Another Update

As far as I know, or have understood to date, these are treatments coming up ASAP. I hope this post will help straighten out my own muddled head - apologies should it turn out to be fairly un-readable, un-inteligible, un-interesting, or any other 'uns' available!

Targeted therapies for liver lesions and progressed bone issues are being organised - will know more about the former in around ten days. No idea as yet, oncologist not very forthcoming - probably has to get the OK from somebody or other.

Targeted therapy for further metastasis to bones will be a bone medication to be given every 3 months, by injection (Xgeva). This I do not relish, but neither do I relish a fracture of spine or rib! Horrendous side effects, including possible damage to jaw bone. Before agreeing to this medication I insisted on seeing my dentist - did so on Tuesday. The docs prefer patients who are about to use this med. to have any necessary dental work done before beginning treatment. So...my lovely dentist put my mind (reasonably) at rest about the jaw issue which I worried about a lot, due to the "clicky" jaw , right-hand side I already have. He also confirmed that there are no tooth issues to deal with. He recommended that I go ahead with the medication, as far as any dental matters are concerned. An appointment now has to be made for the first injection. First appointment has to be at a main Cancer Center, in a bigger town, half an hour's drive away; any injections thereafter will be done in our local Cancer Center.

Then there's an MRI to be done (sedated) tomorrow (Friday 24 July). This is for radiation planning I think, to expand on results in PET scan.

I shall not see either my oncologist or my radiologist until 5 August. Stuff about radiation, and other bone treatment will then be discussed with benefit of MRI results, which they will need. They've agreed that I can have a sedated MRI because I'll not be able to lie flat for an hour in the machine, due to increased back pain. With the knowledge, by 5 August, that I've had my first Xgeva injection, and with the MRI results, the docs should be in a position to plan ahead in more detail. I guess I shall learn about the liver treatment on 5 August too.

Beyond this, all is mystery.

Whinges: My pain is now considerably worse than it has ever been since this health saga began. Pain pills aren't working as efficiently - or so it seems. I'm suffering from awful nausea, "gagging" and complete loss of appetite, practically living on Boost. Trying to find something in medical marijuana that might help.

UPDATE

My PET scan a few days ago showed that the disease has progressed, in my bones (spine, legs) and now in my liver. I am not feeling too good currently, so can't write in detail just now. I have various treatments coming up, and hope to write about them later. Many thanks for your support.

Quick Update

The trip to Cancer Center in Lawton OK went quite well - scheduled for 2.15 and we were home before 4 o'clock. Boiling hot day here - car registered 97 degrees on the way there and 100 to 104 degrees on the way back!

The few elderly patients awaiting appointments were well-scattered in a large waiting room. All nurses and receptionists wore masks (as did we). Our temperatures were taken before entering, surprisingly, my husband was allowed in with me. I suspect this might be because we are not exactly "local", not regulars at that particular Center.

Blood test came first, then, after the usual blood pressure check, weigh-in, and questions about pain etc by a nurse,  we had a short wait to see the oncologist.

I didn't realise until we were back in the car, ready to leave, that the doc didn't mention blood test results, and I hadn't remembered to ask about them, so things must be alright on that score. I answered the usual questions on how things had been since my last appointment, then a chest and shoulder examination, along with (in relation to my joint and muscle pain) tests of my grip and joint strengths. All appeared as well as might be expected. Doc did ask if I'd like to change the estrogen-blocker medication, suspected of causing the joint pains.  I decided to leave as is, as the alternative was the first medication I took after my original breast cancer diagnosis, which seems like aeons ago now. That medication really didn't suit at all - side effect-wise.

PET scans have not been available for some time due to covid-19. Doc will check when these are expected to be possible again. At my request he quickly agreed that I should schedule a scan during the days before my next appointment with him, in order that a long period of awaiting the result would not cause me weeks of anxiety. I told him candidly about my current feelings. I'd like whatever time I have left to be as anxiety free as possible, to better enjoy what I can of it. I explained that, should there be more trouble discovered by a scan, I doubt that I could stand more surgery or stronger chemo at this stage. He was understanding and kindly. He said that he, as a doctor must always listen to his patients' own needs and feelings.

I shall await hearing from our local Cancer Center as to the date of my next appointment with the oncologist, and regarding schedule of a PET scan earlier that same week or so.

Music Monday on World Cancer Day

World Cancer Day is an international day marked on February 4 to raise awareness of cancer and to encourage its prevention, detection, and treatment. (See more at Wikipedia, here.)

For all who are, or have been, afflicted with this terrible disease, and in memory of those of our loved ones already lost because of it, I can't think of a more appropriate song than this one. Here the song was sung in 2016, on America's Got Talent by a 16 year old cancer survivor, Calysta Bevier.
Fight Song, written, and recorded earlier, by Rachel Platten.

There's more about Calysta Bevier here:
Calysta Bevier – Biography, Wiki, Quick Facts, Where Is She Now?




Fight Song
by Rachel Platten

Like a small boat
On the ocean
Sending big waves
Into motion
Like how a single word
Can make a heart open
I might only have one match
But I can make an explosion

And all those things I didn't say
Wrecking balls inside my brain
I will scream them loud tonight
Can you hear my voice this time?

This is my fight song
Take back my life song
Prove I'm alright song
My power's turned on
Starting right now I'll be strong
I'll play my fight song
And I don't really care if nobody else believes
'Cause I've still got a lot of fight left in me

Losing friends and I'm chasing sleep
Everybody's worried about me
In too deep
Say I'm in too deep (in too deep)
And it's been two years I miss my home
But there's a fire burning in my bones
Still believe
Yeah, I still believe

And all those things I didn't say
Wrecking balls inside my brain
I will scream them loud tonight
Can you hear my voice this time?
This is my fight song
Take back my life song
Prove I'm alright song
My power's turned on
Starting right now I'll be strong
I'll play my fight song........................

Arty Farty Friday ~ Quartet of Cancerian Painters

There are other painters whose birth dates fall during the next 4 or 5 days, but I've chosen the following for their diverse styles. (Hat-tip to Wikipedia.)

