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+ Greek Myths, Hercules, Higher Mind, Journey of the hero, Labours of Hercules, Mystery Schools, myths and spirituality, Silent Eye School, Uncategorized
Nine Deadly Sins with Coffee, part 52 – A Descent of Fire
by Steve Tanham
Nine Deadly Sins with Coffee, part 52 – A Descent of Fire
.Alexandra.
When I was younger I did some flying lessons. They began as ‘Try Out Day’ gift for one of my birthdays, and developed into an expensive hobby which I had to give up when I took out a mortgage on my midweek apartment in London.
As soon as I experienced the sheer joy of the Carnforth Flying School’s venerable Cessna talking off from it’s old grass strip near our home, I was hooked. Climbing, steeply, into the air and seeing the landscape falling away, below, was like entering a new world – one quite different from a trip in a commercial plane: scrubbed nicely clean and sanitised…
Tightly buckled into the small cabin of the Cessna, with my instructor next to me, sharing the intercom link in the headset, was a magical experience.
That was many years ago. There was no coffee in the cabin today, though. And my instructor was no stranger…
“I didn’t realise you had become a pilot!” I shouted above the noisy but vibrant engine. “Did you know I had done some flying, too?”
“Yes–you told me, once – many years ago.” John took his eyes off the altimeter and smiled across at me. My headset cracked with his voice. “Didn’t you stop just before you were due to do your first solo flight?”
I nodded, conserving my throat. There was sadness at the memory; a thing not finished, a road not taken…
“I did some student flying in my thirties,” said John, “But it got very expensive; too expensive for our young business to support,” he nodded at the memory, his eyes also somewhere far away. “Went back to it when I retired from the IT world. Recently qualified as an instructor!”
“So what’s all this got to do with Prometheus, the Hound of Hell, and Heracles?” I said.
John looked down through his side window. We were levelling off from our steep climb and turning Westwards.
“Notice how the worlds change; how ‘lived in’ become a ‘map from above’?” he said, ignoring my question.
“You couldn’t have a coffee with someone up here in the air!” I laughed, getting his drift. “Unless you were in the same plane…”
John smiled at that. “I’ve brought a flask, but I’m saving the coffee for something special.”
I turned to look at him, but the ironic smile on the lips said that there’d be no more for now… I decided to elaborate on what I knew to be an important connection between the scale of things and their realms, “But down there on the ground, where the view is much more local and small-scale, there are people drinking at Rose’s Cafe.”
Morecambe was just coming into view on the horizon, the early sun catching the tops of the taller buildings, making golden shards out of the faded glory of the old seaside town. It was beautiful…
“Which way then? Your choice!” asked John, levelling the plane off at our cruising altitude, somewhere over the small town of Kirby Lonsdale. Far below there were a multitude of tearooms, I thought, smiling to myself, but we wouldn’t be visiting them, either.
He never wasted an opportunity. I knew the choice of direction was a metaphor. “Pick what to do…a bit like Cerberus, then – the three headed dog? The one that guards the entrance to Hades?”
He laughed at my artifice. “Three heads, three choices?” he said. “And I like ‘guards’. Go on then…the enigma of the three headed dog that stops dead people leaving?”
“One of the central issues of our lives – the trap of Desire!” I said over the resonant boom of the engine and its whining thrum-thrum.
He banked us slightly left, taking us onto an easterly course. The line of the distant ocean was a field of gold, lit from the dawn sky behind us. “And the other two heads?”
“The left is sensation, the right, ‘good intentions’. They all have snakes wrapped around them…symbols of Illusion, I believe?”
John nodded. “Very good,” he said, levelling us off with the shining gold dead ahead. “And does Heracles attack the Sensations or the Good Intentions?”
“Neither!” I laughed, over the whining notes. “He strangles the middle one – Desire, itself, with his bare hands,” I’d had another flash of inspiration and added, “and thereby frees himself…and all the other dead people, if you think about it…”
“Like Buddha, then – he attacks the cause, not the symptoms…” John was smiling so much, his teeth were catching the gold of the sun, too. “Wonderful stuff! All yours, then…”
He sat back and let go of the controls. The Cessna’s nose began to dip, slightly – he hadn’t trimmed for level flight; probably deliberately!
“No!” I screamed into the dawn. But my hands reached out and took the controls as the old memories and skills came back to aid me.
