Holistic Astrology

Last week, on the Summer Solstice, I had a Vedic 'Yagya'. This is the performance of a religious duty involving Agni, the sacrificial fire, with the chanting of the mantras. The word itself is derived from the root "yaj" meaning "to worship", to evince devotion, and is a fundamental part of Vedic astrology. The performance of a yajna is meant to please the Paramatman (Higher Self or Supersoul) and the various deities.

In modern terms, we can think of yagya as sound therapy. The vibration of the mantras have a specific healing effect, which is beautiful and uplifting. You feel inwardly peaceful and centred, with any rough inner energies and disharmony smoothed out. Rather like after a sauna and massage, you feel super-clean and shiny.

Mahalaksmi Yagya

Planetary Yagyas are based on a reading of your personal horoscope. Unlike in the West, where we might say 'You are having a Saturn-Pluto transit... good luck', the Jyotishi will give you something to remove the obstacle and make you feel better. A Vedic reading is simply a diagnostic to determine what sort of yagya performance you will need. This is proper practical use of astrology, in the context of a fully integrated holistic system of health.

Patanjali in The Yoga Sutras, states: Heyam duhkham anagatam, 'The danger that has not yet come can be averted' (II.16). Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, when asked about fate versus freewill, said: "We have 100% fate and 100% free will." That is, we are absolutely fated by our previous actions, but have total freedom to undo the effects of those actions today.

The pandits (Sanskrit experts) you see in the clip are based in Noida, India. The wonders of modern technology allow you to watch your yagya performance via Skype. You can even participate, by stating your name at the opening Sankalpa (intention behind the ritual) over the microphone. At a certain point in the yagya, you are invited to chant a simple mantra relating to the planetary energy being propitiated. Mine was a  Rahu yagya, since I am in a difficult subperiod ruled by the North Node.

I wish I had taken this step about a year ago. A week after the yagya, its calming effect is palpable and I am more able to focus on my life and work. With the upsurge of interest in Yoga, it is this kind of spiritual technology that is long overdue a renaissance.

Get Off the Yoga Mat and On the Meditation Cushion


My friends are often perplexed when I say that I do yoga. "Yeah, done it for years, swear by it." The statement conjures up images of lycra-clad contortions at the local gym, and is ferociously at odds with my laid-back, if not horizontal, lifestyle. Despite this, I find 'yoga' a better description of my practice than the equally easily misunderstood catch-all term 'meditation'.


From its present popularity, one might assume that ancient sage Patanjali has a lot to say about Hatha Yoga. The author of the Yoga Sutras defines yoga as 'ceasing the fluctuations of the mind' (I:2). In fact, only one aphorism out of one-hundred and ninety six in the 'Bible of Yoga' refers to posture. It says simply: 'The seat should be firm and strong' (II:29). That's it.

'Hatha yoga is useful and produces spectacular physical results, but this branch of yoga is little used by yogis bent on spiritual liberation' - Paramahansa Yogananda

Yoga is mind-body union and beginners are often surprised at what a physical experience deep meditation is. 'Every state in the mind has a corresponding state in the body', according to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. So there is nothing whatever wrong with asanas; they play a very useful part in daily practice, even if only a few creaky Sun-Salutes. If we think of yoga as removing an obstacle, then performing asanas is the heavy preparatory work, similar to breaking concrete with a sledgehammer. Meditation afterwards then hoovers up the debris. A combination of asanas and pranayama is the perfect way to ease yourself into the yogic trance.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, 2007

It seems presumptuous to offer timeless spiritual advice my personal seal of approval, but I'm talking from an everyday, worldly point of view. How it works for me. I have practised yoga meditation daily for a couple of decades plus now, without ever becoming super-knowledgeable about Ayurveda. All the business of asanas, massage, panchakarma, body type, balancing the doshas, seemed to me quite peripheral, and all the supplements and treatments an expensive luxury indeed. 


I reasoned that everything comes from the meditation first. Get that right and everything follows. Tapping into higher consciousness leads spontaneously to a more balanced lifestyle and one naturally falls into a healthy routine. It is remarkable, actually: with powerful meditation you just start doing the right thing, and can read about it in the literature afterwards.

