Hi Julio,

For years, starting just after I worked for Davis Brody & Associates in New York, then ghosted houses for Robert Stern with a friend of mine in NYC, I got involved with Eastern mysticism via inner journeying and various other arcane substances around at the time. I quit working, journeyed to the East overland from Europe, lived in Morocco and India, and began teaching myself astrology and painting mandalas as a way of centering. The mandalas were of course very ‘architectural’ and highly structured and they rapidly got more and more complex. The early ones were calendars showing multiple calendar systems (Western civil, Catholic, Hebrew, Islamic, Mayan, Aztec, Chinese, Indian, I Ching, Chinese astrology and others) and how they interacted. Each mandala was a year shown around the outer ring and also within the seven rings that fit perfectly inside. Also the whole calendar rotated at the equinoxes and solstices — each change of season and you rotated it clockwise on the wall. Eventually I became founder/partner of a publishing house in London and we made calendar books throughout the 70s (for Simon & Schuster, Doubleday and English publishers), featuring my mandalas, drawings and very complex hand-drawn calendars with great detail.

To me they were a way of tapping into the yearly cycle and exploring correspondences of planets and signs to colors, plants, flowers, shapes, geometries and other symbol systems. My astrological books are quite renowned for the complexity of the imagery, especially one called “The Round Art: The Astrology of Time and Space” (1979), which is named for another interest of mine; the historical memory systems embedded in our perception of reality. The Greeks and Romans created it the art of memory and used buildings as memory ‘places’ in what they called the ‘square art,’ and they used the 5° ‘faces’ of the zodiac with constellation images for the ‘round art.’ (See Frances Yates, “The Art of Memory”) So I proposed and wrote about astrology as a form of memory art embedded in architecture and astrology as twin ‘sciences and arts’ as witnessed by the Masonic dynamic and mystery of the grand architect Hiram Abiff. My friend Roger Dean, who did art and album covers (and weird architecture) for the rock group YES, then commissioned me to write and illustrate my book, 300 pages, all color, with my design layout, illustrations and it was a grand project that got me going.

Anyway I began making the great calendar mandalas and only years later discovered that the sixteenth century mystic Giordano Bruno made similar images of seven circles within a larger one and advocated memory systems (see Frances Yates’ ‘Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition’) and was shocked as he was one of my creative and intellectual heroes. The mandalas probably took a few weeks to do and are quite large (20” x 28”). I am currently in the process of making giclée prints of them that are faithful to the originals. I also used liquid water colors that have faded beautifully over the years as they were quite vivid when I first painted them in the 70s.

They are mandalas, meditative diagrams, cosmologies and architecture, temples of the imagination devoted to the old gods and goddesses, and I have always wanted to design a building that embodied these ideas, but that hasn’t happened yet….. it would probably resonate with the geometry and proportions of the chakras.

Anyway I ramble on but enjoy the opportunities of our conversation, Tad

Late night thoughts: The internet encodes "event" loops, or simply records of clicks, scanned words and images, sounds and shifting sites and analyzes them. When the pattern is stored and reproduced, it replicates an encoded behavior pattern and its associated actions. With clear (and rare) insight, one can sometimes catch a glimmer of these electronic dances of information -- as I just did. The rate and amplitude and relative speed of any specific information can shift in an almost predictable pattern, bringing one's consciousness back to the immediate present and yet carrying past information with it. But maybe some are right thinking that there is a "creator."

In retrospect the incorrect Oath of Office administered by Chief Justice John Roberts during a void-of-course moon (that has the effect of coming to nothing) was a godsend as it means that Obama had a chance to take the correct oath yesterday, the 21st of January at 7:35PM, when the Moon was well in the middle of Sagittarius. It is even more ironic as the mistake was that of Justice Roberts, an avowed enemy of Barack, who voted against his nomination for CJ. This simultaneously puts the conspiracy theorists to rest and gives Obama a better inception chart. This however will lead to a run-in with the Saturn/Uranus opposition in about six months, in July 2009. Fascinating......

Most astrologers in the know realized at the time of Barack Obama's inauguration that there were two major difficulties, apart from the flubbed statement with Chief Justice Roberts. Already conspiracy theorists were saying the his Presidency was therefore invalid. The difficulties were that the Moon was void-of-course, which means that it was in its last degree but before it changed into a new sign, Sagittarius. The second issue is that Mercury is retrograde, which implies working on past problems, which is correct but difficult to get right.

