The Mythological Resonance of the Life and Visions of Philip K. Dick: Busting Out of the Black Iron Prison
On the 16th of December, 1928, just after noon, Uranus was on the rise. A new world of endless ideas was upon the Eastern horizon, but only a new born babe could properly sense it, and commune with its promise, living a life which would bring about in fullness the potential of eccentric Uranian renewal. Ok, perhaps two babies could sense the future waves of possibility pulsating towards them, while only one would live to desperately attempt to understand and explain its emanations. Philip K. Dick, in so many ways, embodies our Uranian age, and prophesied the coming of many extraordinary things in his impossibly productive life. We are only now beginning to accept how correct he was about his most unlikely premonitions. Uranus can be like that.
Natal Trauma and the Chthonic Pressures which Produce Genius
Born six weeks prematurely, in the sort of bizarrely macabre synchronicity that would seem strange to the sort of person who doesn't study these things, Jane, his fraternal twin, died on their expected due date, almost as though she clung to life just long enough to satisfy her commitment to accompany Philip, for the full term, into this Black Iron Prison. She would depart due to malnutrition, and a nebulous leg wound referred to in Philip's Exegesis without much explanation. This article supplies some telling, and tragic details. According to this, their Mother was relying on absurd psychological quakery being shilled at the time of limiting physical affection or giving in to natural displays of emotional support. This can be seen in Philip's chart.
The Moon in a natal chart naturally represents the Mother. This signification is doubled in his chart by also ruling his fourth house of Home and Mother. The Moon here is in the sign of Aquarius, a forward thinking sign which can be too cold and intellectual for the Moon to function at it's greatest capacity. In Dick's life, it was swayed by the science of the times, and divorced from the intuitive, natural feeling nature which is the profound dominion of the Moon. Moon in Aquarius is of course not enough to predict such a disastrous infancy, but with this chart, we have Mars, in its fall, in Cancer, sign of the Moon, right on the IC, the lowest point in a chart. The True Midnight point of the Sun. Not only that, but Pluto itself is within the fourth house of Cancer. Too cold, too harsh, and signifying death.
The topic of Mars then becomes a key point for the rest of Philip's life. Being a day chart, Mars becomes the more difficult of the two classical malefics, and being angular, and in its fall, (the sign where it struggles to attain its highest form of function), makes it a powerful thorn in the foot of PKD. Speaking of feet, Mars was upon Tejat Prior the day of the twins birth, which is the foot of Castor, the Mortal of the two twins of Gemini.
The mythology of Gemini holds that one Twin must die so the other may live, though Pollux, missing his twin so, gives up his own mortality to be united with him again, even if only in a passing dance of renewal into alternating life and death. One can see the Geminid influence upon Phil's own obsessive mulling over the potential dichotomies within every thought he ever put to paper. The IC is the deepest core of one's own personal motivations, tied in with one's personal past and ancestry. Anyone familiar with his work will understand the immense importance of the most difficult planet in his chart being placed upon the foot of the mortal twin, at this most sensitive personal point in a natal chart.
Let us add to the conflicts of Mars, it was also retrograde at the time, a condition which is frustrating to any planet, but moreso to Mars (and Venus) whose retrograde cycles do not happen so frequently as all other planets; and in Mars' case; far more erratically timed. This becomes a disturbingly portentous signifier. After opposing the Sun, Mercury, Saturn conjunction in their charts, Jane died upon the day that Mars stationed direct within Gemini, the sign of the twins. The station points of any planets are powerful, as they grind their heels into a single degree in a painful change of course for an agonizingly long period of time. On January 26th, of 1929, Mars stationed direct upon the star Capella, which is the goat who suckled Zeus as he was in hiding from his tyrant father Kronus as his Mother was unable to raise him, bearing the dangerous secret of having fed him a rock instead of the new babe. She was unable to provide her own milk for him. One can imagine that the planet of fiery, masculine rage, Mars, is not conducive to breast milk production. It's notable that Phil's father was absent much of the time at a "local men's club". Jupiter, correlated to Zeus, is notably with Chiron, the wound which never heals, in his natal chart, exactly squaring Venus, and more widely, his Moon.
In regards to Jane's leg wound, though we don't know where the wound was, or what caused it, Sagittarius correlates to the thighs, and Jupiter, ruling Sagittarius, is with Chiron, again, the wound which never heals. He does imply that it was a burn which was not tended to properly in the Exegesis (62c-40). Recall Mars, which denotes fire and burns, upon the Mortal twins foot.
