UNUS MUNDUS

Aquarius – Mentioned here over time two things: One starting past Jung’s UFO myth essay we have entered a “returning to earth” mythology with pop culture like “Lost” and a TV show “Survivors” – seen here in dreams as well - they show earth as newly discovered and strange, like planets in "outer space" were in the early UFO culture. And in this period all last century we rise – assuming here that the pop culture is the naïve dream of the times – up to space with Captain Kirk and Lt. Ripley and find the Tao in Obie wan Kenobi – but there is in our times an end piece and companion piece to these two: Battlestar Galactica. What is fascinating about Galactica is that it is searching for the strange planet “earth” so it is a primary “returning” myth. My kids gave us Netflix at Christmas and we have been watching it. It is addictive. (We put it off for years because it sounded “Mormon.” But the current version with the elegant Number Six in the red dress was written by someone else.) The story is about an ancient race of humans in space seeking earth (this story was originally conceived by a Mormon and humanity coming from space is coherent with Mormon philosophy). The “others” are called cylons. They are a race created by “humans” who took their own freedom and then declared war on the humans. Throughout, there are people on the ship who discovered that they are “really cylons” much to their chagrin, and they try to be more “human.” And incidentally, this is a primary Aquarian myth as the commander is named Adamo and his son Appolo; Adam and Appolo seek earth. Then at the end of the third season a melody infects the ship and certain people are affected by it as if led as if by a muse. The song is Bob Dylan’s “All along the Watchtower” – made popular by Jimi Hendrix. The cylons are the hippies; the redeemers of the humans or the destroyers. This the “returning to earth” mythology and begins “time” again on the planet as per lore of Battlestar Galactica. (Logos = Mormons, Eros = Hippies in rising Aquarius) Quigley" "Returning" @ http://quigleyinexile.blogspot.com/2005 ... ey-in.html

(Being here at the time - and I did make the stop at Haight-Ashbury during the infamous Summer of Love [1967]- it was quite exciting - I came to feel that John Lennon and The Beatles on their way to India and the Maharaishi Mahesh Yogi was a countervailing archetype to the trip to the moon. As Norman Mailer wrote at the time in "In a Fire on the Moon" it was a counterpoint between "Protestants and Beatniks." "While we were out getting stoned," he wrote, the Protestants had flown "to the moon.")

Jeffrey Kripal "Mutants and mystics" : "[...]Hence Lachman begins his study of "the mystic sixties and the dark side of the Age of Aquarius" in the France of 1960 with this book* and these two authors ** , whom he credits as the central creators of the mutant-myth that would become so central to the hippie movement.

Lachman explicity invokes The X-Men as an immediate influence here. Its 1963 vision of "mutants teenagers with weird powers who band together for support in a world that won't accept them" uncannily predicted (or helped produce) the events of 1966, when a large group of teenagers banded together in a place called Haight-Ashbury for very similar reasons. These hippies, as they came to be known , also called themselves mutants. Lachman notes that the San Fransisco Oracle for January of 1967 even published a "Manifesto for Mutants", which went like this :

Mutants! Know now that you exist!
They have hid you in cities
And clothed you in fools clothes
Know now that you are free [...] "

* The morning of the magicians
** Pauwels/Bergier

The movies X Men are suggested at the beginning and the end to be related to the book The Once and Future King by TH White - the retelling of the Arthur legend. The "mutants" then are actually representative archetypes - if I recall correctly in the White book, the Knights - Templars, archetypes - are referred to as Unicorn, etc. zodiac and torot animals . . . likewise the mutants are - fireman, etc. - archetypes. And of course, their symbol, the X symbol, is a quaternity. It seems the mass marketing of culture through symbols is terribly dangerous and creates in the people watching the thinnest experience of consciousness; especially recently, the bat, as Batman dominates these 30 years would suggest NY and Hollywood driven world culture identifying with Shadow and negative anima. Tolkien's Rings, a better story and anti-enlightenment which I think is the object of true folk lore; like Galactica, returning people to the earth: Yeats: "The only art is folk art."

