Angel of the Gap: guerilla astrology

Astrologically, a Jupiter sextile Sun aspect has been popping balloons and burning boats from 23rd May and will keep locking and loading until 1 June 2012.  A cosmic Jovian wave that will carry me to the outlying reef of the Venus transit across the face of the Sun a few days later.  Last Venus Transit I will see in my current physical form.  I cannot remember being aware of the first in 2004, only that that was the year in which the life I had planned went pear-shaped and nothing prepared me for that.

I lay back in the arms of the cosmos, floating contentedly in the ocean of timespace, knowing that in the gap between 8 June 2004 and 5 June 2012, I have been well prepared to receive the spirits of aloha and kokua and to fulfill a vow I made when I was very small; to do something to help people - like - my Mother.

To help people find my mother agreeable?  And to which mother do I refer - biological, Earth, divine or archetypal.

To help people who bear a resemblance to my mother; is that what I meant?  Again, do I refer to a biological mother or the Great Mother or to Earth as our mother.  As we are all composed of the same elements of earth, then we all bear a resemblance to that mother. 

As for our biological mothers. Well, we all fear that we'll turn out just like them!  Nobody wants to be just like their mother.  It is an off-the-cuff remark: a Pholian jibe that strikes most of us in a chironic Achilles' Heel.

Recently, I learned of the mortal passing of the 'Angel of the Gap' - Don Ritchie - a local hero who
lived near The Gap at Watson's Bay in NSW for over five decades and in that time he talked at least 160 people out of committing suicide.

People like my biological mother.

The philosophy of angels is simple, uncluttered, and contained in 33 words or less. Mr Ritchie said:

 "Never be afraid to speak to those who you feel are in need.

Always remember the power of the simple smile, a helping hand,

a listening ear and a kind word."

Yesterday, was a way freaky Friday kind of day in which I experienced the whole of this angelic philosophy which we really need in our knapsacks while we journey on this planet amongst golden imbeciles.

Andrew Hamilton, the consulting Editor of Eureka Street, writes of suicide being the new leprosy.
Close but no cigar.  There is nothing new on this Earth, only people who have grown new ways in which to see that which has always moved amongst us.

I have come to feel that the practice of astrology, especially natal astrology, is one of the more sublimely insidious ways in which that which has always moved amongst us, seduces the majority to float contentedly in the sewer of timespace; whilst contemporaneously infusing them with the belief, that they are actually getting someplace.

 'Five men were sent on a mission behind enemy lines.

Four never returned.

The one who came back was badly wounded.

He died before he could tell what happened.'

This is a story designed to exclude the hearer.

We have to ask ourselves, those of us who work in the Mysteries, those of us who are in the healing professions - getting our hands dirty, up to our elbows in the psychic filth of other peoples energies - we have to ask ourselves:

......who prepared me for this.....and what the fuck!

At some stage, some of us realise that we are Shamans for the Where-the-fuck-are-we? tribe and there is really nothing you can do about that, except stay alive as long as you can, do what your skills allow you to do, and remain as good-humoured as you can about the human propensity for mass delusion: mad crowd disease.

Venus last transited across the face of the sun in 1882.  Might account for the eco-steampunk neo-druidic trend that has been around for a while.  Either that or folks are grokking the costume design of  Mad Max and Waterworld and are, once again, romancing the Trickster, the Loki, the Heyókȟa

Serious play.
Deadly fun.

Heyókȟa functions both as a mirror and a teacher, using extreme behaviors to mirror others thereby forcing them to examine their own doubts, fears, hatreds, and weakness. They provoke laughter in distressing situations of despair and provoke fear and chaos when people feel complacent and overly secure, to keep them from taking themselves too seriously or believing they are more powerful than they are.

Andrew Hamilton writes: "In Western societies suicide has the same aura that leprosy once had. It also evokes the same fear, which in turn leads to exclusion and to silence. It is seen as the inexplicable rejection of the most fundamental human desire to live. This is the foundation stone of all attempts to find meaning and to shape a human society.

Perhaps this explains why in some cultures, which allowed human life to be taken with cavalier freedom judicially and militarily, the bodies of those who have taken their own lives were treated ignominiously. They were buried outside the common graveyards, and even subjected to ritual execution. It marks a fear that suicide may be contagious and corrode the fabric of society.

The families and friends of those who have taken their own lives suffer doubly from this exclusion. It is hard not to feel at times that people who have taken their own lives have rejected our love, and have chosen to exclude us from their lives. Because suicide is so inexplicable, relatives and friends also commonly feel excluded from conversation. They feel unable to speak about what matters to them".

Serious fun.
Deadly play.

The thing with suicide is that there is no taking backsies and being enamoured with Death, romancing the gravestone is just a hidden way of demonstrating that you do not like your Mother: Earth as mother that is.   Y'all might like to think on that.

To play

Catch a face before it slides
from the plate. Screw in

an unblinking eye. Into one
corner hammer a tent peg

so a smile flaps but
holds good. Now shrug on

an amorphous coat. Hurry.
No. Panic won't make for fast-

buttoning; think reattaching
lead to dog, lock-picking,

wire-cutting. The fork-hand
easy but the truculent right:

a fist, a nest of magnets from
which you pry the index out

and fit it the length of that
silver spine, while those

around you spill the loaded die.

~ Aiden Coleman



 References:

Suicide is the New Leprosy
Vale, Don Ritchie
John Fire Lame Deer
Aiden Coleman, Poet