BECOMING WHO I AM PART ONE
When I changed my name from Patrick to Patrick I began the long journey to becoming who I am.
It is not really a long way from myself to myself but it seemed to take forever to get here. Now that I am here it is just a question of staying present. The addiction to not being here and not being myself is strong. Loosening the grip of that addiction is as effortless as letting go of the edge of the cliff I have been clinging to most of my life. What makes me cling is fear. Holding on is the devil I know. Will an angel break my fall?
Arriving here is just the beginning of a journey through eternity just as it is the end of a journey through time. How did I get here? All paths from anywhere else have to find their way here. We all begin our journey to here as lost souls with no idea of where to go. When we finally realise that we never actually left where we always were we become who we always have been.
Although my parents gave me the name Patrick I never truly claimed it as my own until the Mother of my Heart called me by that name one lonely night and I didn’t really know the value of my name until She called me again 25 years later. It wasn’t long before the bubble of who I always thought I was popped and I became who I am.
Perhaps now is the time to tell that story of how I met the Eternal Presence, how I became who I always have been, who we all are and who we all will become. There are no words that can say this that are true. The closest we can come to this truth, in words, is through paradox. If logic is your chosen deity nothing I say will appeal to you. If reason is your vessel to the shore of understanding then cast yourself adrift from these words for they cannot carry you to safety.
I was on the telephone, talking to a friend who also happened to be an astrologer. I found myself being drawn towards a discontent within me: the need to live a more fulfilling life. I mentioned how, in Buddhism, our true nature is that we are all already the Buddha; how all beings have Buddha Nature. I felt the energy change as my words appeared in the conversation. Then something extraordinary happened: Something appeared right above my head, like a thought bubble you see in cartoons. No sooner had I noticed its presence when it suddenly dropped straight through the top of my head, without asking permission from my brain, and descended instantly into my heart. There it bounced back up again and appeared on my tongue as these words:
“How can I become who I already am? How can I fulfil my destiny?”
Astrology is often dismissed, by those who invariably don’t know and don’t want to know much about it, as a pseudoscience. However, it is not a science or a pseudoscience. It’s an art of discerning and interpreting the meaning of celestial movements and earthly events in the light of the ancient Hermetic maxim – “As above so below”. Many people try to tell me that astrology is just a superstition. That is only half true: it is super. Almost all of the very few scientific studies which have been conducted have focused on predictive astrology. This, in my view, is the least reliable form of the celestial art.
Western astrology has a pedigree which goes back almost 4,000 years and has its roots buried deep in Mesopotamian culture. The Ancient Greeks did what they always did with their wisdom: they stole it from the Barbarians. Barbarians were anyone who did not speak Greek. They stole astrology from the Babylonians and mixed it with Egyptian astrology and proceeded to create what we call the horoscope. The Romans stole it from the Greeks and medieval Europe inherited it from them and the Arabs. During the Renaissance its value was enhanced when Hermetic and philosophical manuscripts escaped from the crumbling Byzantine Empire. During the so called Enlightenment reason assumed the throne of European academia, as it had done for a while in Ancient Greece and astrology fell into disrepute. According to the new, scientific paradigm, the universe was a meaningless, purposeless machine set into clockwork motion by an invisible hand and left to run down until the end of time. When Darwin’s findings were accepted the same meaninglessness and purposelessness was applied to life on Earth. In this disenchanted cosmos there was no place for astrological interpretations.
I first came to astrology by way of a personal crisis in 1986. It involved a change of career, a loss of my home and a broken heart. There was more as well but I won’t go into that here. I spent about a year studying astrology every day and, still, I hardly scratched the surface of the subject. What I learned is that, in some mysterious way, the movement of the Sun, the Moon and the planets reflected corresponding events in our lives. Of this I had no doubt.
