CITY OF GOLD

finally new work again. feels great. as i’ve been saying to my friends that ever since finishing the astrology book, i feel like starting my whole life anew. part of this is redefining my stance to art and illustration. somehow the ultimate test and opportunity came along through an inspiring ‘call for entry’ by STERZ, an austrian literature magazine …

we have my ‘old’ style handing over to my ‘new’ style here in this surreal double-spread clash of filmic imagery. colours are not longer needed, at least for the time being. the ink layer and tracing paper (which always reminded me of condoms for some mad reason) are now gone as well, freeing up more time and thus lessening my karmic burden, i guess. what’s left is a more thorough and sensual treatment of lines into the actual matter of paper.

as to the story, i originally had the idea of contrasting an unredeemably depraved babylon with a ‘golden city of jerusalem’ from scriptures. and then there was the association with a woman being like a city, in a way (again we have babylon there and also frank miller/ willl eisner’s ‘spirit’ which also references such gnostic metaphors). it all went from there. hope you like and feel inspired. there’s plenty to look at and to discover for those who are looking and able to see :)

london, autumn 2011

WHEN THE SHIT HITS THE FAN

***UPDATE – a slightly more polished and beautifully type-set version is part of the SYSTEMICS book.

(made available to read online for free once-in-a-while or generally with a donation based password.)

 


 

I – SATURN & PLUTO

SO WE’VE HAD the first hit, from around new year’s eve up until a couple of weeks back. Several aspects of what it means, Pluto in Capricorn, have already shown their first, subtle glimpse. Since Pluto is now back in Sagittarius again, until later on in November, we have a chance to reconsider our stance towards those passing Jupiter related issues (Jupiter as the ruler of Sagittarius), which we’ve had to integrate into our  collective framework since 1992. The overindulging, celebrity-worshipping credit-card-spenders compulsively feeding on cultural and culinary junk food, as well as the Viagra-popping whore-humpers earning big bucks under the magic wings of multinational corporations will both have to cut down quite a bit on their life-styles. The learning outcome, according to modern Astrology, will be for us to be stripped bare of any illusions and hopes [JUPITER] which do not adhere to the ultimate, naked truth at this time and age [PLUTO]. We’re asked to display a healthy, mature attitude towards our vision of growth [JUPITER] and this way understand our actual role in what we commonly perceive as our fate or destiny [PLUTO]. Any over-inflated ego might easily burst like a bubble, leaving behind the bleakness of what is left, without fake, glitter and fame.

This streamlining of excess during the next couple of months will pave the way neatly for what is about to come, once Pluto will finally start its full journey through Capricorn. Capricorn’s ruler, Saturn, is an Astrological symbol for our concept of Reality, of the Framework, the perception of Time passing. It also stands for our internal fabric, the wiring in our brain as well as the molecular structure of our DNA. Everything we perceive as the visible, tangible reality around us, is traditionally associated with Saturn (it is also the furthest away Planet we can still see via the retina on our flesh eyes). Saturn is also The System, the political / social structure. Psychology, the mechanics of our day-to-day interactions, is therefore also a Saturn related issue. Boundaries are Saturn. The skin as the interface between Me and You is also Saturn related, as well as the bones, the structure we stand on. To express the planetary transit in a nutshell we could say that Pluto would probe into our understanding of Reality [SATURN] and squeeze out the essence of what we need to do [PLUTO] in order to keep growing as a human society [PLUTO, SATURN]. Part of the truth is that everyone is connected with everyone else, we’re all in the same boat – namely a planet which can go, from time to time, through some really serious trouble. Whilst at the same time, our brains are making this all up, aren’t they, inexplicably wired into the Holo-movement of what we have come to call the Universe (according to the ingenious Quantum Physicist / Philosopher David Bohm – 1).

Let’s try and coin this Pluto / Saturn constellation into more practical terms: All our defence mechanisms to face the truth about ourselves and other people [SATURN] will be ruthlessly disintegrated [PLUTO]. How will this happen? Through the public awareness that Psychological Literacy is paramount in order to live a healthy and balanced life – not money, status, guns or religions. Because at the end of the day, what we call ‘our reality’ are simply those people around us, how they treat us and see us and how we ourselves feel about them. The eventual insight into our unhappiness – the psycho-mechanics of it – will compel us to get a grip on the reasons why our Life Scripts keep running the way how they do (as one of the true heroes of modern psychotherapy, Eric Berne, calls the emotional patterns set in place – through mother’s breast, family bathroom and dinner table – all before we even reach the age of six – 2).

