Shaking Loose the Bonds of Culture
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27th November 2010
Niobe and Altjira are fascinating me at the moment. They are both in crucially important positions in the bodygraph and they both deal with how we relate to our creations, whether they be children, works of art, acts of charity or business projects. They both seem to point to the idea that we must learn to live in the moment, to release any attachment to goals, to create simply for the innocent and pure joy of the process.
Niobe is an asteroid, and sitting between Saturn and Pluto in the Gate of Family Patterns (18) she is a key player just now. It’s not a pretty story. Niobe was prideful and boastful about how wonderful her many children were. She was basically saying she was better than Apollo and Artemis, who only managed 2 children, perhaps because they were twins but that’s another story. Apollo and Artemis weren’t happy about the slight, and killed Niobe’s children as they practiced their gymnastics. Niobe was turned to stone but continued to weep unceasingly for her lost children.
This is a person who believes that her creations make her more important or better than others, not a good look.
It ocurred to me this morning, as I continue to work with a sense of sadness that seems to arise from the very earth just now, that we are all walking through a field of bereavement. It’s not that we can understand what we’ve lost, but still it seems to permeate so deeply. My feeling about this is that we are experiencing a deeply suppressed grief at the loss of many things – our lost inner child, our lost connection with our own bodies and with the magical abundance of the earth, our severed connection with our souls, and a deep cultural disconnection with both the mother and earth matrixes that has profoundly affected our ability to relate to each other in simple joy.
All these things are showing up in the transits just now. The Spleen Centre, where we find Niobe, Saturn, Venus retrograde and Haumea, is the part of the bodygraph that relates to our ancient reptilian brain. The reptilian brain is lightning fast. It doesn’t want to wait to think things over or seek emotional clarity when a sabre tooth tiger is poised to pounce, threatening our very existence. But the reptilian brain, and hence the Spleen Centre in Human Design, is not operating well in the current climate. As Joseph Chilton Pearce points out in his excellent book, The Biology of Transcendence, what most threatens our survival now is not tigers and bears, but our culture. We are threatened with losing our jobs, our homes, our families, with being too fat, too thin, accidentally saying the wrong thing, loneliness, various forms of discrimination and political blindness, and a myriad of other cruel but everyday tragedies.
And it’s here, in this cultural milleu, that our Spleen Centre is busily doing what it was originally designed to do, projecting it’s ancient fears into a modern context, and preventing us from clearly seeing the truth. Our minds also connect to our heart/soul (the G Centre), but by the time our heart gets to hear about what’s going on, the lightning fast reflexes of the ancient survival brain have beaten it there and already informed us that we are at grave risk and should respond as if the threat is real. In the rush to survive we ditch the joyful simplicity of being alive, and aspects of self not directly involved in survival – our hearts, our creative child, our loving relationships – get thrown overboard as too much ballast.
Last week and this coming week are creating a huge upheaval in our ancient brain. It is getting an upgrade, a brand new 21st century renovation. It’s being rewired from the old way of being human – short, brutish and inevitably ending in death after a lifetime of paying taxes – and released into a glorious new reality. In this new reality it has a whole different job description. It lets us know in each moment what choice will infuse our cells with the most deliciously wonderful experience of life. The rasberry or the chocolate? The bright warm sun or the dappled shade? The snuggle or the time alone?
And Altjira? He is a Trans Neptunian Object, doing a long term transit in Gate 20. This Throat Centre gate has been the main access for Pluto and Haumea to express themselves in the past 2 to 3 years (Pluto when he was in Gate 10, and Haumea in Gate 57). They have been weaving the Spleen Centre (survival) with the G Centre (soul/heart) and the Throat Centre (expression).
Altjira was a creator deity of the Australian Aboriginal people. He created the earth, created a few lesser deities to run the show, and then he left. No doubt to create another world somewhere else. He didn’t hang around to make sure everyone played the way he thought they should. He just left. There’s echoes of the absent working father in Altjira, another source of bereavement we are currently experiencing. But I’ve observed a deeper message in Altjira. He isn’t attached to his creations. He creates from joy and then moves on.