Tonight I received an email from a friend of mine and fellow director of NCGR, Linea Van Horn, who heard from her friend Elizabeth Barton to say that she heard on NPR that Obama took his Oath of Office once again, in order to avoid any possible repercussions from the flubbed oath yesterday.

I confirmed it at the Washington Times and they give an exact time,
Jan. 21 7:35 PM in DC. (http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jan/21/roberts-obama-re-do-swearing)

The new chart has 0 degrees of Virgo rising. Mercury is retrograde, of course, and combust (too to the Sun), and is not as well positioned as in the inauguration chart itself when it was
cazimi.

The Moon is 15 Sagittarius -- not Void of Course, but moving swiftly into a square with the
Saturn-Uranus opposition. At least her next aspect is to an exalted Venus.

This is fascinating and shows that the first inauguration was problemmatic and that the second one is the inauguration of record. More on this soon.

The Sling Shape of 2009

The most obvious signal of what lies ahead of us in 2009 is that the New Year ingress horoscope is a Sling Shape. A sling shape is when all the planets are grouped with a narrow series of zodiac signs and opposite the "handle," a single planet that must balance the whole. In our case Saturn in Virgo (difficult choices, naivete, hard work and resultant health problems, acting alone and out of touch with others) is opposite all the other planets in a narrow range from Pluto in early Capricorn to Uranus in mid-Pisces. Even this selection of boundary planets Pluto and Uranus signify "revolution, collapse of the old order, chaos, genius but also precipitate actions" and show us that unusual and unpredictable events will continually surprise us throughout this year. More to come........

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Alert Update of the Week: Stop Vilsack

Over the past month, the Organic Consumers Association (OCA) has been alerting our nationwide network about Obama's proposed appointment of Monsanto ally and former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack to the position of Secretary of Agriculture. Far from representing the "Change" which Obama has promised, Vilsack has a disappointing record of promoting controversial genetically engineered foods, biopharm crops, and animal cloning, as well as cheerleading for unsustainable biofuels derived from corn and soybeans. In addition Vilsack has come under fire for aiding and abetting chemical and energy-intensive industrial agriculture, including Iowa's infamous Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs). Thanks to all of you who have taken part in OCA's "Stop Vilsack" campaign. So far, we have collected over 60,000 online petition signatures, generating coverage from major media outlets and websites including the New York Times, Washington Post, National Public Radio, Pacifica Radio, Air America, Democracy Now, Common Dreams, Counterpunch, The Nation, and Huffington Post, as well as a number of major daily newspapers. Similar petitions circulated on the internet by OCA's allies, including fooddemocracynow.org, Pesticide Action Network, and the Center for Food Safety have generated an additional 60,000+ supporters, making Vilsack perhaps the most controversial and unpopular Obama cabinet appointment. OCA's petition is being delivered to Obama's Transition Team, as well as Congress.. If you haven't yet signed the petition, please do so now. If you've already signed the petition, here's another way to make positive change: The Obama Transition Team has set up a website soliciting input from citizens about various hot-button issues. One area of the website invites people to post questions and concerns and vote on them. Supposedly, those questions with the most votes will be directly responded to by President-Elect Obama. Please follow this link and vote for questions asking Obama to support policies promoting health, justice, peace, and sustainability.

It has been brought to my attention yet again that the major pharmaceutical companies such as Merck have successfully lobbied the Republican government via extensive payments and donations to make vaccinating children mandatory. It is know that preservatives in vaccines contain mercury, which produces long-term mental effects and can produce autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders in some children. Such substances are banned in Japan, Europe, Russia and England. I think this is outrageous, as their next step is to make a flu vaccine mandatory for all individuals on the pretense that a winter flu will kill millions. Last October President Bush vetoed a bill that would have banned the use of mercury in flu vaccines despite the fact that he pledged in 2004 to support such a move. There are also lobbying attempts on the part of major pharmaceuticals to force vaccination of young women starting at 11 years old against potential sexually transmitted diseases and the possibility of cervical cancer.

From a William Wordsworth poem:

Sweet is the lore which Nature brings,
Our meddling intellect
misshapes the beauteous forms of things
we murder to dissect.

Enough of science and of art:
Close up those barren leaves;
Come forth, and bring with you a heart
That watches and receives.

