Finding Meaning in the Stars
The universe is an infinite space full of nothing, and in between there are unexplored meanings and mysteries. The very relatable fact of us being here should be proof enough of the awe inspiring nature of our reality. A reality of human experience that is present in the vast universe of space.
Perhaps the best evidence of awe, is that the universe has given us the grace of our conscious presence. Ancients and modern people have all endlessly speculated at one point in time as to what all this mystery and conscious presence means, and we are still looking for answers today. Infinite questioning and endless answers.
The fact is, we have no idea as to why we are here in the first place, despite all our collective and historical knowledge about human nature, Earth, and the universe. Nonetheless, we have constantly searched for meaning throughout history and vigorously strive for knowledge today. Ancient knowledge may have found our answers long ago, but like a black hole of forgetfulness science has replaced or dismissed many of these classic truths, now myths and archetypes of the universe are replaced with new scientific idioms.
Presently our views on space are a mish-mash of cultural archetypes and concepts. Space may offer us its mysteries to be explored, and science may answer our questions and inevitably, it seems, that our human condition is rewarded through these endeavours.
Here we are the lucky inhabitants of a small speck of sparkly blue water and colourful rock, floating among many rocks, all orbiting a brilliant yellow star, in a quiet part of a sprawling galaxy, moving through a a massive universe full of similar specks and cosmologies.
What are we to make of our collective journey through the alchemical make up of the universe? What mysteries and knowledge have yet to be uncovered?
- Ancient Lineages
In the beginning, thousands of years ago and probably more, our ancestors looked to the stars for the answers. They acted on deep archetypical and esoteric principles that were reflected in the stars that they worshipped, recorded, and observed. Something was there, they felt it intuitively, like their lives were being reflected in the stars.
Our ancestor’s created, or more like intuited, the Zodiac; developing astrology and the subsequent religions were attached to it. Over the years the accumulated wisdom and knowledge of our ancestors are, in essence, the forefathers of our modern scientific perspectives, such as subjects like modern astronomy. Us ‘moderns’ are still interested in observing the stars, I don’t think we ever won’t be.
People have observed the stars, paid homage to the planets and worshiped the heavens. The Sun and all the planets represent an assortment of human archetypes: kings, queens, war, peace, love, and death. The meaning they attached to space mirrored the archetypes are human values; our attributes and vices, oppositional and attractive forces, and the laws of nature such as birth and death.
Totalizing archetypical ideas take hold of us and drive us to understand our place among things and society. We anthropomorphized our observations and gave names and meanings to the stars for as long as history has been been written. However, we may have forgotten our connections to the stars, replaced it with a hard calcification of thoughtful materialism, and hence been blinded by contemporary materialistic ignorance.
Here we are alive, birthed on Earth, and constantly trying to make sense of it all. Do the answers lie in the stars or do we just get more questions? The answer is probably both. For as long as we look up into the sky with fresh eyes there will always be something new to see, as well as familiar patterns and movements. All interacting, as if we get to witness giants dancing.
Amid all the chaos and unknowing in the universe, there is always a suggestion of something in between that order, an elegant pattern, something that gives solace to that chaos in between.
Perhaps, our solace is found in the prescribing anthropocentric qualities to our solar system. We have always been doing this, giving meaning to the space around us, in a sense I’m talking about the planets and stars, as if I am talking about you.
The Sun is the most magnificent object, both in mass and its metaphysical form. It is not just the photosynthesis or nuclear fission that it free rewards us with, its also represented of love and warmth. For many the Sun is God. There is life and death all tied into the essence of the sun, or lack of it. That’s a start, and that’s a beginning of any grand exploration.
Take note of the ‘typical perspective‘ of the Solar system pictured above . Similar pictorial likeness can be witnessed in the atom pictured below.
- As Above, So Below
As above, so below, is an ancient alchemical tenet, a concept that ties everything together, including our lives, experience, material make up and soul. It’s a concept that reflects the largest most complex systems to the smallest ones. Both pictures above are basic perspectives detailing relationships and patterns in all matter, from the smallest known material qualities, to the largest.
These pictures are a one dimensional representations of the real thing, a tourist’s map of the universe, ergo not the real thing. However, like the real thing, words may introduce the dynamic principles that give this pictures imagined motion and relatability, so that the tenet becomes visualized.
Yet the real universe is much more complex, containing many more dimensions. The real thing being much more dynamic among the chaos. Just remember the tenet-as above so below. A simple concept that allows us to integrate the complexity of the vastness and our own being.
Pictured above is a example of a perspective that enhances ones imaginations when it comes to the motion of our Earth and solar system movement through the galaxy.
This is just another layer to the represent the “real” thing, like a basic solar system model- reflected in Kepler’s Heliocentric model of the solar system. Perhaps, we need a universal-centric model, and another added layer of complexity to our thinking.
