In “The Dawn of Everything,” the anthropologist David Graeber and the archaeologist David Wengrow aim to rewrite the story of our shared past — and future.

By Jennifer Schuessler

Published Oct. 31, 2021 Updated Nov. 3, 2021 (NYTimes.com)

One August night in 2020, David Graeber — the anthropologist and anarchist activist who became famous as an early organizer of Occupy Wall Street — took to Twitter to make a modest announcement.

“My brain feels bruised with numb surprise,” he wrote, riffing on a Doors lyric. “It’s finished?”

He was referring to the book he’d been working on for nearly a decade with the archaeologist David Wengrow, which took as its immodest goal nothing less than upending everything we think we know about the origins and evolution of human societies.

Even before the Occupy movement made him famous, Graeber had been hailed as one of the most brilliant minds in his field. But his most ambitious book also turned out to be his last. A month after his Twitter announcement, Graeber, 59, died suddenly of necrotizing pancreatitis, prompting a shocked outpouring of tributes from scholars, activists and friends around the world.

“The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity,” out Nov. 9 from Farrar Straus and Giroux, may or may not dislodge the standard narrative popularized in mega-sellers like Yuval Noah Harari’s “Sapiens” and Jared Diamond’s “Guns, Germs and Steel.” But it has already gathered a string of superlative-studded (if not entirely uncritical) reviews. Three weeks before publication, after it suddenly shot to #2 on Amazon, the publisher ordered another 75,000 copies on top of the 50,000 first printing.

In a video interview last month, Wengrow, a professor at University College London, slipped into a mock-grandiose tone to recite one of Graeber’s favorite catchphrases: “We are going to change the course of human history — starting with the past.”

More seriously, Wengrow said, “The Dawn of Everything” — which weighs in at a whopping 704 pages, including a 63-page bibliography — aims to synthesize new archaeological discoveries of recent decades that haven’t made it out of specialist journals and into public consciousness.

“There’s a whole new picture of the human past and human possibility that seems to be coming into view,” he said. “And it really doesn’t resemble in the slightest these very entrenched stories going around and around.”

The Big History best-sellers by Harari, Diamond and others have their differences. But they rest, Graeber and Wengrow argue, on a similar narrative of linear progress (or, depending on your point of view, decline).

According to this story, for the first 300,000 years or so after Homo sapiens appeared, pretty much nothing happened. People everywhere lived in small, egalitarian hunter-gatherer groups, until the sudden invention of agriculture around 9,000 B.C. gave rise to sedentary societies and states based on inequality, hierarchy and bureaucracy.

But all of this, Graeber and Wengrow argue, is wrong. Recent archaeological discoveries, they write, show that early humans, far from being automatons blindly moving in evolutionary lock step in response to material pressures, self-consciously experimented with “a carnival parade of political forms.”

It’s a more accurate story, they argue, but also “a more hopeful and more interesting” one.

“We are all projects of collective self-creation,” they write. “What if, instead of telling the story about how our society fell from some idyllic state of equality, we ask how we came to be trapped in such tight conceptual shackles that we can no longer even imagine the possibility of reinventing ourselves?”

The book’s own origins go back to around 2011, when Wengrow, whose archaeological fieldwork has focused on Africa and the Middle East, was working at New York University. The two had met several years earlier, when Graeber was in Britain looking for a job after Yale declined to renew his contract, for unstated reasons that he and others saw as related to his anarchist politics.

In New York, the two men sometimes met for expansive conversation over dinner. After Wengrow went back to London, Graeber “started sending me notes on things I’d written,” Wengrow recalled. “The exchanges ballooned, until we realized we were almost writing a book over email.”

At first, they thought it might be a short book on the origins of social inequality. But soon they started to feel like that question — a chestnut going back to the Enlightenment — was all wrong.

“The more we thought, we wondered why should you frame human history in terms of that question?” Wengrow said. “It presupposes that once upon a time, there was something else.”

Wengrow, 49, an Oxford-educated scholar whose manner is more standard-issue professorial than the generally rumpled Graeber, said the relationship was a true partnership. He, like many, spoke with awe of Graeber’s brilliance (as a teenager, a much-repeated story goes, his hobby of deciphering Mayan hieroglyphics caught the eye of professional archaeologists), as well as what he described as his extraordinary generosity.

“David was like one of those Amazonian village chiefs who were always the poorest guy in the village, since their whole function was to give things away,” Wengrow said. “He just had that ability to look at your work and sprinkle magic dust over the whole thing.”

Most recent big histories are by geographers, economists, psychologists and political scientists, many writing under the guiding framework of biological evolution. (In a cheeky footnote assessing rival Big Historians’ expertise, they describe Diamond, a professor of geography at the University of California, Los Angeles, as the holder of “a Ph.D on the physiology of the gall bladder.”)

