Hand-held Earth

This week I'm continually being reminded of things. The image below was pulled from my over-filled memory banks after reading my weekly forecast, commencing 21 September 2017, by one of my favourite astrologers,
Rob Brezsny of Free Will Astrology.
Snips from THIS:

Aquarius
"The brain is wider than the sky," wrote Emily Dickinson. "The brain is deeper than the sea." I hope you cultivate a vivid awareness of those truths in the coming days, Aquarius...............

Try this visualization exercise: Picture yourself bigger than the planet Earth, holding it tenderly in your hands".

The image that brought to mind is one I originally found on a notice board in a gallery or museum, years ago, while on our travels - we took a photograph of it then; later I found it online, and discovered that it was written by Joe Miller for a children's book, illustrated by Wilson McLean.

Earth: "This Godawful mess"

To give this post an astrological flavour I'll invite passing visitors, before reading on, to crank up their inner Virgo (responsible, careful, health conscious), and their inner Saturn (self-discipline, thrift).......then continue:

And Man created the plastic bag and the tin and aluminum can and the cellophane wrapper and the paper plate, and this was good because Man could then take his automobile and buy all his food in one place and He could save that which was good to eat in the refrigerator and throw away that which had no further use. And soon the earth was covered with plastic bags and aluminum cans and paper plates and disposable bottles and there was nowhere to sit down or walk, and Man shook his head and cried: "Look at this Godawful mess." ~ Art Buchwald, humorist

By the time I left its fair shores in 2004, recycling had become way of life in England. Local authorities provided separate garbage bins for our newspapers. Centres for collection of other items, such as glass and aluminium cans, were plentiful in most neighbourhoods. Here in Oklahoma it's a different story. Few facilities to encourage recycling exist, and whenever some do emerge they are short-lived.

For a few years we ferried our collection of newspapers and aluminium cans the 35 miles to a recycling collection centre in a neighbouring city. Then the military base in that city, whose staff collected recycling materials from several centres, was prevented, by Department of Defense financial constraints, from continuing the collections. Later a few, smaller, re-cycling bins were replaced in school locations.

Then, about a year ago, Power Shop, an organisation which helps to provide jobs for people with disabilities set up a re-cycling centre in our town. We were able to deposit paper, cans, cardboard, and plastic bottles there regularly. The centre seemed to be doing good business, but last week, when we visited to deposit some newspapers, we were told that the centre is closing, is now closed in fact, for re-cycling, but will continue to accept donations of aluminium cans. Reason: it hasn't made a profit. “We had a grand idea that we believed would provide jobs for people with disabilities, help the community, save the earth and make money,” the executive director said in a statement. “Unfortunately, it did everything except make money.”

Ye gods!!! Surely the state or city or federal government could subsidise something as important as this, so that profit need not be paramount? I should send a letter or a copy of this post, perhaps, to the state's governor, Mary Fallin - but it's a lost cause. A standard letter would be the response, as it was when I wrote to our Senator Tom Coburn about health care reform. They. Don't. Care. In this as in many spheres Oklahoma lags behind the rest of the US. I should not tar the whole of the US with the same brush. The following is from Encyclopedia of Earth's Recycling section

.....In particular, the culture of consumption of post-World War II America re-enforced carelessness, waste, and a drive for newness. Environmental concerns contributed to a new "ethic" within American culture that began to value restraint, re-use, and living within limits. This ethic of restraint, fed by over-used landfills and excessive litter, gave communities a new mandate in maintaining the waste of their population. Re-using products or creating useful byproducts from waste offered application of this new ethic while also offering new opportunity for economic profit and development.

Non-profit recycling centers began opening around the country, followed by municipal recycling programs. Today, most U.S. communities have such programs. A typical program asks people to separate their recyclables from their trash before placing them at the curb for collection. To encourage recycling, some communities also charge residents for the quantity of trash put out for collection. The most commonly recycled household items are paper and cardboard; metal, glass, and plastic containers and packaging; and yard waste. Recycling the recovered materials is simple for metals and glass; they can be melted down, reformed, and reused. Yard waste can be composted with little or no equipment. Paper, the most important recycled material, must be mixed with water, and sometimes de-inked, to form a pulp that can be used in papermaking. Plastics recycling requires an expensive process of separation of different resins.

In the US, plastics are all numerically coded according to type, including: polyethylene terphthalate (PETE or PET; 1) an example of these plastics are virtually all soft drink bottles, high density polyethylene (HDPE; 2) an example would be detergent bottles, polyvinyl chloride (PVC; 3), sometimes used for water or oil bottles but now rare in food beverage packaging, due to concerns about its environmental hazards; low density polyethylene (LDPE; 4) often used for plastic bags, polypropylene (PP; 5) examples are some yogurt containers and bottle caps, and polystyrene (PS; 6) used to make Styrofoam containers. Number 7 seen on some packaging, refers to all plastics other than these six. It is not a single plastic material.

Lessons are being learned - somewhere - if not in Oklahoma. Because of the horrendous growth of the "plastic garbage island" in the North Pacific, grown 100-fold in the past 40 years, several Californian city authorities have placed a ban on the use of plastic bags in grocery stores. That's a start! The use of styrofoam/plastic cups, cutlery and plates in motels and fast-food places ought to be next on the list.


