By Daniel Giamario
NOTE: These are views of the founder, and not necessarily those of the Shamanic Astrology Mystery School
As I prepare to embark on three months of research and adventure to Ireland, with the Renaissance of the Sacred Feminine chasing crop circles and sacred geometry, to the USA for the eclipse and a few SAMS events, Portugal, Bavaria, and maybe even Egypt, as well as the odd music festival, I wanted to share some book and music recommendations that have greatly contributed to my personal zeitgeist.
Book Recommendations
The Fourth Turning: What the cycles of history tell us about America’s next rendezvous with destiny by William Strauss and Neil Howe, 1998.
This book does not contaian a word of astrology, but is nearly on par with Richard Tarnas and his book Cosmos and Psyche. I have been quite influenced by this work, as it has provided a missing piece for me in understanding historical cycles. This is particularly with regards to generations, and how they differ in discernable historical groupings. Strauss and Howe are the ones who coined the name “millennial” generation. This book has inspired me to update and improve the Shamanic Timeline. (Stay tuned for updates). I consider this book to be essential reading for any astrologer, and any American, to help understand the current situation circa 2017.
Four Eternal Women: Toni Wolff Revisited, a Study in Opposites.
By Mary Dian Molton and Lucy Anne Sikes, 2011.
Since the late 1970’s, a short writing by the great Tony Wolff on the four archetypes of the feminine (Amazon, Medial, Hetaira, Mother) deeply influenced my work, and it remains a foundational element of the Shamanic Astrology approach to archetypes, relationship, and the Sacred Marriage. Now finally, I have discovered and devoured a whole book on the subject. For anyone desiring a deeper understanding of why we use these four as a foundation, or desiring greater depth to your work with female archetypes, this is a deeply satisfying read.
Here are three additional books of a somewhat related nature:
Heads: A Biography of Psychedelic America
By Jesse Jarnow, 2016
This is a great history of the counter-culture origins and how it was inspired by ethneogens. Included in this thoroughly researched tale, and woven throughout the book are the stories of the Grateful Dead, the origins and development of psychedelia along with most of the key historical figures connected to this.
The Road to Eleusis: Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries
By R. Gordon Wasson, Albert Hofmann, and Carl Ruck, originally 1978, (I read the 30th anniversary edition)
This book, written by the original researchers into plant medicine, and who coined the word ethneogen to replace psychedelic drugs, was impossible to find for years in the USA, but remains the foundational work for all those interested in these subjects.
Even more so for me, as my psychedelic drug or ethneogen experiences are now behind me, are their research into the Eleusianian Mysteries, a subject that has long fascinated me. This is something I have often spoken and about previously. Many of my questions were answered and I hope that the current purveyors of Burning Man are familiar with this material.
Intelligence in Nature: An inquiry into knowledge
By Jeremy Narby, 2005.
In my opinion, Jeremy wrote the single best book on the link between Shamanism and Ethneogens in his book The Cosmic Serpent. This is his follow up book, taking his explorations and discoveries even further. It could very well revolutionize your view of nature, its plants and animals, and the aliveness and consciousness of Gaia.
Music
Although I listen to lots of music, mainly in the categories of jazz, progressive rock, and blues, these two recent releases have contributed greatly to my experience over the past few months.
Leonard Cohen: You Want it Darker
This album was released just before Cohen’s death, November 7, 2016 at the age of 82. Although, admittedly a challenging work, and not everyone’s cup of tea, very few things have impacted me as deeply as this brilliant work. It’s quite deep, but straight to the point. It challenges us to ask questions we may not want to inquire about or ask. While all of his work is amazing, this final album may be his greatest in my opinion. Here are some sample lyrics:
It Seemed the Better Way
It seemed the better way
When first I heard him speak
But now it’s much too late
To turn the other cheek
Sounded like the truth
Seemed the better way
Sounded like the truth
But it’s not the truth today
I’d better hold my tongue
I’d better take my place
Lift this glass of blood
And try to say the grace
Steer Your Way
Steer your way through the ruins of the altar and the mall
Steer your way through the fables of Creation and the Fall
Steer your way past the palaces that rise above the rot
Year by year, month by month, day by day, thought by thought.
