No arms! No arms!
I've been to hell and back!
I'll play it on an Acetylene Fiddle!
With a thousand tongues of metal
I'll flaunt it like a gypsy's skirt!
A thousand voiced chorus calls out :
A million suns will harm!
A million suns will harm!
But two suns shall crown my new world!
Unfurling fire streams from my forehead.
This is my last kiss, Elis,** to the orphan-blue world,
"The last gold of expired stars."**
Its twin, the new one, is here.
Over there.
Pull, O pull my finger.
** see the poem by Georg Trakl below this essay
- Norman Nightingale,
"Mastodon Dream Streams Surround-Sound God-Fire Falling Down",
fromThe Cathected Poems of Norman Nightingale.
Unexpurgated Edition. Chapbook.
Cortical Canticle Press,2008.
Out of print.
*****
Piled with a hundred burdens...the wise Zarathustra!
You sought the heaviest burden, and found yourself. - Friedrich Nietzsche
Preliminary word - the three dreams: In a recent dream group I host twice a month three of the dreamers presented their dreams; in brief:
1) a large and growing atomic bomb called the "Fat Boy" must be dealt with by the dreamer who cannot deal with it alone, he finds official help who disassemble the outer shell of the bomb, arrive at the core of the bomb, a silver flat rectangle of impenetrable metal which they then launch from earth into space, the bomb core explodes into a new sun in the solar system,
2) a woman seeks the Alchemical Fire which she knows is secretly kept by small groups or by individuals around the world, she contacts a famous chef who is a Fire-keeper, his highly exclusive restaurant has only 12 chairs, the chef makes a reservation for the dreamer and her husband (there are more details important to the dream but this is the essential "skin of it")
3) the front door to the male dreamer's apartment is barred by a metal rod installed by the landlord to prevent the dreamer's entrance after the dreamer has taken exams at a university, he enters a side door, finds his room is very damaged and is still "soaking wet" from storms, the windows broken; soaked by the dripping water in the room, he removes his clothes entirely but for a tee-shirt, he investigates other apartments to see if they have similar damage and is discovered by others to be naked, is pursued by a growing raucous crowd, he decides to accept the dangerous situation he is in and to act humorously rather than as a "shameful flasher" to which the crowd responds with laughter and gaiety, lightly spanking his bare ass with badminton rackets as he trots...the dreamer has another dream where he must rent his bedroom out to "four "anal" women" as an office, the women are very controlling and particular about their space and office equipment, the dreamer needs to use a computer/printer and is given permission by one of the women but it is hard to use the equipment.
Whereas the latter dream is not necessarily apocalyptic (except to the dreamer, although the landlord, the Lord of the Land, can have an archetypal significance, and the room of the dreamer has been severely damaged by a violent storm force, or by the landlord, or both) the other two have apocalyptic imagery chief of which are of the "unusual Fire". The latter dream has the dreamer shifting his attitude toward the dangerous situation he's in and in so doing shifts the attitude of the crowd toward his nakedness. In discussing this shift of attitude the (not)Goethe quote was mentioned (see directly below) as the attitude shift can illustrate what the quote indicates.
It was the dreamer of the Fat Boy Bomb/New Sun dream who mentioned the quote and emailed it to fellow dreamers after the dream group:
"Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now."
Click here for an informative essay about the quote which apparently is a very, very loose translation of Goethe from his play, Faust:
http://www.goethesociety.org/pages/quotescom.html
****************************
Letter One
"Faust opens the New Testament and says [the ever growing in size, and growling/whimpering insistent black poodle near by]:
"I must look at the original [Biblical text of the Gospel of John 1:1] without delay and see if I can render it honestly in my beloved German. He opens the volume and begins.
"The text reads: In the beginning was the word. But stop. What about this? I can't rate the word nearly as high as that. I'll have to translate it some other way. Unless I'm mistaken, the true reading is: In the beginning was the mind. But let's not hurry with the first line. Can it be the mind that creates the world? Sure we ought to read: In the beginning was the energy. But no sooner do I write this than something tells me not to stop there. And now I see the light and set down confidently:
In the beginning was the act."
