Seeing Through Saturn

Growing Up & The Fall of Man

Once upon a time, God created Man in his own image, and placed them in The Garden of Eden, a Paradise where they could live forever in joy just by being there. No aging, no pain, no sorrow, no failure. On one side of this Garden few the Tree of Knowledge of Good & Evil, whose fruits bestowed awareness. On the other side of this Garden grew the Tree of Life, whose fruits bestowed immortality. To Adam & Eve, the Garden’s only human denizens, God simply instructed “Do not eat the fruits of these trees.” And so they obeyed.

Until one day.

 A serpent approached Eve from the bushes as she wandered by the Tree of Knowledge, and suggested that she eat an apple from its branches. “Why should Man be restricted from wisdom?” the snake tempted her. One of the defining features of Man is free-will: the innate right and ability to make choices. So Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge, and immediately became aware of duality, that she was different from Adam, of sin and purity, of light and dark.

God learned of this disobedience and feared Man would eat of the Tree of Life, achieving immortality to match their now divine intelligence. God feared they would become as Him. And so they were banished from the Garden, cursed to age, to die, to toil all their days. And we, their ancestors, are cursed to live similar existences…

Although millennia of human ingenuity and technological advances have made that toiling significantly easier.

This, if you are not familiar, is the creation myth from The Bible: the story of where we are from and why we are the way we are.

However, upon closer examination, the story of Genesis could actually be seen as a metaphor for human development. In our own lives, we are created by our parents, in their image (due to genetics), and placed into a (to our un-educated eyes) paradise where we don’t have to feed ourselves, clean or do anything particularly useful with our time other than eat and play. As Adam and Eve were unaware of their nudity, in early infancy we are literally unaware of our bodies and how to manipulate them. We also don’t know that there is right or wrong, good or bad. Very early on in life, we can’t even perceive the outside world as separate from us.

It’s only through time and experience, plus world-views consciously or unconsciously gleaned from our parents, that we start to learn about duality - right and wrong, self and others, mine and theirs, etc., etc. This sense of duality continues to feed a sense of individual self, with an ever-growing in complexity network of values, beliefs, wants, fears and aspirations.

Eventually, that sense of self begins to feel restricted by parental authority. Unlike in the story of Adam & Eve, we are not tempted by a serpent to expand beyond the limits set for us by our God-like parents. Be it an inner thirst for rebellion, peer pressure or passage through socially constructed rites of passage, in adolescence, something impels us to break free of whatever bondage we are in - that we have the right to have, to know, to go, to be, to varying degrees of conflict (or not) with our parents. The majority of us are not banished from our respective Gardens of Eden — we leave it in accord with well-established social norms such as leaving for college or moving out for that first job, ready to explore the world beyond the garden walls. In our culture, this leaving behind of Eden is viewed as a positive thing - something important and desirable. To grow up is to spend the rest of your days in toil, doing your own laundry, cooking your own meals, cleaning the bathroom, all the things your parents (hopefully) did before your hormones kicked in and impelled you to metaphorically eat of the Tree of Knowledge. Not to mention taking on bills and careers and relationships and, probably, eventually, a family of your own.

In spite of the general population being aware of the Garden of Eden as our origin story, our culture is structured in such a way that both the loss of paradise and life beyond the metaphorical garden walls are celebrated and glorified.

The dark side of this glorified loss of innocence has been especially present in the collective consciousness and mass media lately, in music with Britney Spears’ transformation from virginal school girl to supposed femme fatal and Rihanna’s “Good Girl Gone Bad,” in film with the Twilight saga and The Black Swan, and in television with shows like Gossip Girl, WEEDS and Pretty Little Liars. This may at some point be the subject of another article, but in the meantime you can read about the undercurrents of these media elsewhere.

What really happened when Eve took a bite of that apple was more complicated than gaining knowledge of “Good & Evil.” What happened was the bite of that apple woke her up to the fact that she was inside of a body that is separate from the tree she was eating from. That the tree was rooted into earth beneath that was separate from the sky above. She became aware that she was Eve, and that there was a God who created her, and she was in a body separate from Him.

The eating of the apple of the Tree of Knowledge was the moment that mankind lost its blissful innocence and became aware of duality. And as we know, duality is oh so very complicated and painful. So complicated that we have to be sent to school at a very young age so we can start to learn about it. And once you learn about how this world of duality works, you have to decide if you want to “make something of yourself” in it, so you have to seek more education in order to learn about deeper levels of duality. And then, over all of this, there are the trials and tribulations of learning about the duality between your values and collective values, relations between Self & Others, private life and public life, and even the relationship between your conscious self and your unconscious self. The list could keep going.

Whether or not The Fall of Man from the Garden of Eden has any truth in actual history, the structure and themes of that story are at work in every single one of our lives. Theology tells us that the eating of the apple was our original sin and that our expulsion from the Garden of Eden was a punishment and a curse. However, this viewpoint is not validated by our culture. We live in a world where failure to grow up, to get out of the metaphorical Garden of Eden and make something of ourselves through toil is considered a failure.

Just as our parents ultimately want us to grow up and do something, and probably ultimately surpass them, surely God had expectations of Adam & Eve when he created them. The conventional understanding of the story of Genesis has a flaw. Within the structure of this story, it is a truth that God created everything. This would include that snake that dared to tempt Eve into disobeying God. New Age-ists and occultists have ground for an argument that expulsion from the Garden was all part of the plan.

In the millennia since man has been ejected from Paradise, we have created society, agriculture, electricity, technology, industry, education, art and culture. In a world of duality, all of these have good and bad sides, of which we could spend hours expounding upon. Everything in our world is a double-edged sword. But we would have none of it if we were still frolicking naked through the Garden of Eden.

