Metal Goat

Today is a Metal Goat day. Influential characters born in a Metal Goat year:

Marcel Proust, writer of heavy tomes.

Charles Dickens, another writer of thick books.

Cult leader Jim Jones 

Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev

The Soviet Union also dissolved in a Metal Goat year (1991)

Fire Tiger

Today is Fire Tiger day. Lots of strong characters born in Fire Tiger years:

Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro

Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat Sen

French composer Erik Satie




American poet Allen Ginsberg





American musicians Miles Davis & John Coltrane 

 
& Lady Gaga

French postmodern theorist Michel Foucault

Wood Ox

Today is a Wood Ox day. Solid characters born in Wood Ox years:

Composer Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)

Composer Georg Friedrich Handel (1685-1759)

Civil rights leader Malcolm X (1925-1965)

British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (1925-)

Wood Rat

Today is a Wood Rat day. These people were born in Wood Rat years (lots of writers):

 William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

James Baldwin (1924-1987)

George Sand (1804-1876)

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)

Yukio Mishima (1925-1970)

Jimmy Carter, George HW Bush and Scarlett Johansson were also born in Wood Rat years.

Water Pig

Today is a day of the Water Pig. These people were born in a Water Pig year:

American photographer Diane Arbus (1923-1971)

English composer John Dowland (1563-1626)

American essayist / philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

Water Goat

(Young Kafka with a sheep and in his 20s)

Today is a Water Goat day. Franz Kafka, born in the year of the Water Goat (1883), was one of the most influential writers of the 20th Century. His work is often read as a cypher for the neuroses of the modern age ("Kafkaesque"). Kafka was known to his friends as a gentle and caring person, but had a tortured inner life that he expressed through his writing. Many of his stories have a suffocating atmosphere, and involve protagonists who hopelessly try to negotiate everyone's needs.

Water goats are probably the most likely to be sacrificed, or sacrifice themselves for the greater good. Many of Kafka's stories end with the image of a sacrifice: In "The Judgement", a father orders his son to drown himself and the son complies, declaring his undying love for his parents. In "The Metamorphosis" Gregor Samsa, who has turned into a giant cockroach, dies so that his family could go on with their lives. In "The Trial," Josef K. is ritually slaughtered by agents of an obscure Law, perhaps taking the guilt of an entire society on himself.

As a German Jew in the waning days of the Austro-Hungarian empire, before and after the First World War, Kafka was aware of his precarious place in society. His letters reveal an overwhelming sense of obligation to family and partners. He lived with his parents until the very last year of his life, working in a workers' accident insurance company and writing during the night. He constantly suffered from real and imagined illnesses, sought out spa treatments and "natural" cures, and was obsessed with cleanliness. Despite his low opinion of himself, Kafka is not only known for his writing but also for introducing reforms to  workers' injury compensation policies that have remained to this day. 

Another way of thinking about the 5 elements...

Wood is the child, still unformed, doesn't know anything but just enjoying everything and taking it all in.

Fire is the rambunctious teenager, still doesn't know anything but thinks it knows. "Don't tell me what to do, because I know what I want!" "And what is that?" "I don't know! Stop bothering me!"

Earth is coming into adulthood, getting married and buying a house, etc. Doing practical things.

Metal is the midlife crisis. "What is the meaning of all this?" Selling the house and moving into an apartment, searching for what's important, getting rid of inessentials.

Water is old age, or realizing it doesn't matter anyway. Someone who has been stoic their whole life may become sentimental in old age. A second innocence that develops when it seems you've lost all trace of innocence. Old people are especially fond of grandkids... and so it goes back to Wood.

The Wood Rat is the baby rat, the Fire Rat is the teenage rat... etc.

Astrological history of Communism :-)

(See the resemblance?) 

Today is an Earth Tiger day and it occurs to me that Marx (born 1818) and Stalin (born 1878) were both Earth Tigers. Karl Marx organized the vague socialist-Utopian dreams of the 18th and 19th centuries into a coherent ideology and philosophy of history (all human history as the struggle for dominance between haves and have-nots), and established a practical plan for action -- though Communism is often referred to as "Utopian", Marx only used the word pejoratively. 

Communism reached its peak of international influence under Stalin. Stalin transformed Lenin / Trotsky's vision of the Soviet Union as a staging ground for a second, worldwide revolution, into the idea of "Socialism in one State" -- which meant, in practice, a new Russian Empire. Earth Tigers are territorial cats, and the style of leadership is like a warlord / hegemon -- consolidating and expanding territory. Though Georgian by birth, Stalin was more Russian nationalist than Lenin, and known for his imposition of the Russian language and culture on ethnic minorities. Though they can be brutal, Earth Tigers are effective rulers in certain ways, and some Russians even today are nostalgic for Stalin's times. 

                     

Complex and A-causal

I wanted to share a link to a lecture given by an astrologer from the Persian/Western tradition that actually makes the case that astrology is neither a science nor a religious/spiritual tradition. Her ideas are the closest I have seen anyone in the astrology world get to a definition that is near to the ideas Ming presents. It is very refreshing and I hope you enjoy it.

Chaotic Astrology - Bernadette Brady

The 'Uncertain' Quality within the 5

In contemplating the totality of experience, I realize that there is always some aspect that is unknown, or unclear. No matter how much focus, or strength, or effort, there will always be something beyond my senses, beyond my grasping. I seek to 'know' the nature of my experience and soon realize that some aspect of nature alludes me. Or even when I find some amount of confidence in my understanding, I find myself, once again befuddled, confused, and/or uncertain.

And so I got to wondering, which of the 5 phases contains this aspect?

Is it Water? The ever-resolving aspect that pulls or pushes us towards vast emptiness?

Water is seemingly the most suitable to the idea of uncertainty - the winds of dissolution, concluding, death, and completion. Ultimately, what do we have when we have achieved our aim? We reach out for completion and completion arrives, leaving us to enjoy the communion of uniting with our goal/desire; the communion of death.

'Uncertain' is that which cannot be relied upon, not definite, not known... what can be more uncertain the resolution of all that we know? What can be more uncertain than a shifting 'truth', a shifting 'world'?

Water shifts and slips downward only to find itself ejected into space or falling down to Earth. Certainty is equally subtle in its movements and changes. Uncertainty is most certainly an aspect most clearly represented by Water.

But surely it reflects itself into all the other phases as well? What about the uncertain movements of Wood? Fire? Earth? Metal? Are they all expressing 'Water-like' qualities?

In terms of 4 Pillars, What about this uncertain quality do the Water stems lend to character?

Meeting at the Well

Lunar Mansion - 22 - 'the Well'

"The well is a rallying point for society (clans) and symbolic of a consensus morality."

On this day, we have formed a place to share in our engagement with Chinese pattern studies - astrology/feng-shui. We meet at the well of knowledge and share in the living dialogue that flows between us.

May we draw from the well with openness, appreciation, and diligence.

Welcome!

Please feel free to use this space to ask questions and share your thoughts and musings on the material presented in class. You can post links, pictures, music, videos... whatever is relevant to the discussion.