Rick Mealey

After days spent integrating new tracks into the songs for the first Arc CD (performed by others), I’ve been spending my nights doing a bit of astrological research. It appears now that neither this album nor the remixed, remastered Luminous City will be ready when I had intended them to be (next week), so I began to delve into the murky depths of electional astrology in order to determine an auspicious time to have the upload ready. I found one that I think will work, but am waiting on a second set of eyes (a volunteer at an astrology forum) to confirm that for me.

At the same time, it came to my attention that in about a month I will have completed my fiftieth trip around the sun here on Spaceship Earth, and a spirit guide prodded me to have a look at my Solar Return chart. As it does annually, the Sun will return (hence the name) to the degree of the zodiac that it occupied when I was born. Because of the movement of the solar system as a whole, it gets earlier and earlier, so that now my return occurs the day before my birthday.

Anyway, the Solar Return chart looks promising in a way that recent years have not been: tenth house highlighted, meaning that if I play my cards right (there is still such a thing as free will) I may be working again soon and off unemployment insurance. At least, something is likely to happen that will place my work before the public.

For laughs I also computed my Venus Return chart. I stopped laughing when I saw all the good omens for my social and romantic life for the upcoming year. As I write the return is to take place this evening. Venus’ planetary position, along with that of the other planets in the sky now and their placement in the houses, speak well at the time of the return; as does their interaction with my natal planets. In the astrologic natal chart, Venus is the lady of love (we’d refer to a male ruler of a house or an area of life as a lord), of course, but it also has a hand in financial matters, so I enter the next pass of the merry-go-round with a smile on my face and hope for my prospects on all fronts (and hopefully, very soon, as a Reiki Master).

But because I am turning 50 in less than a month, I was aware of a third return chart that I needed to have a look at.

Technically speaking, Chiron isn’t a planet; it may even be a comet, but it’s convenient for most astrologers to consider it an asteroid, one of the so-called Centaurs. Mythologically, that’s exactly who Chiron was: a centaur schooled by Athena and trained in the healing arts by Apollo, he inadvertently took a poisoned arrow in the thigh (shot by Heracles—friendly fire, apparently). Chiron’s immortality prevented him from dying, but as he was unable to heal himself, he suffered. Heracles brokered an end to Chiron’s misery by suggesting that Zeus exchange Chiron’s immortality for the life of Prometheus (chained to a rock and left to die for the crime of bringing fire to mankind). Zeus recognized Chiron’s nobility and service by making him a constellation, Centaurus—which we in the Northern Hemisphere can no longer see; it’s progressed too far south.

From this myth, Chiron the asteroid (discovered and named in 1977) acquired its astrological connotation as the “wounded healer” and the “inconvenient benefic”. Chiron’s placement in a natal chart by sign and house position, and the aspects it makes to the other planets in the chart—more and more astrologers include Chiron in their interpretations—represents that area of our psyches where we are wounded. Because its orbit is as eccentric as it is, at perihelion it can be closer to us on Earth than Saturn is, and almost as far away from us at aphelion as Uranus, so it’s also considered a bridge between the “personal” planets (Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn) and the “transpersonal” ones (Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto).

Chiron takes approximately 50 years to complete one orbit around the Sun. I’ve taken 50 spins on this rock, give or take. So I fired up AstrologerXP to research when mine was coming, and what I might expect to encounter when it did.

(Let me take a moment to recommend this piece of software, which runs on both OS X and iOS. If you know what you’re doing with plists, you can customize the hell out of it, adding as many asteroids as you like and as many different aspects as you can stand. I’ve already added aspects for the first 36 harmonics. More on that another time.)

The Chiron return is supposed to signify a time when that which has wounded us throughout our lives is brought to the fore, and represents an opportunity to deal with the issue once and for all. Shamanic astrologer Daniel Giamario phrases it like this:

The Chiron return process around age 50 radically exposes the interface, the ‘fracture’, between the psyche and the soul, between the personality and the essence of who we really are. It catalyzes a process that restarts the ‘spiritual path’ on an essential level by exposing the ‘sacred wound’, which is the core of our humanity.

When I was born, Chiron was at 9° 6′ 12″ in Pisces, in my 9th house. I’m in somewhat sketchy company: Warren Harding, Dick Nixon, and Ronald Reagan also had their Chiron in Pisces. (But then, so do George Clooney, Nicholas Cage, Brad Pitt, Jodie Foster, and other beautiful people like me; so did Kurt Cobain, Charles Dickens and Henry David Thoreau.) From the wiki at astrologynotes.org:

Chiron in Pisces relates to deep wounds stemming from the desire to merge with the whole (e.g. oneness with God, with the universe, or with others). There is nothing wrong with this desire; in fact it could be argued that it is our natural state. The Chiron in Pisces child is born with expanded consciousness; so much so that they can hardly tell where they end and another person begins. But their life may be riddled with painful experiences that result from their lack of boundaries. It is not uncommon for parental neglect, rape, or some form of childhood betrayal to be associated with Chiron in Pisces individuals. The nature of the wound will relate to betrayal of trust. Since a Chiron in Pisces person does not distinguish between self and others well, they do not know how to say no (or even that they should say no). Furthermore, when they do assert themselves as individuals, they encounter the pain of separation or even abuse.

