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| Janus, Roman God of Doorways gives the month of January its name |
During
the period between Christmas and the New Year we find ourselves in that
no-man’s land where we fix our sights on the past year, reassessing it within the
longer view of perspective and context.
And as the first day of the first month
of the New Year approaches, it offers the freedom to turn the telescope round and
peer into the unknowable future.
I
was particularly struck with this image of no-man’s land when considering the
movie Joyeux Noel that celebrated the soldiers of the 1914 Great War (“war
to end all wars”) who lay down their arms on Christmas Eve 100 years ago to
fraternize with their enemies in the zone where their dead comrades lay. Here
they listened to Christian carols and flirted with the bizarre notion of peace
on earth.
Once Christmas was over, such a dangerous idea was of course
immediately flattened. The great war-machine of Church and State rolled over
the maverick soldiers, who had re-learned their humanity and re-gained their foolish
souls for just that momentary spark in time. Business was resumed as usual so
the slaughter of innocents might continue.
Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today….
Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace….
The
key word being imagine
And
of course the musician and pacifist John
Lennon died a violent death - murdered.
So
here we are in our annual no-man’s land
of time - the breathing space each year gifts us - with a few days if we’re
lucky - to contemplate our past and future. This ending and beginning of the
year is a floating dreamtime allowing opportunities to strike up a different
kind of free-flow conversation with family and friends. A voice on the radio or
in a book might open a new connection. Or maybe a FaceBook photo, an amusing
Snapchat joke might jolt an old memory into a different re-arrangement in the
jigsaw patterns of the mind.. Time takes on different rhythms and dimensions when
not dictated by money and the structures of routine.
(Time
IS money!? Is that what we truly think?!)
Holiday
time is Dreamtime. And dreaming is where imagination roams, where new goals are
formed and born.
In
tarot terms the Fool is the embryo
that floats in No-man’s Land and the Magician
is the foetus that is formed out of and emerges as baby from this fluid womb.
The
Magician is the first numbered card
in the sequence of the tarot’s major mysteries.
He is Number One and he is the
master of illusion. Magic is cognate
with imagination, image, imagine, magus.
So
while we contemplate the Old and New Years - our resolve and our resolutions
still in embryonic form - we come under his spell.
You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join
us
And the world will be as one
The
Magician is the archetypal agent for change. So while his first directive is
imagination, his escort is transformation. His symbolical equivalent is the
astrological Mercury who is shape shifter, trickster, hermaphrodite
extraordinaire.
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| Hermaphroditos |
We
pause here to allow me the luxury of an aside about gender and symbols:
For
about three thousand years Mercury and the qualities of Number 1, and lately
over the last 600 years so too the tarot’s Magician, have all been imaged and
imagined by our mostly male Magi.
Take
Number 1 for example. It is written as an upright shaft. This vertical line
represents spirit and provides the link between the higher and lower worlds of
sky and earth. From nadir to zenith and back again – it is related to such
symbols as the trunk of the World Tree, the spine in our bodies, standing
stones, the staff and the stave, the Sceptre and the Wand. Not to mention the
upright Phallus.
Pythagorean
philosophy stated that Number One is masculine for it is an odd number. This
concept (which is not a universal one) has become fused in the West with the
stereotypical re-writing of masculinity as bright and active, whilst the dark
feminine is passive and acted upon.
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| Allegory of Mars, Venus & Cupid. De Young |
For
a long time, this has been a very convenient cultural description that helped
to normalise a patriarchal social system of how and where women should be
placed relative to men.
Of
course biologically, the upright phallus is a vertical thrusting shaft, however
humans have always been so much more than their biology.
Women
like men have a backbone, share the masculine ability to take the initiative,
begin things and become independent thinkers; all of which are number one
qualities.
The
woman’s womb itself is indeed a dark hole that nurtures. However during the
birthing process, the womb becomes a forceful, driving self- initiating organ.
Men
may fancy their penises as upright thrusting life-giving shafts of light and
power but more often than not they do not perform according to task and are
normally limp and small, nestling and vulnerable.
Use
biology at your peril to describe human and spiritual qualities. An archetype often deteriorates swiftly into
stereotype when examined closely.
When
using a symbolic language such as Astrology and Tarot, gender too must be taken
as a symbol. Each culture can then interpret gender according to its own
cultural norms.
When
we find Mercury implicated in the Number 1 card The Magician, we must assume we
have a hermaphrodite God/dess symbol that is certainly not strictly male. Gender
roles are rapidly changing. So too must the esoteric world adapt to new
understandings of what it means to be a woman and man in each culture the
symbols find themselves. Patriarchy is a horrible, outworn system of oppression
that has no place in our work as symbolists!
Healer
heal thyself,
Teacher
teach thyself,
Magicians
unite to initiate change!
The
planet Mercury’s glyph is hidden within the older Marseilles tarot image.
Mercury
is the God of travelers and merchants. A trickster, a fairground shyster or
performer, Mercury fits the tarot’s Magician perfectly for the older title for
the card was The Juggler or Mounteback.
