OCTOBER 25, 2022 AT 7:00 AM BY ROB BREZSNY (newcity.com)

Photo: Luke Jones

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Of all the rich philanthropists in the world, Aries author MacKenzie Scott is the most generous. During a recent twelve-month period, she gave away $8.5 billion. Her focus is on crucial issues: racial equality, LGBTQ+ rights, pandemic relief, upholding and promoting democracy, and addressing the climate emergency. She disburses her donations quickly and without strings attached, and prefers to avoid hoopla and ego aggrandizement. I suggest we make her your inspirational role model in the coming weeks. May she motivate you to gleefully share your unique gifts and blessings. I think you will reap selfish benefits by exploring the perks of generosity. Halloween costume suggestion: philanthropist, Santa Claus, compassion freak.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): What animal best represents your soul? Which species do you love the most? Now would be a good time to try this imaginative exercise. You’re in a phase when you’ll thrive by nurturing your inner wild thing. You will give yourself blessings by stoking your creature intelligence. All of us are part-beast, and this is your special time to foster the beauty of your beast. Halloween costume suggestion: your favorite animal or the animal that symbolizes your soul.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): During the tyrannical reign of Spain’s fascist government in the 1930s, Gemini poet Federico García Lorca creatively resisted and revolted with great courage. One critic said Lorca “was all freedom inside, abandon and wildness. A tulip, growing at the foot of a concrete bulwark.” I invite you to be inspired by Lorca’s untamed, heartfelt beauty in the coming weeks, Gemini. It’s a favorable time to rebel with exuberance against the thing that bothers you most, whether that’s bigotry, injustice, misogyny, creeping authoritarianism, or anything else. Halloween costume suggestion: a high-spirited protestor.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): If the trickster god Mercury gave you permission to do one mischievous thing today and a naughty thing tomorrow and a rascally thing two days from now, what would you choose? Now is the perfect time for you Cancerians to engage in roguish, playful, puckish actions. You are especially likely to get away with them, karma-free—and probably even benefit from them—especially if they are motivated by love. Are you interested in taking advantage of this weird grace period? Halloween costume suggestion: prankster, joker, fairy, elf.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Everyone’s mind constantly chatters with agitated fervor—what I call the ever-flickering flux. We might as well accept this as a fundamental element of being human. It’s a main feature, not a bug. Yet there are ways to tone down the inner commotion. Meditation can help. Communing with nature often works. Doing housework sometimes quells the clamor for me. The good news for you, Leo, is that you’re in a phase when it should be easier than usual to cultivate mental calm. Halloween costume suggestion: meditation champion; tranquility superstar; gold medalist in the relaxation tournament.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): “Education is an admirable thing,” said author Oscar Wilde. “But it is well to remember that nothing worth knowing can be taught.” What?! That’s an exasperating theory. I don’t like it. In fact, I protest it. I reject it. I am especially opposed to it right now as I contemplate your enhanced power to learn amazing lessons and useful knowledge and life-changing wisdom. So here’s my message for you, Virgo: What Oscar Wilde said DOES NOT APPLY to you these days. Now get out there and soak up all the inspiring teachings that are available to you. Halloween costume suggestion: top student.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): To celebrate Halloween, I suggest you costume yourself as a character you were in a past life. A jeweler in first-century Rome? A midwife in eleventh-century China? A salt trader in fourteenth-century Timbuktu? If you don’t have any intuitions about your past lives, be playful and invent one. Who knows? You might make an accurate guess. Why am I inviting you to try this fun exercise? Because now is an excellent time to re-access resources and powers and potentials you possessed long ago—even as far back as your previous incarnations.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): I guess it would be difficult to create a practical snake costume for Halloween. How would you move around? You’d have to slither across the floor and the ground everywhere you go. So maybe instead you could be a snake priest or snake priestess—a magic conjurer wearing snake-themed jewelry and clothes and crown. Maybe your wand could be a caduceus. I’m nudging you in this direction because I think you will benefit from embodying the mythic attributes of a snake. As you know, the creature sheds its old skin to let new skin emerge. That’s a perfect symbol for rebirth, fertility, transformation and healing. I’d love those themes to be your specialties in the coming weeks.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): “I need my sleep,” proclaimed Sagittarian comedian Bill Hicks. “I need about eight hours a day and about ten at night.” I don’t think you will need as much slumber as Hicks in the coming nights, Sagittarius. On the other hand, I hope you won’t scrimp on your travels in the land of dreams. Your decisions in the waking world will improve as you give yourself maximum rest. The teachings you will be given while dreaming will make you extra smart and responsive to the transformations unfolding in your waking life. Halloween costume suggestion: dancing sleepwalker; snoozing genius; angel banishing a nightmare; fantastic dream creature.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Recently, my mom told me my dad only spoke the Slovakian language, never English, until he started first grade in a school near Detroit, Michigan. Both of his parents had grown up in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but immigrated to the United States in their youth. When I related this story to my Slovakian cousin Robert Brežny, he assured me it’s not true. He met my dad’s mother several times, and he says she could not speak Slovakian. He thinks she was Hungarian, in fact. So it’s unlikely my dad spoke Slovakian as a child. I guess all families have odd secrets and mysteries and illusions, and this is one of mine. How about you, Capricorn? I’m happy to say that the coming months will be a favorable time to dig down to the roots of your family’s secrets and mysteries and illusions. Get started! Halloween costume suggestion: your most fascinating ancestor.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): My Aquarian friend Allie told me, “If a demon turned me into a monster who had to devour human beings to get my necessary protein, I would only eat evil billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg.” What about you, Aquarius? If you woke up one morning and found you had transformed into a giant wolf-dragon that ate people, who would you put on your menu? I think it’s a good time to meditate on this hypothetical question. You’re primed to activate more ferocity as you decide how you want to fight the world’s evil in the months and years to come. Halloween costume suggestion: a giant wolf-dragon that eats bad people.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Do you value the feeling of wildness? Is that an experience you seek and cultivate? If so, what conditions rouse it? How does it feel? When it visits you, does it have a healthy impact? Are you motivated by your pleasurable brushes with wildness to reconfigure the unsatisfying and unwild parts of your life? These are questions I hope you will contemplate in the coming weeks. The astrological omens suggest you have more power than usual to access wildness. Halloween costume suggestion: whatever makes you feel wild.