If our expulsion from the Garden of Eden mirrors the early part of a human life, an individual human life can be looked at as a mirror to understand the life of our entire species. After our own individual expulsions from Paradise, we work, we learn self-sufficiency, we create careers, we date, we make more friends, we join groups and fraternities, we get married and we establish families of our own, creating our own little Adams & Eves to occupy our little Garden of Edens.

The human race, for the most part, has reached the age of established security and complete self-sufficiency (as much as any person can create them). Current environmental and economic circumstances and inequalities would argue we could do a better job of this - but that’s another article entirely. In the article, Leaving Behind a Man-Made Hell, we established that the world we live in was created entirely by people and human ingenuity, including its problems. It is said by philosophers that to be God is to be able to create, to know, and to live forever. We have yet to perfect our ability to create, as exhibited by the mess of the modern world, but we have also not reached our full potential.

There are a lot of ways to view the current hell we have created for ourselves:

1. Human beings are cursed to eternal suffering due to original sin, unless we accept divine salvation. (Read The Bible)
2. The structure of society has been engineered by a secret, elite group of occultists in a grand rebellion against the authority of God. (Google search ‘Illuminati Conspiracy Theories’)
3. The modern world has been hijacked by a selfish, greedy elite desperate to consolidate more and more power. (Turn on the news)
4. The evolution of humanity has been halted by a final showdown with its own unconscious, primal survival instinct. (Take a look at your own psychological problems)

There is tons of evidence for each of these views, and more. Each of them have compelling arguments, truths and ways to invalidate each other, and you should delve into understanding all of them. This article, however, is about trying to understand the process by which our own personal destinies unfold, as well as the destiny of Man.
 
In adult life, we eventually seek to create a home-base that nurtures us like or better than our environment in early life. Harkening back to that story of our origin, when God learned that Eve had eaten from the Tree of Knowledge of Good & Evil, his specific motivation for casting them out of the Garden of Eden was to prevent them from eating from the Tree of Life and living for eternity, like Him. He even placed a cherubim at the gate to the garden to keep Adam & Eve from getting back in.

Any good parent wants their child to grow up and surpass them - but not until they earn it.

The next step in the life of our species is to re-establish the Garden of Eden. And in so doing we may get access, once again, to the Tree of Life.

The destiny of mankind can be witnessed in the destiny of individual man. Our individual grand finales are death - a return to the dust. All theologies speak of a life after death, be it reincarnation or an after-life. Most speak of the material world we live in as being an illusion, relegating death and the exit from this plane to the status of “transcendence.” We are the sons and daughters of God, and we are being raised with the same hopes and wishes with which we raise our children. The destiny of mankind is to earn the fruit of the other tree. To attain true life.

Media Trends: Mirror or Propaganda?

That there are trends in the media, be they visual or ideological, is self-evident. There are periods of time when it seems as though an idea arises that completely dominates all of media, from news reporting on current events to the media being produced by Hollywood.

One of the ideological trends that has been especially prevalent this year is the concept of freedom to be an individual and the right to love yourself for who you are. This theme has been encompassed in everything from Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way,” to the fight for marriage equality to mass media coverage on bullying among children and the pain this causes.

One of the visual trends that has been especially prominent over the past year is the idea of mankind merging with or becoming machine. This concept has been explored in everything from pop music, such as Christina Augiliera’s Bionic album, to advertising (such as Drake’s Sprite commercial and Svedka Vodka’s Bot or Not campaign) to media coverage of Ray Kurzweil and the Singularity movement.

What fails to be discussed by the media (be it news or commercial art) is how and why certain ideas take such prominence at certain times. There are many factions of thought I have been exposed to regarding this, but they seem to fall into two types of philosophies. I will cover what those two philosophies are in a moment, but before doing so, it is first necessary to establish who it is that creates mass media and how it is presented to the public.

The majority of media, be it news, television shows, motion pictures or advertisements, is produced by massive multi-national corporations whose goals are to make as much money as possible, which means creating media that will attract as many eyes as possible. Many of these corporations have merged into conglomerates and their combined powers are used to promote collective agendas in a strategy / corporate structure called vertical integration.

An example of this would be watching a CW show such as “Vampire Diaries,” and the soundtrack for the episode including a song from a new artist whose album is being distributed through Warner Music Group (both are owned by the same parent company). If you go to the CW website to learn more about the song, you can probably even purchase it from the CW website. Conversely, if you are already a fan of the music artist, you might go to their website and learn that the song was featured on an episode of “Vampire Diaries,” prompting you to check out the show for the first time. The end result of this, however, is a single larger company benefiting from the cross-promotion opportunities gleaned by owning two completely different types of media companies.

However, not all media is produced by corporations, and individuals more than ever have the opportunity to have their content viewed by the masses thanks to outlets such as YouTube, Tumblr, Flickr and DeviantArt. Still, sometimes it is still hard not to notice common trends or themes in the media produced all across the board, be they major corporations or individuals getting recognized on their own. To refer back to the idea of mankind merging with machine, the concept has been explored by both international icon Christina Aguilera and complete unknown Amadeus in his Humanoide album.
This brings us back to the two philosophies of media trends:

1. Propaganda: Media corporations are trying to mold the masses into possessing certain values and morals and using the messages embedded in mass media to do so.

2. Mirror: Just as individuals have an unconscious from which life-changing ideas arise, so does all of man-kind have a Collective Unconscious (see the work of Carl Jung) from which ideas arise and are explored collectively in the mass media.

The case for #1, that mass-media is being used as a kind of brainwashing tool, is explored extensively with compelling evidence on blogs like The Vigilant Citizen and Pop Occulture. In regards to the massively popular concept of humans merging with machines, also do a Google search for “transhumanist agenda.”

