A Construção das Doze Casas Astrológicas, os Raios Celestiais e as Variações de Radiação: Exemplo Textual

Quinlan-McGrath, M., Influences: Art, Optics, and Astrology in the Italian Renaissance, 36-7.

   The intersections of the horizon circle and the meridian circle divide the heavens into four quadrants relative to the location on the Earth that is to be studied. A third circle, the ecliptic, the belt of the zodiacal constellations against which the planets appear to move, intersects the meridian and horizon circles relative to that earthly point as well. Over the course of the year, this ecliptic circle gradually seems to ascend and descend relative to the merid-ian at that place on the Earth. Owing to this continual shining of the heavens during the course of a year, we might visualize the quadrants as seasonally expanding and contracting.

   Within the quadrants, the cusps or divisions between these twelve houses are measured and marked along the 360 degrees of that ecliptic circle. There were slightly different ways to apportion the 360 degrees that were divided among the twelve houses, depending on the house system chosen by the astrologer. But, whatever the house system chosen, the four cardines or cusps of the quadrants - marked by the Ascendant (the point at which the ecliptic crosses the eastern horizon), the Midheaven (the point at which the ecliptic intersects the meridian circle above the horizon), the Descendant (the point at which the ecliptic intersects the western horizon), and the Lower Midheaven (the point at which the ecliptic intersects the meridian circle below the horizon) - are usually the same in all house systems.

   The degree of the ecliptic circle that intersects the eastern horizon at the time in question becomes the Ascendant degree. The rest of the ecliptic circle follows counterclockwise from this point, and all the subsequent cusps in the horoscope diagram are determined from it. The “moving” sky is continually passing through this Ascendant point - ascending in the east with the passage of the twenty-four-hour day. This is means that each of the 360 degrees takes roughly four minutes of clock time to rise or set. Moment by moment, the stars and planets, traveling at diff ering speeds, some of the planets occasion-ally retrograde, move through this framework of the horoscope chart. Moment by moment, the angles of the celestial rays, hitting a unique point on the Earth, are changing. This is ever-changing complexity of radiation was, we will see, understood to influence the great variety of earthly entities as these were all in the process of coming into existence or fading out of it.

Quinlan-McGrath, M., 2013, Influences: Art, Optics, and Astrology in the Italian Renaissance. Chicago/ Londres: The University of Chicago Press.

O Sol Negro, a Luz da Escuridão, Jung e a Psicologia Profunda: Exemplo Textual

 

Marlan, S., 2005, The Black Sun: The alchemy and art of darkness,11-2.

  Jung’s exploration was influenced by the seventeenth-century alchemist Mylius, who refers to the ancient philosophers as the source of our knowledge about Sol niger. In several places in his collected works, Jung writes of Sol niger as a powerful and important image of the unconscious. To consider the image in the context of the unconscious is both to recognize its vastness and unknown quality as well as to place it in the historical context of depth psychology and of the psyche’s attempt to represent the unrepresentable. Imagining Sol niger in this way is to see it in its most general sense, but Jung has also extracted from the alchemical literature a rich and complex, if scattered, phenomenology of the image. The black sun, blackness, putrefactio, mortificatio, the nigredo, poisoning, torture, killing, decomposition, rotting, and death all form a web of interrelationships that describe a terrifying, if most often provisional, eclipse of consciousness or of our conscious standpoint. 

  The nigredo, the initial black stage of the alchemical opus, has been considered the most negative and difficult operation in alchemy. It is also one of the most numinous, but few authors other than Jung have explored the theme in its many facets. In addition to the aspects just described, Jung also finds in this image of blackness a nonmanifest latency, a shadow of the sun, as well as an Other Sun, linked to both Saturn and Yahweh, the primus anthropos. For the most part, Sol niger is equated with and understood only in its nigredo aspect, while its more sublime dimension—its shine, its dark illumination, its Eros and wisdom— remains in the unconscious. 

  I imagine my work on the black sun as an experiment in alchemical psychology. It is concerned with this difficult and enigmatic image and with our understanding of darkness. My contention is that darkness historically has not been treated hospitably and that it has remained in the unconscious and become a metaphor for it. It has been seen primarily in its negative aspect and as a secondary phenomenon, itself constituting a shadow—something to integrate, to move through and beyond. In so doing, its intrinsic importance is often passed over. This attitude has also been perpetuated in alchemy, which places darkness at the beginning of the work and sees it primarily in terms of the nigredo. Yet in its usage of the black sun there is a hint of a darkness that shines. It is this shine of the paradoxical image that captures my attention. How is it possible to imagine a darkness filled with light or a shine that contains the qualities of both light and darkness? 

  Jung has noted that darkness “has its own peculiar intellect and its own logic which should be taken very seriously,” and it is my intent to give darkness its due—not to rush beyond it but to enter its realm to learn more about its mysteries. To turn toward darkness in this way is an odd reversal of our ordinary propensity. To more fully understand the turn toward darkness it is first important to pause and consider how much the historical primacy of light has infused our understanding of consciousness itself. 

  The image of light and its corresponding metaphor of the sun are fundamentally intertwined with the history of consciousness. Our language demonstrates the pervasiveness of these images, and it is difficult to envision a way of thinking that does not rely on them. In myth, science, philosophy, religion, and alchemy we find these metaphors widely disseminated. Our language is filled with metaphors of illumination: to bring to light, to make clear, to enlighten, and so on, all serve in these and in many other contexts.

Marlan, S., 2005, The Black Sun: The alchemy and art of darkness. College Station: Texas A & M University Press.

Luz sobre o Caminho

"Cada homem é para si próprio, em absoluto, o caminho, a verdade, e a vida. Mas é-o apenas quando firmemente toma posse da sua individualidade e pela força da sua vontade espiritual desperta reconhece essa individualidade como sendo, não o seu próprio ser, mas aquela coisa que com dor criou para seu uso por meio da qual se propõe, à medida que o seu progresso se reflecte na sua inteligência, atingir a vida além da individualidade. Quando ele reconhece que para isto existe a sua estranha vida completa e separada, e então, e só então, ele está no caminho. Procurai-o aprofundando os abismos misteriosos e gloriosos do vosso próprio ser mais íntimo. Procurai-o pondo à prova toda a experiência, utilizando os sentidos para compreender o crescimento e a significação da individualidade e a beleza e obscuridade desses outros fragmentos divinos que lutam a vosso lado, e constituem a raça a que pertenceis. Procurai-o pelo estudo das leis do ser, das leis da natureza, das leis do sobrenatural; e procurai-o pela profunda genuflexão da alma à pálida estrela que brilha dentro de vós. Pouco a pouco, à medida que velais e adorais, a sua luz tornar-se-á mais forte. Então podereis saber que achaste o princípio do caminho."

Collins, Mabel, Luz sobre o Caminho, p.15. Tradução Fernando Pessoa. Lisboa: Assírio & Alvim, 2002.

O Mistério do Tarot: A Sacerdotisa

O segredo que esta carta encerra é o centro do mistério do Tarot. Este Liber Mundi, tecido em imagens e símbolos, guarda um enigma que carece de revelação. A verdadeira Luz está oculta por detrás do véu da Sacerdotisa.