Graeber and Wengrow, by contrast, write in the grand tradition of social theory descended from Weber, Durkheim and Levi-Strauss. In a 2011 blog post, Graeber recalled how a friend, after reading his similarly sweeping “Debt: The First 5,000 Years” said he wasn’t sure anyone had written a book like that in 100 years. “I’m still not sure it was a compliment,” Graeber quipped.

“The Dawn of Everything” includes discussions of princely burials in Europe during the ice age, contrasting attitudes toward slavery among the Indigenous societies of Northern California and the Pacific Northwest, the political implications of dry-land versus riverbed farming, and the complexity of preagricultural settlements in Japan, among many, many other subjects.

But the dazzling range of references raises a question: Who is qualified to judge whether it’s true?

Reviewing the book in The Nation, the historian Daniel Immerwahr called Graeber “a wildly creative thinker” who was “better known for being interesting than right” and asked if the book’s confident leaps and hypotheses “can be trusted.”

And Immerwahr deemed at least one claim — that colonial American settlers captured by Indigenous people “almost invariably” chose to stay with them — “ballistically false,” claiming that the authors’ single cited source (a 1977 dissertation) “actually argues the opposite.”

Wengrow countered that it was Immerwahr who was reading the source wrong. And he noted that he and Graeber had taken care to publish the book’s core arguments in leading peer-reviewed scholarly journals or deliver them as some of the most prestigious invited lectures in the field.

“I remember thinking at the time, why do we have to put ourselves through this?” Wengrow said of the process. “We’re reasonably established in our fields. But it was David who was adamant that it was terribly important.”

James C. Scott, an eminent political scientist at Yale whose 2017 book “Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States” also ranged across fields to challenge the standard narrative, said some of Graeber and Wengrow’s arguments, like his own, would inevitably be “thrown out” as other scholars engaged with them.

But he said the two men had delivered a “fatal blow” to the already-weakened idea that settling down in agricultural states was what humans “had been waiting to do all along.”

But the most striking part of “The Dawn of Everything,” Scott said, is an early chapter on what the authors call the “Indigenous critique.” The European Enlightenment, they argue, rather than being a gift of wisdom bestowed on the rest of the world, grew out of a dialogue with Indigenous people of the New World, whose trenchant assessments of the shortcomings of European society influenced emerging ideas of freedom.

“I’ll bet it has a huge significance in our understanding of the relationship between the West and the rest,” Scott said.

“The Dawn of Everything” sees pervasive evidence for large complex societies that thrived without the existence of the state, and defines freedom chiefly as “freedom to disobey.” It’s easy to see how such arguments dovetail with Graeber’s anarchist beliefs, but Wengrow pushed back against a question about the book’s politics.

“I’m not particularly interested in debates that begin with slapping a label on a piece of research,” he said. “It almost never happens with scholars who lean right.”

But if the book helps convince people, in the words of the Occupy slogan, that “another world is possible,” that’s not unintentional.

“We’ve reached the stage of history where we have scientists and activists agreeing our prevailing system is putting us and our planet on a course of real catastrophe,” Wengrow said. “To find yourself paralyzed, with your horizons closed off by false perspectives on human possibilities, based on a mythological conception of history, is not a great place to be.”

• © 2021 The New York Times Company

(Contributed by Michael Kelly, H.W.)

The art of the Bhil people of central India is instantly recognisable for its bright colours, fantastical human forms and, above all, mesmerising dot patterns. Today, the unique character of these images is celebrated in books, folk art museums and, in the case of the short film Hum Chitra Banate Hai (We Make Images) (2016), a beautiful animation. But for centuries, this distinctive painting style existed primarily on the clay walls of Bhil homes, with twigs serving as the painting tools, and plants and oils generating the vivid pigments. More than decoration or artistic expression, the making of these pictures, taking place on festival days and depicting ancestors and scenes from Bhil folklore, represents an act of ritualistic prayer.

So, why do the Bhil people paint? That’s the question at the centre of Hum Chitra Banate Hai, directed by the Indian artist and storyteller Nina Sabnani in partnership with the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, where she is an associate professor at the Industrial Design Centre. For the project, Sabnani teamed up with the Bhil artist Sher Singh Bhil to bring to life the myth behind the tradition of adorning homes with elaborate frescoes. Narrated from the perspective of a rooster, the story recounts a journey to find a shaman to bring relief from a catastrophic drought. Once located, the shaman inspires the Bhil to paint their homes – an act that brings rain, bountiful crops and, ultimately, peace and prosperity.

