Daoist Polestar Astrology

My Perspective in the Haunted Body

Let’s start with the hook:

Daoist Polestar Astrology was the first time in my life, after thirty something years, where a practitioner & system confirmed my lived experience of the haunted world.

A world that had shown me ghosts, demons and bitter strangeness hidden under the melting mask of western rationalism and modern society. A lonely, isolated place where everything was mentalized, where nature was just an idea in the brains of white folk. Where possession was well-actually “mental illness”, where personal “trauma” was the banal & automated answer for everything painful.

I left that initial polestar natal session with an introduction to a system of science and philosophy that included my lived experience, that didn’t label me as crazy, that had already, thousands of years prior, accounted for everything in nature and left nothing out, nothing exiled or mentalized.

• I had already by this time been mysteriously ill for years.

• I had already by this time survived my childhood and all the strange and ghostly phenomena of that era.

• I had already been experimenting with drugs and entheogens for almost ten years, which had enhanced and recovered my childhood memories of spirits, ghosts, demons, visionary dreams, psychic experiences, and the like.

• I had already spent years in a northern California “spiritual community” who mangled and colonized indigenous and nondual traditional practices.

Which is to say, I had the experiences, but i didn’t have an organizing model of reality that actually functioned. I was still sick. I was still poor. I was still plagued by phenomena that i couldn’t really talk to anyone about, because when i did, things got worse, not better.

I walked away from that 4+ hour session a bit dazzled, a bit confused, but with a scrap of something real - a recognition from an ancient culture (translated and taught by a weird little white guy who died a few years prior) which actually stabilized my nervous system.

This stability would be like a seed, a seed which would grow into a garden over time, but that still required me to go out into the dark world and learn vast amounts of information, practice dozens of other systems, required me to test the hypotheses empirically, required me to fail time and again, required me to shoot myself in the foot with my choices and preferences, until finally recognizing reality.

Reality had already recognized me. But because my society had not, I couldn’t recognize my reality. Maybe this resonates?

We all need Right Story. The colonizers & the colonized most of all. So we look. We look everywhere. Even if we can’t name what we are looking for, even if we can’t recognize the act of looking. The universe seeks reflection. The universe IS reflection. All of reality exists and wants to be recognized. So we look. Often, we look to the stars…

Daoist deity Zhenwu, alternately known as Xuanwu, Chenwu, The Dark Warrior of The North, Emblematic representation of the North star or Polestar. ZiWei DouShu = Purple Star or Polestar Astrology. The “Purple star” may be called so because of the purple myrtle flower. As below, so above.

various chinese depictions throughout time of the north star

A copper Black Tortoise from the Yongle era of the Ming dynasty (early 15th century). Xuanwu: “Black-Dark-Mysterious Warrior of the North”. The animist pre-cursor to the human representation of Chenwu/Zhenwu above.

The Ziwei Emperor - Middle Heaven Great Emperor of the North Pole Star of Purple Subtlety. One of the four heavenly ministers.

written by Liu Ming. Notice that the first icon is the original animist form of the polestar, Xuanwu, the black tortoise/snake, the warrior icon. This then transforms into the sage version, Zhenwu. From animal to man. The north direction is represented by winter, midnight, death, the ocean, the ancestral realm and the color black, which is associated with kidneys, the jing storehouse, and the afflictive emotion of the kidneys: Fear.

The term astrologer has been largely butchered by traumatized orphans.

Of course there are good astrologers in the world. But the world itself, our society, is a nasty lil’ freak addict. This causes good information to be used for ill. I never “fell in” with western astrology as a stabilizing force for understanding my lived experience. If you have, that’s great, but this isn’t your story.

You see, if any western occult science had actually been able to accurately witness and reflect back my lived experience correctly, i would have stopped my quest.

and believe me, i’m aware that a part european part afro puerto rican american nobody clinging to the raft of asian nondual sciences isn’t some clean and wholesome event. it reeks of colonial fetishism. that’s what it could be, to anyone who skims the surface of reality looking for easy tabloid patterns to grab.

because society is bloated with cringe fools peddling fake wisdom that i want absolutely nothing to do with, it’s probably taken me much longer than it should have for me to accept the gift and step into the wisdom stream as someone who can actually guide people through the education and embodiment of it.

I have a thing about being a sell-out. It’s in my chart.

i’m not claiming i am an expert at all aspects of this system, just that i’ve spent the better part of ten years being with it, seeing how it reflects and works on my lived experience, seeing how it can be a useful framework for which to make decisions and unravel karmic fate.

my opinion on it has changed through the years, my sense of how it works has changed, my sense of what it can help us do has changed.

part of that is the natural aging process, part of that is the way my chart progresses each year and highlights different aspects of my fate. part of that is you need to be sane for a long enough time in order to enact wisdom, which is caution.

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The Water Cycle, or Ghost School 101

The system or ecosystem/world of Daoist polestar astrology is a set of symbols that describe “Ancestral Recycling”. This is in many ways exactly like the water cycle of the earth. Water element is the “last” element in the wuxing 5 element cycle. Water is the “old crone” with one step in the other world.

