You have protected yourself by divorcing the emotions from the images of torture. You heart has felt it could not tolerate the pain of the compassion, empathy and heartbreak of these feelings, but emotions are not divorceable. It is like divorcing your bowels from your brain. You are all part of one body, one being—bowels, brain, mind and emotions. It is time to re-marry the separated parts of yourself which have never actually been separate but have simply stopped communicating with one another. This lack of communication has led to misplaced assumptions and resultant misunderstandings.

Now, your spirits inhabit your bodies as though they were separable from them, like a car and driver. But they are not truly separable, and it has never been right to treat bodies as disposable. You have worn yourselves down and lost much power over lifetimes through the cycle of birth, death, and in many cases, birth and death again, again and again. This cycle has appeared to be the natural way because it has happened for so long, but it is not the way it is meant to be.

Some of you have lived hundreds, even thousands of lifetimes on Earth. For others, it is the first time around here–and the last. It is not a question of which paradigm is correct, the wheel of reincarnation and karma or one shot at embodied / earthly life. Both are true for different types of beings.

The beings who have reincarnated on Earth many times are the old souls. They have much more responsibility for the state of the world as it is today than those who are only now born into it for the first time. The new ones, the once-borns (as they were called) have responsibility to save themselves if they wish to live. If they do not, then death will be their lot, for each in the time which is right, and that will be the end of their time on earth. This is not necessarily wrong for them.

On a personality level, we are all ‘once-born’. Personalities are formed at the moment of birth, which can be read in the astrological chart of the tropical zodiac.

I am an old soul on Earth—an ancient one. I remember my other lives in aggregate, though only a few in great detail. I tend to live with a kaleidoscopic profusion of mental images and memories. Most of my past lives ended badly, which is not an uncommon pattern for we old ones. I have become stuck in the pain of my past deaths. I have died many times, in terrible ways.

None of my memories so far include slipping gently away at the end of my days, surrounded by my loving family, as I rise from my body and into the welcoming light. That has not been my story. Being burned at the stake, tortured, starved, or wasting away in painful torment has been more my style.

The reasons for that are complicated and I won’t go into them here. But I cannot blame others for my own patterns. I see lines of causality connecting me to my experiences, and I accept the responsibility inherent in that causality.

Science has proved that time is not linear. Thus, there are no ‘past’ lives that are really over with, finished, or ended. I still experience every one of my lifetimes, at some level, concurrent with this one. In a sense, my deaths are yet to come, since I am still alive in this here and now. As long as I live, there is hope that my other selves may yet live. The past is subject to change due to my evolutionary growth. Still, memories of death are also true, because my body (which is bound by time) holds the emotions triggered by these past deaths, and can only continue to hold them until those emotions are released.

These emotions were born with me and have been the cause of most of the compulsive behaviors, futilities and failures of my life. This is the fate side of the double-sided coin. On the free will side, I can choose to allow those ancient emotional imprints to express cleanly, thereby releasing the patterns that hold them in place, and thus changing my own fate, past and future. The memories themselves may not shift until all the held charge is released, so changes, when they come, tend to be sudden from an experiential point of view.

I’ve already lived through several of these global internal transformations. But I’m not finished, for my history is long and the layers are many.

For as long as I live, there exists a possibility that I may yet live forever. If this possibility manifests, then the experience of eternal life will be translated to my other selves, some of which exist in my chronological past, and some in the so-called future.

What of those who do not boast past lives, the once-born? Who are they? Their fullest focus as beings is not here on this planet. Most of them are extrusions or extensions of vast selves which exist primarily on other planets. Their prime attention is focused elsewhere. Earth is not their primary home, merely a side trip.

Whether we feel love for Earth or not, if we have lived many lifetimes here, Earth is our primary home. We are bonded to her by virtue of the many bodies we have borrowed from her, made of her sub stance, whose elements have since returned to her. We are owned by the Earth, and in turn, own her.

