Ralph Lemon’s “How Can You Stay in the House All Day

And Not Go Anywhere?”

The cage of our postmodern existence; photograph of Walter Carter by Ralph Lemon, "How Can You Stay in the House All Day and Not Go Anywhere?"

Imagine this:

A stark, empty stage.

A woman wailing in the wings.

For about 10 minutes.

That seemed like an hour.

A public catharsis for the loss of a specific woman.

And the loss of the feminine in every woman under thousands of years of patriarchy.

When Janet Stapleton told me the title of a unique cross disciplinary experience premiering in NYC at Brooklyn Academy of Music, I had to laugh. Perfect!   If this doesn’t get me out of the house, nothing will!

Ralph Lemon had been absent from New York stage for six years.

What is so remarkable about his comeback is that his public act of private grieving has provided a universal narrative for a new paradigm ascending.   The most memorable component of this four part (monologue, film, live dance and “Meditation”) multi-media interactive experience, described above, had no movement at all.

Yet, it precipitates an entirely new movement in art.

What was so magical for me personally will resonate with my readers.  Lemon, in relating his surrender of postmodernism language to the death of his beloved girlfriend, showed segments from a film they watched together in the final stages of her illness.  It was Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1972 Solaris, which I hadn’t seen, though I analyzed the 1992 remake a few posts ago on this blog.

Natalya Bondarchuk as Hari and Donatas Banionis as Kris Kelvin in Tarkovsky's "Solaris"

The protagonist of Lemon’s parallel film is Walter Carter, a Mississippi Delta native born at the turn of the century.  This Walter is a stand-in for another Walter: Walter Benjamin (1892-1940), the German intellectual whose “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” anticipated the late stages of postmodernism.   Lemon juxtaposes his two Walters in his opening monologue against the backdrop of Walter’s entrapment.  The protagonist transforms into a hare as representation of the underground journey that he — and the audience — will travel to embrace Lemon’s non-linear narrative — and subsequently make the leap in consciousness out of postmodernism — to something entirely new.

Spaceman fallen to Earth; Walter Carter, photograph by Ralph Lemon

We are provided with a prescient view of Walter in his initial entrapment in a cage (projected in video) to the place of his release into the sacred marriage of heaven and earth, represented by the falling of an identity of this “everyman” as spaceman into the ordered fields of the sharecropper.  He arrives via an intimate real life staging of Tarkovsky’s avant-garde film, his home transformed into space via cellophane covering the bed that he shares with his partner Edna.  Their dance in imitation of the dance in the lovers of the film (above) was proclaimed by the filmmaker/choreographer  as a real experiment in overcoming the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, meaning the artist/scientist holding the camera acknowledged his own role in the unscripted actions of his real life actors dancing in their living room.

This authentic breakthrough revealed in the title — which got me out of the house and to my first performance in over a year — into multiple levels of meaning.  On one level, he admonishes his peers in the avant-garde performance world as to how they can “stay at home” with outworn languages of movement while a new configuration is yearning to be revealed!  The entrapment in the  Solaris space station, mimicks the entrapment of Walter in the cage, yet this multi-media imaging of the embodiment of a new archetype is transformed into a liberating authenticity via the unscripted performance of Walter and Edna in their tacky living room.  Release into the momentary experience of the archetypal is what frees them, and the avant-garde itself,  from being the mere object of an artistic experiment but rather a movement towards real human connection in deep inner and outer space.  In beating the drum for unity of the opposites in this manner:  a universal archetype (personified by the spaceman falling to earth) in such an intimate everyday reality as a sharecropper’s home, and then transmitted to the most avant-garde audiences in New York City!  That very act of transformation reveals the destination of the surrender experienced with the dying lover into the weightless lovers of Solaris, triumphing over the copy to experience what is real and authentic.

Geography of the Two: Okwui Okpokwasili and Ralph Lemon perform in "How Can You Stay In The House All Day And Not Go Anywhere?" at the BAM Harvey Theater on October 12, 2010, part of the Brooklyn Academy of Music Next Wave Festival. The dancers: Djedje Djedje Gervais, Darrell Jones, Ralph Lemon, Gesel Mason, Okwui Okpokwasili, Omagbitse Omagbemi, David Thomson Credit: Stephanie Berger

On another level, the artist is revealing the struggle embedded in the work, which is also the central struggle of Solaris: how to distinguish the real, the authentic, from the copy?  He might as well been asking his protagonist the namesake for the philosopher of the postmodern how to distinguish the Real under the relentless cynicism of the all-knowing postmodern ego?

Geometry of the Three; Members of the Ralph Lemon Dance Company perform "How CAn You Stay In The House All Day And Not Go Anywhere?" at the BAM Harvey Theater on October 12, 2010, part of the Brooklyn Academy of Music Next Wave Festival. The dancers: Djedje Djedje Gervais, Darrell Jones, Ralph Lemon, Gesel Mason, Okwui Okpokwasili, Omagbitse Omagbemi, David Thomson Credit: Stephanie Berger

Originally a choreographer, Lemon attempts to find this Holy Grail in a merging of opposites: abandonment of the highly developed dance body with the public body of his ordinary hero, Walter Carter.  In doing so, he creates a language of freedom of movement that extends The Geography Trilogy theme of his 2005 work to the rectangular space of the stage, even as projected in film.  Within the confinement of a stark, unadorned stage which absorbs his words and images, he creates a geometry of movement through Reichian charged bodies surrendered to the internal movement of the Kundalini, a free form attraction/repulsion through the Eros/Thantos play of opposites in space.  A visual and visceral language of the very meaning embedded in numbers: the solo, the duo, the trilogy (triangle), the quartet (cube) and pentagram (five).  Revealing sexual desire of the pentagram as the fear (projected by Christians as the Devil) of being left out, the fifth ending up alone in the center of a quartet.

Geometry of the Five as a pentagram. Members of the Ralph Lemon Dance Company perform "How Can You Stay In The House All Day And Not Go Anywhere?" at the BAM Harvey Theater on October 12, 2010, part of the Brooklyn Academy of Music Next Wave Festival. The dancers: Djedje Djedje Gervais, Darrell Jones, Ralph Lemon, Gesel Mason, Okwui Okpokwasili, Omagbitse Omagbemi, David Thomson Credit: Stephanie Berger

This stripped down, naked show of emotional vulnerability is not only setting a new standard for the brave in New York performance, it is also huge leap forward for the language of the avant-garde.  The coding that Lemon has formally delivered to the body in movement out of the current struggle of the five, the struggle to contain our very desires, is hurtling towards a geometry of a new archetype: the harmony of the six, the sacred marriage of opposites that we yearn for in romantic love.  It remains, in the final gesture, as a goal rather than a destination.  Fortunately for us, this leaves something for Lemon to explore in the future, just as he has left something for us to explore in ourselves through his final act, “Meditation,” a multimedia installation on the stage of the Kitchen theater,  on the final day of the performance.

Ralph Lemon performs in "How CAn You Stay In The House All Day And Not Go Anywhere?" at the BAM Harvey Theater on October 12, 2010, part of the Brooklyn Academy of Music Next Wave Festival. The dancers: Djedje Djedje Gervais, Darrell Jones, Ralph Lemon, Gesel Mason, Okwui Okpokwasili, Omagbitse Omagbemi, David Thomson Photo Credit: Stephanie Berger

ADI DA SAMRAJ’S “ORPHEUS AND LINEAD”

(r)evolutionary!

The divine feminine born out of the sacred marriage and therefore indifferent to the male gaze!!! "The Spiritual Descent of The Bicycle Becomes The Second-Birth of Flight: Part Eleven – IX" Orpheus One 2007, 2010

My images are created to be means

for any and every perceiving, feeling,

and fully participating viewer

to “Locate” fundamental and Really Perfect Light–

the world as Light,

all relations as Light,

conditions (or naturally perceived) light

As Absolute Light

– Adi Da Samraj

About five years ago, I was leaving a Chelsea galley with my friend Peter Frank, when he said: “You have set a difficult task for yourself.”

“What is that?” I asked.