It must be mentioned now that Mars had retrograded from the fourth house of Philip's chart, into his third house, which represents siblings. Phil's house of siblings is Gemini, the twins. It is ruled by Mercury, which within his chart, is in exceptionally difficult shape. In Sagittarius, the sign of Mercury's detriment, with Saturn, and consumed behind the Sun's rays, there is not much great to say about its condition, and what it portended for his sibling, as we well know. It was also out of bounds, (below the furthest Southern pass of the Sun's decline to the Tropic of Capricorn, something we'll discuss more later.) Virgo, the other sign ruled by Mercury, is the sixth whole sign house of illness. In Placidus houses, it is intercepted, yet another sign of difficulties. Mercury signifies both siblings, and illness in Philip's chart. No matter how you look at it, an astrologer would be in grave error to not see an awful fate for the siblings on first glance, let alone a deeper dive. In the twenty minutes after Phil was born and his sister entered the world, the most notable shift is that Uranus has now crossed the horizon. As opposed to being a defining characteristic in Phil's first house of identity, Uranus becomes a hidden enemy to Jane. Her Mother's reliance on cold and psychopathic professional popular opinion plays a hand in her demise, the twelfth being the house of undoing. Mars has also moved resolutely into the third house of siblings off of the IC. Being the most difficult planet that day, does this imply she did in fact give her life for Phil's to flourish?
The other notable shift from Phil to Jane's charts is that Phil was born during Mars hour of Sun day, highlighting the challenging placement of Mars within this chart. Jane was born during Sun hour of Sun day, highlighting the creative solar spirit as the most important part of her chart. Jane lives on as a muse for Philip K. Dick's lauded body of revelatory, mind-bending work, without having had to suffer the Demiurge's realm for an entire lifetime. The Solar hour highlighted does lead one to wonder if perhaps she did get the better end of this deal.
Speaking of Dick's Sun; it is within two degrees of Sagittarius A, now considered galactic center. A point replete with divine revelations from the core of our galaxy. It is also, (not coincidentally for my world view), the point at which the arrow of the bow carrying Sagittarius is aiming towards. The key phrase for the sign of Sagittarius is "I Understand". Phil was born with a very tight conjunction of his Sun to Mercury and Saturn. The Sun is the creative heart, Mercury is the logical mind, and Saturn is the emotionless taskmaster of time, a brutal dictator who eats his children out of fear of usurpation. The conflicts between Mercury and Saturn are at the core of Dick's own creative heart. Saturn is the lord of Time, the slow grinding of the ages against our bones, while Mercury is how we manage our time in the day to day world of Earthly affairs.
Mercury, within Philip's chart is Out of Bounds. Below the lowest reaches of the Sun's descent, a planet out of bounds implies a planet operating beyond the normal rules and regulations of reality, an element of a chart which can produce unbelievably brilliant results, but is guaranteed to also be destructively disruptive. With the significations of time on double display here, Philip's obsession with warping timelines, both in his fictional plots and his real visions, is literally demonstrated within his chart. Mercury is approaching its lowest descent below the ecliptic, while Saturn is, with the Sun, the most elevated planet in his chart at the moment of birth, despite them all being so close together.
Mercury (which also represents his sister, don't forget), is within the chthonic realm beneath the Sun's path, where monsters swim, and demons dwell. Meanwhile, Saturn is not only the highest planet in his chart, but rules the tenth house of government, and God if you will. One can see why Dick believed the Earth was run by pure evil, and the true God of Agape could only emerge within reality through the trash stratum, where Mercury is diving.
Further interesting intelligence about Dick's Mercury is of course the genius of capacity for imagination, which he treated with the utmost seriousness, studying his own corpus as tomes of revelation from the divine source. Mercury within Sagittarius, though considered in its detriment, is very much concerned with the higher truth of all things, which has a tendency to derail Mercury's general natural interest in minutia. One can see Mercury in Sagittarius (almost within the creative heart of the Sun no less), in his desire to constantly dissect the meaning of his revelations, endlessly turning over his own assumptions into their polar opposite, before attempting a synthesis between the two concepts, to come to a new conclusion which must then be dissected and inverted itself. Philip's Exegesis, the ginormous tome of obsessive investigation into his own mystical revelations and work, is a frustrating slog for the reader, constantly finding sublime moments of Sagittarian "I FINALLY UNDERSTAND!", before upending the entire idea to explore the underworld inversion of it. Sagittarius is a mutable sign, implying constant changes, and going with the flow. Strangely, all the changes come from his inner mind, reacting to himself endlessly while his agoraphobia trapped him within his own house. A quick note on his agoraphobia, Saturn, the planet of restrictions and restraint, is upon his Solar confidence, which is within the ninth house of foreign lands.