Chiron in the 9th house indicates my spiritual restlessness, which started at a very early age (much to the chagrin of the nuns). But its aspects—whether, and how, it communicates with the other planets—show where the wound lies.

It lies within a strong and easy sextile to Venus, two signs away in Taurus (somewhat beset with a square from Saturn in Aquarius in the 8th house, the house of sexuality). Ordinarily, that is, it would be considered easy; but as it’s played out in my life it’s reflected a lifelong battle between the side of me that wishes to be original (Pisces) and the side that wishes also to fit in (Taurus/11th house; the house of friends, committees, gregariousness). Up until I began this self-work I had deemed the two sides mutually exclusive.

It also lies within an even stronger and much more difficult opposition to Pluto in Virgo (in my 3rd house, the house of communications). Here’s a particularly poignant interpretation of what that might mean:

You have some very deep work to do around issues of loss, intimacy and personal power… Your journey involves deep, initiatory experiences that prompt you to claim your spirit power and heal yourself. In so doing you can become a powerful healer, shaman and spiritual midwife, but you must accept and own your power and face your “shadow”.

Other than a weak conjunction with Jupiter coming up behind it less than six degrees of arc away, it sits about 1.75 degrees of arc outside a square to my Vertex/Anti-Vertex (“Hand of Fate”) axis, one terminus of which sits neatly atop the midpoint between my Sun and Moon in Gemini (11th house). Dawn Bodrogi writes:

If planets square the Vertex angle, then the development of this planet is crucial to whether or not I become aware enough (and brave enough) to meet my fate.

Translation: working with Chiron energies opens the door to fated encounters. But it’s going to be bloody hard work. So it has been.

The chart elsewhere on astrologynotes.org details what happens to us as the transiting real-time version of Chiron aspects its natal position. It first sextiled (moved two signs away from its natal position) when it hit Taurus (and an almost exact conjunction to my natal Venus) two weeks after I turned 17. It was to have been my first opportunity to heal the wound—the desire to return to oneness with creation—and it might well have been a start on it. I was coming to the end of my first year in a public high school, where no one remembered me as the victim of numerous thrashings from playground fights as children. I was beginning to fit in, albeit that I still felt somewhat out of place and was nowhere near as popular as others in my age group.

But the wound surfaced in a major way when it came around again the next year. It came within about an arc-minute and a half of perfecting a second sextile to its natal position, and seeing all my friends pairing off with new lovers, that was when I began to feel too different to ever be loved. Ordinarily that first realization would have come with the first square, which didn’t occur until I was 23 and Chiron had moved three signs away to Gemini). But if anything, the square reinforced what I already knew to be true: busing tables at a hoity-toity Westport restaurant among some very beautiful people, and again feeling like the odd man out when it came to love. My first relationship was still a year away, and that lasted six months before I was kicked to the curb.

The trine, which came about when I was 27, saw me begin my relationship with the woman ten years my elder, whom I later put aside in favor of my future (now ex) wife. True to the chart, I did feel more like I could be myself during it, and after it was over.

If I recall the timing correctly, the first major fight I had with my future wife, during which she expressed a desire to break up and never see me again, coincided with the opposition, when Chiron had moved six signs away to Virgo. We managed to reconcile long-distance while I was in Montréal. The chart: “Learning to love, forgive and accept ourselves and others.” It was the first of many instances in which we decided that saving what we had required work, and that what we had was worth saving and therefore worth working toward. We learned.

The ex and I were solidly together when the second trine hit in November 1997 (Chiron was in Scorpio), and we had been married a year and three months as the second square hit in December 1999 (Chiron had moved to Sagittarius). By then I figured all the pain of the past was behind me; I wondered how I ever thought I would never be loved. Even as Chiron sailed through Capricorn and the second sextile came and went in 2002, and I wondered how I was going to provide for the household on unemployment insurance, I felt no need to examine the old wounds; time would heal them, I figured—it had healed everything else about this relationship. What self-work needed doing now?

A year later, Uranus moved opposite itself; two years later, Saturn opposed itself for the second time in my life. It was the beginning of the end. A short time after I moved out of our house in 2007, I joined Myspace and began a pen-pal relationship with a girl in New Jersey. By now you know my take on how that turned out.

Before I bring this walk down memory lane to a close, I need to go off on a short tangent. From our vantage point here on Terra, because some planets move faster than others and some slower, we observe that sometimes the other planets slow to a stop and then appear to be moving backward in the zodiac—what astrologers call retrograde motion. Eventually the planets slow to a stop again and begin moving forward in what astrologers call direct motion. As I write, Mercury, Mars, and Saturn are all moving retrograde.

Chiron does this too, in a pattern that appears to us to be three steps forward, two steps back.

In the sky now, Chiron is rolling through the early degrees of Pisces again for the first time in 50 years, and in the early evening of 5 May, Chiron will finally return to its natal position. Back to the chart:

Issues related to the wound resurface as a test of the individual’s level of awareness and growth. If we are able to respond with unconditional love, it will probably be a victorious experience, otherwise it could be very painful or even completely repressed and unnoticed. This is a major crossroad. We should experience confirmation of spiritual growth and healing at this point even if it means we have to work through more issues. If we do not, we are not likely to continue to work on ourselves past this point on the issues related to Chiron.