However, as someone who believes in the work of Carl Jung, and who also studies astrology, I have to wonder if that’s all that is really going on. Isn’t it entirely possible that collective interests arise and take hold of mass media due to a change in the evolution of our collective consciousness - that the trends of the media are simply acting as a mirror to what’s happening in the heart of the human race at any given time?

This chart of the moment reveals Neptune leaving Aquarius and going into Pisces. In Aquarius, Neptune indicates an interest in human individuality, but also robotics and the idealism of technological advancement, or better living through science. We can expect a coming collective fascination with service to others, public figures who seem like Messiahs or self-sacrificing crusaders, a glamorization of the non-profit sector, the mind-altering effects of drugs, spiritual healing and the metaphor of the ocean and its depths being the source of our lives.

So are media trends a result of corporate propaganda or do they mirror what’s happening in our collective psyche? It’s probably a little bit of both. But what do you think?

Society As A Cult Structure

The New Oxford American Dictionary defines a cult as a system of religious veneration and devotion directed toward a particular figure or object.

Whenever we hear the word, fringe groups come to mind such as Heaven’s Gate, in which members committed mass-suicide so that their souls could catch a ride on a comet back to their home planet, or Scientology, a multi-billion dollar, celebrity touting organization whose mythology tells that our bodies are comprised of the souls of aliens who were killed in a holocaust by an ancient intergalactic warlord named Xenu.

Going back to the basic definition of cult, however, a cult is simply defined as a system of devotion to a particular figure or object. That object of devotion could be an abstract figure, such as a god or deity, or something more material, say, money. Though the objects of devotion can vary widely, cults all have certain characteristics in common:

Those characteristics are:

1. Defining an ultimate, ideal goal that people desire to strive for and brings esteem or prestige to those who have achieved it.
In Scientology, the dissolution of the “Thetan body.” In Heaven’s Gate, entering The Next Level by leaving behind the flesh vessel of the soul via the comet Hale-Bopp.
2. Defining rungs of a ladder to climb in the quest for enlightenment or attaining the ideal goal.
In Scientology, the advancement through different courses gets initiates closer and closer to being clear of Thetans (or the souls of the dead aliens killed by Xenu that are responsible for all of our psychological torments). In Heaven’s Gate, the ladder is one of self-sacrifice, beginning with relinquishing worldly possessions and individuality and ending in suicide.
3. Institutionally mandated rituals & ceremonies marking rites of passage on the quest to achieving the ideal goal
In Scientology, graduation ceremonies from one level to the next. In Heaven’s Gate, castration, and later, collective suicide.
4. Structures that limit objective perspective on the cult member’s / initiate’s circumstances beyond the world of the cult.
In both cults, the cutting of family ties and all external relationships. Restrictions from viewing external media and blind obedience to authority.
5. Symbols and statuses that indicate one’s level or stage on the path to achieving the ideal goal
In Scientology, ranks indicating level of Thetan clearance. In Heaven’s Gate, lack of genitalia.
6. The subjugation of individual will for the purpose of achieving the ideal goal
In both cults: massive financial investment and requirement to provide free, slave-like labor.

Though (slightly) far from cults, if you take a moment to think about it, the societies of the modern world share a lot of these characteristics. The object of devotion isn’t as pervasive and clear as it is in a smaller cult (ie centered around a certain deity) but modern society is structured in such a way as to utilize many of the indoctrination techniques of cults in order to inspire mass conformity to its agenda of security and expansion, often signified by the accumulation of wealth and worldly power.

The point of this article, however, is not to assert that our society is a cult that worships money (though this is partially true), but that the mechanisms of cult indoctrination are very deeply embedded in our lives and our shared circumstances - that the various institutions we pass through on our ascent through life are tools of indoctrination overwhelmingly responsible for our values, our dreams and our aspirations. Naming an object of devotion for modern society that is inherent in most cults is a little difficult in the cult of society because we all have different aspirations. Some people’s ideal goal is a loving partner or their family. A growing number of people are devoted to fame (something which can be attained now without the rewards of financial prosperity thanks to outlets such as YouTube and social media). Other people may want simply  to attain a private, individual definition of success, yet we still see them on a daily basis, at work, on the subway, having to pay their taxes and be a part of the institution of society in spite of not really chasing the externally defined ideal goal. Society is an all-encompassing institution that people are born into, from which there is a rarely an escape, or even a real desire to do so.

Let’s take a look at the various characteristics of cults as they manifest in our society:

1. Defining an ultimate, ideal goal that people desire to strive for and brings esteem or prestige to those who have achieved it:
Concepts such as The American Dream, the ideal of home-ownership, marital bliss, rising to the top in one’s career, fame, wealth, un-defined but oft-referenced “success”

2. Defining rungs of a ladder to climb in the quest for enlightenment or attaining the ideal goal.
The corporate ladder of title and the military ladder of rank, the general work ladder beginning with “employee” and ending at “boss,” tax brackets, the class structure, neighborhoods, the passage from renting to owning, the passage from single to married, the education ladder from kindergarten through PhD, the passage from unknown to famous

3. Institutionally mandated rituals & ceremonies marking rites of passage on the quest to achieving the ideal goal
Graduations, weddings, job promotions, all awards ceremonies, red carpet events, parties celebrating accomplishment, presidential inaugurations

4. Structures that limit objective perspective on the cult member’s / initiate’s circumstances beyond the world of the cult structure
Deadlines, the drudgeries of responsibilities, the stress of financial investment to fund the quest, competition with others for “success”

5. Symbols and statuses that indicate one’s level or stage on the path to achieving the ideal goal
Wedding rings, luxury cars, diplomas, the Home, title, rank, economic class status

6. The subjugation of individual will and well-being for the purpose of achieving the ideal goal
Remaining in an unhappy / unfulfilling marriage, going into massive debt for home-ownership, education or the illusion of “success,” cutting ties to focus on work and goals

It’s interesting to note that just as the goals of Scientology and Heaven’s Gate are to dissolve the aloneness of inhabiting a body, many of the quests for the ideal goals listed above are motivated by a (at least unconscious) desire to dissolve aloneness, either through overt relationship or amassing such worth that others are attracted to us.

