Brock’s natal astrology chart, a “medicine bow” which forecasts the karmic learning journey we choose in each lifetime.

The Medicine Bow is a lifelong do-it-yourself guide via computers, the Internet, books, seminars, trade magazines and other mass media resources; an ancient tool for the emerging soul that illuminates our harmony with the Universe’s other cultures and religions.

The Zodiac is the learning topography of the soul. The astrology transits and signs we choose are the “bow and arrow” movement of a Healing Universe; the universal therapy that heals the illusory brokenness obscuring our Oneness

Our multiple-life journeys are down-to-earth, informative, humorous, spiritual narratives And here, includes Pluto and a Civil Rights demonstration, Neptune and California counseling seminars, the Moon’s mom and Elvis coincidences or changing careers from a chaplain to a Chicago taxicab driver when the Progressed Sun moved into Leo. Astrology was simultaneously developed by Inuit Eskimos, India yogis and Iraq priests in such ancient astronomy observatories as the Medicine Wheel in Northwest Wyoming, Iraqui Ziggurats and Stonehedge (a full-scale replica is in Southwest Washington).

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Chapter 2

Grace Land

Mom and Elvis

"Why the hell are my Mexican neighbors playing their radio so early in the morning?", I groaned. Sometimes, they had a late night barbecue and guitar fiesta. But the voice was not Hispanic. It was unmistakably Elvis Presley, crooning "You're the happiest angel in the clouds above the moon!"

And yet, as the music woke me up, I realized Elvis never sang those lyrics. And that it was not a radio but a ballad in my dreams. So, I wrote the words down and consulted an astrology ephemeris for a full moon. Perhaps, a book company was going to offer me a publishing contract.

That morning, I went to the Public Library for a reference from Raymond Moody's Life AfterLife. Lo and behold, the card catalogue listed another book by Moody, Elvis After Life (1987). "Hmmm!", I wondered, as I made my way to the library stacks and opened to his only mention of Elvis singing to someone in a dream.

At the 7-Eleven, I overheard someone say "Roger" – and mused, "Perhaps, I'm supposed to read Roger Ebert's movie review in the Chicago Sun-Times". Sure enough, he reviewed Honeymoon in Vegas the following day. The ad featured an Elvis impersonator parachuting over Las Vegas , a large moon in the background.

Roger said the main character, at his mother's deathbed, vowed to never marry. But he changed his mind and flew his fiancee to Las Vegas where a gambler thought she was the reincarnation of his ex-wife. My own mother and I became much closer just before she died – and I never married. In another magazine article, I explained how she and others made contact from the other side. Reincarnation was something I came to believe, something my Capricorn mother would understand and support.

For many years, I had been searching for a home in the West. It was so frustrating that I had recently exclaimed, "Oh, hell! I'm tired of all this. I'm going to a swanky place like Lake Tahoe - Reno , Nevada – and have fun for the rest of my life. Let the world save itself!"

"Wait a minute!", I thought, "The Tahoe Area has the mountains and lakes of my native Upstate New York and access to the San Francisco Area's East-West resources. Mark Twain, who wrote many of his books near my hometown, began his writing career (The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County) as a newspaper reporter in Virginia City , Nevada . It was damn near perfect!"

Mom's name was Grace Dauchey-Smith. The home Elvis built in Memphis , Tennessee for his mother, father and himself is known the world over as Graceland . Mom was lucky in gambling, and Elvis starred in Las Vegas . She loved Country-western music, the Appalachian Mountains – and seemed to be saying "Yes! Tahoe (or a “ Corning ”) is the home I was searching for".

A year earlier, an Alabama nurse stopped by for counseling during a Chicago trip. A few months after my dream, her friends invited me to lead a workshop in Tupelo , Mississippi , the first and only time I did so outside the Chicago Area. After flying me into Memphis , they drove me to Elvis' birthplace ( Tupelo ) and told stories about his youth.

The furthest my mother ever traveled was by train, through Tupelo , to see my father at a Mississippi Naval base during World War II. When a Southern bus driver asked her to leave the "For Colored Only" back of a bus, she refused. In the 1960s, I transferred from an Upstate New York home to a college in Florida (until then, my longest trip) and became involved in Civil Rights. [One of Elvis’ concerts was back in his Tupelo hometown.]

Elvis and I were from poor, bluecollar neighborhoods with African-American, Country-western and Gospel music – a down-to-earth spiritual and intercultural influence in our careers. His family moved to Memphis , a home of the Blues (African-American) – and a town Mark Twain steered riverboats by.

I moved from Bath , New York to a rivertown near where Mark Twain wrote Huckleberry Finn, enrolled in a Chicago Area seminary and became an Associate Pastor of an African-American church in the Cabrini-Greene housing projects, near Rush Street 's Blues and Jazz scene. My mother's favorite singers were Hank Williams from Mississippi and Eddy Arnold, the Tennessee Plowboy. In addition to Country-western, I loved the Chicago Blues (from the Mississippi Delta).

As the coincidences continued, I said "Hello, mom!" and let it go at that because of the Elvismania, the "Where is Elvis?" jokes. While a chaplain in a Pacific Northwest state mental hospital, I was familiar with religious delusions, pain projected upon popular cult heroes.

Raymond Moody, a clinical psychologist, gives an explanation for this phenomena in Elvis After Life. But, he is baffled by the strange coincidences and how a PhD colleague's psychic experience with Elvis could change her life, "By the time it was over, I understood that there is much more to the mind and the spirit of the human being, than I had allowed up to then, and that if I was going to be a full human being to the point where I could be helpful to others, I had to realize this and let it affect me fully from within, and allow myself the liberty to explore it to the utmost".

A psychologist, two nurses and another chaplain at the state mental hospital introduced me to a local psychic institute, which led to a holistic counseling and writing career in Chicago. It has also facilitated more contact with astrology, Native American, pagan and other spiritual paths.

My Elvis dream happened as I was writing more and more about Gaia, the Earth Mother. Transiting Pluto was conjuncting my Fourth House (the mother and home), which is in Elvis' natal chart. The Fourth house, natural House of Cancer, is ruled by the Moon, a female symbol.

The most startling deja vu occurred the day I began writing a magazine article about this, when Venus was conjuncting Pluto (opposite Jupiter) in my Fourth House. According to Robert Hand, this transit brings "a greater understanding of yourself and your place in the universe" (Planets in Transit).

In the morning, I walked into a coffee shop playing Elvis' "That's all right mama!", received a Canadian quarter (with my elk totem) in change, met a band member from Big Guitars ofMemphis (who knew the Jordinaires) and purchased Barbara Hand Clow's Chiron from a New Age bookstore. Those with my natal Chiron in Cancer, she says, are concerned with "a healing of the Earth".

At the Public Library, I discovered Tupelo is a Chickasaw name for lodging place or gum tree pole which bends in a direction the tribe should settle. Elvis was born across the street from a Methodist Church (I became a Methodist minister). But his mother took him to her Assembly of God Church. Like them, I loved the spirit and music of my maternal grandmother's gospel church more than the formal Methodist church my father sent me to. My mother's aunt and the niece she babysat for were named Gladys Smith (Elvis' mother's maiden name). As a teenager, Gladys babysat for Grace (Reed) who introduced her to Jimmie Rodgers' (from Mississippi) records and "buck dancing" – which influenced her legendary son's style (see Elvis and Gladys by Elaine Dundy).

