01/11/09

Pandora in the NOW!

(Newly Ordered World?)

Pandora is, like Eve, a woman.  It is the feminine side of human nature--feeling, instinct, imagination, intuition--which must probe for the truth despite the consequences.

The insects, unlike warmer blooded creatures, are far from human consciousness and relationship.  We cannot communicate with them, but are stung and goaded by nature itself.

The chest which Zeus sends to mankind with Pandora is like the apple in the Garden of Eden: something which is forbidden yet impossible to resist.  It contains knowledge of the reality of human life, which means the death of naiveté and childlike fantasy; yet it also contains the most precious attribute of the human spirit (69). 

Like the cards of the Hermit and the Hanged Man, the card of the Star is a card of waiting, for the sense of hope is a fragile light which glimmers and guides but does not dispel the darkness altogether.  Hope is therefore shown as a female figure, because it is the irrational side of us - the intuition - which perceives the Star in the middle of the noxious swarm of Spites (70).

Thus the Star, the guiding vision of hope and promise, arises not from intention but out of the ashes of the Tower which has been destroyed.  The Fool waits amidst the rubble, without any clear sense of how or what to rebuild.  In the midst of this confusion and collapse of old attitudes and structures, the faint, elusive yet potent Star of Hope rises (71).

~from The Mythic Tarot by Juliet Sharman-Burke & Liz Greene.  Fireside, NY: 1986.

We are coming to a day soon, that has the conspiratorial part of me wondering.  So I'm obviously obsessed with the idea of "the underworld."  It is my contention that we went into The Belly of The Whale with the collapse of the Tower(s) on 09/11/01.  Well I think we are about to face it from the other side of the mirror:  01/11/09.

Obama is clearly the Star of Hope.  We may be coming out of the whale.  And it may happen soon too.  I just don't know if the rubble of the recently fallen Tower that we fools are standing in, is the WTC, the year 2008, the end of the term of the Bush administration, or if it is the corpse of capitalism.  Maybe it is all these things.

It is also pretty clear to me at this point, that Sirius is "The Star".  The long dark night of the soul is the period from the solstice to the sun's rebirth on the 25th.  Sirius is the star of hope pointing to where the newborn sun will rise again.  Then, a week later, it is at it's highest point overhead at the stroke of midnight.

And so, what does this mean?  Hajo Banzhaf has this to say in his Tarot and the Journey of the Hero regarding the Star:  "When the tower of false consciousness is smashed to pieces, all the upside-down concepts of a solely quantitative, linear form of time made of the past, present, and future collapse (187)  ."  And what's left?

The timeless NOW.  "This leap of consciousness is like bathing in the fountain of youth.  It saves us from being fixed on time and gives us the gift of boundless freedom from time (188)."

Next time, I'll talk about our guide through "the underworld" (The Anima, or Animus). Hopefully I'll get to some good old fashioned synchromysticism soon.  I think The Black Hole is the key film for me right now. It's study will include Monica Bellucci, Eden, NYC, Iris/Temperance, Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman/Olivia Newton-John/Naomi Watts--Australia, etc . . .