Where does this lead us? It would point exactly at the ‘collective rise of consciousness’ as the more serious predictive sources would usually claim. And as a consequence, the breakdown of any too-rigid frameworks (corporate / religious / political) incapable to cope with this ever accelerating speed of collective growth. Through gaining psychological / emotional literacy we would be able to heal inside [MOON], work through our insecurities, anger and sadness, whilst we increasingly feel the need to do our own thing [SUN], whatever that means to us, in our sadly too-short life. A lot has to do with regaining the freedom to do what we should, according to what our heart really tells us. Failing it would result in an increase of pain [SATURN] as long as the deterioration of our core potential [PLUTO] continues. In a general public climate of emotional maturity, feelings like jealousy will increasingly come across as silly, embarrassing or even pathetic. In a world of ignorance, devilishly fuelled by the mystery of a cycle-of-abuse, there is simply no one to blame for any painful buttons being pushed on our fragile emotional space-suits. We just have to let go of any invalid suits – get real / naked – and all of a sudden we could be happy even under the cheapest, shabbiest of duvets. Instead of compensating with money the constant craving for a hot piece of meat (men) or hopefully one day meet somebody special to enter symbiotic salvation (women), we feel it is alright to accept the truth that we’re all alone in this Life – as soon as we can relax and actually enjoy it.

And yet, Psychology is of course not the highest plane of what we, this time and age, perceive as Ultimate Reality. There are many Planes, many Angles, many Dimensions. Each of us has vastly different ones and they furthermore even change all the time. Preferably, our Planes / Views are supposed to be constantly rising, so everything makes more sense as we look back on our own, individual growth patterns and thus become able to clearly identify many of the others around us. In the end, we need to subscribe to Beliefs and Values which are as much in touch with the Truth as ‘humanly’ possible. As long as they can convincingly describe what we really feel inside, we should be absolutely fine. But if not, we’ve got a problem, since any decisions we arrive at from those subscribed Beliefs and Values are essentially political. They systemically pave our way into a quite predictable outcome of personal – and therefore, however marginal, collective – future. I feel that this is somewhat the crux in our historical development as a society, that psychology, culture and politics are in fact intrinsically linked. Any political concept, be it Socialism, Capitalism, Democracy, will be bound to fail if it cannot ensure the psycho-hygiene of its people, thus creating the fertile cultural soil from which society can be successfully nourished from within, grow in the most beautiful way.

It would be difficult enough to achieve such an Utopian state of society. But there are quite a few other things involved, it seems. Stargates, other dimensions, extra-terrestrials, timespaces and space-times. Sub-quantums, holographic universes and shuffle brains. All sorts of sometimes more, sometimes less reasonable conspiracy blurb, as well as fairly inexplicable post-ice-age sudden seeding of knowledge – not to mention 2012, of course.

II – 2012

WHAT’S THE latest story on this? According to David Wilcock, anyone who’s either been gifted enough by supernatural abilities, or by otherwise using one of the apparently existing time-travel devices (reverse-engineered from the pineal gland and UFO navigation chairs found back in the forties!!!) only encountered White Light as they hit the date 21st of December 2012 on their journeys. Whilst further down the timeline they’d all see entirely different futures. Like so many other mythologically encoded clues embedded in our culture, this reminds us of a scene in a movie. In this case it is Luke Skywalker having to face the illusion of Darth Vader in a small cave on Yoda’s planet where whatever he takes with him into the cave is what he is eventually going to be confronted with. Could this be the way how it works? Are we really – to such an mind-boggling extent – creating our very own futures?

In this light, it is definitely important for the existence of timetravel technology to be kept strictly secret, since our flawed ego-states would inevitably lead to rather horrifying, selffulfilling time-feedback loops, the closer we would get to the 2012 date. But on the other hand, perhaps that is what’s already happening, the White Light is the shrieking feedback, and perhaps it is true, that we can be anything we want to be, a grain of sand, a superhero or a galaxy, as we roll over the galactic centre on that miraculous date. It would be a paradigm-shift indeed …

I personally quite like the idea, however radical, so instead of going on about global catastrophes, conspiracies, aliens and the likes, let’s stick with the White Light for the moment. It also ties in nicely with the general concept of psychology, that through our emotional outlook we are masters (or slaves) of our very own, customised future. This way, a paradigm-shift would already mean that maybe external growth – doggedly pursuing our worldly interests – will not be that important anymore. It happens on its own anyway, as time passes, people come and go and new overall growth patterns are constantly being created, even in ‘stillness’. And then, perhaps, our lives will be more about internal growth – self-cultivation – about becoming a ‘better’ human being. “Returning to our True Selves”, as the Dao School, for Millennia, has succinctly described it. Could there be something like ‘salvation’, then, in the end?