— William Wordsworth, from The Tables Turned

The current financial crisis in the US has some distinctly insidious undertones, as well as overtones. Funny that it should happen just before the election, strange that John McCain refuses to participate in a debate with Obama. It all seems fishy to me, especially as it coincides with Mercury going retrograde yesterday on the 24th. That means that it won't go direct until the 16th of October, and won't return to its position yesterday until the 30th of October, one week before the election. This last phase is called the "shadow" of the retrograde cycle and often shows a time when issues as presented to the world are not what they seem. I will be very wary of definite chicanery before and around election time.

"Man is God’s astrolabe, and just as by means of an astrolabe the astronomer discovers the condition of the celestial spheres and observes the motions and influences of the stars, so when Man has received from God the gift of self-knowledge, he continually beholds the manifestations of the Divine Beauty, which is without attribute and beyond description by means of the astrolabe of his existence, which is a Divine Mirror wherein that Beauty never ceases to be displayed." Rumi

I came across this quotation in my diary from 1971:

I lay no wood, Brahman, for fires on altars,
Only within burneth the flame I kindle.
Ever my fire burns, ever composed of self,
. . . . and the heart is the altar;
The flame thereon — this is a man’s self well tamed.
Samyuita-Nikaya Upanishad I

Presidential Panel at the United Astrology Conference 2008 in Denver

I just returned from the amazing astrology conference (UAC) in Denver together with 1500 other astrologers from 35 countries. Among the activities was a Presidential Panel with some of the wisest astrologers in the world. Click above to have a look at the media reaction, which ranges from the idiotic to the perceptive.

I am back, involved in my blog and will post new material on a regular basis in 2008. There will be many strands of material, ideas, thoughts, dreams, perceptions and reflections.

From CGJung, His Myth:
"Somewhere there was once a Flower, a Stone, a Crystal, a Queen, a King, a Palace, a Lover and his Beloved, and this was long ago, on an Island somewhere in the ocean five thousand years ago . . ., Such is Love, the Mystic Flower of the Soul. this is the Centre, the Self . . . Nobody understands what I mean, only a poet could begin to understand."

This is in answer to an astrologer engaged in an online discussion of the relative merits of equal houses versus Placidus houses in astrology.

Ironically, people who have horoscopes like the one compacted onto the ASC-DSC axis tend to be just as lopsided, particularly in the light of my system. Examples can range from a child born in isolated northern Norway who was seen as a father-substitute by the mother virtually from birth. She talked to him like a husband rather than tiny infant and he developed in that way. Or on the other hand people who never grow up and remain bonded infants.

Remind the critics that there are two times every day in all latitudes where the houses are exactly equal. Did you know that? At 06:00 and 18:00 Sidereal Time. Thus despite the extreme latitudinal conditions, there are always people in those latitudes who have equal house charts naturally.

Years ago I connected the whole dispute with the apparent effects of living in various latitudes. For example, near the equator almost all charts are equal house and in those climates the social condition is primarily "tribal" and where individuality is frowned upon, if not overtly punished. As you more north (and south) from the equator the variations in house sizes increase to the "balance point" at 45°N (near NY, Paris, Berlin) where individuality and tribal qualities are balanced. Further north they become exaggerated as there are cultures where individuality is virtually a religion and tribal sense nonexistent, all the way up to the Eskimos who live in small family units in isolated places.

Although this is a tremendous generalization, I believe it is an interesting starting point in the discussion of "equal house" versus "Placidus houses."

People’s birth times are often a bit “off” in one direction or the other and the reading addresses that issue. It usually corrects the time if it isn’t right. The planetary influences are also either inner or outer in the way they manifest, in that they often do not correspond to what many consider important dates in their lives, i.e., marriage date, graduation from school, birth of children. All of these events are the “literal” dates of really the end of a process that started earlier, i.e., relationship leading to marriage, school years leading to graduation, gestation leading to a birth. The horoscope shows symbolic phases and stages of life when our inner processes manifest, like when you realize that you love someone, which then leads to formalizing the relationship with marriage six months, or a year later.

(A letter from Portugal)

My name is Carlos Oliveira and I’m writing to you in the name of Maria Flávia Monsaraz, founder of Quiron – Portuguese Centre of Astrology in Lisbon. I believe you and Maria Flávia met in the International Astrological Congress in Venice some time ago.