- Here Comes Science
Ancient knowledge laid the foundation for scientific thought, and space exploration. However, what demarcates science from its ancient predecessors is the technological polish to extending our senses.
Take for example the pictures of ‘King’ Jupiter and ‘Queen’ Saturn and their poles below. Take note of the remarkable symmetry and synchronization of patterns being formed on their respective poles, vortices of unimaginable beauty. The ancient peoples were never privy to these photographs, what would they have made of them?
The Sun, planets and moons, all the material in our solar system is in complex resonance. The ancients of course knew the beauty of our solar system and attached elaborate metaphors and distinctions to the movements, although never being able to truly see up close and atomistical, the inner and outer workings of the planets in such detail.
- Contemporary Scientific Chaos
With the ascendancy of science, scientific institutions and scientific interpretations in society, we have attempted and somewhat succeeded, to explain, reduce, and deduce, the unwavering mysteries of space. It has offered us some solace, but at what expense, is ancient knowledge to be dismissed as irrational and be replaced by a “righteousness” of science?
Science is precise. It has given us many of the answers to our solar systems material and makeup. For example, we would never have seen the vortex poles of Jupiter or Saturn 100 years ago, even 500 years ago we didn’t know that Jupiter had moons, or the existence of quasi-planet Pluto (a planet in my mind)
As if with science our eyes have been extended by all sorts of technological innovations, yet society may be at risk of forgetting to see the ancients. From the telescope to space probes, science has codified and taxonomized still just a fragment of space reality.
This extension of our senses has given us unprecedented astronomical analysis and new knowledge, but it hasn’t answered everything, like the reason for it to exist in the first place. Moreover, science tends to give distance to the principle ‘as above so below’; essentially ignoring the dance of the cosmos and it’s direct relation to us-whatever that may be.
As science branches out into space, here on earth our consciousness is extending also, both inwards and outwards, like we are all gas giants. But if science forgets its origins derived from ancient knowledge we might be at risk of our souls being perceived as ‘just matter’ and the firing of neurons. If we do this we essentially enter into a state of entropy and our own destruction.
While scientific explorations of space is informative, we must not let it demystify our collective archetypes as primitive or irrational. While science may claim to be rational, it is consisting of the very same ideas that it attempts to remove it self from- The observer effect.
Ancient astrology is the foundation of modern astronomy.Such that science is just another branch of the collective history and knowledge of our species. It’s a continuous narrative of collective thought and philosophies about the world. We need to be very careful so as not to neuter Newtonian physics model; however, we need to balance our approaches so that we do not see our existence in a purely material way that contemporary science tends to do.
- A Very Long Conclusion- Part One
There is a potential synergy between ancient and scientific thought, something that science doesn’t know or perhaps methodologically could never know. Science can never eliminate subjective interpretations of our collective archetypes almost encoded into our genetic make up- that which makes us special. Nor can science build purely objective thought, the ancients helped build our thoughts in the first place.
Have the myths been debunked? Have we have forgotten the old ways? These are questions we need to keep asking ourselves, and as long as we do there will always, hopefully, be a soul in the machine of man and therefore our explorations of the stars will be graced with our conscious metaphysical presence of what makes us human. A ghost in the machine to be meta.
The Ancients understood something about the nature of space that we are at risk of forgetting with science, to repeat myself. We once organized and acted upon the movements of the planets and attached specific meaning to them, that gave them balance and order. Let us prospect for that alchemical mix of matter and consciousness, we will find it interacting in space and in the ether between space.
Concluding the Conclusion- Part Two
Perhaps there was a Big Bang. That from a inconceivably condensed object of matter in the middle of nothingness there was suddenly something; an explosion of light, sound, vibration, and matter-something. The cosmos spilling forth a red light spectrum panspermia, and what emerges is the breath of life.
Here we are travelling through a space that has no real explanation to us for its origins or purpose, just a thought of one. Meanwhile we can enjoy the light show, and perhaps, from an esoteric perspective, we can add more meaning to the journey.
Doppler shift from spectrum analysis of the universe shows us that the Universe is expanding. This is the current scientific orthodoxy, a neat idea, but it still doesn’t answer all the questions, but the universe sure seems infinite. Moreover, nothing is ever still and all things are always moving, in till they stop moving.
The trajectory could be considered dark, but in every corner there is light. From chaos, there really does become order. Then there is entropy, for what once existed, exists no more, but nothing never ceases to exist.
Dec 7,2020
The universe lasts seemingly forever, life comes and goes. Perhaps, one day the very last piece of matter and energy will be used up and devoured into a final coalescing darkness consisting of all the ultra massive black holes in existence. With a tiger’s final roar our universe is extinguished once and for all. The final universal visual demise being the last massive black hole collapsing into itself infinitely over and over. And then an explosion of light and once again a new universe is born.
Additional resources and exploration to stimulate your mind, body, spirit, and soul.
Freeman's Free Speech 
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