So here’s the kicker: not only will it return there, it will move forward a little bit, slow to a stop while it is still within an acceptable orb for conjunction, begin moving retrograde, hit my natal Chiron again in the late evening of 19 July, slow to a stop again while still within acceptable conjunction orb, begin moving direct again, and hit my natal Chiron a third time during the afternoon of 23 February 2013. This direct motion will bring it out of the conjunction orb early in May 2013..

.. for about a month. Then in mid-June, it will stop and begin moving retrograde again, back into conjunction orb.. and then (as it happens, on Jersey Girl’s birthday) it will stop about a minute of arc away from hitting my natal Chiron a fourth time.

Then it turns direct again and begins moving away. By late February 2014, it will be out of conjunction orb for good, and I’ll have to wait another 50 years to do this dance all over again.

If I weren’t already bald, I wonder if I might have torn the last of my hair out by the time March 2014 rolls around. But the rest of the description of Chiron in Pisces from Astrologynotes gives me hope that this battering isn’t in vain:

After a while, the Chiron in Pisces person gets tired of having their trust betrayed and starts fighting back. In the process, they acknowledge that they are an individual, that they want to remain an individual, and that they are willing to endure the pain of separation from others if they can be free to be themselves. Without this struggle, they would de-evolve back into group consciousness. The reward for their efforts is the ability to evolve into individuality without losing their connection to the whole. In fact, they discover that they have never left the whole, and they are connected to all beings regardless of their feelings of separation.

.. that, in other words, being myself and being an integral part of the cosmos are not, after all, mutually exclusive.

A small correction to yesterday’s post.. all those planetary lines converging over Alaska converge over Kotzebue Sound, not Norton Sound. My sleep-encrusted eyes saw what my wakeful eyes didn’t.

Specifically, they all seem to meet over the village of Sheshalik, which according to Wikipedia doesn’t seem to be inhabited now. The lines fly about 15 miles west of the settlement of Kotzebue (I like its Iñupiaq name better: Qikiqtaġruk, “almost an island”), which has about 3000 residents.

If anyone has gone through life being almost an island, I feel like it’s me. This is a major reason for all my work with Reiki energies for the last few years: Having established a firm connection to myself at an early age, I have always wanted, but never quite felt (or only felt sporadically), that profound connection to others and to the universe at large.

Mind you, all of Western Alaska, including Norton Sound, will have strong planetary influences. I guess I got taken in by what I saw on Google Maps when I inadvertently zoomed in on the wrong section of the state.

Just now as I start this, I finally finished getting rid of all the spam that had infiltrated the comments section. Three thousand comments telling me who to use for lawncare in Delaware, who to go to for grey Uggs.. and a few telling me that I used to “write excellent” but that my last several posts have slipped in quality. (Yeah, pal, I’ll be sure to click on your link sometime soon, especially since you’re chastising me for my style but haven’t even got a clear grasp on basic English grammar.)

So since this seems to be the day for it, with transiting Mercury conjunct my natal Chiron and working in a spirit of self-healing, I can turn my attention to loftier things. I’ve got several on my mind at the moment, so they’re all going to get some play in this post.

I attended a spirituality meetup on Monday, wherein (with guidance) we practiced mediumship. If you’ve been an avid reader of these ramblings it’s likely you’re also aware of Crossing Over, a syndicated series wherein medium John Edwards comes in contact with people/spirits/entities who’ve crossed over from this plane to the next, and relays messages from these entities to specific people in a studio audience who need to hear them. The few times I sat down long enough to watch, I kept an open mind about what I was seeing, and figured it was a special gift that Edwards has with which the rest of us weren’t blessed.

After Monday night, I’ve had to revise my thinking. As is customary at these meetups, we worked on the specific area of concern with a partner. On some level I guess I was tuned in to her vibration, although I wasn’t aware of it as I concentrated—it wasn’t even that I went into a trance, just that I opened myself up to any spirit that might have had a message for anyone in the room. Most of the others at the meetup didn’t get messages specifically for their partner—I was one of the few who did, and may even have been the only one other than our facilitator.

I got a vision of a seaside restaurant, then of a middle-aged woman in a blue dress with small white polka dots, wearing a piece of cheap costume jewelry: a pin, pewter-structured, with colored glass representing a small cornucopia of fruit. My partner identified this person as her late mother-in-law, who used to take her and her husband out to dinner at a restaurant on the water in Montauk. The message she wished to relay to my partner was that she was happy with the way my partner and her husband were taking care of one another, and that that was what she had always wanted for her son.

But earlier, our facilitator had been showing us the basic principles of mediumship by way of demonstrating how she does it, which turned out to be in a manner not dissimilar to John Edwards. She sensed the presence of an older woman of particular spiritual radiance, short, wearing glasses, heavy Eastern European accent. I sensed that this person was trying to communicate with me: the description fit my late maternal grandmother.