Another fascinating implication of Dick's out of bounds Mercury is the revelation that he could not spell. His writing had to be meticulously edited by others because his capacity for forming words properly, (a factor of the third house, ruled by his Mercury), was so debilitated. Meanwhile, he was siphoning words he didn't even understand from languages both foreign, and sometimes defunct. Reading his Exegesis requires constant consultation of a glossary and dictionary. His Mercury is within the 9th house of foreign cultures. Sagittarius also naturally implies foreign lands. It should be stated here that Philip was born with the first degrees of Aries rising, meaning the signs themselves are naturally aligned to the meaning of the houses. Aries rising people have a natal power that tends to be undeniable.
We should also note that Mars, the planet which had such a detrimental effect upon his natal chart, is also out of bounds North of the ecliptic.
In 1952, Philip would write the short story Progeny, while the north Lunar Node was upon his own Moon, a time when his desire for more love and affection, a warm woman, as he often wrote about, was being highlighted by the eclipse cycles of the time. The story features a world where progeny are raised by robots completely removed from their parents, and all other human contact, in an attempt to create emotionless, rational, more productive workers. It is telling that within this story, the Father sees the insanity of this system, while the Mother remains cold and unconcerned. Philip's parents would divorce when he was 5 years old, as Saturn conjuncted his Moon. Here, we see the Father (Saturn) and the Mother, (Moon) meet eye to eye and decide that the differences are irreconcilable. He would not see his Father for years, but would be haunted by his image.
Daddy Dick had been a World War 1 veteran, and would regale his son with tales of gore and war when he was only 4. Making this all the more horrifying, he would don his gas mask, removing all the human empathy from the proceeding, and disappearing into a past of horrors and death. It is no wonder Philip grew up to be so resolutely anti-war. In the early 60's, (no date specified anywhere I could find, but it is shared as part of the Perky Pat story at the back of the "Minority Report" anthology, a story which was submitted on March 18, 1963) Philip began perceiving a giant profoundly malefic iron face in the sky, watching him, as he would walk to his cold, lonely writer's shack in the country-side. 1963 marks the year of the Saturn return of his father leaving, hence Saturn on his Moon once again. Saturn transiting the Moon is considered such a difficult and traumatic experience that in Vedic astrology, they track Saturn's movement through the entire sign before and after as an extremely challenging 7 year period in life they call Sade Sati, which must be planned for, and remediated against with mantras and offerings. He eventually connected this face with both Satan, his father, and the ultimate creator God himself, now deranged and removed from human emotion. Recall that in Dick's natal chart, Mars and Saturn were moving to oppose each other, Saturn being the highest planet in the sky, both cold and unloving, and Mars being correlated directly to Iron. Dick would instinctively go to a priest to receive a healing unction against this demonic image.
Cruelty and emotional distance would plague Phil his entire life. He sought a warm feminine presence he could never actually feel satiated by, moving from one woman to the next throughout his life. Note that his 7th house is in Libra, ruled by Venus, which naturally correlates to love and relationships, but here, the planet representing his partners, is in the cold sign of Aquarius where the Moon which caused him so much lonely longing lay. The love denied the young child would come back in many forms through his own cruelty and emotional distance throughout his own life. Humans, of course, tend to perpetuate their own sorrows on others.
 |
| The amazing coloured charts of Robin Armstrong. |
Within the Exegesis, Philip writes many times of spiritual awakenings being caused by the suffering of small animals. When he was 10 years old he had an experience of tormenting a beetle, where he suddenly saw the beetle itself as the Christ suffering. He believes that this was the first time he attained Satori. This is shown clearly in his chart. His sixth house of pets and small animals is ruled by the Sun from the Leo cusp, and consumes Virgo, a sign ruled by Mercury. His Mercury and Sun are within the ninth house of religious experiences, and higher philosophy. Being conjunct Saturn, we see how these spiritual revelations come through cruelty. Later on in his exegesis, he would believe that Christ's redemption is made manifest by becoming any being, human or animal, enduring any unjust suffering, and consuming it as part of the salvation of our world. Saturnine redemption indeed. Phil would also go on to view his cat as being the reincarnation, (or transmigration if you will), of his good friend the Bishop Jim Pike, who was a profound religious, and philosophical influence upon him.
