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Separation of Blogs

I was right about the alphabetical thing. Actor/Astrologer – I’m more likely now to remember what I do on the side. Although which side is on the side is moot.

coloring-pages-alphabet-letters-letter-a2 (1)But this post is not to mingle these two occupations. Rather to separate them.

Response from the theatre-savvy people who read this page has been mixed. Some of us leap like young gazelles into the mystic. Some are quietly interested (in this category is one friend who has taken to calling me Madame Arcati). And some are reluctant to believe it, up to and including my personal favorite, a message from one friend after one of my promo emails, asking me if I’d been hacked.

So after this post I’ll keep the Acting here and the Astrology over there. McPhillamyTarot.com is now up and running, and there’s a brand new astro-tarot blog starting. If the stars call to you, by all means check it out.

And let me remind you that for the first 90 days in business, I’m offering a pay-what-you’re-happy-to-pay (with a zero minimum) aka a FREE sample.

Ok enough about that. Except to say that in my researches I’ve been taking in the mind-altering discoveries made possible by the Hubble telescope — you know the one I mean? The one that orbits the earth, the one that when they pointed it at a single fragment of sky they discovered billions of galaxies. Er, let me say that again, billions of galaxies. And just looking at one tiny piece of the infinite sky. The universe is a big place.

Compared to the infinite endlessness and abundance, anything that astrology could say is kind of … local. Or is it …? 52940_letter_a_lg

I won’t say any more here, but these and other questions will be explored over there, at mcphillamytarot.com

Except I will say that the day the Creator of the Infinitude of the Multiplicity — aka in some circles, GOD, and by many other names — was bored, and looking for a way to stir things a bit, well on that day S/HE invented … The Audition.

Yes, but it took the guy downstairs to come up with the call-back, or what we used to call in England, the recall.

Eee but it’s a tough gig being alive …

Or as Shakespeare puts it:

“… Such harmony is in immortal souls;
But whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.”

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Magical Realism

When it comes to day jobs I have found it sensible to go alphabetically.

It’s the first time in quite a while that I have absolutely no idea of what work comes next. Oh sure, there’ve been gaps but I’ve nearly always had light at the end of the tunnel in the form of an (admittedly sometimes distant) job, and if occasionally that turned out to be an oncoming train, well even then, as Clark Gable says in The Misfits, “It’s better than working.”

But today the phones are quiet with the silence of mystery.

So …

Acrobat, Aerialist, Ardvaark-wrangler … and now … Astrologer.

Don’t laugh.

I mean it.

tarot-magicianI’ve always known what I wanted to do in life. When I was three I wanted to be a train driver, then a milkman. Aged 5 I played the evil baron in the elementary school production of Swan Lake. It involved a lot of jumping around.

At 6 I began to be interested in the planets and the stars and learned some basic astronomy, the orbital periods of the planets in our solar system, the names of the moons of Mars, some of the speeds of planetary axial spin.

This fascination held for a few years until I got tangled up with the quest for the other kind of stardom. It became my intense wish to become an actor. I took a few serious detours in youth and nearly didn’t make it, but somehow got to the Central School aged 20.

To be an actor, as perhaps you’ve heard me mention before, is in no way sensible.

But then life isn’t. Is it? Sensible.

I’ve always had a push-me-pull-you relationship with the craft. Always keeping an eye out for something else. Knowing that it would never be lawyer or doctor or engineer, always kind of held in the theatre, never quite ever achieving the velocity to escape its gravitational pull … mostly fulfilled in its orbit.

But lately something has changed … so I’m starting a practice in which I offer readings in both Tarot and Astrology.

For the initial 90 days beginning mid February thru mid May 2016 I’m offering pay-what-you-like readings to readers of this blog.

Contact me if interested.

More info here

Skeptics welcome!

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Not From The Stars Do I My Judgement Pluck …

It’s about the middle of my 58th year of life, and as, as we know, the orbital period of the planet Saturn is 29 years and change, I’m in the onset of the second Saturn return (lucky me).

I’ve embedded a video from youtube. If it’s just a single image, go ahead and play it, if you haven’t already seen it. Sometimes it shows up as four astronomical samples, the one in the upper left quadrant is an artistic graphic impression of solar motion. It illustrates what Kurt Vonnegut Jr. talked about in Slaughterhouse 5 and The Sirens of Titan, what Rodney Colin Smith had to say in Theory of Celestial Influence.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jHsq36_NTU&w=560&h=315]

Simply put, every 29 and some years, the planet Saturn will be in the same position relative to the Earth and the Sun as it was when you were born. Bearing in mind that everything else will be in different places, what does this mean and why does it matter?

Time was when astrologers, alchemists, and seers were respected professionals. One thinks of people wandering about with phials of lead which they were trying to turn into gold, dressed like something in an episode of Wolf Hall.

Time was, on the other hand when actors were vagabonds.

When James the first of England (Sixth of Scotland) came to the throne, things took a rum turn for the metaphysicians (although it was still a good decade for language, theatre, and Shakespeare). In the following centuries though, there was a loss of public confidence in the arts of the signs and the planets, and the consequent rise of charlatans and quacks brought the business into disrepute.

Charlatans and quacks abide still, if you don’t believe me, go and order a report for $29.95 at random off the Internet, then stand back and watch as you get a zillion emails explaining that it’s just crucial that you order the full deluxe package because if you don’t you’ll miss your chance at greatness for another many several rounds of the Sun.

But …

Although a natal chart is cast from a Terra-centric viewpoint giving a snapshot from earthly perspective … and although such a picture is the merest slice from the unique loaf each human life describes …

And …

Because I once played the great physicist, Neils Bohr, I’m able to tell you that a sub-atomic particle can also be a field, and not that I knew Zoroaster, but I know people who knew people who did, and I think he got it right when he said: “As Above So Below.”

And because, as you see, the dance of the planets is a spiral one.

And because an approximation of the orbital period of the planet Uranus is 84 years, and there was a stock market crash in 1929 and subsequent trouble for quite a while, and the 2000s were ripe with global crises …

Maybe some of us will look to consultant astrologers again.

I did so myself recently.

I found a British lady and via the magic of Skype we chatted. I was impressed.

It’s not editorial policy to make commercial recommendations in these pages, but here’s an exception: http://www.claremartin.net

Shakespeare on the span of a human life:

“A breath thou art, servile to all the skyey influences …”

MILKYWAY

Or, for a more prosaic instance; I recently got into a minor altercation with a “hare-brained rudesby”. I was waiting in a checkout line and one of the six clerks appeared to be free. The Rudesby, two places behind suddenly shoved my elbow, while at the same time ordering me to go forward. When I explained that I had seen what he had not, namely, a previous customer returning with new items for payment, the Rudesby grunted, and muttered in a language I do not know. We had an exchange:

Me: And you know, Mercury isn’t even retrograde until the 18th?

The Rudesby: (Aggressively) What!? I don’t know what you’re talking about!

Me: No.

The Rudesby: (Proud of it) I don’t believe in any superstition.

Had he chosen to quote from King Lear, the Rudesby could have expressed himself more elegantly … “I should have been that I am had the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my bastardizing.”

What has all this got to do with acting?

Good question: I was wondering that myself …

Shakespeare knew of course (no surprise there):

“… that this huge stage presenteth nought but shows
Whereon the stars in secret influence comment.”