My grandmother is no stranger to me some twenty-odd years after her passing: more than once I’ve awakened in the middle of the night to sense her spirit at the foot of my bed, keeping watch. If there was conversation, I wasn’t aware of it in my half-awakened state. I never sensed that she was trying to tell me anything; she was just letting me know she was still there, and I was always grateful every time she showed up. For me, that was enough.

The message I got at the meetup from my grandmother was twofold: first, that life is to be savored. It’s something I don’t always remember to do in the midst of working on three albums’ worth of music by myself down here in the Sanctum by day, and running out to gigs by night. But when I’m actually at the gigs, I can savor that experience and the support and cameraderie of the people who’ve showed up (even if I can’t always accept their compliments freely; see previous post).

The other part of the message was that I’m not going to be single for very much longer: I’m not meant to be alone, and the lover who has been speaking to me in spirit for a year and a half, urging me to keep looking, is coming soon.

On the drive home from the meetup, one of my other spirit guides got my attention. “You have a knife in your back.”

I had been feeling this ever since the end of my last relationship. Now, I call it a relationship, and I can point to certain experiences we shared along the way in order to prove my case; but to hear her tell it now you might well think she had never, ever given it any kind of credence, even while we were lovers; or accorded it the weight that would justify it being called a relationship. On my end, I know better than that; on hers, it’s probably something she never even thinks about now, and it’s probably just as well that she doesn’t, as she has other things in her life that require her attention.

The betrayal I experienced at her hands, which I’ve documented in earlier posts, had never really left me. I know that she’s moved on now: she has a new lover, who is also the father of her child. What has bothered me, to the extent that her presence in my spiritual orbit still bothers me, is that since she gave birth, her attitude seems to have mellowed towards quite a few of the other people she’s hurt in the past: she’s reached out to them, or found them reaching out to her, and met them halfway.. and that was something she’d rarely if ever felt inclined to do with me. The chain between us remains broken.

And I’m ambivalent about fixing it, and she appears to be equally ambivalent. The disconnect I experienced between her past actions and her words, and the fact that she’d come to a point where it seemed that I was only her friend if she wanted something from me, and a non-factor in her life the rest of the time, produced serious trust issues. It raised questions with which I’ve found myself wrestling ever since: can you truly love what you can’t trust? To what extent is trust a part of, or prerequisite for, love? When one person feels like a kitchen utensil, taken out of the drawer only to be used, and then put back in the drawer again with no more thought given to it after its purpose has been accomplished, does that constitute friendship? Given that I’d forgiven but not forgotten the slight, was that OK in the universe’s book, and did that contribute to my walk or hinder it?

I broke radio silence between us after about nine months only to acknowledge the birth of her child (for some reason I still can’t fathom, my phone number remains in her cell phone, and she MMS’d me a picture of the newborn). I went right back to silence when she tried to engage me in conversation. At no point since we stopped being lovers did I ever feel that she was ever curious as to how I might be faring; the sole topic of conversation after a while, after we stopped being lovers and were ostensibly friends, was herself and whatever might be troubling her at the moment.

Then, a few months ago, while I was still on Google+, a notification appeared in my Gmail inbox that she had added me to one of her circles. She was reaching out to me. I allowed it without adding her to any of my own circles, and as a courtesy I sent her a friend request on Facebook: a move I’ve second-guessed every day since I did it.

She accepted my request; however, I restricted access such that while my status updates and shared items may well appear on her FB wall—I can’t tell whether they actually do—none of hers appear on mine. The second-guessing, and the restricted access, come from that ambivalence about fixing things. There are days when I feel that our lives have spun in entirely different directions, and that there is no overlap now, and that she and her attitude toward me had changed enough that I don’t really need to know what’s going on in her current life. But I perceive that she doesn’t see that anything needs fixing, even after I told her explicitly that I felt betrayed, even after I told her explicitly that I no longer trust her, even after I told her explicitly that I no longer considered us friends, that in light of the attitude she’d taken towards me our roles in one another’s lives were effectively at an end, and that I could see no further reason for us ever to speak again.

While it’s true that we all have a system of chakras scattered about our bodies—a whole range of very minor ones that seem to me at first glance to correspond to acupressure points, about 21 minor chakras, and 7 major ones—certain healing arts practitioners, among them Barbara Ann Brennan, have identified that the major chakras aren’t just energy centers protruding from the front of our bodies, but also from behind.

The spirit guide who pointed out the knife in my back gave me something else to think about. “You can’t reach it. You’ll need help getting it out.”

Step into a shower and try to fully wash your back without aid of a scrubbing brush. There’s an area around your shoulder blades that you won’t be able to get to. It corresponds to the back area of your heart chakra. That’s where the knife in my back was located.

The night after the spirituality meetup, I attended a Reiki share with Jane, my teacher. I told her what my guide had told me and asked her to have a look at my back around the area of the heart chakra. As she worked there, she felt something give.

And slowly, almost imperceptibly over the course of the last several days since the share, I’m feeling as though something is releasing in me. I don’t know what this will mean for my current relationships—or my past ones.

Today, just before I sat down to write this, I hiked a mile off a back road and down to a local reservoir. The area was quiet except for the wind blowing leaves along the ground and through the bare branches, the water slapping at the shore, and distant traffic from State 58 across the water. The air was cool but not overly cold; the sun showed signs of strengthening. I was pleased at the mildness of the winter so far just north of Long Island Sound.