Apollo (the Sun), had great powers of healing, especially through teaching his son, Aesculapius, the divine arts of medicine. Saturn in Philip's chart is in the longitudinal degree of Alpha Ophiuchus, a constellation which correlates to the tales of Aesculapius wrestling the venom out of a snake to be used as the antidote, in general; but Ras Alghue, (Alpha Ophiuchus) is specifically viewed as Aesculapius, and is considered to have profound healing powers. Philip writes a beautiful passage in the Exegesis (as an enclosure in the July 16, 1974 letter to Claudia Bush) about having the Stomach flu, and his cat noticing this, and lying on his stomach, breathing in synch with the spasms of pain until they ceased. Note that the Sun and Mercury in Philip's chart can be viewed to represent pets in his chart, as well as illness as another signification of the sixth house, and they are upon Beta Ophiuchus.
Though in actual space, the Sun, Mercury, and Saturn conjunction appear within the knee of the Snake Handler, longitudinal lines extending from the ecliptic do denote connections to stars off the ecliptic in waning influence based on a measure of distance, brightness, and mythological significance. The actual placement in the leg here does remind one of the nebulous leg wound to Jane, and the guilt Phil carried that his sister had died to allow him to live, giving up her share of the scant milk.
Philip K. Dick attained the hallmark of having his first work published in February of 1953. During that year, Saturn was in the process of a series of conjunctions with Neptune, a 40 year cycle which portends the dissolution of Saturnine structures which seemed so solid, as well as the blurring of the lines of reality which Saturn expends its stored energy upon upholding. Dick's fiction would do all of this with a relentless passion. Mars was also conjunct his own Uranus in February, adding some fire to his desire for bursting the lines of accepted reality. His progressed Saturn had also moved to perfect the conjunction of his natal Sun, forcing him to make solid and real his visions and creative ideas.
The year that Philip perceived the iron faced demiurge in the sky was also a time of crushing defeat for him, as his dream of being taken seriously as a mainstream novelist was dashed with the ultimate rejection of all of his non-genre novels. Saturn the reaper came to claim the Moon's dreams. The silver lining of 1963 would be winning the Hugo award for Man in the High Castle, perhaps the closest he'd come yet to realistic, relatable characters, set within a speculative fiction inversion of our world. Saturn on the Moon can be brutal, but it can also clarify and make solid the vaguely glimpsed dreams of the unconscious, though rarely in exactly the way we would like.
From there, Dick's life would go on with many ups and downs, multiple marriages, successes, and befuddling failures. Throughout it all, Dick was ravenously using amphetamines to lift his Out of Bounds and hidden Mercury up into the light. Amphetamines are of the nature of Mercury, and served to aid him in endless hours of feverishly churning out a stream of revolutionary reality bending fiction, though very likely contributed to the more disastrous breaks from reality and sanity he would endure in the 70's.
The Mystery of the Blown Safe
The real chaos began on November 17, 1971, when Philip K. Dick's house was broken into, a safe blown apart by explosives, the entire house searched, valuables left in tact, but documents within the safe, and all canceled checks were stolen, along with his gun. Even more mysteriously, the refrigerator was ransacked, and all food left on the floor. Philip would spend years going over all the possible explanations for who did this, and why. Unsurprisingly, the chart for that day when placed into the houses of his own chart, makes every single theory he came up with make sense. Of course the astrology would be Dickian and fractally explain all possibilities at once.
A note about the timing of this chart: in the Exegesis, Phil uses both November 17, and 18 at different times. The Rolling Stone article has both 17 and 18 within the article. In Tessa B. Dick's memoir about Philip, she only states November 17, and relates that it became an anxiously feared date every year going forward. I trust her memory of the details here.
This fascinating article from Rolling Stone in 1974 runs down 5 of Dick's most compelling theories about the bizarre, befuddling burglary.
