Giving Up and Letting Go

I bought a card from a gift shop several years back, because I found the verse on the card very motivational. Today I discover that it still lying on my table. The verse reads as follows:

Letting Go

Giving up is merely quitting,

Letting go is sweet release.

Giving up is cries of anguish,

Letting go is perfect peace.

Giving up is simply failure,

Letting go, success in sight.

Giving up is very human,

Letting go is most divine.

Letting go I trade my blueprint,

For a a perfect, pure design.

Giving up is death at sundown,

Letting go, the rising sun,

Giving up is "There, its over."

Letting go, "I've just begun!"

- Suzanne Marshall Lucas

Dr. Steven Covey's 4th Habit

For those of us who are not familiar with Dr. Steven Covey's book: "Seven Habits of Highly Successful People" it is a self-improvement book that writes about principles of successful living that he has personally crystallised from his research and which he call as habits:

Habit One: "Be Proactive",
Habit Two: "Begin with the End in Mind,
Habit Three: "First Things First",
Habit Four: "Think Win-Win",
Habit Five: "Seek First to Understand, Then be Understood",
Habit Six: "Synergise",
Habit Seven: "Sharpen the Saw".

I want to reflect on his Habit 4 in particular. I followed a friend's blog the other day where the author voiced her views about recommending or not recommending customers to competitor shops when your own shop does not sell a particular product. The theme behind the write-up is essentially on the "Scarcity Mentality". It is a mentality of economics, where people feels that things are scarce and therefore not to be shared. It is a view that there is only so much money out there to be earned. So do not recommend your customers away.

The opposite of the "Scarcity Mentality" is the "Abundance Mentality" which Dr. Steven Covey teaches as the basis of Habit 4 ("Think Win-Win"). It is only when people feels that there is enough for everyone would they start sharing ideas and start thinking along win-win principles.

For those of us who are familiar with the Tarot, the "Scarcity Mentality" is represented by the 4th of Pentacles. Pentacles is the symbol of money or finances. In the Rider-Waite Tarot deck, the 4th card of the Pentacle suit of the Minor Arcana shows a misery man stepping on two pentacles with both hands clutching one and with a fourth one on top of his head. He is unable to let go of his material wealth.

It is enlightening to realise that this "scarcity mentality" has already been described in medieval times, but in pictorial form.

Movie: "Escape from Huang Shi" - some astrological Musings

As I was watching the movie this evening, it striked me that the story content resonated with very rich astrological themes, especially theme of the outer planets, i.e. Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto.

It is about a British journalist George Hogg who narrowly escaped death during the Massacre of Nanjing and fled to a neighbouring village, Huang Shi, where, under the recommendation of a Communist Guerilla, Jack (Chow Yuen Fatt), managed to take shelter in an orphanage (Plutonian in theme). Each and every boy in Huang Shi was a survivor of the Japanese war and had their own nightmares through the loss of their family members. George befriended them, helped them to repair the orphanage and get them back onto a more healthy way of living. Ms. Lee a Red Cross volunteer was there to help and encourage him.

Soon the Nationalist officials eyed the orphanage and wanted to draft all the children into their army to fight the war. In the critical moment he decided to lead and bring all the children across the Silk Road, over the snowy mountains and across the Gopi Dessert to a place called San Dan where the children would be safe from both the Japanese and the Natonalists. Just as the group was about to leave, one of the orphans hanged himself (Uranus/Pluto in theme) and shocked George. Jack explained to George that their instruction to the group "Let us leave this place" had probably triggered and drawn out the boy's nightmare memories of how his parents perished when he last heard the same sentence spoken to him. Hence, in despair the boy took his own life.

The party left eventually and George was assisted by Lee and Jack. George noticed that Lee suffered from morphine withdrawal along the way. Jack explained that, unlike himself and George who both had noble ideals (Neptune/Jupiter in theme) to live on, Lee had none. So she has to share the pain of each and every orphan in the group and numb her own pain with morphine (Neptunian in theme).

Eventually they struggled and travelled more than 500 miles and reached their destination after 3 months. This feat was thereafter known to the local Chinese as the "Miniature Long March" (Saturn/Pluto in symbolism). Unfortunately on the way, the party encountered a twister in the desert and George suffered a subcutaneous injury. Shortly after he reached his destination, he developed tetanus from the wound and perished.

The orphans who survived the Miniature Long March and have grown up as adults all said George Hogg was the one who gave them the fighting spirit and glued them together on the journey (Saturnian in theme).

The Last of the Matriarchal Society

In June 2007 I visited a near-extinct minority tribe in in the north-western part of Yunnan. They are called the Mosuo People and stay around the Lugu Lake. They can not get the formal government status of a Tribe because they have less than 30,000 population in total. Apparently this tribe has come to be known by the outside world only about fifty years back, and has a matriarchal structure in their society. What does this mean?

Well, the mother heads the family to start with. The Chinese literature describes them as the "female kingdom". Secondly, their traditional marriage style is unique. The boy comes to the girl's house in the night after dark to mate with her and leaves before sunrise. After the lady conceives and gives birth to a child, the child adopts a family name that follows the mother. The identity of the biological father will be formally made known to the child when he/she grows up and gets initiated in a formal ceremony at the age of 11.

