Monday September 4, 2023
– Disseminating Moon Phase – share, demonstrate, teach, learn, feed back, distributionization, fulfillment, shadow, relationships, experience
– Moon in TAURUS –
– Retrograde Planets 2023 –
R – Pluto – May 1 – Oct 11
R- Saturn – Jun 17 – Nov 4
R – Neptune – Jun 30 – Dec 6
R – Chiron – Jul 23 – Dec 26
R – Mercury – Aug 23 – Sep 15
R – Uranus – Aug 28 – Jan 27
R – Jupiter – Sep 4 – Dec 3
– Best Days (from the Farmer’s Almanac) – Sep 1st –
Slaughter, Kill Plant Pests, Pick Apples and Pears, Cut Hair to Slow Growth, Start Diet to Lose Weight, Mow to Slow Growth, Quit Smoking, Dry Fruits and Vegetables, Perform Demolition, Wash Wooden Floors–
Planting Calendar (from the Farmer’s Almanac) – 3rd – 4th – Good days for transplanting. Good days for planting root crops.
– Aspect of the Aeon Sophia: (Wisdom): – Kali – Goddess of Beginnings and Endings
– Aspect of the Aeon Thelete: (Will/Desire): Kathe – God of the South, God of Frequencies, Harmonics, and Waves
– Sabian Symbol for the Solar-Lunar Month – New Moon in LEO SUN/MOON – 24 LEO: totally concentrated upon inner spiritual attainment, a man is sitting in a state of complete neglect of his body (EARTH – 24 AQUARIUS: a man turning his back on his passions, teaches deep wisdom from his experience )
SUN – 12 VIRGO: a bride with her veil snatched away
EARTH – 12 PISCES: an examination of initiates in the sanctuary of an occult brotherhood
Happy Monday! “Learn to value yourself, which means: fight for your happiness.” ~A. Rand
Over the last week, about 73000 people flocked to the desert in Northern Nevada. About 100 miles away from anything. The purpose? The Burning Man festival. From the news about it, this year defies explanation.
As with every year I hear about it, I wonder what in the hell it really is.
I grew up camping. Going to places far away from everything with no amenities is tough. You have to plan in advance – food and water. You have to consider how to deal with waste (trash and human waste). We had a toilet in our trailer. We could carry about 50 gallons of water. Where ever you were, you were going to get dirty.
Well, up in Black Rock City, Nevada, instead of super hot, dusty windy conditions, they were deluged with rain. And when rain and dirt get together, it creates mud. And as a result, it is Monday night and people are still stuck at Black Rock City – told to shelter in place and conserve both food and water.
FIRST
So what is it that they are doing? I will give them their due. And offer you their 10 Principles (from the Burning Man Website):
The 10 Principles of Burning Man
Burning Man co-founder Larry Harvey wrote the 10 Principles in 2004 as guidelines for the newly-formed Regional Network. They were crafted not as a dictate of how people should be and act, but as a reflection of the community’s ethos and culture as it had organically developed since the event’s inception.
Radical Inclusion
Anyone may be a part of Burning Man. We welcome and respect the stranger. No prerequisites exist for participation in our community.
Gifting
Burning Man is devoted to acts of gift giving. The value of a gift is unconditional. Gifting does not contemplate a return or an exchange for something of equal value.
Decommodification
In order to preserve the spirit of gifting, our community seeks to create social environments that are unmediated by commercial sponsorships, transactions, or advertising. We stand ready to protect our culture from such exploitation. We resist the substitution of consumption for participatory experience.
Radical Self-reliance
Burning Man encourages the individual to discover, exercise and rely on their inner resources.
Radical Self-expression
Radical self-expression arises from the unique gifts of the individual. No one other than the individual or a collaborating group can determine its content. It is offered as a gift to others. In this spirit, the giver should respect the rights and liberties of the recipient.
Communal Effort
Our community values creative cooperation and collaboration. We strive to produce, promote and protect social networks, public spaces, works of art, and methods of communication that support such interaction.
Civic Responsibility
We value civil society. Community members who organize events should assume responsibility for public welfare and endeavor to communicate civic responsibilities to participants. They must also assume responsibility for conducting events in accordance with local, state and federal laws.