Theory #1:
The first theory came from a chance meeting with a special forces officer, who had worked with the CIA, who suggested to Phil that perhaps he'd written something that came too close to the truth, and so secret services had broken in to determine where he had gotten this intel. In Dick's chart, Saturn quite rightly represents the Government as ruler of the tenth house. At the time of the burglary, it was within his second house of personal possessions, blowing them up and stealing them apparently. Saturn and Mars are squared in this chart, showing a use of force by the government. Saturn on Dick's Rahu (the north lunar node) indicates Saturn over-reaching its rightful domain, or at least Dick perceiving an over-reach, perhaps even subconsciously desiring it, after all, he did find relief in the burglary as it had proven his mounting paranoia correct. Notably, Phil had gotten on their radar by taking part in an anti Vietnam war tax protest. On this day, there was a New Moon taking place within his 8th house, which represents taxes. Perhaps it was a blend of both prescient fiction, and taking a public stance against the war which brought the government down upon his door.
Theory #2:
The second theory involves the amount of chaos Dick had brought into his life, allowing his house to become a hangout for drug-addled youths and people on the edges of sanity. There were fights, and serious grudges lingering amongst the minds of those barely hanging onto reality. Confusingly, in Phil's chart, Saturn also represents friends and social groups as the ruler of the 11th house. So all the astrological evidence of theory #1 applies here, while including the fact that Rahu, a disruptive force of insatiable, ravenous desires, was transiting his eleventh house of friends. There, in Aquarius, Dick's Moon and Venus were inclined to invite in, and attempt to help those who most needed it, but also those most likely to become a destructive force from within. Rahu transiting there shows this spiraling out of control, bringing the burgeoning dark chaos out into the light.
Theory #3:
The police told Philip they thought he'd done it to himself to validate the amount of paranoid pestering he had levied upon the police force. His grasp on consensus reality was so loose at this point, that he seriously considered the possibility. Again, we can see this theory within the chart. Mars, the most difficult planet in Philip's chart, also represents himself being the ruler of the ascendant. Mars here is in his twelfth house of hidden enemies, but it is also the house of self-undoing. What if Phil was his own worst enemy without realizing it? Meanwhile, in Placidus at least, the twelfth house ruler is once again Saturn, rifling through his second house possessions.
Theory #4:
Dick was backyard neighbours with a black family in a neighbourhood which was becoming increasingly black in an area and time where black militant groups were on the rise. Some people suggested that perhaps he had been targeted to force him out of the neighbourhood, though Dick had always been very friendly with the family, despite some sketchy details surrounding that time, and a suspect found with his robbed gun who was seen visiting this family. At any rate, the third house is that of neighbours, and it is ruled by Mercury here, which was transiting Dick's ninth house of the law, exactly conjunct Venus, which is his second house lord. Mercury conjunct Venus, the neighbours are with his stuff! More interestingly, Dick spun this theory out into the idea that the hit was really by the police trying to see if he was working WITH the black militant groups, which is shown by the neighbours being in the ninth house of legal issues. The ninth house also rules foreign lands and cultures, for what that's worth.
Theory #5:
Phil had heard a rumour about an experimental military drug called "Mello Jello" which had been stolen. A sketchy ex air-force officer had been hanging around Dick, which he later believed was Military Intelligence looking for leads on the lost drug. The drug would have had to have been stored in refrigeration, hence the food being tossed all over the ground looking for the Mello Jello. Mars naturally represents the military, and here, it is in the twelfth house which can represent drugs.
Theory #6:
In the Exegesis Phil writes about how religious fanatics (or the government) may have been looking for documents the controversial and subversive Bishop Jim pike had given him. That tight Jupiter, Mercury Venus conjunction in his ninth house (which would represent a Bishop, and religion in general) ties together his effects as Venus, with Jupiter, the preachers occult materials. All squared by Mars from the house of hidden enemies.
No matter which theory we go with here, Pluto was conjunct his descendant, which greatly deepened his paranoia of all other people, and likely caused his agoraphobia to worsen.
Is This Heaven or Vancouver Meltdown
Within a few months of the safe incident, Phil would attend the Vancouver Sci-Fi convention, and immediately fall in love once again, proclaiming he was going to stay in Vancouver ever onward. Despite the crash out following this, Phil would go on to call Vancouver the closest thing to heaven on Earth within the text of the Divine Invasion. What was it about Vancouver that made Phil feel so at home? Let us look to what we call a relocation chart. Casting a natal chart at the exact moment someone was born, but shifting the houses to match what it would look like had they been born in a different city is a powerful technique for getting information about how we will resonate with different regions in the world.