When he was three years old, Elvis' father was in a Mississippi prison. When I was three, my own father was at a Naval base in Mississippi. My ancestry is Scots-Irish, English and Native American. Elvis' maternal ancestry is Scots-Irish and Native American. Elvis' maternal grandfather's name was Bob Smith who made "moonshine". My name before changing it to Brock El/k Horn was Bob Smith.

The Homeless

The messages from mom and Elvis continued while writing two more magazine articles about them. Honeymoon in Las Vegas appeared on television (11/13/95) in a week NBC dedicated to the city Elvis often performed in (Jay Leno's The Tonight Show originated from there). Graceland Lives, a play by June Finfer at the Evanston Public Library (11/30/95), was a dialogue among Chicagoans buried in Graceland Cemetery.

I also learned the major events in Elvis' life occurred during the New and Full Moon ( The New and Full Moons by M.J. Makransky, Dell Horoscope, 8/3/95): his first job (as a theater usher), first big concert, the death of his mother, discharge from the Army (and resuming of his career), the birth of his daughter, opening in Las Vegas (his first stage show in years) and his wife leaving him.

When the December (1995) Full Moon was in Gemini (conjuncting Venus in my 10th House, opposite Jupiter in the Fourth), a friend surprised me with an astrology book from the Light of theMoon bookstore (where an astrologer had Elvis' natal chart waiting for me) – at June's home. June became involved in Eastern religions with me over 20 years ago. June is also the name of Elvis' girlfriend (1956) who gave him a copy of Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet.

That morning, I left a telephone message for Barb June Thomas regarding my Elvis article. Barb, spiritually devoted to him for years, made a pilgrimage to Graceland. In 1994, she appeared on the Howard Street El station, asked "Aren't you Brock Elk Horn? Remember me?" and showed me my signature on the tape of a 1990 counseling session. She was on the way to the bookstore where I worked.

After riding the El train to Evanston, we talked for over an hour about her guardian angel (Elvis) – at the Foster Avenue El stop. Barb thought I had the same down-to-earth, global spirituality as Elvis – an insight which illumined the Earth mother theme in my writing. That El(vis?) stop was the only place my mother and father boarded the CTA while visiting me during my Evanston seminary days. Barb Thomas is also the same name as my mother's former next-door neighbor.

On 12/7/95, Barb returned my phone call from her new job in the advertising department of the Chicago Sun-Times. "Wait a minute!", she said – and put me on hold, listening to a description of the newspaper's Auto and Sunday Travel sections. When she returned, I said my mother's next-door neighbor (Barb Thomas) was married to a Used Car salesman – and my own family were auto mechanics.

On the front page of that Sunday's (12/10/95) Chicago Sun-Times Travel section were photos of Lake Tahoe and Las Vegas. Mercury was conjuncting Jupiter in my Fourth House. "You may express this transit", Robert Hand (Planets in Transit) says, "by purchasing real estate or a new home. Land and houses are an external symbol of the desire for a stable inner world... This is the time to put down roots... having a real sense of belonging to a place, a community and family".

"Looking for a home, looking for a home" was the refrain in Tex Ritter's Boll Weevil song which my mother played over and over. When I told her my 6th grade teacher had mentioned boll weevils, she let me take her record to school. But on the way home, someone pushed me. And it dropped and broke into pieces on the sidewalk. Aware of how distraught I was over knowing we didn't have money for another, mom said "It's okay". That memory of her love and the "looking for a home" theme touched me deeply.

Mom and I shared a lonely melancholy because of my father's two year absence during World War II – not knowing if he would return. We were also affected by the grief of my father who named me after his only other sibling who died at the age of nine. Elvis and his mother also became closer – when his father was in a penitentiary for forging a check.

And because of a twin brother's death in childbirth, something which affected him for the rest of his life. Peter Whitmer, a clinical psychologist, delivered a paper at Harvard University on Elvis as a "Twinless Twin", "leaving Elvis a lifelong legacy of loss, pain and survivor guilt. Some say Elvis would `talk to' Jesse [the stillborn twin] for the rest of his life" ("Among the Believers" by Ron Rosenbaum, New York Times Magazine, 9/24/95).

As a Gemini (the twins), I was two persons – torn between living up to special expectations from my father and grandmother (and resolving their grief) – and a natural love for my mother, that was strengthened by my father's wartime absence. After he returned, our maternal bond was obscured by family birthdays at his mother's home. But, it only enhanced the lonely journey my mother was sensitive to – similar to what Elvis' mother felt when her son became a controversial public figure.

The Robert Smith I was named after died in 1932. Elvis was born a Capricorn (as was my mother and younger brother) January 8, 1935, 12:20 P.M. CST in Tupelo, Mississippi. I was born May 28, 1941, 12:22 P.M. EDT in Corning, New York – four days later than another guitar player (Bob Dylan, 5/24/1941).

In the 1960s, I left home searching for social, religious and political unity in a world broken by fear, guilt and anger over its differences. That journey toward spiritual unity has been nurtured by a changing era's scientific technology and East-West dialogue.

Elvis died (8/16/1977) reading The Scientific Search for the Face of Jesus, that was given to him by a friend from California he was planning to film Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet with. In 1976, I left the United Methodist Church for California to be a lumberjack, learn to play the guitar – and write a more inclusive portrait of Jesus, one related to Eastern religions and my working-class background.

The search for our spiritual Home is universal, the purpose of our Earth journey. In the 20th century, that has been accelerated by world wars, immigration, changing national boundaries and generational conflict in an electronic global village. Leaving our parental homes for marriage, college or the Armed Services are death and rebirth ways of sometimes finding our Selves through failure, divorce, alcoholism, counseling et al. "down the end of a lonely street in Heartbreak Hotel" (Heartbreak Hotel by Elvis Presley).

Barb mentioned how the search for her real father opened up metaphysical doors which transformed her life. I told her about a father on the East Coast finding his son on the West Coast through a dream of Elvis (Elvis After Life by Raymond Moody) – and added my thanks for delivering another message from my mother (and Elvis). By "coincidence", that Sunday's Chicago Sun-Times mentioned the Internet number of The Monthly Aspectarian's Lightworks which includes "some lovely angel artwork".

"Are you lonesome tonight?" Elvis sang after I walked from June's home to a restaurant. Someone was playing the song in which he quoted Shakespeare about our entrances and exits on this earthly stage, a metaphor I was using in writing about Chikagou, Gaia. Perhaps, I mused, the month of June with its Gemini (air, communication) – Cancer (ruled by the Moon) cusp was related to Elvis' singing to me about "clouds above the moon".

"Was I lonesome?"

"Yeah, mom – but not as much as before. You've helped me feel the arms of the Earth Mother supporting our growth".

The Earth Mother

Bob Smith made moonshine, sharecropped, built railroad crossties, dug ditches, swept cemeteries – and moved his family to Marion Parker's dairy farm, Isom Parker's, Marvin Lamb's, Jim Love's, Luther Lummus', and White Mansell's farm where Gladys Love Smith was born. He died in 1930 and is buried in an unmarked grave along with Gladys' mother – as was my own mother's parents.

