The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
by William Blake
“…The ancient Poets animated all sensible objects with Gods or Geniuses, calling them by the names and adorning them with the properties of woods, rivers, mountains, lakes, cities, nations, and whatever their enlarged & numerous senses could perceive…Thus men forgot that All deities reside in the human breast.”
It is now Gemini season. If Taurus season can be summarized by a deliberate search for pleasure, then the Sun’s ingress into the sign of the Twins can be summarized by an increased appetite for information. The mutable air sign of Gemini stirs the mind, stimulating curiosity, cross-pollinating ideas and ushering in new levels of knowledge.
Gemini buzzes with mental energy. Thus, Gemini season emphasizes the themes of studying and communication. But like the ancient Poets mentioned in William Blake’s poem, Gemini often becomes lost in a sea of data, so immersed in the process of observing, naming, and cataloguing that the deeper meaning gets lost. The mental energies of Gemini may be able to catalogue the names of all the gods, but may not be able to connect with a single one on a heartfelt level.
During this season of Gemini, make an attempt to maintain the integrity of your learning processes, never sacrificing quality for quantity.
While the shift into Gemini season certainly increases your desire to read and disseminate knowledge, there is some danger of falling prey to the extremes of dualistic thinking.The Twins represent the experience of duality itself, the division of unified consciousness into polarity.
On your quest for goodness, pleasure, and joy you may often bemoan the existence of negating experiences. In other words, you may feel that you love one Twin and hate the other. However, it is important to accept that in a dualistic reality, the Twins always arrive together: good and evil; bitter and sweet; love and hate. The opposing forces need each other to create the push and pull behind all evolutionary thrust.
In Gemini season, you may find that you are inspired to search for ontological problems to solve. You may find that your hunger for answers grows steadily while your confrontations with paradox increases exponentially.
“The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.”
Though you may favor one side of any polarity over the other for emotional reasons, the healthiest response to polarity is to synthesize and blend the two sides together. This allows your mind to become more nuanced, seeing the gray areas in between. This week, you may soften some of your inner conflict by opening up your philosophical mind with the practice of synthesis.
Imagine for a moment the great conflict that resides in the heart of a Christian who over-identifies with Jesus (good) and zealously rejects Satan (evil). The polarity is so stark that any failure to emulate Jesus is thus conflated with Satanic supplication. Now imagine what a synthesis and reconciliation between Jesus and Satan could do for this person’s mental and emotional health.
Abandoning the violent battle between good and evil enables one to begin understanding that Satan was in fact Jesus’ greatest teacher. Therefore, even if Satan was evil, there was a divine purpose to that evil. After all, if Satan had not tormented Jesus in the desert, then Jesus would never have realized himself to be the messiah. Without the great temptation to betray his calling, how could Jesus have ever known how strong his convictions really were?
Opposition is true Friendship.
A story like the temptation of Christ resonates because it bespeaks of an important truth about life. Your tormenter is your teacher. The Twin energies of good and evil always arrive together and act as each other’s teachers. So whenever you are confronted by an opposing force, know that you are being strengthened and pushed into growth.
In his poem, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, the mystical poet William Blake described this truth about duality, saying:
“Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and
Repulsion, reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are
necessary to Human existence.
From these contraries spring what the religious call
Good & Evil. Good is the passive that obeys Reason.
Evil is the active springing from Energy.
Good is Heaven. Evil is Hell.”
Raised in a Christian paradigm, Blake would have been expected to reject evil (the path to Hell) and to embrace good (the path to Heaven). And yet, he is instead calling for an elegant understanding of duality, stating that both ‘Love and Hate are necessary to Human existence’. He does not dispute that human nature is burdened by a dichotomous relationship between Good and Evil, but he does not believe in continuing the war between these polarities. Instead, he envisions a mythic marriage between Heaven and Hell, where both realms realize that they have sprung from the same center.
Reason restrains desire and Energy inflames it. Heaven is a paradise above and and Hell is a paradise below. In Blake’s mind, Heaven and Hell are just different aspects of One Thing.
This week, let the influence of Gemini increase your tolerance for paradox, letting your mind’s subtle senses be sharpened and stimulated. Open up to the full breadth of the experience of learning, enjoying a newfound flexibility of mind.
The week begins with the waning Moon in Aries passing through the sign and briefly conjuncting Uranus, catalyzing the ongoing trine with Saturn in Sagittarius. As the Moon wanes, pent up emotions are already being released, so with the added influence of volatile Uranus you may be prone to a flaring of temper. Fortunately, Saturn will keep whatever tempers there may be well within bounds.
On Tuesday the Moon moves into Taurus, its sign of exaltation. The stabilizing quality of Taurus will be most welcome at this time and you will feel the subtle ways in which you are integrating the scope of experiences that you recently endured while the Sun was in Taurus. Maintain a steady pace today, but don’t hurry yourself through anything and expect to succeed.
Wednesday is the Dark Moon in Taurus. This is a time for deep inner work that uncovers what is normally hidden from your view. This is a perfect time for divination of any kind. Just find a way to receive messages.
The day after the Dark Moon, Venus in Aries squares Pluto in Capricorn. Burning desires will erupt. Temptations will taunt you. Glaring insecurities may be drawn to the surface. Your relationship to sex and money is most vulnerable this influence. Therefore, in the spirit of healing, some things which are not working for you may begin to fall apart. On the contrary, you may also discover just how strong some of your relationships and ideals really are.
Imagine this Venus/Pluto square as a moment to confront your own shadow, just as Jesus confronted Satan in the desert. There is no need to respond with fear. It is a time for you to strengthen your integrity and prepare for a great transformation.
Concurrently to the square between Venus and Pluto, the New Moon in Gemini will also occur on Thursday. The annual New Moon in Gemini is a moment to renew and revivify your mental energies. As you re-ignite the flame you have for learning you will also be confronted with the limits of the two hemispheres of the brain and its dualistic processes. You will perceive the mechanistic hum of information processing beneath everything.
Set the intention to harness this upswing in mental activity for your benefit by channeling it into a study or a practice that requires a healthy appetite for information.
Friday/Saturday/Sunday: Joys Impregnate
The weekend is a time to practice art for art’s sake. On Saturday, the newly waxing Moon will transition into Cancer, its sign of rulership. When the Moon is increasing its light in the sign of its rulership, the lunar qualities of nurturing and intuition are notably increased. There is a diffused softness in the air. People are more attentive to one another’s feelings. This is a very good time to bring extra comfort to your loved ones or to cultivate a leisurely art with great care.
On Sunday, Mercury in Taurus will make a sextile with Neptune in Pisces, creating a sympathy and flow between your intellect and your spiritual senses. This is a day when your words will reflect your spiritual understanding of the world. Thus you might offer great words of wisdom or you might espouse a delusional fantasy. It depends on where you are at with your spiritual development.