Horoscopic Expressionism: The Unconscious Depiction of Birth Time
The Objectification of Astrological Measurement Who would have thought that it is possible to see the effects of astrological birth chart patterning? Isn't astrology all about predicting well timed events? In other words, divination, revelation, and just plain fortune-telling? No. Not for me it isn't, and never really has been. As soon as I discovered that I could actually understand what astrologers were doing, when “doing astrology,”--this addiction to 'prediction', I just wanted to make it all go away. I was never
interested in being a fortune-telling “astrologer.” However, where does one go to find a lot of ideas about Individuality and one's unique being? Art, Philosophy, Literary criticism, Linguistics, Psychoanalysis, all add up to me being an astrologist, I guess. That's apparently what happens; one cannot part with what one has experienced as learning—we're stuck with the change in our symbol juggling perceptions. This newly acquired way of processing information seems a permanent feature of life in language in general and we cannot go back to our prior ( perhaps less than blissful ) ignorance. So, here I have investigated the thing called astrology to see where it can possibly help in my search for ever better ways to think about the possible existence and the difficult-to-symbolize nature of whatever Individuality may be. Figure 1. (above) is, "Self-regeneration" , a free-flowing, uninhibited-seeming, abstract self portrait by Emanuela Ligal, an artist living and born in Padova, Italy. What you see in this illustration is the superimposition I have made by transparently layering the exact pattern of her astrological natal (birth) chart over her painted image. This is how I make a measurement of congruity to discover the unstated birth time of artists. Given only the correct date and place of birth, it is possible to temporarily setup a chart for Noon on the day in question, then proceed to add or subtract clock time in order to see when the tokens of astrological planets seem best to align with the planet symbols which are linguistically metaphorical, analogous, or in some way capable of parallel meanings.
Mars, the actual chart position of the symbolized planet, is expressed in this painting: Mars is a reference to initiating actions, assertiveness, aggression, and so forth. So, ideologically, Mars is very much about 'starting something'. Graphically, the artist shows us a protruding button or switch (on the 'neck') which seems intended to start the title's “SelfRegeneration” process.
The Moon of astrology is shown as a crescent figure, this painting explicitly has such a figure—a parallel of expression: The overtly active crescent, to which our attention is directed by its seeming to pop out of some imaginary mental mechanism, really is the Moon. But you may have to read Jacques Lacan's psychoanalytic definition of the real ( as opposed to reality). There is definitely a difference between the real and reality. But I didn't know anything about such things until one day I noticed that I was most likely perceiving patterned symbolic artsy things that no one else had ever suggested to be in existence.
This particular instance of measurement was off by four minutes of clock time, one degree of Zodiac angularity: This painting is a particularly good example of how persons do unconsciously map out for us the unthinkable. Do we really have a map or chart graphic locked away in our unconscious? Rationally, probably no one really wants to try to defend such a completely inexplicable complication of our psyche. But, too bad, it just happens to look the way Johannes Kepler said it was four hundred years ago;
"In the vital power of the human being that is ignited at birth there glows that remembered image." --Johannes Kepler, World Harmony (1619) I'm just trying to show someone in the world that Kepler was correct when he admonished, don't “throw the baby out with the bathwater.” And, as Picasso said , all children are born artists, the trick is for them to remain artists. The ever resident 'artist' of the human soul has invented and evolved the art of horoscopy as if to to contemplate its own imagal reflection. The linguistic barrier which deprives us of perceiving this patterning requires that we approach 'its' reality--the real of the psyche on its own terms, or perhaps never at all. ====================================
The “Sneeze” Heard 'Round the Zodiac Fig. 2.)
Here (figure 2) is the first drawing I encountered which quite just by chance stimulated
my perception of an apparent abstract natal chart pattern projection: This drawing entitled ,“Sneeze,” was the spontaneous creation of an eleven year old boy who was quietly amusing himself while sitting on the front porch one lazy afternoon. He proudly brought it to me exclaiming that it was his, “masterpiece.” Not yet know the title he'd come up with, I asked if it was an old-man-tree-stump. He looked a little disappointed that , somehow, I didn't seem to appreciate the masterpiece quality of his work. The natal chart of the 'artist' (above, right) was apparently on the back burner of my obsessing mind , because I started to feel or see some kind of overlapping patterning, some parallels of structure integral to both projections.