The central thesis of this website is that we live in a man-made world, and that any limits we contend with have largely been created by us.

Cults are said to attract lost people who are looking for meaning in their lives, and this vulnerability allows them to be taken advantage of by charismatic but unscrupulous individuals looking to attain power and / or wealth. The problem with society deploying many of the indoctrination techniques as a cult is that people are born into it - they are indoctrinated into a system before they even have a chance to find (and lose) themselves. The positive side of this double-edged sword, however, is that society (when functioning properly) automatically moves us up on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs so that we can focus more on self-actualization. Without society, we would not be afforded the systems of basic comfort such as shelter and abundant food and water. We would not be afforded the luxury of easilly accessible companionship and camraderie.

Thus, this is not a message of gloom and doom, but a call to awareness. We live in a man-made world. As a people, we are responsible for the structures that limit us, but we have also built the one’s that make us thrive. Mankind as a species, more than any other currently existing on earth, has the power to shape its destiny and the destiny of the world. The more we are aware of that on an individual level, the more we can be a part of that destiny, and truly claim our own in the process. Good luck brothers and sisters!

Buying Into Maya

If you look closely, there is a single message hidden underneath all of the advertising, marketing, music videos, fashion trends and glamour that surrounds us. That message is that love and acceptance are out there, separate from us, and as human nature is, we probably want it. Fortunately, it can be attained when we swipe our credit cards.

We hold high-concept ideals of who we want to be and what it will feel like to be that way.

Comfortable.
Wealthy.
Adored.
Loved.
Cool.
Fashionable.
Unique.
Perfect.
Sexy.
Powerful.
Masculine.
Feminine.

Each of those feelings has had commodities attached to them, that, in an almost subconsciously Pavlovian way, we associate with the above high concept feelings. Obtaining these items has become equated with the attainment of the feeling. Here is a list of items that can be purchased. Read through the list and take note of what words they evoke for you. It’s likely some of the words listed above will come to mind.

Roses
A Mercedes
A Motorcycle
Stiletto High-Heels
Designer Sunglasses
A Puppy

We live in a world (which we have created), in which we are always missing something, and the missing piece can be found outside and purchased. A great deal of ego energy, time and effort are applied to attain these badges. To realize an intangible, emotional goal through symbolic attainment.

The process is so logical that it’s programmed into our biology:
   Need nourishment. Obtain food.

A program so deep that its coding runs through the society we created.
   Need knowledge. Get an A.
   Need life. Get a job.
   Need salvation. Get a religion.

By our biology, it would seem, we were destined to be consumers. The process is our vital ego function. And this process has evolved from the hunters and gatherers adhering to the god of nature, to card-swiping sale-seekers adhering to the gods of marketing.

There is an Eastern concept that the world we live in - this
physical plane of separate entities - is an illusion created by ego. This illusion is called Maya. For ego, the low self, to exist, it must prove its worth through material attainment in this world. It must conquer. Work hard. Reap and sow. Go through all the discomfort and suffering our culture is addicted to. A therapeutic version of that is to shop.

This idea of buying into Maya originated about five years ago when Visa came up with a product called The Enlightenment Card. A credit card targeted towards people who, as the double-page ad said:

Practice yoga. Eat organic. Recycle. Read positive books. Frequent workshops. Donate to charities. Am active in the community. Put their money where their heart is.

    “Then shouldn’t I have a credit card that supports my conscious lifestyle?”

The idea we’ve been instilled with since youth is that God is
something out there, away from us. Or everywhere. People spend their entire lives seeking it and what it has to offer: Unconditional love. Bliss. Salvation. Perfection. Is this not the heart of consumerism?
 
“Buy this product and you will feel loved.” (or sexually desireable)
“Buy this product and you will feel alive.” (or caffeinated)
“Buy this product and you will feel at peace.”
“Buy this product and you will be saved from this existence.”

Buy freedom. Buy God. Buy salvation. If you spend enough money, you attain and become whatever ideal you’re seeking.
   
    The Enlightenment Card, then, turned on a few lightbulbs. Because it’s proof of a paradigm shift in human/consumer consciousness. Not since the 60’s has there been such a large scale need for humanity to feel they are making a difference in the world. To transcend the limitations of carbon-based existence. A major corporation branding this need all but verifies its scale, and further pollinates the collective mind with consciousness.

   We are in a stage in evolution that goes past the need for
egoical consumption. To nourish our souls with external attainment. Consumerism symbolizes the height of our somatic evolution and now, our spiritual obstacle.

    But when you turn to the outside to make whole your insides, you’ve
given up more power than you know.

“God created us in his image. We were created in the image of God.”

God is whole. God is all. Therefore, so are we. The kingdom of heaven lies within. Not without. Not above. Not at the mall. Speaking from a financially
logical stand-point, is it smart to purchase that which you already own?

The Occult Nature of Money

What is money? The New Oxford Dictionary defines it as “a current medium of exchange in the form of coins and banknotes.”