Always
an androgynous and ambidextrous figure, s/he performs sleight of hand tricks to
distract and entertain.
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| Romany Tarot Magician |
Mercury is the original wheeler and dealer, purveyor of
information and of course, con-artist or spin doctor. Just like our own imaginations
and indeed the mind itself.
Mercury
rules our intelligence and the eloquence of the written and spoken word.
So
this image/idea I’m using to begin our New Year is clever, monkey- brain stuff,
requiring us to use our smarts, be self-focused. Thinking, writing, talking, communicating
to stimulate new and innovative ideas.
In
the Roman alphabet “I” represents the authority of self – I, me, myself. Number One in popular language means the
best, a leader a winner. The purpose of One is action that is both
self-centering and motivated.
In
the image of the Juggler s/he is holding
a wand – the vertical line – but also a ball.
Another way of imaging 1 is a
condensed circle so it becomes a point.
A
point is like a seed or a bud, the first pinprick of light forming in the void,
the start of new life in the womb.
Everything
starts with a point or a focus that demands intense concentration. The point
demands separation, isolation and aloneness. Going solo means there is no-one
to rely on except oneself.
It
requires self-mastery, well-developed will-power and inventiveness. It works
optimally when it has a goal to direct itself towards.
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| Victorian Romantic Tarot featuring Faust as Magician |
In
this time in No-Man’s land imagine yourself as the central character in the
play of your life.
If it’s to be, it’s up to
Me.
Who am I?
Perhaps one of the most fundamental questions we can ask. Ask it now as the end
of the year approaches, so to better “know
thyself” – one of the older precepts of the ancients.
Walt Whitman,
in “Song of Myself” from The Leaves of Grass writes
I celebrate myself and sing
myself.
Or
listen to Jill Scott sing One is the Magic;-
So many times I define my
pride through somebody else’s eyes
Then I looked inside and
found my own stride, I found the lasting love for me
If I’m searching for my spirituality
passionately, I must begin with me
There’s just me, one is the
magic number
There’s just me, one is the
magic number
If I add myself unto myself
multiplied times
You and yours and you again,
there’s just me
And if I divide 8 billion,
48 trillion, 98 zillion, there is there is just me
If I subtract 1 plus 3 to
the 5th degree, use any theorem, there’s just me
There’s just me, one is the
magic number
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| Salvidor Dali as Himself |
Enterprising,
entrepreneurial, self-motivated, get-up-and-go!
Forgive me – the sounds of Number One begin to sing a paean of joy to
capitalism and its entire self-promotion tout and hype our current society
holds so dear.
When a community becomes alienated from its individual members,
it is indeed easy for each atom to slip into sole self-interest and puff. Each
atom pitted against another atom. Why not join the ranks of Key and company and
become a master of illusion-delusion?
The
Magician can be the conman, the adman, the arrogant selfish know-it-all who
drives around in that SUV and bugger everyone else on the road. The Prime
Minister who appears in his best performance mode as Magician – consummate Master
of Ceremonies - distracting attention
with one hand in order to better deceive his audience with the other.
Number
One’s individualism can also lead to loneliness - one of the modern social
diseases generated by a selfish, self-regarding, self-absorbed culture.
One is the loneliest number
that you’ll ever do
One is the loneliest number,
worse than two. Harry
Nilsen
But
the Magician like any archetype always consists of the extreme poles and all
the shades of grey that reside within that dialectical tension that is me/us.
Walt Whitman
“Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict
myself. I am large, I contain multitudes.”
Directing
and focusing one’s mind and attention, to find the will that will transform
circumstances to one’s advantage does not a capitalist make. In fact, if we
want to change this society to a more socialist, more community- structured, democratic,
healthy place to live in, we’d better magic up some goals quick smart.
The
constant dumbing down of critical independent thinking in the public forums of mass
media and political debate, is creeping fascism at work. Unless each one of us
starts valuing our own creative thought and begins to exercise some deliberate
cultural disobedience in more directed ways, we will quickly become slaves to
totalitarianism.
Complete
corporate control is in the air and on the march with a vengeance. It is only
the will of the people that can prevent it.
“In times of crisis I try to
think and use my understanding.” Marilyn Monroe
“Thinking was where Monroe
went in search of freedom”
Women
in Dark Times by Jacqueline Rose
In
January when we all go back to work, unless we want that Kafkaesque machine of (what
passes for) normality to steamroller us into the monstrous ongoing slaughter of
our beautiful planet – we’d better ensure we have imagination and strong
resolve to make the new magic that can begin the task of transformative change.
I
invoke the Magician in us all -
- Come artists and architects, pioneers and
inventors, students and scholars
- Come
poets and musicians, creatives and communicators, healers and parents
- Come
scientists and dreamers, come one and come all
- Come
workers of the world – unite!
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood (and
sisterhood John!!!) of ‘man’
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world…..
You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join
us
And the world will live as
one
John Lennon