“The Carnforth field is on 120 degrees, over there.” He pointed into the golden air. “You can set her down on your own–you can fly us to the underworld…”
My mind was shouting, but strangely, there was a sense of calmness; of purpose, there too. “Where’s the wind?” I yelled into the mike.
“Coming straight off the sea, I would say, right in line with our approach to the strip… you’ve been blessed with the perfect approach!” He looked around us then clicked on his radio link. “Charlie-Victor-Delta-Hotel forty-two…final…”
“Roger Charlie-Victor-Delta-Hotel forty-two.” Crackled the almost instant response.
Were they all in on it? I wondered.
“Damn you, uncle John,” I muttered, loud enough to be heard in his headset.
He chuckled. “Very appropriate that… besides, you seemed keen to take the controls.”
I was about to object, violently. when I realised he was talking metaphorically. Yes, sod it, I had pushed to take the ‘controls’; and had obviously seemed ready to go ‘solo’ even if he was next to me in the cabin… I wondered… Maybe one was never alone in the cabin of life, just not used to conversing with a loving intelligence that always sat next to us…
The landscape was getting bigger, houses and churches were becoming clearer, below, in all their detail. I recognised the height, the speed, the distance… I was doing it right…
About a half mile out from the small grass airstrip, which I could now see, there was a sudden flash of red and gold below us. I looked down and, for a second, I’ll swear I could see a tiny shadow of the plane in the gold-licked metal of the Glasgow to London train as it flashed by at a huge speed.
Then there was no more time to think, just to act. “Flaps to twenty,” I said pushing the the throttle back in, and trimming the plane as we coasted over the edge of the field and seemed to hang in the air, sinking very gently to land with a noisy series of bumps.
The Cessna quickly lost her speed on the grassy runway. With a simple, “I have control.” John upped the revs and taxied her off the runway and onto a remote part of the boundary, while I sat, numbed and looking straight ahead, silent and happy in a way I could not find words for.
I came to in the now silent cabin, at the smell of coffee being poured from a flask. The aroma filled the small space, along with another, less expected smell. I turned round to see him holding a steaming plastic mug out to me. In his other hand, he had a miniature bottle of cognac.
“The cognac’s for my cup of coffee,” he said with a wily smile.
“Why?” I whispered, feigning outrage.
“Because I’m preserving your liver,” he said, chuckling…
(Image – Prometheus and the return of the vulture)
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Nine Deadly Sins with Coffee is usually published on Thursdays.
©Copyright, The Silent Eye School of Consciousness, 2016.
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Stunning photo from SmackedPentax.
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Running Elk and Sue conspire…
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River of the Sun, chapter 17 – The Rule of Three
Lord Menascare, former mentor to the King-in-Rising, stood in the outer arc of the temple, close to Anzety, the high priest. He watched the care with which Neferaset approached and woke the young priest, Amkhren, whose body was lying, still deeply asleep, where he had left it. The four of them were the only occupants of the temple.
What must it be like, thought the Eye of the Cobra, to have your world destroyed, but still need to pick your way through the debris of what you held most sacred, to save another’s life? Damn you, Rameses – did nothing I taught you take root in the fertile soil of your pampered soul?
But I can do this! His anger became a fury, and the fury became a voice, projected so that the stone walls of the temple echoed in their jagged harmonics, causing every head but that of the kneeling Neferaset to look to the West. The power of Menascare’s voice was such that it reached those waiting in the passageway outside.
“Let all bear witness,”chanted Rameses’ wayward mage, “that in obedience to the King-in-Rising, Rameses, Chosen of Ra, the high priestess of this temple rightly demands our participation in the continuation of this sacred rite.”
Menascare glanced across at Obion, knowing the choice of words would be crucial. The Talatat leader tightened his fingers around the Khopesh sword he always carried. One slip of meaning and the elite commander would attack him. He knew that Obion had his orders, too – and there was no certainty that both would be the same…
“Let all know,” Menascare held up the royal scroll left by the ruler, conscious that the very edge of danger was being trod, “that by examination during the night, our mighty Regent has determined that the high priestess is fit to lead us in the further testing of the young priest-to-be, Amkhren.”
Sensing the powers that strove for mastery of her space, Neferaset seized her opportunity, “Amkhren, wake now!”