Still, an epiphany a couple of years ago gave me an insight into the importance of the physical side. Yoga is mind-body union; building a platform strong enough to support a higher level of consciousness, which by definition, means a sound, healthy body. We all have flashes of insight and moments of bliss in meditation, but the idea is to make it permanent. 'The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak': Enlightenment is our natural state, but we can only live it once our body is ready.

Proper food, therefore, is crucial. Organics not only have more nutrients, but are spiritually healthier - processed food makes you dull, lazy and unwell: just watch the debilitating effect a cheap takeaway meal has on your mood. 

Abyanga body massage with sesame oil massage is another Ayurvedic staple. It tends to make me drowsy first thing in the morning, but with enough sleep, it gives you a golden insulated feeling that promotes inner ecstasy. Rest itself is vital too. Sleep pulls the arrow of our energy back and brings a good supply of breath. Long meditations are like deep-sea diving: you need a good lungful of air to stay down for any length of time.

So: it is possible to raise your consciousness simply by eating well and taking care of yourself.

What's Love Got To Do With It? Neptune in Pisces/ Venus transit. 


I realise I've been harping on the Disestablishment of the Church string for some time. Hands up: I first predicted it in 2003 when Uranus went into Pisces (no show). Transits of Venus work in mysterious ways, however, and between this and the history of Neptune in Pisces in relation to the Church of England, the omens are stacking up. 


Front-page news in the UK today is the Coalition Government's new proposals on same-sex marriage. This will exempt the C of E from marrying gay couples 'in religious buildings'. At present anyone in the UK can be married in their own parish church, regardless of their religious beliefs. If the Church refuses to extend this right to same-sex couples, the UK will effectively have two forms of marriage; civil partnership in a registry office and a religious marriage in church. The Church fears that in this event, it will face a legal challenge from the European Court of Human Rights, and be stripped of its power to act as an 'agent of the state'. This schism, some say, would lead ultimately to disestablishment.  


The initial Civil Partnership Act was passed in 2004 - the year of the first of our present pair of Venus transits. The C of E originally backed this compromise, but says that this new extension of legal rights leads to an effective redefinition of marriage as a union between man and woman. This, and the still-divisive issue of women bishops, may represent a Venus transit too far (even though the new legislation will not come into effect until at least 2015). Many people have pointed out the irony of a Church founded on a royal divorce objecting to a form of marriage. 


In fact, some Church figures see this development as their biggest threat since the Protestant Reformation of the 1530s. Dramatic? Not so much. Neptune was in Pisces from March 1520 until December 1534. This encompassed the period of the English Reformation, culminating in the Act of Supremacy in 1534, which proclaimed Henry VIII Head of the Church of England. There was also a pair of Venus transits in 1518 and 1526, in the aftermath of Martin Luther's original Ninety-Five Theses in 1517, which sparked the Reformation in Europe (the Dissolution of the Monastries didn't get underway until 1536, under the Neptune-Jupiter conjunction in Aries... go figure).


Neptune was also in Pisces during the Glorious Revolution of 1688, where Catholic sympathizer James II was deposed to ensure the Protestant succession. The Church of England became the established religion, and to be a practicing Roman Catholic was effectively illegal until the emergence of the Anglo-Catholic Movement of the 1840s. You guessed it, Neptune was in Pisces at this time too.

It is hard to pin down exactly what Venus transits mean, but love must have something to do with it. Throughout my lifetime, the Church has only ever been in the headlines on debates over sex, gender, politics, or funding. To quote Arthur Miller, they don't talk about God any more. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams is opposed to solemnising gay marriage and has stated that there are advantages to disestablishment. Still, Williams himself will resign at the end of 2012. If he is replaced by a more liberal Archbishop, the present Church structure may survive and the disestablishment issue prove no more than scaremongering. 


However, with Pluto in Capricorn - square Uranus - currently drilling into England's Sun (1066 and 1801 charts) and breaking up institutions of state, this could be the time. In an age where many people are looking to alternative forms of spirituality, a division between Church and state may be an attractive and progressive move. But I wonder how much the issue matters and how many people actually care about ecclesiastical politics. This apathy, rather than esoteric doctrinal differences, may be the deciding factor.

Pluto 9-10 degrees Capricorn. 