I found a hospitable pine tree to set myself under, and my body became a pendulum. Yes, my grandmother was correct: she is coming. Yes, she is coming soon. No, I don’t know her yet; she’s not in my life now. But she’s coming. I didn’t ask any other questions, and a guide told me to enjoy the show.

The only show in front of me was the play of sunlight on the water and the caress of a slow wind across my face in the shade. It was enough.

Apropos of nothing I’ve had to say so far, but this has been on my mind too, lately. Back when I was a sophomore at a parochial high school, it dawned on me that the girls in my class who remembered me from my younger days of getting tormented on the playground were probably not going to be very charitable toward me as we all passed through pubescence and began looking for partners with whom to pair up. Other than a select few who appeared to be content with friendship, I didn’t see that anyone was at all as interested in the prospect of dating me as I was in them.

I decided that I needed a fresh start, prevailing on my parents to send me to the local public high school instead of to the Catholic one. It was one of those moments in my life that represented a true crossroads, when looking back from the safe distance of almost thirty-five years you wonder how things would have gone had you chosen differently, how your life would be so very different now.

Now, I can’t change where I was born, but I can change where I go from here. And the question has been rearing up in my head of late: if I needed a new reboot from the circumstances that surround me here in the 203, where should that take place? And do I in fact need one?

As part of my studies into astrology, I came across the fields of relocation astrology and astrocartography. Wikipedia doesn’t go into very much detail on the subject, but its description suffices here. Typical astrocartography maps

…show all locations on the earth where planets were “angular” (rising, setting, on the zenith or nadir) at the moment of an event like a person’s birth. An “angular” planet is one that is conjunct one of these four angles (Ascendant, Descendant, MC or IC). These locations are displayed in the form of lines on the Astro*Carto*Graphy world map.

On an astrocartography map, the lines can be sine wave-shaped curves denoting where on Earth a planet was conjunct the Ascendant or the Descendant (the zodiacal areas where the Eastern and Western horizons were; astrologically these are where the first and seventh houses begin), or straight lines denoting where a planet was conjunct the Midheaven and the Nadir (the noon point and the midnight point; astrologically, the tenth and fourth houses).

The map I generated out at Astrodienst shows that the Moon-Ascendant sine wave passed just to the west of Bridgeport at the moment of my birth. Not surprising; when I was born, the moon had just risen above the horizon and was approaching first quarter. If the astrocartographic theories are to be believed, the entire area will hold a very, very powerful resonance toward the parts of my personality governed by the Moon, which as it happens was in Cancer at the time of my birth. Moreover, Cancer was rising on the horizon at that moment, making the Moon my chart ruler. It would likely have been powerful anyway, but its appearance just above the horizon would give my presence in this place a very lunar quality to it.

And I’ve come to feel that it’s done that over the course of my nearly fifty years here on this rock—to the virtual exclusion of those parts of my personality that haven’t been nearly as developed. I’m an Aries: that’s where my Sun was located at just about the highest point in the sky (Mercury is actually closer to the noon point, but Mercury is never very far away from the Sun). At my birth, the Sun rose over western Alaska and set over Volgograd and Lesotho. The sun was at its highest just east of Labrador, and at its lowest just west of the Korean Peninsula and some hundreds of miles east of Perth. Had I been born in any of those places, the Sun would have probably held more of an influence over what I’ve become.

Beside the Sun and Moon, the other planets cut similar paths across the face of the Earth. Astrologers have documented stories of people who were born in one place, relocated to a place just under or closer to one of these lines, and found themselves. As astrologer Robert Couteau tells it, Charlie Chaplin achieved a certain amount of success in his native England, but it wasn’t till he relocated to Hollywood—directly under the line where his natal Sun was at its highest point in the sky, the Midheaven—that he achieved his fame.

Now, I’m not looking for that kind of fame or notoriety (although if it comes, I will find a way to deal with it). But if there are aspects to my personality that need to be refined, it’s probably not going to happen in Connecticut.

Couteau’s concept of the Least Aspected Planet in my natal chart identifies Uranus as the planet most responsible for who I am at my core: the essence of my soul. My long-held individuality, creativity, and revolutionary tendencies are Uranian.

The line on my astrocartography map where Uranus was at the Nadir runs through or very near Saskatoon, Casper, Denver, Colorado Springs, Santa Fe, Albuquerque, and Mazatlán. I can expect Uranian energy to be very present there along that longitude. Similarly, the line where the Nodal Axis was conjunct the Nadir runs through Los Angeles, which actually was my home for a few months back in the watershed year of 1967. The Nodal Axis is commonly thought to denote fated occurrences.. and I am thinking very strongly again about California these days, contemplating a trip there in late June or early July, when the transiting Nodal Axis will be on the Descendant and transiting Jupiter will be on the Ascendant, and wondering whether to even bother coming back to Connecticut.

But the region I find most interesting is a little further north.

I can see Russia from here!

