The Serpent Drawn Chariot

    I'm just going to jump right into the deep end where all of the googley eyed, razor tooth internet sharks are busily seeking their next unsuspecting prey (that'd be me).  I've been in internet seclusion for about 8 years.  Today I rejoined Swampbook and started this blog.  I had a blog a long time ago called Epiphany Now.  That blog was a conspiracy theory, societal collapse, and peak oil centered blog.  I now consider it a bit sophomoric and have subsequently removed it from appearing as a blog that I keep.  If you're interested I'm sure you can dig it up by joogling it.  It's a book worth of reading as it was pretty much a weekly blog from 2010 to 2018 when I quit writing publicly.  The heart of that blog is still true to me.  I'm a sun sign Aquarian, and so too revolutionary in nature to disavow my past anarchic musings.  I've since settled down a bit where conspiracies of the 1% are concerned.  Not that they don't still conspire to rule the world via controlling the money, but I'm just of the opinion that my opinion doesn't matter on that matter, nor does yours, or anyone else who's not theirs.  Like The Who said, "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."  Which is where the sophomoric bit I referred to reemerges in all of it's juvenile rebellion.  Yeah, okay, so what are we going to do about it?  Well, die early due to anxiety and worry or just, you know, do like the Christ said and give Caesar his due.  He's gonna get his due whether you do the due or not, so you may as well do like the Romans when in Rome and whatnot.  

    I couldn't abide Swampbook back then because I was possibly a bit psychologically unstable for various reasons.  I had a rough Saturn return, which is when Saturn returns to his "natal" position on your birth chart.  Which means that Saturn has completed an orbit of the sun relative to it's position on your birth chart...where it was located in space the moment you were born.  The Saturn return is when we finish becoming an adult psychologically.  At least it's supposed to signify that, but we often get it wrong.  In my case, I got some things right and a lot of things wrong and subsequently I had a bit of delayed development.  I'll get into all of that as I go along here on The Serpent Drawn Chariot (TSDC).  As this is an introduction to TSDC, I will now get into explaining what this blog is about. "Just what the Hades is a serpent drawn chariot anyways," you may be asking?  

    Well, a serpent drawn chariot is a chariot that is pulled by serpents (as my youngest son would likely explain it).  Obviously, but what the Pluto am I talking about?  Triptolemus got himself awarded a serpent drawn chariot by the goddess of the earth, Demeter, for telling her what happened to her daughter Persephone.  If you don't know, Hades (roman Pluto) raped and abducted Persephone as she picked narcissus flowers in a field (that's not loaded with meaning).  Triptolemus witnessed the rape and abduction.  I was recently informed by a friend that Hecate also witnessed it while Apollo turned away, that was news to me, and Triptolemus was news to him.  Greek Myth is like that.  It's so rich in meaning, and it's been told so many times by so many different ages that there are as many tellings as there are stars in the night sky, and by that I mean pre-electric night sky, and not the light polluted what even is a star night sky that we have now.  The title "The Serpent Drawn Chariot" came to me in a flash of inspiration while I was meditating on the Page of Pentacles from the Mythic Tarot deck (it's Triptolemus holding a pentacle in the field where Persephone was abducted).  Demeter rewards Triptolemus for telling her the truth by teaching him her mysteries and giving him a plough and a serpent drawn chariot by which he could go and spread the science of agriculture to humanity.  Triptolemus is associated with the Eleusinian mysteries, and you can go read the wiki about him if you want to get into all of the different iterations.  

