Gnosis and Timing

Using astrology to connect with your world

The sphere of Marcus Manilius made an English poem with annotations and an astronomical appendix by Sir Edward Sherburne (London : Printed for Nathanael Brooke, 1675)

This is Part III of my series on Gnosis, or how to find knowledge with our own experience and bodies.

Gnosis, for me, is the foundation of my spiritual, creative, magical and embodied practice. It is the first step to interacting with spirits, communing with plants and animals, feeling for yourself that the world is alive and speaking, though perhaps in a different tongue than we humans are used to.

In the privileging of the rational, logical mind over what we know intuitively or experience for ourselves, we lose our connection to our lives.

This newsletter is for anyone who wants to enhance their self trust, expand their knowledge of astrology, divination, the numinous, etc beyond what has been written about in books (which, I will remind you, only encompasses a fraction of the world’s wisdom).

This newsletter is for anyone who wants their very life to be a portal of deep knowing that cannot be taken away.

If you want to learn more about gnosis, check out part I and part II.

While my last newsletter on gnosis included skills, tips and tricks for inviting the numinous into your daily life, this essays gets into the nitty gritty of timing, or using astrology to determine when is the most auspicious time to communicate or reach out to a certain entity.

We can’t make gnosis happen, really, as we are waiting for another being, be that a planet, plant, deity or daimon to speak back. But, “[i]f spiritual openings are accidents,” as John Tarrant puts it, “then the spiritual work of meditation makes us accident-prone, susceptible to the imagination of eternity, the wit of God”.

Electional astrology, or the practice of beginning activities when the astrology of the current moment is most beneficial for the intended aims of such activity, allows us to invite these “accidents” into our lives.

The act of gnosis, being more an exploration that a definite move in the world, lends itself well to easy and practical electing. The following points are all something to consider if you want your gnosis to be clearest when you sit down with your ritual. Take what is useful and leave the rest <3

Remedios Varo’s Papilla Estelar (1958) detail

The Moon

The Moon is the beginning of all things, the primordial connector. She is the closest planet to earth and thus the translator of celestial power into mundane matters.

You’ve probably heard the phrase “as above, so below”. This adage is a major reason why the Moon was so important in timing for ancient astrologers. “Since she conveys heavenly things generally, frequently, and easily to things below,” Marsilio Ficino explains, “the safest way will be to do nothing without the favor of the Moon”.¹ The Moon has a hand in both pots; the mysterious heavens and the “mundane” earth. The Moon, thusly, is given dominion over the beginning of everything, from the life of a seed to the start of a relationship.

Whenever you have a stroke of inspiration, a sudden mood change, a revelation, though it may come from other sources, the Moon is always involved, at the very least as the primal filter or screen for other influences.

This is the reason we date our rituals and art projects; take note of our moods before and during— to understand where we begin. To find our baseline on a given day.