Félicien Rops (7 July 1833 – 23 August 1898) Belgian artist whose best known pieces are erotic or pornographic in tone and depict an imaginary underworld or subjects of social decadence.

Pornocrates, Pornokratès, La dame au cochon, or The Lady with the Pig

Artemisia Gentileschi (8 July 1593 – c. 1656) was an Italian Baroque painter, today considered one of the most accomplished painters in the generation following that of Caravaggio. In an era when women painters were not easily accepted by the artistic community or patrons, she was the first woman to become a member of the Accademia di Arte del Disegno in Florence.

My archived post on her is HERE.


Judith & Maidservant with the Head of Holofernes

David Hockney, OM, CH, RA (born 9 July 1937) is an English painter, draughtsman, printmaker, stage designer and photographer. An important contributor to the pop art movement of the 1960s, he is considered one of the most influential British artists of the 20th century.

My archived post on him is HERE.

A Bigger Splash

Giorgio de Chirico(10 July 1888 – 20 November 1978), an Italian artist and writer. In the years before World War I, he founded the scuola metafisica art movement, which profoundly influenced the surrealists. After 1919, he became interested in traditional painting techniques, and worked in a neoclassical or neo-Baroque style, while frequently revisiting the metaphysical themes of his earlier work.

The Song of Love

Zodiac Sign Cancer Considered

In his book, Astrology published 1964, Louis MacNeice, not an astrologer, but a poet and scholar, gathered together much of interest from a variety of sources, ancient and modern. On zodiac sign Cancer, through which the Sun now travels, he wrote the paragraphs below, quoting from a variety of professional astrologers. This extract was not copied and pasted from elsewhere, but copy-typed by my own fair fingers, by the way, with illustrations added.

 Cancer by Erté

In spite of its name, Cancer is a homey, motherly sign, but also perhaps the most vulnerable. It is the sign of the summer solstice, from which it will be nine months before Aries comes around again; it can therefore be regarded as a symbol of fecundation and conception. As with the other signs, Barbault makes much of its position in the year, forgetting that many other countries have their spring and summer at different times from his. But on the symbolism of this sign and the psychology of Cancer people, he is at his most eloquent and suggestive. Because it is a cardinal sign and the first of the watery signs, he treats it as symbolizing the primal water - les eaux-mères - in the same way that Aries symbolizes the primal fire. It therefore stands for our ancestral origins, all organic life being assumed to have begun in the waters. It also stands, like the sea, for both intuition and introversion. It is the one and only sign ruled by the Moon, so Cancerian qualities are very much the same as the lunar qualities. The Moon, it will be remembered, is Our Lady of the Waters.

 From illustration by Ronald Searle

In accordance with this watery character, Barbault says that the Cancer type tends to be un végétatif. [Huh?] And the Cancer man (it is easier to be a Cancer woman and work it out in motherhood and the home) is often unduly feminine; as Pearce puts it, "effeminate in constitution and disposition". Cancer people can easily become "drowned in their own insecurity": They are over-emotional and sub-active. But there is another side to the picture. In its earlier pictorial representations Cancer was drawn as a crayfish, a creature that can give one a terrible nip. And even crabs, however soft inside, have a very hard shell and are difficult to dislodge from their chosen crannies. So throughout the centuries this sign has stood for tenacity. Not only of purpose but also for tenacity of memory - especially memory of childhood. Which brings us around to the home again. "Cherchez la mère", writes Barbault "et vous trouverez le Cancer!"

This sign, however, stands for not only motherly people but mother-fixated people. Being extremely sensitive, it is in fact a sign of many colors and moods. Many astrologers consider that it makes excellent teachers (or actresses) and in it Barbault distinguishes what appear on the surface to be two quite different types: the stay-at-home, sufficient-unto-the-day type and the explorative, castles-in-the-air type. (Actually, he would not claim that these are more than subtypes.)

Earlier astrologers laid less stress on the profundities and sensitivities of this sign and more on its crab nature. According to Varley, Cancer tends to give "a crabbed, short-nosed class of persons, greatly resembling a crab in features, when viewed in front; these people resemble crabs, also, in the energy and tenacity with which they attack any object." And in spite of his shy and retiring nature a Cancer friend can be a social asset. Gleadow advises anyone about to give a dinner party: "If you want to know about food or wine ask Cancer." (He adds unkindly: "And if you want someone who will not object to whatever you do choose Pisces.")

Morrish, in his Ladder of Being (or more strictly speaking, of Becoming), makes Cancer the first of three rungs representing gestation and birth. (He suggests that the heiroglyph could stand not only for crab-claws but for breasts.) The Zodiacal opposite to Cancer is of course Capricorn, an earthy no-nonsense sign that does not suffer from hypersensitivity. The signs that Cancer gets on with are Pisces and Taurus; but in mundane astrology Cancer and Capricorn are bracketed together, not only because they are both solstitial signs (one summer, one winter) but because they are the traditional fields for world-wide disasters. A third-century B.C. astrological missionary from ancient Babylon to Greece named Berosus taught that, when all the planets are in conjunction in Cancer, there will be a universal conflagration (a summery type of disaster); when they get together in Capricorn, there will be a universal deluge.

So there is Cancer, the only sign ruled by the Moon. Water, water. everywhere - but also tenacity and patience, maternal love, understanding of others, extreme sensitivity, and introversion. And next door to it, with the usual dramatic juxtaposition, what should we find but the only sign ruled by the Sun?

Astrologers mentioned:
André Barbault
A.J. Pearce
John Varley
Morrish (L. Furze-Morrish?)
Rupert Gleadow

Arty Farty Friday ~ William Roberts - Against-Type Gemini Sun

William Roberts, born 5 June 1895, died 20 January 1980. He was a British painter of, mainly, groups of figures and portraits. He was also a war artist in both World War I and World War II.

I was unaware of Mr Roberts' paintings, but having wandered among those available via Google Image have been duly impressed.

From a piece by Michael Spens HERE with added images of paintings mentioned.