“To find the spiritual in art,” he replied.

Was he joking?  I never really know with Peter the wit, the punster.

From my 1997 launch as newspaper critic, I managed to interpret from within my own reality structure established through an experiment catalyzed by a Heaven meets Earth  planetary configuration which metaphysicians were interpreting as the gateway to the Age of Aquarius.

But in the time that has passed since I stopped writing regularly for the public about art, the only passage forward was surrender, as there didn’t seem to be any existing track for my journey to uncover the post-patriarchal archetypes.  The New York art world has little concern with spirituality in art.  Surviving, never mind triumphing, in New York City requires a great deal of ego.  For the last two decades, it was the ambition of pushing the slick and salable object into an insatiable market.  Currently, it is illusion of finding the “next great artist” through the competition of a “reality” TV show.

"The Spiritual Descent of The Bicycle Becomes The Second-Birth of Flight: Part Eleven – VIII from Orpheus One" 2007, 2008 – Lacquer on aluminum, 72 x 71 inches / 183 x 180 cm

Fortunately, the New York premiere of Adi Da Samraj at Sundaram Tagore Gallery in Chelsea revealed a new modernism — that ironically for a self-declared avatar– resolved the postmodern obstacle of ego.  Not only because the artist is dead, but because the fallen guru managed an entire trajectory of death and rebirth the last decade without being tempted by the prospect of fame.  The hand that removed itself from the physical manifestation of his vision was also the hand that waved away the viscitudes of fame and fortune, and the audience expectations that come with such an unholy pursuit.

Yet, it turns out that Peter Frank led me onto “Orpheus and Linead,” Adi Da Samraj’s premiere exhibition in Chelsea!  It began with an e-mail “By way of Peter Frank” which contained an invitation to a special preview from  Mei-Ling Israel, author of The World as Light, a fascinating book about the evolution of the avatar’s vision into the material of his art.  The images from the exhibition didn’t initially attract me.  They were so blatantly digital with primary color combinations reminiscent of a child’s plastic game.  The viewing experience was jarring; how could their source be organic?  Yet, I found his videos so compelling that I did some research.  After reading much about the avatar Adi Da Samraj, and nothing about his art, I was prepared to dismiss him as yet another of the stream of fallen gurus that have appeared in my path…

But in an internet search for his astrology chart, I discovered this writing from his appointed astrologer, the Broken Yogi Samyana:

As mentioned in an earlier piece on the astrological view of the universe as an endless series of cycles, I got my start in astrology on something of a lark. As a strong skeptic and disdainer of all things astrological, I felt at a certain point that I should actually look into it and see if there was anything useful or meaningful or even true about it. Rather than simply read the literature, which seemed rather puerile for the most part, I simply used astrological software to plot out star patterns, using a charting method of my own devising, to see if there really were significant correspondences between star patterns and life patterns, studying most directly the life of my Guru at the time, Adi Da. What I found defied rationalistic explanation, and I began to formulate ideas and theories about how these correspondences could be meaningful, and deducing from the patterns what the underlying meanings of various astrological patterns were. In some respects these meanings confirmed traditional astrological literature, but at other times they stood in stark contrast, and implied a different understanding than the literature seemed to hold true.

After a year or so I wrote up a very long paper detailing some of these findings, along with a set of “test predictions” which could be used to verify their value, and sent it to Adi Da. His inner circle were quite excited about it, and told Adi Da what I had done, but he wanted to see nothing of it until time had proven or disproven the predictions I had. After another year or so, so many of the predictions I had made had come to pass that they felt comfortable presenting my work to Adi Da, and he approved of it, asking me to be his personal astrologer. After spending retreat time with him, he modified and expanded the function to simply “studying his pattern”. During this time, he also gave a significant amount of instruction on his view of the universe as an endless series of patterns emerging in consciousness, and a fair amount of that instruction involved astrology and my use of it in relation to him and his inner circle.

Adi Da’s view of the conditional cosmos is, essentially, that of a machine that constantly spits out patterns. In his view, the entire cosmos is a single pattern that is endlessly modified at every level and viewpoint, which, while always appearing differently in every time and place, yet retains the same basic patterning. Therefore it is possible in his view to study any kind of phenomena at the level of pattern, and if one compares it to any other phenomenal pattern, the correspondences will reveal the something about the greater pattern of the universe itself. In his view, astrology is just one particular way of studying a pattern and seeing its correspondences with other patterns. One could do the same thing with tea leaves, or lines on one’s palm, or the birds in one’s backyard. Any patterning correspondence studied with enough attention and depth will reveal the same universal patterning, and yield insight into what is going on everywhere else in the cosmic pattern. This is in fact what Adi Da liked about my approach to astrology. Many people in Adidam speculated that he approved of my approach to astrology because of my devotion to him, as a way of drawing me into relationship to him, etc. Some of that may be true, but primarily it was because my approach to astrology was based on looking for real correspondences rather than just superimposing rote meanings on the star patterns and the patterns of the life of whomever’s astrological pattern I was looking at.

This view of patterning fits my experience.  I have had my astrology chart read many times, my palms read, my numerology and voice analyzed.  My tarot card readings were invaluable aids to my life journey.  In revealing the same pattern, these insights were my introduction into magic — the raising of my vibration — as the practice by which I could overcome them.  So, I was intrigued and prepared to re-enter Chelsea with an empty mind.  I entered the gallery with a single goal — to experience the art of Adi Da Samraj, not as a critic, but as a participant in a subjective search for — well nothing, in particular.

How could I resist an artist who claims he has a key to unlock me from my patterns?

My visit to the gallery knocked me out.  The power of the New bounced right off the smooth surfaces and reverberated deep into my psyche.  The tremendous scale, the sleek surfaces that seemed to mock the postmodern with the depth of their meaning.  The sacred marriage of opposites on the surface symmetry/irregular geometries of meaning as well as the objective/non-objective merging of abstract and figuration.  The newly imbedded archetypes of liberation busting up old patterns.  I left feeling incredibly free and optimistic about the future of art.

The shock of discovering what I had long given up expecting to find in Chelsea took over a month to sink in.  I wasn’t ready to penetrate Mei-Ling’s book or the catalog until September 29, and I didn’t write a review until I returned from the October 9 closing with Peter Frank .

"The Spiritual Descent of The Bicycle Becomes The Second-Birth of Flight: Part Eleven – XI" from Orpheus One 2007, 2008 – Lacquer on aluminum, 84 x 41 inches / 213 x 104 cm

“Ultimately, when “point of view” is transcended, there is no longer any separate self at all–but only love-bliss-brightness, limitlessly felt, in vast unpatterned joy.”  Adi Da Samraj

Adi Da’s position on astrology can be found in:

Three Views of Reality and Human Potential
Book 8 of The Practical Spirituality Series

The Chilean Miracle and the Quantum Wave Collapse

What better mythology could exist for our times?   The saga of  33 male miners trapped in the Underworld for 68 days and transported by way of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle into a global awakening by the Fenix (Phoenix)  capsule??!!!!  This reflects a cycle of life/death/rebirth in the national narrative of Chile in which an Aquarian grassroots experiment was quashed by the patriarchy, a C.I.A. funded coup.

 

 

NASA, with its Masonic origins, knows the value of a symbol. The Nasa constructed Fenix (phoenix) transporting to inner space.

68 days underground

…caves and caverns were compared to the matrix of the Earth-Mother.  The ritualistic role played by ‘caves,’ attested in prehistoric times, could likewise be interpreted as a mystic return to the mother, which would also help to explain the sepultures in the caves as well as the initiation rites practiced in these same places.  Such primitive intuitions die hard.  – Mircea Eliade, The Forge and the Crucible

The prophecy I was given, by many sources, is that the new archetype would emerge in the extraordinary ordinary person.  When I returned from Chile in January, 2009, I penned a Letter from Chile predicting the quantum wave collapsing in this Aquarian country full of extraordinary ordinary people, so completely attuned to the Kundalini due to the fissures of its earth.