The area in and around Norton Sound is very, very highly charged on my birth chart. Uranian energy is present here too, on the curve where it was at the Nadir. But also floating through the area was where Mercury, Mars, and Jupiter were rising (conjunct the Ascendant) and Saturn and Neptune setting (conjunct the Descendant). To the west at the mouth of the Sound, the Sun and Venus were just about to rise.

Those of you who know how much I detest winter will believe me when I tell you I never thought I’d be saying this, but insofar as I have a bucket list of places to visit, Norton Sound has just gotten on it.

For a little over half the year I had a couple of collages perched precariously on the mantle over the fireplace down here in the Sanctum, prominently, where I could see and reflect on them. They represented the things that I openly stated that I wished to make manifest in 2011, about which more in a bit. I made the vision boards in January, the first at a manifesting workshop I attended at my Reiki teacher’s place, the second here at home after scouring Google Images to find pictures closer to what I had in mind than those I was able to find in the assorted magazines at my teacher’s.

The week before, I had written a letter to Spirit, asking for these things, putting them into words, speaking them to myself and Spirit, and placed it in a sealed envelope where my teacher had safeguarded it for the year until today.

By August, both collages had gone through the shredder in a fit of deep depression. I have the letter in my possession again.

Now, in between bouts with the Luminous City remaster and assorted work on the first Describing An Arc album, I find myself reflecting back on the year past in light of those destroyed collages and that letter.

As I entered 2011, the main thing I understood that I needed was a job. At a separate prophesying workshop, I estimated that something would turn up by August, and presumed I would be working again. I had hoped to manifest a full-time, non-contractual, 40-hour-a-week gig as an IT support person at a medium-to-large company, and applied for anything that looked as though it might be close to that in scope. I was told I could be as specific as I liked, and at the time a friend in New Hampshire was trying to get me into his company, and the possibility existed that the job could move to Long Island—close enough that I could still be within reach of my parents, and well-paying enough that I could have my own flat down there. So that was the specific situation I wrote down in the letter.

At the beginning of the year, I actually went on a few interviews, none of which recommended me for a second. The company in New Hampshire never even bothered to interview me. By May, I had been on my last one for the year, although I had no way of knowing that at the time.

In March, a recruitment company granted me access to their online databank of training materials, which I visited daily in hopes of keeping my skill set current. But whenever I had questions of them, most notably whether any contracts were in the pipeline, no one ever bothered to get back to me, not even to say “No, there’s nothing yet, but we’ll keep you posted.” By August I was thoroughly disillusioned at the lack of prospects and the lack of any urgency on the part of the recruiters, and I stopped visiting, and soon after gave up on even scouring the newspaper want ads and Craigslist.

The job would have facilitated other things that I sought to manifest. My own flat, for starters, close enough to my parents that I could still get to them easily, but far enough away that they wouldn’t necessarily be tempted to visit at the drop of a hat. And coming with that, the chance to prove to myself and others that I am capable of living independently. I’m an Aries; being here has chafed from day one and it’s worn me down to the nub.

Seed money for the day when I could say goodbye to IT and settle into my healing arts practice. Expansion of the Sanctum’s physical plant, and more opportunities to gig. The new albums finally released, available at the major online stores, and receiving airplay on assorted internet radio stations catering to my style of music. A trip to Los Angeles to visit with friends there. Another to Florida to visit with friends there. A third to North Carolina.

Most importantly, a lover: as I phrased it in the letter, one “who isn’t broken and is helping me to fix what’s broken in me.” But as my friends kept telling me, as though I needed reminding, ain’t no romance without finance. They also engaged in a bit of conjecture, and I now believe them, that the roller coaster, feast-or-famine existence of an IT contractor played a large part in both the collapse of my marriage and that of what turned out to be the rebound relationship with my former friend in New Jersey.

The money thing was reinforced when I threw Rahdue’s Wheel again on the Winter Solstice. I saw things for which to hope, things to guard against, and, in answer to a specific question I asked about my current level of understanding with regard to the fairer sex, the 4 of Coins. The Transformational Tarot says this about what the card signifies when it isn’t reversed, and describes the collage imagery the artist, Arnell Ando, used. (I’d reproduce the text here, but then I’d have to include all sorts of legalese and copyright notices; better that you see it there, I think.)

So, yeah. The ability to make a profit. While still unemployed and netting $250 a week on unemployment insurance from the State of Connecticut, with future insurance very much in peril at the hands of a Republican Congress inclined to let anyone making under $100K a year fend for themselves. Any job for which I’d qualify now is paying mininum wage, would not offer health benefits, and would require me to keep appointments on my own dime (i.e., no company car, not even a mileage reimbursement for using my own ride to and from). The shift from white collar to blue collar is pretty much complete now; all the white collar jobs are overseas, and the few openings I’m seeing are being taken by overqualified former systems analysts whose old jobs were also offshored. That market is glutted.

At first glance it seems that without the job, none of the rest of it came to pass either. But in the last several days spent wool-gathering over this last blog post of 2011, I got to thinking whether that was necessarily true.

On a purely material level, I have managed to improve the Sanctum. These improvements came about as gifts rather than through very much intensive labor on my part. But still, they happened, the Sanctum is in better shape to produce the music I hear in my head and that I want others to hear too; so that goes in the plus column.