Roberts, always himself a most independent figure, carved a special niche from an early age. Very much a man of the people, from the simplest East London beginnings (his father was a carpenter), he remained all through his life a man who chose not to communicate with people. Yet, he provided us through his oeuvre with a broad yet spectral insight into the social characteristics of society as he saw it and of its changing nature as the 20th century wore on...........

Roberts' dramatic set-piece, entitled 'The Cinema' (1920)

The film being a silent cowboy saga, the female musical accompanist is glimpsed through curtains below the screen and the monochromatic expression of the silent movie is represented in toned sepia, as a maelstrom of feverish activity. By contrast, the audience, mainly male, is shown enthralled in sombre, darkening colours, not without cubist or even futurist influence. It is interesting to be able to see, in the same exhibition, Roberts' 'TV' (1960).

 TV

Here, a similar engrossment with the screen, now contained within a living room for a family grouping is revealed, yet all is at a private scale of activity. Privacy was a permanent necessity for William Roberts himself in his career and in his closely guarded family life.

Roberts had a highly proactive start to his career, following his scholarship to the Slade at the age of 15. By the time he was 20, he had signed the Vorticist manifesto with other colleagues, together with Wyndham Lewis and the poet Ezra Pound. Did active service as a young war artist in World War I ever expand Roberts's enthusiasm for the mechanistic surge and thrust of the compelling machine age? There is no evidence of this. Indeed, a degree of revulsion now turned Roberts towards full-blown figurative art, developing human forms that were well rounded and upright, generic in a language all his own. Roberts, from his working class background (which he never foresook) was able to provide a genuine social documentation throughout his career, of ordinariness and light together, of his fellow Londoners and Eastenders. He suffered after the war, for his apparent lack of charisma, buying, too, a simple home in Camden, becoming something of a recluse - always with his wife discouraging art critics. He taught at the Central School of Art, but even with students and staff maintained a 'Trappist' lack of verbal exchange, just drawing on his students' work, and in all human contacts painfully shy and less than amiable. His work, and family, became his entirety. Yet Roberts was also an exceptional portrait painter and was persuaded to complete portraits of such luminaries of the pre-war period as TE Lawrence and JM Keynes. His self-portrait shows a cloth-capped, warily reticent, red-faced individual.

Roberts's countervailing sense of humour is apparent in many paintings, such as 'Rush Hour' (1971), one of the best depictions of the almost-disappeared and much-lamented London bus.

Rush Hour

He distrusted critics for the most part and took strenuous measures to avoid them. What speaks out from his work is a self-explanatory integrity, both visual and of technique. He had developed and mastered his personal style from a young age, maintaining and developing it all his life.

Unfortunately, his typical rejection of the entire gallery system (with the proud exception of the Royal Academy, which had perceptively elected him an RA in later life) had long-term shortcomings for his estate. A most important collection of his work, comprising some 70 paintings, numerous drawings and other documentation, still lies in the Tate Gallery cellars, inaccessible as long as the Treasury Solicitors' Department takes to decide as to the best manner of its disposal. Roberts had, typically, died intestate aged 85 in 1980. Neither his family, nor indeed the William Roberts Society, have been able to advance this situation at present.

Many of Roberts' paintings can be seen via Google Image, his subjects encompass a wide variety of everyday activities. From HERE:

Painter, William Roberts, started out as a poster designer and studied at the Slade; leaving the school in 1913 he travelled in France and Italy and fought in the trenches during WWI, the sheer horror of the experience, as with many other artists who went to fight, significantly changing the direction of his work. Roberts was one of the signatories to the first issue of BLAST, the short-lived literary magazine of the Vorticist movement in Britain.

The Vorticists at the Restaurant de la Tour Eiffel: Spring, 1915.

He developed an interest for representing and interpreting the predominantly working class elements of metropolitan London’s everyday life and events – visits to the cinema, the dance hall but treating them with dignity and humour.

 Cantering to the Post

 The Palms Foretell

The Wimpy Bar

 The Dressmakers

 The Barber's Shop

ASTROLOGY

Born on 5 June 1895 in London, UK. time of birth unknown, chart set for 12 noon.

Mentioned often in descriptions of the artist is Roberts' need for privacy - from Wikipedia, for instance:

Roberts was often described as reclusive, and he was very wary about interviewers – especially after an Observer journalist who visited him produced an article that Roberts felt was concerned more with his rather spartan lifestyle than with his work. 'What kind of art critic is this, who sets out to criticise my pictures, but criticises my gas stove and kitchen table instead?' he asked. One admirer of his work has told how she saw him getting on to a number 74 bus and 'Fascinated to gain a sighting of the octogenarian recluse, she followed him to the top deck. Aided by "the chutzpah of youthful inexperience", she respectfully asked him if she were addressing Mr William Roberts. After what felt like an interminable pause, and with his gaze defiantly averted, he replied: "I really do not know."

That reclusiveness is reflection of four personal planets in Cancer: Venus conjunct Mars and Jupiter conjunct Mercury. Cancer, a sign said to indicate, when prominent in a natal chart, a propensity for feelings of vulnerability and need for self-protection - the sign's symbol - the crab displays these tendencies. From snips quoted above: His work, and family, became his entirety. That clearly signals Cancerian!

Elementally, Roberts' chart has a preponderance of intuitive, sensitive Water, with only Sun and two outer planets in Air, and no Earth or Fire at all - unless rising sign added one of those elements to the mix.

Roberts' Gemini Sun, closely flanked by Neptune on one side and Pluto on the other, seems a tad beseiged. This, in tandem with four Cancer personal planets could well account for a Gemini Sun person turning out to be against-type, and rather unsociable - at least on the surface. Roberts' underlying affection for ordinary people, though, is evident from his paintings - his way of communicating without making himself vulnerable.

Saturn, from secretive Scorpio trines Mercury, further adding to some feeling of inner restriction or limitation. Also in Scorpio are Uranus and, quite possibly Moon, with one or both in trine to some of the Cancer planets - still more reflection of Roberts' need for privacy - a known Scorpio trait.

Uranus' links to personal planets also relates to Roberts' modernistic quasi-cubist art style, and his connection with the avant-garde Vorticists.