Dissolution, Dispersal, Death. Water, which is winter, feeds Wood, which represents spring, and new birth, renewal, regeneration.

In the larger flow of time, raindrops (our individuated “selves”) flow into the great river. In the great river, upstream are the/our ancestors and downstream are the descendants. Upstream and downstream are relative to whomever is listening, whoever is present. There is an upstream to the upstream, on and on, back and back. Likewise, there is a downstream to the downstream, further and further along in the cycle of time.

Time is Yang, Time is Qi, Time is Movement and Time is Blood. Blood is Water.

In a more Buddhist ideology/cosmology, this water cycle explains how reincarnation works. In the Daoist/Confucian/Animist/Shamanic perspective, all reincarnation is ancestral, bubbling up from below, the underworld, to reach the surface and flow down again, back to the ocean, the dark waters, the underworld — to continue the cycle. Each time ancestors are “recycled” or “reincarnated” there is an opportunity to remediate or resolve some karmic fate, some knots to untangle, some water to purify. This purification happens just so, by itself, no matter what, given enough time.

AND we can align and adapt with that process and either assist in the unraveling of fate or use our freedom to create even more karmic fate.

This great cycle has no beginnings and no end, it is not linear the way moderns perceive it. Cause and effect are part of a great, unending and un-endable CONTINUITY.

We are that Continuity expressing itself. An auto-poiesis of nature. Just like everything else in nature from the smallest to the tallest. All following along, carried along in the great cycle of time and fate.

The symbol system of polestar astrology allows to see clearly where we are in that cycle.

It is not necessarily about solving, curing, fixing, healing or exorcising ghosts and demons.

It isn’t not about that either though.

All potentials appear, given enough time.

In the right timing, there are opportunities to unravel in certain areas of life, and there are obstructions to unravel in other areas of life.

And round and round we go.

It’s mainly important to realize and recognize that more accurately reflecting who/what/where/when/how we are, is in many ways the “exorcism” that all ghostly tangles require to be able to transform and get “unstuck” from the habitual, addictive, sticky yin pattern that is what a ghost is.

Getting Real Now is the medicine, and polestar can help us do that.

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Polestar Astrology is the “Maths” of Ancestral Recycling.

But it isn’t the only maths one needs. Any practitioner or person that claims there is a single catch-all system of health, spirituality, relationality is lying to you. All indigenous sciences have multiple sub-systems that interweave to address the multiple levels by which life lifes and nature natures.

The human body needs braided approaches to living and dying well.

We need Allies & Assistants. We need Superiors, Teachers, Mentors. We need Pleasure. We need Ancestral Mandates. We need long-term relationships, Partners, Spouses. We need Legacy, Offspring, Sexual Identity. We need Vocation, Career, Travel.

Polestar Natal Astrology organizes and differentiates us into 12 Houses which represent the various fate and freedom we have in those areas of life. Once we understand the way things are for us, we can utilize the great many options in reality to assist us in those various areas. We don’t have to “compete” in a “world of scarcity” when we have an accurate location and description of where we are in the great cycle of time. We don’t have to behave like someone else when we know our character. We don’t have to “believe” in the manifest destiny project of unmoored individualism when we can see where our ancestral gifts and karma are.

We can be free to feel, sense, think, move, act, reflect, express, celebrate and perceive through the ancestral “GPS” coordinates of our life. We can learn to syncretize our ancestral streams into a working whole, no longer expressing and personifying ghostly fractures as if they are unresolvable mandates. We don’t have to play the victim of our birth. We don’t have to frame everything we don’t like as “trauma”.

It’s important to remember that ghosts and ghostly afflictions limit our capacity and predilection for generosity.

This is why it’s important to ingrain and sing the mantra: “When life is hard, help others.”

Polestar is one of the best, most comprehensive ways I’ve found to understand and apply the understanding of ghosts, afflictions, and various traumatic, ancestral patterns in a NON-PSYCHOTHERAPY BABBLE way.

• This is not western psychotherapy.

• This is not fortune telling.

• This is not a salvational religion or philosophy.

What this is, might be best understood as nature looking at nature the way the moon is reflected in a lake. There are flickers and ripples across the surface when the winds (ghosts) fly to and fro. Ultimately though, neither the water nor the moon is affected by the apparent distortions of the reflected image. The sky is unafflicted by clouds, the cycle is unperturbed by preferences.

photo by tom fisk

Aligning with this can allow for us to receive and generate MERCY.

When we can see our reflection in the lake, whatever distortions are also seen clearly for what they are: temporary movements of the magic dance.

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Housekeeping

donations happily received at venmo @Dare-sohei & paypal.me/daresohei

Please refer to the Sessions and Polestar Astrology tabs for more information, and review previous blog posts for more on ghosts, possession and nondual view application. Currently i am offering natal sessions at a discounted hourly rate and I plan on doing a special in-person natal class series in Portland in the fall if the auspices allow.

Blessings to all our relations and teachers. May all beings receive and generate liberation and the causes of liberation.