The current Pluto-Uranus square, with us until Spring 2015, is a big-deal generational aspect between two pushy planets. So many Capricorn institutions: bankers, politicians, the Church, the Press, are having Pluto's spotlight beamed on them, with the unruly Uranus in Aries mob demanding instant action, 'me, me, me'. Politics, power and business as usual is now being seriously questioned, particularly with the square hovering at 9-10 degrees of the cardinal signs. This covers the area of the zodiac 1st January, where lots of countries and institutions' Suns naturally fall. The clash between old and new is given extra potency: the lights go on and we see what the cockroaches were up to scuttling about in the dark.

Both the main UK charts, for 1066 and 1801, have the Sun at 9-10 Cap. In the aftermath of Queen's Diamond Jubilee, a good-natured national bash many pro and anti-monarchist alike thought they'd never see, the UK still faces potential ruptures of Scottish independence and the disestablishment of the Church. This latter is a recurrent theme for this astrologer (more of a Neptune in Pisces's issue, more elsewhere), but Pluto kills things and brings them back to life in a different form. The Jubilee brought inevitable talk of 'bread and circuses', but unless people get more bread, the revolution will rumble on. 


The circus comes with The Olympics, in anticipation of which, some east London residences have had missile launchers installed on their roofs, yes, really. Welcome to the bunker. This, along with a particularly  s l o w  Mercury retro (July 15th- August 8th), will make getting around London over the Summer an athletic feat in itself. We remember the atmosphere of the 7/7 terror attacks, only a couple of days after London was awarded the Games in 2005.

Click on image to see high-res.



Still, the square to Uranus? Vested interests are holding on to their power and, as in Syria, we are seeing a life-and-death struggle after the initial ease of 2011's Arab Spring. Uranus in Aries is capitalism in a nutshell and shows the entrepreneurial revolution in essence. Lots of people, products of the Thatcher-Reagan years, will throw their hands up in horror, but this is a new kind of pioneering spirit. Not working for The Man, but people doing their own independent thing in arts, crafts and self-development. Its official: everyone is a yoga teacher now (except for the life coaches).


Throughout my lifetime (since the 1960s), Pluto has always threatened to destroy the world, and that's how it's always been. Pluto in Virgo saw the influence of mind-altering drugs and spawned Generation X's slacker attitude to 9-5 work; Pluto in Libra in the 1970s and early 80s revolutionized relationships ("marriage, what's the point?"); Pluto in Scorpio brought us the scary sex backlash and the AIDS apocalypse; Pluto in Sagittarius saw the dark underbelly of religion: radical Islam, suicide terrorists and the New Crusades. Now we have Pluto in Capricorn and the world is about to end through the demise of capitalism and the great instruments of state. 


As much as Saturn-Uranus-Neptune in Capricorn did for the monolith of Soviet Communism, Capitalism was seen as the natural alternative. Now under Pluto in Capricorn, our excesses are being examined. The West's economic revolution, I believe, is as a result of its complacency, and economic and military exploitation of developing countries over the last many years. That Greece, the cradle of democracy, should be struggling so badly may be symbolic that this system of government itself isn't invulnerable. Pluto square Uranus rages on for the next three years, but the 2012 portion will be emotional.

MIRROR, MIRROR... REFLECTIONS ON VENUS

As a kid in school, my imagination was sparked by reading of Captain James Cook's voyage to Tahiti in 1769. Cook's mission was to observe the Transit of Venus for the Royal Society, furthering scientific and navigational knowledge, before going in search of the legendary Southern Continent.

On 5th - 6th June 2012, we will again be able to see Venus as a small black dot against the  backdrop of the Sun*. This transit or obscuration occurs in pairs eight years apart, separated by 121.5 years and 105.5 years. The 2012 Transit is the second of our current pair - the first occurring in 2004 - and the next transit of Venus will not be until 2117.

Such rare and spectacular events suggest great astrological significance, though equally they are hard to put into context. There are correspondences looking back through history, whether or not we can credit Venus transits for these in isolation:

• 1518/26 First circumnavigation of the globe, Christian Reformation, Cortez conquering the Aztecs, Conquistadors bringing back Xocolatl - chocolate - to Europe.
• 1631/39. Rise of rationalism/ scepticism, Galileo, Descartes, First regular mail service in Europe. 
• 1761/69. International co-operation on observation of Transit, 'discovery' of Australia,  birth of American revolution.
• 1874/82. Height of Victorian era, founding of World Postal Union, laying of transatlantic telegraph, invention of the telephone.
  