The artistic collaboration results in a playful and evocative animation, with a visual style unlike anything you’re likely to find on your streaming service of choice. This absorbing imagery, combined with the unpretentious storytelling and the expressive narration of the celebrated Indian actor Raghubir Yadav, builds a world into which it’s easy to dissolve. But beyond its brisk charms, Hum Chitra Banate Hai is also an accomplished work of visual ethnology. By bringing authentic Bhil imagery to life, Sabnani and Singh Bhil at once share and express a tradition at the centre of Bhil culture, portraying a people to whom art, nature and spirituality are inseparable.

Written by Adam D’Arpino

Director: Nina Sabnani

Artist: Sher Singh Bhil26 MAY 2021 (psyche.co)

Masnavi Manavi #1

The Masnavi: Book One

Rumi, Jawid Mojaddedi (Translator)

‘The pen would smoothly write the things it knew
But when it came to love it split in two,
A donkey stuck in mud is logic’s fate –
Love’s nature only love can demonstrate.’

Rumi’s Masnavi is widely recognized as the greatest Sufi poem ever written, and has been called ‘the Koran in Persian’. The thirteenth-century Muslim mystic Rumi composed his work for the benefit of his disciples in the Sufi order named after him, better known as the whirling dervishes. In order to convey his message of divine love and unity he threaded together entertaining stories and penetrating homilies. Drawing from folk tales as well as sacred history, Rumi’s poem is often funny as well as spiritually profound.

Jawid Mojaddedi’s sparkling new verse translation of Book One is consistent with the aims of the original work in presenting Rumi’s most mature mystical teachings in simple and attractive rhyming couplets.

(Goodreads.com)

DECEMBER 27, 2021 AT 7:00 AM BY ROB BREZSNY

“The Doctor” by Sir Luke Fildes, 1891

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Historians disagree about the legacy of Jimmy Carter, who was President of the United States from 1977 to 1981. Was he effective or not? Opinions differ. But there’s no ambiguity about a project he pursued after his presidency. He led a global effort to eliminate a pernicious disease caused by the guinea worm parasite. When Carter began his work, 3.5 million people per year suffered from the parasite’s debilitating effects. Today, there are close to zero victims. Will 2022 bring an equivalent boon to your life, Aries? The banishment of an old bugaboo? A monumental healing? I suspect so.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): In 2022, I hope you will express more praise than ever before. I hope you’ll be a beacon of support and inspiration for the people you care for. The astrological omens suggest this could be a record-breaking year for the blessings you bestow. Don’t underestimate your power to heal and instigate beneficial transformations. Yes, of course, it’s a kind and generous strategy for you to carry out. But it will also lead to unforeseen rewards that will support and inspire and heal you.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): If you search Google, you’ll be told that the longest biography ever written is the twenty-four-volume set about British political leader Winston Churchill. But my research shows there’s an even more extensive biography: about Japan’s Emperor Hirohito, who lived from 1901 to 1989. His story consists of sixty-one volumes. In the spirit of these expansive tales, and in accordance with 2022’s astrological aspects, I encourage you to create an abundance of noteworthy events that will deserve inclusion in your biography. Make this the year that warrants the longest and most interesting chapter in that masterpiece.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): One of the twentieth century’s most famous works of art was “Fountain.” It was scandalous when it appeared in 1917, since it consisted entirely of a white porcelain urinal. Marcel Duchamp, the artist who presented it, was a critic of the art market and loved mocking conventional thought. Years later, however, evidence emerged suggesting that “Fountain” may not have been Duchamp’s idea—that in fact he “borrowed” it from Cancerian artist and poet Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven. There’s still disagreement among art scholars about what the facts are. But if definitive proof ever arrives that von Freytag-Loringhoven was the originator, it will be in 2022. This will be the year many Cancerians finally get the credit they deserve.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Author Carson McCullers wrote the novel “The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter.” Early in the story, the character named Mick Kelly has a crisis of yearning. McCullers describes it: “The feeling was a whole lot worse than being hungry for any dinner, yet it was like that. I want—I want—I want—was all that she could think about—but just what this real want was she did not know.” If you have ever had experiences resembling Mick’s, Leo, 2022 will be your year to fix that glitch in your passion. You will receive substantial assistance from life whenever you work on the intention to clarify and define the specific longings that are most essential to you.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): After careful research, I have concluded that one of your important missions in 2022 will be to embody a perspective articulated by poet Rand Howells: “If I could have but one wish granted, it would be to live in a universe like this one at a time like the present with friends like the ones I have now and be myself.” In other words, Virgo, I’m encouraging you to do whatever’s necessary to love your life exactly as it is—without comparing it unfavorably to anyone else’s life or to some imaginary life you don’t actually have.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): If your quest for spiritual enlightenment doesn’t enhance your ability to witness and heal the suffering of others, then it’s fake enlightenment. If your quest for enlightenment encourages you to imagine that expressing personal freedom exempts you from caring for the well-being of your fellow humans, it’s fake. If your quest for enlightenment allows you to ignore racism, bigotry, plutocracy, misogyny and LGBTQIA-phobia, it’s fake. Everything I just said about enlightenment is equally true about your quest for personal success. If it doesn’t involve serving others, it’s meaningless. In this spirit, Libra, and in accordance with the astrological omens, I invite you to make 2022 the year you take your compassion and empathy to the highest level ever.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Two mating rabbits could theoretically engender eleven million relatives within a year’s time. Although I suspect that in 2022 you will be as metaphorically fertile as those two hypothetical rabbits, I’m hoping you’ll aim more for quality than quantity. To get started, identify two projects you could pursue in the coming months that will elicit your most liberated creativity. Write a vow in which you state your intention to be intensely focused as you express your fecundity.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): A blogger named Soracities writes, “The more I read, the more I feel that a good mark of an intelligent book is simply that the author is having fun with it.” Sagittarian author George Saunders adds that at its best, “Literature is a form of fondness-for-life. It is love for life taking a verbal form.” I will expand these analyses to evaluate everything that humans make and do. In my opinion, the supreme sign of intelligence and value is whether the creators had fun and felt love in doing it. My proposal to you, Sagittarius, is to evaluate your experiences in that spirit. If you are doing things with meager amounts of fun and love, what can you do in 2022 to raise the fun and love quotient?