Money is the paper bills that fill, or do not fill, our wallets and purses, the change we use at the laundromat and the numbers that define our bank account. It has a changing worth constantly being re-determined by international government entities using systems the majority of the population does not understand, and this officially assigned worth determines how much is needed to buy tangible things like food and clothing - things whose worth are determined not by people, but by our individual bodies and their need for sustenance, warmth and protection. Some would say these are the determiners of true value.

Money’s transaction, accumulation and spending is something we’ve been involved with our entire lives. As children we watched our parents give money to the cashier and collect change. We took note of their frugality, generosity, hardships, and windfalls, and probably absorbed a lot of their attitudes about money, and which we now express in our own adult lives. We may wonder, where did our parent’s get their attitudes about money? And where did their parents get their attitudes about money? And if we ask this question long enough, we must eventually ask, who invented money, and why? And how did it evolve into what it has become?

Money is probably the closest thing we have in the modern world to magick, and without realizing it, as we swipe our debit cards and buy our Starbucks and deposit our checks and pay the babysitter, we are participating in the largest occult ritual in the world. Not to mention the fact that our very own currency is covered in occult symbols that a majority of the public does not understand.

Money is the single most important thing in modern society. It builds our cities, it pays for our time and grants freedom and mobility in our world. It has been attributed value equal to or greater than the very resources that sustain our lives, from the soil that feeds us to the water we drink. Money, in this world, is a force of power, a currency between both businesses and people, a dream, a status symbol, a statement of intent. But what many of us forget is that money is not real - it is something that has been invented by people, regulated by government, given more worth than the life-sustaining resources it affords (food, shelter, clothing, etc.), and is an illusion sustained by nothing but habit.

As the world exists right now, a farmer grows crops, sells them, uses the money to buy fertilizer, pesticide, his groceries, pay his electrical bill, and all of the things he needs to survive and continue his business. But what if he were to suddenly decide he did not want to use money anymore? Rather than selling his crops, he starts to negotiate with the fertilizer manufacturer for fertilizers in exchange for food, for electricity in exchange for his crop. And of course these companies must oblige if they want to eat.

This is actually how things were before money came along. Commerce was all about people exchanging tangible resources in exchange for tangible resources. Wealth was measured in cattle and crop yield, in silk and oil, even in the attractiveness of a man’s daughters. Money was invented as a commercial lubricator of sorts, making trade easier and allowing for a redistribution of power to happen… However, in the process, a lot of power was taken from everyone by causing us to unconsciously devalue our resources and our wants. Our art is viewed as worthless unless it makes us money. The home we love and nourishes us so deeply has become a horrible investment in this housing market. By that same token, we want something, be it a red sports car, or a vacation to Hawaii, and the obstacle that most often comes up in the quest to attain these things, if we even begin the quest, is lack of funds. Even then, the quest becomes then one to make money. In our minds, it is not the lack of the sports car or Hawaiian vacation that hinders us from having these things, but the lack of money. And we live in a society that trains us from the very beginning of Kindergarten, to work in exchange for money so that we can have the the things we want, rather than, say, learning how to build a sports car, or learning how to fly a plane so that you can get yourself to Hawaii. This is disempowering, and it is a negative facet of the spell that money has cast over our lives.

In the occult, all rituals are performed with symbolic items, movements and sounds. The chalice is not just a chalice, the hand gestures over it are not just hand gestures, and the low gutteral sound the practitioner makes is now the sound of an upset stomach. Like a wedding or a Catholic mass, every bit of wardrobe, dialogue and movement has a symbolic meaning, and is being carried out in a particular fashion in order to create a desired outcome. The difference between weddings, Catholic masses and occult rituals is that most of us are at least semi-literate in the meanings behind the white dress and consumption of the wafer to such an extent that we take all of these rituals for granted.

Money is actually little more than a stand-in for actual resources that we have ascribed value too.

William Greider wrote in Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country that:

“Above all, money [is] a function of faith. It [requires] an implicit and universal social consent that [is] indeed mysterious. To create money and use it, each one must believe, and everyone must believe. Only then [do] the worthless pieces of paper take on value. When a society [loses] faith in money, it [is] implicitly losing faith in itself… The money process… [requires] a deep, unacknowledged act of faith, so mysterious that it could easily be confused with divine powers.”

In addition to being a spell, money in our world has us under a spell. When Nixon revoked the gold standard, so was revoked the concept that our money had any tangible backing. Many of us live and die by financial security, yet money has been reduced to meaningless numbers in a computer - something that only has power because an external entity says it is so. To learn more about this, I recommend this amazing video by Tad Lumpkin.

around-the-corner asked: What reason do you have to get up in the morning when you are so well aware of the pointlessness of the activities we fill the days with? What keeps you going?

Life is not the activities we do, it is just something we experience and engage with 24/7. So many of the activities we have to do every day are pretty pointless but what we learn and feel from doing them, good or bad, is interesting, and not pointless. And that’s the important part.

The Structuring & Mechanization of Life

When we think of the scope of a human life, in addition to birth and death, our minds start to list the standard benchmarks that happen in between, such as learning how to drive, turning eighteen, getting the first job, getting married, having children, retiring. However, it seems to be taken for granted that these benchmarks are largely man-made and constructed by society. To use the language of astrology, these benchmarks are significant only in the realm of Saturn - the realm of time and space and the world that we have constructed within it.

Without the man-made concept of time and the legal transition into adult (the law - another man-made concept), a person living to see 18 transits of the earth around the sun would have no special significance. Legally, living to be 18 years old grants a person the ability leave home and start their own adult life, become legally bound to a life partner in marriage or join the army and die in a war. The importance is placed on the passage of time itself, and not the experience and knowledge gained during the time. Perhaps one individual has not gained enough experience to successfully start charting their adult lives. Perhaps another individual had already gained the knowledge and skills needed to “be an adult” by the time they were fifteen, but were legally delayed in putting this experience into action for three years.