Like Gladys, mom was from a poor family who moved from one job to another. Her father died soon after she was born, a stepfather was abusive and her only Christmas present one year was a bowl of candy. She worked in odd jobs to supplement the family income; never finished the same school in one year until high school.

In migrating from place to place, mom and Gladys learned to trust the Earth's resources: to live off the land, to value friends and family, to retreat to the hills, to go within and meditate, to look beyond their pain and dream – like 19th century American immigrants, 1930s Okies, 1960s hippies and 1990s "Internet-ers".

The 20th century nurtures a god/goddess within spirituality (Native American, paganism, Eastern religions and Country-Western Gospel) and multi-cultural global village on a do-it-yourself frontier. Solitary entrepreneurs unencumbered by authoritarian social, religious and political institutions have been unifying a planetary stage as diverse as the 1940s Grand Ole' Opry.

Such freedom nurtured a joy in mom's heartache and loneliness – as expressed by one of her favorite singers, Hank Williams, in "Your Cheatin' Heart" ("tears come down like falling rain") – and in the Chicago Blues, 1960s folk songs and Elvis. When she and I visited her kinfolk in their ramshackle rooming houses in the Appalachian foothills, we picked blackberries along dirt roads, swam in cool creeks and studied hilltop vistas.

That spirit was in our wartime neighborhood of low-income factory workers, Italian immigrants, Jewish grocers and backyard junkpiles in overgrown fields between Route 17 and the Chemung River. However, when my father returned from the Navy, we became (like Elvis and his mother) prisoners, lonely outsiders, of his post-World War II American middle class dream. I had to dress up and behave in a Christian, Republican church, school and town of crew-cut football heroes and Barbie doll prom queens planning a college education and home in suburban ticky tacky boxes.

So, we dreamed of the hills and stars – with country-western music, comic books and 1950s television. At the Steuben County Fair, she had my photo taken with Gene Autry's sidekick, Smiley Burnette. Mom and I loved The Twilight Zone, Star Trek and Loretta Lynn before they became popular. Like Elvis, we swapped Batman, Superman and Captain Marvel comic books with poor neighbors.

Elvis painted a Captain Marvel lightning bolt on his bus and airplane, I on a baseball bat. After joining Little League baseball, I made the All-stars and mom memorized the starting lineup of the New York Yankees. She taught me how to spell Mississippi and the Cisco Kid's sidekick (Chito Jose Gonzales Beaustamonte Rafferty. Mom read movie and romance magazines; worked crossword puzzles. I became a sports reporter for the local newspaper.

In contrast, my grandmother's clean-cut Methodist Church, mom's attitude toward the body was down-to-earth. Ragamuffin kids with dirty shoes, loud burps, snotty noses, smelly farts and skinned knees tromped through a home she proudly compared to the movies' Ma and Pa Kettle. When mom yelled "Come and get it", we gathered around a free-for-all of meat loaf and mashed potatoes, fried chicken or spaghetti and meat balls.

Christianity was split from the Earth Mother, from its body (sex, feelings, et al.), from the Self-expressive god/goddess within. But mom bought me a sexy pin-up shirt and in later years, brought home girlie magazines from a motel she cleaned rooms for. Because of her, I've never been able to see [Jesus] as other than the son of a carpenter (Joe) with callused hands and an Earth mother who diapered unruly of kids, cursed the budget and sloshed hogs.

Only with mom, was I able to express a rebellious anger and hound-dog loneliness, the passion for an individual freedom and humanitarian justice that she understood. The life she endured supported my lonely journey in a way Elvis' mother did for her son.

Elvis' art (like French Impressionism and African-American Jazz) was a natural expression of the Earth Mother. So, in the 1950s, I rebelled with rock n' roll, did an impersonation of him on Senior Day. And in the 1960s, fought for Civil Rights with African Americans; later for a Whole Earth university, home and church without walls.

As a pastor in bluecollar, African-American, gay-lesbian and country parish neighborhoods, I talked of a God with dirty hands. And hoboed through California with holistic counseling and Eastern religion workshops where I sat nude in redwood hot tubs with long-haired Zen Buddhists and lumberjacks listening to John Denver's Country Home and Hank William's Your Cheatin'Heart. In a Midwestern parish of farmers, I listened to Loretta Lynn singing "Coal Miner's Daughter" at a county fair. And finally, left the church to write in a frontier town of working-class immigrants (Chikagou, Gaia).

There is a grace, a love in Gaia, the Earth mother, in our Selves that heals wayward, lonesome souls. As pilgrims in this healing place, we are on a journey of Self-discovery, to remove illusions about our differences and abundant resources, to discover the Inner home that unites us.

... Meanwhile, as the Sun moved into Capricorn (1995), the coincidences among my mother, Elvis and I reached the absurd. I discovered Colonel Tom Parker was the former manager of mom's favorite singer (Eddy Arnold). In the 1950s, he put a paper mache model of the RCA dog Nipper on stage when Elvis was singing. Mom had a dog named Nipper.

Mom was born January 6, two days before Elvis. My father was a Taurus (an Earth Mother symbol) as was Elvis' mother and father. He gave me his middle name (Austin) as did Elvis' father (Aron). Elvis and his father were truck drivers; my father and I, auto mechanics who greased trucks.

Elvis' cousin Bob Smith (and his family) moved to Memphis with the Presleys and later to Graceland. My mother and Elvis gave a daughter the same middle name, Marie. Mom's nickname (on her tombstone) was "Gummy". Also known as "Gum" by her grandchildren, it is the name of the tree Elvis' birthplace (Tupelo) is named for.

Elvis was into Numerology which I have a computer program of. The number of letters in Elvis and my first and last name are the same (5 and 7). So are the number of letters in Elvis and my mother's maiden names (5 and 6). Grace and Gladys' middle name (Love) are spiritual words. Mom died in 1983 when I was 42 (Elvis' age when he died).

Dan Keough was the first husband of Elvis' daughter Marie. Don Keough was a 1950s high school pal who also listened to Elvis' records at dances. Jim Brown of the Cleveland Browns was Elvis and my favorite football player. I went to an Elmira, New York sports banquet to see him. Elvis played the end position in high school football (so did I for one year) and left because of an injury (so did I). We both had a scar under one eye.

Elvis asked Jess Stearn to write about his spirituality (The Truth About Elvis by Stearn and Larry Geller). In a 1991 magazine article, I quoted Stearn about my mother and others communicating after death. In 1977, when Elvis died, there was an angry separation from my mother and the family for covering up the pain that oppressed us both. It led to a healing correspondence that continues after her death.

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Chapter 4

The Medicine Bow

Aries, The Warrior

May, 1976. Zero visibility! A snowstorm from the Medicine Bow Mountains suddenly descended upon my 1969 Rambler. The headlights were useless. And fear gripped the steering wheel when I began sliding along U.S. Interstate 80. My hopes and dreams were on a precarious edge, in danger of crashing into some forlorn abyss. At that moment, I felt a strange peace. The illusory boundaries of life and death, time and space vanished. My soul was adrift in the galaxy and ...