Arty Farty Friday ~ Félicien Rops, Decadent & Sun Cancerian.

Félicien Rops - a new one on me! He was one of the artists of the Decadent Movement which took place, mainly in France, around the turn of the 19th century, a period more elegantly termed as "fin de siècle".

Decadents: writers, poets, painters who rejected a current trend towards realism, favouring instead the more Romantic association of irrationalism. Sister movements contemporary with the Decadents were the Symbolists and the Aesthetes. Stripping away arty jargon, the Decadents were something akin to the Punks in more recent times - anti-establishment, pro- individual freedom an' all that, with an added "Goth" element of satanic darkness. Associated with the Decadents, possibly more familiar than Rops' name were: Charles Baudelaire, Aubrey Beardsley (and here); Guy de Maupassant, Edvard Munch, Gustave Moreau, Algernon Swinburne, Oscar Wilde (archived posts, where available, are linked to the names). The Decadent Movement came to an end during the first decade of the 20th century, with some Art Nouveau carrying forward a few lingering traces of it.

In art, the art of Félicien Rops for example, Decadence equals serious eroticism, sex with satanic elements, dark surrealism. His association with Baudelaire brought Rops further into the public spotlight than might otherwise have been the case - though as a fine artist, illustrator and print maker he was no slouch.

Many of Rops’s etchings are erotic or pornographic in tone and depict an imaginary underworld or subjects of social decadence. Despite his peculiarities, Rops was a printmaker of brilliant technique and original content whose handling of dry point (etching directly on the plate) marks him as one of the masters of the medium. He was also one of the first modern etchers to revive the neglected medium of soft-ground etching, in which the etching ground is melted into and mixed with tallow, producing the effect of lines drawn with a soft pencil or chalk.
See Britannica.com - here.

".....Rops drew priapic devils, horny priests, and an obscenely self-pleasuring St. Thérèse, but the center of his cosmos was taken up by repetitions of the femme fatale: fleshy, imperious, invariably nude, a dominating subject radiating perversity or a dominated object broken down, often on or at the foot of the cross. Unsurprisingly, the Decadent author J.K. Huysmans was a Rops fan, writing that he “celebrated the spirituality of lust which is Satanism...............
........Banished from the canon of Symbolist art for his unredeemable cheese, Rops remains potent because of illustrative craft, a flair for the cartoon line of evocative caricature that looks, from this far distance, rather charming, if not innocent..." See HERE

ASTROLOGY
Félicien Rops was born in Namur, Belgium on 7 July 1833, died in 1898. He spent most of his life in Paris, France. Astro.com gives his time of birth as 8:30 AM with an excellent "AA" rating.

From typical lists of keywords for the zodiac signs, one wouldn't immediately expect to find "decadence" under Cancer. But then, I didn't expect to find "boxing" under Cancer either, until I gave the matter more than a passing thought.

Cancer, the sign, does have the basic "soil" where decadence might grow, I guess - the emotional pull from its Watery element and its ruler, the Moon. Without some augmented input from other planets and signs, and/or environmental impact, that soil would remain...well, just soil. Rops' natal Moon in Pisces augmented the Watery emotional pull of his Cancer Sun. Venus, planet of the arts, at 00 Gemini almost on the midheaven cusp reflects his pull to the world of art. For added decadence I guess Pluto or Scorpio input might be expected. No Scorpio planets, but Pluto in Aries challenges his Cancer Sun via a square aspect, maybe that antagonising square converts the otherwise soft and sentimental Cancer into a darker emotional mode? Overall, though, I'm seeing "the time in which he lived" as having major influence on his choice of art style.

I looked at an astrological ephemeris for a year in the midst of his life span - around 1870. At that point the slow-moving outer planets, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto were transiting in the middle degrees of Cancer, Aries and Taurus respectively, forming square and semi-sextile angles to each other. Interestingly, Uranus in Cancer would have conjoined Rops' Cancer Sun at points around that time, adding some unexpectedly novel ideas to his arty mix. Pluto (usual culprit for input of eroticism and/or darkness) around the same time, during Rops' mid 30s, formed a semi-sextile from Taurus to his Cancer Sun. Those could be points in time which could well have either initiated or solidified his choice of subject matter. Rapidly germinating seeds delivered into Rops' moist Cancer/Pisces-led soil?

Fixed Stars Currently in Cancer

Onward with a series of monthly posts on Fixed Stars in each tropical zodiac sign.

Data for Cancer from Astroweb (HERE), showing star positions in 1900 in the left-hand column and in 2000 on the right.

Astrological interpretations for most of those stars, if found to be tightly conjunct a natal personal planet, or important point, are available online. A good, all-encompassing website to investigate for this is Constellation of Words.

So...which of those shall I choose to expand upon this month? The best known of the lot, I think, is Sirius, aka the Dog Star. I recall researching a little on that star some years ago....a re-airing:

The Old Farmer's Almanac, a venerated publication first on the streets of the USA in 1792, has the dog days, summer's hottest, most sultry days, spanning 40 days from 3 July to 11 August. Other, possibly more up to date, sources have the dog days set during a slightly later period of summer. Whatever dates are involved there's a link to the heliacal (at sunrise) rising of Sirius the Dog Star. Movements of Sirius have been noted by inhabitants of planet earth from as long ago as records exist - and probably long before that.

Sirius is a binary star system composed of Sirius A and Sirius B; there's supposition of a third star involved, but no proof of this. Sirius shines brightest of all bodies in the night sky. In case of difficulty pinpointing Sirius just look for the three stars in a row forming Orion's belt, extend the line southeastward - there it is.

Click on image for clearer view:

 Hat-tip here

It's possible to wander, all unsuspecting, into realms of myth and wonder while chasing information on Sirius. I shall post only what can be seen to be true(ish), and leave stories related to, for instance, the ancestry of the Dogon tribe of Africa for others to investigate.

Astrologer "Dr. Z" is always a good read, his piece on this fixed star is titled
Dog Days of Summer - Let’s Get Sirius.