These are the challenges of living in a world that values systemization and output more than purpose. At some point, all of the laws that govern our land were enacted for a reason, and so were all the institutions and schedules that structure our lives. What’s happened is that all of these, in our system of priorities, have evolved from services or tools to make our lives better and actually become the goals and the should-have’s or should-be’s that cause anxiety. They have become agents of conformity and the barometers of whether we are “on track” or “living the right way” regardless of our individual paths. As our society has become more and more complex, these structures have multiplied vastly. We actually live in a society now where the goal of the majority of the institutions we are immersed in are to encourage conformity in the populace to ensure its own continuance. The world we have created has become so complex that it would be very simple for a person to live the entire span of their life doing what is expected of them and never asking themselves what it is they really want to do. And all of this has combined to fundamentally alter our concept of what life is and for.

“What do you want to be when you grow up?”

This is the question we all were asked as kids at one point, and it has become so cliché, that we take its asking, and also its implications, for granted.

Note the specific phrasing of the question. It is always asked “What do you want to be” not “What do you want to do?” “What do you want to accomplish?”
The modern world has trained us that in order to be a part of it, we must have a specific role, and that there is a list of these roles to choose from, and, especially when we become adults, we must work towards becoming that person until the identity has become crystalized.

When we enter the institution of school, we are imparted knowledge on how to read and write and understand the world, but also given specific training about how to excel within that institution, taking tests, doing homework, working in general. The training intensifies as we progress through grades. Later, focus emerges on college, and, in general, only those who were most successful in learning how to excel in the institution of school are allowed to proceed further down the path of conformity and worldly success.

If you take some time to examine the stresses now that affect you in adult life, most of them are probably related to your ability to conform. Pressures of conforming to employer’s demands, physical appearance, attire, hobbies, interests, romance, living arrangements, location and even fun. Financial pressures can fall under this umbrella as well, for why do you feel you need to have these things that you want to have?

The last two paragraphs have been especially general and broad. To clarify, I’m referring only to the institutions as agents of conformity. School, for children, is indoctrination into society and the way it works. Its goal is to prepare students for the next level of indoctrination in college. College’s primary goal, in spite of the great amount of awakening we are likely to experience there, is to prepare students for the workforce. Many of us have probably encountered the teachers who truly encourage us to be ourselves and “follow our hearts,” and we probably remember them fondly. Within the institutions of conformity are inspired agents who promote innovation and soul. What this article is proposing is not that conformity and the agenda of our world is bad, but that the institutions change to balance output of conformity with an encouragement of true self-knowing.

As the emphasis on only conformity and structure has its consequences, so too does the other end of the spectrum - of living completely free and following the (supposed) whims of the heart every single moment. Conformity, and other emanations of Saturn actually have a great many benefits (and these will be discussed at length in a future article). For starters, conformity allows us to have our society and live the comfortable lives (with the lower portion of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs taken care of) that we do. Having external pressures to rise to can cause people to grow in very positive directions if they weren’t otherwise challenged to do so. The problem is that our society is structured in such a way that too much emphasis is put on conformity, and the proof is in how collectively shitty a lot of us feel. Depression is a very natural response to living in a world where so much is demanded of us that we cannot hear our own souls. And those demands are so great we have even developed medication to help us conform to society’s standards of happiness and productivity.

Until the world we live in becomes more balanced, we are challenged to to individually leave our Saturnian shackles from time to time and explore the freedom and possibility at the other end of the spectrum. Imagine your life without your daily schedule, without your home, without your relationships, without any of the things, places and people that exist outside of you on a daily basis. Go even further and let go of all your habitual responses to and behaviors in the world outside of you. Immediately your life potentials skyrocket, and you’ll probably feel light enough to actually take flight. This is the realm of Jupiter, Saturn’s opposite. As with any spectrum, the best place to be is usually the middle, and balance between the emanations of Saturn and Jupiter are crucial to a healthy life, healthy society and healthy world. We will explore this further in future articles as well.

Plato’s Parable of The Cave

Plato’s parable of The Cave, both the actual story and this video directed by Sam Weiss, tells the eternal story of the human condition: the mainstream masses are lost in darkness, and one individual leaving it behind to cross the axis-mundi, see the truth and bring it back to his tribe. The story seems to have two target audiences, with the beginning acting as an illustration to the blind exactly how their world is constructed and in the end, a moral call to action for those who have been “illuminated” t0 share their knowledge with their fellow man. To convey this, both the story and the video make heavy use of astrological and occult symbolism, Greek myth (especially the tale of Prometheus) and the symbols of the collective unconscious (such as shadows and darkness being associated with ignorance and light and the sun being associated with truth). You might also watch this video and see Plato’s influence on The Matrix, and even Joseph Campbell’s famous Hero’s Journey.

Let’s break down some of the elements in this video and interpret it through the lens of Seeing Through Saturn.

The cave is our Saturnine reality and Plato is saying that the world we live in is a construct designed to keep us enchained and in the dark. When he is set free, our hero journeys outside the cave to find the true light of the sun, and experiences the natural world as designed by God. Able to finally See, he comes to understand the true order of the universe, learning that from the sun comes all. In Plato’s allegory, the sun is synonymous with the creator and also the Truth, and our hero becomes someone who lives in illumination of that truth while the rest of his people live in the darkness of the cave.

A journey complete, he tries to return to his people only to find that he can no longer live as they do. He is ridiculed and cast out of the society. Plato’s story ends with the call to action that those who have seen the light, and been illuminated, go back and try to share the Truth with their people, and to bring them into the light as well.