No-one of this young man’s calibre should be faced with waking in a temple whose dark wings will almost certainly toy with him until his death, mere hours from now, thought Menascare, shaking his head at Neferaset’s courage and…nobility.
The boy turned a sleepy head, then unfolded bent limbs and stretched in the unselfconscious way that young things do. He looked around the temple, startled that it was not all a dream, yet holding fast to the eyes of Neferaset whose power was focussed on him in this, his weakest moment.
The high priestess spoke softly, “You did well, Amkhren. You did what I commanded you to do. Now you must do more…so much more.”
Amkhren struggled to his feet and bowed, awkwardly, to Neferaset. “Yes, High Priestess,” he said, adding in a whisper. “Light of my existence…”
Menascare watched as Neferaset’s attention shifted – to the poles of power represented by the Talatat commander and himself. He studied her, admiring what he saw, as she unfolded her lithe body from the floor and, standing once again, gathered her resolve.
“Menascare, Obion!” Her voice was firm, “I have my orders from the King. Do you support me in what I must do?”
He could reply from the heart, “I can only speak for myself, High Priestess; I have my orders too – and they are to support you–but, also, to ensure that I lend to your rituals the same eye that the King-in-Rising, received at his tasks when the Regent was the age that your young apprentice priest is now.”
Obion spoke as one who tolerated being in the temple only because the King-in-Rising had demanded it.
“I have my orders, too, High Priestess, and in the Regent’s hand. Beyond those I cannot say, since neither the Eye of the Cobra nor I have seen him since last night,” he smiled slyly, “though you may have seen a lot of him..”
“I am sure the King’s eyes are everywhere, Obion,” said Neferaset, easily deflecting the soldier’s slight, “and that he sees through both you and me as he wishes. To return to my question: do you place your forces at my command so that I may carry out in this temple what the King has instructed me to do?”
That was a brave thing to say, thought Menascare. Everything now waited on the commander’s response.
“My orders are to guard, watch and wait,” said Obion, the deadly overtones obvious in his words.
“Very well,” said Neferaset. “This place, though damaged, is still a magical temple in the high tradition of ancient Kemet, our black land. The rites here were never designed for a circle of hardened soldiers. I will need to command their movements if not their words.” she looked from Menascare to Obion and back, testing them with her eyes. “Do I have your word on this?” She fixed her gaze on Obion, her evaluation of friend and foe finished, waiting for confirmation in their actions to follow…
Menascare interrupted, stealing the space within Obion’s slower response. “The Talatat are soldiers of the mind, above all else. Their obedience is absolute and they will do as Obion commands. What that is, I cannot say…”
Confident that she had at least secured a renewed beginning for her temple authority, she turned to talk to Amkrhen.
“Priest to be,” she said, softly. “You have one turning of the sand to wash and prepare yourself with fresh robes. Be swift in body but let your mind be swifter…”
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Index to previous chapters:
Chapter One – Gifts From the River
Chapter Two – An Agony of Sunset
Chapter Three – The Dark Waters
Chapter Four – Touching the Sky
Chapter Five – The Fire Within
Chapter Seven – The Crystal Air
Chapter Eight – The Unchosen Darkness
Chapter Nine – The Priestess Calls
Chapter Ten – Darkness at the Door
Chapter Twelve – Above and Below
Chapter Thirteen – The Binding Voices
Chapter Fifteen – The Intimacy of Enemies
Chapter Sixteen – Old Friends, New Dangers
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Introduction to River of the Sun
In April 2015 a group of people gathered in the Derbyshire hills to enact the Silent Eye’s annual Mystery Play, entitled, The River of the Sun. The five-act mystical drama formed the backbone of that Spring weekend, and told the fictional story of a clash of ego and divinity set in an Isis-worshipping temple located on an island in the Nile, during the the fascinating period of the 19th dynasty, the time of Rameses the Great.
The 18th and 19th dynasties were a period of deep upheaval for ancient Egypt. The reign of the ‘Heretic King’, Akhenaten saw Egypt’s religious structure torn apart, as the revolutionary Pharaoh became what Wallis Budge called the ‘world’s first monotheist’; re-fashioning the power of the many Gods with one supreme entity – the visible sun disc, the Aten, for which Akhenaten, alone, was the high priest. Many have pointed to the failure of the ‘herectic’ Pharaoh’s politics, but few have doubted the sincerity of his religious vision. He will, forever, remain an enigma.