    It could be argued that this was a backhanded reward as agriculture was the beginning of the end of nomadic living.  I won't argue that because I don't feel it's the spirit of the reward.  We now know that agriculture presented a sort of double bind for humanity.  I mean this gift resulted in cavities, the dentists drill, big pharma, prisons and taxes, so maybe Triptolemus should have been all thanks but no thanks to Demeter?  Yet if the Earth goddess gives you a gift you don't check it's mouth for rotten equine teeth do you?  The point is that the gift she gives him is the beginning of civilization.  You can't exactly have a city without grain to bake bread.  So Triptolemus goes around the ancient Greek world and teaches his fellow humans the art and science of plowing the earth, sowing seed corn, and reaping what you harvest until Saturn shows up as the Grim Reaper and takes you to Hades...sort of like what happened to Persophone, and that is the point of the Eleusinian mysteries.  The cycle of life and death.  That's also ultimately what astrology is about.  It's definitely what Cronos (saturn) is about.  Cronos became Charon, the ferryman who takes the decedent across the river Styx for one obol (I thought it was a drachma, probably due to Hollywood because "drachma" is a much cooler word than "obol" I'd guess).  If you didn't have payment you'd be stuck in a type of endless purgatory with no access to the next incarnation.   An Obol was one sixth of a drachma which was the daily wage for an ancient greek worker.  

Charon and Psyche

    I have a spiritual practice by which I pull three tarot cards per day.  I use the Mythological Tarot deck which is a deck put together by Liz Greene and Juiliet Sharman-Burke.  I've been doing this for about as long as I've been studying astrology which is about 2 years.  It took a full year to learn how to communicate with the Tarot, which is really just communicating with the right brain.  The right brain uses images and not words, and so the Tarot is a means by which you can tap into that right brain logic.  The right brain is the true master.  The left brain just thinks it's in charge of things, but we know that it's not.  Interestingly the disenchantment of the world has been brought about by this single mistake which began with Martin Luther, Rene Descartes, and then Isaac Newton.  I think therefore determinism and purposeless cosmos?  The Logos is a wonderful tool, but it's a tool of the real master which is the right hemisphere (at least in scientism terms).  This is the realm of myth.  C. J. Jung said that "myth is ancient man's psychology," and he was correct.  All that we know about the mind the Greeks had already worked out in myth.  Stories about pictures.  Science wants to put everything under the lens of a scope for measurement, but how do you measure an image?  If you measured it would you even be measuring an image?  You can only measure the medium by which the image is projected, photons, but the image needs no projection to be real, and everything is photons right?  Isn't that what Einstein elucidated for us all with that famous equation?  Furthermore, as soon as we measure the image it changes its behavior and is no longer the original image.  Take that up with Werner Heisenberg, whoa, the principle scientist in the Nazi nuclear weapons program!  Man, day one and Nazi's have already been mentioned.  Yikes!  Well, in my defense I have been talking about the Greek version of Hell, and I may as well say Satan, which would be more a conglomeration of Pan, Dionysus, Hecate, the Furies, Cerberus, Charon, Hades, Saturn, the Gorgon, the Hydra, the Pythia and well there is no shortage of dark, telluric, chthonic, underworld characters in Greek myth. 

Priestess of Delphi

    I love Greek Myth.  Myth is the greatest stories ever told, and in my opinion it just doesn't get better than Greek myth, which is an opinion shared by the majority of classically educated western man.  I mean it's what it means to be classically educated isn't it?  Full disclosure, I don't have any college degrees.  I have just read, and do read, a lot of books.  I tried college like 4 or five times.  I lost count.  I just dropped out for various reasons all surrounding an unfortunate problem with self medicating what's probably a position on the spectrum, or perhaps a love affair with the astrological Neptune.  Now I'm about to turn 45 and I'm contemplating going back to college for the 7th time.  It would be the 9th time if I go back, and I'm not sure one needs to attempt college at the age of 45 for the 11th time.  Besides I'm an autodidact and an aspiring polymath without the time to fool with learning asinininities (I just laughed out loud at myself for that reject word smithage).  I'm also of the opinion that, well, it's free at the library.  

"At least I won't be unoriginal."  

    The Serpent Drawn Chariot will be exploring the themes of Greek Mythology and humanistic, psychological astrology.  I don't have any credentials in any of that, just a library card and a lot of time to read.  Although my wife is a librarian, so...does that count?  I'll try to post once a week, so if you like this than follow me and standby, it's going to be a personal and heroic bumpy journey through myth, astrology, and psychology through the mouth of a Mercury ruled Aquarian flunky.  Well, at least I got my show together by the second Saturn opposition and right at my Uranus opposition.  If you don't know what I'm talking about I will explain next time on The Serpent Drawn Chariot.