Homework: Here’s another Halloween costume suggestion: Be the opposite of yourself. Newsletter.FreeWillAstrology.com

The Wheel of Fortune

The Wheel of Fortune is numbered ten and is usually shown as a great wheel. Sometimes Fortuna is seen, turning the wheel for all eternity. There are people or animals on the Wheel – some are falling off to be crushed, some are struggling to stay on, while a solitary figure makes no attempt to maintain its position but succeeds anyway.

Fortune is not the same as luck. We make our own luck and follow our own destiny. Good fortune comes from the still centre which contains the very heart of ourselves. The seasons will continue to wheel, the sun will rise and set, the planets will move in their allotted courses – with or without us.

If we struggle against the flow of life, we become those struggling to ascend the Wheel, or even one of those crushed beneath it. However, if we realise our own power to create a beneficial future and then trust in that vision, we shall become the still figure, master of our own universe.

(via angelpaths.com and Alan Blackman)

Heather Ensworth Oct 22, 2022 To become a patron: https://www.patreon.com/heatherensworth Heather’s website: https://www.risingmoonhealingcenter.com This video describes the energies of the powerful total lunar eclipse on November 8, 2022 and the meaning of where this eclipse is in the stars in the sky and how we can work with these energies in our lives for healing and transformation.

Catafalque: Carl Jung and the End of Humanity

by Peter Kingsley (Goodreads Author)

Catafalque offers a revolutionary new reading of the great psychologist Carl Jung as mystic, gnostic and prophet for our time.

This book is the first major re-imagining of both Jung and his work since the publication of the Red Book in 2009–and is the only serious assessment of them written by a classical scholar who understands the ancient Gnostic, Hermetic and alchemical foundations of his thought as well as Jung himself did. At the same time it skillfully tells the forgotten story of Jung’s relationship with the great Sufi scholar, Henry Corbin, and with Persian Sufi tradition.

The strange reality of the Red Book, or “New Book” as Carl Jung called it, lies close to the heart of Catafalque. In meticulous detail Peter Kingsley uncovers its great secret, hidden in plain sight and still–as if by magic–unrecognized by all those who have been unable to understand this mysterious, incantatory text.

But the hard truth of who Jung was and what he did is only a small part of what this book uncovers. It also exposes the full extent of that great river of esoteric tradition that stretches all the way back to the beginnings of our civilization. It unveils the surprising realities behind western philosophy, literature, poetry, prophecy–both ancient and modern.

In short, Peter Kingsley shows us not only who Carl Jung was but who we in the West are as well. Much more than a brilliant spiritual biography, Catafalque holds the key to understanding why our western culture is dying. And, an incantatory text in its own right, it shows the way to discovering what we in these times of great crisis must do.

(Goodreads.com)

By Mike Zonta, BB editor

1)    Truth is that which is so.  That which is not truth is not so.  Therefore Truth is all that is.  Truth being all is therefore total, therefore whole, therefore complete, therefore one, therefore harmonious, therefore united.  I think therefore I am.  Since I am and since Truth is all that is, therefore I am Truth.  Since I am Truth therefore I am total, whole, complete, one, harmonious, united.  Since I am Truth and I am Mind, therefore Truth is Mind.

2)    A power outage can cause havoc in a city.