Whatever the nobility of his goal, the actions he took were ruthless, and included the shutting down of the annual deity festivals which were the sole point of ritualistic contact between the ordinary people of Egypt and their locally-worshipped gods. In addition, Akhenaten paid little attention to the domestic and military affairs of Egypt, allowing the country’s enemies to encroach on its borders, greatly weakening Egypt’s power at that critical time for the region.
After Akhenaten’s brief reign, culminating in the Pharaoh’s mysterious death, shadowy military forces took control of Egypt, instigating the 19th dynasty in the persons of Rameses I and, soon thereafter, Seti I, whose throne name derives from the god Set – often considered the ‘evil one’ because of his slaying of his brother, Osiris.
Seti I is judged by modern historians as having been one of the greatest-ever pharaohs, yet his importance in the 19th dynasty was eclipsed by the actions of his second son, the brilliant Rameses II, whose long reign of over sixty years included much self-promotion and the alteration of Egypt’s recent history. Both Seti and Rameses II (Rameses the Great) were passionate about the evisceration of the last traces of Akhenaten’s ‘chaos’, as they saw it.
But, although, by the 19th dynasty, the the ‘Son of the Sun’ was long dead and the buildings of his embryonic and doomed city of Tel-al-Armana were reduced to rubble, something of that time remained in the Egyptian consciousness. A new kind of connection between Pharaoh and God had been established, one which elevated mankind, if only in the being of the Pharaoh, to be someone who ‘talked with God’. It was, at the very least, a bold experiment and, though the world would have to wait until the 19th century to re-discover the ‘erased’ pharaoh, the philosophical waves of that period rippled out and dramatically affected the way the incoming 19th dynasty had to repair the worship of the Gods, uniting the people of Egypt under a trinity of Amun-Ra, Khonsu and Mut.
Our fictional story is a tale of politics, friendships, mind and faith. It is set against an historically accurate background, and at a time when Rameses was due to take the throne from the dying Seti .
Returning to Thebes in his swift warship, crewed by his fearsome Talatat mind-warriors, Rameses decides to mount a surprise night-time raid on the island-based Isis temple which has prospered under the sponsoring reign of his father. Rameses suspects that the inner teachings conducted by the revered High Priestess and Priest conceal views that relate to the thoughts of the heretic Pharaoh, Akhenaten. He plans to insert himself and his warriors of the mind into the islands’s Spring rites as the high priest and priestess begin a cycle of initiation for a chosen apprentice priest who has proved himself worthy of special advancement.
The resulting clash draws everyone, including the young Pharaoh-in-Rising, into a spiralling situation where each is forced to confront their own fears as well as living out the roles which life has allocated them. River of the Sun is the story of a spiritual and political encounter from which none emerge unchanged, including the man who will shortly be Pharaoh, the mighty Rameses II, whose secret name for himself is ‘the unchosen’.
Through the eyes and minds of those surrounding the chosen priest and the ‘unchosen’ Pharaoh, the River of the Sun takes us on a tense and compelling journey to the heart of power and its eternal struggle with truth.
The chapters of the book will be serialised in this blog. The finished work is planned to be available in paperback and Kindle in the Spring of 2016.
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River of the Sun, serialised here, and its associated images, are the intellectual property of Stephen Tanham and is ©Copyright material.
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+ Ancient Landscapes, Bakewell Jail, Ben's Bit, Doomsday series of books, esoteric psychology, Silent Eye School
Ben’s Bit, part 13 – The White Hot Blade of Separation
by Steve Tanham
“And then there are the moments when the white hot blade of separation comes into your life, and everything changes. In the presence of such instantaneous power, you realise that the human view of transformation is impoverished by a lack of true experience at the edge, while your former life is separated from the now with a cut of such precision that it is as though the past was a dream… In such moments it is so very important to be fully conscious of what happens next; of what the universe fills that void with. If the deep and gentle breathing of true consciousness can overcome the panic and fear of sudden change, there are keys dropped into a life, then, that are of incalculable value…”
I wrote that, many years ago, lying on a floor, curled up on a Persian rug pulled by friction around my knees and thighs within the near foetal position I had taken in the middle of a moment of black and total grief. The old writing pad on which it was transcribed in tearful letters was, fortuitously, lying nearby, along with a pencil. For months it was pinned over my desk in the room that serves as my home office and place of writing. I looked at it so often it became burned into my memory. It has no claim to good writing – it is just what I found at the bottom of the old well that was me…
And now, reproduced in pencil on the pad given me by the departed Yellow Eyes, it stares me in the face each morning, as I make myself repeat it, like a mantra, while shaving over the old enamelled sink.