Warthe (me, in inflated professorial effete form) follows this with, "The only magic is practical magic...take action, act by act...see how the universe responds and then respond back....act by act." Note that Warthe does not heed these words as oft as might be efficacious but that entity oft called "the universe" (made up of matter and "spirit" or spiritualized matter) responds to our non-action/non-response...so might as well act/respond. H.R. Heinneman, existential philosopher, has rewritten Rene Descartes, "Cogito ergo sum" (I think therefore I am) to what I like much better, Respondeo ergo sum (I respond therefore I am). He says we are creatures of response, that there is an "appeal" (a call) in Existence Itself (the universe) which seeks to be heeded, born witnessed to by conscious creatures (homo sapiens) and responded to. Witness means literally "with-ness"...relating/relationship...Martin Buber helpfully might come in here in his statement that there are two kinds of relationships in the existence, "I and Thou" and "I and It"...one is subjective (I and Thou) and the other is objective (I and It)...we need both to bear witness and respond to the appeal (call) of Existence for response/relating...to relate to the Universe and "all within it" as a Thou makes one conscious with conscience of one's acts within and toward/with the Universe and it's thous...with the I/It relation information is gathered, parsed, digested, intellectualized, codified which is, too, an essential relation to Existence. Respondeo-ers and Existence needs both...we don't know if Existence "witnesses" and responds as we humans do but it does appear to interact (perhaps more from the I/It relation since Existence is beyond the personal (includes it as but one of myriad expressions), it is transpersonal.
An act is a response which premises a responder...Existence...Universe in particular forms...
“A mood of universal destruction and renewal has set its mark on our age. This mood makes itself felt everywhere, politically, socially and philosophically. We are living in what the Greeks called the KAIROS - The Right Moment - for a “metamorphosis of the gods”, of the fundamental principles and symbols... So much is at stake and so much depends on the psychological constitution of the modern human.” -C.G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self
"Kairos is the ancient Greek word meaning the right or opportune moment (the supreme moment), it signifies a time in between, a moment of undetermined period of time in which something special happens." --from The Threshing Floor Radio Show-August 17, 2009 -Randy Maugans, Mystery #3: Time
"Kairos is the passing moment in which something happens as the time unfolds...it is a small window of becoming and opportunity. One of the origins of the word comes from shepherds watching the stars. As the night progresses and the stars turn in the sky, they appear to rise and then fall against the horizon. The moment when a star has reached its apogee and appears to change direction from ascending to descending is its kairos." --Corrigall, J, Payne, H, Wilkinson, H (eds), About A Body, 2006: pg. 201
*********
Greetings Pilgrims and Poodles (reference to Mephistopheles as a growing to monstrous-sized black dog in Faustus, Goethe's powerful play). As I write this I am listening to Bach's magnificent, Easter Oratorio, fitting music to be musing upon your recent dreams...I began this the night after dream group...and now, Friday, am still at it...forgive the verbosity but this is more for me, probably, that for patient thee...since starting this I have received the synchronistic email with a link to a Huffington Post article on two suns being seen in the sky in 2012, the ending of Betelgeuse, going nova as are we all...paradoxically, archetypally, Nova means "new" in Latin, and (disturbingly?), nova also means "food" in Hopi. Marco's proto-star is named Fat Boy, food and fat go together so Marco's nova-star, it's new light is food, new light, new values to nurture the souls and society of humankind? If ye wish, continue on here and indulge, perhaps incrementally, upon some of my musings...or not. But the Goethe quote (above and re-quoted below) is the main point of sending all this...the rest is commentary and nova fluff, sans chipotle...