The following paragraphs come from a piece written by Denise St.Denis at Souled Out.org

Liberation
Sirius is also associated with liberation; in fact, according to ancient teachings, the very concept of freedom itself resides in human consciousness because of the influence of this star system. Interestingly enough, the time each year our sun conjuncts Sirius at 14 degrees Cancer is close to July 4, America's Independence Day. Bastille Day, the French equivalent of Independence Day is July 14, and Canada celebrates its independence from England on July 1; Dominion Day. Venezuela's Independence Day is observed July 5, while Argentina's is celebrated on July 9. And noting, Iraq's Freedom Day, when the new Coalition government took control, happened on June 28, 2004 (two days earlier than it had been announced).

In 1993–1994, as the "great conjunction" of Sirius A and B approached, a wave of freedom swept our world culminating in the breakdown of the communist rule in Europe and the liberation of the Russian people from the hard-line Communist party. The Berlin Wall fell as the cold war ended ... these events transpired simultaneously with the magnetic forces building to their highest intensity on Sirius. Is there a connection? Perhaps. Conditions on our world may not become as dramatic as previously described; nevertheless, certain major adjustments are likely to occur.

Interesting eh?

The next "great conjunction" of Sirius A and B, will occur in around 50 years from 1993 = 2043. I'll not be around, but if a younger reader passes by and stops to read, do make a note of the year 2043, and watch what happens then!

Music Monday ~ Cancerian Carl Orff's O Fortuna! & matters related

Everyone must have heard O Fortuna! at least once during their lifetime. It pops up regularly in movies and TV commercials. I first heard it many Moons ago as background music to a TV ad for Old Spice aftershave - in the days when aftershave as a male accessory was in its infancy.

Years later I discovered that Carmina Burana, a cantata by German composer Carl Orff (whose natal Sun is in Cancer) from which O Fortuna! is taken, was derived from a set of mediaeval poems. These poems were discovered in a monastery in Bavaria in 1803. They are not all on sacred subjects, as one might expect from writings found in a monastery, but include poems and songs in Latin, French and German about love, lust, gambling and the trials and tribulations of life on Earth. Carl Orff chose 24 from the much larger collection of poems, and set them to music.

O Fortuna! sits at the beginning and end of the cantata he composed in the mid 1930s. There is a connection between O Fortuna! and the tarot card from the major arcana: Wheel of Fortune. It's a convoluted journey from an aftershave advert to the tarot deck! Card illustrated is from the 15th century Vinconti-Sforza deck.

The Wheel of Fortune turns I go down, demeaned; another is raised up; far too proud sits the king at the summit -- let him fear ruin! for under the axis we read about Queen Hecuba.

Carl Orff was born on 10 July 1895 in Munich, Germany at 3:15AM. Sun conjunct Jupiter, and Mercury all in Cancer, with Cancer rising. His natal chart can be viewed here, at Astrodatbank. Zodiac sign Cancer is ruled by the Moon. Carl Orff's Carmina Burana begins with a direct reference to his ruling luminary. Translation:

O Fortuna O how Fortune, inopportune, apes the moon's inconstancy: waxing, waning, losing, gaining, life treats us detestably: first oppressing then caressing shifts us like pawns in her play: destitution, restitution, mixes and melts them away. Fate, as vicious as capricious, whirling your merry-go-round: evil doings, worthless wooings, crumble away to the ground: darkly stealing, unrevealing, working against me you go: for your measure of foul pleasure I bare my back to your blow. Noble actions, true transactions, no longer fall to my lot: powers to make me then to break me all play their part in your plot: now seize your time - waste no more time, pluck these poor strings and let go: since the strongest fall the longest let the world share in my woe.

Orff has, over the years, had some justifiably bad press, related to his acquiescence during the Nazi regime, and betrayal of his close friend Kurt Huber. Huber was a founder of the resistance movement, White Rose. Perhaps Orff was a weak and selfish man who, while not being a member of the Nazi party, had achieved acceptance of his music by the ruling regime. He was not courageous enough to forego this in order to offer aid when his friend was arrested, tortured and executed. Is this a reflection of a typically Cancerian trait: withdrawal from danger and unpleasantness, I wonder. It's best not to judge the guy too harshly. None of us knows what we'd do in his position, in those circumstances. We might think we know -but we really do not.

Boxing the Crab

Natal charts of three famous boxers are shown below, all three were born when the Sun was in zodiac sign Cancer. The first two charts are set for 12 noon as no reliable times of birth are available, the third chart is set for a rectified time given at astro.com ('C' rating only).

How, one might wonder, do the commonly attributed Cancer keywords (for example: gentle, maternal, sensitive, nurturing, defensive, contemplative), manage to fit three guys who made their names professionally by trying to knock the living daylights out of an opponent?
Defensive - there's that! My late partner was as keen on boxing as husband Anyjazz is on jazz, and had had some involvement in the sport. He would always declare that boxing should properly be a sport of defence, not aggression. If that is so, then Cancer's symbol, the crab, is no slouch in defensive action, sporting a hard shell of protection, pincers that could hurt, scuttling away, albeit with peculiar gait, when trouble is sensed. But really, what I see as crystal clear from the experiment below is that Sun signs are always much-modified by the rest of the chart's components.

Jack Dempsey born in Manassa, Colorado on 24 June 1895.

Leon Spinks born in St. Louis, Missouri on 11 July 1953.

Mike Tyson born in Catskill, New York on 30 June 1966, time of birth rectified to 9.40 AM ('C' rated at astro.com).

Most Cancerian traits do seem quite unsuited to "the noble art" - how boxing earned that title is explained nicely in a blog called The Way of the Warrior HERE. In the three charts above I first noted the mix of Cancer with Leo and Gemini - and came closer to seeing rhyme and reason. Successful boxers need to have mental acuity (here supplied by Gemini) as well as as physical strength, and for a professional boxer some Leo flavour will propel him to enjoy the spotlight - if he's sufficiently skilled.