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Microbiologist Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928. It was later described as “the single greatest victory ever achieved over disease”—an antidote to dangerous infections caused by bacteria. But there’s more to the story. Fleming’s strain of penicillin could only be produced in tiny amounts—not nearly enough to become a widespread medicine. It wasn’t until 1943 that a different strain of penicillin was found—one that could be mass-produced. The genius who made this possible was Mary Hunt, a humble researcher without a college degree. By 1944, the new drug was saving thousands of lives. I mention Hunt because she’s a good role model for you in 2022. I believe you’ll have chances to improve on the work of others, generating excellent results. You may also improve on work you’ve done in the past.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Catherine Pugh wrote a series of children’s books collectively known as “Healthy Holly.” Later, when she became mayor of the city of Baltimore, she carried out a scheme to sell 100,000 copies to hospitals and schools that did business with the city. Uh-oh. Corruption! She was forced to resign from her office and was arrested. I’d love for you to be aggressive and imaginative in promoting yourself in 2022, but only if you can find ethical ways to do so. I’d love for you to make money from doing what you do best, but always with high integrity and impeccability.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Piscean Vaslav Nijinsky is regarded by many as the twentieth century’s most brilliant dancer. He had a robust relationship with beauty, and I want you to know about it. Hopefully, this will inspire you to enjoy prolonged periods of Beauty Worship in 2022. To do so will be good for your health. Memorize this passage from Nijinsky: “Beauty is God. God is beauty with feeling. Beauty is in feeling. I love beauty because I feel it and therefore understand it. I flaunt my beauty. I feel love for beauty.”

Homework: Name your greatest hope for the person you love best. Newsletter.FreeWillAstrology.com

With a worldview formed amid the unfathomable human suffering of the early 20th century, Albert Camus’s writings reflect on the inherent absurdity of the human condition, including his best-known work, the novella The Stranger (1942). But the arc of his career, from his ‘cycle of the absurd’ and his ‘cycle of revolt’ to his ‘cycle of love’ – left unfinished after Camus himself met a rather meaningless end in a car accident – points towards a humane philosophy, centred on a defiant pursuit of freedom and value in a futile, incomprehensible universe. This animation from TED-Ed scopes Camus’s career, outlook and cultural influence, shedding light on how, where he might have found hopelessness, he instead found inspiration. For more on Camus’s life, including how his worldview clashed with those of his existentialist contemporaries, watch the Aeon original animation Sartre vs Camus.

Video by TED-Ed

Writer: Nina Medvinskaya

Animator: Avi Ofer15 July 2021

Lesson 160 I am at home. Fear is the stranger here.

Fear is a stranger to the ways of love. Identify with fear, and you will be a stranger to yourself. And thus you are unknown to you. What is your Self remains an alien to the part of you which thinks that it is real, but different from yourself. Who could be sane in such a circumstance? Who but a madman could believe he is what he is not, and judge against himself?

There is a stranger in our midst, who comes from an idea so foreign to the truth he speaks a different language, looks upon a world truth does not know, and understands what truth regards as senseless. Stranger yet, he does not recognize to whom he comes, and yet maintains his home belongs to him, while he is alien now who is at home. And yet, how easy it would be to say, “This is my home. Here I belong, and will not leave because a madman says I must.”