Rereading parts of Edinger's good book, Goethe's Faust, Notes for a Jungian Commentary, about the play, lectures he gave with a Jungian perspective, I found this great quote above (and repeated below) from said play when after the black dog, the large poodle which is Mephistopheles, the Satanic manifestation of power, the anti-Christ, has shown up...Faustus describes the dog as it swells and grows to be more "like a hippopotamus. Eyes of fire and dreadful jaws." "The dog is eros, libido, striving, desire," Edinger says, and continues:
"..."it was Faust's "striving," longing acted upon, that brought about his redemption. "He who strives and ever strives, him we can redeem." Indeed, the central theme of Faust is "longing"--desire, love, Eros--in a word libido [libido for Jung is different from Freud...Freud uses libido specifically for sexual drive, Jung expands libido to include sexual drives but also is life force impelled/compelled/propelled toward some "object" seeking a return to stasis."
"And yet the dog/libido image is also the Philosopher's Stone, the goal of alchemical transformation...the black dog serves as an entrance into the underworld, but also serves as guide and familiar spirit, the dark aspect of the Greater Personality [a term Jung uses to describe the Self , the totality of the Psyche which we can never fully know, from and within which the self, little "s", is derived and gives greater expression to]."
So Faust begins to hear this exquisite lofty music with great longing and wants to give himself completely over to the spiritual sublimity of these higher longings and yet the black dog whines and growls distracting him from his aims for higher spiritual awareness..."Poodle, stop your whining and growling. There's no place for these animal noises beside the lofty music that I hear within me. We know that if people don't understand a thing they ridicule it, they complain about the good and the beautiful because it embarrassed them. Is the dog going to follow suit?"
"The dog is here equated with vulgar, collective man, a typical shadow figure for a pedantic professor (Faust) with intellectual and aesthetic pretensions. Faust tried to protect himself from the "animal noises" by turning to the New Testament."
This quote from the play follows the above and it is this quote which I most want to share with you all for it couches all the effort showing up, of late, in group dreams where great effort must be taken, such as, deal with the Fat Boy Atom Bomb, Al's rocky path he must run and eventually bike upon with great attentiveness, patience, presence and effort, Matty's striving after the alchemical "fire keepers", Nat's attempts while naked to get back into his apartment, to work on computers which are overly tended to by the anal women, etc....
Faust opens the New Testament and says:
"I must look at the original without delay and see if I can render it honestly in my beloved German. He opens the volume and begins.
"The text reads: In the beginning was the word. But stop. What about this? I can't rate the word nearly as high as that. I'll have to translate it some other way. Unless I'm mistaken, the true reading is: In the beginning was the mind. But let's not hurry with the first line. Can it be the mind that creates the world? Sure we ought to read: In the beginning was the energy. But no sooner do I write this than something tells me not to stop there. And now I see the light and set down confidently: In the beginning was the act."
Read this authentic Goethe quote (above and repeated just below) with the one Marco sent out which is attributed to Goethe but is not actually his (says Marco) and you may understand that (not)Goethe quote, too, requires that Goethean/Faustian "act," effort and, viz Warthe, response (I/Thou & I/It)...in other words there is an underlying "drive"/impulse beneath consciousness, some originating energy motivating first then all actions or somehow, eternally always/already IS regardless of chronos/time and development/evolution in time propelled by that originating "in the beginning was the act" presuming an "actor" of some sort though it may not be quite a thingy thing but a meta-thing, quanta/squanta/mas adelante (more forward)...so examine the drive/impulse within/beneath the thought which requires an act/response...to merely make mental notes and thoughts and affirm or think is apparently not enough...in the beginning (the underlying foundational dynamic) is the act from which the thought manifests...and then creates outwardly...
In kaballah, the god beyond god, the no-thing which precedes all thingy existence even as though, the Unknowable for some non-reason feels a compulsion, a thought, an emotion (all which are not) and decides to create the universe...Ain Soph (that god beyond all comprehension/apprehension completely outside time and space) had to create a womby space, which is a contraction within it's no-selfness, called Tzim Tzum, in order to even bring primal materiality into existence so that the "pots of Creation/Multiverse" could be thrown/formed into being...
Faust's "in the beginning was the act" perhaps partakes of this kaballistic "dreaming" around cosmogyny (how no thing became some thing...Existence formation and ongoing reformation and evolution).