... I was 12 years old, bicycling through winter winds on a busy highway. "Shorty", an employee in my father's gas station, told fascinating stories of Native American sites in Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains and near my hometown. I was so determined to explore one that I left behind a friend who complained of the weather – and pedaled across the Chemung River Bridge onto Route 17. Nothing could stop an adventurous spirit within.

Aries, the warrior, rules my [Ninth house], the natural house of Sagittarius – long distance travel, higher education, publishing religion and philosophy. Whether the Ninth, Seventh (relationships), Tenth (career) or other houses, everyone has Aries somewhere in their astrology chart. In addition, Mars which rules Aries, charges around the zodiac every 22 months and empowers whatever house or planet it runs into.

In 1976, the freedom of the West and the grandeur of the Rocky Mountains were so near – after Iowa and Nebraska cornfields, after so many flatland years – that, I pushed myself through the night toward Cheyenne , Wyoming and the Great Divide – 1,000 miles from my Chicago clergy past and 1,000 miles from a hippie lifestyle in California 's High Sierras.

"Aries, ruled by the planet Mars, is the natural sign of the first house. It signifies beginnings and new enterprise; hence, Aries is indicative of the pioneer spirit. A cardinal-fire-positive sign, Aries represents dynamic action, initiative, self-motivation, enthusiastic drive, aggressive effort ... [Aries' persons are] highly competitive, outgoing, resourceful, confident and decisive. They step into the thick of things boldly, sure of themselves, fearless of adverse consequences, unafraid of failure (Compendium of Astrology by Rose Lineman and Jan Popelka).

The natal horoscope is our soul's blueprint for a lifelong journey. And Aries' (or Mars') location is where our Spirit fiercely fights through any roadblocks. In May, 1976, Mars was sextiling Saturn in my Ninth house while Jupiter, the natural ruler of the 9th house, was transiting the 9th and sextiling my Mars. When I first left home for college, Jupiter was also sextiling Mars – and Pluto was opposing it.

Aries has always been a merciless Ninth House taskmaster. During college, I worked in a settlement house for Cuban refugees, attended an Illinois religious conference and spent a Civil Rights summer at an African-American church in Brooklyn , New York . In seminary, the issues I wrote about in an underground newspaper were an influence in a new Ethics class and revised curriculum.

While a pastor, I organized world religion seminars and spent most of my money on Human Potential Movement workshops. The multi-media explosion in East-West spirituality only whetted my appetite for a journey toward another frontier, a writing career in California .

Steven Forrest says Sagittarius is a "gypsy, student and philosopher" always expanding his/her knowledge – and "no sacrifice of safety or security counts for anything if it stands between a man or woman and that unceasing quest" (The Inner Sky by Steven Forrest).

And my Aries Ninth House has been Sag's trailblazing fool. Before I knew much about astrology, I traveled West in an Aries symbol (the Ram/bler) – in which I eventually logged over 100,000 miles. Later, I traveled the same mileage in an aptly named Plymouth Satellite.

In the 20th century, interstate highways and telecommunications have facilitated the transformation of social, religious and political structures. The Internet computer network has made self-employed explorers, entrepreneurs – and spiritual warriors of us all. Not only Aries, but the esoteric growth of all astrology signs has been accelerated.

Aries is the natural sign of the First house which has to do with manifesting one's Higher Self (or ego) on the planet. Forrest says, the real meaning of Aries, the "Warrior, Pioneer, Daredevil and Survivor.... refers to existential courage", the "ability to say: `This is my life. I have the right to seek whatever experiences I need to have. Nothing will stand between me and my growth. Not another person. Not any circumstances. Not even my own fears' " (The Inner Sky).

A courageous risk in a career or relationship occurs in a lonely abyss, away from familiar religious-philosophical structures, from friends and family. In that "Great Divide" between our ego and Higher Self, the future is unknown. Such was my near-death (and rebirth) experience on the Medicine Bow.

Richard Alpert left his Harvard University credentials behind for LSD experiments – and a journey to India , "My mind went faster and faster and then I felt like what happens when a computer is fed an insoluble problem... I started to cry... I wasn't happy and I wasn't sad. ... The only thing I could say was it felt like I was home. Like the journey was over" (Be Here Now).

After changing his name to Ram Dass, his "be here now" book described the Tao as an existential and utilitarian spirituality in a fast-changing East-West world. The future, a Sagittarius energy, has become, as Alvin Toffler said in Future Shock (1970), part of our reality.

The spiritual warrior or "swordmaster is fearless, but, unlike him, he grows daily less and less accessible to fear. Years of unceasing meditation have taught him that life and death are at bottom the same and belong to the same stratum of fact. He no longer knows what fear of life and terror of death are. He lives – and this is thoroughly characteristic of Zen – happily enough in the world, but ready at any time to quit it without being in the least disturbed by the thought of death" (Zen in the Art of Archery by Eugen Herrigel).

An opening appeared in the universe, in my soul – on the Medicine Bow. I scaled the heights to a mountaintop death and rebirth experience, an ending and beginning. At that moment, the snowstorm lifted. Like a Sagittarius archer, I aimed my Rambler through an opening in the storm – and sped toward California .

The Sagittarius Interception

May, 1977. I was a failure of sorts, returning to the Midwest after searching from San Francisco to the High Sierras – for myself and a home. In Wyoming 's Great Divide Basin ( Red Desert ), there was a fierce windstorm. The Medicine Bow was approaching – and my 1969 Rambler was weather-beaten, my storm-tossed soul weary from the long journey. Like drifting tumbleweed on a barren plain, I was resigned to being swept away.

And remembered bicycling to the gravel pits behind Scudder's Dairy and trudging through snow drifts toward a Native American site in the nearby hills – before abandoning my quest in the waning daylight hours. On the way home, I pedaled to an old roadside cafe for protection from the cold winds – and to savor the journey. Although, the winter landscape was bleak, the aloneness was peaceful and the freedom exhilarating.

That solitary journey so angered my father that he fired "Shorty", my guide to local Native American culture. At first, I responded with bewildered tears. And then, a stubborn silence and Aries resolve to pursue my Sagittarius goals.

Professional astrologers have said my Fourth House Sagittarius "interception" (i.e., a sign's enclosure between two other signs in the same house) dilutes Sag's power. When I left home for college and later, Chicago , that blockage and the complementary Gemini (my sun sign) interception were removed.

Most astrologers prefer "change" or "lesson" rather than "positive" or "negative" descriptions of an intercepted sign, afflicted planet or hard transit. Difficult aspects build spiritual muscles related to our karma (lessons) and dharma (Self-fulfillment). Gemini and Saggitarius, for example, are related to my writing about global spirituality in a travelogue style.

When I was growing up, my Taurus father intercepted such dreams as journalism and the Georgetown University School of Foreign Diplomacy. He, instead, pressured my attending a local junior college for a practical, good-paying job – which led to flunking out.

In addition to firing my friend, he was angry at a Scoutmaster, favorite teacher and my Sagittarius grandfather who were similar to Mark Twain (a Sagittarius). Twain wrote about his boyhood travels (e.g., Huckleberry Finn) in a nearby Upstate New York rivertown.