I cannot change my external circumstances–I am a prisoner, a fact brutally reinforced by the clinical and degrading encounter with the Governor in the shower block. I can only examine, as honestly as possible, how I am reacting to this fact.
I have a tendency to intellectualise things–we all have a makeup that is driven by such facets of our deeper selves. For some of us, it’s the emotions that power us, for others, the instinctive hungers are dominant. For me, it’s thinking; and that, while it has its upside, can be a dreadful curse when you’re locked in a gloomy remand cell for most of the day and night…
The only cure for the encroaching madness that the newly unveiled Governor and his well-qualified team would love me to embrace is to reject thinking, feeling and lusting; and harmonise a distillation of them all into something the ancients called Being…
Being is easy to say and rather more difficult for the personality to approach. Those who have touched it long for its return. Those whose understanding has matured are swallowed into its glory, swapping the realities of becoming for those of an ever changing face of an intelligent and loving eternity. I know the words…now would be great time to translate knowing into understanding… and beyond.
What stops us stepping naturally into Being is a dirty set of glasses…very powerful glasses, with lenses forged in the process of egoic learning that is our lives.
But Being is our home…and deep within us we feel that loss, bitterly, and search for the marks of others who understood that. The ancients who carved the now reinstated Saxon cross knew that…and, reading the landscape as carefully as they had carved the stone, they knew where the stone should stand in order to fulfil its purpose.
To see this world we need to take off those glasses of the personality – or, at least give them a substantial wash… This washing is not a trivial affair, but it is all that is required.
After that there is only seeing, for which we simply need our Selves.
Don and Wen: among the most significant names in my life… Two of my best friends, taken from me by an act of ‘armed vandalism’ on my part–if the words of Dr Grey in my latest interview, combined as a double blow after the Governor’s ‘visit’ – are to be taken seriously. The Governor carefully gave me the barest facts at my recent meeting with his committee. He’s an astute one. He knows his psychology – there’s nothing as acidic to the mind as part-knowing something.
But the good Doctor Grey has reassured me that I will be having a daily ‘interview’ to talk about my mental state. He thinks this may help my conditions here in Bakewell Gaol. It’s a clever use of language–he knows I will read it as ‘condition’ rather than ‘conditions’, and it will reassure me that, under the fist of the no-nonsense Governor, my interference with their own agenda will soon be at an end…
When your mind has eighteen hours a day to do nothing but think, it imagines… The blade of imagination has two edges… One of them is a very good friend to the human consciousness; the other…
Are my friends, Don and Wen locked up somewhere, too? Can the reach of the Knights of Severity be that strong? See, I’m imagining, again. The Governor didn’t say they’d been caught, not exactly. He took great delight in naming them and telling me that they were being pursued, and by two of his golfing buddy’s best police officers… And I know Don and Wen well; they’re not best equipped to escape the police for long… unless some unseen agency is flying low over their heads and leading their way through the dimensions of the possible. Equally, they might simply and sensibly be enjoying that trip to Scotland they were planning before the white hot blade struck me, again. The Governor and his police friends might simply have their first names and nothing more?
I reach for the pad, which has only a few pages left, and rip out one of the remaining, precious sheets.
I like triangles.
In our world – the world of physical consciousness, things happen in triangles. Old adages like ‘things come in threes’ have much wisdom behind them; but they’re partial. I know a deeper version, and its use begins with writing down what you know in a certain way.
I sit on my bed and think… this is good thinking – aimed at a specific problem whose elements are clearly identified. After several minutes, I close my eyes and imagine a clock face on which I project my triangle. Then, emptying my mind, I wait and breathe, shutting down the intellect as best I can.
It works. Five minutes later I’m standing at my sink with a new drawing pinned to the ancient cork-board that sits above the sink and mirror. To anyone else, the drawing would be a simple arrangement of names. To me, and to Don and Wen had they been here, the arrangement is of great significance in describing the driving forces of the now.
