In this week’s edition of Planet Waves FM, I take off on the themes associated with Mercury in Leo opposite Juno in Aquarius — in particular, questioning our presumptions about relationships, jealousy and possessiveness.
Juno in Aquarius represents intense social pressures to conform to cultural relationship norms. Aquarius can be as oppressive as it is freedom-seeking; with Juno that quality can be more dominant. Mercury in Leo represents the childlike desire to be an alive individual with your own ideas — coming right up against the past.
I also take a look at the Stop-and-Frisk decision. Our musical guest is Bujak, the ensemble created by Jeff Bujak featuring Jen Dulong.
Blue Studio Sessions: How to Talk about Sex
The Planet Waves FM Blue Studio Sessions are back. Begun last autumn, this series of recordings is about the honest discussion of sex. In tonight’s edition, Diva Carla Sanders and I talk about how to have conversations about sex, whether about pregnancy, STIs, or figuring out what kind of sex is appropriate to the relationship or encounter that you’re having. We talk about all the reasons not to have the conversation, how awkward it can be, and how to make it easier.
I make reference to several sex education webpages that you may find helpful. One is Scarleteen. Another is Everyday Feminism, which is not about sex ed per se but includes some good articles. I also recommend Solotouch because reading reader stories will give you a clue how diverse sexual experience and fantasy are. Read Solo for a while and you’ll figure out that you’re right in range of perfectly normal, no matter how weird you may think you are.
Older editions of Blue Studio Sessions are located here.
“The received philosophy is so ingrained that the new is challenged at almost every turn”. Yes, and this isn’t helped by the fact that we’re unaware of a great deal of the stuff we’ve been indoctrinated with. The Buddha was born a prince, but he went beyond his class and origins – he carried out a profound study of the mind and human behaviour, starting from himself, to find out why we suffer the way we do.
I do agree with you, Lizzy, it is an amazing philosophy and I like to think I espouse it more than any other in my daily life. As an Englishman, the problem for me has always been one of class: were the insights of Gautama Buddha’s meditations only possible because he was a prince? If Siddhartha were a carpenter…?
There’s also the difficulty of overlaying an earlier religion on one that is culturally innate, in my case Christianity. The received philosophy is so ingrained that the new is challenged at almost every turn unless one completely rejects the native precepts.
Thanks for the wonderful hexagram, Geoff! You know, I still think that Buddhism is an amazing philosophy – and continue to get so much out of it, but am so aware now of how we Westerners turn it into something else, into a goal-oriented, dualistic pursuit, plus there’s all the religious, constricting crap around it. It’s been a valuable lesson for me, in so many ways.
Many thanks for the greeting, Lizzy. I found your report of recent Buddhist experiences very enlightening – it helped explain to me why, despite all my best intentions back in the ’60s and ’70s, I could never quite bring myself to commit wholeheartedly to that philosophy.
My hexagram for today: “When trying to reach a goal or fulfill a personal ambition, obstructions inevitably present themselves. This is not always a bad thing. Obstacles and difficulties that are eventually overcome often turn into assets. Without irritating grains of sand, oysters would never make pearls.” – I Ching, 39.
Thank you, nilou, that series of photographs is astounding. Many of the artefacts recovered are so beautiful it made me ponder the values we attribute to some of our art today.
Thank you, Geoff, for providing a tenuous link to these really beautiful pictures.
Sunken Egyptian City of Thonis-Heracleion
http://photos.uk.msn.com/slideshow/photos/sunken-egyptian-city-of-thonis-heracleion/2xok7sk3#scpshrjmh
Good to see you here again, Geoff!
Apropos of almost nothing, here’s an interesting article from this week’s New Scientist which, with a freedom-loving Aquarian spirit, I dedicate to jealous gods everywhere.
Giulio Magli, an archaeoastronomer at Milan University, believes Göbekli Tepe, the world’s oldest known temple, was built to follow Sirius, the dog star, whose rising and setting was used as the basis of the ancient Egyptian calendar. Due to the wobbling of the earth on its axis, Sirius would have been below the horizon until around 9,300 BC but would be the fourth brightest object in the night sky (after the Moon, Venus and Jupiter) following its “birth.”
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21929303.400-worlds-oldest-temple-built-to-worship-the-dog-star.html#.Ug9ByRZbyYd