But their Jupiter (which rules Sagittarius) spirit succeeded in nurturing my own. As a 1950s teenager, I explored other worlds through an automobile and television (Walt Disney was a Sagittarius). After failing junior college, I ventured forth to another college, over 1,000 miles away.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune liberated Sag's characteristics by conjuncting Pluto. There was more long-distance travel (airplanes, interstate highways), laughter (Alan Watts' Zen Buddhism), higher education (public television, teach-ins), sexual fun (hippies, nude "be-ins"), legal reform (Civil Rights legislation), publishing (The Whole EarthCatalogue) and religious-philosophical exploration (Esalen, Ram Dass).

Neptune in Sagittarius (1971 - 1985), which it co-rules, "can weaken the structures of organized religion, but it fosters the search for spiritual truths. Religious cults and mystical organizations thrive under this influence" (Compendium of Astrology by Rose Lineman and Jan Popelka).

Neptune removes illusory walls which obscure a universal religion. The mysterious planet is also related to LSD and film exploration. Steven Spielberg introduced us to his Sag world through such films as Indiana Jones and E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial.

From 1981 to 1988, Uranus (which rules Aquarius) was in Saggitarius (e.g. The Aquarian Conspiracy: Personal and Social Transformation in the 1980s by Marilyn Ferguson). In the 1990s, Uranus conjoined Neptune to accelerate body-mind-spirit learning and a universal spirituality with an Internet computer network.

Pluto in Saggitarius (1995 - 2017) "signifies transformation through intellectual and philosophical advances. It is associated with the rebirth of high-minded ideals and the evolution of world-wide religious beliefs. Spiritual truths which unfold at this time may act as the cement that binds nations together" (Compendium of Astrology by Rose Lineman and Jan Popelka).

In January, 1997 Jupiter conjoined Uranus and Neptune. Uranus in Aquarius (1995 - 2002) will be followed by Neptune in Aquarius (1998 - 2012) and Pisces (2012 - 2024), the sign it co-rules with Jupiter. Uranus, Neptune and Pluto have thus nurtured Sagittarius (and Aquarius) energy for everyone.

Steven Forrest says the successful navigation of the Ninth House (Sagittarius) includes the "Ability to break up routines and create new patterns of behavior. Clear, individual sense of life's evolving meaning and purpose. Capacity to absorb shocking, unexpected perceptions" (The InnerSky).

When I left home for college, Uranus was squaring Uranus which conjuncts my natal Ninth House Saturn, Midheaven and Tenth House Jupiter (and Sun). "Probably the most common manifestation of this transit is what Sheehy calls `pulling up roots' [Passages by Gail Sheehy], or leaving the parental home. The task of separating from the family and finding out who we are in our own right... a time of significant growth and rapid change" (The Gods of Change by Howard Sasportas).

On the Medicine Bow, on the way to California, the freedom of the road (and my Higher Self) was threatened by institutional constraints (the ego), i.e. the heretical decision to leave my clergy profession and move further away from my family in the East. Was the thirst for more knowledge (Sag) worth the risk?

In May, 1977, I wondered about "failure" and going back to my Judeo-Christian roots. In one year, I not only had left the Christian Church but California , i.e. any dreams of becoming a group therapist or member of a Humanistic Psychology commune my friends were planning.

The journey clarified and strengthened such long range goals (a Sag characteristic) as writing and publishing for an inclusive community, a global university-without-walls. In May, 1977, such a career change was nurtured by Jupiter conjuncting my Sun, Uranus trining Mars and Mars trining Pluto (which sextiles my Jupiter and Sun, both trined by Neptune ).

Samuel L. Clemons left his Mississipi pilothouse and passed the Medicine Bow on a stagecoach to California (Roughing It). He found himself as Mark Twain (The CelebratedJumping Frog of Calaveras County) and returned to write about his roots and travels in Huckleberry Finn, A Tramp Abroad , et al.

When the Sagittarius interception was removed, Sag ruled my Fourth House (home, roots). Perhaps, the journey itself was the goal – and my home, the whole Earth. If a Missouri boy could raft the Mississippi and a Kansas girl (Dorothy, The Wizard of Oz) ride a whirlwind, perhaps an auto mechanic could cross the "great divide" to his lost youth. And write about our (spiritual) planetary adventure – and Inner Home.

Along Interstate 80, a windstorm in the Red Desert was belting a roadside shelter I took refuge in. After re-discovering my Ninth House spiritual warrior, I climbed onto a buckin' bronco ( Wyoming 's license plate symbol), my windswept Rambler – and rode it toward an unknown future.

On the Medicine Bow, there is an Abraham Lincoln memorial, that was obscured by the snowstorm one year earlier. Perhaps, it symbolized another future in Illinois . From that memorial, the old Lincoln Highway (Route 30) goes northwest toward the town of Medicine Bow where Owen Wister left his Harvard University credentials and disembarked from a train.

In The Virginian, he wrote about such Western towns, "More forlorn they were than stale bones. They seemed to have been strewn there by the wind and to be waiting till the wind should come again and blow them away. Yet serene above their foulness swam a pure and quiet light, such as the East never sees; they might be bathing in the air of creation's first morning".

Across the Great Divide

November, 1985. In Nebraska , a blizzard sculpted icicles on my Chevrolet Impala and U-Haul trailer. In Wyoming , the trailer suddenly lost traction and threatened to pull me assbackwards into oncoming traffic. At the Medicine Bow, dangerous winds forced a retreat to a Cheyenne motel.

But, I was anxious to cross the Great Divide – from the Midwest to the Pacific Northwest , from a church pastor to a hospital chaplain. And the next morning, said "The hell with it!", hurling life and limb at my old adversary. Pluto trine Mars was empowering my Aries Ninth House (long distance travel); Neptune trine my Ascendant was dissolving a clergy identity.

And I remembered the final decision to leave my hometown. If not accepted by a Florida college, I would board the Erie-Lackawanna train for New York City and throw my fate to the winds. That risk (Pluto was opposing Mars) removed the Sagittarius interception – and I graduated From Florida Southern College with honors.

The "great divide" is an abyss we venture back and forth across with counseling, travel, marital separation and other learning journeys. The final divorce from our past is a holistic healing of the great divide between our right and left brain, yin (female) and yang (male), body and spirit in our past, present and future.

The Aries glyph resembles a ram's horns, "two half-circles (Crescents of Consciousness that symbolize the soul) that join at a straight line (Scepter of the Sun, which represents the power of the Sun). It describes the polarity in nature (male and female, positive and negative) united in the power of the life force. The inverted crescents [or bows] signify the release of power, which inspires new activities and the beginning of life" (Compendium of Astrology by Rose Lineman and Jan Popelka).

Wyoming 's Medicine Bow was named for the mountaintop birch trees which Native Americans used for making bows. In my youth, Chief Greyhorse, a Forest Ranger, made a hardwood bow for my father which I was unable to bend until I had their strength. When I was older, the Medicine Bow became part of my spiritual sinew, an Inner bow and arrow toward an unknown future.