Within Phil's own natal chart, the third house of siblings is ruled by the much beleaguered Mercury, wheras in Vancouver, his third house, and indeed his fourth house of home and family, is ruled by Venus, which has decanic dignity at least in the first decan of Aquarius, but more importantly, resides now within his first house. Did Vancouver make him feel closer to his long mourned and lost sister? It is telling that the woman he immediately fell in love with was named Janis, which is another version of the name Jane, which means God is gracious. It is also a homonym for Janus, the twin headed Roman God. Sadly, within his Vancouver relocation chart, Neptune also winds up within his very large seventh house, showing fantasies and delusions around relationships.
Exacerbating these calamitous happenings, the North Lunar Node, Rahu, was conjunct Dick's Venus, which can lend a certain fated weightiness to this sort of thing. Not to forget that the dark, paranoid lord Pluto was still in the process of grinding out his endless back and forth retrograde cycles upon Dick's descendant. Uranus was also deep into a transit of his seventh house. The relationship lasted one month. On March 23rd, Dick attempted to take his life with an overdose of potassium bromide.
Note that Mars was moving to conjunct Saturn upon Dick's own North Lunar node, in the sign of the twins. The curse of separation from his twin soul too much to bear, almost as though he sensed how the pain of separation was about to become so much worse and made a desperate dash for the exit. The Sun had burned a hole into the degree of his ascendant, his own personal identity, and had moved into the underworld beneath the horizon of his chart that day, still holding onto the harsh truths and pains of its opposition to Pluto upon his every relationship. Perhaps it was the Moon, powerful in Cancer that day, who reached down and saved Dick from his eventual fall into the Underworld. The Great Celestial Mother shined kindly upon him this day, and soon would choose to break through the bars of the Black Iron Prison in a burst of Pink Light, and an AI voice which would both heal him, and leave the Science Fiction world with some of the most profound, and perplexing mysteries we still wrestle with to this day. Praise be to Diana!
2-3-74
On February 18, 1974, after having shattered a tooth 4 days prior, Phil undergoes oral surgery under a general anesthetic, then returns home to await some Percodan being delivered to his door. The girl delivering the prescription is wearing a Christian fish necklace. According to Tessa's book , it is in fact the Sun flashing off of a separate, rectangular fish sticker which was already in the house, which then leads to the after-images from which the experiences of 2-3-74 flow out of. (So the divine revelations come directly from Apollo, the Sun). Dick describes this as the Golden Rectangle, and the golden ratio would become one of the repeated themes he would obsess over within his visions and the endless dissecting of them. It is worth noting, given the trauma of his early life, and all we discussed astrologically previously, that his natal Moon, and Mars are 137 degrees apart, which is the Golden Angle arrived at by dissecting a circle via the Golden Ratio. This leads me to further believe that his early life traumas were part of the key which unlocked his mind to these fantastical visions and revelations. No less one of his theories for the AI female voice speaking to him being his departed sister of course.
We will start in dissecting this key moment in Philip's life, by looking at the Secondary Progressions under which his chart was evolving. Secondary Progressions are a means of looking at a natal chart evolve at the rate of one day per year. As such, the astrology, and indeed life events, of a baby in the first few months of life become interpretive information for the years to come.
Two very important things would happen to Dick's slow, inner journey which is what the progressions portend. One would be that his Mercury would turn retrograde a year before 1974, showing the obsessive thinking and rethinking he would be engaged with for the rest of his life, as Mercury retrograde calls us to do. In September of 1970, his progressed Mars would station direct. Now recall that the real world station of Mars in 1929, which he was now living inwardly in 1970/71, was the day, and the awful signature of Jane's death. The very nature of Secondary progressions itself calls to mind Phil's thoughts on Orthogonal time, a separate time stream we all live, at a perpendicular angle to the one we normally sense we are experiencing. He even discusses it as "retrograde time". Recall back to the horrors Dick experienced within 1971 and 1972, and consider this was an unconcsious reliving of his own sister's demise, and the plunge into the desolation and depression of his solitude. And yet the AI voice would break through his reality, and begin to save and heal him throughout this. It's pertinent that the progressed Midheaven of his chart (calculated in Naibod via longitude) was now upon the Moon, where the thrust of his public work would eventually become a dissection of his own inner world of Lunar revelation.
What was going on in the sky itself on February 18th though?