What reason is there for not saying this? What could the reason be except that you had asked this stranger in to take your place, and let you be a stranger to yourself? No one would let himself be dispossessed so needlessly, unless he thought there were another home more suited to his tastes.

Who is the stranger? Is it fear or you who are unsuited to the home which God provided for His Son? Is fear His Own, created in His likeness? Is it fear that love completes, and is completed by? There is no home can shelter love and fear. They cannot coexist. If you are real, then fear must be illusion. And if fear is real, then you do not exist at all.

How simply, then, the question is resolved. Who fears has but denied himself and said, “I am the stranger here. And so I leave my home to one more like me than myself, and give him all I thought belonged to me.” Now is he exiled of necessity, not knowing who he is, uncertain of all things but this; that he is not himself, and that his home has been denied to him.

What does he search for now? What can he find? A stranger to himself can find no home wherever he may look, for he has made return impossible. His way is lost, except a miracle will search him out and show him that he is no stranger now. The miracle will come. For in his home his Self remains. It asked no stranger in, and took no alien thought to be Itself. And It will call Its Own unto Itself in recognition of what is Its Own.

Who is the stranger? Is he not the one your Self calls not? You are unable now to recognize this stranger in your midst, for you have given him your rightful place. Yet is your Self as certain of Its Own as God is of His Son. He cannot be confused about creation. He is sure of what belongs to Him. No stranger can be interposed between His knowledge and His Son’s reality. He does not know of strangers. He is certain of His Son.

God’s certainty suffices. Who He knows to be His Son belongs where He has set His Son forever. He has answered you who ask, “Who is the stranger?” Hear His Voice assure you, quietly and sure, that you are not a stranger to your Father, nor is your Creator stranger made to you. Whom God has joined remain forever one, at home in Him, no stranger to Himself.

Today we offer thanks that Christ has come to search the world for what belongs to Him. His vision sees no strangers, but beholds His Own and joyously unites with them. They see Him as a stranger, for they do not recognize themselves. Yet as they give Him welcome, they remember. And He leads them gently home again, where they belong.

Not one does Christ forget. Not one He fails to give you to remember, that your home may be complete and perfect as it was established. He has not forgotten you. But you will not remember Him until you look on all as He does. Who denies his brother is denying Him, and thus refusing to accept the gift of sight by which his Self is clearly recognized, his home remembered and salvation come.

“So few want to be rebels anymore. And out of these few, most, like myself, scare easily.” ― Ray Bradbury 

By Suzanne Deakins, H.W., M. on December 28, 2021

As a young woman, I learned to cover up my outrageous ideas. I dreamt of doing things I knew were not acceptable to my parents and our lifestyle. I became conventional and proper, hence the Clap Saddle name of Prissy Prime Walk. By the time I was graduated from HS I had learned never to tell my parents anything about my activities or dreams. I was a secret rebel wanting out of my self-imposed prison. 

Rebels have a bad reputation. We think of them as troublemakers, outcasts, contrarians: they are the ones, associates, friends, and family members who often cause anarchy and disagree with everyone else. Perhaps it starts as the ability to see multiply choices or see other possibilities as a child. It often comes to bloom by the time we are teenagers. In my case I stepped outside of my mother’s religious path was thrown out of Sunday school, thrown out of school several times because I disagreed with teachers’ actions, even got the cheerleaders to go on strike. Fortunately, my rebellion has taken a more productive path as I aged. 

Radicals, nonconformity, conflicts, and differences are often seen as problems. When traditionalism becomes the basis for anything it positions a possibility of causing an idea or organization to become passe’. Those involved don’t feel safe to instigate new ideas or create the next step in growth. For any organization to be authentic its members must be able to criticize, dissent, and give constructive ideas without being seen as bad, or troublemakers. Constant communication where a person can ask why and if, sets an atmosphere of innovation. This is needed to accommodate change that is in a continuous state of occurrence in all aspects of consciousness, from personas to brick and mortar.  Only inert non-alive ideas are seen as not changing, or changeless.   

Rebels are the change bringers they bring transformation to make a better world. With unconventional thinking, a willingness to move into unfamiliar thinking, and experiences they often refuse to step back into routines and traditions refusing the status quo. Doing so bring about renovation and innovation that helps move humanity forward. We use phrases in our studies such as unfolding in infinite variety, without beginning or end, the totality of being, and yet we exclude the very idea, refusing that which is, rather than rejecting what we think we have learned. 

When we step outside a binary system into a multiple dimension consciousness we glimpse at ideas and possibilities of what we can create. But to do this we must allow students to be authentic. We must reward innovative thinking by taking time to stop, listen, and dialogue with students on their ideas. There will be missteps and if we embrace these as part of the process, we empower ourselves and students to take risks and celebrate what we create. 