In 1884, F.H. Cushing from my native Upstate New York was an Assistant Ethnologist assigned by the federal government to the Southwest Uni Reservation. After he joined Uni war parties and took an unpopular stand against United Sates policy, the tribe renamed Cushing Medicine Flower and initiated him into their Priesthood of the Bow.

The Sagittarius Archer's goal is "To realize the ultimate meaning of life. To find one's destiny in the cosmic scheme of things. To arrive at the Truth .... a realization that in this world of impermanence, no sacrifice or safety or security counts for anything if it stands between a man or woman and that unceasing quest .... to grasp the wholeness of life and to find our place in it" ( The Inner Sky by Steven Forrest).

Antoine St. Exupery once landed an engine-troubled plane on a Sahara mesa whose steep walls no human could have scaled – and discovered untouched meteorites, "miserly rain from the stars. The marvel of marvels was that there on the rounded back of the planet, between this magnetic sheet and those stars, a human consciousness was present in which as in a mirror that rain could be reflected" (Wind, Sand and Stars).

In 1977, like Owen Wister ( The Virginian) and his town of Medicine Bow, I landed at a dirt road junction (Elkhorn Brick - Wilson Mill) – to pastor a church. There, I learned from the writing landscape of Carl Sandburg, Mark Twain, Abraham Lincoln – and Chicago. While gazing at the vast panorama of stars over the prairie, I understood how early settlers found their way by starlight, by astrology in The Farmer's Almanac.

Such transformative journeys test our character and manifest our Spirit, teach us how to navigate the planet. Exupery (The Little Prince), Richard Bach, F.H. Cushing and my grandfather (a builder of airplanes) learned about spiritual flight, about a unity among the Earth, stars, machines and our bodies.

During my Medicine Bow journeys, the past, present, future, body, mind, spirit, earth, water, air, fire, stars, mountains, desert, ocean, ego, Higher Self, light, darkness, life and death swirled in and out of my consciousness as One inner/outer zodiac I was discovering in Eastern religions, Humanistic Psychology and Native American spirituality.

In our Internet global village, we are learning "To fly as fast as thought, to anywhere that is... by knowing that [we] have already arrived.... The trick was to know that [our] true nature lived, as perfect as an unwritten number, everywhere at once across space and time (Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach).

The 1985 journey was between ancient astronomy observatories, the Medicine Wheel in Northeast Wyoming and Stonehedge (a full-scale replica) in Southwest Washington . The zodiac is the topography of our soul. The astrology transits and signs we choose in each lifetime (including their inclement weather) are the bow and arrow movement of a Healing Universe. They heal an illusory brokenness which obscures our Wholeness.

The Medicine Bow was a vision quest across the "great divide" between my past and future. The tumultuous 1985 route strengthened a decision to leave the Christian Church and change careers. After the Nebraska blizzard and Wyoming windstorm, there was heavy rain in Utah and another blizzard in Idaho – with overturned trailers.

Alone and frozen with fear, I left Interstate 84, called a friend in Boise and slept a restless night in a motel. His warm-hearted counsel over breakfast calmed my nerves – and I drove over Oregon 's Blue Mountain in tire chains. On the other side, I repaired a flat tire, was warned about black ice (macadam highway fog) along the Columbia River and, in Washington , was welcomed by thunder, lightning and a record-setting twenty-four inch snowstorm.

Saturn in Sagittarius was opposing my natal Sun-Jupiter conjunction. Robert Hand says, "Your vital energies are at a twenty-nine-year low, and you may feel quite incapable of dealing [with] the adversities that often accompany this transit... You may feel physically tired, as if the burdens of your life are too much for you....

[It is] a period of endings which will be followed by new beginnings. The problem is to avoid being discouraged and frustrated by the endings. Soon you will have the opportunity to begin new projects that will build up to new peaks of achievement... (Planets in Transit).

On the way West, I was also deciding to legally change my name because of a suffering servant persona, i.e. the Christian expectatons of a father (and grandmother) who named me for his brother who died at a young age. In 1986, I chose the Elkhorn Brick dirt road junction – and an Elk totem from Native Americian spirituality (by separating Elkhorn into two words).

Years later, I learned of an Elk Mountain beside the Medicine Bow and further north, the Big Horn Mountains . Mark Twain, Owen Wister and wagon train pioneers traveled through that "great divide" (appropriately landmarked by the Devil's Tower) and were transformed. After my Medicine Bow vision quest(s), the Great Spirit (within) apparently made my pen name a spiritual gateway, i.e. ELK ... HORN.

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Chapter 5

Northwest Passages

A Heretic's Exodus

"A tremendous gale of wind arose, accompanied with lightning, thunder, and hail: at six it became light for a short time, but a violent rain soon began and lasted during the day... Our situation became now much more dangerous, for the waves were driven with fury against the rocks and trees, which till now had afforded us refuge" (an excerpt from The Journals of Lewis and Clark – in the Pacific Northwest).

When I first walked into the Chaplain Supervisor's office, there was a thunderclap over Western State Hospital . Jim jumped up, looked out the window and said, "What the ...! That's lightning – and snow! There's no snow west of the Cascades!" (A record 24 inches was arriving).

Such an entrance seemed appropriate. After all, natal Uranus conjunct my Sun and Midheaven had always made me an outsider (or heretic), an irreverent lightning rod – even within my own family. In seminary, I walked into the Dean's office with a warrant for my arrest from a Civil Rights demonstration. The Dean later threatened to expel me for saying "Bullshit!" to an administrative official.

When the United Methodist Church moved to the political Left, I was involved in the fledgling Human Potential Movement and heretical world religions. In November, 1985, I began a turbulent passage (a heretic's exodus) through a Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) program in the Pacific Northwest .

Uranus was transiting my Fourth House (1980 - 1988), "the ultimate basis of your being", Robert Hand says. "Old ties with the past may be broken, which can give you a feeling that you have lost your roots. But ultimately this break may free you from old patterns and habits that have enslaved you" (Planets in Transit).

During that transit, my mother died, my father remarried and I moved from a rural church to Chicago 's New Town, another rural church, the hospital chaplain program, an apartment in Tacoma and back to Chi-town – where I resigned from the United Methodist ministry.

"In certain traditions Uranus is viewed as the ruling planet of astrology. I think this is quite accurate. Astrology and Uranus share a common purpose – to free us from anything that limits the full, healthy expression of our nature" (The Changing Sky by Steven Forrest).

Uranus' transit through my Fourth House (the home, mother, one's roots) also opposed my Saturn, Midheaven, Uranus, Jupiter, Sun, Venus, Mercury – and squared my Ascendant and Neptune . Astrologers recommend counseling during a major transit through the Fourth House.

Although there was more freedom (and courage) to be my Self, the separation from the past was a volatile thunder and lighting mixture of the old and the new. "Uranus fireworks" offer us "freedom, step by step, battle by battle, realization by realization" (The Changing Sky by Steven Forrest).

The Association for Clinical Pastoral Education (ACPE) serves as a half-way house for such clergy as my alcoholic, divorcee and drop-out colleagues at Western State Hospital . Jim, the Chaplain Supervisor, was a Southern Baptist from South Carolina . But he was also a veteran of Iwo Jima and pastored a multi-racial church in Hawaii . His two sons owned a llama hiking company in Colorado . The Roman Catholic Supervisor was a former chaplain in Vietnam .

