: January 2015 onwards, Winter Nights - embracing the darkness Tagged: Happy Solstice, In the bleak midwinter, Sumerian Moon Tree, Susan Cooper
December 12, 2015
A New Moon Meditation…
Here is the latest post on Astrology: Questions and Answers
http://astrologyquestionsandanswers.com/2015/12/12/working-saturnneptune-a-new-moon-meditation/
Winter New Moon
Filed under: Uncategorized
December 4, 2015
Invincible summer – in the chill of winter….
All my life I have loved and been inspired by quotes.
At this dark time of year approaching the solstice, as winter begins to grip, I thought I’d post a couple of special favourites: I hope you find them inspiring! And – feel free to share one of your own in a comment…
******
River Kelvin, Glasgow UK, Dec 2010
photo: Anne Whitaker 8.12.10
“In the midst of winter
I finally learned
That there was in me
An invincible summer”
(This is a popular quote whose original source I have as yet not traced, but have come across a slight variation ie ‘within me there lay an invincible summer’ – different sites have different versions. Come on, detectives out there! Where in Camus’ writings does this quote appear? Let me know!)
( Albert Camus 1913-1960 was a French philosopher best known for his book L’Etranger (The Outsider) whose existentialist philosophy influenced a whole post-war generation)
AND
“It is far more creative to work with the idea of mindfulness rather than with the idea of will.Too often people try to change their lives by using the will as a kind of hammer to beat their lives into shape. If you work with a different rhythm, you will come easily and naturally home to yourself. Your soul knows the geography of your destiny. Your soul alone has the map of your future, therefore you can trust this indirect, oblique side of yourself. If you do, it will take you where you need to go.”
John O’Donohue, pp 83-4 “Anam Cara” Bantam Books 1999
(John O’Donohue 1956-2008 was an Irish poet turned priest, whose writing merged Celtic spirit and love of the natural world)
******
300 words copyright Anne Whitaker/John O’Donohue/Albert Camus/ 2015
Licensed under Creative Commons – for conditions see Home Page
Filed under: 01 - new Posts: January 2015 onwards, Favourite Quotes (archive) Tagged: Albert Camus, Anam Cara, John O'Donohue, L’Etranger (The Outsider), River Kelvin 
November 30, 2015
Advent: “a winter training camp for those who desire peace…”
Tomorrow, Advent begins. I can scarcely believe the speed with which this year has flown past. Neither can I quite believe – despite all the dimensions of our world which are still positive, creative and hopeful – the quantum leap which our troubled planet seems to have taken this year: into a frightening level of population displacement with its attendant human misery, and of mindless violence for the continuation of which, it appears, we have to steel ourselves for the foreseeable future until our political lords and masters can come up with some kind of solution. As I write, that solution is not at all obvious.
Advent’s Light
What can we do about this at an individual level, to help our feelings of pain for the suffering of our fellow human beings, and to make us feel less helpless? At a practical, outgoing level, we can send donations of food, clothing, money to help ease the plight of those millions of refugees displaced by violent upheaval.
Advent, however, invites us to pause, be still, go within…The great psychologist and mystic Carl Jung observed that if there is something wrong with the world, then there is something wrong with us. We can start the process of possible change for the better by looking unflinchingly into our own hearts – and amending our own behaviour. Writer Edward Hays puts this challenge beautifully:
“Advent is the perfect time to clear and prepare… Advent is a winter training camp for those who desire peace. By reflection and prayer, by reading and meditation, we can make our hearts a place where a blessing of peace would desire to abide…
“Daily we can make an Advent examination. Are there any feelings of discrimination toward race, sex, or religion? Is there a lingering resentment, an unforgiven injury living in our hearts? Do we look down upon others of lesser social standing or educational achievement? Are we generous with the gifts that have been given to us, seeing ourselves as their stewards and not their owners? Are we reverent of others, their ideas and needs, and of creation? These and other questions become Advent lights by which we may search the deep, dark corners of our hearts.
An Advent Examination
Edward Hays, A Pilgrim’s Almanac, p. 196
Readers, do you have a favourite Advent reflection, meditation or poem which has inspired and comforted you? If so, do share it in a comment.
Advent’s Light
400 words copyright Anne Whitaker 2015
Licensed under Creative Commons – for conditions see Home Page
Filed under: 01 - new Posts: January 2015 onwards, Favourite Quotes (archive) Tagged: Carl Jung, population displacement, Season of Advent 
November 20, 2015
“…to deal more kindly with one another…” A Big Picture perspective from the late Carl Sagan
Like everyone else, I have been feeling crushed and deeply dispirited by the dreadful events in France last Friday, and now Mali today. I’ve also been feeling the need to post something on my blog by way of response. Thanks to Robert Bruce over at 101 Books, I found a wonderful quote from the late scientist Carl Sagan which offers a large enough perspective to encompass the horrors currently happening across our beautiful planet. It was inspired by an image of Earth taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft on February 14, 1990 from a distance of more than 6 billion kilometres. In it, our Earth appears as a tiny dot against a background of muted slanting bands of colour. I have taken the liberty here, though, of illustrating the quotation with the most famous picture of the Earth ever taken:
Our beautiful planet
“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there–on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”
— Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994
I took some comfort from this wise statement. What do you think of what Sagan says here? Do you have favourite quotes to which you turn in dark times?
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500 words copyright Anne Whitaker 2015
Licensed under Creative Commons – for conditions see Home Page
Filed under: 01 - new Posts: January 2015 onwards, Favourite Quotes (archive) Tagged: Carl Sagan, our Universe, planet Earth, Voyager Spacecraft
Here is the latest post on Astrology: Questions and Answe...
Here is the latest post on Astrology: Questions and Answers:
Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: Astrological Neptune
November 13, 2015
The Scorpio New Moon: a meditation on light in darkness…
Here is the latest post on Astrology: Questions and Answers:
Filed under: 01 - new Posts: January 2015 onwards Tagged: "as above so below", Astrological sign, astrology