A first drawing-v-chart translation, a comparing of the parallels between two pictorial 'languages': Gesunheit ! Fig. 2a.)
The superstition concerning the experience of a sneeze, the fanciful possibility of the soul
momentarily leaving the body, makes just a little bit more sense with regard to what seems to have been accomplished in the production of this particular “Sneeze.” My first thought was an irresistible wondering if the Mars of astrology was somehow being depicted, being shown here as a fang-sized tooth and sharing the same visual coordinates, as well as well as implying a Mars-like function. Very basically, “Mars” = a pointed thing capable of assertive or aggressive purposes. Is this the graphic version of Michel Gauquelin's Mars effect ? Could this really be what I'm looking at? Is this abstract image a little like a unconsciously performed symbolic depiction of the individual soul, or at least a variation its pattern preference as theme ? Are natal charts somehow really like an individual's soul-print, whatever ? As one can see above, I went on to make analytical conjectures about the related, parallelseeming, figures involving as many possible references to astrological planets as I could dream up. Mercury as some sort of antenna, Venus as a vulva, Saturn as the presence aging--the facial hair of maturity, Moon as a crescent sort of bump attached to the Ascendant, Jupiter as a show of force—like flexed bicep, and last but not least, the Sun, which seemed to originally occupy its natal chart position in pictorial space, was crossed out and moved to a new position. This new position is interesting because of what astrology calls the meaning of Houses . The Sun was moved for two interwoven reasons; to depict and 'eye' for this character, and I think to express the meaning of House 8—basically, the role of Lacanian Desire. Putting on my dusty astrological wizard's hat, I attempted to 'read' the natal chart for clues as to what the boy was thinking about as he made this drawing. Because his 'Sun' was opposite Jupiter in Gemini, and being that the expressing 'artist' here is only eleven years old, I hazard a guess that he might have been secretly dreaming/obsessing about a new and larger bicycle. “How could you know that?” he said.
What if one could, somehow, get subjects to draw these wonderful expressions on demand ? Then it dawned on me that, if one did routinely have access to such a drawings, and did not know the birth time of 'test' subjects, one could use the possibilities of astrological planet patterns, upon the specif dates in question, to “predict” unknown birth times. This would be the first time anyone has ever been able to make an objective measurement of information gathered from subjects which would by its physical measurement yield a falsifiable, somewhat scientific, prediction--a birth time 'guess'. My second thought was about the nature of the drawing, its intention, or reason for being. It seems a likely conclusion that this image is an unintentionally produced abstract self-portrait, and that Picasso may have indeed been very correct about children being natural-born expressive 'artists'. But who knows how long this lasts ? What are the like chances of astrologers being silently frustrated in their effort to provide skeptics with 'evidence' of astrology's existence by the fact that the people they wish compare to natal charts are just not 'putting-out' authentic symbolic references relating to their potential for individualized speech and behavior? In short, the word individuation is central to the issue of being or not being a detectable individuality with definable parameters. Perhaps too often the becoming of one's own patterned self-hood just gets lost in the cacophony of language and cultural incitements
and expectations. (A good reason for lost soul's to tryout the insulating properties tinfoil hats ? ) At any rate, it seems that the unintended abstract self-portraiture status of one's creativity is potentially the most useful to one trying to symbolized a unique individual presence, to isolating the signal in the background noise of language and culture. These abstract productions are the opportunity for witnessing the Freudian slips of the apparently unconsciously possessed astrological natal chart pattern information—one very intriguing labeling scheme for the unique individual of one's unconscious.
The Personal Island Kingdom Map : a first attempt to stimulate an instance of horoscopic expressionism Fig. 3.) I asked my daughter, age 8, if she would like to draw for me, “ a map of your own personal island kingdom.” This (Fig. 3.) is the excellent map drawing I received in response:
The prominent natal Moon seems unmistakably 'mapped'. When referring to this crescent figure, the subject explained that it was a “beach”. The primary pointed object, a volcanic mountain, (above, left) , as well as the others in that general vicinity, could very well be an expression of natal Mars. Noticing that some objects seem to be
where nothing ought to be, for the sake of contiguity, I asked how these two object in the upper right got to be there, and she explained that she had turned the drawing so as to facilitate their inclusion.
…...To be continued )