Edinger says of this "in the beginning was the act":
"This is a key passage. Faust here reverses the direction and goal of the collective Western psyche from heaven > to > earth. With this revolutionary conclusion, the translation of John, the most "spiritual"" of the gospels of course could not proceed. If Faust is to opt for action he must deal with that manifestation of earthly matters, the poodle-Mephistopheles [the Gospel of John begins with "In the beginning was the Word (translated logos) and the Word was with God and the Word was God." John says that Jesus the Christ is that very Word become "flesh and dwelt among us. This is significant to Faust because the Poodle is none other than that very opposite of the Word Christ...it is the dark aspect of every word/act...thus Jung says that all archetypes (which are building blocks of creation/consciousness) have two sides and all gradations in between of good and evil, light and dark, of pastel to primary colors, etc."]."
This underscores what I said in dream group the other night that shadow, evil, "shit" is not changed by "positive thinking" and "affirmations", emphasizing only the positive/good while
(delusionally) eliminating/eradicating/denying the negative/evil; wholeness partakes of both so itis actually a growing capacity to sustain a holdness for, and enduring, the dynamic tension of the opposites which leads to ongoing/ongrowing consciousness and literally created worlds...the shadow is transformed (re-valued, which is what the word "re-deemed" means, by the 'Mephistopheles' route, the Faust/alchemical root of recognizing (ultimately) that the shadow (power/cunning, etc), the shit, is/are the very stuff from which the gold is derived, the Philosopher's Stone...Christianity (and not only Christianity) has not succeeded in healing the split between good and evil, between spirit and nature, mind and instincts, between the Word and the Act but has, rather, widened the chasm of the split...
Edinger says that, as with the Gospels and New Testament, so goes Faust/Goethe, "The Christian split between heaven and hell persists and Mephistopheles [the anti-Christ, Satan, the darker brother of Christ, matter, Nature, evil] has not been clearly incorporated into the divine totality (the "godhead" or "god-image" of the West)."
The ongoing owning of our own "darkness", it's confrontation and difficult integration/transformation (turn shit to gold by putting shadow to consciously "good uses"), is what alchemy and alchemical symbolism point to. The New Age does what Christianity does, splits off into Light, Good, and denies the evil, the dark which forces evil more deeply into the unconscious which therefore gets projected upon the outer world onto persons, things, places, activities, thoughts (kinds of thoughts), etc...and by identifying only with the Light then others must carry the shadow for those Light-identified one...gurus, spiritual teachers, Science of Mind gurus, therapists, healers, counselors must be in touch with the Mephistopheles within, the Black Dog, the Power Devil (Jung's characterization of the Devil) Christ encountered just after his ministry began and he went to fast for 40 days and nights in the desert...the 3 temptations were temptations of misuse/abuse/hubris of Power). If folks don't own their shadow especially in the helping professions from politicians to preachers to physicians to priests, etc., then the followers, or some of them, carry that shadow and will be scapegoated. I know this one first hand from a long association to a spiritually identified program as well as a young man at a Christian college/community.
The disassembling of the Fat Boy bomb alludes, I think, to psycho-analysis or similar persistent awareness work, to depth psychology/therapy, to painstaking, patient psychological work which disassembles complexes which in so doing makes one aware of the archetypes within them and then one can have a conscious relationship to the archetypes as opposed to being mugged by them...just as the Black Dog/Poodle grows the more Faust tries to be "spiritual," to rise over, to remain above the instinctual, the material fray of power, opposites, aggression, etc., so also in tandem with this dissociation from Reality the "Fat Boy shadow bomb" in us all grows to dangerous proportions...fortunately, Marco's dream reveals resources, those people who are able to untie ("analysis" means untie), breakdown, disassemble the sheaths to get to the silver metal core which is then launched into space to explode into a new sun/star which light from it returns to earth, a new light, a new sun/value...