In the chart of the mining disaster below, Chile becomes the focus of global media (Moon in Gemini rising ruling Mercury in his ruler Virgo, overhead at the top of the chart) for a personal/universal Aquarian (Neptune in Aquarius in the 4th house) mythology regarding an understanding into the new archetype of equal partnership (Jupiter ruling the chart conjunct Uranus in Aries in the 5th house opposing Mars/Saturn/Venus in the 11th house).

 

Chile Mining Disaster rectified to 1:45 PM (5:45 PM GMT). With the rising in Sagittarius, the first house passes through the Galactic Center with Pluto, planet of death and rebirth, conjunct the North Node in Capricorn.

 

The Galactic Centre is the womb of  Mother Goddess, the Milky Way Mother of Suns known of and told of in ancient myths,  who we have forgotten, and she the beginner and ender of great ages.

– Susan Seymour Hedke.

Last Miner Reaches Surface

“One of the most poignant moments of the last few days came with the rescue of shift foreman, Luis Urzúa, the last miner to reach the surface. (Thursday 1.56am, 9.56pm Chile). As the world’s media wait to talk to the miners, his will surely be one of the most eagerly awaited personal stories. It was Urzúa who held them all together by rationing them to two spoonfuls of tuna a day for 17 days. It was Urzúa who told the Chilean president: Mr President, we need you to be strong and to rescue us as soon as possible. Don’t abandon us.” His arrival on the surface triggered scenes of wild celebrations, with more champagne being sprayed about than at a grand prix podium. Chilean miners rescue – live coverage | World news | guardian.co.uk

 

 

Ruled by the Moon at Zero degrees Capricorn conjunct Pluto/North Node, this chart reveals the tension of being the focus of global media attention.

 

The manner that these men comported themselves in their daily work (Capricorn line-up in sixth house) while trapped below, and now in the spotlight, is a harbinger of what is to come.  The key here is the body and why this body of miners have been elected to deliver a new archetypal configuration to humanity.  Venus Retrograde on the IC is about to hit the Venus/Uranus conjunction in the 12th house of the collective unconscious in the  birth chart of the Chllean Republic.  As Venus continues its underground journey and surfaces while Mars travels to the Galactic Center and conjuncts Pluto and the Nodes at the point of the eclipse on the eve of the Winter Solstice…

The mythology of the miner reaches a new era!

This site has all sorts of data and charts on the Chilean Mining Disaster, including the individual charts of participants.   http://astroxa.blogspot.com/2010/10/astrologyminingaccidentchile2010.html

Resurrecting Ana Mendieta…

… 0n the 25th anniversary of her tragic death.

 

Ana Mendieta's 1978 "Silueta Series"

 

 

An altar memorializing Ana Mendieta in the office of the NYU Department of Performance Studies was placed between the windows overlooking the spot on the deli where she fell.

 

 

The deli across the street from the NY School of Performing Arts where Mendieta fell in the early morning of October 8, 1985.

 

September 8, 2010 marked the  25th year anniversary of the fall of Ana Mendieta (1948-1985) from the 34th story of her apartment with Carl Andre, her husband of eight months. She landed on the Delion delicatessen across the street from the NYU Tisch School of Performing Arts on Broadway.

Where is Ana Mendieta? Curated by Richard Move, the exhibition at the NYU Fales Library opened the A.I.R.  (Artist in Residence) Gallery Archive  to the public and screened Move’s new film (in which I was a participant), Bloodwork: The Story of Ana Mendieta.

On October 7, 2010, Move hosted a panel which resurrected her groundbreaking art to bold new interpretations in the 21st century.

It was standing room only. Several people had to be turned away.

 

Kat Griefen – Director, A.I.R. Gallery spoke the five years in which Mendieta (in white shirt) played an active role in A.I.R.

 

 

Genevieve Hyacinthe – Assistant Professor, Purchase College (SUNY) provided a fascinating interpretation of Mendieta's art through the spiritual practice of Santeria

 

 

Jose Esteban Munoz – Chair, NYU Department of Performance Studies, spoke about why we are still looking for Ana Mendieta

 

 

Carolee Schneemann – Multidisciplinary Artist revealed the parallel path she and Anna were on to give form to the unseen force of the kundalini in the body.

 

 

Diana Taylor – University Professor, NYU and Founding Director, Hemispheric Institute spoke about Re-performance: Here she demonstrates how "Abramovic can't let go."

 

Richard Move, the most avant-garde of New York performance artists, has catalyzed a (r)evolution in the academy.

 

 

Richard Move at the reception following the symposium with his longtime collaborator, Janet Stapleton

Ana Mendieta's "Tumbas (Tombs)" 1977

 

If man can no longer control the female through the body, then it effectively means the death of the patriarchy.  With a grounding in this consciousness, Where is Ana Mendieta? answered its own question by delivering performance art into a new era.

The Kundalini climbing out of exile (the tomb) into an awakening was captured in a spirit collaboration described by Carolee Schneemann in both the film and symposium:

 

Carolee Schneemann talking about the process of making the art which gave form to a dream sent by Ana.

 

(Left to Right) A letter sent to Mendieta informing her unpaid dues at A.I.R. and the artist’s response in the form of a brief letter resigning from the collective through the sell of her share.  Beside it, an invitation to  participate in an Earthworks show which would have placed her as an equal among the male artists in a new Land Art movement.  She didn’t live to participate.  

Think of how art history, and the culture, might have evolved if Mendietta had lived!

 

Ana Mendieta's "Alma Silueta en Fuego (Soul Silhouette on Fire)," 1975 brings the unseen force of the Kundalini into the human form.

 

But perhaps it was inevitable with an artist who ventured that far out into the unexplored realm of inner space would be creating her own tomb …

She left the family that she created in NYC, the grounding of the A.I.R. collective of female artists and lept into an unconscious marriage with the High Priest of minimalism, Carl Andre.  But her star was ascending as his was on the decline.

 

"Tree of Life" a 1976 self-portrait by Ana Mendieta captures her image as the ancient love goddess Inanna/Ishtar of the Sacred Marriage Rites

 

In a more perfect world they might have met in the middle as collaborators of a new vision of equal partnership, ushering in the icon of a new era: the hieros gamos (sacred marriage).

 

View of where Ana Mendieta landed from her 35th story fall. Carl Andre, who was tried and acquitted of murder, still lives in the same apartment on the top floor of this high rise building across the street from the Tisch School of Performing Arts

 

It was not to be.  And from where we stood to honor her memory on October 7, you can look right down at the spot she fell.

The transformative love of  Richard Move for the feminine divine has propelled the Kundalini consciousness out of the Underground where she fell and directly into the Ivory Tower!

LIBRA NEW MOON: HIEROS GAMOS

The New Moon in Libra has HIEROS GAMOS stamped all over it.

The chart set for NYC, the capital of global media, practically screams out: THE TIME HAS COME!  If anyone reading this has been attentively working on embodying this archetype, I can channel Neitzsche’s Zarathustra:

The destined hour has arrived!

“My hour has come” (to his sister, June 19, 1891).  ”It is one of the strongest spiritual drinks…It is a beginning of my beginnings—what lies ahead of me! …I am at the summit of my life, i.e. my tasks…” (to Overbeck, September 1881).  What Nietzsche was later to consider the third phase had now arrived in the form of fate which claimed him completely and which he knew he was destined to carry out.  (Karl Jaspers, C. F. Wallraff, F. J. Schmitz; Nietzsche: An Understanding of his Philosophical Activity, p.48

The coding is threaded throughout the chart.  Mars triggering the Midheaven conjunct Venus.  Capricorn rising with Pluto/Ceres conjunct the North Node in the 12th house of the collective unconscious.  The message here is concretization, containment and structure of a new archetype.  This interpretation is reinforced by the Venus/Moon conjunction this afternoon.  Taking place nearly an hour earlier, the Capricorn Rising conjuncts the North Node.  It promises to be an intense 24 hours night of illumination coming from the body.  I ended up finishing a manuscript, writing a short speech and chronicling my next two posts.  And I still have three hours to go!  That is how intense this lunation cycle is for the crystalization (Saturn) of a new archetype embedded in the Jupiter/Uranus conjunction, here straddling the second (body) and third (communication) houses.