Dempsey's Cancer planets were flanked by a generational Pluto/Neptune conjunction in Gemini which linked via helpful sextile to natal Mars and Venus in Leo, assisting the blend. Uranus in harmonious trine to Jupiter, contributes elements of surprise - delivering the unexpectedly punch is essential for a successful boxer. Saturn trines his natal Sun, putting a sturdier "backbone" into Cancer's potential softness.

Spinks' Sun, Uranus and Mars in conjunction has to be a classic astrological signature for a boxer. Cancer's urge to protect itself, Uranus' unexpected punches, and Mars dynamic strength and energy. His Cancer planets are flanked by personal planets in Gemini and Leo...there's that blend again!

Tyson has a similar blend with personal planets in Cancer, Leo, Gemini. His generation has a Pluto/Uranus conjunction in Virgo - it links to his Cancer Sun/Jupiter conjunction by sextile, adding power and an element of surprise to aid the Cancerian urge to protect itself. Tyson's opponents usually felt that additional power in action, very early on!

These three boxers were able to call the full orchestra of their natal charts into harmony when at work in that square ring.

Arty Farty Friday ~ Brion Gysin & William S. Burroughs: what you get when the recipe calls for a heaped measure of Aquarius & a scant measure of Cancer

No pretty pictures today...because Brion Gysin and William S. Burroughs. These two didn't produce much that was pretty, though they remain revered in certain circles. They were part of the Beat crowd and 20th century avant garde who weren't known for pretty.

I've already written a post on Burroughs, his artwork and natal chart (SEE HERE). In searching for an artist who had a birthday in late Capricorn I stumbled upon Brion Gysin, who, it turned out was a good friend and close collaborator of Burroughs, who described Gysin as ".. the only man I have ever respected. I have admired many others, esteemed and valued others, but respected only him.”

Gysin was a painter, writer, sound poet, tape composer, lyricist, and performance artist. He was, at one time, proprietor of a Tangier bistro called 1001 Nights; later became artist in residence at the Beat Hotel in Paris. He is the one said to have submitted the recipe for hashish brownies to the Alice B. Toklas cookbook; he introduced Brian Jones of The Rolling Stones to avant-garde sound recordings and the master musicians of Joujouka (Gysin's former house band).

From cover blurb on a biography of Gysin by John Geiger - Nothing is True – Everything is Permitted: The Life of Brion Gysin

Gysin (1916-1986) English-born, Canadian-raised, naturalized American of Swiss descent, who lived most of his life in Morocco and France. He went everywhere when the going was good. He dabbled with surrealism in Paris in the 1930s, lived in the “interzone” of Tangier in the 1950s and traveled the Algerian Sahara with Sheltering Sky author Paul Bowles before moving into the legendary Beat Hotel in Paris.

Gysin’s ideas influenced generations of artists, musicians and writers, among them David Bowie, Keith Haring, Patti Smith, Michael Stipe, Genesis P-Orridge, John Giorno and Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones. None was touched more profoundly than William S. Burroughs, who said admiringly of Gysin: “There was something dangerous about what he was doing.”

Official website for Brion Gysin - images of his artwork are there, along with biographical and other detail.


In addition to their writings and artworks Burroughs and Gysin were deeply interested in magic - not the "rabbit out of top hat" kind - the darker Aleister Crowley kind of "magick". More on that in a piece by Matthew Levi Stevens: The Magical Universe of William S. Burroughs.







I mainly want to compare natal charts of Gysin and Burroughs, but first a brief word about "cut-ups", a technique originated by poet Tristan Tzara in the 1920s, re-introduced by Gysin and appropriated by William S. Burroughs.
From Gysin's official website, linked above:

In the 1950s, Brion Gysin more fully developed the Surrealist cut-up method after accidentally re-discovering it. He had placed layers of newspapers as a mat to protect a tabletop from being scratched while he cut papers with a razor blade. Upon cutting through the newspapers, Gysin noticed that the sliced layers offered interesting juxtapositions of text and image. He began deliberately cutting newspaper articles into sections, which he randomly rearranged. The book Minutes to Go resulted from his initial cut-up experiment: unedited and unchanged cut-ups which emerged as coherent and meaningful prose.

Burroughs explains cut-ups:



In 1959, Gysin invented, with Ian Sommerville, the “Dreamachine,” a device intended to simulate lucid dreaming through the projection of light patterns on users’ eyelids.

So...Burroughs and Gysin were a pair who revelled in being, and producing things, far out of the ordinary. Burroughs in his writing, but also, as shown in my 2009 post, he dabbled in art as well. Gysin dabbled in the far-outer fringes of most of the arts.



Taking a look at their natal charts:

William S. Burroughs, born 5 February 1914 in St. Louis, Missouri at 7.40am (Astrodatabank)

I wrote back in 2009 -

Wowee!! 5 planets and ascendant in Aquarius (including Aquarius' ruler, Uranus); 3 planets in Gemini, two in Cancer. So much Air (Aquarius and Gemini) cannot be good for a body - or a mind! Here's another instance of "too much of a good thing". I've seen it before, but never quite as extreme an example as this. Too much Air blows away anything of substance, literally and metaphorically.

This guy had potential to spare, yet he squandered it. It seems to me almost as though he was born drugged and drunk - from the overdose of Air in his chart. Oh, the literary elite coo over his books with exaggerated praise. Does the average reader, though, see anything praiseworthy, or just a case of the emperor and his new clothes?

Brion Gysin born in Taplow, near Maidenhead, UK on 19 January 1916. Time of birth isn't known so this chart is set for noon.

Well..turns out their charts are quite similar - pity we don't know Gysin's time of birth.

Though Gysin had Sun in late Capricorn he also had plenty of Airy Aquarius going on, with planets conjoining some of Burrough's Aquarius planets; he doesn't have Burrough's additional Gemini, Air though. Instead he has three Cancer planets, including Moon (whatever his time of birth), and Jupiter in Pisces both of which bring in a much softer, more sensitive and intuitive feel to his nature.

Burroughs did have some Cancerian flavour - his Mars and Neptune are both in that sign, whereas the same two planets in Gysin's chart are in Leo. In both cases at least one of the Cancer or Leo planets is striking a balancing opposition with planets in Capricorn or Aquarius. So there is a similarity, even there.