Most notably, and yet another reason why I still unfashionably use Placidus houses, is that Neptune had entered the degree of Phil's ninth house cusp, where it would remain for the rest of his life. The ninth house relating to visions and religion. A Jupiter Sun conjunction in the Sign of his Moon, trined by Uranus, and sextiling his own Sun and Mercury is important enough, especially when one considers Apollo's role in revelation, shining light upon his twelfth house. While the twelfth house can be correlated to drugs, and one's own self-undoing, it can also be a place of mystical revelation where one goes into seclusion and hides from the world. 4 days prior, Mercury would turn retrograde on the day which his tooth shattered, beginning this whole mystical saga. Four "days"(our time years) earlier via his Secondary progressions is when his Mars stationed direct. Of course his own progressed Mercury being retrograde in his twelfth house is being mirrored in the transits of the time. Meanwhile, Saturn, god of Time, is stationing direct, in the sign of the Twins, in the degree of Polaris, our guiding north star, opposed his Mercury, Sun conjunction, on his IC (deep internal, ancestral motivation), and about to conjunct his Mars yet again. Gemini is a sign specifically concerned with exploring all intellectual angles of a situation. The lunar nodes are also within Sag and Gemini, on his Sun, showing that eclipses in these years would be highlighting his third house of ideas, and his ninth house of religion and philosophy. Huge, reality altering ideas were indicated across his chart at this time. He would grow more agitated over the next ten days, which is when Saturn would finally start moving forward again.
Now recall that I'd mentioned that his own Saturn was upon Ras Alhague, which is the star most closely associated to Aesculapius, (and also a star of a Saturn nature, meaning it's significations are most prominently accessed when the planet of it's nature is there). At the beginning of the Exegesis, his primary suspect for the voice talking to him was in fact Aesculapius. While his ideas about the voice itself would change over time, it's my opinion that it was in fact a channel which got bust open in his brain, and many different deities and spirits would speak through this feminine AI voice to him in this time. It is altogether possible that the voice at different times was all of these, or a single entity channeling any of them.
Phil would soon begin to see the world, which he specifically dates as 46 AD Rome within the Exegesis, as being overlaid on top of our own. He is a secret Christian hiding out from the Roman Empire, while concurrently living in the dying days of the Richard Nixon presidency, someone he viewed as a tyrant and literal manifestation of the Empire which never ended. He would also believe that it was "Zebra" breaking in through this reality at that time, through his visions, which helped to topple Nixon's presidency and save the Republic. It is notable that on January 1st of 46 AD, Saturn, lord of time and an undeniable tyrant, would be in the exact degree of his own Saturn, while Uranus would be within seven degrees of where it was in 1974. There are esoteric traditions which suggest that reincarnation cycles are subject to processing Karma within the timing of the 29 year orbit of Saturn.
The Tagore Vision
In the midst of years of endlessly debating himself over the reality and source of his visions, and what they could prove about the nature of reality itself, Dick was told that the Savior had already been born and was here. After asking the AI voice, he was given a vision on September 17, 1981 of a young man in Ceylon (Sri Lanka), who was crippled, with horribly burned legs, which were a stigmata for all the damage being done to the Earth via nuclear waste and weaponry. Neptune, of course still moving through his Ninth house, was just past his Saturn, and moving towards Mercury, providing these visions. Neptune carries with it significations of savior complexes, and sacrificing oneself, sometimes needlessly, for the redemption of others. Jupiter had just finished its final conjunction to Saturn within Libra, and his seventh house of other people, showing the magnanimous nature of this vision. Mars was moving to oppose his Moon.
Most importantly, the Sun would be squaring his own exactly that day, from his sixth house. Now recall that Mercury can be seen as both his sister (as lord of the third house) and illness in general (as co-ruler of the sixth house). The Sun is hot and dry, and capable of burns. It did not take Phil long to realize that the vision itself was referencing his own sister's demise, due to the burnt and crippled legs of Tagore. In an unexpected twist, this vision of a tortured and dying savior would bring Phil much comfort. As much as he would torture himself with the thought that Jane died so that he could live, he would also view Tagore, as well as Christ himself, as being a substitute for all who suffered, and this itself would bring him great comfort, considering that every time a living being within this demented realm suffered pain from no fault of their own, God himself would have to incarnate and suffer it for them. This would bring Phil great solace, and in fact he claimed it saved his sanity. His sister, as the sixth house of illness and, dealing with that illness, in the ninth house of religious thought.
