The Full Moon is still in Pisces today, just starting to wane. Meanwhile the Venus/Mars conjunction is tightening up, the Sun is traveling closely with Jupiter, and Mercury is with the north node.
Yesterday one of my former students sent me a video of her five year old son tranced out, knitting, and humming sounds from what felt like another planet. She said, “How Virgo/Pisces is this?!” His hands were carefully at work while he simultaneously looked to be in a state of shamanic ecstasy.
Yesterday I spent 8-10 hours carefully organizing boxes, purging, sorting, and cleaning, while entranced by zen flute music.
Last night I spent time talking with someone close to me who is going to Peru for ayahuasca ceremonies in the fall. She said she is afraid of leaving her body, and I said, “Well you don’t really leave your body entirely. In fact sometimes by just a gentle tapping of your finger on the surface of the mesa floor, or just keeping a gentle little rhythm with your foot, the out of body experiences won’t feel so terrifying. It’s our fear that we are only body that freaks us out when we discover we’re also spirit.”
Children sometimes have a knack for remembering that they are made up of spirit as well as physical, earthly matter. Imagination enters and exits the dayside reality more fluidly than it does for many of us adults. And yet…what of this world around us isn’t an extension of imagination? As I’m sitting at this desk typing these thoughts each morning, as we read the news, discuss things, plan and execute actions for all the reasons we do, how do we forget that we human beings have been playing make believe for thousands of years?
Imagination doesn’t mean a lack of reality…imagination means something more like the translucent quality of realities (plural). Imagination is like the tapping of the finger, or the movement of our legs at night that reminds us that we’re dreaming even when we’re not dreaming. Imagination is more like the conscious quality of our relationship between “what is” and “what isn’t.” Both of which aren’t really what they seem..both of which are always changing places, repeating stories like musical notes, and adding depth, dimension, and animation to experience.
So instead of describing Virgo as the real or earthly and Pisces as the transcendent or imaginative, let’s look at both in terms of the imagination.
Virgo imagines:
* straight lines like spider webs, catching the dirt dark flies
* wholesome and careful choices, the master watching
* carefully woven and dyed fabrics, strong rugs for simple homes
* sitting next to home and heart fire, clean and hot kept
* small wings of angelic proof grow quietly from each simple choice
Pisces imagines:
* smoke and fog rising off quiet lakes at sunrise, the feeling of something nameless hovering nearby
* the rise of insects, loons, and the wind that interrupts a thought, interrupts conversation, to quietly remind
* the white noise of a thousand lights in the sky, we’re still in the womb, still in the womb
* the suffering of each small thing, imprisonment and liberation turning around and around like halls of mirrors
When you put them together…sometimes we mistakenly say “real versus imaginative.” But here’s how these two signs might combine if we recognize the already imaginative nature of everything:
* carefully woven thoughts disappearing gracefully into the early morning wind and light…prayer…then reappearing and reorganized by an invisible presence
* careful choices informed by the sounds that interrupt our thoughts
* carefully woven strong rugs, made for simple celestial homes..the design of heavenly archetypes
* a well kept fire and clean home, even though it’s messy…the simple acceptance of dirt and death beyond our control…liberated from an idea of organization into the organization of natural chaos
* the controlled chaos of the artists studio…like a water color image bleeding out into everything
With all heavenly archetypes, Virgo helps us to keep each thing in its rightful place. But if we forget that earth itself is an elemental, and hence imaginal, sphere, then we will tend to dichotomize body and spirit…as though one is more fundamental than the other, when in fact both are imaginal from the get go.
Prayer: and by imaginal we mean realer than real
Yesterday one of my former students sent me a video of her five year old son tranced out, knitting, and humming sounds from what felt like another planet. She said, “How Virgo/Pisces is this?!” His hands were carefully at work while he simultaneously looked to be in a state of shamanic ecstasy.
Yesterday I spent 8-10 hours carefully organizing boxes, purging, sorting, and cleaning, while entranced by zen flute music.
Last night I spent time talking with someone close to me who is going to Peru for ayahuasca ceremonies in the fall. She said she is afraid of leaving her body, and I said, “Well you don’t really leave your body entirely. In fact sometimes by just a gentle tapping of your finger on the surface of the mesa floor, or just keeping a gentle little rhythm with your foot, the out of body experiences won’t feel so terrifying. It’s our fear that we are only body that freaks us out when we discover we’re also spirit.”
Children sometimes have a knack for remembering that they are made up of spirit as well as physical, earthly matter. Imagination enters and exits the dayside reality more fluidly than it does for many of us adults. And yet…what of this world around us isn’t an extension of imagination? As I’m sitting at this desk typing these thoughts each morning, as we read the news, discuss things, plan and execute actions for all the reasons we do, how do we forget that we human beings have been playing make believe for thousands of years?
Imagination doesn’t mean a lack of reality…imagination means something more like the translucent quality of realities (plural). Imagination is like the tapping of the finger, or the movement of our legs at night that reminds us that we’re dreaming even when we’re not dreaming. Imagination is more like the conscious quality of our relationship between “what is” and “what isn’t.” Both of which aren’t really what they seem..both of which are always changing places, repeating stories like musical notes, and adding depth, dimension, and animation to experience.
So instead of describing Virgo as the real or earthly and Pisces as the transcendent or imaginative, let’s look at both in terms of the imagination.
Virgo imagines:
* straight lines like spider webs, catching the dirt dark flies
* wholesome and careful choices, the master watching
* carefully woven and dyed fabrics, strong rugs for simple homes
* sitting next to home and heart fire, clean and hot kept
* small wings of angelic proof grow quietly from each simple choice
Pisces imagines:
* smoke and fog rising off quiet lakes at sunrise, the feeling of something nameless hovering nearby
* the rise of insects, loons, and the wind that interrupts a thought, interrupts conversation, to quietly remind
* the white noise of a thousand lights in the sky, we’re still in the womb, still in the womb
* the suffering of each small thing, imprisonment and liberation turning around and around like halls of mirrors
When you put them together…sometimes we mistakenly say “real versus imaginative.” But here’s how these two signs might combine if we recognize the already imaginative nature of everything:
* carefully woven thoughts disappearing gracefully into the early morning wind and light…prayer…then reappearing and reorganized by an invisible presence
* careful choices informed by the sounds that interrupt our thoughts
* carefully woven strong rugs, made for simple celestial homes..the design of heavenly archetypes
* a well kept fire and clean home, even though it’s messy…the simple acceptance of dirt and death beyond our control…liberated from an idea of organization into the organization of natural chaos
* the controlled chaos of the artists studio…like a water color image bleeding out into everything
With all heavenly archetypes, Virgo helps us to keep each thing in its rightful place. But if we forget that earth itself is an elemental, and hence imaginal, sphere, then we will tend to dichotomize body and spirit…as though one is more fundamental than the other, when in fact both are imaginal from the get go.
Prayer: and by imaginal we mean realer than real
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