These shadows the prisoners watch projected on the wall is the symbol of the all the meaningless trivia that takes so much time from our lives. To reference Buddhism, the shadows are the elements of Maya (illusion) that keep us distracted from the truth. Be it shopping, or the entertainment industry, or compulsive relationships, those shadows may entertain, but ultimately just dim one’s view of the truth. It should be pointed out that the illustrator in this video chose to have one of the puppets that has entranced the masses be Capricorn the Sea Goat. In astrology, Capricorn is the archetype of the public figure, be it a politician or a pop star, someone who stands in the public eye, delivers a message (good or bad) and is listened too. In a way, Plato predicted the rise and power of mass media when he chose to use this metaphor of the shadow puppet show.

It’s interesting that Plato does not choose to explore who these men are that have constructed the cave, and control the puppets whose shadows have the prisoners so hypnotized. Plato does not even bother to explore what their agenda is or what these men have to gain by keeping those people in a cave. That he postulated this while living in ancient Greece, where society was much less complicated than it is now, suggests that this worldly condition of the masses being kept in the dark by an in-control minority is one of the innate spiritual conditions of being alive and a human.

Failing to explore this is perhaps a wise thing, as the act of keeping track of the conspiracy of the cave and the agendas of the men who built it might be akin to following the patterns of the shadows projected onto the wall. In the same way the prisoners of the cave are distracted by learning the patterns and trivia associated with the shadows, the illuminated run the risk of being distracted by uncovering the identity of the people who control the cave and understanding what their agenda is. By omitting these details from his parable, Plato is saying that the architects of the cave and the world within it are not important. Nothing matters but getting out of the cave.

The Saturnization of Christian Mysticism

Jesus.

For many people, words like “Christianity” and “Church” summon images of women in floral dresses and men in suits (their Sunday best), of hard wooden pews, of a gospel choir, of a priest in black with a white collar (more on that later), of hands opening a Bible (and the smell of the paper that only Bibles have), of nuns in black habits with rosaries and crucifixes hanging from their necks.

None of these images really have anything to do with what Christianity is about, though. Yet they may deter a lot of people from the philosophy due to their association with boredom, or authority, or bigotry, or even childhood sexual abuse.

Christianity is named after a man called Jesus Christ. Therefore, he, his life and the beliefs he shared are arguably the most (and only) things important in understanding what the religion is about. What we know of him, among other things, is:

1. He was a carpenter (not much social status).

2. He preached the very humanistic and mystical message of unconditional love and tolerance for his fellow man.

3. Accordingly, he openly associated with prostitutes and lepers (again with the flagrant disregard for social status).

4. This message he preached and lived by (rightfully so) struck a cord with a great many people and inspired them to follow him and live as he did.
5. When he was thirty-three, Jesus was brutally murdered for sharing his status-quo defiant message (see Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ,” etc.).

By his actions and his words, Jesus lived a life of humble service to humanity, compassion for people less fortunate than he, faith in the good will of others and the universe, and disregard of social status and material possessions, knowing that in the true reality that is beneath the world that we can see and hear and touch around us, such things do not matter. One of his best friends was a prostitute. He washed the feet of his subordinates. In public. On that note, he didn’t even regard these people as his subordinates.

Before his death, Jesus achieved a lifestyle that transcended the limits of the world that we live in. The limits of loneliness, of feeling like we don’t have enough, of desperately needing something to fill us, of lacking purpose, of poverty, of basic and simple fear. Jesus was a mystic to such a deep degree that he has become the archetype of the word.

mystic |ˈmistik|
noun
a person who seeks by contemplation and self-surrender to obtain unity with or absorption into the Deity or the absolute, or who believes in the spiritual apprehension of truths that are beyond the intellect.

There could be a picture of Jesus next to this dictionary definition.

Jesus?

In spite of all of this, the images mentioned above dominate the perception of Christianity.

In the context of this article, to be “saturnized” is to be bound to the material world, the low realm of duality that we all live in. Let’s take a look at how Christian mysticism has been Saturnized (and therefore corrupted) by the world. Below is a list of some of the elements of Saturn followed by examples of how Christian mysticism has been entangled in it.

Elements of Saturn:

1. Physical Structure = The traditional architectural aesthetics of the church. Pews. The Cross (interestingly, in occultism, the symbol of the cross has nothing to do with the wooden structure that Jesus was crucified on - it is the Cross of Matter, the symbol for the material world that we live in). The Pulpit (which is a symbol of authority - did Jesus ever come across as authoritative?).

2. Social Structure = The Vatican. The hierarchy of the Pope and Cardinals. That status of dressing up for Sunday service. Church gossip. The social status conferred onto priests. The social status conferred onto devout Christians (clichés include well-dressed nuclear family, parents with well-paying / socially desirable jobs, kids popular and doing well in school, etc. See “Saved” starring Mandy Moore for reference.).

3. Time - Scheduled service times (traditionally Sunday morning).

4. Duty - Kids should say their prayers before bed. Priests can’t have sex. Guilt for not attending church service. Donation encouraged.

5. Duality - Seeing God and Jesus as separate entities from us. Being encouraged to reach out to these external sources for help. Being encouraged to look to the patriarchal authority figures of the Priests for guidance (and about that black attire w/ white collar - it should be noted in occultism that black and white paired together is symbolic of the dual world we live in - of light and dark, good and bad, love and hate, poor and rich - all of the illusions of polarity and separateness that characterize being alive).

Of these elements discussed above, how many did Jesus talk about? Ever? Okay, maybe the praying to God part, but priests? Pews? The Vatican? Dressing up for Sunday service? Indoctrination? Narrow minded judgement of the world and other people?