  

Venus transits occur only in the signs of Gemini and Sagittarius, while Venus is retrograde, and common themes revolve around breakthroughs in thought and exploration. We are probably too close to have any historical perspective, sandwiched between our two present Venus transits, but the world financial meltdown, the digital age and the rise of social networking will probably be the standout features of our time, in retrospect.

Print is disappearing and in the UK particularly, the Geminian nature of this occultation is reflected in the national debate over press ethics. A succession of politicians and journalists have been paraded in front of the Leveson Inquiry, with some prominent media figures facing jail time, who only recently had an almost untouchable aura. 


Venus is the only major planet to be named for a female deity. She spins in a different direction to all the other planets, symbolically representing our need to adapt to others in relationship. Venus's day is also longer than her year (ie, it takes longer for her to revolve once on her axis than to orbit the Sun). We have all heard of Lazy Librans, while Taurus teaches us to savour our earthy pleasures slowly. The mythic Venus-Aphrodite was famously beautiful and jealous, and the planet's glyph has been called the 'hand-mirror of the Goddess'. 

In terms of specific Venusian qualities, we are clearly having a realignment of material values, or as somebody put it, a world financial colonic irrigation (Old Mother Earth could do with a face-lift too). The West has higher standards of living than ever, except with greater divisions of wealth, with nobody ultimately being much happier. We are a global community of smiley-happy, linked-in friends now, and what better time to inaugurate a more peaceful Venusian world. It is easy to get carried away with starry-eyed visions at such times, but esoterically, we might see Venus coming in front of the Sun as a vital infusion of feminine energy into a masculine Solar-dominated world. The return of the Goddess, and a universal shift from the Mars Chakra to the Venus Centre in the Heart. 


It is also not too much of a leap to see symbolic meaning in a transit in 2012, of all years. The ancient Maya had a particular reverence for Venus, which they identified with their god Quetzacoatl, the so-called Plumed Serpent. They had a sophisticated knowledge of Venus's orbit and synodic cycle, her disappearance into the underworld at her inferior and superior Solar conjunctions, and then her rebirth as the Morning and the Evening Star. They treated Morning Star Venus with special fear and awe, as a time for war. The extent to which the Aztecs saw Hernan Cortez as the personification of Quetzacoatl is disputed, but some accounts claim that the 1518 Transit of Venus lay at the heart of Montezuma's fatalistic attitude to the Conquistadors.


Venus's synodic cycle with the Earth is a something of a chestnut for Western astrologers, with its precise five-pointed star, or five petaled rose, describing an idealized planetary mandala. Would that all planets' cycles described so graphically their inherent astrological nature (which at some level, admittedly, they must do). Venus corresponds so elegantly to the Earth's orbit, and their mutual dance of five conjunctions, or 'kisses', over an eight-year period has a strangely seductive quality for anyone studying the subject. I have read accounts of astro-dramas, where the symbolic 5:8 cycles have been choreographed and re-enacted among participants, to great effect. However you decide to tap into it, it is a particularly lovely, harmonious energy to work with. 


                                  

                                         'There's a little black spot on the sun today...'

* Sky-watchers in the UK will only get an hour of the Venus Transit at sunrise on 6th June, and only then with a clear sky and unobstructed horizon. Take care, and of course never look at the sun directly.

2012 and all that.

One of the funniest features of the 2012 Prophecies has been watching astrologers tie themselves in knots trying to explain the Mayan calendar.  My own experience has been that it is a very strange and complex system for outsiders, but even a cursory study shows how sophisticated knowledge the Maya had. Not that we should be surprised at this. Their value of a 260 day Tzolkin has a clear parallel in the Morning and Evening Star arcs of Venus's 584 day cycle - a planet that they identified with the god Quetzacoatl, the so-called Plumed Serpent. The Maya's value for the length of the 365 day solar year corresponds to our own to within a second and a half, and whether or not we are heading off a cliff on 21st December (we're not), the Long Count concept should be respected.


What gets me is how astrologers and New Agers in general make the leap from this albeit impressive system to grand Utopian theories of a global consciousness shift. One model doesn't seem to entail the other. I want somebody to tell me what the end of the Long Count actually means, and, like the Hindu concept of Yugas, what will be the hallmarks of the next 5200 years, if any.