Example of My Daily Work as a CRONE

April 25, 2024

 

Yesterday, at our local food co-op, I decided to “work with” a clerk, an older man, probably in his late ’60s or early ’70s, who has been working there for the past several months. I have a sense that he doesn’t want to be working, but can’t avoid it. All the other clerks are as usual, friendly and helpful, but I have never seen him crack a smile, or even speak in anything but a low mutter, anytime I go through his line. Frankly, he seems depressed, and quite used to being depressed, cut off from those around him.

“Work with,” for me, means, first find something about a person’s appearance that I really appreciate and mention it. And there was one, his hair:  thick, greyish/brown. So I launched in.

“Did anyone ever tell you you have magnificent hair?” I said as I as busily arranged groceries in my backpack.

It was as if I had addressed him for the first time, or rather: as if I was the first person who had really addressed him, not just the role he was playing of a grocery clerk.

“I don’t remember,” he said, after a pause (to get his wits about him?).

“Well, you do. Magnificent! Many people your age don’t have any hair!”

“I know.” He replied, then: “It’s just hair.”

Okay, that was the extent of the exchange. But you know what? From that moment on, I could sense a spark of aliveness kindling within him, and reached out to me energetically, in a subtle fashion, as we completed our transaction.

That’s an example of my “work” these days, as a crone. Wherever I am, wherever I go, my intention is, with small, short encounters, to acknowledge and/or ignite aliveness in my fellow human beings.

Just passing another on the street is enough; we can greet each other, soul to soul, and often do. My direct gaze penetrates, activates, and the mutual frisson lifts both our hearts.

In my work as a Crone, my aim is homeopathic.

On Growing Older vs. Getting Older: JUDI DENCH AND ME

April 24, 2024

 

To grow older is to mature, like fine wine. Getting older, however, is not so fun, since most females are indoctrinated to prioritize their “looks” above all else.

Judi Dench, now 88, is one who knows this, and much else, that gradually seeps in with the passage of time.

 

 

Let me add one more gift of the fine art of aging, which I received from the world view I expanded into, during my 30s, when I began to absorb  the symbolic language of astrology. This is a completely other view of the relationship between space and time that engenders a plethora of cascading meanings across the decades for any person who pays attention to processing their experience.

In fact, within the astrological world view, the longer one lives, the deeper and more profound the meaning of the whole.

This is because the astrological world view does not view time as a single linear line, but as a multitude of curving lines, creating circles, enclosing spaces: many nested concentric cycles, with YOU as the center. These begin with the Moon (29.5 days) go out to Uranus (84 years) in one possible human lifetime — and beyond, to Neptune (165 years) and Pluto (248 years).

The larger the cycle, the greater the meaning. The meaning of a cycle IS the length of time it takes to carve out its own space. At least the wholeness of the 30 year (Saturn) cycle should be obvious to those who have reached that age and beyond. I remember my 20s, when my generation thought “you can’t trust anyone over 30.” Well, after 30, we soon reached the opposite conclusion: “Actually, you can’t trust anyone under 30, because they have not yet had the life experience to see that decisions, over time, yield consequences!”

Longer cycles are archetypal. Saturn, for women: Maiden (under 30), Mother (30 to 60), Crone (60 and above).

Again, the longer the cycle, the more of life is encompassed in the journey, the larger the meaning, the more profound the wholeness.

At 81, I am approaching my 84th year, and the completion of the first cycle of Uranus, highly aware, at this point, that I seem to be continuously processing memories and their interconnections, their various cycles within cycles, over the extended time and expanded space of my entire life. An extraordinary gift, to live this long.

Would love to speak with Judi Dench, and find out about the years leading up to her 84th, her completion of the cycle of individuation: URANUS.