What is key is the Asteroids: the feminine in the chart.  Vesta and Ceres sextiling at Zero degrees and Juno forming a Yod with the sextile to Vesta and Jupiter/Uranus at the apex.  It is as if a Congress of the female goddess has converged to formally (Capricorn) usher Venus through the gate to the Underworld draping her in the full garb of the Sky Goddess!

Crystalization of a New Archetype: Venus Retrograde Conjunct the Moon

 

Mario Vargas Llosa wins the Nobel Prize for Literature.

““The lies in novels are not gratuitous—they fill in the insufficiencies of life,” he wrote.  “Thus when life seems full and absolute, and men, out of an all consuming faith, are resigned to their destinies, novels perform no service at all.  Religious cultures produce poetry and theater, not novels.  Fiction is an art of societies in which faith is undergoing some sort of crisis, in which it’s necessary to believe in something, in which the Unitarian, trust and absolute vision has been supplanted by a shattered one and an uncertainty about the world we inhabit and afterworld.”

—excerpted from: “A Storyteller Enthralled by the Power of Art”   Michiko Kakutani’s “An Appraisal” the New York Times, October 8, 2010

And I bring to a close my 24 years of novel writing by finishing The Sacred Seven which incorporates sacred geometry into the novel through the progression of seven self-contained chapters chronicling a 24 year process of containing the kundalini in the body.

The Full Moon will bring the illumination to the 9th house process engaged at this New Moon!  Stay tuned!

 

The Subtext of George Clooney

George Clooney on Capitol Hill. Photo credit: Lisa Paul Streitfeld

…is in the stars.

The subtext  of George Clooney is not in any particular work of art he has had a hand in creating – whether as actor, director, writer, producer or all together — but rather  the evolution of an on-screen persona.  Rare for an actor, his core character strength is a work in progress that leaves artifacts – films, public appearances, mischievous pranks – for us to decode.

In overcoming the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, Clooney becomes an extremely hospitable guide to the paradigm leap.  That he manages to do so while challenging his audience’s expectations, yet without self-conscious irony, indicates he is hooking into something beyond the postmodern.

The precise and even calculating manner that this artist — who labored for so long in the shadows under the burden of a consciousness of the very pitfalls of fame – chooses his vehicles for public expression is fascinating against the backdrop of his natal astrology chart.  This has been true ever since his starring role in Steven Soderbergh’s 2002 remaking of Solaris, which reinterpreted the Stanisław Lem science fiction novel about an oceanic consciousness in outer space into the Ouroboric passage into the sacred marriage, via the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.  While many films are about the anima, it is rare for a film to work out the anima problem as Solaris does within a non-linear story with a self-contained aesthetic.   In the film, the beloved Rheya (derived from Rhea, the patriarchal mother goddess who destroys her children at the command of her husband, Cronus) evolves from seductress to conscious collaborator.  The message is that conscious action in regards to relationship (Saturn in Libra) is an evolution into the eternal union of the sacred marriage.

The shift from the patriarchal to a new partnership model is the door into Clooney’s chart.  Notice the fixed cross (in red) as the dominate configuration in the chart; this pattern connotes a surrender of previous patterns upon a new set of conditions that are both personal and universal (his Sun in the fixed cross with transcendental planets Uranus and Neptune).

His first house is shared by Pisces and Aries, so the Jupiter/Uranus conjunction passing between these two signs, the first and last of the zodiac, indicate that the lasting power of George Clooney’s celebrity is a  harbinger of what is to come.

When Clooney was born, Venus, suddenly in view, had just begun to move forward after retrograding in the independent minded sign of Aries.  While making no planetary aspects, it formed an EXACT conjunction first house conjunction with Vesta, the keeper of the Kundalini flame.  This reveals a containment of the Kundalini via the route of evolving (Vesta) the anima principle (Venus) publicly through the labor (North Node in Virgo in the Sixth House)  of expressing (Mercury) his talent (conjunct the second house Sun).

ICON AS SUBTEXT

At the moment of this posting, the archetype of the hieros gamos is constellating.  The signature is the conjunction of Venus/Mars in Scorpio as Venus moves into a retrograde station.

In Clooney’s chart, the configuration triggers his eighth house Neptune while Saturn/Sun conjuncted ( Sept. 30)  the partnership sign of Libra.  It is quite an amazing pattern, given that Jupiter (in conjunction with Uranus) in Pisces is EXACTLY on the ascendent!  Also, the Moon is in Leo opposing Neptune in Aquarius, making the personal (Leo) anima complicit in the universal (Aquarius) quality of the sacred marriage!

See below, how the sacred marriage (Mars/Venus conjunction) hits Clooney’s chart: (1) Transiting Sun/Saturn (seventh house of partnership) opposing his  Venus (first house) (2). Venus/Mars conjunct his Neptune in Scorpio (eighth house of marriage) opposing his Taurus Sun.

George Clooney natal with Venus/Mars conjunction of October 3, 2010

ANIMA CONTROL

Solaris (2002) set the tone for this new terrain: man in control of his anima.  Subsequent films he participated in extended this idea,

Elevating the Anima: "Men Who Stare at Goats"

notably the innovation Frances McDormand character whose female proactive desire drives the action in the film, and the joke is that this desire stems from the urge to fit the societal female idea via plastic surgery, yet the Clooney character accepts her as she is.

I happened upon this excerpt from Bill Tiierney’s Dynamics of Aspect Analysis which sums up the solitary position of Clooney’s Venus:

Usually our estimations of how any planet might act out its impulses are prompted by the presence of aspects to that planet.  But with no aspects to consider, what is an astrologer to expect in terms of that planet’s expression?  There are probably other unknown factors in existence that regulate the manifestation of life principle beyond what is presently realized through the structure of astrology as it has now evolved.  Astrology is as subject to the evolutionary process as is everything else (which should be evident every time a new planets is discovered and added to the structure).  We should not assume that all that is is exclusively contained within solar system based astrological archetypes (as we do when describing life processes indicated by the Zodiac).  What if earth-based astrology is simply the necessary springboard for human beings to eventually tap into completely alien concepts of being?  What if even more powerful galactic archetypes unknown to us nevertheless direct the mechanism of earth-based astrological phenomena?  Frankly, we just do not know if the astrological formulae we apply to our human condition are unconditional.  Thus, if an unaspected planet tends to show a periodic lack of control in its actions or moments of oscillating expression that are hard to account for, it could be prompted to activate this way due to the processes that we are not ready to know about yet.  These planets have been shown to undergo periods of spurtlike activity for no apparent reason (i.e. not

because of transits or progressions).  With our limited knowledge, it is hard to explain how these planets are generated into expression without any aspect stimuli.  (p. 173)

COLLECTIVE TIMING

Because the art world is both stymied by its commercial sellout during the boom years and comatose as a result of the economic downturn, there is an urgency for the celebrity/movie star to fill the void.  After all, what does the term movie star mean but an archetypal constellation patterned in a human being?

If the August 20^th Mars/Venus/Saturn gathering in the sign of Libra could bring the Palenstinians and Israelis together for peace talks, then couldn’t we expect to see some bold strokes from the arts of the paradigm leap catalyzed by the cardinal T-square of the last month?

Could it be that the popular culture is too corporate controlled to allow for self-examination?

Which makes George Clooney all the more valuable, and explains his universal appeal.  A movie star who reminds us of our own humanity through his very public humanitarian persona.

Fortunately, along with his grey hairs revealing the maturity separating him from other leading men, Clooney has developed his innate gift of timing.

Just three days after his acceptance speech for winning the Bob Hope Humanitarian Award, The American hit the theaters.  Why was a film based on a book titled An Extremely Private Gentleman re-titled as The American?  Good question that the score of reviews of The American undoubtedly failed to probe.  But for an astrologer it was a crucial clue to the super consciousness that appears to be guiding George Clooney.  The comparison of Clooney’s chart with the USA Sibly chart reveals a karmic connection related to his widespread appeal: Clooney’s Jupiter is EXACTLY conjunct the USA South Node.