Photograph from ambiental.

The huge patch (some say the size of Texas, but calculation is difficult because much of the broken down material remains below the surface) of 80% plastic garbage has been created by waste swept into the North Pacific Subtropical Convergence Zone by circulating ocean currents known as a gyre. Eventually the plastics are broken down by wind and waves and become small particles which will, someday, enter the food chain.

"Your descendants shall gather your fruits." ~ Virgil
(Note: I'd add to Virgil's ancient wisdom, and no doubt it was implied anyway: "whether the fruits be nourishing or poisoned is up to you.")

Wednesday's "Why?" ~ Elements and Stuff

The building blocks of astrology: the elements - Earth, Water, Fire, Air, and the modes or qualities: Cardinal, Fixed and Mutable, were bequeathed to Western astrology by the Greeks via their illustrious philosophers. The elements, by the way, equate to what modern physics has identified as the four states of matter - building blocks of the Universe: solid, liquid, gas and plasma.

Less serious modern-day wits have other ideas. Author Terry Pratchett has a character in one of his books stipulating that the universe depends for its operation on the balance of four forces which can be identified as "charm, persuasion, uncertainty and bloody-mindedness.” While comedian Dave Barry has it on good authority that "the four building blocks of the universe are fire, water, gravel and vinyl."

Jokes aside, without a basic understanding of how the elements relate to each other, it'd be impossible to "get" astrology. The four elements, each modified by one of the three modes/qualities are the the root of all interpretations.

The circle we use to depict the sky in astrology is split into 12 equal segments, each allocated to an element, modified by a mode (eg. Aries = Cardinal Fire, Taurus = Fixed Earth...) It's possible, with an understanding of each element and mode, to produce a basic interpretation of a chart using only these concepts, ignoring labels placed on signs by ancient astrologers.

The elements and modes progress around the zodiac circle, alternating in regular succession, forming wave-like patterns. If spread out in line the patterns looks like this ~ please excuse the awful diagram! F=Fire. E=Earth. W=Water. A=Air.....C=Cardinal. Fx=Fixed. M=Mutable. Wave above line =Elements. Wave below = Modes. To avoid more confusion I've ignored a third quality - Polarity (positive/negative or masculine/feminine), which would form another wave, alternating between signs, starting at Positive = Aries.



Why? Did those Greeks, long ago, grasp, intuit, or have access to some lost knowledge which led to this particular way of laying out the zodiac? More questions than answers - as usual!

The elements and modes are factors amid a plethora of astrological principles and methods, which remain completely reliable and consistent. They never let you down. As I see it, something somehow connected to these will, one day, explain (partially) why astrology works.

From a book "The Night Sky" by Richard Grossinger, I found a paragraph which may or may not have any relevance in this context, but it caught my eye as I searched for information.

In 1869, the Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev discovered that the chemical properties of the elements (My note: this refers to the non-astrological elements)are periodic functions of their atomic weights, i.e. of the number of protons in their nuclei. When he arranged the then-known elements in a series, he found that there were familial resemblances among elements at regular numerical intervals. For instance, carbon, silicon and tin lie in a series for which the member between silicon and tin was then apparently missing. This was later found to be germanium. Fluourine, chlorine, bromine and iodine constitute another family. Then there's a group of lithium, sodium and potassium; another of nitrogen phosphorus, arsenic and antimony; and so on. Nature contains a hidden periodic function which is basic to form and order in the world. (My note: There are "families" in astrological elements too, at regular numerical intervals - the Fire family Aries, Leo, Sagittarius, the Air family Gemini, Libra, Aquarius etc.) All the other elements are based on the simplest one, hydrogen with its single proton, which is also - we were to find out - the fuel of the stars.

Mendeleev's periodic table, and the reality that lay behind it gave a new basis for understanding the history and evolution of matter. Mathematical relationships determined the seemingly limitless display of forms in nature, from plants and animals to stars and galaxies. It was hauntingly Pythagorean, as Heisenberg would remind us.

I'm not at all sure where that took me! I'm attracted by the echo of astrological elements and modes and the way they were arranged by ancient astrologers, who had no knowledge of periodic tables and suchlike - as far as we know. One place it did take me is to a confidence that astrology is more than mere superstition. It's something rooted in the very nature of the universe. It's rough and ready, imperfect and encumbered with a range of unnecessary accessories, but beneath it all there is a gem. I can't say it better than the wonderful Carl Sagan said it..."Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known."

ARTY-FARTY FRIDAY # 9

To keep the blog rolling along while we're away, here's another bit of my arty-farty handiwork. I've decided to try to compile videos representing each of the planets. Not in an astrological way, exactly, but in a way that means something to me, and hopefully to others.

This attempt represents, and is a tribute to, planet EARTH.



Or for a bigger version in Windows Media Player - click this link:

The Light the Stars Make

Wayne Dodd, whose poem "The Light the Stars Make" is featured, is Distinguished Professor of English at Ohio State University, as well as being poet, editor and author.

Almost all the photographs used in the video were taken by my husband, aka HeWhoKnows, on the coast of Yorkshire, England; and in the Rocky Mountains National Park, Colorado. HWK also helped me to blend the music (Enya's "Waterfall") and narration by Wayne Dodd.
(More of Wayne Dodd reading his poetry HERE)