Among the Mosuo People, the mother makes all the decisions for the family. The child's maternal uncle will be the "father image" for the child. If the child has a maternal aunt, then she will play the role of a second mother for the child. In the meanwhile, the child's biological father will stay in his own home and will play the role of the "father image" for his own niece/nephew.

The Mosuo People have their own primitive religion and worships gods associated with the natural forces such as the Wind, the Fire, the Earth etc. Some of them worships Tibetan Buddhism in addition, as they find no conflict between the two.

With the opening up of these people to city life and modern schooling, their culture is being fast eroded. When interviewed, they admit that they are facing a turning point in their cultural history. Their children face problems with school registration when they are asked for their parents' identities. From the Chinese government's point of view the current generation of Mosuo People are allowed the option of following conventional marriage rites and procedures like everybody else.

No one knows how long more will the cultural identity of the Mosuo People will last before they merge culturally and completely with the Han Chinese.

India's National Horoscope & the Mumbai Tragedy

As the television news and the newspapers give their account of the attacks in Mumbai over the past three days, many of us follow it in a state of shock. With a major event in its capital city, India as a country seems to be under a major attack. Instinctively, I looked up Nicholas Campion's book on "World Horoscopes" to search for India's national chart.

Understandably it is not easy to obtain for a country the horoscopic equivalent of the birth chart in an individual. We simply do not know when a country is "born", so to speak. According to Michael Baigent's hypothesis, "the beginning of the period of taking of power" is the critical moment for which a national horoscope should be set.

India was under British rule for many years and it achieved independence from the British at 0:00 hr on 15th August 1947 in Delhi. Apparently, according to Campion there is evidence that the midnight moment was elected as the most auspicious time for the occasion. The chart for Independent India is therefore set for the above data.

The national Ascendant is in Gemini and Mercury as the Chart Ruler is in the 3rd house. Immediately what comes to my mind is the ability and agility of its people in mastering languages. What strikes me however is the presence of a Saturn-Pluto conjunction with the IC (Imum Coeli). It brings to mind that this is a nation that is very much tied to its roots, origin and traditions.

I next decided to use this National Chart for an analysis of the Mumbai attacks, which, according to the media started around 9:20 pm local time on 26th November 2008 with the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus Railway Station. And, as I cast a bi-wheel chart with the transits for the above timing, I stared at it with awe. Several astrological significators of a catastrophe are clearly present on the chart.

Firstly, transit Pluto is exact oppostion to India's Mars. Pluto is a planet of forceful, hidden power often accompanied by transformational change. Mars on the other hand is a planet of aggression, drive and often symbolises war. With the two planets in opposition, it suggests a major conflict accompanied by a major act of violence.

Secondly transit Pluto is at the verge of moving from Sagittarius to Capricorn, in fact, this happens only 3 hours later. In Astrology this is called an ingress and generally signifies a significant event.

Thirdly the Moon is moving into a New Moon Phase while transit retrograde Uranus is turning direct, both astrological phenomena being mirrors of outer world events.

Fourthly, the Nodal Axis, which is often used in Astrology to time events, is seen to be in exact conjunction with India's Saturn-Pluto-IC conjunction. It seems to tell us that this is a moment when India's sense of innermost self or identity is under serious attack.

Cornerstone of the Horoscope

Most of us are aware that the Sun Sign is the cornerstone of Pop-Astrology and has captured the imagination of the masses and media for decades. What may be less well known by the public is the fact that horoscope readings in Natal Astrology attach far more importance to the Rising Sign. Whenever someone asks me why, I explain it through historical roots.

The word "horoscope" is derived from two Greek words: "hora" meaning the hour, and "skepios" meaning to watch. In the old days, the astrologer would literally watch the skies to identify the rising sign at the moment of a child's birth. Hence, the horoscope was identified with the rising sign itself, once upon a time.

Today, the rising sign continues to remain prime in importance, but the professional astrologer needs to examine all the signs and houses of all the planets in order to do a proper horoscope reading.

Flow with the Tide

There is a quotation from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar which I studied in secondary school, and which has stayed in my memory since. The passage is so descriptive of the philosophy of Astrology that I would like to share it with others:

"There is tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune,
Omitted, all the voyage of their lives,
Will be bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea we are now afloat,
That we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures."

Human affairs exist in cycles. In studying these cycles, Astrology helps us to flow with the tide and make the most out of our lives.

In Search of Meaning

Worldly phenomena are cyclical. The sun rises and sets daily. The four seasons come, go and return. The tide rises with the moon. Human civilisations rise and fall. So does the stock market indices. Heroes rise to fame and then fade away. Academics like economists talk about Kondratieff long waves. The more pragmatic people like entrepreneurs look at business cycles in relation to their investments. At the individual level, the female gender have monthly menstrual cycles to grapple with. Few knowledge areas deal with the understanding of natural in the way Astrology does. It is through the study of Astrology that we are able to bring together our wisdom to make meaning of the cyclical events that happen around us every day. As cycles come and go, they show up a recurring pattern, and as we follow the recurring pattern of events, we can anticipate what things may possibly happen, and when. Therein lies my fascination and passion with Astrology.