Modernism dictated genius as a singular work, a masterpiece.  Under the paradigm shift that artists, like everyone else, must acknowledge today, the requirement for art is the sacred marriage of opposites:  the shedding of the personal subconscious and then accessing the collective unconscious and finding the vehicle of containment (Saturn) for that dose of super-consciousness (Uranus).

We can’t forget that two planets, Saturn and Uranus, rule Aquarius, the sign of genius, which is placed in Clooney’s chart by way of the ruler of his mid-heaven, Jupiter.  This dictates that his very calling demands that he hold the tension of the opposites — the Leo-Aquarius polarity — during this crucial time of transition between the breakdown of patriarchal archetypes and rise of the Aquarian Age icon, the sacred marriage.  In fact, the very ability to maintain a center is how the sacred marriage icon takes hold!

With this insight regarding is position in the collective consciousness (Jupiter in his 11th house), the title of his most recent film is a form of coding.  That the character of Jack  is an American in a foreign country is obvious.  But what about “the American” as the archetype our forefathers coded into the American nation?

Let’s look at the charts in comparison.

Here we discover that George Clooney’s Jupiter is EXACTLY on the USA South Node while his Mars in Leo opposition conjuncts the USA North Node.  Here is the opposition of Aquarius/Leo, the human and the movie star.

What is more significant is his Moon in Capricorn EXACTLY on the USA Pluto, with his Saturn only two degrees away.  What this signifies is an uncanny instinct (the Moon) to uncover deep state (Capricorn) secrets (Pluto).  We will see how he has been going about this in his recent films.

Moreover, Jupiter makes this highly karmic position a stellum, so this archetype of heaven/earth, human/celestial is imbedded into Clooney’s persona (Moon) as a sense of personal duty.  The position in the  11^th (Aquarius) house only adds to a personal narrative that is reflected in the collective: a commitment (Saturn) to truth (Aquarius) seeking (Jupiter ruling the Midheaven, the calling).

SYMBOLS, CYCLES & ARCHETYPES

What is uncanny about The American is the use of the symbol and archetypal characters drawn from the Spaghetti western (the priest and prostitute both offering redemption from opposite ends of the chakra spectrum: spirit vs. the body).   The physical  labyrinth, representing the journey of self-discovery with its unknown twists and turns — is embedded in the streets of the Italian village where the assassin is hiding out.  Along with its geographical isolation, this elevated landscape conveys the mood of the yearning for transcendence of a new archetype.  This is personal for the character but also pertains to the American nation, with its two primary exports revealed in the film: munitions and culture (the spaghetti western on the restaurant TV).  The primary symbol of the film is the butterfly, which connects the physical body image (the tattoo on the assassin’s back) with the ethereal concept of the sacred marriage.  This newly emerging archetype was to be located in arcadia by early American spiritualists (the Theosophists) translated into the film as a paradise where Jack would bring the  female anima figures of death (the female assassin) and rebirth (the prostitute); both women gave him the nickname farfalla (butterfly).

On one level, the butterfly, along with the film’s premise, is a cliché about the quest for transcendence.  In this case, however, the butterfly is a live presence in arcadia  where the trained assassin is confronted with two females.  The first will be his killer.  And the other?  The Beloved.

On a more mundane level, the butterfly is the quest for the freedom to be human, an emotional being.  But in a hidden coding that illuminates the ambiguity of plot, butterfly references Project Monarch in which CIA operatives are subject to mind control, which makes them slaves to an external authority.

When a person is undergoing trauma induced by electroshock, a feeling of light-headedness is evidenced; as if one is floating or fluttering like a butterfly. There is also a symbolic representation pertaining to the transformation or metamorphosis of this beautiful insect: from a caterpillar to a cocoon (dormancy, inactivity), to a butterfly (new creation) which will return to its point of origin. Such is the migratory pattern that makes this species unique.

Occult symbolism may give additional insight into the true meaning Psyche is the word for both “soul” and “butterfly” coming from the belief that human souls become butterflies while searching for a new reincarnation. (source: Project Monarch: Nazi Mind Control by Ron Patton)

Was this association intentional or the unconscious at work?  The American, rather than butterfly, was the assassin’s nickname in the book.  Could this film character be symbolic of the illuminati mind control of the American masses by the collusion of government intelligence and the corporate entertainment media?

In fact, the cyclical manner that violence is treated in the film – the very gun that the hitman so meticulously crafts is the instrument of his own death – is a mirror in which America’s exportation of violence has turned back on ourselves, creating technological slaves immune to emotion via America’s two largest exports: our entertainment culture and munitions industry.

Could this be a higher intelligence working through the Clooney subtext that the star himself isn’t even aware of?  A message informing Americans to connect with our humanity so we may together evolve into a liberating new archetype — or otherwise making us unwitting victims of illuminati mind control?

It seems that the true guerilla approach to creating a revolution in a media driven society is to use the mechanisms of the globalization of culture to mirror the very process by which the unquestioning adherence to the American dream is undermining the very freedom guaranteed by our constitution.  How does this bear out with Clooney and the emergence of a new icon out of the postmodern decay of the patriarchal archetypes?

SUBTEXT IN TRAJECTORY

the highflying American puer eternus encapsulated by George Clooney in "Up in the Air'

An early Clooney film was a 1996 formulaic romantic comedy with Michelle Pfeiffer about a social dilemma — the frazzled life of the single parent.  One Fine Day cast Clooney in the light of the archetypal puer aeternus.  He returned to this archetype with his indelible 2009 characters in Burn After Reading and  Up in the Air, where the insecurities of age transform puer into senex.  These portraits reveal the puer/senex polarity as crucial to the American myth, the innocence coupled with cynicism stemming from an inability to evolve  –whereas consumerism has filled the void left by the non-emotionalism of the American male.

Confronting the Shadow: George Clooney in “Men Who Stare at Goats”

In Men Who Stare at Goats he takes the shadow by the horns, so to speak (the goat is the symbol for Capricorn, the mythological Cronus or patriarchal shadow).  We are served in this film an antidote, the surrender to the feminine in a common goal of caring for the Earth.  Such a whooping message is delivered, as it only could be in the entertainment culture, with characteristic Clooney humor.  But even his humor is a vehicle for revealing the overblown violence in media, which, as Michael Parenti states in his Make-Believe Media: The Politics of Entertainment“… violence cultivates exaggerated notions about danger in the real world.  The exaggerated sense of risk may lead to increased demand for protection and increasing pressure for force by established authorities.”

But The American was a departure from the humorous vehicle for shattering a consensus reality so ingrained in the American psyche that no film critic could even detect it, despite the freedom of thought supposedly allowed by the Internet.  It was deadly (excuse the pun) serious examination of the American character that has become completely desensitized.  America’s penchant for violence, manufactured and exported in our military industrial complex and entertainment industry, will — like the carefully hand crafted weapon of George Clooney’s assassin — be turned on ourselves one day.

Perhaps it already has

EQUINOX FULL MOON: FALLING INTO MA’S ROADHOUSE

SOMETIMES IF FEEL THAT MY LIFE IS A SERIES OF TRAPEZE SWINGS.

I”M EITHER HANGING UP IN A TRAPEZE BAR
OR SWINGING ALONG

OR, FOR A FEW MOMENTS IN MY LIFE

I’M HURTLING ACROSS SPACE
IN BETWEEN TRAPEZE BARS

THE TRANSITION ZONES IN OUR LIVES

ARE INCREDIBLY RICH PLACES

THEY SHOULD BE HONORED

EVEN SAVORED

THEY ARE THE MOST ALIVE

MOST GROWTH FILLED
MOST PASSIONATE

MOST EXPANSIVE MOMENTS OF OUR LIVES

BECAUSE HURTLING THROUGH THE VOID

WE MAY JUST LEARN HOW TO FLY

Danaan Parry

Full Moon at Zero Degrees Aries on the Fall Equinox, September 23, 2010; 5:17 AM EDT NYC

Quite an amazing feeling of Falling into the New as the Full Moon in Aries lined up on the E/W axis of my natal chart at 5:17 AM this morning.  I am full of new plans to apply my theory outside of the insular NYC art world.