The Aquarius/Cancer mixture they both had in different proportion was, I suspect, what led them in the paths of magick and psychic experimentation. Aquarius alone wouldn't necessarily head in that direction.

It's not difficult to see how these two men, when their paths crossed, would easily become friends. Their work isn't easy to like, unless one is naturally on their far-out wavelength. I'm not. I find their natal charts more interesting than anything they produced, but then, at their levels, even with my own Aquarius solo Sun to assist, I remain a Philistine.

In a conversation at AnOther Magazine website John-Paul Pryor answered the questions:

Do you think that Gysin’s symbiotic relationship with Burroughs may have held him back as an artist?

The two were certainly joined at the cerebellum, but Gysin shines a tremendous light in his own right, especially in the field of visual art. Burroughs was an underground phenomenon and the platform for Gysin’s livelihood, but it’s true that he also shadowed him. One area of contention has to do with who invented the “cut-up.” Burroughs tried his entire life to tell people that Gysin invented the cut-up, but because Burroughs ran with the idea, producing numerous novels, he is the one credited. It’s important to think of Gysin as an idea generator above all.

Do you think they were driven by a desire to be subversive?

Yes, it was a choice for them. They took their energy from being counter, and I think it was enormously important for that generation to be counter to the structure of contemporary culture in every possible way. These were guys who were stateless, gay, psychotropic experimenters (and in the case of Burroughs, also a murderer and a junkie). They used drugs very consciously as tools that supposedly allowed them to get out of where they were. There is a lot of talk about cultural subversion now, but I don’t think anybody could beat these guys at that. Gysin was also interested in the straightforward notion of magic. The calligraphic style he created was a personal glyph that consisted of drawing his initials over and over again; it was, in its way, a spell.

It all fits rather well!

Cancer the sign, the ascendant; Moons - but no Junes...or Ferris Wheels.....

A person could fill several pages, a couple of books even, with thoughts, quotes, pictures featuring the Moon, "ruler" of zodiac sign Cancer. I shall severely limit myself to one or two less-used bits and pieces.

“It was lunar symbolism that enabled man to relate and connect such heterogeneous things as: birth, becoming, death, and ressurection; the waters, plants, woman, fecundity, and immortality; the cosmic darkness, prenatal existence, and life after death, followed by the rebirth of the lunar type ("light coming out of darkness"); weaving, the symbol of the "thread of life," fate, temporality, and death; and yet others. In general most of the ideas of cycle, dualism, polarity, opposition, conflict, but also of reconciliation of contraries, of coincidentia oppositorum, were either discovered or clarified by virtue of lunar symbolism. We may even speak of a metaphysics of the moon, in the sense of a consistent system of "truths" relating to the mode of being peculiar to living creatures, to everything in the cosmos that shares in life, that is, in becoming, growth and waning, death and ressurrection.”
― Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion

The Cruel Moon
by Robert Graves

The cruel Moon hangs out of reach
Up above the shadowy beech.
Her face is stupid, but her eye
Is small and sharp and very sly.
Nurse says the Moon can drive you mad?
No, that’s a silly story, lad!
Though she be angry, though she would
Destroy all England if she could,
Yet think, what damage can she do
Hanging there so far from you?
Don’t heed what frightened nurses say:
Moons hang much too far away.

“Maybe there's a whole other universe where a square moon rises in the sky, and the stars laugh in cold voices, and some of the triangles have four sides, and some have five, and some have five raised to the fifth power of sides. In this universe there might grow roses which sing. Everything leads to everything.”
― Stephen King

Here's an alternative take on Moon's gender by Michael Cheval: Sunset Tango with a male Moon and female Sun. (More on this artist and his gorgeous work in an archived post HERE).

The Moon is a Painter
by Vachel Lindsay

He coveted her portrait.
He toiled as she grew gay.
She loved to see him labor
In that devoted way.

And in the end it pleased her,
But bowed him more with care.
Her rose-smile showed so plainly,
Her soul-smile was not there.

That night he groped without a lamp
To find a cloak, a book,
And on the vexing portrait
By moonrise chanced to look.

The color-scheme was out of key,
The maiden rose-smile faint,
But through the blessed darkness
She gleamed, his friendly saint.

The comrade, white, immortal,
His bride, and more than bride—
The citizen, the sage of mind,
For whom he lived and died.

Speaking of painters...an archived post featuring a Cancer-ish painter Paul Delvaux, his nudes and moons can be accessed HERE.

20th century British Astrologer C.E.O. Carter's piece on Cancer, the zodiac sign, is a good read. He isn't much impressed with Cancer rising though (my own natal rising sign). A few snips on that strange tid-bit, and a couple of others I'd not been aware of before:

I should say that Sun in Cancer is better than Cancer rising, and of course the Moon in Cancer is good. Not only kindly, but shrewd. It is not difficult to understand why it is not a very good ascending sign. Of course, as I am never tired of pointing out, it all depends on what means by "good." But the ascendant and midheaven are the most exposed parts of the figure, and it seems on the whole desirable to have strong signs in these latitudes Cancer rising usually brings Pisces on to the meridian and so one gets an unusually sensitive personality.

TRUE ENOUGH .

..........................Cancer is the quincunx to Sagittarius, and so one would expect them to be unlike, but they are both travellers. At least, tradition call the 9th sign the sign of travel abroad. Actually I should say it is more explorative than Cancer; it has an urge to find what lies beyond the ranges but Cancer is perhaps rather the tourist, or commercial traveller.................

NOT EXACTLY - I can be both explorer and tourist...but never commercial traveller!

Cancer is not easily thwarted and put down. Unlike the quincunx sign Sagittarius with its sudden enthusiasms and changes of interest, Cancer holds on. Even if its claw is torn off, it grows another. When it succeeds it is usually due to this doggedness, a word not inappropriate actually, since both Sirius and Procyon fall in the longitude of the 4th sign!

RIGHT AGAIN...I've always put this down to Aquarius Sun being a Fixed sign, this "dogged" factor could further underline that, I guess.