Why not? Perhaps major religions do actually allow us to cultivate our Souls / Selves into different unitary Paradises (as contemporary Master of both the Dao and the Buddha School, Mr. Li Hongzhi, suggests – 3). And so do perhaps other, more solitary pagan / shamanic cultivation ways of mind and body. Perhaps we can arrive in Heaven even within our lifetime, as preferrably conceptualised in the East, when we for instance reach Enlightenment / Consummation / Unlocking through successfully cultivating Buddhahood or the Dao. We would then be able to use our Third Eye to see the Ultimate Truth and our real place within the hitherto unfathomable Fabric of the Universe. Perhaps it is then all really true, as Sages throughout thousands of years have always adamantly been claiming, that what we see with our flesh eyes (or telescopes and microscopes) is only a veil, a ‘deception’, covering ‘hermetically’ what actually, really is there.

Being born into blindness, without ever being able to see before we inevitably crash into ingorant death, sounds like a rather cruel predicament, doesn’t it? It might therefore as well be that Earth is in fact a ‘prison planet’, as many of a counter-historian is bold enough to claim. But also, perhaps, it’s just the way how it is, that we’ve completely lost touch with our True Nature, on our hefty sail-ride throughout History. The truth is, we don’t know anything about our True History. We’ve only been given hints through scripture and by ourselves came up with all sorts of funny theories. Behind the back of the currently envogue Darwinist Canon, for instance, there is an entire ‘Hidden History of the Human Race’, reaching back Hundreds of Millions of Years (all meticulously recorded in a book by the same name). In this staggering scope, we’ve certainly been faced with total annihilation numerous times, lately not long ago, only between 15.000 – 7.500 BC, the most recent ice-age. In the more remote past, there must’ve been many meteorites, tsunamis, volcanoes, earth quakes, continental drifts – even earth-crust replacements or tectonic shifts could have taken place. There also used to be an atmosphere on Mars, in most likelihood, to remind us of the reality of complete planetary annihilation. And the asteroid belt could’ve been part of our Earth once, as well as our dear, beautiful Moon. Maybe a tenth planet hit us and split us apart, we simply don’t know.

Countless theories have been put forward to shed light into the entire Mystery of ‘why we are here’. But the word ‘theory’, as David Bohm wisely points out, comes from the Greek word for theatre. It is being put forward, presented on stage and it is therefore only another angle which happens to make sense – seems to be real – to the rest of us, at one particular time-spacecoordinate on our galactic journey. Without having our third eye / pineal gland open, and by being trapped in the Three Realms of our concurrent dimensional plane, we can only perceive as Reality what our alleged monkey-brains allow us to ‘see’. In terms of Quantum Physics, the torrent / stream of Matter, the Explicate Order (David Bohm), persistently permeates Us Beings – and is thus being decoded in realtime, like a flickering movie, by our desperately grasping Consciousness / Mind – before it dissolves back into the unfathomable Implicate Order of the Ground (God, the Aristotelean Unmoved Mover) where everything originally comes from.

Contemplating all of this, perhaps those who until the 2012 deadline, either through science, religion or self-cultivation, can penetrate through the illusory curtain of in-your-face reality, will be able to truly ascend on that prodigous day. Perhaps some of them will be levitating in ‘broad daylight’, perhaps with a glass of champagne in their hand, over a planet which has just been saved from extinction by everyone’s collective efforts. Or perhaps nothing will happen at all and life goes on as usual, similar to back in 1999, when no ‘millennium-bug’ brought everything to a worldwide, hyped-up standstill.

In any case, the planets will keep moving. From around 2011 to 2015, for instance, electrifying Uranus will join deep-grinding Pluto in a tensional square to unearth the same issues which the Hippies first raised during the conjunction of the 1960’s. Whether by then we’ll be throwing computer-generated Molotov cocktails into fascist corporate mainframes or whether we’ll have successfully learned how to ‘fly’ – be truly free – the likely reality will largely depend on how we cultivate / conduct ourselves in the years to come. Pluto’s next stop in Aquarius at around 2024 will then give us a lift into yet more lofty realms of existence. By then, everything should be eventually ready to progress into the 2.160 years of the next Precessional Age – the long-anticipated Age of Aquarius – which will be ruled by emotionally detached, but utterly collective-conscious Air-planet Uranus.

The bottom line is that our future is entirely up to us, really. My final prognosis therefore is:

We Shall See!

London, July 2008
© 2008, all rights reserved

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1 – David Bohm, ‘Wholeness and the Implicate Order’, 1980 & ‘The Ending of Time’ (with J. Krishnamurti), 1985

2 – Eric Berne, ‘Games People Play’, 1964 & ‘What Do You Say After You Say Hello?’, 1972

3 – Li Hongzhi, ‘Zhuan Falun’, 1999 & ‘Zhuan Falun Volume II’, 2008