When I first encountered Sean Tejaratchi‘s mindbending books, gosh, about fifteen years ago, I was instantly enchanted–and just a little bit waylaid.

Once you open one of Sean’s collections of vintage imagery, the effect is instantly alchemical, meaning Sean’s deft arrangement of paradoxical or nonsensical pairings (death and scissors, sex and kitchen gadgets, church and state, for example) will force your unconscious mind to reimagine and rethink the too-tight boundaries that define consensus reality.

I can’t explain exactly why this is the case; but after decades of working with the content of my client’s dreams, I can attest to the value in allowing the rational mind to dally in a big tub of images. In one sense this is why working with the Tarot can be so potent, although unlike the Tarot the unexpected and madcap nature of Sean’s vintage collections works quite differently.

And for that reason, I’m recommending Sean’s latest publication, the humongous, 450-page The Crap Hound Big Book of Unhappiness. I’m suggesting this book to friends, colleagues, and clients who are coming to terms with the aura of anxiety surrounding the ongoing Saturn Pluto conjunction; a planetary merger that will set the tenor for the entirety of 2020.

As Sean writes in the introduction to his collection:

My video will take you deeper into the book and also, hopefully, highlight parts of the thesis from my upcoming private report Saturn and Pluto and the Remains of the Day. A report that will be available next month on Astroinqiry.

If you’d like to receive a notice (and a special discount rate on my report) please sign up for my newsletter.

And you can order your own copy of The Crap Hound Book Big of Unhappiness from Amazon.

“The scientific theory I like best is that the
rings of Saturn are composed entirely of lost airline luggage.” –Mark Russell

Saturn has been on my mind this week. Or rather Saturn has been pinging me, tapping my shoulder and nudging my conscience, in the same way, most of us might experience Saturn — which is to say obliquely. From the corner of your eye, in the tractor beam of a projection or a dark figure in a dream.

Most of us have our eye, ear and heart tuned to the frequencies of the other planets and lights: Mercury (planning and conceptualizing), Venus (feeling what we want), Mars (getting what we want), Jupiter (persuing realities beyond the personal). The Moon – what poet Mary Oliver calls the soft animal of your body – is the fluid medium of consciousness and how our instinctive nature compliments the Sun’s ceaseless, live-giving radiance.

But with Saturn we’ve what psychologists call depression. If you tune out your conventional notions about depression and consider the condition in a different light, you will see something like this:

The writer Thomas Moore wrote that depression is an answer — a remedy — to manic hyperactivity, a frantic state reinforced by the constant buzz and hum of our info-glutted age. Feeling low and heavy we are forced to move inward and realign with the natural rhythm of our Earth-based bodies. It creates psychic space, a container for deeper reflection – where sensitivity increases and life events feel less threatening. In our bodies, we access the Earth’s wisdom to maneuver dilemmas. I mean, the Earth’s been doing just that for billions of years.

So when you have a moment this weekend, take some time and consider the following facts, pointers or articles related to Saturn. It benefits each of us to know, consciously, the only planet in the solar system that is associated with, not only lead but also diamonds.

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Charles Dickens pulled off a literary first when he gave a detailed account of the aftereffects of spontaneous human combustion in his epic novel Bleak House. The recounting went like this: While sitting and dozing in his cluttered room, Mr. Krook — a grizzled, alcohol-steeped rag merchant — abruptly burst into flames, leaving just a rancid smell and a gruesome pile of skeletal ash in his wake.

Dickens, a writer of keen detail and authenticity was always taken at his word by the public. And so one of the most horrifying images from the 19th Century claimed a spot in the collective imagination.

Even today, tales of spontaneous combustion continue to flare up (sorry) in the tabloids. And if those are not genuine, still, the impression of a human being inadvertently bursting into flames is a striking symbol — both mythic and alchemic.

I recalled Dickens and Mr. Krook while contemplating an illustration to mark Saturn’s entry into Capricorn on December 19. The image is fitting while Saturn closes in behind Pluto’s smoldering trail; a path that appeared like a flash fire after the tiny dynamo entered Capricorn in 2008.

The two planets will conjoin in January of 2020. Take this as an alert from the solar system’s public warning system.