The helping professions are workshops for healing suffering-servant and other co-dependent illusions. Pastors are immersed in a birth and death, wedding and funeral world. Through therapy, they often develop a sense of humor, wisdom and compassion about themselves and humanity.

Hospitals and churches now promote continuing education programs and group counseling for burn-out, staff morale, etc. As hierarchical religion fades and holistic counseling expands, more clergy are letting go of the sacrificial-martyr game for Self loving careers, i.e. more money and happiness as businesspersons or creative artists.

Clinical Pastoral Education was a warm-hearted sharing of personal journeys that I had yearned for in the politically divided United Methodist Church . There was a down-to-earth camaraderie from sharing our hopes and fears, our joy and pain in educational seminars, group therapy and the hospital residence.

And yet, as I contemplated becoming a Chaplain, the Judeo-Christian limitations were apparent. A Self-healing savior-within threatens not only the existence of hierarchical religion but the authoritarian aura of the American Medical Association members and Ph.D psychologists attached to their duly licensed egos and a savior-victim consciousness.

The ACPE requirements for a Chaplain Supervisor include college and seminary degrees, pastoring a church and a three year CPE program – which excludes holistic health practitioners and many religions from medical and mental institutions. Many await the transforming changes of Pluto in Sagittarius (1995 - 2017).

Despite a deepening friendship with the other student chaplains, I was more and more an outsider because their beliefs, however liberal, were in contrast to my understanding of world religious unity, including reincarnation and a Self healing god/goddess within.

I was, instead, attending Unity churches and making friends with hospital psychologists who shared my own beliefs. From the 1960s to 1990s, Uranus conjoined Pluto and Neptune while transiting Sagittarius and Aquarius. It has nurtured a multi-cultural religious, philosophical and educational worldview.

The painful divorce from one's roots and the religious-philosophical script blocking the emergence of one's Self is a universal journey which makes heretics of us all. And it was now time for a heretic's exodus across a lonely abyss toward an unknown future.

Saturn was also transiting my fourth house (1985 - 1988), when "your ideas and plans may be defeated, or they may have their greatest concrete realization. In either case, you will run into considerable resistance from others to what you say. This may result in severing relationships with those who disagree with you because there is no longer any communication between you.... But the resistance of others also forces you to give your plans clearer form and to take definite steps to implement them" (Planets in Transit by Robert Hand).

On the hospital grounds were the log cabin headquarters of old Fort Steilcoom where Ulysses S. Grant was stationed in the 1850s. Because of drinking problems, he resigned his commission and returned to Galena , Illinois as a clerk in his father's store. I remembered touring his home with my mother when she visited my Elkhorn Brick church.

When I was deciding to say goodbye to my chaplain family, I yearned for another time and another place, a home I could never return to. In a seminar, I introduced the Unity Church and my other heretical beliefs, knowing that Jim would include this in my permanent record.

With caring and sadness, my friends, aware of the painful risk and distance between us, disagreed with my spiritual convictions. There was a sudden aloneness in my soul as vast as the horizon over the Cascades and Pacific Ocean . And in 1805, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark crossed the Great Divide to an unexplored country.

Mountains and Ocean

"The fog cleared, and we enjoyed the delightful prospect of the ocean; that ocean, the object of all our labours, the reward of all our anxieties. This cheering view exhilarated the spirits of the party, who were still more delighted on hearing the distant roar of the breakers. We went on with great cheerfulness under the high mountainous country" (The Journals of Lewis and Clark)

From a dockside restaurant in Fort Steilacoom 's historic port, I looked at sailboats on Puget Sound – and a state prison on McNeil Island . From the Mentally Ill Offender ward at Western State Hospital , I looked through steel bars for a Northwest Passage from the world I was imprisoned in.

From the chaplains' dormitory windows, I wondered at Mount Rainier , Mt. Tahoma ("snowy mountain" according to Native Americans), where Shirley McLaine was writing books in a mountain retreat. Another actress, Linda Evans, moved to a lakeside home near Western State Hospital with Yanni, New Age musician. McLaine and Evans were friends of their Mt. Rainier neighbor J.Z. Knight – who channels Ramtha, an ancient Egyptian.

In those coastal mountains, there is a breathtaking freedom for Gemini (myself), Libra and Aquarius air signs. One could hike in the Cascades or Olympic Peninsula, take a ferry boat ride to a Puget Sound island or a two hour automobile trip to Oregon or British Columbia . One could enjoy nude beaches and smoke marijuana among free-thinking weirdos.

Uranus (which rules Aquarius) in Sagittarius (1981 - 1988) expanded the planetary understanding of religion, philosophy and education (see Marilyn Ferguson's The AquarianConspiracy). In the Pacific Northwest , that includes The Far Side's Gary Larson and Microsoft's Bill Gates.

Uranus rules computers and nurtures the individual Self and humanitarian ideals. In 1996, Gates donated a million dollars in software to the Chicago Public Library. At that time, he spoke about "empowering" the country's havenots with today's computer technology, "to do what we can to bring free and equal access to that information".

The Far East meets the West along the Pacific Coast with a large Japanese, Korean, Chinese (and Buddhist) populace. Native Americans are a powerful political influence because of substantial land holdings. Sun Bear (Buffalo Hearts) led seminars on his home reservation near Spokane , Washington . Boeing Aircraft has an annual psychic fair.

In the 1980s, Richard Bach (a Cancer) bought a house with his soulmate on Orcas Island . "I looked [from his biplane] down the slope past the meadow, out over the water to the islands floating on the horizon. `This is a pretty place, isn't it?' ` Paradise !', she answered (A Bridge AcrossForever).

Bach is a Cancer. The arts and spirituality flourish where the mountains meet the ocean, where the mind (air signs) meets the emotions (Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces water signs). Loretta Lynn found her Inner voice in a journey from the Appalachians to the Cascades with her "Moonshine" husband. Ray Charles began his career in Seattle . The film industry (ruled by Neptune ) thrives here. As does computers and airplanes (ruled by Uranus) – and New Age spirituality.

Since the 1960s, people interested in holistic counseling and Eastern religions have migrated to the West Coast. At Western State Hospital , they included many psychologists who were practicing their New Age spiritual beliefs despite the Association of Clinical Pastoral Education regulations.

In that rarefied atmosphere, I explored East-West spiritual resources, the reason for moving there. A psychologist and two nurses introduced me to the Washington Psychic Institute’s healing, meditation and clairvoyant training programs.

Organized as “The Church of Divine Man”, it The was related to Eastern religions and served as a Self help accessing of Inner information for a career change. It was also a transition from authoritarian and co-dependent religious structures – a reason for Unity Church 's growth in the 1980s.

Neptune rules psychic, artistic and spiritual change. During my 1985 - 1988 stay in the Pacific Northwest , Neptune was opposing my Moon, sextiling Mars, trining my ascendant and moving to the Fifth house. It dissolved old religious structures and opened up a creative dream.

Neptune in the Fifth house (1985) nurtures "artistic creativity. If you have artistic ability, your imagination will be very much improved, and you will be able to come up with new ideas for your art work in any field or medium" (Planets in Transit) by Robert Hand).