This core in the Fat Boy is the Self, is a god-image, is that most-valued Value within matter, Nature, shadow, and Celestial Fire (the Sacred Fire of alchemy outside of time and space), Consciousness (the experts in Marco's dream who disassemble the outer carapace of the bomb, who create and fire the rocket, represent consciousness, knowledge, know how, expertise) arrives newly in the new star, the new sun, a new orientation which is what the apocalypse (literally meaning "revelation") brings, not just blind chaotic destruction but a conscious disassembling of the old outworn once-was-central-Value, but brings about ultimately a renaissance of culture with revivifying new values...this "Fire" (as in Mary's dream, too) is dangerous (it is none other than alchemy's Celestial Fire) and it is not for the unconscious masses (which we all are for in their hands would be great danger as it would most likely be put to destructive hubristic purposes (thus the Fat Boy bomb image depicts that already present danger of hubristic misuse of such Fire by the Power Devil unleashed upon the world collectively)...
This "Fire" requires experts, those who put in the effort to confront, own, deal with and integrate the shadow, power, cunning, etc. Goethe is working this in the Faustus play. Goethe is trying to do what alchemy seeks to do, to integrate the split between good and evil which Christianity did not do (not to fault for who among us has succeeded?! anywhere in the world...). The New Age (a Puer movement if ever there was one, born of baby boomers still suspended in long adolescence, and eschewing the Senex, ground control to major tom, "reality as it is" orientation) and Science of Mind (ditto last parenthetical) thinks it has done so by a "slight of mind/hand" by simply denying evil and its power as only "the diminishing of good" (which blasphemes and mocks Buchenwald, Guernica, Hiroshima, etc)...this view only feeds "the Fat Boy", the Black Poodle with "the large jaws and teeth"...it dooms others to carry the darkness which is denied and disowned by the Light Ones, the John 1:1 ones, the "super spiritual", this is inflation to Mephistophelean degrees and feeds the shadow helping it to grow. I believe it was Winston Churchill who said astutely of Neville Chamberlain who met with Hitler before Hitler made his horrific first move to world domination and the murder of millions, Neville being charmed by Hitler when they met, Churchill said, "He has no imagination for evil." The New Age and Sci/mind and similar "schools" of though refuse to even imagine evil and in so doing undo their slight of hand dismissal of evil by their very fear of putting energy into a "bad thought" else it will come true. OY.
Just as in Nat's dream where he"owns" his nakedness differently and thus transforms the way the crowd responds to his and their own nakedness, we each must do the equivalent...as we personally consciously own and integrate the disowned and consigned-to-the-devil parts of ourselves we can shift the collective poco a poco (little by little)...this is done person by person, each doing their own work (and not their guru's, their "spiritual teacher's" shadow work, which is often the unwritten job description for followers of such types...
...an example from my own life...I began to study with a spiritual teacher/channeler upon whom I had naively projected much good "spiritual" powers and attributes...almost instantly my dreams cast this teacher, and her teachings/channeled-so-called "information", as a Nazi (NOT SEE, "see no evil") with a deeply psychopathic core...I obviously had to look at my own self to identify such within myself, my Jungian analyst would not have any avoidance of this, and began a long untying and extricating of what was mine from the projected upon teacher); BUT I was invested in my projections upon the spiritual teacher at the beginning who, in retrospect I can clearly see, pulled and depended upon such projections psychologically and financially...only years later with ongoing shadow work did I begin to see that these earliest dreams were dead accurate...AND I still had to own my own version of the psychopathic "guru" and charlatan within, it was/is my own piece of the shadow to chew and integrate...I try to remember the first words to me from a kaballah teacher when we had our first lesson:
"Don't believe anything you hear in here." )
Matty's dream is directly referent to alchemy and partakes of much of what I've written already above, the Faustian "gamble"/risk of Power, the need for integration of shadow, the small group of people consciously doing this; the "12 seated small restaurants" around the world exist, exclusive, with a master chef (cooking is alchemical symbolism) who prepares the Messianic Meal of Leviathan (the shadow of God, the dark side of God revealed to Job in the Book of Job)...this is no cause for inflation for it means the Self has selected/chosen some to do the Faustian work of dealing with the devil! and the dark side of Power/God and Existence...who in their "right minds" would sign up for this? It is a terrible thing to be a chosen one...great suffering is involved...but it is meaningful suffering as it leads eventually to integration, individuation, new values, new culture, a new star (which means a new central Value) since the old star (which orients us) is diminishing and cannot integrate/hold what needs to be integrated/held which will occur in the kairos of the new star (see the above quotes re: Kairos)...Kairos is the Greek term which means "falling star"...it is used by St. Paul at the beginning of the new star of Christianity which was "falling" to earth at the beginning of the Piscean aeon...Jung quotes Paul and says that we are living in a time of kairos as the old star/sun fades and the new sun/star explodes newly (in Marco's dream!!!!) and expands for the next 2000 years in the Aquarian aeon which will be forced to tackle what Goethe/Faust is writing of...none other than a transformation of God (God always represents the central creative Value and Orientation) which has only begun and which is alluded to in the Book of Job, the New Testament with similar imagery showing up in other religions...Jung's radical premise is that as we confront our own shadow we are confronting God's shadow, a sliver of it, in ourselves...as we chew the sinewy shitty meal to be eaten and assimilate/integrate we change not only ourselves, our culture, but also our "god"...