As the Zen saying goes, if you have one eye on the goal you only have one eye on your path. Altjira is in Gate 20, an energy of being present in the moment and loving what we do. This gate contains the essence of being fully present and integrated, and those who truly live it have a powerful effect on everyone who comes into contact with them.
Our culture tells us to keep both eyes on our goal, so long as that goal is culturally sanctioned, and to give our path only fleeting glimpses. But the goal is a glamour, an illusion. What’s real is the process, the pathway. What’s real is the experience of the journey. And this is where our Spleen Centre is paramount. It knows how to live the journey, step by step. It knows that the journey is filled with health, abundance and wonderful soulful connections with others, all felt at the cellular level.
Tomorrow we have a rare event – the Spleen Centre connecting directly to the Throat Centre via the Gate of The Well (48). This is the gate of prana at the cellular level – an unlimited source of pure life force energy that brings a deep wisdom and connection to life. The transit is made up of Saturn (48) and the Earth (16) and will be in place for 5 days.
It’s about breaking through the old illusion of being worthwhile through our cultural achievements, and being here now in all our glory. It will shake us loose from goals that are culturally conditioned rather than soulful.
the next 5 days are about choosing to know that we are spiritual beings on an earthly journey that is housed in incredible magic vehicles that we call our physical bodies. It’s about our physical bodies coming back into the picture and a new culture (Venus in Gate 50) arising from a place that includes all aspects of self and not just those that are culturally sanctioned.
I very much appreciate this article Kim. Excellent explanation of the Splenic Center and it’s function.
Also, I do feel like my brain is being rewired at this moment.
thx Kyle, nice to hear from you <3
Dear Kim, thank you for this posting. It has seemed to me that nearly the whole of November has had this deep undercurrent of sadness, and for me an unusual collapse of my energy field leading to me getting ill and not easily finding the path back to full wellness still. You posting feels like a bit of beautiful classical music with just such a deep sorrowful opening theme but which builds through your expression of it into a strong and hope-filled crescendo. From my out-of-balance place this feels like good medicine – thank you!
You exactly described how it felt when I wrote it Anna.
I’ve had sadness and health issues as well the last few weeks, seemingly inexplicable things that make me feel just a bit toxic each day. I’ll be glad when it passes.
Thank you Kim for making my feeling resonate in your words! So grateful for your support! Heartfully rejoycing! Hali
hey gorgeous Carole!
Just putting in my two cents, in the version of mythology I know, Niobe was comparing her achievements (her many wonderful children) not to Apollo and Aphrodite themselves but to their mother Leto. I don’t know if there’s a celestial body called Leto, but there might just be a connection there
Arraeias there is an asteroid called Leto and it is currently in the Root Centre in Gate 54 conjunct dwarf planet Ceres which is interesting! Ceres of course is also representative of losing a child, and can be a marker for extremes of grief and loss. On Wikipedia it also talks about her claiming superiority to Letona, and there is also an asteroid called Letona in the Spleen Centre in Gate 28 (which has until a few days ago been creating a channel with Ceres who has been in the adjoining Gate 38).
So Leto the mother is conjunct Ceres the mothering planet, in the gate that says “I want to better myself, to marry well in order to raise my status and to have children who are higher up the social order than I am. ” Which is pretty much the point that Niobe was making, that she and her children should have been accorded at least as much status as Leto and Letona. She was also saying, why do you honour the gods who are far away and whom you’ve never met, rather than me, a human who is worthy to be a goddess? Interesting question!
I thought of so many ideas around Niobe after I posted this! Thx for pointing out the error about Apollo and Artemis.
And also this gate, 54 in the Root, is also one of the main gates for new beginnings, transmuting and moving to the next cycle rather than going around the same old circle again. Hurrah for that!