Samain Stent Moon
The post below, written before this one, has pushed me to finally get this out, down. Success. That bitch goddess. That awful demanding god. Subtle. Get good grades. Make a difference. Make a name for yourself. As if the name you already have isn’t enough. Graduate valedictorian and have expectations laid on you, absorb them, make your own. Don’t slip up. Don’t fail. Don’t succumb. Keep at it. Do well. Do better. Do best. Do. Do. Do.
Here’s the rub for me. I set myself up when I left the Presbytery. Success now would look like published books, a little shelf beside all the books by others that I’ve collected. My own shelf. My name on the spine. Money. Maybe a touch of fame. Hasn’t happened. At least not yet. Will it? Probably not, but, you never know.
Are the only two options success or failure? Don’t think so, but it feels that way. A binary choice means if not this, then that. No publication, no success = failure. Maybe.
No question I’ve failed at getting books published. That’s the facts, not fake news. At all. So. Let’s assume I don’t ever succeed at getting a book or books published. I’m not conceding, not at all. This is both a hypothetical and the reality for me right now.
Just reread my Percival post, A Fool On The Hill. Can’t seem to shake this question. Does not publishing mean I declare my life, at least the last 30 years, a failure? I failed at publishing. Yes. Does that somehow stain me, all of me? Make me a Self no longer able to put a trophy up on the shelf? Doesn’t seem to make sense, but my mind keeps circling around, circling around, gathering my long-winged feathers, gathering my long-winged feathers.
Wish I could put this matter to rest. It bugs me, keeps returning. Should I just yes, I’m a failure, now I’m going forward anyhow? Or, should I reframe success? Abandon the idea as a bourgeoisie conceit? Figure out why the subject continues to resurface?
The dreaming. Elisa told me I’d start remembering dreams during Mercury in retrograde. And, I have.
Folks learned in astrology will say, my sun is Aquarius in the 11th house, my moon in Sagittarius in the 8th house, and my ascendant is in Aries. Not, hi, I’m an Aquarian. What’s your sign? Those happen to be my particulars, btw. The complexity of astrology begins right here.
Finally, what is the persona most congenial to me? Characteristics shaped by the ascendant sign in my chart, Aries. According to Forrest, the Aries archetypes are: warrior, pioneer, daredevil, the survivor. Aries, Forrest says, is the lifeforce, the will to exist. It rules the ascendant, the first house, which makes its impact on my chart even stronger.
I’m continuing my experiments with oil painting, getting more experience, wondering about all the tricks and tools of the trade. Making it up as I go along right now. Playing. Yes, I’m playing with two shiny new disciplines right now, oil painting and astrology. When I use that word, playing, and it is accurate, what always comes to mind is 
The oil painting. So far I’m imitating, at least in a way, Rothko. Although. I did see some cloud formations that I tried to recreate, or at least evoke. Not in my power yet. Though what I produced I liked for what it was.
Bought this ceramic container a few years back, probably during a Woolly Mammoth retreat at Valhelga, the Helgeson’s family retreat on a lake close to Collegeville, home of St. John’s Monastery. It reminds me of the modest clay cylinders that held the Dead Sea Scrolls and I loved the brown to black glaze, the whoosh.
Been thinking about actions to fight climate change. The inversion of the Great Work championed by his Satanic Majesty, the orange tumor on our democracy, threatens human genocide. Intentional mass murder of potentially billions. Hitler and his crowd? Pikers.
“The United States has an abundance of natural resources and is not going to keep them in the ground,” Mr. Griffith said. “We strongly believe that no country should have to sacrifice their economic prosperity or energy security in pursuit of environmental sustainability.” Wells Griffith, Trump’s international energy and climate advisor, 
Astrology is a thicket of wild claims, unjustified certainty, and intriguing utility. Sorta like religion. In my reading so far I’ve found sensible, modest intellectuals who lean on the utility, using this ancient discipline (Mesopotamian in origin.) to promote self-knowledge. I’ve also found, as you might expect, a number of at least charlatanesque figures who are only one step away from the traveling potion wagons of the early frontier. OK, maybe not one step away.
In the later days of my interest in psychometrics there was a similar change from seeing certain personality characteristics as bad or good, especially those characterized as abnormal. Two instances from my own testing. I spiked both the 4 and 5 scales* of the MMPI when tested in the mid-1970’s in seminary. In the original uses of the MMPI these two scales supposedly determined whether you were a psychopath, 4, or a homosexual, 5. The new (then) understanding became: 4 spike = non-conforming, rebellious, angry, creative, family problems, impulsive and 5 spike = lacks traditional masculine interests. This testing was also done while I was still drinking and some of those 4 scale attributes reinforced my addiction. Though I may have lacked masculine interests (not quite sure what that means), I did have one clear masculine interest. Women.