Elsewhere, it’s true that I’m still in my parents’ basement, far longer than I anticipated I would be, unaware (as I made my calculations in 2007) that the job market was going to take the dive that it did and not accounting for a predominantly Republican Congress taking pains to ensure that the current unemployment situation would remain exactly as it’s been for the last few years, ostensibly at the behest of the corporate big shots who funded their election campaigns—the so-called one percent. It still rankles that Herman Cain would suggest that somehow being unemployed is my fault for not seeing the signs, and that he’s definitely not alone among his Republican cronies; but who among us did, or could?

And when I consider that there are people sleeping under bridges tonight, I’m damn lucky I have a roof over my head and food to eat at dinner time, and pets to care for.

I never made it to Los Angeles, Florida, or the Carolinas; about as far as I got was the odd trip to Woodstock, and those were few and far between. The healing arts practice has yet to reach anything close to critical mass, thanks in part to the economic doldrums we face as a country and the lack of discretionary income in these parts.

At some point along the way it began to appear to me that my road ahead has nothing to do with Information Technology. A friend’s words to me (in August) came back at just the right time while I was at the latest emotional nadir:

i think thats a bit of society’s brainwash upon us. you HAVE a job sir…you were given a purpose…Art and music!!!! that’s your job.

And the clouds parted a little bit, and helped to lift me out of the depression that caused me to destroy the manifesting collages. I inquired with my Reiki teacher as to how best to begin the work towards Master level, and the process has begun. Progress has been made on the three albums currently on the desk or near enough to it. Two of them are slated for release in March, money permitting. And it may: as a result of expanding my circle of musician friends I’m now part of a wedding band project which is sure to be somewhat profitable.

Without the burden of finding work for which I am no longer spiritually suited, I have largely felt lighter in my soul as the year wound down.

It still hasn’t brought me any closer to a steady income, or to a steady lover. A friend said, “You’re looking for someone who isn’t broken, but we’re all broken at one level or another.” I don’t know about that. The level of vibration I hope to attain would seem to suggest a singular lack of brokenness. I’m not counting on becoming Jesus or Buddha in this lifetime, but I’m aware that my light shines brighter than it did at this time last year. One of the things I asked for in my letter was to walk closer with Spirit, and I feel as though I do now; I got as much of an opportunity to do that as I wanted thanks to the many public forest areas within striking distance of the Sanctum. And though I’m not taking anyone steady to bed with me, my circle of friends has expanded and I think we’re all better for that happening.

The album work has led me to believe that the people I’ve attracted into my life as lovers were attracted because they were broken, because they saw in me a road to healing—and not much else. Last night at a show (I wasn’t onstage), two lovers spent the entire time entwined around one another, barely registering their surroundings, only really registering one another. I ached a little bit for not having that, nor anyone in my life who might be that in potential, and I realize it’s possible that however much I may want it, I’m not supposed to have that kind of relationship with anyone this time around. It’s equally possible that if the universe wants me to meet her as the ball drops tonight, I’ll meet her.

And I realize I’m not really invested in a particular outcome, either: I don’t need to be in a relationship, and when the time is right, I will be, and so will she.

What I asked for this time last year, and what the universe gave me, seem at first glance to be rather dissimilar. I got the things the universe felt I needed for me to eventually fulfill my destiny, and didn’t get the things for which it felt I wasn’t ready. But I got things I hadn’t intended to get.

The very last thing I asked for in my letter was this: “The understanding that I’m not being greedy, that abundance is the birthright of everyone you’ve put here, me included. Ask and it is given.”

I think the main thing I am taking from 2011 is that I don’t get to define what constitutes abundance: that it’s totally the call of the universe as to what that means, and I don’t have the power to consciously manifest specific things or circumstances for myself. On throwing Rahdue’s Wheel, the second-to-last card I turned up in response to a specific question I asked (“What do I need to know about my current capability for healing myself?”) was the Ace of Swords reversed. One possible interpretation of the reversal is a feeling of powerlessness, and as I head into 2012 I feel very much as though I’m at the mercy of the universe and anything or anyone it might care to blow into my path. (But it also warns that I need to be careful of any conclusions I may draw from available data.)

And thinking about that as I write, maybe that’s how it should be: the hammer doesn’t complain when I use it to drive a nail into the pieces of wood that keep a house together, and maybe I shouldn’t complain about asking Spirit to use me as a tool—a fulcrum—to move us all closer together.

This is what I asked for.

And after I finished writing this year’s letter (with my manifesting goals much more vague this time out and with a lower bar set on what I wished to bring into existence), my teacher pulled a card out of a deck of messages from the angels (I think one of those Doreen Virtue decks). The card she pulled depicted a unicorn in full charge, and the message: “Keep charging ahead, and don’t take no for an answer. Expect miraculous solutions to appear.”

The walls that need to be broken down in my understanding.. is it that much of a difference to attack them with a unicorn’s horn or a ram’s?

And suddenly I was under a dome. I couldn’t see where the half-sphere met the ground—too far, and too many beings in the way. It may even have been sky, but the light refracted into my eyes as an every-colored flower of life. I could see the circles within the circles, each circle distinct as a circle but each petal a slightly different color like stained glass: red gradually into orange, into yellow, green, blue, violet, and back again to red as I let my eyes roam slowly over the ceiling.

