A dear, dazzling soul took leave of the astrological community last night.

Many of us, today, are celebrating, recounting and mourning the extraordinary life of Kelly Lee Phipps.

Because astrology is a spiritual practice, a practice that offers the potential of awakening to those it touches, I’ve long known that astrologers comprise their own unique group soul upon the planet — a circle of colleagues that serves in the forging of a living connection between the terrestrial and the celestial within the individual soul.

Kelly embodied and embraced this service with all the gusto of a genuine (and wildly enthused) magician.

He inspired many hearts and minds, and initiated many others into the astrological logos as well — and offered the gift of his presence with spirit, imagination, humor and wisdom. A gentle man and a scholar.

“We are here to witness the creation and abet it. We are here to notice each thing so each thing gets noticed. Together we notice not only each mountain shadow and each stone on the beach but, especially, we notice the beautiful faces and complex natures of each other.

We are here to bring to consciousness the beauty and power that are around us and to praise the people who are here with us. We witness our generation and our times. We watch the weather. Otherwise, creation would be playing to an empty house.

According to the second law of thermodynamics, things fall apart. Structures disintegrate. Buckminster Fuller hinted at a reason we are here: By creating things, by thinking up new combinations, we counteract this flow of entropy. We make new structures, new wholeness, so the universe comes out even. A shepherd on a hilltop who looks at a mess of stars and thinks, ‘There’s a hunter, a plow, a fish,’ is making mental connections that have as much real force in the universe as the very fires in those stars themselves.”

— Annie Dillard

I died as a mineral and became a plant,
I died as plant and rose to animal,
I died as animal and I was Man.
Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?
Yet once more I shall die as Man, to soar
With angels blest; but even from angelhood
I must pass on: all except God doth perish.
When I have sacrificed my angel-soul,
I shall become what no mind e’er conceived.
Oh, let me not exist! for Non-existence
Proclaims in organ tones, ‘To Him we shall return.’

–Jalal ed-Din Rumi

Growing up gay in a dreadful Southern California suburb was made bearable for me after I discovered Gore Vidal in the early 1970s. I was around 14 and would disobey my parents and watch The Dick Cavett Show (or late into the night, Johnny Carson) where Vidal would appear and ignite intelligent, scintillating conversation with the hosts.

I recall seeing Vidal on Carson once where he explained how absurd it was that humans shit in the same water that they eventually drank. He’d come on the show to advocate developing a more sane approach to sewage, I forget the details, but his passionate rationality impressed me like crazy. Not just his rationality but his certainty about his rightness was beguiling. There was a way to be ‘right’ without being an asshole (a style which was opposite that of my father’s), and that made a bigger impression on me.

I don’t think I consciously knew Vidal was gay (or as he would define it: the practitioner of homosexual acts). Vidal wrote: “There is no such thing as a homosexual or a heterosexual person. There are only homo — or heterosexual acts. Most people are a mixture of impulses if not practices.” But as a budding queer I did respond to him as the sort of adult male I wanted to emulate. He was informed, stylish, wry and not possessed by a bitchy, negative anima complex. As soon as I could I began to read Vidal’s writing — understanding perhaps 60% of it at the time. (I just felt smarter knowing that I was making the effort). For me, his finest form was the essay — a clear parade of searing syntax that flowed, like lava, right from the center of his glowing brain. Read more

George Orwell once said that a man has the face that he deserves at age 50.

And while I’d agree with that sentiment as it relates to just about every single post 50-year-old walking the planet today — think Dick Cheney — I’d have to take exception with how that curse applied to Michael Jackson.

Dead at 50 and possessing a face with which no one should ever have to contend. Mike’s adult face was actually a mask. A direct creation of self-hatred, plain and simple. That and the way our own ghoulish fascination with his self-loathing spurred him on. An obsession that was prodded, secretly I think, by that part within each of us that dislikes parts of ourselves: wrinkles, sags, spots, dots; imperfection. Given unlimited wealth and time, Michael could nip, tuck, tweak and freak to his heart’s content. Only he could never get away from the self-loathing.

But enough bummer talk. Michael was a genuine puer aeternus. And no self-respecting puer, worth their essence in gold records, should ever live into his fifties. Michael was just taking leave on cue, true to his mythology. It makes perfect sense to me.

Mike’s key astrological signature reads like this — and is cosmic code for us to understand just about every aspect of his career: Uranus conjunct Venus in Leo. And Pluto conjunct his Virgo Sun. The Uranian aura — the dazzle, electricity and ingenuity to his performance style — mixed with a distinct charm and innocence. And the strange shadow catcher condition represented by his Pluto Sun conjunction. As I mentioned earlier, Michael’s Frankensteinian relationship with his own body and face fostered the perfect condition for the public to project their own obsessions with youth, beauty and perfection — and how those always remain elusive. Read more

Established astrologers — those that make some sort of living from the subject — are decidedly divided when it comes to the issue of Sun-sign columns. To some, Sun-sign astrology is a disgrace to the profundity and subtleties of the art. While others, myself included, see horoscope columns as good lure. If it weren’t for those tiny Dell Sun Sign booklets that I hoarded as a kid, I’d never have dedicated myself so determinedly to deeper study.

To pugnacious scientists like Richard Dawkins‘ dismay, it’s a dazzling testament to astrology’s oracular power that nearly every periodical in the world carries a horoscope section. Most of the Sun-sign columns read like fortune cookie banalities — and this might be the secret to their appeal (their association with eating dessert). But occasionally, amidst the riffraff and dross, a column appears that is both astrologically erudite and pop-culturally savvy — written in a manner that speaks to the urban poet (and astrology lover) within each of us.

Rockie Gardiner‘s astrology column for the L.A. Weekly, The Rockie Horoscope was just such a creation. Read more