Alchemy

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Happy Birthday Paracelsus – The Scorpio Mystic

November 19, 2009 in Astro-Fiends, Metaphysical Quirks by Mystic Medusa | 9 comments

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‘Each person is a sun and a moon, and a heaven filled with stars. ‘
Paracelsus

Astrologer, occultist, alchemist, doctor, radical & magician – He’s totally fascinating. From his Wikipedia entry:

“….His wanderings as an itinerant physician and sometime journeyman miner [5] took him through Germany, France, Spain, Hungary, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden and Russia.Paracelsus did not think of himself as a magician and scorned those who did, though he was a practicing astrologer, as were most, if not all of the university-trained physicians working at this time in Europe. Astrology was a very important part of Paracelsus’ medicine. In his Archidoxes of Magic Paracelsus devoted several sections to astrological talismans for curing disease, providing talismans for various maladies as well as talismans for each sign of the Zodiac. He also invented an alphabet called the Alphabet of the Magi, for engraving angelic names upon talismans….”

Paracelsus pioneered the use of chemicals and minerals in medicine. He used the name “zink” for the element zinc in about 1526, based on the sharp pointed appearance of its crystals after smelting and the old German word “zinke” for pointed…” He even makes it into Harry Potter.

Alchemical

August 26, 2009 in Metaphysical Quirks by Mystic Medusa | 9 comments

a_003Colette Calascione

“Magic rites, primitive civilizations, alchemy, the language of flowers, fire, or sleepless nights, are so many stages on the way to unity and the philosophers’ stone.”  Albert Camus


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Colette Calascione

Jacqueline Susann – the Ultra-Leo Novelist

August 20, 2009 in Astro In Books, Celeb Fluffery by Mystic Medusa | 7 comments

2742342853_99aace203f Today is the birthday of Jacqueline Susann, the Ultimate Leo Novelist & a total pioneer of the clit-lit confessional women’s genre. Before Jackie Collins, Sex & The City or the Real Housewives franchise, there was Jackie…

So Ultra-Leo was she that she parlayed an unsuccessful career as an actress into a three Number One bestsellers in a row publishing & banned books sensation via such tomes as Once Is Not Enough, The Love Machine & Valley of the Dolls.

All were based on her life & weirdly, her fame  happened after diagnosis with a serious illness. Leonically, she said she bargained with God for ten more years of life that would involve fame and she got. She’s famously quoted as saying, upon the assassination of President Kennedy: “Why is everyone so sad? I’m the one whose book tour is gonna get cancelled.”  She saw the 60s as being about “Andy Warhol, the Beatles & Me.”

Her genius and manic self-promotion efforts totally revolutionised book marketing.  Culture was forever altered by the candour & humour with which she depicted the feminine life in all its myriad shades; She did a lot to out clandestine feminine issues of the time of  AND the You Tube clip below  -the trailer for the movie of her Valley Of The Dolls book – below -  is seriously sensational, poignant & camp.

So the bargain with her God worked & she scored sensational success – she was so classically Leo that she was even quipping and making jokes on her death-bed. The ultimate Leos are like ludicrous alchemists – shit to gold 24-7.

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The Book Of Changes

July 22, 2009 in Metaphysical Quirks by Mystic Medusa | 19 comments

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I have had a copy of I-Ching – a.k.a. Book Of Changes – since I was about 15.  Like old ephemerides, they tat apart from such regular use.

It’s a book of  divination – Jung went mad for it as proof of synchronicity and all. Of course, the cosmology behind it is ravingly complex – similar to the other Ancient Chinese arts/sciences of acupuncture, Feng Shui & so on – but the actual book itself is easy to use. You can just get three coins with heads & tails on them, shake them around and throw six times. Each throw creates a line and you wind up with a hexagram which you then read the ‘result’ for.

It has a rich history too. In Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle, he has Eliza, his seductive spy-princess-courtesan character, using it to communicate in code. With just a few little lines that could pass as a doodle, one could be directed to a paragraph that says the king is about to be deposed. Neal Stephenson himself is a Scorpio genius…though you do  not enter his world lightly.  The moment i began to read Quicksilver, i took a deep breath & started cancelling social engagements etc, all the better to lie on the couch with sandwiches and The Book. Anyway, the I-Ching as spy code is totally fascinating and no doubt the theory of it being used in such a way has some accuracy.

I go on and off it. It’s  not at ALL New Agie & comforting like – say – The Goddess Oracle.

It constantly moralises & addresses one as if one were an aspiring ruler. It’s sexist – The Superior Man is often evoked to remind you of how to conduct yourself. And sometimes reading it is like being whacked over the hand with a ruler by some maniac but maybe-correct teacher. I haven’t got this hexagram for ages but i remember oh-my-godding when I’d ask the same question too many times, i would – without fail – keep getting the Number 4 Hexagram:

“Youthful Folly —

It is  not I who seek the young fool — It is the young fool who seeks me.

At first, I inform him with clear answers; But if he importunes, I tell him nothing,

He must persevere to succeed.”

The I-Ching also has an annoying habit of being right. Note that I’ve tried some of the online versions but i think there is something magical about having it as an actual book.

Dissing The Disbelievers

May 26, 2009 in Metaphysical Quirks by Mystic Medusa | 27 comments

15412626671Lawrence Weiner

“I don’t believe in astrology. I’m a Sagittarius and we’re skeptical.” Arthur C Clarke.