Jesus had nothing to do with most of the things that turn people off from the religion.

Jesus?

In regards to Jesus / God, as stated in The Gospel of Thomas:

I am the light that shines over all things. I am everything. From me all came forth, and to me all return. Split a piece of wood, and I am there. Lift a stone, and you will find me there.

All of the intellectual arguments that people put up against religion are invalid, because the things that deter them from the love of God are also invalid. The harsh nuns in Catholic school, the bigotry against homosexuals and people living alternative lifestyles, the authority of the church, the boredom of  Sunday service. None of these are valid representations of Christ’s teachings.

The reason all of this is important is because Jesus’s life, beliefs and behaviors are very clear, effective and significant examples of the path to transcend this world and its limits. If you are a seeker of this goal, do not be tricked into ignoring Jesus’s validity and importance in this regard due to superficial, Saturnine reasons. And this goes for every other religion and spiritual discipline as well.*

*Use great caution in regards to Scientology and cults in general.

Leaving Behind A Man-Made Hell

Children often ask the question: “Why does God let bad things happen?”
Usually these questions come in the face of seeing a homeless person, a car accident, experiencing a divorce, or a parent losing a job. The adults around them will answer with things like “Everything happens for a reason,” or, if they are hardened and jaded, “God does not exist.”
These answers fail to address the underlying issue, which is that, if he ever did, God has no part in the majority of our suffering anymore.

Think for a moment about all of the problems that mar our world. Things like hunger and poverty come to mind, or perhaps global warming, or problems in politics, or crime, or pollution, unemployment, inadequate schools, expensive housing, expensive food. The list could go on and on… But chances are, every single one of the problems that come to your mind were created by mankind. Chances are, things that did not come to mind are the difficulties of keeping a fire going so you don’t freeze to death in the winter, or that boar that always escapes your arrows and leaves your stomach gnawing in hunger. If they did, then I truly applaud you for reading this blog, as your ability to access the internet in spite of your lifestyle is a testament to human ingenuity.

Forget your concept of God. Leave behind that word’s association with the Church, or with that deity you don’t believe in, etc. etc. Instead, think of God as nature, what we come from, what we have mastered more than any species currently existing on the planet, and what we have built a safe haven from, only to go camping in it on random weekends to nourish ourselves in a way that being surrounded by concrete buildings 24/7 cannot.

No matter geographical location and proximity to an urban area, if you live in the modern world, a ridiculously high percentage of your existence is spent in a man-made space and time. We wake up to the blaring of man-made alarm-clock ticking to a man-made concept of time, take a shower in our man-made homes, drive to work in our man-made cars, spend our days in the confines of our man-made jobs meeting man-made deadlines and snacking on man-made food. Billboards around us advertise man-made products, which trigger a response in us based on man-made values, concepts of confidence, sexuality (God did not invent spray tans and bikinis) and status. Our buying into this supports a man-made economy, which supports our man-made lifestyles, and so on and so on.

The point is, God, that all powerful deity many people credit with all the good and bad that happens in our lives, has very little to do with the bad things that happen to us on a daily basis. Granted, the society we live in is encapsulated by the natural world, but all the idiosyncrasies, red-tape, scheduling and so forth that causes so much stress in our lives are made entirely by people like you and me. If you look at the world around you, or simply the structure of your individual life, and see chaos and pain and stress and general hellishness, just know that we are responsible for it.

Maslow broke down a hierarchy of human needs, starting with basic needs like shelter and food and extending all the way up to self actualization. The hierarchy is in the shape of a pyramid, with each level of needs building upon one another once they are fulfilled. Though this man-made society we live in affords us the comfort of food, and warm shelter, and people around us with whom to relate and love, and vehicles for us to achieve fulfillment within all of this, to a large extent, we live in Hell, and it’s entirely man-made. In regards to this hell-status of our society, I refer again to homelessness, and the imprisoning stress of our jobs, the poor quality of our food, which is poisoning the populace, the strain of consumerism and the havoc our quest for fulfillment has wrought on the environment.

But how did we get this way? It’s perfectly easy to understand. If we examine our own lives, we’ve made as many good decisions as we have bad decisions, we’ve failed to take the extra step at times, and others gone above and beyond. We’ve succeeded, we’ve failed, we’ve survived and continued on, making due with the circumstances we are in. The entire human race has a life as well, and it’s been around long enough for its cogency and fallacies to have a considerably gigantic impact on the world it inhabits.

What do we do to change this? The enemies to the good existence our species is capable of are the very enemies that stop us from individually thriving on a daily basis. Lack of time, lack of resources… More importantly, it is our reaction to these things that hold us back. Balking at the constraints we live under breeds malcontent, which breeds the desire to cut corners, or to not even succeed, or to develop a way around the obstacle that is unfortunately detrimental to our environment or our health.

We have a language now for how to live in balance with our environment, controlling our mind and our reactions to that environment so that we succeed in spite of obstacles and without creating imbalances in our lives or the lives of those around us. Whether you call it the science of thought, or positive thinking, it is a way of living that allows one to take full responsibility for their lives and their circumstances, and more and more people are striving to live this way every single day. And where people have taken responsibility and done the work to correct an imbalance, inventions free of angry, frustrated energy can grow and contribute to the world in a pure, harmonious way.

Nature is still hidden underneath the concrete and pavement that surrounds us. Heaven is inside the cracks in the road, in the trees that line our streets, in the cogs of the ticking clock, in the spark of creativity in the billboard advertisement. The surface world is filled with so many problems, but if withhold our knee-jerk, frustrated reactions to this, all the goodness underneath is going to come and meet you.

People exactly like us made the world that we live, and people exactly like us have the power to change it.