The Pond March 13, 2021
It's time for Daylight Savings time 😩 Also: Hilma af Klint • The mystery of language • Destroy the Monarchy • Your dreams, on the couch • And NEW to WOODRUFF: free one card Tarot draws!
YES, THE HORROR OF DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME has returned, starting tonight. So round up your Adderall, “spring ahead”—and say ugh! What a fucking con—and it’s killing us!
But there’s always time for love. This is a great weekend to swoon with the sweetness of the New Moon that’s conjunct both Venus and Neptune in Pisces. Seriously, if you desire a direct line to your muse—without paying extra fees or lighting a shit load of votives on your shrine, this is your weekend.
Here are five recommendations for your soon-to-be one-hour-deprived brain. Enjoy!
Reflection 1: Hilma af Klint: Painting with Spirits
SPEAKING OF PISCES…Swedish artist Hilma af Klint was born in 1862, into a family that included several generations of naval officers skilled in navigation, mathematics, and astronomy.
Back in 1985 while visiting California I discovered her paintings in a monumental show at the LA County Museum of Art’s exhibit titled The Spiritual In Art: Abstract Painting 1890-1985. Talk about a Magical Mystery Tour. Imagine Georgia O’Keefe and Wassily Kandinsky having a love child who grew up to be a trans-medium and skilled painter.
The best commentary on her work was included in the accompanying tome from that same exhibit—now a collector’s item—and the crown jewel in my art library.
But this interview with Hedvig Martin shares a slew of fascinating new details about the otherworldy inspiration that guided af Klint’s hand.
Reflection 2: Language and the Mind
I WAKE UP LIKE A BALD-EYED FOOL every morning right around 3 AM. I hear this is the witching hour for a lot of other folks too. I used to fight it, now I listen to my favorite podcast from the BBC: In Our Time. Until I conk out again.
Although it took me several listens to Language and the Mind, an old episode from twenty years back, to put together just how mysterious language is.
“Language”, as science author Steven Pinker puts it, “comes so naturally to us that it's easy to forget what a strange and miraculous gift it is. All over the world members of our species spend a good part of their lives fashioning their breath into hisses and hums and squeaks and pops and are listening to others do the same”. And yet we understand. A highly recommended exchange.
Reflection 3: The End of the Monarchy
“The Royal Family is…a crime against the British public. It represents the taking of precious public resources for the most undemocratic, elitist, and unproductive use. It is akin to taxing the American public to support the Kardashian family.” —Hamilton Nolan
MY INTEREST IN THE BRITISH MONARCHY is on par with my interest in chlorine enemas. Avoiding quips and video teasers from the recent Oprah Winfrey interview with the palace’s escapees/exiles was impossible last week. As an antidote, I took delight in reading Hamilton Nolan’s scathing op-ed in the New York Times which recommends that the monarchy be demolished ASAP.
New princes and princesses will be born, opulent weddings will be had, different coddled butts will get their turn to sit on the cushioned throne. These machinations, each of them designed to occupy the public’s attention for a while, are just the scrambling of termites atop the enormous nest that is the monarchy itself. It feeds on the vigor of the working people and regurgitates it into a giant home for itself.
Nolan has been advocating for the abolishment (and imprisonment) of the British Royal Family since 2013.
On this same theme, UK astrologer Deborah Houlden recently shared some fascinating commentary on her Facebook page:
The Aries Ingress set for London: the degree of the Queen's natal Mars culminates on the MC (she has Mars conj Jupiter at 20.52 & 22.31 Aquarius; squared by Saturn at 24.27 Scorpio). The Queen's Moon is in the same degree as Meghan's Sun: 12 Leo—this is being opposed in the ingress chart by MC-ruler Saturn. This is one of several indicators that this year is going to be a very difficult and upsetting one for the queen (that Saturn is very close to the opposition of Phillips Moon too, which is 15 Leo if the 10:00am time is used—but his time of birth is in dispute, so its difficult to know the exact degree).
I recently did an interview with Nina Gryphon where we chatted about what the ingress held for UK and the USA. We both felt the Moon's conjunction with Mars on the nodal axis presaged a lot of damage, trouble and disturbance related to press and social media, with the possibility of restrictions being introduced that could cause social anger; at the very least, social media and press are likely to get even more nasty and intolerant (I also noticed that the Moon in the ingress chart falls upon the degree of Mars in the commencement chart for Twitter, which becomes ever-more the source of sensational news reporting buy other media outlets). The Meghan-Oprah interview seems to be giving an indication of the kind of controversies in store.
More about Deborah and her School of Traditional Astrology is here.
Reflection 4: The new Dr. Dream column on WOODRUFF
IF YOU ARE A PAID SUBSCRIBER to WOODRUFF you can send me your dream and I will share my impressions in this new monthly feature.
I’ve worked with dreams for over 35 years and it’s often the most dynamic segment of my session work with clients. Of course, dreams can never be accurately interpreted by another person (only you have access to the heart of your dream’s message or meaning.) Still, it is fun to see how another person responds to your dream’s narrative.
I read where Carl Jung would regularly share his dreams with an old man that worked as a gardener on his estate. Jung said that the gardener’s interpretations were so ‘off’ that it helped him tune in to what his unconscious was actually sharing in his dream.
That is an example of a good way to have conversations about dreams; understanding that the meaning you hope to unearth will usually come about in a way that isn’t logical or sequential.
Reflection 5: One card Tarot pulls for WOODRUFF paid subscribers.
ONCE EACH QUARTER I WILL OFFER one card Tarot draws for my paying subscribers.
How this will work:
I’ll send out a subscriber-only newsletter with an alert that for a limited window of time I’ll have my Tarot deck primed and ready. Either the Waite Smith deck or the Crowley Harris deck—depends on my mood.
You can then visit the COMMENT SECTION for the post and type in your name and hit ‘send’. Do not add any questions or ponderings. Just your name is fine (a name says so much—why add anything more?)
I will then draw a card for you (within the 48-hour window) and post the name of the card beneath your name along with some impressions to mirror your card.
The serendipity of the moment could be life-changing. Or not. But we won’t know until we try.
The first draw is coming next week!
Love,
Hi Frederick! Is this the comment section to ask for a one-card draw? Still figuring my way around.