Research on innovation shows that changes in organizational growth and health are based on curiosity and not conformity. It takes one person to ask a question no one has asked before for a wave of innovation to happen.  

Without upheaval and trouble, Thane and Billye said, “there is no growth, change without pain.” For new life to happen there must be a moment of pain. Conformity is a cultural constraint it makes us feel comfortable and accepted. In a 4^th Way school under a teacher such as Thane, you are asked to rebel and conform at the same time. This conflict led us out of our binary existence into a dimension of reality we had not known. The same thing happens in the argument of Translation, we must see the conflict to move into a space of releasing the wholeness of being, Truth in our thinking. Conflict is important if we are to know Truth. 

If we are to survive, we must be allowed the rebels to say no to groupthink. A moment of nonconformity most often triggers creativity. I think we are a group of rebels. Perhaps we miss understood Thane about toeing the line. Having the courage to step outside the box was always the lesson. Most students fowled the box and they got yelled out, embraced, and seemingly attacked. He praised and encouraged us to think outside our boxes, to fulfill our calling of Truth. 

History is filled with rebels who went against conformity to make transformations for the good of all, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Abraham Lincolns, Suffragettes the list goes on. By trying not to offend others we often create more harm than good. This does not mean we purposedly should offend another on a personal matter. 

True rebels are not crazy or out of control. Their actions are not meant to defeat the current regime, but to improve it. They don’t break the rules because they want to, but because they have to. Rebels want to bring about a better future. They break habits, and groupthink, fight limits, to have a more dynamic and positive future. 

Exploration shows that a few weeks of acting against the norms raises self-esteem, when we encourage students to speak up and express an opinion, they become more confident. Being rebellious is a habit. Resistance and unhappiness are an indicator. Students and Mentors that are disengaged is not a disease, but a symptom of a lack of freshness and safe spaces to engage new ideas. If we want a viable organization, we must turn rebelliousness into a creative normal. It is this creative atmosphere that will draw a new generation of students.  

The Prosperos was never meant to dwell in the realm of old metaphysics covered in dust. When Thane was alive creativity was expected of mentors. They were expected to teach or counsel and be active. He encouraged their writings and developing new ideas. 

Translation itself is a product of rebellion, moving ontology out of metaphysics into practical application. 

Be a living Translation.

This is a profound and immensely reassuring video.  The problem is laid out with detail and clarity, and so is also the solution. Translators will recognize their role as it is spelled out as the solution. 

Zach Bush, MD is a triple board-certified physician specializing in internal medicine, endocrinology, and hospice care. He is the founder of Seraphic Group, an organization devoted to developing root-cause solutions for human and ecological health in the sectors of big farming, big pharma, and Western Medicine at large. And he is also the founder of Farmers Footprint https://farmersfootprint.us/, a non-profit coalition of farmers, educators, doctors, scientists, and business leaders aiming to expose the deleterious human and environmental impacts of chemical farming and pesticide reliance — while simultaneously offering a path forward through regenerative agricultural practices.

Dr. Zach Bush’s work is critical in exposing the truth about our toxic food system or its health impact. To learn more please visit https://zachbushmd.com/

Visit our site at https://www.afterskool.net/

Email: 100@gmail.com

New Thinking Allowed with Jeffrey Mishlove Richard Smoley is editor of Quest: The Journal of the Theosophical Society in America. He is also former editor of Gnosis Magazine. His books include Hidden Wisdom: The Guide to the Western Inner Traditions, Inner Christianity: The Guide to the Esoteric Tradition, Forbidden Faith: The Secret History of Gnosticism, The Essential Nostradamus, Conscious Love: Insights from Mystical Christianity, The Dice Game of Shiva: How Consciousness Creates the Universe, The Supernatural: Writings on an Unknown History, The Deal: A Guide to Radical and Complete Forgiveness, and How God Became God: What Scholars Are Really Saying About God and the Bible. Here he points out that prophecies concerning the destruction of the world date back to the time of Jesus. He suggests that such prophecies are a strategy for softening the existential fear of personal death. He also notes that there has always been a market for such dramatic prophecies. The various prophetic utterances in the western tradition, he claims, are best understood as comments on the political and social climate at the time – rather than as statements about the future. In reviewing the extensive quatrains of the famous seer, Nostradamus, Smoley was unable to uncover any pattern of accurate prophecies. New Thinking Allowed host, Jeffrey Mishlove, PhD, is author of The Roots of Consciousness, Psi Development Systems, and The PK Man. Between 1986 and 2002 he hosted and co-produced the original Thinking Allowed public television series. He is the recipient of the only doctoral diploma in “parapsychology” ever awarded by an accredited university (University of California, Berkeley, 1980). He is a past vice-president of the Association for Humanistic Psychology; and is the recipient of the Pathfinder Award from that Association for his contributions to the field of human consciousness. He is also past-president of the non-profit Intuition Network, an organization dedicated to creating a world in which all people are encouraged to cultivate and apply their inner, intuitive abilities. (Recorded on August 6, 2016)

December 28, 2021 (astrobutterfly.com)

2022 promises fairytale-like developments and unexpected twists and turns that will help us connect with our life purpose.

