"And Upon Gaia He Lay: On the Embodiment of the Heavens"
How might we, even temporarily, escape from the contemporary dominance of abstraction and correspondence in our astrological thinking and instead experience the heavens in an immediate and concrete fashion? One strategy to peak beyond any current blinders and prejudices we may, often unknowingly, be limited by, is to look to those ways of experiencing the heavens which formed the foundation of what would later become the standard paradigm. In other words, before the formation of what would become so-called Western astrology in the Hellenistic Greek context, how were the heavens and their occupants – be they stars, gods, or something other – experienced?
My argument will be that before the formation of the great synthesis of Egyptian, Greek, and Mesopotamian elements that gave rise to what we largely call astrology, the heavens were experienced as embodied, as indeed were the gods. Far from metaphors or symbols, mythological descriptions of the bodily relations between Heaven and Earth and even Heaven’s castration are most informative when we take them literally. What are the details and full implications of this worldview? What does it mean to experience and engage with the bodies of the heavens and how might this inform our contemporary practices?
How might we, even temporarily, escape from the contemporary dominance of abstraction and correspondence in our astrological thinking and instead experience the heavens in an immediate and concrete fashion? One strategy to peak beyond any current blinders and prejudices we may, often unknowingly, be limited by, is to look to those ways of experiencing the heavens which formed the foundation of what would later become the standard paradigm. In other words, before the formation of what would become so-called Western astrology in the Hellenistic Greek context, how were the heavens and their occupants – be they stars, gods, or something other – experienced?
My argument will be that before the formation of the great synthesis of Egyptian, Greek, and Mesopotamian elements that gave rise to what we largely call astrology, the heavens were experienced as embodied, as indeed were the gods. Far from metaphors or symbols, mythological descriptions of the bodily relations between Heaven and Earth and even Heaven’s castration are most informative when we take them literally. What are the details and full implications of this worldview? What does it mean to experience and engage with the bodies of the heavens and how might this inform our contemporary practices?
How might we, even temporarily, escape from the contemporary dominance of abstraction and correspondence in our astrological thinking and instead experience the heavens in an immediate and concrete fashion? One strategy to peak beyond any current blinders and prejudices we may, often unknowingly, be limited by, is to look to those ways of experiencing the heavens which formed the foundation of what would later become the standard paradigm. In other words, before the formation of what would become so-called Western astrology in the Hellenistic Greek context, how were the heavens and their occupants – be they stars, gods, or something other – experienced?
My argument will be that before the formation of the great synthesis of Egyptian, Greek, and Mesopotamian elements that gave rise to what we largely call astrology, the heavens were experienced as embodied, as indeed were the gods. Far from metaphors or symbols, mythological descriptions of the bodily relations between Heaven and Earth and even Heaven’s castration are most informative when we take them literally. What are the details and full implications of this worldview? What does it mean to experience and engage with the bodies of the heavens and how might this inform our contemporary practices?