I never get bored but an emotion close to it, i think, infuses me whenever I am faced with an old-school sceptic. It’s not that they haven’t the right to think/believe w.t.f. THEY want but they so often seem determined, smug & pass-agg-insistent on dialogue with me. My fave retaliation is the George Santayana quote that “skepticism is the chastity of the intellect” but rather than responding to that, they just sort of dirge on. I think it’s actually Taurus (men, soz) who are the most pompous about it. Aquarius too – they’re either super-logical & will cheerily crap on with all sorts of spurious shit or else they’ll try to out-weird one with a harmony-0f-the-spheres rant.

But just as I was about to launch forward on a dissing the disbelievers rant, i thought isn’t it fabulous that many of us live in a time when we can express all these things & share them openly? And how much would many of our ancestors (especially those who lived in darker times) would have ADORED modern freedom of speech, being able to bung up charts on the internet, sharing stories about Mugwort on one’s blog…And i felt amazingly grateful that it’s just the occasional dullard grumbling…”Surely, you cannot possibly believe in xyz…”

The weird thing is that I DON’T know how astrology works. And yes, I have read Cosmos & Psyche.

I just know that it DOES work and it seems to work better the more you do it. It works backwards, it works forwards, it works shallow (when Mars is on your Venus, you will meet hot guys sorta thing) and it works deep…a la Jungian astro et al. Or a Pluto transit. So if it works and it does, then how weird & intricate & MAGIC is our world? Our universe?

And it is all around us, so yes I believe in magic and then i get onto the Dark Matter situation. 90% of our universe is made up of this mysterious substance and scientists have no idea what it is. It sounds so satisfyingly witchy. I went through a stage a few years ago (when Neptune was on my Ascendent by transit) when I became obsessed with Dark Matter. Now I’ve calmed down but if I have had a few drinks & a skeptic is annoying me, i can download all my Dark Matter info (blended ad lib with some alchemy, surrealism, Ancient mythology and obviously astrology) into one Mercury-in-Aries rant enough to scare off any Skeptic.

Scents Of Time

April 10, 2009 in Metaphysical Quirks by Mystic Medusa | 36 comments

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David Pybus is a “21st Century alchemist & aromancer” who is a.k.a the Perfume Hunter/the Indiana Jones of the fragrance world. He attempts to recreate ancient scents…a la this sort of thing…That annoying numeral 1 cannot be removed. I think he a Taurus. Love the scents & insanely want them all…Or do? I was just googling for a Pompeii image & managed to totally freak myself out. Maybe is better to have one’s scent In The Now…But sensational idea & way more interesting than some of those ghastly bog freshener style scents. I could crap on re this for ages AND have just realised that the Moon in Libra is precisely conjunct MY Moon…as i type.

  1. “…Head spacing the substances found (stealing their aromas through scientific instrumentation) as with Nenúfar, the flower’s perfume was diffused into a polymer filter with the air around it and then reconstructed as the aroma of the Blue Lotus, a bloom sacred to all Pharaohs. The flower’s chemistry contained a hallucinogen, myristicin. Egyptians got high steeping the petals in wine and drinking the wine. (The poem ‘The Land of the Lotus Eaters’ depicts this). The chemistry of the flower’s perfume is kept intact with the humble nutmeg spice, which contains myristicin.
  2. Reconstruction from materials found, as with Pyxis, derived from floral, herbal and spice spores found in the garden of a perfumer, believed to be called Sperato, at Pompeii. These, along with substances garnered from the four corners of Empire, re-created Pyxis. A pixie fresco on the wall at the House of the Vetii in Pompeii gave the fragrance its name.…”

Zen Hippy Full Moon In Cancer

January 11, 2009 in Astro-Cliches, Astro-Passages, Full Moons by Mystic Medusa | 13 comments

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So, as I suspected, the Cancerian Full Moon bought me out in full Zen-Noire-Hippy mode, with the usual Crab Moon carbophilia…I am talking:

* New appreciation of the daffier herbal teas, such as the dandelion & burdock combo, hippy insights gleaned from watering garden & feeling sense of communion with all botanical life. Especially the parsely. eg; how plants thrive depending on the quality of the soil & the nurturing, the heat, the light blah de blah, the desire to cook something ‘properly’ and musing upon lentils + the genius of sprouting, lecture-nurturing peeps re vitamins/water etc, pondering making a patchwork quilt for five seconds, patchouli oil as (temporary) signature scent, thinking that the cats are resonating at a higher viber than usual & buying them extravagant fish to thank them for being so feline, doing laundry as mystical ritual,  decided to get more serious about my chamomile lawn as chamomile most likely sacred, trying to have ‘deep’ conversations re feelings with children, whom sensing sentiment immediately attempt to alchemise the moment into retail purchases, to ensure their sense of security remains intact.

Which is also tres Crab moon. The comforting new nightgown, the freshly washed pillowcases, a fridge full of actual food as opposed to the latest Aquarian vitamins/supplements regime. During such a benevolently aspected Full Moon in the sign of Gaia, it’s naturally so much easier to feel deep emotions & sit comfortably with them. Ditto feeling a connection to Terra. Live it up with the Zen-Noire-Hippy awareness vibe guys because Jupiter in Aquarius is moving toward the North Node & things are about to get a lot more expansively weirder. Positive. But still weird. This Moon is the last chance to look back fondly & with a goobly counsellory persective/sentimental smirk of understanding for a while.