1990 – 1992 Initiation 9: Cosmic Astral Birth

INITIATION IX: COSMIC ASTRAL BIRTH (1990 – 1992)

On March 6, 1990, Saturn moved across 22.5 degrees of Capricorn (T-E Aquarius), thus presumably beginning my 9th Initiation, that of Cosmic Astral Birth. However, Saturn went retrograde across this point on July 8, not recrossing until December 3, 1990. It was over this nine-month period that Nancy and I went through the most difficult period of our relationship. Nancy now signed up for the Army Reserves, to my great dismay. The cut-off age for military service was thirty-five, and Nancy would turn thirty-five in June, 1990 — it was now or never, and she wanted to experience it while she could. Basic Training started in early March, just after we got our new two-bedroom apartment. I thought I knew a little more than Nancy about what the Army, and especially Basic Training, was for — to train people to kill people. I had tried to express my revulsion to her, but she had been promised a good job in Technical Intelligence as an Artist, and would not be dissuaded. Just before she left for her three months of Basic at Fort Dix, I shaved my head — partly in an ironical salute to her incipient military service, but mostly to acknowledge and express a new phase of my life.

I really wasn’t sure we were supposed to be together anymore; Nancy and I were moving further and further apart, both literally and figuratively. I tried to support her emotionally, but she seemed to be growing ever coarser and cruder under the auspices of the Army. However as the stressful realities of Basic Training sank in and she practiced stabbing dummies with bayonets and shooting human-shaped targets, she wrote and asked me to look into obtaining Conscientious Objector status. I spoke with the Boston Quakers and passed on the information to her. She didn’t act on it; I think just knowing she had options made it easier for her to stick it out. Even though she was the oldest recruit, she excelled there and even became an Expert Marksman: the best in her company.

Meanwhile, I celebrated my thirty-fourth birthday alone, set up my bedroom in our new apartment, and continued corresponding with the psychiatrist’s daughter, the blonde, azure-eyed Aquarian Solar Initiate I had last seen on my Washington tour in December 1987 — the one with whom all my chakras had simultaneously opened. There was still a strong bond of unfinished business between us; she was as gracious and loving as ever, and we made tentative plans to meet in early May. I tried to tell Nancy both by phone and by letter that I wished to break up with her, but she refused to hear me or to discuss it. I felt sad and guilty but it seemed I had no real choice. I was like the proverbial drowning man grasping at straws: If I could only find my ideal mate before Nancy returned, it would present her with the only fait accompli that she couldn’t deny.

Of course I would not choose just anyone. A few months earlier a beautiful neighbor with whom I had had a few spiritual discussions approached me on our common backporch, clad only in a bathrobe and eating a sausage in a most suggestive manner. Letting the robe fall off her shoulders, she stared deep into my eyes while sliding the sausage slowly into her mouth. “I’m sorry if I am supposed to find that attractive,” I told her, “but I am a vegetarian!” As she continued her advances, I realized she was slightly intoxicated, and told her gently that she was very beautiful, but I was not interested; I was in a relationship with Nancy. She apologized the next day, saying, “I was drunk. You know what it’s like to be drunk, don’t you?” I grinned and said, “Yes, sure; I tried it in college and threw up all over a snowbank!” She nodded and left. I didn’t add that while impairing certain brain/body functions and heightening my sensual awareness, neither alcohol nor pot had ever made me do anything I wouldn’t normally have done sober. At any rate, the woman while physically gorgeous was not yet committed to the spiritual path, and so could not hold any attraction for me even if I were alone, and I kept my distance from my beautiful neighbor during Nancy’s absence.

However I did invite my cousin, a wise and lovely Pisces with whom I had always shared a deep and warm bond, to visit me, and after lunch asked her if she wished to consider a relationship. Rather taken aback by my urgency, she said there was no hurry; there would always be time. I nodded dubiously — I knew I was at my last major crossroad where relationships were concerned, and the woman I would be with in a few months would almost certainly be my mate for life — but in the larger sense, across lifetimes perhaps, my cousin was right. At any rate, it would not happen in this lifetime! Her refusal was undoubtedly for the best, given certain less-than-desirable recessive genes in our ancestor’s line. Despite the fact that my cousin had found me attractive in the past, I suspect that she found neither my unusually short hair nor my evident desperation particularly appealing!