The once-born, though not the enemy, are the greatest danger we face, for they can not relate to Earth as we do, and they can not understand. They are not focused with their full loving attention as spirits here—Earth is not their primary matrix. They cannot act, here, from their hearts, for their hearts are not with them. In point of fact, they are not right to be here in the first place. They are an invasive species, so to speak.

At present there is nothing you can do about them. The best thing you can do is to call those spirits who do belong here to return home now, and this includes the rest of your own consciousness which currently drifts in worlds of dream and fantasy, seeking escape from the pain that pressures your bodies and minds to be released. You can call yourselves home through your intent to awaken and accept the responsibility that is yours. However, much of the consciousness that belongs on Earth has been displaced by consciousness that actually belongs elsewhere.

This displaced consciousness can return in several ways: it can be born anew into infant bodies (and this has been happening for some time already). It can enter an already-existing body whose own birth spirit has abandoned it. This is quite a common occurrence, as those who do not belong here seek escape. It can suffuse the elements of nature—a spirit could take up residence in a river, for example, or a forest glade, or a hive of bees. Depending upon the inclination and affinity of the incoming spirit, it could bond with a frog or a giant tree, with an entire ecosystem or with the biosphere as a whole.

Earth has need of these lost children now, and is calling them home. Many earth spirits (such as the consciousness of the faerie folk, little people, gods and goddesses, devas, monstrous and magical creatures) have been pressured almost completely off the surface of the planet. The once-borns are here instead and spirit essence which is of the earth has been pushed out of its place. Before life eternal can manifest for anyone, all spirits need to find their true homes and occupy them, and spirits who are occupying space that belongs to others need to leave it and find their own places.

Here are some articles and essays I’ve written on the subject of astrology. More are added on a regular basis. Enjoy!

A Journey Through the Signs: The Spiral Path: “Aries is utterly simple, the Fool of the Zodiac; the first sign in the cycle, blunt, direct, straight from the chest. Aries says, I want what I want and I want it NOW Goddammit!!

Aries doesn’t care about complicated things like love or beauty or art or the mechanics of day-to-day survival. Aries is consumed by a monumental, focused passion, the will to exist. That’s all. Not ‘to exist freely’, or ‘well’ or ‘comfortably’. Simply to exist.” read more

Finding the Balance in Astrology: “The elements of astrology are divided into two polarities: the feminine and masculine, or yin and yang. The interaction between these two polarities describes the basic binary code of astrology. In traditional astrology, the planet which rules a sign can be differently polarized than the sign itself. For example, the planet Saturn is seen to be masculine, though it rules the feminine earth element Capricorn, while the feminine planet Venus rules the masculine air-element sign Libra.” read more

Science and Astrology: “In this day and age, astrology is lumped in with all the other so-called superstitions and backward, non-scientific belief systems that primitive and unevolved people cling to in order to comfort themselves in the darkness. What has not been acknowledged by the mainstream media (though they feed the superstition with tacky horoscope columns and sun sign predictions in the back pages) is that modern scientific understanding and astrological principles are actually quite compatible.” read more

More articles and information about astrology, and other things too, can be found here

Well I’ve webbled until I’m boggled and my eyeballs have that cartoon character spiral thing happening. So I’m going to take a break and just write for a bit, give my brain a rest. See, just because I’m getting oh so organized, writing actual articles and tonifying the look of my webly home here doesn’t mean I’ll stop spewing forth my crazy poetnesses. It’s my catharsis, my mental hygiene, my truth, my Way!

Okay, so I got a bit carried away. That’s what happens when I don’t write for a long time. I get backed up and what comes out is, shall we say, a little brown. False start. Here I go again.

It’s March. Last month, February was my excuse, but every year March smacks me fresh with drab, grey blotchiness, forcibly reminding me that the golden spring promise of February with its crocii and spring tree-buds bursting loose was, alas, merely a preview of spring and not the real thing. Not yet. March reels us back to the season still in progress, namely winter. It’s a thudding descent into dreary grey one-day-after-the-otherness, cold and wet and threatening snow, with the sunshine a Februarian memory. This happens every year, and what is that about, I want to know? February seems to be a month out of sequence. March is supposed to come after January, with February the lighter and brighter time segueing more naturally into the sweetly scented April world of blossoms and blue skies.

