The Mutilation of Uranus by Saturn, Georgio Vasari, 16th century
My last week has been less of me riding triumphantly on Taurus and more of me slouching towards summer through residual emotional sludge. And so it goes. It seems the more we slouch forward in time, the more opportunities there are to recognize and release old patterns that are no longer doing us any good. I'm taking Speedwell Essence and a heart elixir and being kind to myself. A storm just hit which feels good; there is some release there as well. My heart contracts and swells in the constriction. I know, by this time, it's normal, and a part of my cycle, however much I'm tired of it. Here we go again.
On Synchronicity
I'm going to cheer myself up by writing about Synchronicity. Carl Jung introduced the concept to psychology as a way to talk about those coincidences that are not coincidences, seemingly random events that are linked in a mysterious way, not through any linear understanding of causality, and that give meaning to our inner experience, connecting it to the outer world. I think of it as winks from the world, telling me I am on the right path and that all is well. I love seeing how the universe dialogues with me. I keep track of them and I find that the more I keep track of them, the more I notice them, so that life can feel sometimes like a large network of inter-related meaningful events that I am simply observing. There is in fact nothing I need to do except be there to observe the meaning that is being made for me, that was always already there. Granted, I can go through periods of only feeling chaos, feeling lost in a series of seemingly tasteless jokes at the expense of my ego, but then the fractals start to appear. That's quite Uranian too actually. Maybe Uranus in Taurus will be about us all grasping the strength of our thoughts and seeing in real time how they influence our reality, or at least these ideas becoming more understandable.
But back to Saturn. My employer recently requested I accompany her elderly mother and family on a touristic outing in Geneva. I don't usually do this kind of thing as part of my job, but I thought it could be a fun way of seeing more of Geneva and part of the visit was to one of my favorite places, the Bodmer Foundation, where the manuscript I studied in my dissertation is located. Also, I would get taken out to lunch, so I couldn't say no. We would go to the Patek Phillip Museum and then to Cologny for lunch and the Bodmer Foundation Museum for a guided tour of the current exhibit, on books and gardens.
Getting A Huge Wink From The Universe
Since I started working with Saturn, when it moved into Capricorn back in December, I've been getting a lot of confirmations that the work is going well in the form of signs. About half way through the first visit, I realized I was getting a huge wink from the universe. You probably know about Geneva and its role in the history of the watch industry. Well, I did too, but I'd never thought to go to the Patek Phillip museum. I thought of it as the sort of ritzy thing rich tourists like to do, but I was blown away by the collection and the intricacy of the construction of our temple to the time god Kronos, to Saturn. The marking of time has shaped our world in so many ways, from what we wear to our current technology, to the watch as object. At first the watch was ornament, and simply as a record of human craft, the collection is amazing. There are all forms of beautifully decorated watches to wear and to display, there is a watch made of wood, and ways to mechanically measure most anything, the moon cycle, the tides, the stars. The things humans have shaped with their hands! The intricacy of the inner workings of these sometimes miniature machines! No wonder there has been such pride and belief in our ability to mark it all, to know it and will it to be so, to fill time, to end time. Oh Saturn. There was a beauty and a bitter-sweetness in it for me, standing there, as I am so often in defiance to this masculine sky-god control. It was as though I were just seeing it, in all its glory, for the first time, and all its fall. What will happen now? The objects are there, remembering. You can go see them too. I might go back again, and think of how we've mastered nothing at all, but we've learned to mark time, and in so doing we've also gotten some valuable lessons from Hubris. And how intricate and fragile a construction time is! And how skilled our hands. Remember this.
Des jardins et des livres
The second exhibit, after a delicious lunch, was called Des jardins et des livres and I felt so peaceful there in the smell and world of old books that I love, listening to the curator explain how they had brought them all together; over 150 objects, manuscripts and printed books, from their collection, from Paris and Milan. And all about how people in the past connected to plants! The flowers were winking at me from the pages of four hundred year old manuscripts. I sighed and listened and watched and regretted I didn't have a pen to take notes. I bought a book, a facsimile of Basilius Besler's Hortus Eystettensis, and thought of all I can keep learning from the flowers. It was two passions, two loves, come together. I'll find a way to do more of that. I want to write medievalist ecocriticism and study how we related to flowers in the literary past. I saw how the garden itself has long been a way of ordering and dividing nature, much like the watch did with time, and, interestingly enough, the two exhibits followed the same timeline, from the 15th-16th century to now, both documenting our changing relationship to the natural world. The exhibit ended with how modern and postmodern writers have delved into the world of plants from a subjective and personal perspective. I want to do the opposite. How do the plants see us? Maybe I'll write a book on that. I'm on the right track.
How interesting to be standing in this place at this time, reading the signs! I'm keeping track. And that these two eye-opening visits, so perfectly in relation to my current train of thought, were offered to me. The world is generous. I didn't even have to ask. Here's hoping you are reveling in your tracks too, at least most of the time.
(Originally posted May 22nd, 2018)
