I am now looking to introduce my Enchantments of Life map to fellow professional astrologers. About 8 years ago, I cut off from the astrological community, stopped reading astrology books, took on board the criticisms of the ancient art of astrology and got rather cynical about the clichés. This coincided with a pretty much full-time exploration of psychology and Integral Theory. I read all of Ken Wilber and everything I could find by Dr Clare Graves, as well as about Spiral Dynamics, and looked at Jean Gebser and many others. What did I find?
Astrology all over again, on another turn of the spiral.
My astrological research continued throughout this time, as did my consultancy work. My research went ‘out of town’ into the Trans-Neptunians, Centaurs and other minor bodies. From 1994, I was heavily into Chiron and then by 1997, Pholus and Chariklo. I was experiencing the holographic nature of the energy field in my daily practice, a visceral and literal connection to the old adage, ‘as above so below’. I knew that the explosion of planetary discovery meant that, like the astronomical view of our Solar System, astrology had access to not just a lot more information, but a whole new order of understanding that information.
Tuning into Chariklo opened the door for me to the holographic nature of the plasma field or the plasmic ocean we call space. My Enchantments of Life model emerged from my experiential awareness of the fractal relationship of my Aura, the Planetary Aura and the Solar System (the Sun’s Aura).
The Enchantments of Life adds a whole new contextual understanding to astrology, without negating the traditional art or the modern neo-Jungian perspective.
Having spent a few weeks immersed in a state more akin to ordinary reality, hanging out with people living within the normal world, I am reminded of the essential goodness of human beings, regardless of their value system.
Many people working deep within the corporate structure are aware of the discordance that is arising within the world — their world. The environmental issue is one obvious disturbance within consensual reality. Further to this, conversations I have had reveal that many bankers and lawyers are aware the business practices of the monoliths they work for are despicable.
The sobering truth is that once you have a family and a general dependency upon a certain income and live within a social group, it is unthinkable to leave it. Where can you go? How can you earn any sort of living that can support your life and those you love? How can you retain your friends and social reality?
Likewise, once a person has become part of the alternative humanitarian-based movement, you have joined a mindset that has its own certainties and laws of membership. Healers have to remain bright and light, yogis have to radiate purity, meditators have to remain transcendental and conspiracy researchers have to remain dark and cynical.
To talk about the complexity of our species' dynamics is neither welcome nor appropriate, for the subject brings truth that people do not yet need, nor that is yet visible. The complex truth plants the seed for the death of one's identity and undermines the survival mechanism and coping system in place that maintain daily living.
We all need to survive and maintain an underlying story that supports the life we are living. Each story has its own consistency within its contextual boundaries. The consensual materialistic world is intellectually self-consistent; the alternative world is emotionally self-consistent. If someone is to take on a more sophisticated perception, based on the multilevelled nature of human beings, they are effectively casting themselves into a virtual desert. To speak of the paradoxical dynamics of individuals and societies, nations and mindsets is to appear confused to those who need their certainties. Yet I also must find more alliances if I am to survive and fulfil my role.
I am not here to enforce change upon those who are not already changing. I am one of those people looking to facilitate understanding and clarity for those whose identities are either moving towards post-corporate, post-new age and post hard-line conspiracy, or are already there, adapting to that which is given, whilst creating that which can be created.
The work of the Enchantments is closest to education; therefore, like all education, it is not commercially viable but does need subsidizing. The workshops I have done up to now have been 101 affairs, necessarily watered down due to constraints of time, and at the same time nonprofitable, even subsidized by other monies.
I walk forward with a spirit of adventure and plenty of uncertainty, but with an underlying sense of faith.
My wife and I are just back from a lovely six-day holiday in Penang. Penang is a multicultural island off the northwest coast of Malaysia, a popular holiday destination for travellers from all over Asia, including those from the rest of Malaysia, as well as those of us from Hong Kong. It is a perfect place for an eating holiday and, although urbanized in many areas, it has beautiful unspoiled tropical rain forests and some lovely beaches. Malaysia is a Muslim country, but in Penang we see Muslim mosques, Chinese ancestral temples and old clan houses, Hindu shrines and Buddhist temples, all happily co-existing.
The people are very friendly and helpful. The atmosphere is a little bit 1970s-ish and reminds me of the comfort of an innocence no longer found in the West. In fact, much of Asia is like that. The Saturn and early Uranus Enchantments in a lot of Asia are fairly benevolent and, as long as you play by the rules, life is good.
While Penang is very easy—and cheap—to get around by bus, we decided to treat ourselves, as we did last year, to one day with a tour guide and driver (the ever friendly and helpful Simon Sin, http://sspenangtours.webs.com) so that we could see as much as possible in complete comfort and ease, leaving other days of our short break for lolling around the hotel beach, with its resident wild iguana, as well as shorter, more gentle outings by bus into enticing George Town by day and a few evening trips to Batu Ferringhi for sunset beach strolls, night market shopping and mouth-watering food at its many restaurants and the hawker stalls. (Iguana at 100 metres below...)
Among the varied attractions we took in during our day tour, we visited one of only two remaining handmade batik craft factories; the inland town of Balik Pulau where we ate delicious Penang Assam Laksa, Siam Laksa and the best Char Koay Teow that the island has to offer; and a garishly beautiful and intricate temple and clan house in George Town, the Khoo Kongsi. We also visited the ButterflyGarden, which I love. There is something special about being surrounded by a cloud of butterflies, as I first discovered a couple of years ago in a butterfly sanctuary on an island on the Amazon.
One of our favourite places in Penang is the TropicalSpiceGarden (www.tropicalspicegarden.com), well worth a few hours just wandering around absorbing the incredible beauty of the gardens. This year we were blessed to be followed around by a troop of Dusky Leaf Monkeys, who have moved into this eco space of their own accord—they were as interested in us as we were in them, led by one intrepid youngster who took a shine to my wife.
As it is rare for me to ‘go on holiday’, I left my laptop behind and indulged myself at the airport before heading out with some magazines—Vanity Fair, Esquire and Rolling Stone. Vanity Fair is an intelligent read, emotionally anchored in an America long gone. Like a good soap opera, it evokes the life of the affluent, shielded from the awareness of the shadow of capitalism. I find it a good escapist experience as I enter the reality tunnel of Vanity Fair with its sense of glamour-drama. In the September issue, as well as a candid interview with Lady Gaga, there are stories of the old billionaires and their personal lives going back to the Kennedy era.
In summary, all this has reminded me of the goodness, the fun and the safety of the old realities that still coexist within the cacophony of the human global society.
The world is changing on multiple levels, but it is comforting to be able to visit the realms of normality, to take a holiday from focusing on the challenges and complexities of the global changes we are in the midst of. I am reminded of how the world offers us so much on so many levels.
The world will continue to retain all the old theatres, methinks. And best of all, the treasures of nature and contact with animals—and that is wonderful.
What a lovely holiday. We could now really do with another couple of weeks away, perhaps in Thailand, ah, sigh…
I will start promoting the April 2011 Ecuador trip within the next two weeks.