My Aquarius friend and I confirmed our plans, and when she came up by Amtrak to visit for a week in May, it was utter paradise. She put me on a short diet of forty cups of hot water infused with fresh-squeezed lemon-juice, along with an occasional meal of adzuki beans and ghee to draw off toxins. Almost immediately I felt cleansed and purified; everything was once again bathed in the most lovely rich gold light. I was a bit surprised both by how close to the surface this golden radiance had been, and that it was reached through physical purification.

We went to Jamaica Plain’s Arnold Arboretum, where all the trees were blooming; we toured Cambridge, and Boston, and Salem, but mostly we just chanted, and talked, and laughed, and then chanted, and talked, and laughed some more. How lovely it all seemed! We slept together in my bed every night, but we did not have sex — until her last night in Salem. This did not go so well, no doubt in part because of the guilt I — or we — felt. But there was more: Despite her physical grace and beauty, and her clear sense of spirituality, her field was surprisingly dense — almost impervious to my quickening influence. As I began to channel Shiva, she commmented on how impersonal I seemed, and my attempts to acknowledge and awaken Shakti within her were interrupted by her constant flow of directions — all well and good for a meeting of egos, but not so good for Tantra, at least as I practised it. Despite these discords, I was still open to forging a deeper relationship with her, but she was torn — she still had deep feelings for an old boyfriend. Could she decide later? No, I told her; if I had not found another mate when Nancy came back, and if Nancy would still have me (a big “if,” I knew), I would stay with her. I knew this sounded odd, but the alternate futures looked very clear. It quite literally was Now or Never. Well, then, No, she said regretfully. So be it. Apparently I was meant to be with Nancy, if she would still have me!

It was not long before Specialist Nancy returned from Basic Training, looking supremely tanned, fit and healthy. In great remorse I immediately told her everything. She was not too surprised, I think. Was it over now? She asked. Yes, totally, I said. I was hers alone if she wanted me; although I didn’t expect her to forgive me. But after meditating on it for about five minutes, she did! I was awe-struck by her maturity, and now committed myself to her fully.

On August 14, 1990, my maternal grandfather, John Freeman Bradley, died at the age of 86. When I had known Nancy but a few months, my mother had invited us to accompany her on a visit to her father, and I had told Nancy I did not recommend that she go. My own highly critical snobbery I knew to be hard enough on her; my grandfather’s was infinitely worse. Even my own Harvard education and mastery of English was not proof against John Bradley’s scathing contempt; on my previous visit to him I had mentioned that something was generic — pronouncing it ‘jen-air-ic’ — to which he replied angrily, “It is pronounced ‘jen-uh-ric’! ‘Jen-uh-ric’!” and muttered something about the declining standards at Harvard. Upon returning home I had looked it up in my Oxford English Dictionary, and found that I had been right, and my grandfather’s version (no doubt inspired by the original Latin ‘genus, generis‘) was not even listed as a secondary pronunciation. My grandfather taught me that day to mistrust “righteous” anger; when most certain I was right, I would almost certainly be wrong! But I wished I had not warned Nancy against visiting him with me, for on my last visit to him, he was deeply changed. Disease and old age had destroyed his illusion of total control, and he was both frailer and much kinder than I had ever known him to be before. And that was the last time I saw him alive; Nancy never had another chance to meet him, and did not accompany me to his funeral.

About that time I finally finished scrimshawing the Salem tusk. It now had forty scenes woven together in a comprehensive history of Salem, beginning with the Native Americans at the base and culminating in twentieth-century Salem near the tip. The very tip was given over to angels, as depictions of our future selves. Ten scenes along the front side showed specific Salem ships through the centuries; ten scenes along the bottom showed representative cargoes of those ships; ten scenes along the back depicted Salem architectural landmarks, and ten scenes along the top showed famous men and women of Salem associated with those ships and those buildings.