So said, the appearance of The Hunger Games brings an auspicious turning. The three books are one two three on most best seller lists and appeal to teen agers - girls especially.

Hey Bernie and Fox;

Just a thought given your comments:

Isn't it strange that bats are dying all over the world, and yet Batman figures ever more prominently in our psyche at present? Perhaps the quality of 'mutation', the idea of a 'mutant' factor, has overtaken the purely natural in the world at large? Species are dying, yet 'mythic' mutants continue to be 'reborn' as bigger, stronger and more potentially dangerous than ever before? Remember perhaps that we here on the UM have, in the past, viewed the term 'mutant' in quite neutral terms, as when, on various threads, we would discuss those who tend to observe 'eros consciousness' as a form of 'mutant' practionner? Quite a different take on the terminology, in fact.

Maybe we should all privately take a minute to consider what specific combination of attributes must co-create to bring such a benificent 'mutant' type of consciousness (the type that lives the 'wu wei') into 'active' being. When one thinks about it, it does seem as if such a 'mutant' could be considered 'natural' after all, thus the line between mutation and what is presently considered 'natural' must be a very thin one indeed!

And exactly when does the idea of a mutation 'morph' such that it enters a completely new demarcation, wherein such a 'difference' is viewed as overly 'special', thus superceding what was previously considered 'natural' (thus 'good'..)? It's really a sort of 'loop' one can so easily get caught in, isn't it? Until human beings can get over their own hubris, it will continue to be too easy to see ourselves as preciously unique in whatever capacity, therefore also uniquely situated to succeed beyond the success of any other species.

Obviously the idea of mutation is constellated in our time!

(many thoughts for one night...)

with continuing thanks to all,
Kristin

Hi Kristin,



Yes, it seems that eros consciousness is like a mutation between human and animal but we refuse :

Thanks, Kristin - delighted to read your cogent thinking - and what a good writer! Incidentally, like much which awakens in the world today, virtually all of the actors in Galactica are from Vancouver. RE "dark side of Aquarius" mentioned by the authors above, I was at Haight-ashbury at the height of the events (on my way to Thailand for military service) and was delighted by what was occurring. Felt that Woodstock, two years later, might be considered the "shadow" or "dark side" Woodstock was an attempt to "recreate" in NY the original awakenings in San Francisco in the "Summer of Love" and brought a definitive division of America as East and West or Rome and Athems or Logos and Eros. I was calling Woodstock the "summer of love" for lawyers. The Haight scene in summer, 1967 was entirely unpoliticized and spontaneous - my claim once was that the first voice of the full feminine like we had not heard in the west since the 12th century awakened there with Janis Joplin. I stopped by a year later on my return trip from Vietnam - it had descended into hard drugs but upcountry was still fun. Woodstock was all about politics. I've asked any number of people my age (66) what was the name of the guru who appeared on stage between acts at Woodstock? No answer. There was a guru? He was Swami Satchidananda.

But RE Aquarius, it might be better to think of it's tai chi entry on 2001 as I possibly recall Jung anticipated and with the tragic events of 9/11 especially those at the Twin Towers; towers indicated on the Tarot card "Death" in the upper right hand corner.

Bernie,

What you write about Haight-ashbury and other "freedom" movements strikes me as the first rumblings of "change you can count on" trying to emerge from the feminine principle. Unfortunately the wu-wei aspect of that movement, that Kristin mentions above, was not integrated, not humanized as Eros ego consciousness. Instead these pioneers, these involuntary exponents of the Imago Dei, became possessed by the Dionysus archetype and simply acted it out like so many puppets on a string - ruining untold numbers of lives in the process. Thus, this "emergence" of the feminine principle is no panacea and is in fact a great danger for it more often than not receives a bad (very unconscious) reception.

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Like this it is humanity that is the great danger. It reminds me of Jung’s comment that “the fate of the world hangs by a thin thread and that is the psyche of man”.

The Origin Of All Coming Evil - Video

Gregory