Word-tracking:
power: ability or capacity to do, electricity, energy, work, to do.
outage:  loss of power
havoc:  chaos, devastation, chasm, empty space, vacant, empty
city:  citadel, fortress, impenetrable

3)    Truth being all that is, there can be no power, ability, authority to do, other than Truth, therefore Truth is all-power, all ability, the only authority.  Truth being all, therefore whole, therefore full, cannot at the same time be vacant, empty, devastated, chaotic, therefore Truth is ever-present fullness, plenipotentiary.  Truth being all, therefore one, there is nothing other to guard against, therefore Truth is the eternal, infinite all-inclusive city of Universal Being.

4)    Truth is all-power, all ability, the only authority.
Truth is ever-present fullness, plenipotentiary.
Truth is the eternal, infinite all-inclusive city of Universal Being.

5)   I [and every and any “I” in the Universe] am the plenipotentiary of Universal Being, the Universal I.

“Lead us from the unreal to the real.” Hindu Invocation

AN OPPORTUNITY FOR DAILY REFLECTION BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE SCHOOL OF PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY

We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

—Nobel Prize Laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel

Elie Wiesel (September 30, 1928 – July 2, 2016) was a Romanian-born American writer, professor, political activist, Nobel laureate, and Holocaust survivor. He authored 57 books, written mostly in French and English, including Night, a work based on his experiences as a Jewish prisoner in the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps. Wikipedia

Let Your Heartbreak Be Your Guide: Lessons in Engaged Contemplation By Fr. Adam Bucko “The kind of spirituality Jesus calls us to is less about withdrawal, protection, safety, and preserving our lives as we know them, and more about risk, vulnerability, and even mutual dependence. On this path, we make progress not by practicing ‘shelter in place’ but by being able to touch what frightens us in the world. We make progress by removing the protective walls, the clear boundaries dividing the world into good and bad, and engaging with it, struggling with it, and in the process, discovering new levels of God’s expansiveness.” Let Your Heartbreak Be Your Guide: Lessons in Engaged Contemplation by Fr. Adam Bucko is a collection of reflections, stories, and lessons on how to bear witness to our trying times. Written against the backdrop of the COVID 19 pandemic and America’s reckoning with growing poverty, injustice and systemic racism, many of his reflections originated from sermons delivered via zoom during the early days of the pandemic when we were all sheltered in place. He is hopeful that the lessons he learned as he prayed through the events of the last three years and reflected on his own life journey, will help people connect with their own hearts, and support those seeking guidance on how to respond to the challenges that we are facing in our world in a way that doesn’t just create more noise but rather evoke what’s deepest in our hearts.The book is divided into three parts: Listening to Life, Touching What Frightens Us, and Interrupting Silence. Each chapter offers readers an invitation to pay attention to God who is eager to accompany us through our challenges and hopes. Throughout, Father Adam invites readers to draw from his rich personal experiences, beginning with his youth in Poland where he witnessed courageous priests use nonviolence to fight a totalitarian system, to his work with homeless LGBTQ youth on the streets of NYC, to his interactions with interfaith communities across the globe. Alongside these diverse experiences, Father Adam weaves in wisdom gained from mentors, scripture, and spiritual activists and mystics, such as St. Teresa of Avila, Howard Thurman, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, Catherine Doherty and Thich Nhat Hanh.The book ends with a powerful roadmap for individuals and communities looking to integrate a “rule of life” in service of compassion and justice for all. The book also includes an appendix of contemplative practices to help readers develop discernment, courage, and receptivity to God who is always guiding us towards healing and liberation. Let Your Heartbreak Be Your Guide: Lessons in Engaged Contemplation AVAILABLE NOW  for purchase at Powell’s Books Fr. Adam Bucko, Episcopal priest, spiritual director, author, activist and inttereligious pioneer, has been a committed voice in the movement for the renewal of Christian Contemplative Spirituality and the growing New Monastic movement.

Cat Daddies movie remiered Aug 30, 2022 Coming to Select Theaters This Fall. Visit www.catdaddiesmovie.com 10/14/22 – NYC 10/21/22 – LOS ANGELES, DALLAS, MILWAUKEE 10/28/22 – SAN FRANCISCO, SAN DIEGO 11/11/22 – CINCINNATI 12/1/22 – PORTLAND

The Priestess

The Priestess (or High Priestess, Papess, Pope Joan, Isis) is numbered two. This is the representation of the Goddess. She is the complementary partner of the Magician, possessing all his skill and ability, but with far more insight and psychism. She is more subtle yet somehow far more noticeable.

She is almost always shown with the Lunar Crescent, conveying her natural affinity with the forces of Nature and natural cycles. The Magician generates his own power, whereas the Priestess draws upon the forces of life itself.

She sits between two pillars with veils suspended between them – it is the Priestess who allows us to penetrate the innermost secrets of life. She is also the bridge between our conscious and Higher selves, by teaching us through our dreams and our subconscious. It is in our subconscious that we hold the keys to the Universe.

(via angelpaths.com and Alan Blackman)