By virtue of my astrological chart, I meditate a great deal on Saturn. It is by far the strongest and most capable planet in my map. It is in Capricorn, in domicile, and even in its own term, in the 4th house, at the bottom of the chart. It is domiciled and angular, capable of…
It is said that Pessoa, a profound student of occultism and astrology, as well as a learned connoisseur of the Hermetic arts in general, managed to foresee his death and missed the mark by only a few months. In his lifetime, astrology was re-emerging after a long period of obscurantism, mainly through initiatic and Theosophical…
When the Portuguese philosopher António Telmo said in an interview “the ideas I have come from the angels”, he was making a precise ontological claim: thought is not private property of the ego. The human intellect operates as a receptive organ. Just as the eye does not create light but receives it, the intellect does…
I was just reading John Michael Greer on discursive meditation, understood as a process that exercises the capacity to work with symbols in an intelligible way, a deliberate training of the symbolic muscle through repetition. Meditation has always been this, before its modern reduction to the exact opposite, the idea that meditating means emptying the…
In medieval astrology, the main planets to be considered for profession are three: Mercury, Venus, and Mars. Mercury signifies merchants, scribes, men of calculation, technique, and craft; Venus signifies artists, musicians, and all occupations that proceed from the pleasure of form and harmony; Mars signifies warriors and occupations of harsh action, cutting, and conflict. Jupiter…
The most common reading of the Six of Cups associates the card with nostalgia. That interpretation almost always comes from the usual iconography. Children, flowers, simple gestures, “innocent” scenes. Let’s see what nostalgia actually means. Nostalgia comes from the Greek nóstos (return) and álgos (pain). Literally: the pain of an impossible return. The impossibility of…
After doing a reading for William Stoner, I decided to do another one for another stoic figure in American literature: Don Gately from Infinite Jest. Now Don Gately is one of the main staff members at Ennet House, the halfway house for recovering addicts in Infinite Jest. He is a former burglar and addict who…
I was meditating on the Knight of Wands. He is Air of Fire. That combination alone says almost everything. The rational, mercurial, mental element applied to direct and immediate action on the world. It’s the moment when plans are acted upon, when the mind gives direction to the flame. He is the conqueror who brings…
I received a question from a querent who wished to know whether her natal chart contained any indication that may explain the repeated failures in her relationships, which she described as being marked by loss, conflict, and recurring frustration. The analysis that follows is conducted strictly within the parameters of medieval astrology. I. Jupiter and…
Bill Hicks was one of the most intensely influential figures of my adolescence. An anarchist with a profoundly spiritual, untamed and subversive core, he embodied exactly what a teenager at the height of his estrangement from the world often admires most. His comedy was a philosophical manifesto disguised as stand-up, a form of spiritual warfare…
