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Preliminaries: a fore-thought, a foreword and a dedication
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A fore-thought: rules for being human
* You will receive a body. You may like it or hate it but it will be yours for this time around.
* You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called life. Each day in this school you will have the opportunity to learn lessons. You may like the lessons or think them irrelevant of stupid.
* There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of trial and error: experimentation. The failed experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiment that lands up working.
* A lesson is repeated until learned. A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it. When you have learned it you can then go on to the next lesson.
* Learning lessons does not end. There is no part of life that does not contain lessons. If you are alive, there are lessons to be learned.
* ‘There’ is no better than ‘here’. When your ‘there’ has become ‘here’ you will simply obtain another ‘there’ that will again look better than ‘here’.
* Others are merely mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects to you something you love or hate about yourself.
* What you make of life is up to you. You have all the tools and resources you need – what you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours.
* The answers lie inside you. All you need to do is look, listen and trust.
* You will forget all this!
I wish I myself had written this! It's brilliant! I am told it is copyright-free, but if there is someone with a proprietary claim to it, !
Foreword
A knowledge of Astrology can open us to the Music of the Spheres, awakening us to the ever sounding symphony of creation which Time and the planets unfolds. Yet all too often the astrologer slices up the Music of Time so that we hear but one bar, the one beat of the individual birth chart, disconnected from the larger harmony. In this refreshing book Palden Jenkins, of Glastonbury Camp fame, brings us his long experience in helping people attune themselves in an immediate and practical way to both the smaller and larger themes of the time. Firmly relegating personal birth charts to the end of the book, Palden quite rightly insists that much of the real mystery and magic of astrology, and much of its most important message for mankind, lies in its power to open and sensitise us each day, each moment, to the unfolding ‘energies’ and ‘power points’ of the interweaving cycles of creation.
If the true astrologer is he or she who learns to listen to, to appreciate, and to work with, the creative energies of the moment, then Palden’s book will certainly encourage the growth of true astrologers and a real living astrology. The more we can establish an active relationship with those living archetypal Ideas in the light of which the universe itself is produced, the more genuinely creative we can become, learning consciously to choose our path in tune with the time. As Palden emphasises throughout the book, it is not what happens to us that is important but what we make of what happens to us, what we do with the potential offered to us, The kind of increased astrological awareness advocated in this book can assist us to optimise that potential each and every day.
This work is in a sense a handbook for the appreciation of Time. It shows that, even without using the individual birth chart, there is great personal value to be had from studying the ever changing ‘climate of ideas’, a study normally reserved for mundane astrology. As astrologers have always understood, Time is not simply a measurement of duration, it is that dimension in which the Eternal takes on material form, with all its ever changing qualities. As Plato put it, "Time is the flowing image of Eternity" and "the planets are the instruments of Time". The heavenly bodies as "the first-born thoughts of God" can in this sense be said to mark out the very flow of the Ideas of the Time. The more we can attain to a conscious awareness of those archetypal ideas and processes, the more effectively we can work with them. This book will help in its own way to awaken its readers and students to that daily sense of wonder which awaits all who actively accept the challenge of Living in Time.
One word of warning is perhaps in order. The reader new to astrology will need to take in the ideas here presented fairly slowly. This is an ambitious and at times complex book. It sets out to cultivate an appreciation of all levels of Time from the simple rhythms of the lunar month and the annual cycle of the year, right through to the great interweaving patterns of the outer planets which unfold the great formative processes of history. Fascinating and powerful though such intricate analysis can be, it is obvious that nothing less than a state of Cosmic Consciousness would suffice for the effective daily use of all this material by any one individual!
For individuals trying to live their lives more effectively and with greater awareness, the sheer volume of information presented here could at first be overwhelming rather than illuminating. It should not be forgotten that we each have our own unique relationship with the One. With this in mind it will be seen that ultimately the individual birth chart is essential to filter out our ‘own’ tune from what must at a personal level often come through as collective ‘noise’. That said, there can be no question that, the more each one of us attunes ourselves to the working of the ‘ideas of the time’ in the world around us, the more creative, understanding and tolerant we will become of the issues facing humanity, and the more we will be able to help turn to the Good all that befalls us individually and collectively.
Charles Harvey
2 December 1986
DedicationThis book got written for you
tucked away in your somewhere
to whom this might be valuable news.
If but one person out there feels
the visionglow I seek to share, and
drinks of this fountain from which I have drunk
and finds nourishment there
the cycle completes...
for this is but a passing-on
and nothing is new
yet perhaps it will help you remember
what you know in your bones.
When we all are true to ourselves
as microcells in a vast universe
there will be no ‘problems’
and this is a little virgoid contribution
toward that end –
may it bring great benefit
to all and the whole of you!
Palden Jenkins, 1986.
