Dear Friend and Reader:
We who live on Earth must coexist with the mystery of our own presence here. Events of the world proceed as if there was no question at all about what we’re doing on this planet, where we came from, or how to conduct our lives.
We take for granted the fact that we are able to live and even thrive on Earth. Any questions about our existence that we may have are usually answered in palliative form, by religion, which assumes that our particular planet is the center of all creation. Or worse, they are answered by science, which always pretends to know the absolute truth, which it then disavows a short time later.
The Galactic Core is the center of our spiral island in space. It is located in late Sagittarius, the sign of all things exotic and distant — including long-distance communication.
This time of year, the Sun aligns with the Galactic Core. That’s been going on all week, though the exact alignment was Wednesday morning at 9:05 am EST. Then the Mercury and the Sun aligned very close to the core, at about 10:26 pm EST on Wednesday.
Its existence was discovered in 1932 by Karl G. Jansky, who figured out the origin of a hissing sound affecting newly-laid overseas telephone lines. The cables served as antenna that picked up a signal being broadcast from 25,000 light years away. I just love this story.
The ‘Occult’ is Often Way Ahead of Science
Esoteric practices like astrology are often chided for being unscientific. Yet it was astrology that noted the tendency of the sign Sagittarius to represent that which is alien, distant, exotic, foreign and unusual. When the most unusual thing known to science was discovered, it was in Sagittarius.
There are many examples of this. Just like many modern pharmaceutical chemicals are analogs of substances in the herbal apothecary, in many ways science is a rehashing or reinvention of what has long been known to
The Galactic Core includes a supermassive black hole with 4 million times the mass of the Sun. It is surrounded by numerous X-ray sources and other unusual phenomena. A black hole is likely to be a dimensional opening of some kind; a portal into somewhere else. Sagittarius people often feel like they are from that other place, and are visitors here.
Half a century later, in the mid 1980, the Great Attractor was discovered . This is a point in space that all of our local galactic neighbors — about 100,000 of them — are being drawn toward at about a million miles per hour. It, too is in Sagittarius. (The Sun aligned with it on Dec. 6.)
There is not an actual bull in Taurus, nor twins in Gemini. Of all the signs, Sagittarius is not a figment of the imagination. There are two deep space points that make it rather real.
The Distant Calling
The Galactic Core represents the distant spiritual calling that we can sometimes hear. It can be so subtle that it verges on vapid. There is nothing dramatic about it. Borrowing from A Course in Miracles, it’s as loud as your willingness to hear.
Humans have a tendency to fall for the hype. Hellfire and brimstone, the devil, the savior and and the rapture are much more exciting narratives than what we learn from quiet inner reflection. We confuse what is shocking with what is true.
Western religion, meaning that which exists from Palestine to California, tends to emphasize drama, and is obsessed with death. The Galactic Core is more responsive to Eastern techniques that involve inner listening.
Contemporary spiritual traditions, including much of the New Age, emphasize what can be discovered outside of ourselves. There is an obsession with going to “sacred places,” and for life developments which “prove” that one is making progress.
Yes, that is one dimension of Sagittarius, which gets murky and misses the point. We must consider our world to be a sacred place, and our existence on it to be a rare and beautiful experience. We are here, in our current form, against all odds. Our awareness is so versatile that we can get anywhere from here.
The question is, what do we do with our attention?
The Habitable Zone
We are believed to live in the “habitable zone” of our galaxy. That’s a good guess; we inhabit it. We also know this term from our place in the solar system. We’re close enough to the Sun to get the benefits of its warmth, but not so distant that everything freezes over. We are in the “just right” area.
This is also true of the Sun’s location in the galaxy. We’re about halfway out from the core, located between two of the spiral arms. We are far enough away that we’re not overwhelmed with radiation from the core itself, or from the concentration of stars that amasses as one approaches it. We’re at a safe distance to keep us from getting sucked into the black hole.
Close to the core, you can imagine that stars are so concentrated that it’s light out at night. Stars are also moving much more quickly and chaotically, in a much shorter orbit around the galaxy. (Our Sun takes about 250 million years to go round once.)
While the signal of the Galactic Core is subtle, that conceals a kind of inner churning and uncertainty that is represented by all those stars buzzing around so fast you cannot see them.
It is this restlessness that also must face as part of our spiritual journey. Those fast-flying stars are circling around a mass of compressed matter that will eventually swallow them — another metaphor for us, on our journey to inner truth.
The affairs of the world have us all under a lot of pressure. It’s difficult to think about the future, much less to be optimistic. There are surely challenges ahead, for our societies, our world and for many of us as individuals.
It may be a stretch for some to think that it’s a privilege to be here. Yet we are indeed here, with no idea how, exactly that happens. And our persistent search for purpose implies that we just might have one.
I would propose it’s a lot closer at hand than you may imagine.
With love,
Eric Francis