If we want to understand the core themes of a year, we look at the most important planetary aspects of that particular year.

2020 was shaped by the Saturn-Pluto conjunction in Capricorn.2021 was shaped by the Saturn-Uranus square. Saturn conjunct Pluto and Saturn square Uranus were both heavy and difficult aspects, and we all know how 2020 and 2021 have been for the collective.

2022 is nothing like that.

Yes, we still have the Saturn-Uranus square lingering in the background, but the major aspects are very positive and uplifting. The 2 major aspects in 2022 are Jupiter conjunct Neptune in Pisces and North Node conjunct Uranus in Taurus.

Jupiter Conjunct Neptune In Pisces

Jupiter conjunct Neptune is one of the most beautiful aspects we could hope for in astrology.

Jupiter is the greatest benefic in astrology, and when it is in the sign of its domicile, Pisces, he has an even more positive influence.

Neptune is also in domicile in Pisces, and to have the two planets that rule Pisces in a conjunction, really is a dream come true. “Dream come true” may sound formulaic, but we all know that Neptune is the planet of dreams, and Jupiter is the planet of hope, abundance and luck, so dreams coming true sounds about right in 2022.

Jupiter conjunct Neptune in Pisces really has the power to make our dreams come true and to awaken us to the simplest truth of life: that there is magic everywhere.

Uranus Conjunct North Node In Taurus

Uranus conjunct North Node in Taurus is another important aspect in 2022. North Node is our soul’s purpose, and Uranus is the planet of freedom and liberation.

When the North Node is conjunct Uranus, we will be awakened – sometimes suddenly, otherwise with interesting serendipities and twists – to what it is that we were truly born to do in this lifetime. Yes, these are big words but that’s what Uranus and the North Node do when they join forces.

That being said, North Node conjunct Uranus may not be for the faint of the heart. If you’ve been living in a well-constructed illusion, or just live a life other people or society has crafted for you, then the awakening can be quite shocking – something like Neo in the 1st Matrix movie.

On the other hand, if you’ve always known what your path is, what your purpose is but you never really got the chance to get closer to your goal, 2022 will make it easier than ever. North Node and Uranus come with a green light from the Universe – yes, you can now follow your path with no more hindrances!

Most of us are in between these extremes, so Uranus conjunct North Node can come with a mix of shocking events that will turn our lives upside down sometimes too quickly, too soon, and also with incredible changes and opportunities to step into our true purpose.

These are the most important astrological events in 2022:

• Jupiter conjunct Neptune in Pisces – March-May 2022, exact on April 12, 2022
• Jupiter in Aries – Jupiter enters Aries on May 11th, 2022 and stays in Aries until October 28th, 2022 when Jupiter moves back into Pisces, and then Jupiter enters Aries for good on December 20th, 2022.
• North Node in Taurus, South Node in Scorpio – Lunar Nodes move into Taurus and Scorpio on January 18th, 2022 and will stay in Taurus and Scorpio until July 17th, 2023
• North Node conjunct Uranus – May-September 2022, exact on July 26th, 2022
• Saturn square Uranus – while we don’t have an exact conjunction, Saturn and Uranus are in a tight orb especially from August to November 2022

March 2022 – When The Stars Align

In March 2022 we have several astrological line-ups that are pretty special:

On March 2nd, 2022 we have a special New Moon in Pisces which is conjunct both her rulers, Jupiter and Neptune. At the same time, Mars, Venus and Pluto all align at 27° Capricorn, and Mercury and Saturn align at 19° Aquarius.

Basically all planets, except for Uranus, are engaged in a conjunction. This is rather unusual and it will bring a lot of forward momentum. Here we can expect a lot of new beginnings on multiple levels in our lives at a personal as well as at a collective level.

On March 6th, 2022 Venus and Mars meet at 0° Aquarius – the same degree we had the epochal Jupiter-Saturn conjunction on December 21st.

If Jupiter and Saturn spoke for collective developments that impacted us on a collective level, the Venus-Mars conjunction in Aquarius is about how we, as individuals, get to shape the collective. Power to the people!

Eclipses In 2022

The most eventful times of the year usually coincide with the Eclipses. Eclipses are times of alignment – their goal is to remind us of our life purpose.