The Otisco docked at the family port in Lyons, NY

I was away for nearly a week on a family trip to realize my brother’s dream, to travel the Erie Canal in a boat, entering the locks that we never tired of experiencing from the outside on visits to our grandmother’s house in Lyons, NY.

The Otisco's descent into Lock 28 A in Lyons NYC

Descending...

The experience was so apt for the onset of the Fall Equinox. Being inside the lock as the water was drained felt like a descent into the Underworld, and then arising, prompting a spontaneous outpouring:

As the leaves start to turn

View of the grandfather's bridge from the canal

And Persephone begins her descent into the Underworld

We four Streitfelds are reflecting on the joyous frutation of a long-cherished dream

to be inside the locks of the Erie Canal as our boat descends and ascends

After a childhood spent gazing upon the process from outside

With our ancestry passed through four generations of matriarchal lineage

(Vocker, Klippel,  Deachler and Seligman) in the lock town of Lyons

We grew up in the mythical lore of the Erie Canal

As we would pass over the bridge passing over lock 38A

My mother would declare, “Your grandfather built this bridge.”

This youthful refrain now met an upward gaze

Thank you Midlakes Navigation for providing a bridge to our youth!

–entered into Otisco logbook on September 20, 2010

The opening of the Locks

Signs pointing to a vacation spot frequented by ancestors

We spent the day of the Fall Equinox hunting down the haunts of our ancestry.

Virginia Volcker Streitfeld seeking her ancestry in Lake Como, the family vacation spot of Lake Como, NY

And the evening with entertainment provided by my brother, delivered via the airwaves…

Ma's Roadhouse, an AMS production on Tru-TV

MA’S ROADHOUSE

My  brother’s new reality TV show, Ma’s Roadhouse, aired for the second time under this full moon,  challenges my new orientation of interpreting a newly emerged archetype in the pop culture.   The series offers a descent into Texan biker culture, where scantily clad woman are treated like cattle, evidenced in last night’s episode of rounding up the bikini contest babes with a prodding towards the stage.

Mother and her non-Prodigal Son at Strokers in Texas

The truTV series actually surprised me as a unique art form reminiscent of Charles Mee’s  bobrauschenbergamerica that I reviewed as “breathing a fresh wind into American theater”  in its premiere at Stamford Center for the Arts.  Told from a dramatic personal perspective that hits the universal through some brilliant editing, Ma’s Roadhouse sums up the blend of authenticity, entertainment and folklore…

..that attracted my family to such unique “slice of Americana” locales as  on our cross country road trips with our own mother, who is diametrically opposite the  raspy foul mouthed mother spotlighted in his TV show!

Mother and Son on the Erie Canal

VMA 2010 KICKS THE ILLUMINATI IN THE BALLS

The Dog Days Are Over: Florence and the Machine's ecstatic delivery of the embodied ethereal Kundalini stole the show

I have long suspected that the reason why women have been kept down in show business had to do with the male anatomy.  In mean this in the most literal sense, giving a brilliant, unpredictable woman her freedom of speech in a public arena risks cutting the male ego being cut down to size…

Chelsea Handler demonstrating how to handle unwelcome intrusions of the male ego..

…an award winner took the bait that Chelsea Handler, this year’s MTV Video Music Award host, juicily held out by swiping away the girl-on-girl kiss as old hat.  He stripped down to his underwear to reveal a limpid  dildoe made of cloth.

Chelsea Handler, natal chart (time is unknown)

What I like so much about Chelsea Handler is her bittersweet attitude about her role in the collective. “What would President Obama have to say to me?” she said in an interview, revealing a quest for transcendence arising from an honest appraisal of her designated pop culture role as trash filter.  There is certainly a higher consciousness being channeled by her Mercury in Aquarius (in a Boomerang with the Full Moon in her natural chart, left)  which can’t be dampened by a self-professed addiction to vodka.  Her performance style is deadpan, which means she doesn’t compete with the star wattage. Regardless, she is no slouch in her role as MC to the steady stream of toxicity which passes as pop culture these days.  On her nightly show, Chelsea Lately,watch her deadpan treatment of B.o.B. revealing what made his Airplanes ”Video of the Year” nomination so forgettable; he never met his “collaborator,” Hayley Williams).

In her opening monologue, Handler announced she gave up her beloved vodka for three weeks in preparation for her duty but got wasted anyway.  Perhaps it was vodka in her cup during the beginning skit — a robed Chelsea passing through an obstacle course of male slaps on the buttocks in the hallway until a head-on confrontation with Lindsey Lohan.  The ex- convict trumped the media’s power of projection, delivering a warning about the dangers of crossing boundaries while pointing out her  host’s electronic ankle bracelet.

Handler had a lot to live up to, considering the ruse pulled last year.  Publicity stunt or not, the ritual performed on Tyler Swift revealed the exclusivity of the pop inner sanctum with its illuminati symbolism.   The divine marriage sought by the secret societies required fresh virgin blood, just as the  ”pound of flesh” extracted today from talent hoping  to make it as a pop star seeking the universal Beloved, Fame!

Taylor Swift singing about how she is "still innocent" after last year's cabalistic ritual of her initiation

Illuminati Stunt? Keyne West as the archetypal Shadow (the prima materia of the alchemical experiment) rudely interrupting Taylor Swift's acceptance speech at the 2009 VMA

Terrified or not, Taylor Swift proved up to her cosmic task.  She surmounted last year’s “initiation rite” which, intentionally or not, revealed the music industry self-prescribed role in turning nubile newcomer into fame whore.  Her transcendent performance was as poignant as it was evolutionary — a public declaration she is “still Innocent,” although the forgiving lyrics of Your Still Innocent were directed at West, empathizing with his difficulties in controlling his ego. The intimate  set with an old fashioned TV revealing the song’s inspiration playing out the scrambled signals of last year’s theft of her moment in the spotlight (right).  Was it an illuminati ritual of initation demonstrated via costume?  Doesn’t matter, because Swift played her role to perfection, revealing the feminine power of  transcendence that will move the pop culture upward from its descent into the toxic waters.

2009 VMA: Taylor Swift's "initiation" into pop royalty by Beyonce, the red dresses symbolizing the erotic packaging of the music industry

This year the awards had the benefit of having the edgy Chelsea Handler as host under a Mercury station opposing her Pisces Sun.  Would this Full Moon Pisces  be channeling a higher power?

She didn’t disappoint.  Illuminato or no illumanati,  the illumination of the collective quest for the sacred marriage came through the self-appointed psychopomp Chelsea Handler.

I mean literraly!

Chelsea Hander at the MTV Awards in a feather dress with silver wings; the Sky Goddess with a dove in her womb!

She appeeared on stage with her body fully covered by a Lady Gaga inspired costume (the house a symbol for ego).  After a dance routine, the action halted and the host declared in her characteristic deadpan:  ”That is as far as we got in rehearsal.”  Then she suddenly seemed to remember the climax as she lifted her skirt and a dove came out.  Instead of flying, it sat on one of the dancer’s hands.

Afterwards, Handler made a comment that the dove was supposed to fly.

That is Mercurious working on illuminati symbolsm.  The dove is a symbol of transcendence, and the

The alchemical rites of transformation into the conjunctio or sacred marriage with the dove overhead

alchemical bath is the means of getting there.

But this alchemical bath was the hot tub for the Jersey Shore reality TV show.  Handler responded to an invitation to climb in.  After initially declining, she jumped in fully clothed.  Afterwards, she asked if they ever changed the water.   Never!   She jumped out — pregnant!   This is an illuminati joke on the divine child born from the conjuntio, the alchemical marriage of masculine and feminine.

Who's your daddy? Host Chelsea Handler emerges pregnant from a hot tub shared by The Situation, Pauly D, JWOWW and Snooki of MTV's "Jersey Shore"

The toxicity of the lowest common denominator of the pop culture revealed with a dip into a hot tub!  The message filtering through Handler’s water bearing Mercury is clear: the pop culture stinks at this low.  This is why there is always the need for new energy in the proverbial “young virgin” which then spoils, and must be replaced.  This is how the Ouroboric cycle of life/death/rebirth was traditionally played out in the illuminati secret society while the linear Christian view of life and death kept a hold over the masses.