......Socially Cancer has a valuable card in its powers of mimicry....... For example, they can render dialects excellently .........

NO, I'M NO MIMIC, but I usually am quick to recognise and identify accents/dialects, but perhaps those who can mimic with accuracy have Gemini, the adjacent sign to Cancer, emphasised in some way (I don't have any planet or point in Gemini).

......I do not think Cancer is a happy ascendant, but it is plain from what has been said that it can be a gifted one (a list of well-known and well-gifted people with Cancer rising preceded this remark of C.E.O. Carter.)

I'm not sure that astrologers ought to be declaring ascendant signs (or any signs) good, bad or indifferent - the rising sign is but a single strand in a multi-layered personality pattern. I'm wary of going along with the standard astrological lore that the ascendant is "how we are seen by the world and how we see the world"...or words to that effect. I know that's what astrologers tell us to think, but...I prefer to look on the rising sign as simply part of a whole; it can be, and is, modified or emphasised by other strands forming the pattern.

 Moonshine by Paul Klee

Moons and Junes and ferris wheels,
The dizzy dancing way you feel
As every fairy tale comes real;
I've looked at love that way.
(From "Both Sides Now" - Joni Mitchell)

Crustaceous Cancer

Illustration of Cancer the Crab by cartoonist Ronald Searle
from his book Searle's Zodiac (1977).

Post on Ronald Searle's natal chart HERE.

From Astrology for Lovers by Liz Greene~

"I once had a pair of hermit crabs as pets. These creatures are particularly fascinating because, rather than having hard shells of their own, they wear the dead molluscs, and camouflage them. There is a kind of Cancer whose shell is culled from others, as well as a kind who grows his own. Now when a hermit crab outgrows his shell - which he inevitably does - he must find a bigger one, and make the move in total safety. Underneath the crab is defenseless, completely vulnerable creature. There is a period of time when crabs must hide under the sand while the new shell grows hard. They have to remain hidden, or they will be instant dinner for the nearest seagull without so much as a by-your-leave. Cancer people too have these cycles, where they must withdraw after a change and a period of new growth, Surprise them or intrude upon them when they are going through their quiet private time, and you can damage them irrevocably. Damage them in childhood, and they will retreat into a small shell, sometimes never to emerge. It takes a long time for the crab to forget, once he has been wounded".
Hat tip to The Astrology Place

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Music Monday ~ Sentimentality - Cancer Keyword

One of the keywords appearing in astrology textbook lists under zodiac sign Moon-ruled Cancer, alongside sensitivity is sentimentality. Each person has their own translation of that word. A true translation, from the original medieval Latin root verb sentire = to feel, would be something along the lines of "manifestation of feelings". As is often the case, original meaning has become coloured, over time, by subjective opinions of writers and speakers, which then become generally accepted as "the meaning of the word". Sentimentality is these days thought to be "a bad thing", linked to descriptives such as schmaltzy or cheesy.

A song, or even an instrumental piece, can be described as being full of sentimental, cheesy schmaltz, indicating that its flavour has a synthetic saccharine or maudlin feel.

But how can a manifestation of a feeling be bad?

To my mind manifestation of a feeling can only be bad if it's insincere or hypocritical, used as a form of manipulation.

Music is emotional. Music without feeling emotion would be nothing but a series of sounds. So music has to be manifestation of feelings - sentimental in the purest sense of the word. I guess there's a very fine line between the cheesy and the hearfelt sentiment, or the maudlin and a pouring out of sincere emotion.

Because music is so intimately related to sentiment it can be used manipulatively: think of the violins kicking in whenever the audience's sympathy for a situation in a movie is required, if overdone schmaltz can, indeed, creep in.

Back to Cancer, the zodiac sign and its link to sentimentality - and emotion. All the Water signs, Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces link to emotion; Cancer has dibs on sentimentality.

Music Monday, during the time when Sun travels through Cancer, seems like a good time to spotlight a few songs/pieces of music which, for me, demonstrate the positive side of sentimentality - I do have Cancerian credentials - Cancer is my natal rising sign.

A very simple little song that skipped into my head first when contemplating Cancerian sentimentality was one I had a dickens of a job finding online. I'm a Sentimental One by Phil Green and Noel Purcell from a 1956 British film The March Hare.
I eventually found it in a film clip at britishpathe.com: Film Fanfare No 9 Part 2. The song sung by Jean Campbell begins at the 3 minute point. ~~~Lyrics:

I'm a sentimental one, I believe in love.
I like stars that shine at night, I like moons above.
I'm a sentimental one, I believe in spring.
April never fails to make me sing.

I'm a sentimental one, dreams are down my street.
I like dusk and candlelight, and my music sweet.
So let me give you warning, before the harm is done.
You're dealing with a sentimental one.
A very, very sentimental one.

Next, a Watery one, befitting Cancer as the cardinal Water sign of the zodiac. I never tire of hearing: Enya's Watermark




Feels Like Home by Randy Newman from his Faust - sung by Bonnie Raitt. The song combines sentimentality (the good kind) and "home" another Cancerian keyword.




The version of Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez from the British movie Brassed Off. There are equally affecting versions out there- that by Miles Davis for example, but this one is especially sentimental for me, being a Yorkshire gal. As one YouTube commenter wrote: "A most beautiful rendition which conjures up all the injustices done to the coal and steel industries in this country (Britain) by Margaret Hilda Thatcher and brings tears to the eye." It does too!




Blood Count

The last composition written by Billy Strayhorn in the months before he died in 1967, after a two year struggle with oesophagus cancer.

"Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn were friends who shared "a bond beyond gender or sexuality, and even deeper than friendship...... Strayhorn recalled the first time he watched the Duke in action: Something inside me changed when I saw Ellington on stage, like I hadn't been living until then. And later Ellington described Strayhorn as my right arm, my left arm, all the eyes in the back of my head, my brainwaves in his head, and his in mine. Ellington was so devastated that he did not get out of bed for weeks, and three months later he called his band into the studio to record this tribute album, "And His Mother Called Him Bill", including this track."

One contributed by my husband: Emily played by Paul Desmond