Leaving No Trace
Our community respects the environment. We are committed to leaving no physical trace of our activities wherever we gather. We clean up after ourselves and endeavor, whenever possible, to leave such places in a better state than when we found them.
Participation
Our community is committed to a radically participatory ethic. We believe that transformative change, whether in the individual or in society, can occur only through the medium of deeply personal participation. We achieve being through doing. Everyone is invited to work. Everyone is invited to play. We make the world real through actions that open the heart.
Immediacy
Immediate experience is, in many ways, the most important touchstone of value in our culture. We seek to overcome barriers that stand between us and a recognition of our inner selves, the reality of those around us, participation in society, and contact with a natural world exceeding human powers. No idea can substitute for this experience.
Now, if you learned anything more from this, you are doing better than me.
In its inception, Burning Man was just a campout in the middle of nowhere Nevada. The attendees came. They drank. They did drugs. They dressed like bohemians. They played music. They burnt and effigy of a man. It was the 90’s. Drugs were not legal anywhere. They were far away from everything. They did what they wanted and got away with it.
Each year it got bigger. More people. More Drugs. more need to socially justify itself. And in a mushroom induced haze, they developed a manifesto.
Thus we have the Burning Man of today.
SECOND
It is thirty years later. The youngest of the Burners is in their 50’s. Meaning they are either burnt out. Or they are now successful, RV owning, Gen Xers who still want to party. Still want to be the cooler generation vs the rest of the Millenials and Gen Zers who want to relive the 90’s. With their own spin of course.
“Burning man is anti capitalist cosplay”
Instead of a couple hundred partiers, they have about 73,000 people camped out in the desert. Every one of them want to relive the good old days where they hated capitalism and wanted to party the week away.
Of course they may have “hated” capitalism, but they went on to buy million dollar houses and $150,000 RVs to go out and rough it in Nevada. Even though the drugs all all legal along the left coast.
The 73,000 attendees are there playing poor and roughing it.
THIRD
The “Music Festival” that isn’t. The festival gained popularity at the same time as other festivals like Woodstock 97, or Lollapaloosa or Cochella. The first few featured drum circles and folk singers. But in its history, it has never turned into much.
Music is definitely part of the extravaganza. But from what I have read, it is mostly played from large trailers with big speakers and disc jockeys. When its not flooded, these rolling parties travel around the city like pied pipers with a travelling rave. And you can imagine what fuels the fun.
FOURTH
The Burning. The big event at Bringing Man is . . . the Burning. “Artists” or artisans construct a giant wooden man throughout the week. At on Sunday or Monday, they light it on fire.
Now for me, this whole thing reminds me of the 1973 version of The Wicker Man. If you have not seen it, rent it. Totally worth whatever you have to pay.
Am I saying that the Burning Man Festival is actually a pagan ritual killing event? Not exactly. But given the obscurity around it, I would not totally discount the possibility.
FIFTH
As I said with the Second – Anti Capitalist Cosplay – the people who attend are generally batting from the left side of the plate. Burning Man, to them, is like an energy recharge. They can collectively swoon to the idea of global socialism and Climate Activism.
Previous to this year, the story was usually that it was super hot, dusty and windy. They collectively would decry it as proof that Global Warming was happening. This year with all the rain they are claiming that it is proof that Climate Change is destroying their way of life.
Actually the event started out last week with a group of Radical Climate Change Activists trying to block one of the roads going toward the Burning Man festival. The funny story was that a Tribal Police Force broke the blockade by driving their vehicle through the roadblock and scattered the protesters. The News Media had no idea how to spin that story.
WHY?
A lot of what I have tried to say here sounds like negativity. And it kind of is. But not really. I celebrate that they are able to go out and have fun.
Every year about the first week of August, Harley Davidson owners around the country make a pilgrimage to a small town called Sturgis, South Dakota. I applaud them for it. They are having fun. Living the Dream. Will I joins them? No. Its not my thing. Who am I to judge.
And I say the same for Burning Man. No judgements. I just really would like to have a better idea why they are doing it. And are the drugs really that good.
Are they trying to Change the Word? Are they trying to Save the Planet? Or are they just getting stoned? It’s up to you to decide.