Lady Goaga, despite cleaning up in the awards, including “Video of the Year,” had a forgettable performance, revealing her act is already stale; the constant changing of costumes in anticipation of yet another chance to grab the stage.  The image of her draped in meat while receiving her award from Cher reinforced her act as the same old ketchup in ever-changing bottles.

Lady Gaga striking a pose at the MTV Awards in Alexander McQueen's renaissance gown, her hair styled as the alchemical symbol of transformation; the caduceus

"I'm not a piece of meat!" Lady Gaga, accepting he award for "Video of the Year" for her video laden "Bad Romance" with presenter Cher

Her body was overtaken by the pure alchemy of Alexander McQueen’s genius, fit for a renaissance Queen complete with a crown of a golden feather.  Yet while the costume was undoubtedly channeled as a showcase for the embodied Kundaiini, on Gaga’s frame it only underscored the bottomless abyss at her core which inspired the obvious quest for purification of  Bad Romance video (which I will be analyzing in a future post).

What made the evening so alchemical was the fiery performance by Enimen as the prima materia seeking the transcendence of the alchemical union with the divine feminine.  The multiple levels of Not Afraid/Love the Way You Lie reflected the double meaning in the title.  The music  combined the transcendent upbeat (higher chakras) of classical music with the downbeat (lower chakras) of hip hop. The genius of this act set a high standard for the evening, completely blowing away the other hop hop performances as stuck in a linear rote past which failed to incorporate personal narrative with the universal quest to embody the 21st century archetype, the hieros gamos.

Eninem as the petulant groom and Rihanna as the redeeming angel bride

The fear, of course is both personal and collective in 2010, the ego’s fear of the abyss, the rising power of the kundalini, in evidence through the powerful aerobisized females making jokes about the “stiff statues” in the show.  Rihanna’s all-suffering feminine lament is about kundalini transcendence: “Just going to stand there and watch me burn.”  While the Enimen rap is all about the ever deceitful ego thwarting his Libran struggle to fuse the opposites.  ”Please come back.. Maybe that is what it means when a volcano meets a tornado….I apologize even though I know its a game.”

While the video clilps revealed the influence of Gaga’s instinct to camouflage the negative extremes of the dark feminine, the very fears that Eminem confronts head on: the rising power of the Kundalini that cannot be controlled but only channeled as genius.

All a viwer had to do was turn the channel to Mad Men at 11 pm and see how far we have come.  The ribald jokes in the episode were at the expense of the women in the office, spurring a power struggle.  it would have been untinkable for a woman to get down dirty to mirror the men as we see Chelsea Handler bravely busting through this barrier on live television.

Vodka or no vokka, Chelsea Handler performed double duty in busting through the glass ceiling.  The first female host in the history of the VMAAward managed to kick the male dominated Illuminati hold on the music industry in the balls.  She revealed how far we have come, yes, but also how far we have to go.

Perhaps this was the meaning of Linkin Park having their cake and eating it too: getting to perform for the Video Music Awards having to suffer the customary dowsing in the toxic waters of the music industry.  They performed Catalyst at my former haunt, the Griffith Park Observatory, where  James Dean’s statue  commemorates the iconic scene in Rebel without a Cause. In this iconic locale, human meets archetype, and a new cosmology can be interpreted by the stars!

Linkin Park performing "Catalyst" at Griffith Park Observatory for the 2010 VMA

LADY GAGA: THE TRUTH BEHIND THE VEILS

How will the pop stars of today authentically liberate their fans?

Lady Gaga dolls: Merchandizing the dark feminine in extreme

Lady Gag Order is her new moniker.

The image I get is the Ouroboros choking on its tail.

FAME AS OUROBOROS

Gaga spelled backwards: A Gag.  Is this latest global pop phenomenon an illuminati puppet?  Or is she a collective filter for exposing the rampant use of occult symbolism in the music industry which has rendered the art world impotent in comparison?  How doe we discover the truth behind the veil?

The pop star formerly known as Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta claims the saturation of her video/music/fashion into the collective consciousness is her own unique art, yet in a cover story for Vanity Fair, she dismisses the notion of Lady Gaga as being an alter ego, insisting she has always been Gaga.

In fact, it is widely accepted that the Fame Monster’s passage to fame was a foregone conclusion from the start. And this is a New Paradigm idea of transcending linear time to enter the cycle of the Ouroboros, which this culture experiences as the life/death/rebirth cycle of the famous.

“There’s a real art to fame.” she tells Telegraph music critic Neil McCormick, claiming to have done a “crazy thesis, like 80 pages on Spencer Tunick [who creates nude installations] and Damien Hirst, great pop artists” during her precocious period at the Tisch School of the Arts.  She explained her method of mainlining her message:  “For me, the work doesn’t end with the song, it’s the fashion, the performance and then the trajectory of the energy as it bounces off all of the irises of the fans in the audience and comes back to me.”

FAME AS HOLOGRAM

The truth emerges as Mercury goes direct (5 degrees Virgo)  to form a crucial yod = passageway to the emergence of a new archetype (Jupiter/Uranus on the ascendent forming the apex) that I have been tracking through the art world for a decade.

In Gagaland, the timing is marked by the news of Gaga settling the lawsuit which revealed her sacred marriage gone bad.  It seems they created a love child together…

According to the lawsuit, Lady Gaga and Fusari’s relationship turned romantic and then became a business partnership in May 2006, when they created a joint venture called Team Love Child LLC to promote her career. Fusari’s share was 20 percent, it said.

…that took on a life of its own.  This is about timing and the necessity of the collective to confront the perversities of the extreme feminine, so we may find our center in the archetype of the hieros gamos.

While the 20^th century superstars were tasked with holding up a mirror to the patriarchal archetyoes, those bursting into flame in the 21^st century are expected to deliver the new liberating icon of a gender free culture.  So, let’s proceed to

First some background which frames my inquiry as I cross this border from the underground to the pop culture.  I’ve been thinking about Lady Gaga since her catastrophic rise that attempts to break down the boundaries between music and fine art in a grand bid to define the 21^st century superstar.  I first took notice when I was in Dublin for the AICA Congress and read in a newspaper article a claim that Lady Gaga was actually a man.  I found this intriguing because I had shown images of the hermaphrodite in the delivery of my paper on “The Heisenberg Principle in 21st Century Art.”  Synchronistically, I then discovered myself in a Temple Bar cafe sitting beside a transvestite, wondering if he/she was indeed a hermaphrodite and ditto for Lady Gaga.

As I began, against my own erotic impulses, to explore more of Lady Gaga, I wondered if she could be a new phenomenon revealing the overcoming of the Heisenberg Principle in 21st Century Art, meaning that — as a self-aware student of the very fame which now engulfs her– she delivers a consciousness in regards to fame, the very shadow of the Aquarian quest for equality.  The present moment is the testing point, with Saturn in Libra opposing her Aries Sun.

Headless Gaga: Kundalini fueled instinct without intellect

In seeming to impersonate female sexuality via her male aggression for fame, Lady Gaga is mirroring back the soulless overt sexuality of the pop culture, where these young woman think nothing of flinging off their clothes for the camera.  The exposure of the flesh revealing the loss of the collective soul as American reverses itself from bing a global superpower to global debtor.  Having removed herself from the art world institution, she has made a bold leap into embracing the personal and collective Shadow in the transparency of the 24/7 media.  With Lady Gaga, fame isn’t just a by-product of her art; it is the great Unknown at the core.