We are all of us arrows, and just at this moment, I wish I hadn’t been the arrow that Wen and Don fired… But the white hot blade of separation doesn’t have to be received passively. It can be wielded in defence, too… It can be used to carve the now…
<See index below for other parts of this story>
———————————————————–< to be continued-
Ben’s Bit is a continuing first-person narrative of the character created by Stuart France and Sue Vincent, which may bear some relation to the author of this story, Steve Tanham, their fellow director of the Silent Eye School of Consciousness. In the latest of their books, Scions of Albion, Ben is arrested for his overly enthusiastic part in a mad escapade, and the other two are nowhere to be seen . . . For more, enjoy their Doomsday series of books, and the new series (Lands of Exile) beginning soon. Click here for details.
Index to Ben’s Bits:
Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six, Part Seven, Part Eight, Part Nine, Part Ten, Part Eleven, Part Twelve,
Sue Vincent describes her and Stuart’s perspective on Ben’s imprisonment: Part One, Part Two
The Doomsday Series of books and the new book, But n’ Ben by Stuart France and Sue Vincent
The Silent Eye School of Consciousness – a modern mystery school.
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A heart-warming account by Ali of a recent meeting with Stuart and Sue to discuss the Silent Eye’s April Workshop – Leaf and Flame. We have a small handful of places remaining… any takers?
Sue (Vincent) and I have always got on. We hit it off from Day One – meeting, as I recall, at Savio House for one of the SOL Gatherings (either GOL or RWP) four or five years ago.
Very quickly we discovered that we had much in common – not least, a love of writing and an earthy, nay coarse in my case, sense of humour. Many’s the rib-aching guffaw we have had since.
A while back, Sue suggested that we meet up to have a day out and to discuss the forthcoming Silent Eye weekend of Ritual Drama, entitled ‘Leaf and Flame:TheFoliate Man’ and based, by all that is wonderful, around the story told in ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’. Had I been in a position to fund myself back in 1979, this Middle English poem was going to be the subject of my M.A…
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Nine Deadly Sins with Coffee, part 51 – Butterfly Soup
by Steve Tanham
Nine Deadly Sins with Coffee, part 51 – Butterfly Soup
.Alexandra.
I was ready when he arrived, fifteen minutes early to my twenty. My notebook was out on the small table, already open at the furiously scribbled summary. Two other objects were concealed beneath it. My carefully timed pair of coffees were just being delivered by Rose.
“Gotta hand it to the girl,” said Rose, tousling what is left of John’s hair as he bent to sit and could, therefore, do nothing about it. “Her timing’s getting a lot better…”
John grinned at the twin assault – one on his endangered vanity; the other directed at his habit of keeping me off-guard by being early to these meetings. But he said nothing.
I sipped my hot latté and did my snaky look at him. Still he said nothing.
“I have decided,” I began, brimming with plan. “That I need to recover some ground.” More coffee, then, “Having valiantly gained the initiative a few weeks ago, I have,” I pulled a face. “Lost the plot, somewhat…”
His smile broadened, but he remained steadfastly silent.
This was going well. “I had been considering things blow by blow, episode by episode,” I said. “whereas I should have been taking Heracles’ ‘year’ as a whole, single process – particularly the astrological significances.”
He finally spoke. “There’s only so much one can absorb on each visit. More is revealed each time… as it should be!”
He chuckled into his coffee, remembering how hot Rose made it and blowing it first, then sipping it gingerly. “And if you think Heracles is a challenge you should see the frown lines Noah’s Ark can induce!”
He sat back again, spreading his arms in a gesture of invitation.
We only had a forty-five minute window and I had a lot to say. I began, “The astrological progression is really a ‘container’ for the experiences of the aspirant. He or she begins, as does the astrological year, in March, in the sign of Aries.”
John was nodding, waiting.
“He bursts into his quest, ready to head-butt anything, full of the energy of new beginnings. Indomitable Soul that he is, he conquers the wild mares but then leaves his younger and less capable friend, Adberis, alone with the Mares and he is killed. In other words, it needed both Soul and Personality to tame the Wild Mares, and Heracles forgot that…”
I watched his lips break into an approving half smile, but he kept most of it suppressed.
Momentum. I was on a roll. A small sip of coffee and we were off onto the next bit. “In Taurus, he has to deal with the powerful lower nature of his physical self – with instincts, particularly sexual energy, delivering the bull to the care of a benign face of very focussed folk called Cyclopses…and points of single focus are very important as we’ll see when we get to Sagittarius, our latest foray…”
I was enjoying myself and had no intention of stopping. “He delves into that paradox of soul in body in Gemini, too, but becoming aware that his nature is twin, and that he has to accept that a new world is opening up.”