It happens in May too. May will be sunny, count on it. Then June will rain, but July and thereafter will, unless global warming has completely screwed with the program, brighten up again. I counted on it last year too, but it didn’t happen. Damn this climate change!

Still, I remember extreme weather from my childhood, and tales by the oldsters of seasons long past that surpassed the current climes for extreme weirdness. They loved to one-up each other with sample stories of houses buried in snow so you couldn’t see out the windows anymore, cold so cold that your breath would freeze and fall to the ground. And then it would veer into tall tale territory of the Paul Bunyan variety, but still, there were germs and grains of fact in the fancy, which is to say, weather is weird. Always has been, always will be. And people always try to make it mean things.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to say that the climate isn’t changing. Polar bears forced to swim where they once reclined on ice floes and dined through the holes, and pine beetles surviving no-longer-cold winters to devastate the northern forests are evidence enough for the doubter in me. But. Weirdness happens. Right now (did I mention my brain is turned off?) I’m just dazzled by the mystree of it all. Yeah, it’s weird. But science doesn’t know everything. Oh, the rationalists loooove to declaim about us weirdness-mongers and how flaky we are compared to their oh-so-logical and reasoned approach to life.

Still, just how logical and reasoned are they? They have their own prejudices and assumptions, and the freakishness/weirdness of astrology (which this post from WiredScience shows–especially interesting are the comments) falls squarely into their own blind spot. It’s chock full of unquestioned assumptions and ‘everybody knows’. It’s depressing, mainly because I’m about half inclined toward a science geek perspective, reading science books (by scientists with poetry in their souls; yes, they exist) for pleasure, and I’d like to imagine I could carry on a conversation with one of these folks without having to hide from them what I do for a living for fear that it would discredit me utterly. Am I not a human? Have I not skills of observation and a functioning brain? Not according to these know-it-alls.

But, ah well. If that astrologer hadn’t done that reading for me lo those many years ago, thereby grabbing me by the cortex repeatedly with the question ‘How did she KNOW that??’ and if I hadn’t begun to actually research the topic, which led me down the primrose path into the gloomy cobwebbed depths of the superstitious brain-dungeon, I might still be qualified to carry on an intelligent conversation.

But no. According to them, I must surrender any pretensions to brainiosity, despite my considerable geekery.

The funny thing is, all the skeptics like James Randi who go to such lengths to disprove astrology to the masses are never well researched. They learn just enough to figure out ways to make it look ad fake as they already believe it to be. Like the famous experiment where a so-called ‘thorough horoscope’ is given to a group of people, and they are asked to rate its accuracy. Of course, everybody finds it ‘extremely accurate’, only to have the debunker triumphantly reveal that everybody actually received the same horoscope (collective gasp). This absolutely beyond the shadow of a doubt proves the nonsensical brain-tricksiness of astrology (which is always lumped in with all other forms of prognostication, such as palmistry and psychic divination).

And this experiment is endlessly repeated. The same damn thing, over and over.

The mind tricks we astro-fakers are supposed to be pulling apparently involves always using language that could apply to anybody. According to the debunkers, we merely appeal to the natural human desire to be seen and known, so we use vague, globally-applicable statements like, “You have a great deal of unused potential” and “You are recovering from a recent disappointment”. This is our dirty little secret.

But can something like the following really apply to everyone?

With Earth in Aries, you have a strong need for physical action. Your body has a lot of energy, a lot of life force, a lot of drive, but in Aries, there’s no real need to have a focus for it. You could get just as much reward from running on a treadmill as from building something beautiful. The point, with Earth in Aries, is that you sweat, that you get your heart rate up, that you act, that you do. And this is a really solid way for you to nurture your body, to meet your physical needs.