FAME AS A COLLECTIVE RESPONSIBILITY

The current necessity of re-examining the mythology surrounding the American dream can only be achieved at present by the self-aware who are inside the bubble offame, yet can see their way out of it.  This entails the marriage of Saturn and Uranus, the signs ruling Aquarius, which rules the South Node of the U.S. chart.  Lady Gaga is an  instinctual Aries, a “puppet” if not of the illuminati, then the collective unconscious by way of her Sun square to Neptune (which also makes her highly susceptible to addiction and sensationalism).  Her responsibility of timing (transiting Saturn opposed her Sun)  is becoming the first global superstar with Pluto in Scorpio.  Having Pluto conjunct her Moon makes the message of her generation all the more powerful.  Her stage act crystalizes the dark feminine, complete with tales of poisoning lovers, to the point of extreme.  Her Mars at zero degrees Capricorn, the point of the Winter Solstice ruled by the 13th constellation of Ophiuchus riding the serpent is key to her ascendant.  Her inability to control this powerl (foretold by her rampant drug use) is to be revealed in her fall.     Pluto entering Scorpio in 1984 manifested in the collective as the fear of sex surrounding the mysterious plague of AIDS.  It marked an end to the sexual revolution and a beginning to a deep internal passage through the void…

Lady Gaga, The Return of the Bride as Lilith??

FAME AS BELLWETHER

Lina Morgana suicide (AM, time unknown)

Astrologically, the timing of this accusation of “soul stealing” is very intriguing as it captures the sinister nature of Gaga’s expression, which reveals how tapped in she is to the lower astral levels of the mind controlled characteristic of dissociation.   She doesn’t seem at all emotionally connected to her image making, which is why she can dispose of them so quickly; this would seem to be the expression of a puppet.   And the suicide of a collaborator certainly makes these waters even murkier.

On the morning of Lina’s suicide (left), Venus was approaching a conjunction to Mars in Scorpio, triggering the Moon/Pluto conjunction in Stefani’s natal chart.  And in fact, the story appeared on the front page of the NY Post, Venus was made the Scorpio ingress, as it did on the day Lina committed suicide.

So, there is something going on here indeed.  Something very dark and mysterious…and yes, sinister.

There is discussion among astrologers about Lady Gaga’s birth time.  The time of birth determines what sign and planets are ascending on the horizon at the time of birth, thereby coloring the persona. Which makes my rectification an obvious choice, given the universal description of Lady Gaga, with her shifting veils, as noticeable even in her times of obscurity: Sagittarius with Urnaus on the ascendent and Mars/Neptune rising in the first house.  We haven’t yet had a superstar with Neptune in Capricorn/Pulto in Scorpio.  And Lady Gaga has these two transcendental planets conjunct the Moon and Mars, which determine gender characteristics!

The fequent comparisons is to Madonna.  They were born 28 years apart, which means Stefani was born on Madonna’s Saturn Return, which makes her something of an astral daughter of her pop idol.

Madonna's natal chart

Sagittarius which is about an experiential journey yes, needlessly truthful, but while Madonna’s Jupiter was in Libra conjunct her North Node in the second house of talent, my rectified chart for Stefani places Saturn in the 12th house, thereby reinforcing the message of the hidden agenda.  Again, is it the agenda of the collective America with Neptune on its Moon forcing a reexamining of the collective (Moon) mythologizing (Neptune) or the control of the illuminati which shepherds theses young woman into pop stardom?   Jupiter, ruler of Sagittarius, is in Pisces, making an exact square to Saturn.  So this emphasizes and expands the task of stripping the veil over the universal pursuit of fame in the transparency of the 24/7 media environment.  Her personal ambition for immortality through fame reflects a collective ambition, and this is what makes her a bellwether of fame in our time of social networking, reality TV and 24/7 media.

What I am getting at is this:  getting to the core of the feminine has been the struggle for art as it means working through the layers of the patriarchal archetypes to get to the core of the authentic feminine.  With these revelations about her rise coming with the backlash of fame, the veil is being stripped away to reveal what is truly hidden is the inner journey of the artist!  Where are the dreams, the creative linkages, the personal language that make an artist’s journey pertinent at this time?  One gets the feeling here of a little girl trying on all the clothes in her mother’s closet in a hurry before she gets hom, which is, in effect what is taking place: to put out so many images so that at least a few will stick.  Her struggle is to have her cake and eat it too and if she succeeds, only for a moment, then she will reveal a passage out of this 21st century nightmare in which personal success is defined by externals crushing the soul.

Having her cake and eating it too comes in the form of a constant repackaging of the American dream for her Little Fame Monsters that they too can be famous by mere association with the mirror she provides.  They must expend energy on following her expression, purchase concert ticket, shop at her on line store.  This is the merchandizing dream of the pop icon  that Madonna was selling at Gaga’s birth!  What has changed?

What has changed is the transparency of the Internet which 24/7 challenges the “official line” of the corporate media and allows fans to become stars of their own lives via the smart phone and social networking.  It makes fashion so common through imagery that takes away the impetus of owning!

FAME AS VEIL

Lina Morgana "Wonderland"

Oh wait a minute.  Here is the face (left) behind the veil!   The face of Lina Morgana, the beautiful young artist whose mother claims her soul was stolen by Lady Gaga.  Even her name, Morgana, refers to Fata Morgana, the powerful sorceress associated with the Arthurian myth/Grail legend.  With one video, Wonderland, she documents an authentic search for the sacred marriage.  This is a vision of the collective desire:  to penetrate the power of the authentic feminine at the source of female suffering.

This chart reveals recognition via collaboration (or writing songs for others) as a starting point (South Node at zero Scorpio conjunct

Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta natal chart; time unknown, rectified by Lisa Paul

Moon/Pluto).  While Stefani has a definite talent for writing in an archetypal, symbolic  language open to interpretations (Mercury in Pisces square Uranus in Sagittarius), she has no planets in air signs, which accounts for a triumph of instinct over intellect.  Lady Gaga’s multimedia success may indeed be revealing why an art world so bound by conceptualism is presently comatose.  Without the innate ability to intellectually detach her essence (if she has one) from her creation, she is indeed vulnerable to puppetry of the first order.  subject to her instinctual grasp of symbols and with her Aries impatience can’t be bothered by the time it takes to interpret them and reconfigure them for her own journey. This danger of becoming a victim of symbols (the claim of being an illuminati puppet) is one that artists have avoided since Clement Greenberg outlawed the use of symbols in the search for a pure art.

This accusation of soul stealing by Lina’s devastated mother (who is tring to get the rights to the songs her daughter wrote with Lady Gaga), coming at the precise timing of Mercury stationing direct to form the very yod, that with Saturn opposing in Virgo, gave Lady Gaga a form.  Was it being controlled externally by the black magicians?  Interesting how this lawsuit was dropped just after the revelation from Morgana.  It points to conspiratorial forces that continuing to represss the birth of the liberated face of the feminine.

This certainly has been my experience of the past summer in my struggle to restore the face of the feminine in the canon via Margaret Fuller.  There is definitely a resistance the power of this archetype in a corporate dominated celebrity obsessed culture.

The unintended irony of Lady Gaga’s is that — while she may have originally been instinctually motivated by artistic concerns of bringing a universal message about the quest for fame into a slick multimedia pop package — she now entirely beholden to the fans that made her fame possible.  This is the life/death/rebirth cycle of the Ouroboros that her fans claim to discover in her videos.  Lady Gaga sincerely seems to want to free her fans, even though it isn’t clear what this liberation might be from: sexual repression? obscurity?  corporate oppression?  materialism?  Sex?

In this transparent media of the 21st century, no star can offer truth if they themselves are living a lie.  Yet, despite all her occult imagery, the failed alchemical marriage of opposites is the abyss at Gaga’s ambitious core.  It  is what makes her allegations of being a self-made impresario stink like a carcass of the inner dragon that her whirlwind ride as Fame Monster has failed to slay: the Ouroboros choking on its own tail.

VIRGO NEW MOON: Celebrating the Black Virgin of East 13th St.

Celebration on 13th Street, the site of the Black Madonna del Tiindari Shrine

Paulette Perrier of the Marian Iconoography Project

indred Souls: Paulette Perrier with Adele Regina Montagna La Barre, a Byzantine scholar whose parents were born in Tindari.

K

http://blackmadonna2009.wordpress.com

Tindori (right) was named for the Black Madonna of 13th Street. Her grandmother was from the town in Sicily where she originated.