We have 4 eclipses in 2022 and all of them happen on the Taurus-Scorpio axis. If you have personal planets or angels in Taurus and Scorpio, watch for these eclipses. This is when you can expect major events, changes or developments.

The eclipses this year all aspect Uranus in Taurus, so they are even more eventful, and come with even more surprises and twists than your regular eclipses.

• April 30th, 2022 – North Node Solar Eclipse at 10° Taurus – The Solar Eclipse is conjunct Uranus and the ruler of the eclipse, Venus, is conjunct Jupiter and Neptune in Pisces, promising fairytale-like developments. Dreams can come true at this Eclipse – be careful what you wish for 
• May 15th, 2022 – South Node Lunar Eclipse at 25° Scorpio – The Lunar Eclipse in Scorpio is opposite Uranus in Taurus, showing us what we need to release from our lives if we want to live in alignment with our true values.
• October 25th, 2022 – South Node Solar Eclipse at 2° Scorpio – The Solar Eclipse in Scorpio is exactly conjunct Venus, and will come with important developments in our relationships.
• November 8th, 2022 – North Node Lunar Eclipse at 15° Taurus – The Lunar Eclipse in Taurus is conjunct Uranus coming with surprising outcomes and revelations that will set us free and help us live more authentically.

Venus, Mercury, Mars Retrograde In 2022

While the slow-moving planets (Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto) are retrograde for almost half of the year, Mercury, Venus, and Mars are retrograde for only 19%, 9%, and 7% of the time, and their retrogrades are much more powerful and eventful.

We always want to pay attention to Mercury – and especially to Venus and Mars retrograde, since they come with major adjustments.

Retrogrades ask us to pay attention to something that is very important and that we may just be overlooking, giving us a 2nd chance to set things right.

Mercury retrogrades are times to review our thoughts, mental patterns and everyday activities, Venus retrogrades are times to review our values and relationships, and Mars retrogrades are times to review our behaviors, actions and decisions.

Venus retrograde: December 19th, 2021-January 29th, 2022

Venus is retrograde in the 1st month of the year in Capricorn, inviting us to revise our values and relationships. Capricorn is the sign of success, achievement and fulfillment.

What do success and fulfillment mean to you, especially in relation to your relationships? It may not be what you think it is – and Venus retrograde in Capricorn will help you figure this out.

Mercury retrograde: January 14th, 2022 – February 4th, 2022; May 10th, 2022 – June 3rd, 2022; September 10th – October 2nd, 2022

Mercury goes retrograde 3 or 4 times every year, usually in the same zodiac element or elements. In 2022 we have 3 Mercury retrogrades, and they all start in Earth signs and end in Air signs.

We may start by revisiting some concrete, practical aspects of our lives (Mercury in Earth signs) to get to the root cause of these: our thinking and communication patterns (Mercury in Air signs).

If your gym routine hasn’t been working, perhaps there is a thinking pattern that is sabotaging your efforts. Or if you’re resentful of your partner that they never take care of the garbage, perhaps there is a communication issue that needs to be addressed.

Mars retrograde in Gemini: October 31st, 2022, with Mars at 25° Gemini to January 13th, 2023, with Mars at 8° Gemini

Mars goes retrograde at 25° Gemini and goes direct at 8° Gemini.

Our actions speak louder than words, but not necessarily when Mars goes retrograde in Gemini. Words can be weapons, and can be used to motivate, seduce, or undermine ourselves and others.

Martin Luther King, Edward Snowden, Al Pacino, Barbra Streisand and OJ. Simpson are just a few examples of Mars in Gemini natives.

This retrograde period is great to revise how our thinking and communication patterns shape our actions. Speaking out loud about what we plan to do can give us the drive to actually put our thoughts into action.

If some of our actions and behaviors have been sabotaging our efforts, now it’s time to get to the root cause of the problem, and rewire our minds so we can think and act differently.

All of these themes, and more (depending on the sector of your life Mars is transiting), will be in the focus of your awareness in the last 2 months of the year.

The Astrology Of 2022 – There Is Magic Everywhere

2022 will be a year to remember – thankfully, not for the same reasons 2020 and 2021 have been. If 2020 and 2021 showed us the bad and the ugly, which is of course a useful reminder that life is not all roses, 2022 will remind us of the good.

Yes, there is pain and suffering, yes, we’re all going to die sooner or later, but there’s also incredible beauty and opportunities everywhere we look.

And the keyword is “incredible”. 2022 is not just a story of “focus on the full side of the glass”, or “yeah, things are not really that bad”. 2022 will show us the incredible, the remarkable, the rainbow, the waterfall, the glittering stars.

Age Of Aquarius In 2022

Early next week we will open the doors to enroll in our sweet Age Of Aquarius Community, and we have prepared a special promo you don’t want to miss. More details coming soon – stay tuned!