Your body needs to be starting things, to be doing things, in order to be grounded. That’s Aries. But you need to be aware of your primal physical experience (not ‘what you are doing’ but ‘that you are the body doing it’) as much as possible. Feel your breath, breathing and focusing, not with the intent of doing it better, but just to be present in the actions of your body… to feel your muscles moving, the breath expanding your chest and your diaphragm, to feel your skin from the inside, feel the air and any pressure on your skin from your clothing and feel your weight shifting. Really be focusing on feeling your body as you’re moving, as you’re working up a sweat. You’ll find that you glory in that feeling, so let it nourish you. The primal joy of extreme exertion, the endorphins and the whole rush, can be very thrilling to you, with the Earth in Aries.

Well, it would appeal to a lot of people. Exercise is good. But not everybody–some people are couch potatoes, or need to ground through other means, or just don’t find that extreme pleasure in working out.

And how about this bit?

Your Sun-Uranus conjunction and your Earth-Chiron conjunction both square your Ascendant. This is strongly indicative of a crisis around your birth–possibly you or your mother came close to death during the course of your being born. In any case, you were faced with a choice of whether you wanted to live or not. On a personality level this results in a sense of instability in your self-identity. Are you a daring adventurer in love with the universe, trustingly risking it all, or are you more the careful, reserved, practical, business-oriented sort?

Ultimately both are true, and your path to balance will involve finding a way to integrate these disparate styles and needs within the wholeness of your greater Self. Because the transformative and transmutative forces Uranus and Chiron are present in this configuration, you will not necessarily be free to unfold your own sense of timing around your personal growth. Crises and shocks may jolt you out of your comfort zone and into a period of forced healing, whether you like it or not.

Your Capricorn Ascendant has predisposed you to a certain amount of pessimism and misanthropy. You hold certain ingrained attitudes and opinions about yourself and others that are quite untrusting and even unloving. This part of yourself will likely grate on the part of you symbolized by your 9th house Libra Sun, which wants nothing more than to dance joyfully through life following the will-o-the-wisp of love, accepting the gifts of abundance offered by the universe as you go. To your Capricorn Ascendant, this attitude is ridiculously impractical and not even to be considered! This Capricornian part of you keeps the reins firmly drawn.

These examples are just random excerpts that I drew just now from one of my own transcribed readings. I’m too tired and annoyed by life and March right now to bother sifting through everything to find a really great example of how specific and personal these analyses can be, and of course there will be many people who’ll read those two bits and recognize themselves in it, but by the time the pieces are all put together into a full reading and synthesized (which is the true art of the astrologer) into a unified picture, most likely only the person the reading is intended for is going to be able relate to it.

I’ve done readings in the past for people mistakenly using the wrong birth time, and they had no problem letting me know they didn’t think it was right. And the problem always turned out to be a wrong birth time. Quite recently I did a reading for someone who said they couldn’t relate to what I was saying, so I asked them to double check their birth time. Sure enough, it was twelve hours out.

I’m just tired of being lumped into the charlatan faker box. I work hard at what I do, I’m damn good at it, and I give excellent value to those who want help understanding their own workings and the meanings behind their crises and passages. I can help. So frickin there.

End of rant. I’ve just sat through several videos of these wannabe debunkers all focused on proving me to be a fake, a fraud who deliberately fools poor gullible souls into giving me their money for nothing, and it pissed me off.

Time to toddle off to my lonely March bed. This too shall pass. Thanks for listening.

Just when I thought things couldn’t get more complicated here, I decided to separate the astrology stream from my main blog. Everything I post here will also be posted on the main blog, so if you already read my ‘phoenixwolfray.com/blog‘, you won’t have to worry about this particular sidestream. But I wanted to be able add my astro-logical words to various aggregate sites out there that compile information specific to astrology, so I’ve chosen instal a whole new sister blog (which can be reached under ‘astroblog’ in the menu bar above) for that purpose. This is a separate blog but I’ve used the same template and it has all the same links in the header, so for all intents and purposes, it’s the exact same site.

But of course, it requires extensive tweaking, further webbling and boggling me. Oh, the pain! The pleasure! The sheer unadulterated accomplishment of it all!

The astroblog will focus only on information specific to astrology enthusiasts or, for that matter I suppose, detractors, since I can’t seem to help addressing them. Here we go!