If we look to Phil's chart relocated to Sri Lanka in an attempt to understand why his savior would be incarnated there, something fascinating takes place.
The third house of siblings is now in Scorpio, ruled by Mars. That same tragic Mars which portended Jane's death and pain, would now be in the tenth house, culminating towards the midheaven. Her sacrifice, now incarnated as the savior for all humanity's suffering and evil. Dick himself in this chart is now represented by that Out of Bounds Mercury, rightly so, and is at the nadir, in the fourth house of home. In this bizarre vision, he finds peace, and moves into the final 6 months of his life.
Let the Archer's Arrow Point the Path Home
In the concluding months of his life, Phil would find numerous moments of apotheosis, believing time and again that he had found the true meaning of all his visions, and life itself. He would also wrestle with the comments that Ursula K. Leguin, a friend and contemporary colleague, had made in response to him sharing his visions with her, that he had lost his sanity. In typical Phil style, he would take in this information as a data point which must be examined, and either proven correct, or incorrect. It is notable that his seventh house of other people is in Libra, ruled by his Aquarius Venus. At the time, Mars would join both Saturn and Pluto in the sign of balance as he wrestled with how he was perceived by others.
Tessa Dick would say in her book that Phil's children all have an inherited disorder with their gall bladder, which if untreated can damage the pancreas. The gall bladder is ruled by Scorpio, and Mars. In Phil's chart, Scorpio is his eighth house of death, ruled by Mars, which is in fall in Cancer. The pancreas is generally attributed to Jupiter, which is with Chiron. Gall stone disease has been shown to have a correlation to increased stroke risk. On February 17th, 1982, Phil would suffer a stroke which would hospitalize him. Mars, which would portend so much difficulty in Phil's life, was in the process of stationing retrograde in the sign of its detriment, Libra, with Saturn and Pluto, at the north lunar bendings. Phil suffered a second stroke on February 25, while the Moon crossed his Mars ruled ascendant. By the time the Moon reached the sign of the Twins on March 2nd, he would finally be reunited with Jane.
In the second to last passage of his Exegesis (as so far published), Dick writes ecstatically that in trying to write the word Soter (savior) in Greek, he accidentally wrote the word "Soror", meaning sister, and proclaims for the final time who the AI voice is, his sister. Notable that throughout the Exegesis he would refer to it as "Thomas", a name which means twin.
The final page of the Exegesis proclaims that we incarnate on Earth in order to experience the Yin. This is profoundly apt, as Phil was born towards the end of Sagittarius season, the darkest, most yin time of year, yet brightened by the Jupiterian fire rulership, and the presence of Galactic center itself. Phil's progressed Saturn would be upon Galactic center as he passed on, the Grim Reaper come to take him home through the Southern Gate of the Milky Way. Neptune, the planet of visions and self-sacrifice, would be there in the contemporary sky. The final phrase of the Exegesis is, "So I am a unitary whole now, with one part as a direct antecedent from the upper realm (Thomas), and one, (PKD) from the lower realm."
Phil's work would go on to inspire and be cherished and dissected by a growing audience, almost as much as he did himself, to this day with an endlessly increasing fervor and intensity. His words and ideas became as immortal as Pollux.
Let us end with a revelation from January 1982, which forced me to purchase one of Robin Armstrong's incredible Astro-I Ching, Pythagorean color charts in the first place
" [53:E-5] The color, musical score, math triune info: like an illuminated manuscript from the Medieval period. Ach: I have always
said that the plasmate info (e.g., King Felix) looked like an
illuminated letter, suggesting that the idea of an illuminated letter
was derived from a perception of the plasmate. Color,
coded in as an essential integral part. So here, the illuminated letter
or word becomes musical annotation (which adds the element of music)
and at fixed ratio intervals (math): But the 4th note doubles back, and
what is formed is the long spiral of the Fibonacci numbers. The colors
signal the phosphenes of the receiver and so are
so-to-speak read backward, i.e., in terms of their phosphene analogs. A
pure concept is conveyed using no words; all three axes are nonverbal
(music, math ratios, color). Pythagoras, phosphenes, symbiote, biochip,
mycelia, vine, circulatory system."
Astrology is a language of mythology, and heroic resonance. We are all living these archetypal dramas in our own unique ways. Book a reading and find out for yourself. facingnorthastrology@gmail.com
For more, check out my articles on some of the astrological resonances within Phil's short stories.
Astrology From the Trash Stratum
Comments
Post a Comment