In the Book of Revelation there is a passage much spoken of, of the Great Whore/Harlot riding a 7 headed beast during the Apocalypse (means "revelation")...she holds a Golden Chalice and drinks from it...within this chalice is the "filthy rejecta" of humanity and human culture...all eating imagery is assimilation imagery...the Great Whore is a transformational vessel Herself who does not reject the "filthy rejecta" of humans and human culture but actually drink/eats it all in order to integrate, assimilate and transform the old gods, the old values, into newer, nova-er, more conscious ones. As a Jungian analyst said to me of this passage (regarding this passage in Edinger's apocalypse book), "It means, Warren, that those who were rejected and denied value in the aeon of the Fish (Pisces), the gays, the blacks, the dark ones, the whores, the feminine, and more will be included and accepted in the new religion, in the "new god-image", which will be a god of all those who are sexually and otherly different). This god will also have more shadow integration, the Leviathan aspect more consciously present and in concert with the Light side in the god-image having been integrated more by individuals integrating their own pieces of darkness which is the darkness of God....
I could go on and have gone on too much already...if nothing else, meditate upon Faust's (Goethe's) words re: "in the beginning was the act" which, of course, has layers...from simple "Take action" layers to what is the thrust/purpose of the impulse/act and just "what" is driving the act...thus Goethe and others also speaking of Logos/Word/Mind (some foundational/archetypal structure of consciousness which is indeed energy, etc.).
Now I'll act by stopping all this!!
We are shadow-working for the New Star/Sun, the new Supreme Value, which is hinted at...
In flames,
Woethe
Letter Two
Preliminary words before the further letter response. Upon reading the first letter a colleague questioned whether such apocalyptic dreams herald the literal "end of the world." My response in brief is: who can know such things until the end is literally upon us. Trying not to be glib about this as the apocalypse has gripped human culture via media, movies, and religious and anti-religious movements.
For my longer response response read on:
...Most predictions from indigenous cultures (according to a mythic astrologer friend, mythic astrology seeking to be more that of ancient pre-modern astroologers; "modern" astrology, so-called, is about 2000 years old!!) are based on stars in the sky, stellar events which were/are/will be out of human control but for blood sacrifices, etc. Given New Age bloodless souls the sacrifices to be made are those of intellect, alas. Any blood they shed will be made of pureed beets and guar gum.