On the ground it was dark and featureless; figures moved about the smooth plain in all directions through a subtle haze the shade of burnt umber. I recognized some as human—even recognized some that I know. Mantises and Greys were there, and they were not at each other’s throats; they were cooperating. Other shapes seemed to me to occupy a state somewhere between the physical and the spiritual. And there were some who were purely spirit, points of light that didn’t have a recognizable shape but who distinguished themselves with just presence.

While they skittered about semi-randomly, from where I stood I did notice a general progression towards something I couldn’t see. It was as though the organism we made together were executing a random walk within the organism that wasn’t actually random, that the thing as a whole had a destination, had a purpose, and moved toward it incrementally.

Once I could glean a sense of that direction, I started to walk that way, but soon found myself skirting around others just standing and taking it all in, and then larger clusters of figures, some alike to themselves, some composed of various races, some standing in small cohort, some walking together. After I’d passed enough of them, instead of walking with intent in the direction I’d sensed us traveling, I found myself moving semi-randomly with all the rest of them.

You’ve been here before. The words didn’t reach my consciousness through my ears. A shape, the speaker, fell in beside me to my right. I realized that for all the conversation I’d been hearing as I walked, I saw no one’s mouth actually moving, no one’s hands crying to be understood.

I found that I didn’t have to speak either. I’ve never been here before, I don’t think.. but I know this place, I know what it’s for. I felt comfortable in a way I usually don’t when talking to strangers. Whoever this personality was walking with me, he (she? some other gender?) wasn’t human.. more than human, I guessed.

Of course, my companion said. That’s why you’re here: because you know what it’s for. And I have seen you here before.

Another shape of a different vibration fell in to my left, and said only two words to me before falling silent as we walked. Welcome home.

Something about the way he said it was worth a thousand embraces from a thousand friends after the greatest triumph I could imagine. And I felt not only my own heart swelling with the thought, but his too, and my other companion’s, and everyone immediately around me, and realized the whole room was feeling it too and had been similarly welcomed.

And as we approached the gathering place (it may well have been the center but could just as easily have been some other sacred point—the dome was that large) our shapes fell away from us, and we were all light, and we were all equal. The flower of life, and the trees of life that formed within it, lost none of its colors but gained in intensity as we moved.

I wish strongly that I could remember the words spoken when we got there. The voice soothed as none I’d ever heard before, and filled us with contentment if not a sense of purpose. I recall dimly that the voice noted that our paths had brought us all to this place, and that we were to show others how to get there too through our example.

Looking down momentarily, I noticed that another point of light was anointing what had been my heels with an inscrutable oil: it didn’t seem to have any particular aroma that I could discern, and I felt no extremes of temperature or pain: just that it was there. As I looked left and right I saw that I was part of a long line of people being similarly anointed: I couldn’t see the end of the line in either direction, just that it faded into the brown dusk and merged with the receding geometry in the ceiling, or the sky.

Before I had the opportunity to anoint anyone, I heard the voice of my Reiki teacher telling me, “It is done.. take your time.” As usually happens when I’m receiving Reiki at a share, I came to almost immediately, and sat straight up in the anti-gravity lawn chair we use in lieu of a massage table for want of space.

I didn’t notice until later that I wasn’t sorry to have left the dome, to have been pulled back into this existence. Thinking about it later, I paused long enough to wonder why in order to understand. The understanding comes from the deepest place in me, from the core of the core: I can get back there whenever I need to, now.

The share tonight consisted of four people: me (a second degree practitioner), a first degree, and two Master/Teachers. The first degree noticed that working in my energy field felt to her like a day at the beach, playing in the sand, warm water lapping at her.

The other Master told me that after a while it felt like he was performing a ritual. In my experience, Reiki practitioners never practice the same way twice, even on the same person at different sessions: their intuition will guide them to do certain things differently from session to session. They do what needs doing, and what needs doing can vary.

My teacher agreed that it felt like something sacred was going on, and told me that while she worked, she had a vision of a battlefield, full of fire and carnage, and of me walking purposefully and slowly through the scorched and burning earth, eyes fixed on the horizon, allowing nothing to get in my way, fearless of anything or anyone that might cut me down in the heat of war. Nothing could touch me, and nothing could stop me.

I told them what I’d just experienced: the dome, the figures, the lights, the sacred geometry in the sky, the anointing.

I don’t think it’s all sunk in yet. But I’m pretty sure I’m a different man now from the one writing this past Saturday night.

A friend wrote of being unsure of “astral meanings and consequences” after reading that post. Her words, and her kindness in replying with good reinforcing advice, make it impossible for me not to smile with gratitude.

And with her reply coming when it did, I realize I’m attracting the people I need into my orbit after all—and I am being attracted into others’ orbits for reasons not fully known to me but perhaps out of some reason only Spirit knows. But Spirit has good reasons for placing certain people in our paths, and for placing us in theirs. Opportunities to learn and to teach.. or just to be good to one another because we can.

I met a lot of fellow travelers tonight under that dome. So I think that for a while at least, it may be a little more difficult to feel as solitary as I’ve been feeling.