Steer your way past the truth you believed in yesterday
Such as fundamental goodness and the wisdom of the way
Steer your heart, precious heart, past the women who you’ve bought
Year by year, month by month, day by day, thought by thought.
The Waterboys: Modern Blues
Over the years, I have so loved the Scottish/Irish group the Waterboys, and the vision of Mike Scott. In our Renaissance of the Sacred Feminine workshops, we use the music from his previous work, An Appointment with Mr. Yates, to punctuate our workshops. Modern Blues completely captures my summer mood, and includes my all-time favorite road song: Long Strange Golden Road. Following is the refrain of the song:
Keep the river on your right and the highway at your shoulder
And the frontline in your sights, pioneer.
Keep your eye on the road and remember what you told her
This is all in code, my dear.
Here is another song that even more captures my current mood:
Still a Freak
I am still a freak, I never went straight
I kept my appointment with fate
And like every human being that was ever born, I am unique.
Things disappear, but I’m still here
I’m still a freak.
My Personal Zeitgeist
Almost three years ago I passed into the fourth season of my life (0-22 Spring, 22-45 Summer, 45-66 Fall, 66-88 Winter). Since then I find myself reflecting a lot around the time frame of 1964-1968. The currently unfolding alignments of Jupiter, Uranus and Pluto, as well as the Saturn-Chiron square, direct us back to that era, the seeds of what are happening now were planted then. With the aid of astrology and history, here is my personal reflection on the current situation.
I am convinced that no one can foretell how global humanity will navigate the dismantling and breakdown occurring in the world. It can go in so many different directions, with major clues about to emerge in August 2017 with the Total Solar Eclipse from coast to coast of the United States. The reading of The Fourth Turning helped me to heal a long standing wound that many of us in my boomer generation had to bear. Why didn’t the awakening continue? Why didn’t we fundamentally change the world?
The shattering of idealism (even if we was right) is hard to take. I now realize it was a spring-summer season, only to be followed by fall and winter. Winter inevitably follows, and some kind of breakdown and dismantling must follow. History is not linear, and neither is a human life. Things cannot be said to always be getting better and better collectively. The myth of progress is inaccurate and obsolete. Technology and the human mind, when it separates us from the natural world, will not increase joy, happiness, or fulfillment.
This could also well inform our understanding of the greater cycles. Astrology informs us of the coming Jupiter/Saturn/Pluto conjunction in Capricorn in 2020. Recent research has revealed that the Kali Yuga ends in 2025. This corresponds to the dates given in the non-astrological book the Fourth Turning.
I know what my boomer generation envisioned for the US and the world, but now we are at best, wise and seasoned elders. It’s truly up to the Millenials, and the recently named i-gen, born after 2000, who will determine what the next turning, the next era, will be like.
Will humans become a mono-species? Without animals and plants? And will they be fine with that? Will humans be satisfied with a virtual simulation of God where everything is tracked and interconnected by silicon-based technologies? Will humans long for a fascistic simplicity of a clear black and white? It has happened before.
Or perhaps, the emerging generations will choose human interactions over technology, nature rather than mind and intellect, and restore our planet to its carbon-based magic? Or perhaps there is an unthought-of (by me) synthesis.
And then, of course, humans are not really in charge at all. She (Gaia) has the final say in all of this as she is the agent of Great Mystery.
My priorities in my final season are as follows:
- The love and appreciation of my personal relationships.
- My overall commitment to the Shamanic Astrology Mystery School in its task of assisting anyone who desires it – in aligning with their purpose. Even if a person is not ready, these tools can help a person know what their higher calling and purpose is. Including not being attached in any way, either personally or collectively to any personally desired outcome.
