Thursday, July 26, 2018

Paean to the Dark or Contemplative Hermetic Epoch

Yes, life goes on! This is a basic premise of astrology as well as of psychology and metaphysics (that is, the spiritual metaphysics which had its strongest original manifestation through Christian Science). 

Yet life is varied in its manifestation. Whether you believe it or not, I believe that the most definite twofold discrimination of Time is that between the Dark and the Bright Hermetic Epochs. I might call them the Contemplative and the Active Hermetic Epochs. That might give a clearer demarcation of their meaning.  (Why would the motions of the planet Mercury as observed from the Earth demarcate these very important Epochs? Nobody knows! Why should anybody know? Who knows why your body needs Vitamin C or Vitamin D? Just observe, just link, and as E. M. Forster famously said, "Only connect . . .".)

We are in the Contemplative one now, and further, as I write, the moon has been void-of-course all day (in Capricorn). This makes for a giddy time-period.

Not everything went wrong. However, my computer either crashed or froze at least three or four times today, much more than usual. I sat here drumming my fingers on the table and then remembering that while waiting for it to fire up I might better repeat a mantram, which I then did. You can just say something which comes to mind, if it's positive, like "All is Love," or "Peace, Harmony, Truth," or whatever helps you. 

There was the music. It was good. I have been led to my old playlists on Spotify, not the new ones, which fits with the RE nature of the Mercury REtrograde period we are now in. (It is always the center of a Dark or Contemplative Hermetic Epoch.) I felt deeply that REviewing, or rather RElistening to old music was much more real to me than listening to some of the latest stuff I had on another playlist. Songs from even the '20s and '30s seemed just fine to me, not anachronistic. 

Last night I watched about four episodes of the second season of Thirteen Reasons Why, the Netflix series which had, or has, young people going. That is very surprising to myself, because a few weeks ago I watched one episode and said, "No more of this! They are driving this concept into the ground, like scratching off an old scab to make it bleed again." However, last night, when Mercury was at its slowest and turning retrograde, I was fascinated by the series and watched it episode after episode addictively. This series is, that is, both series, the original and the sequel, almost a paradigm of the DHE or of Mercury Retrograde. A dead girl is the focus of everything that happens! She is not there and yet her memory, and the memories of all the high school kids who knew her, are what drive them and the series. We might say that it is a perfect paradigm of what goes on in any Dark or Slow or Backward or Contemplative Hermetic Epoch.

So I was hooked by it last night and am not sorry. I have to admit that the writers and directors of this series (as well as of course the actors) are magicians. They caught me in their net. But it seems, despite the ugliness sometimes of the subject matter, to be a beneficent one. These young people are young in the good sense--open to experience, honest, sincere, even innocent in a way, even when they do cruel things. 

Then yesterday a young person told me of his problems with some complicated negotiations regarding a loss, and I prayed for him, and then today he seems better and said he is trying to kick a habit which is hard to kick. I applaud him. One can do something like that---REclaim one's habits, REverse a dark spell, REinvigorate oneself toward living a better life--during a DHE. We must remember that. (Of course, it is also possible to REvert into vice rather than REcover. It's just that more people seem to be doing both of those things at these times, times of transition and of "taking oneself in hand" as best one can--or failing dramatically to do so.) (One can also make REverse errors. I just wrote "do to so" and had to fix it.)

There was the picnic. For those in my apartment building today. I went down, made a harmless remark to the building manager, and he was offended. I also was offended because from my viewpoint I had said nothing wrong. So I said "I'm not coming to the picnic" and went back upstairs. Then he phoned me and was conciliatory. So I went down. Meanwhile I had texted another resident that I was not going, then had to text back and say that Yes I am going. Mercury REtrograde makes for these reversals in plans. And, just at this exact second, a whole pile of astrology charts just slipped off the table where I am doing this writing. It will take a few minutes to straighten them out. 

Then there was Harry's Bar. I went there after the picnic. It is often like a setting for a Fellini movie. So it was tonight during the void-of-course moon and the DHE. You can expect parties or fun-times to be unusual, out-of-sight, at those times. I didn't mind because I was expecting it. I didn't care about the silly movie being shown, but the music channel was not bad, and I did some serious reading while sipping my drink. I noted that people were oddly moving in all directions, that there was more coming and going than usual, that in a sense nobody seemed to know what was happening, yet since it was a bar and after work, people enjoyed that feeling of irresponsibility or "Who cares?" It was exhilarating. That is one good thing which can happen during a void-of-course period or a Dark or Contemplative Hermetic Epoch.

I wrote this also during the v-of-c and of course the DHE (July 7 through September 1, with the center being the Mercury Retrograde period from July 26 through August 18). I hope it contains clues.

H H H  /  C P 

No comments:

Post a Comment