Weekend Music Discovery. Grade: A-

The eclectic electronic composer Max Richter‘s new 8-hour digital omnibus: Sleep.

Each lengthy transition is a mesmerizing transmission crafted to deliver you, layer by layer to the core of wherever you go when you fall asleep at night.

In spots some of the tracks sounds like angelic beings are beckoning, in others you’re wandering naked in fields of clover and the temperature is perfect.

And no, god forbid, these aren’t New Age lullabies. Some of the sustained tones do to your ears what moonlight does to your eyes, the equivalent of liquid silver sonics.

You can order what is essentially a sampler of the project from Amazon here. Or the full 8-hours from Deutsche Grammophon here.
 
 

Yesterday public television in Seattle celebrated their decade-long relationship with the just-deceased self-help writer Wayne Dyer, and to honor the author the station was replaying one of his final talks.

The theme of his presentation alludes me; it was something about Five Steps to Something or Other, the secrets of which were contained in his new book, which was touted tastefully throughout his talk.

I decided to give the show a try, despite the fact that I’ve a strong aversion to listening to other people talk or write about ‘how’ life should be lived or experienced.

Prior to the advent of the Internet, this phenomenon of people giving advice about living was always buzzing in the background of life, but not in the omnipresent way it does now.

The Net has mutated what used to be a semi-contained industry (the self-help, how-to world) into a bacchanalia of yapping gurus and guides — billions of bromides pinging back and forth across blogs, YouTube and social media every hour.

The world, as the Net depicts it, is divided into distinct camps: Those with electronic devices doing nothing. And those doing nothing but writing or talking about doing stuff and then selling that information on an electronic device to people that aren’t doing anything.

Read this entire post here.

You won’t find a more uplifting description of Saturn’s placement in Sagittarius (where the planet will transit until December of 2017) than astrologer Marcia Moore‘s:

This position of Saturn “gives the capacity to concretize ideas and to bring abstract concepts down to earth. In this respect, Saturn is like a crystal which concentrates the light of the Sagittarian mind into a flame that can start a fire. Sagittarius, in turn, warms the austere formality of Saturn with the genial glow.”

Rational optimism like this is a welcome shift after Saturn’s final pass through Scorpio which often felt like a cathartic slog: A Roto-Rooter attached directly to the collective’s unconscious.

Astrologer Michael Lutin aptly associated Saturn’s transit through the last degrees of Scorpio with “death anxiety.” He listed several markers that were particularly difficult to resolve during the last couple of months. I’d imagine that you can relate to:

“The feeling of helplessness while awaiting a decision, diagnosis, judgment, revelation, miracle, change, or new direction.”

He also mentioned: “The anger brought by having to accept enforced change.”

And probably most painful and confusing, a kind of sadomasochistic “…holding on to improper attachments.”

I think we’re all welcoming the new Saturn through Sagittarius transit. So let’s talk about it.

Saturn’s New Abode

But first:

Imagine listening to only the trombone section playing a Haydn concerto. How weird. Something similar happens when astrologers attempt to define lone planetary transits, detached from the whole. Like I’m doing here, with Saturn’s transit through Sagittarius.

You can’t really pull out a single planet from the pantheon and then describe the possibilities inherent the transit. All of the planets participate in the solar system’s symphony simultaneously. So, keep this in mind whenever you read about significant planetary shifts in astrology. Only a facet is examined, a facet that is removed from the totality of the cosmic field. It is incomplete.

That said, of all the planets Saturn is the easiest to form a distinct impression of when you consider the planet’s placement in any of the twelve signs.

Meaning, wherever Saturn moves in the Zodiac, the reality principle under which we all abide, shifts. So you sense it palpably. It’s like changing the lenses in your glasses. The effect is immediate. Various qualities of the sign Saturn transits are made distinct and specific, and, Saturn being Saturn, we’re pulled in — like Brer Rabbit with the Tar-Baby — until we decipher the code.

So, if Saturn in Scorpio is tied to “death anxiety,” will Saturn in Sagittarius involve life anxiety?

Not exactly. But kind of.

Sagittarius, of all the signs, is related to the flame of optimism, a faith in the ultimate good that resides within or beneath every experience in life. It sounds corny, but think of where you’d be in life if you didn’t have faith? (Not belief, mind you — but faith. Think about the two words and faith’s meaning will become emphatic; Saturnine).

So this is the promise of Saturn in Sagittarius: The realistic benefits of exercising faith. This might show up in your life (at least initially, on the heels of the Scorpio transit) as a super-effort to remember why life is worth living. Read more