Laurie Cabot, the “Official Witch of Salem,” heard that she was depicted on the tusk and invited me to her house near Derby Street to show it to her. Answering my knock, she maternally embraced me, completely enfolding me for a few moments in her black robes. Much like her shop Crow Haven, her house was lavishly hung with tapestries, scented with incense, and profusely adorned with magical objects and Goddess icons. After she examined her portrait and sweetly complimented me on the tusk, we talked of spirituality and Wicca. We both agreed that Salem really needed a genuine Museum of Witchcraft, and I spoke enthusiastically of my Temple designs and my work with the 144 Solar Angels, astrology, and subtle anatomy. She asked me who I was going to sell the tusk to, and I told her I hadn’t decided yet. I took the finished tusk around to show my various friends in the Salem Library, the Essex Museum, the National Park Service, and the Peabody Museum, trying to decide which institution would be best-suited to own it. After a really nicely-written and well-illustrated article on the Salem tusk appeared in the Salem News in September, I finally sold the tusk for $4,000 to the Peabody Museum (now the Peabody-Essex Museum of Salem).

It was about this time that some more Extraterrestrial material surfaced. Early one morning I had a particularly vivid dream of interstellar politics and espionage, wherein I was essentially an Ambassador at a Constellation Council. The dream ended when a very tall, blond-haired, blue-eyed humanoid alien (Pleiadean, I presume) suddenly opened a small blinking-red third eye in his forehead which took a flash-photo of my entire brain-contents. I woke up in fear and blinding light, together with a sense of shock and betrayal. The following morning I awoke in utter panic from a terrifying dream in which my entire family was hypnotically paralyzed in our car while encountering a huge silvery orb on a rural Virginia road. From the look of the car and our various ages, it was probably in the early 1960s. This felt like a deeply-hidden memory resurfacing. Allowing for the usual distortions of dreams, still both of these experiences were very real, and somewhat disconcerting, as I had always viewed E.T.’s with no conscious fear whatsoever. When I was first introduced to my E.T. Higher Selves and Galactic politics in the fall of 1984, there had been very little personal affect; this was much more immediate and personal. It now seemed as if my entire family had been involved with E.T.s for most of my life! As far as I can recall, I had not seen any E.T. books or movies recently, and we had no T.V. I ordinarily never had nightmares. I am reminded of my guides, who had told me “When Love knocks at the door, all your fears line up to be released!” I learned something else about Love in that apartment. It had a healthy cockroach population, and I discovered that when a cockroach and I encountered one another by surprise, if my energy was in my head, the roach reacted in fear and ran for cover, whereas if I dropped my energy into my heart and approached it with Love, the roach not only didn’t run, but it would also do everything I asked it to do mentally — move to a certain point, stop, wave its feelers, everything!

Up until this time Nancy and I had bicycled everywhere, even as far as Gloucester, or taken the bus or train for longer trips. But as the fall progressed towards winter, Nancy’s friend Jack Turgeon — on a short trip home to his native shores from his usual abode aboard a boat in the Florida Keys — told her of an old van for sale which he had spotted on one of his junk-collecting expeditions. It was a circa-1975 motley jade-green Ford Econoline which ran well, but needed some bodywork. We bought it for $250, and then paid Jack an additional $50 to rivet the floor back onto the side walls, where it had all rusted away near the rear door. And as we moved into November, Nancy decided it would be fun to spend the winter in Florida. She didn’t tell me at the time, but she had decided to dump me there! We still weren’t enjoying life together all that much, and she reasoned that if she left me in Florida and returned home, I would stay down south and meet someone there, and she wouldn’t have to see me with anyone else and be jealous.

We left Salem in the last week of November, and had a really great time on the road; enjoying the lush trees of my old homestate of Virginia, and discovering the moist ambience and time-soaked architecture of Charleston and Savannah. Sometimes we camped out in the van, other times we slept in cheap hotels or youth hostels; our favorite was the treehouse hostel in northern Georgia. As we drove further and further south, we felt lighter and lighter. By the time we arrived in the Keys on December 1, 1990, we were in the full sunshine of mutual appreciation at last; Nancy told me later it was then that she had decided to keep me after all!

(To be continued)