Psyberspace

(washingtonpost.com)

ROME — The Archangel Gabriel is one of Christianity’s great communicators — it was he who brought word to Mary that she would give birth to Jesus, the Bible says. So it was only natural that when a search began for a patron saint for the Internet, Gabriel’s name arose.

According to a poll being conducted by a Roman Catholic organization in northern Italy, he is now in sixth place behind a 20th century martyr, an educator and a publisher born in the 19th century, an 18th century evangelizer and a 13th century nun who saw visions projected on a wall.

The web site, www.santiebeati.it, is soliciting votes with the aim of having an Internet patron saint named by Easter. “We had lots of requests for a patron, so we decided the Internet was the best tool for finding one,” said Roberto Diani, an Internet adviser for Italy’s Conference of Bishops. The official choice will be made by the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Cult and Discipline of Sacrament.

More here The Seattle Times: Web site searches for patron saint for Internet

This is not unlike looking for the archetypes of cybersapce and the discussions might well be useful!

Astrology

Mercury Retro Time Table

September 15, 2002 – October 7, 2002
January 3, 2003 – January 24, 2003
April 27, 2003 – May 21, 2003
August 29, 2003 – September 21, 2003
December 18, 2003 – January 7, 2004
April 7, 2004 – May 1, 2004
August 11, 2004 – September 3, 2004
December 1 – December 21, 2004

As we are now just coming out of the retro phase writing about cyberspace should be a whole lot easier!

Weboteric Astrology

It represents the power of communication (even the Internet), interpretation and self-expression, intelligence and reason. Its action is to quicken and enliven whilst adding mobility and fluidity. The symbol illustrates receptivity resulting from the exaltation of spirit over matter.

I have been reading quite complex stuff about Hermes and cyberspace… but it is all put very simply in Astrology.

isi.org ~ PNW Faculty Seminar

Linking here because was impressed by his essay cited below, also because I added a link to his book, which has the introduction on line in a pdf file.

Across town Seattle University played host on Tuesday night to Dr. Glen Arbery of the Dallas Institute for Humanities and Culture. Arbery, who is author of the recent ISI Books’ title Why Literature Matters, delivered a talk to a crowd of over 75 students and faculty entitled “Measure and Freedom: Imagination and its discontents.”

In the forty-five minute lecture, Arbery lamented the abysmal state of literary knowledge on standardized testing. After reading a sample passage from a recent Texas state standardized test, Arbey showed how what counts as literature today does not take stock of what is real, but instead tries to provoke the same response from its entire audience, regardless of their differences. Literature, in other words, has become tantamount to propaganda. Drawing on work by John Crowe Ransom and Allan Tate, Arbery showed how great literature comes into being by taking measure of reality, what he called “reality’s extra-textual roughness.” Similarly he said that freedom, like literature, flows not from liberation but from limitations: “a boundary is not where something stops, but where a thing begins to realize itself, where it comes into being.”

A Transdisciplinary Approach to Science and Astrology by Alain Nègre

In an attempt to sort through the conflicts between science and astrology, this article explores the unconscious foundations which gave birth to astrology. It draws from what C.G. Jung called the symbolic function and originates in the ” place ” of the soul where mind and matter may potentially reunite.

Dallas Institute – but penetrate the “frames” to get to:

Here and Everywhere: the Icons of Global Consciousness, by Glenn Arbery, Ph.D.

A very thorough essay with much to digest on cyberspace.

If, as we have seen, the telos and meaning of the opus of maximizing profit is to render people redundant, does this moment of the symbolic life not serve as our initiation into what I call the ‘psychological difference’, the difference between human and soul? Do we not have to acknowledge it as our psychopomp guiding us out of the anthropological or ontological fallacy dominating the present consciousness and into a new form of consciousness?

Mosaic Voices — Watering the Seeds of the Future A January, 2002 three part interview with Michael Meade by Earthlight magazine.

What happens if they’re not shown the recognition of that seed?

Now, we’re back to death. William Blake said that the garden of the soul is already planted and is waiting for the water of life. Call it the water of attention. There are innate ideas, dreams, stories, buried in people. When we don’t water those seeds, culture loses ideas. It loses imagination. It loses the capacity to dream itself forward. I mean that literally.

I have a tape by Micheal Mead – which I liked a lot!

This article appeals right now because of the “to dream itself forward” idea. I am interested. This is somewhat Chardinian, somehow there is a pull — see item below on afford. I am also interested because of story. What is the difference between travel and journey: story. How does this relate to “surfing” and the cyber part of cyberspace?

Pacifica Graduate Institute | Campbell & Gimbutas Library by Richard Buchen

Lucas had read The Hero with a Thousand Faces while working on the script of the first of the Star Wars movies, and had gone on to read the Masks of God and other writings. When Star Wars debuted in 1977, it followed the Hero very closely. Lucas said at an award ceremony in 1985, “It is possible that if I hadn’t run across him I’d still be writing Star Wars today.”

Insight & Outlook

Hillman: Well, some reviewers has a scientistic ax to grind. To them, my book had to be either science or new age mush. It’s very hard in our adversarial society to find a third view. Take journalism, where everything is always presented as one person against another: “Now we’re going to hear the opposing view.” There is never a third view.

My book is about a third view. It says, yes, there’s genetics. Yes, there are chromosomes. Yes, there’s biology. Yes, there are environment, sociology, parenting, economics, class, and all of that. But there is something else, as well. So if you come at my book from the side of science, you see it as “new age.” If you come at the book from the side of the new age, you say it doesn’t go far enough — it’s too rational.

Another interview, this one by Scott London 1998.