Eventually I chose not to pursue my astrological studies. Other interests took precedence such as working with flower remedies, homeopathy, radionics, martial arts, reiki and shiatsu. After completing my training in shiatsu I left England for Ireland and spent a decade of wandering in a spiritual wilderness. I was seeking simplicity but my life was getting more complicated. Then, in the midst of another personal crisis, my father became sick and died leaving my mother in need of a live-in carer. My life began to become much simpler with one intention – to make my mother’s remaining years as happy, comfortable and safe as I could. I couldn’t make her happy – she had just lost her beloved husband and the first year she just wanted to die. I did my best and she was comfortable and safe except when she kept falling. When she died my own health was beginning to deteriorate and, with her gone, I lost my sense of purpose. I had nothing left to live for. The only thing I had achieved was in being a son. It turns out that was a significant thing but I didn’t know that at the time.
“How can I become who I already am? How can I fulfil my destiny?” These words emerged from the emptiness left behind by my mother’s death but I was to sink deeper into despair before I would find fulfilment emerging from the emptiness.
My astrologer friend took note of the time, date and the location where he heard these two questions and constructed a horary astrological chart. This is a special type of horoscope which is created for the moment a question is asked just as a natal chart is constructed for the moment of a birth. This was my first encounter with this form of astrology. To be honest, I didn’t have much faith in it. My lack of faith was to prove unjustified.
The horary chart turned out to be astonishingly relevant to my question. All astrology works through archetypal relationships and synchronicity. The subject of planetary archetypes is complex involving a synthesis between Jungian psychology and astrology. To understand the astrological significance of the planet Mercury we need to consider such things as mind, thought, communication, the articulation of creative energy so that it can be grasped by others; how to make connections, to write, to speak as well as to listen and read. Mercury is the messenger of the gods who transports souls from this world to the next. He also rules transportation and communication networks such as radio, TV, newspapers and magazines, books and the internet. He is Thrice Great Hermes, the Logos. He is the Word who wrote the Bible. He is a god with a lot of responsibility. He is also the immature and irresponsible of all the gods. He is the Puer Aeternus, the eternal youth: wild, unpredictable and creative. He lives fast and dies young.
That gives us an idea of the breadth and depth of a planetary archetype. Synchronicity is defined by Carl Jung as a meaningful coincidence. Even when there is no obvious causal relationship between the position of a planet and an event on Earth the two appear to be connected by meaning and this meaning can be seen in a natal chart, planetary transits in real time of the natal planetary positions, symbolic movements known as progressions as well as the precise position of a planet at the moment a question is asked and is recorded in a horary chart. It was the position of the planet Mercury which was to prove so revealing in my own horary chart on that day.
It was in the Ninth House. This House concerns issues of long distance travel and communication, philosophy, spirituality and religion. It is ruled by Jupiter and Jupiter also rules the ninth astrological Sign, Sagittarius and Sagittarius happened to be the Rising Sign of this horary chart. The Rising Sign is that part of the sky which is appearing above the horizon to the East. Coincidentally, the Rising Sign on my Natal or Birth chart is also Sagittarius. And even more significantly, on both Natal and Horary charts, the Ascendant or cusp of the Rising Sign was three degrees of Sagittarius. That was quite some coincidence! That was synchronicity!
It turns out that Mercury in the Ninth House, ruled by the same planet that rules my Natal and Horary Rising Signs with coincidentally identical Ascendants is a clear pointer to the meaning of this chart. The meaning was this: I needed to get a computer so that I could connect with the World Wide Web in the context of spiritual matters. The significance is even deeper than that, as I will explain.
Getting a computer sounds simple enough and it was. I had a lot of resistance, a lot of fear. I allowed myself to be forced to overcome my fear: I was frog marched by an older brother to the local computer shop, I handed over what seemed to me to be a vast amount of money and the deed was done. That was when the trouble started. I didn’t have a clue what I was doing and I didn’t have a spare teenager handy to show me how. I even threatened to torture the computer and force it to reveal its secrets. Naturally, I have to live with the guilt of that but I was at my wit’s end. I eventually tamed the wild beast and the scene was set for something unforeseen.
