Raw food. In the last ten days since I began this raw journey, everybody I’ve talked about it with has an opinion. Those in the know, who have tried it, the choir so to speak, are all supportive and yeah! Others’ opinions range from carefully neutral to openly skeptical.

One friend called raw food ‘celibacy for the palate.’ At first, my response to that was along the lines of, “You haven’t had a good raw meal, obviously!” because oh my my, I suffer from no lack of yumminess. I’m equipped! I have the cookbooks, the dehydrator, the food processor, the blender, the seed grinder, and I’m using them all to good effect. And having fun, too.

But l’m starting to get what he meant by that. There’s an addictive quality to the comfort foods, the melting cheeses, the breads and cooked grains, sauces thickened with flour, meats, processed foods. Those foods provide a kind of throatgasmic satisfaction of a different order than the kinds of deliciosity I am now discovering.

Celibacy is not quite the right word for this way of eating, however. If food is sex, then cooked comfort foods are porn, and this is the real deal. My body loves me while I eat this way. It responds (so quickly!) with more energy, clearer skin and clearer senses. And that love is reciprocated, more and more. We have some work to do on our relationship still, my body and me; I sit at the computer far too long at a stretch without stretching or moving and I’m terribly hooked on any and all means of distraction from the visceral experience of this now, this moment, my breath, my self.
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I’ve fallen behind in my postings here, but not for lack of things to write about.

One exciting development is my new astrology class at the Winds of Change here in Courtenay, something I’ve been wanting to do again for a very long time; ever since I taught classes at Life Rhythms Centre in Edmonton back in the nineties. Teaching astrology is way too much fun! It’s a niche waiting to be filled here, too, so I seem to be the girl for the job.

The first class was last Sunday, and tomorrow will be the second one (7pm, drop-ins welcome!). I had a nice full handful of enthusiastic students, a very good start.

I go around and around about the best way to present astrology so that it is easily grasped, but it’s not easy to do since it encompasses so many dimensions of experience.
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This bombing the moon thing just blows my mind. Insane is the only word I can find for the mindset that can even conceive of such a thing.

Why do I think it’s so crazy? The Moon is only a big ball of rock way out there in space, the science priests all say. Plainly it exists merely for us to make use of, just like we used to think the Earth did, except oops, we messed with something there we didn’t understand but now we do, and now we have to suffer through consequences of global warming but oh well, ho hum, the moon doesn’t matter anyway because only the biosphere is alive, biology is what makes life life. Nothing else matters, especially plain old matter.

I can tell you precisely why this way of seeing is so deeply insane, with the help of an astrologer named Terry MacKinnell.

Terry MacKinnel is an astrological researcher from Australia who has shown that the Aqe of Aquarius actually began some five hundred years or so ago. This is supported by evidence at hand which is considerable; I won’t try to replicate his arguments, merely extrapolate from them. Suffice it to say he is very convincing.

The Astrological Ages reflect the predominant belief-system or paradigm of humanity during their passage. Aquarius is the fixed mode of the air element, the style of maximum expression of the mind.
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Full Moon in Pisces; Fool Moon. In Pisces, sense goes awandering and returns with an imaginary friend, ‘can I keep it?’ continuing over leftways into an upside down whirl of an idea that swept in like wind from the trailing edges of a tale that unfolds kalaidoways, extrapolating madly from scraps of crazy poetry.

Oh, yeah, you can have fun with Pisces. But only if you enter it, and leave it again, because in that sea of dreams, nothing ever changes, it merely swirls and sways, flows and floats away in the wind, sameness enduring, fractal patterns of endless replication, evolution only a fantasy.

Keep your feet on the Virgo ground now, chillins, cause here is where the crazy poet crosses your path with pixie dust from fake fairies that takes you only into oblivion unless you are giving something back. Virgo is about giving back. Taking in the trash, turning it into fertile soil, planting, reaping, processing the harvest.

It’s a lovely time for the harvest, this moon; everything dissolves, expands, glamourises in its milky light, from garden or berry bush or tree to the dryer, the freezer, the jar in the pantry.
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I’ve started writing a horoscope column for the Island Word, and somebody asked me if it was available online, and it wasn’t. So I thought maybe I’d just post it on my blog. It also contains a plug for my upcoming classes.

I asked Danny (the editor) for permission to post it here, and he said yes; he also suggested that I could upload it to their website later in the month. I’ll let y’all know when that happens.

It’s from a chart generated specifically for Courtenay, but it should be applicable to anywhere in this time zone.

Disclaimer: Do not use this horoscope column to make major life decisions! That’s what a full reading is for!

Down-to-Earth Astrology
by Phoenix Wolf-Ray
from The Island Word Sept. edition

How often have you wished that life came with a user manual? Well, guess what–it does! A horoscope column like this one is fun to write and (one hopes) read, but sun-sign horoscopes are to astrology what the alphabet is to English. The natal chart, on the other hand, is your personal map, blueprint and how-to guide for actualization.
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