- Continuing to believe that the recent 4000-5000 years have been a deep descent of the pendulum of the last 200,000 years; that the triple aberration of hierarchical patriarchy, patrilineal family structure, and fundamentalist monotheism, does not represent any form of evolution, but is a symptom of this deepest descent and onset of winter.
- My dedication is to help, whomever is interested, in re-connecting with their DNA and the experiences of gylany (where masculine and feminine are valued equally) that has existed far longer in our species. This is very different than what has happened over the last 5000 years including minimum warfare, and connection with land and sky.
- Continuing to ask the question: “Who are we? And what the hell happened?”
At a global winter solstice, when the hour is darkest, when the nights are longest, and when the suffering and ignorance is most extreme, will come a rebirth. I intend to be alive for it, but if not, then I commit to being a seed (a la Dane Rudhyar – see below) for the next global spring.
Stay tuned for our SAMS sponsored Online Summit Preparing for 2020 including insights on the astrology of this remarkable year just a little over 2 years from now.
A Seed
by Dane Ruhdyar
I feel we are at the
threshold of a new age,
and that we need now,
more than anything else,
a new approach
to human relationships
and to social organization.
We need a planetary approach,
we need a synthetic approach.
We need something in which
the individual learns
his own function in the world
because if you are to have
a global world
the individual has to be
so well established
in his or her own identity
that he or she can afford to
co-operate with other people
all over the world,
independent of
their culture,
their race,
their traditions
and so on.
It is very important, therefore
that one should learn
how to establish oneself in
one’s own identity.
We need a new type
of human being.
We need something which is
based no longer, so much,
on conflict,
but on a
full acceptance of the
total human being
body, mind, soul, feeling
everything.
An esthetic approach
versus
an ethical approach,
so that you can see
the relationship
in which everything
stands inside of the whole,
so you can look at the whole
and become identified with the
“wholeness”
of that whole,
rather than with any particular part.
Now this is, of course,
a very difficult situation.
We are certainly
in a difficult time
and what is ahead of us today,
I do not know.
I am rather pessimistic
as far as the immediate future is concerned,
considering the way
the world and our nation
is moving at the present time.
But you must realize that
crises are sometimes
necessary to accomplish
what is to be accomplished.
The only problem, however,
is this:
something must be ready before
the great crisis comes
— when the new cycle begins —
for it will have to begin
on the foundation of those
seeds which have been sown
before the crisis.
If you have a winter
followed by a spring, but
there was no harvest
in the fall
no seed will germinate
during the spring,
and you will have to start
at the very beginning
into the most primitive time of manifestation.
That’s why I have stressed,
so much all my life the idea I call
the “seed man” and “seed woman”
the “seed person,” the individual
who is willing and able
to gather within himself or herself,
as it were,
the past of humanity
and particularly of our western world,
but also of other cultures
because what we want
to emerge from the future,
after whatever crisis will come
is a global world.
We therefore need men and women of great vision,
individuals who are not specialists,
men and women who have the vision and courage to wait,
and to, in some way through their lives,
through their example,
and through whatever they leave after their deaths,
to become the seeds of the future world
That’s of course,
the great choice
we have all to make,
and we all can make it.
We can follow
the mass vibration
and decay, like
all the leaves
of the world
in the fall
(however beautiful
the golden leaves may be),
they will have to decay
and become manure
for the future
of civilization,
but it is only
the “seed men and women” that really count,
and it is those
you should look for,
if you yourself do not
feel yet to the point of being ready to become
a “seed person,”
because it is that only which is
the insurance for the future rebirth of humanity.
I think today
it is of no use
to try to look
to the immediate future,
because it looks very dark;
but it is to look
to prepare —
for the possibility that
a new world may arise,
if not tomorrow,
the day after tomorrow.
I think it is the only thing
which gives value to
all our sacrifice,
all our courage, decisions and choices
today:
it is to become seeds
for the development of the future world.
So I hope
every one of you,
each one in your own life,
in your way can —
some day soon, very soon,
(if you have not done it already),
make the choice, and become
“seed men” and “seed women.”
I thank you.
Dane Rudhyar