Neptune was removing limitations to a writing career through a Seattle-Area New Age newspaper. The editor was a former Roman Catholic nun who gathered ex-Christian clergy in her home for sharing about our journey to another world. That group and the Tacoma Tribune employing a columnist for local New Age activities led to my own newspaper column and book submissions.

Everyone has air and water signs (and the planets which rule them) in their natal horoscope and by transit. In the 1980s, Neptune was dissolving national, religious and other barriers while Uranus was ley lining electronic communication. Their transits often lead us toward seminars or vacations in the mountains or by the ocean.

The Uranus/Neptune conjunction in the 1990s accelerated spiritual unity and freedom on the planet. In 1995, Uranus began a seven year transit of its own sign, Aquarius. Neptune 's fourteen year transit of Aquarius, beginning in 1997, will continue advancing a universal spirituality.

A major Neptune or Uranus transit removes illusory limitations to independent thought, creative art, original expression and Self empowerment. They remove karmic barriers which imprison and isolate our Selves from Self fulfillment and humanity. Although Lewis and Clark did not discover a Northwest Passage to the Pacific Ocean , they did discover an Inner passage to a spiritual vastness that awaits our exploration.

St. Helen's Volcano

"In the morning we set out early and proceeded to the top of the mountain, the highest point of which is an open spot facing the ocean. It is situated about thirty miles southeast of Cape Disappointment, and projects nearly two and a half miles into the sea. Here one of the most delightful views in nature presents itself. Immediately in front is the ocean, which breaks with fury on the coast, from the rocks of Cape Disappointment" (from The Journals of Lewis and Clark).

After ascending a mountain and looking over a Pacific ("peaceful") ocean, a "cape of disappointment" often appears on the shoreline of our future. Any Neptune illusions in our dreams are grounded by an Earth transit (e.g. Saturn) or a volcanic explosion (Pluto).

In 1836, Narcissa Whitman and her husband Marcus left their Upstate New York farm (near my hometown) as missionaries to Native Americans in the state of Washington . However, unable to relate their Christian idealism to the Cayuse culture, they were massacred near Walla Walla .

When I was a chaplain at Western State Hospital , Rev. Laura Cameron Fraser made national headlines because of a Christian heresy, i.e. channeling an angel in her Episcopalian church. She resigned and founded an organization promoting spiritual healing and religious freedom.

David Spangler, pioneer of Findhorn who channeled The Birth of a New Age, had moved to her Issaquah, Washington parish community – and supported Fraser through the controversial publicity. Spangler had left his own religious community and was exploring the spiritual dimensions of parenting.

"The efforts of a manager to empower employees more deeply or the struggles of a father to go beyond traditional patriarchal attitudes to express his own nurturing and `maternal' instincts may not be as dramatic as the allegedly channeled spirit of a 35,000 year old Atlantean warlord prophesying destruction, but they will have a more lasting and transformative effect" ("Defining the New Age", AHP Perspective, December, 1987).

In the 1980s, Neptune moved to an earth sign (Capricorn, 1984-1999). "Because Capricorn adds structure to Neptunian inspiration, constructive spiritual ideals emerge, ideals that are reflected in the development of world affairs... there is little danger of this generation losing themselves in search of utopian dreams" (Compendium of Astrology by Rose Lineman and Jan Popelka).

Uranus and Saturn were opposing my (Tenth House) Mercury (and Moon) and squaring Neptune in my First House. The way I appeared to the world (Christian pastor) and communicated (sermons) was being transformed. Pluto was transiting my Third House (communication) and trining Mars which rules my Ninth (Aries) House of publishing, religion and philosophy.

So, I began submitting book and newspaper column proposals to publishers, fully expecting the Universe to reward me with financial support. Although Neptune transits uncovered my dream, the illusion of becoming a New Age "Erma Bombeck" or "Mike Royko" was crashing down to earth.

After deciding not to pursue the hospital chaplaincy, I continued as part-time pastor of a Tacoma church – which paid for the Clairvoyant Training Program at the Church of Divine Man (CDM). However, that income and my United Methodist clergy identity ended when it was learned I was doing psychic readings and heretical counseling in the church office.

As an old career faded and income from writing failed to materialize, I was interested in establishing a CDM center in Chicago . But, a month after losing my pastor's job, CDM was no longer interested – and I was stranded in Chicago . Meanwhile, Chief Sitting Bull's great-great granddaughter (Kathy), whom I was living with, borrowed my car – which caught fire or "blew up".

Sometimes, our Higher Self creates an unexpected job or relationship loss to move us away from the past to a new experience. Kathy came to the Northwest via a Native American Reservation in South Dakota and public housing in Denver (and Tacoma ). She put her several children up for adoption and became involved in WPI.

Understanding painful change is as difficult to comprehend as a Mt. St. Helens blowing up and destroying a national park. The Earth Mother is healing herself (including her Earthlings), re–balancing our energy to accommodate an increase in Spirit (prana) on the planet (and in our bodies).

Pluto's movement into the sign it rules (Scorpio, 1983 - 1995) was a volatile era of personal and social growth, a death and rebirth transformation for the Aquarian Age. In retrospect, the loss of the chaplain and pastor jobs ended an association with religious structures -- which synchronized with the death of the Piscean Age.

There cannot be a real birth without a real death. As Jesus said, it is like pouring new wine into old wineskins which break. For years, I had been talking of the illusion of Christian clergy, the divinity of Jesus, etc. in sermons and church program. If we are a Oneness, religious structures (or those, not professing spiritual Unity) are themselves are an illusion.

The exodus from Christianity began in Chicago when Pluto was transiting my Third House (1980 - 1993, the natural House of my Gemini Sun sign) – and ended with Pluto squaring my Ascendant. Pluto square Pluto (1983 - 1985) "will root out precisely those elements of the past that are not good for you... allow the things of the past to fade and allow the future to be born on their ruins... This transit may also increase your concern about the creative and regenerative processes within the universe and cause you to become interested in the occult". (Planets inTransit by Robert Hand).

Astrology transits, programmed by our Higher Selves before we're born, choreograph a healing journey. Saturn opposite the Sun (1985, 1986) "may be a very discouraging time.... other people – particularly employers and other persons in authority – may oppose your plans.... a period of endings which will be followed by new beginnings" (Planets in Transit by Robert Hand).

Helen, the volcano's namesake was the mother of Constantine. The daughter of an innkeeper, she was divorced by a Roman general when he was made a Caesar. But she gave birth to Constantine the Great, built numerous churches and gave alms to the poor. The sudden divorce released her Inner Fire.

"Cape Disappointment" is a Christian illusion of a perfect heaven, etc. projected into the new age as perfect angels, soulmates, etc. There is, instead, continued growth. After Richard Bach's auto mechanic left the savior trip in Illusions, he continued learning – as Jonathan L. Seagull did in Bach's earlier book.

David Spangler said "I see the new age as a metaphor for the expression of a transformative, creative spirit rather than as a future event". He said a future ideal "becomes a carrier for people's unmet expectations... [which] will always be foreplay in search of a climax, a tension that is never relieved except in disillusionment" (AHP Perspective).

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