We, Maria Flávia and a group of people that include amateur and professional actors, and other people in some way dedicated to the active and conscious participation of the construction of this new age that has emerged, are in the process of creating the “Theatre of Peace” – a Symbolic Theatre with the aim of bringing back the Sacred to the big audiences.

We have a play to start our first work, based on a book written by Maria Flávia. It regards the planets of our Solar system and their symbolic meaning. This is where we come to you so that you might possibly help us. We are looking to inspire ourselves in the Symbolism from the Greek Theatre.

We would deeply appreciate if you could in light us, in what ever ways you find best, with your vision and knowledge on this subject.

All the Best,
Carlos (carlosol@clix.pt)

and my reply:

Dear Carlos,

I have been interested in theaters for decades and have written and lectured about the “memory theater” that is based on astrology. I include an image of a memory theater painting I made in 1975 here, based on Palladio’s design. It allows the stage to be where the “aspects” take place, the interaction between the planets, which also allows one to place actors in particular symbolic places during a play. The stage entrances are spirit, soul and mind; and the balcony onstage is the “higher level” of entrance and exit.

In the early 1980s I gave a talk about the “Astrological Memory Theater” in Amsterdam and we actually made a theater in this form as I did some few lines from MacBeth to illustrate how it worked. It was a great success. The audience was seated by their “Sun signs” and that was also very interesting.

Symbol and Form
A New Vision of Design Education
(This is based on a week-long course I taught at the Danish Design School in the 90s.)
It is valuable, if not essential, to explore psychological, meditative and interactive feedback techniques of working. These are likely to be quite new to designers and students, but are common to psychotherapeutic work. These ways of seeing and experiencing our world bridge the gap between what happens within and what we create outside in our design work. We can correlate the way our body works with the way our designs evolve. Too often what we design has nothing to do with what is going on with us inside — yet when there is a link, and then later an intimate connection, the designed objects cease to be disposable, but rather carries meaning that encourages us and the owners or stewards of such objects to nurture them, to care for them and to pass them on as containers of our own personal being.

Symbolism is the language by which our collective cultural unconscious communicates deep experience to our conscious mind through dreams, active imagination, fantasy or guided imagery. When we discover this language, we realize that it is always with us and can be understood, whether outwardly or inwardly, by everyone around us. In the new design education we may explore a deeper and more profound world into which we invest our work and life.

When we think about the relationship between astrology and Buddhism, we tend to start by comparing western tropical astrology with eastern sidereal astrology. However, I believe that our present conceptions of psychological astrology resonate very clearly and intimately with key Buddhist concepts in ways that provide us with valuable insight to the motives and goals of astrology itself.
I have been interested and having received Buddhist teachings for decades, starting with the Black Hat initiation that my three-year-old daughter Ptolemy and I received from the XVIth Gwalya Karmapa in London in 1975. Although I had lived in India and met many gurus in those days, this was a genuinely powerful experience. When the Karmapa opened the box in which the hat was transported to begin the ceremony, the entire huge church in Chelsea was illuminated with what I can only describe as the pure light. Since then I have read and followed Buddhism and tried to live in a Buddhist way, all the while attempting to reconcile these concepts with my practice of astrology. Recently I have been working with my daughter’s mother Maxine Harris who is a founder and runs Mystic Fire Video, who create and distribute the H. H. Dalai Lama’s profound teachings. Ironically, my system of Life Time astrology is a way of doing astrology that I have realized conforms to many of the Buddhist teachings and can yield insight into all psychological astrology.
A fundamental concept in Buddhism is that of samsara, defined as “cyclic existence where sentient creatures are compelled to wander from one life form to another without respite until they meet the spiritual path.” The wheel of samsara is the stages of life from birth to old age and death proceeding in sequence around a circular mandala. It is believed that we live through out life and are inexorably reborn into another life of birth, old age and death, on and on, ad infinitum. The wheel is usually broken down into eight stages of life. In the center of the wheel are three creatures chasing each others’ tails: the cock, symbolizes ignorance, the pig symbolizes greed, and the snake symbolizes desire. Indeed in Buddhism the eightfold path was created by the Buddha to lead us from the condition of samsara to the attainment of nirvana, which is enlightenment. I feel that the horoscope carries a roadmap of this journey from samsara to nirvana.