W., the mythic astrologer, is brilliant on all this "end times/2012 Mayan-and-other-ancient calender stuff...modern astrology came into being (more or less 2000 years ago) with more sophisticated mathematics (yes, Virginia, the ZERO was invented! and by the Arabs!!) and laying the sky out in grids and linearity...suddenly from spiral "web of life" senses of interrelatedness in time/space unmeasured but noticed from observations, mathematics cut the world and space and time of mythic/pre-modern cultures (more spaciousness and timelessness) into segments, lines, discriminate chunks/pieces...and then the end of time (inevitably) had to be calculated via math, stars, and synchronistic events (dreams and outer event)...time in the ancient world doesn't exist as it does for us moderns (2000/2500 years old)...and the end of our world, our civilized world so-called as we know it started (Jung writes of this in one of his last books, Aion) started with the time of the second fish...meaning the 2000 year old Piscean eras first fish was that of Christ and the second fish swimming in the opposite direction began toward 1000 years B.C (post c.e) beginning the "anti-Christ" fish period of science, philosophy, alchemy, sped up mightily in the man-centered Renaissance and zoomed ahead 200 years ago to what we have now...in other words, we're already in the apocalypse and have been for 1000 years and it's speeding up in the past 400 years and past 200 years especially...the apocalypse is a dramatic shift in values, in civilizations' cosmologies which means the old ones which were once valid and descriptive of consciousness of their time recede, fade, diminish and are absorbed and built upon by the new Value reflecting and encouraging the new consciousness evolving (it is presumed) toward greater refinement and innovation...
Since the Sun is the God of our solar system (and thus the center of the universe/LIFE for us) another Sun is being born, a new center, a new value in our solar system...Marco's dream, for all of the sobering personal work that must be efforted on his part with help from others, is
a collective dream of apocalypse and can and must be interpreted archetypally (too)...whether Marco personally, and whether human groups collectively, like it or not, a BIG change has truly pivoted on the downward slide of the Meaning Star moving past it's apogee in the night sky and beginning it's "fall" down toward the horizon's new dawn...there is a new sun, a new Key Value, a new "god-image" "dawning, it has been and is not upon us...2001, A Space Odyssey hints at it greatly...planetarily, consciousness of just "ourselves alone" as a species will shift to a more universal awareness of our participation in the web of life of the universe...this is, indeed, the end of the world as we know it...
Edinger's book on the apocalypse speaks of apocalypse as an archetype...I have to remind myself that archetypes are living symbols, active dynamic energies distinctly formed...so the apocalypse (which partakes of death/rebirth symbolism) is an activated archetype which has been activated ongoingly since homo simians became homo lumens/homo sapiens...meaning, self-aware which brought life and death into conscious focus. Now, at the end of the Piscean aeon which has been happening since the second fish, and rapidly now into the Water Bearer time, with global communication/technology, rockets, H-bombs, information explosion and uneasy co-mingling of cultures and DNA (including theological DNA of "local deities" (and ALL DEITIES ARE LOCAL), we, the human collective WE, must shift out of the old local deity/sun/values and into another one that's "falling" to earth, incarnating, coagulating and bringing with it reorganizational chaos until order begins to emerge...the tendency is to anally cling to the old ways, values, deities, etc. and resist or outright war with those stellar forces "invading" consciousness (all those UFO's and aliens books and movies are about). Jung's book on UFO's examines these "mandalas of the skies"...since a mandala is a symbol of wholeness from the Self for the self these "saucers/aliens" are yet to be integrated as they are only now just "landing" in human consciousness, the task of which now and future humans is to integrate the "new sun", the new light from the new sun/new value, the "aliens")...ancient humans have always known this was coming else they, too, would not have drawn images of strange creatures and stars and mandalas on cave walls, petroglyphs, etc.
What is coming is NEW CONSCIOUSNESS, a NEW CULTURE (and it won't look like the blissy-ninny, namaste-ing hippie/New Age souls giving their "received" (by way of Best Sellers and channelers and Hollywood movies) versions. Embarrassing, truly. "The best minds of my generation driven by madness..." is indeed true. All are shaken by this overload of information/access to world cultures, their religions, cosmologies, etc. as run through their "local cosmological grids". As is more than appropriate and actually should be expected, and not to excuse any of this but why would planes be flying into World Trade Towers, Christians be buying guns while donning sheets to fight their way to some mountain top to wait for Christ's return (while kicking some pagan booty at the same time "in the name of the returning Palestinian "local deity")...but see?
we have signs clearly of the new value and culture in Mathew Fox's "Cosmic Christ" (substitute Buddha, Maitreya, Edgar, Beulah)...some cosmic arrival of self with Self, of earth with galactic center point, and some ongoing growing sense that we are not alone in the universe and never were..."there is Something we know not what doing we know not what" but it is doing it! Sir Eddington's words. We have a sense, an intuition, we have "signs and wonders" and our mathematics are probably closer to what is dawning here which has always been here, Cosmic Pattern/Force/Source which is the sense of senses and beyond senses...