John was passive, smiling and sipping his drink. He made no attempt to speak, enjoying my charge.
“In Cancer,” I continued. “he has to come to terms with the fact that he is a member of a family, a tribe, a nation and that these arenas have other souls in them, too; but he doesn’t lose sight of his true quest, and achieves the capture of the elusive doe of intuition.”
“He keeps his eyes on the Sun.” suggested John, interrupting for the first time.
I thought about that and agreed. “Yes, despite the forces of the moon being in his way, he achieves his goal.”
More coffee, then, “In Leo, there’s a fight to the death with the Lion – but only so that something else can be born in the months that follow. In Virgo he makes a complete hash of the gift of new life offered by Hippolyte, the Queen of all the women, who, in a higher sense he should have united with rather than indulging his nasty habit of killing those he loved!”
Note to self, I thought. Stop obsessing about Heracles the butcher… “Comes with being a criminal lawyer,” I muttered into my coffee. John pretended not to notice. I continued, “So in Virgo he becomes conscious that the world of form – our physical world, is really nurturing something very special – something belonging to the Sun… or was that Son?” I let the words hang, proud that I had added them off-script, so to speak.
John had finished his coffee. I had barely started mine. He signalled Rose for two more. I smiled at his optimism and continued, “In Libra, he has to find the balance of power and the use of the mind to tame the respected but feared Boar and nearly stalls in his quest, stuck between the forces of the above and the below.” I paused. “And then we come to Scorpio – my rising sign…” I sighed.
“Scorpio?” John asked, studying me. “A problem?”
“Sex and death…”
“Beg pardon?”
“My best friend, who is a Scorpio, used to describe her life as a maze of ‘sex and death'”
“Nasty sting!” John pulled a face, obviously re-living a distant memory. I didn’t ask.
“Where Heracles has to go right down into the muck to pluck out and hold up the Hydra of illusion, thereby separating it from its swampy roots and killing it for good…”
“Phew…” said John, pretending to wipe his forehead. “Which brings us to Sagittarius, a noble sign if every there was one!”
“The archer on a white horse, or another Centaur, if you like, depending on whether you like your twin beings Divine and Human or Human and Animal.”
I could see that John wanted to add something important. I waved him on.
“”Now I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse‘ – Revelation,” said my uncle. “The King of Kings comes forward from heaven on a white horse…”
“To bring war and peace, as he does with the deadly Stymphalian birds.”
“And how does he defeat them?” Asked John.
“He used a set of cymbals, given to him by Athena, the Goddess of wisdom, to make a vibration–a pure noise so powerful that they were driven away for good.”
John leaned forward for his killer question, “So, if the wild mares were really untamed thoughts, what did these dangerous and noisy birds represent?”
I pulled the notebook to one side and looked at the old pocket watch I had left open on the table, sitting on the card. He had not noticed it.
I had timed it to perfection. I left what remained of my coffee and stood, bending to kiss the top of his surprised head in a mirror of our usual goodbye. But he wasn’t expecting the finger that sealed his questioning lips.
As I left the cafe, exactly twelve minutes early, I looked back, just once, through the cottage-style windows. He was looking at the watch, and the folded half of the butterfly card I had left beneath it.
As I turned to cross the road, I’m sure I saw a half-smile on his silent face.
(Image – composite by author)
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Nine Deadly Sins with Coffee is usually published on Thursdays.
©Copyright, The Silent Eye School of Consciousness, 2016.
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Have you ever walked along the water’s edge in wet sand, leaving behind a transient trail of footprints that will be washed away by the sea? The image is an evocative one, though a little trite perhaps. Many have seen it as an illustration of the fleeting and impermanent nature of our passage through the world.
Although there may be few things more wonderful than walking through warm shallows and laughing at the sun, that too brings an image of life to mind. The shallows are comfortable, they are safe and known, the point where land and water meet. We experience both without leaving our own natural element. We don’t even need to adjust much, simply take of the shoes and walk. At worst we risk stepping on a shard of shell. But we feel the caress of the waves on our skin and the shifting tides echoing in our…
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Sun in Gemini 
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