But modern/post-moderns no real sense and understanding of symbols and metaphors (for what is "meta" for, anyway?)...modern/post-moderns are piss poor in distinguishing a symbol for a sign and are primitive geniuses at reducing symbols to signs...and this is why the times are very dangerous, because even secular atheists are fundamentalists when it comes to reducing a symbol to a sign or, like primal cultures, concretizing a symbol (if I dreamed that their is a new sun coming there will literally be a new sun coming). Our spiritual poverty, meaning our paucity in terms of intelligent conscious relating to symbols--living realities/energies--is why the Fundamentalists, the New Age and the New Atheist churches are filling up...all are churches of either the reduction of symbols to signs, the concrete interpretation of symbols to literal correlative things (though their are synchronistic events and manifestations which are activated by the archetype of the apocalypse), or both. Rare are the individuals who relate consciously to the archetypes, to symbols...Jung helps tremendously and will not yet be assimilated but will be in the future...
Marco's dream is prescribing the "cure" for what ails apocalyptic souls gone to seed from too much leisure, partying, gathering of gelt, cyber and other toys...effort, work, having to take conscious actions for one's redemption instead of waiting for it/he/she/God to show up and wipe ample and amplifying arse, powder it, attach a big gramper (a Pamper for adults) and sending it back to television, netflix, ipods, computer games, et. al, to be big king babies like Nero and "fiddle while" the apocalypse comes down upon gullible and empty heads. It is easy to be unconscious for that is where we mostly live even when awake...but to be awake, to be conscious is hard work. Marco's dream can be, of course, and should be worked for personal transformations but it is apocalyptic and therefore can be interpreted as a collective dream. Both are helpful. But whether Marco and the human collective likes it or not, the dream says he/we/they is/are going to have to work for his/their salvation (a meaningful transformation of consciousness), both inner and outer work IS his/our salvation, his/our redemption (re-deem means re-value, value again)...he interprets the dream as a death dream. He/we wishes/wish!!! Real death to us/Marco would mean having to work on confronting our shadows personally and collectively and have done with "cotton candy" versions sacred rituals from profound world religions with all the predictable attendant "god talk" and "spiritual tourettes" insisted upon being spoken so that one is a confirmed (and safe to be around) member of the local deity tribe. Death is too easy a way out. Individuation (intellect active and intact) is hard and meaningful work. Collectively we can remain a spoiled king babies, refuse to work the shadow and thus make all our "healing" work and therapy sessions and dream groups and "spiritual ugga bugga" group work mere shallow narcissistic entertainments and distractions while the world burns (welcome to the New Age)...I suffer from my own diagnosis...and must effort all the more for kind fate has made sure that I must literally work in outer life as well as inner. As must we all.
In the beginning was the Act.
OY!!!
To quote Allen Ginsberg from his poem, A Supermarket In California, "I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel."
Now to the fiddle!
Woethe
**A poem by Georg Trakl
To the Boy Elis
Elis, when the blackbird calls in the black woods,
This is your decline.
Your lips drink the coolness of the blue rock-spring.
Cease, when your forehead bleeds quietly
Ancient legends
And dark interpretations of the flight of birds.
But with gentle steps you walk into the night,
That hangs full of purple grapes,
And you move the arms more beautifully in the blueness.
A thorn bush tinges,
Where your moon-like eyes are.
O, how long, Elis, have you been dead.
Your body is a hyacinth,
Into which a monk dips his waxy fingers.
Our silence is a black cavern,
From which a soft animal steps at times
And slowly lowers heavy eyelids.
On your temples black dew drips,
The last gold of expired stars.
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