Dr. Bob and his ArtCar We the People featured in bmore magazine and Artscape!
Dr. Bob and his ArtCar We the People featured in bmore magazine and Artscape!
What Drives An Artist to Paint Cars?
From the bmore feature by Jolene Carr with photographs by Steve Ruark
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
Bob Hieronimus recounts his notable artistic accomplishment of painting more than 50 murals in Baltimore.
There’s the 2,700 square-foot “The Apocalypse,” finished in 1969 at Johns Hopkins University, which depicts history as a cyclical force. His “E Pluribus Unum” completed in 1985 features famed diners at the Lexington Market. The 1996 “A Little Help From Our Friends” on the side of the Safe and Smart Community Resource Center on Greenmount Avenue portrays inspirational figures from Bob Marley to Rachel Carson.
But Hieronimus’ friendly blue eyes light up when he explains that his preferred canvas comes on four wheels. This summer will mark his 6th year participating in Artscape’s Art Car Exhibit, displaying a biodiesel-fueled 1984 Mercedes, known as “We the People.”
One of the nation’s largest free arts festivals, Artscape welcomes more 350,000 visitors during its three-day run each July and generates nearly $26 million for Baltimore. This year’s festival runs July 20-22 and marks its 31-year anniversary and its 19th year showcasing the art car exhibit.
One of Artscape’s most popular feature, the exhibit showcases cars with outlandish designs covering every inch of their frame. The cars attract a crowd, some with their mouths agape and observing in silence and others chatting with their friends about the visual spectacle before them. Artists design their cars without restraints, says Artscape Visual Arts Coordinator Jim Lucio. Art cars have ranged from a giant banana to an all-glass motif.
Hieronimus and his car remain memorable. “Bob is a great art car ambassador,” Lucio says. “He’s very engaging with the festival crowd and shows a great local car that everyone enjoys.”
Like his other artwork, Hieronimus’ art car begs for constant reassessment and rediscovery. He says art cars are like billboards with different stories.
Hieronimus’ “We the People” car offers a harmonious blend of symbols and people, including the first African American astronomer Benjamin Banneker, the Iroquois prophet Deganawida and the names of six Iroquois nations scrolled across the hood. It also features Thomas Jefferson and Jimi Hendrix doing his Woodstock rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner. “ Hieronimus describes this as a reminder “that America has a spiritual destiny.”
The Owings Mills native and host of 21st Century Radio, Hieronimus says he wants people to see cars as symbolic change agents.
“The reason why I painted cars was not the reason why most people painted cars,” says Hieronimus, 68, sporting a ponytail under his Beatle’s Yellow Submarine hat.
He started doing it in the 60s, at a time of what he describes as “mega-corruption.”
But artists like himself felt there was nothing they could do about it.
“We felt totally powerless, and when we talked to other people about it, they would say, ‘Ah, you’re just 22 years old, what the hell do you know?’ I realized that if I had something to say I better put it on a billboard. Well I couldn’t buy a billboard because I didn’t have any money. So I painted my car.”
Hieronimus’ first car depicted money, soda and other “American hang-ups.” In 1968 he painted his famous “Light” the Woodstock Bus that became emblematic of the festival’s free spiritedness.
His fondness for mobile art especially lies in the bus. “It has big, flat areas,” explains Hieronimus.
“When you do a theme or a group of symbols, you have more places to work with. With the Mercedes or similar cars, there’s a lot of changes in the shape of them, so it’s more difficult.”
After a 30-year hiatus, Hieronimus’ next art car would be “Founding Fathers’ Secret Societies” in 2006, the first car that was Artscape-bound.
Hieronimus says he takes three to six months forming and revising designs on a schematic that resembles a paint-by-number. A skilled art car artist is also mindful of the upholstery color and car windows, considering how to best marry the interior with the exterior.
Implementing the final designs on the vehicle generally takes four to five months of 14-to-16 hour days. Hieronimus purchases roughly $5,000 in One Shot paint, a toxic paint used for vehicle surfaces. He used more than 100 quarts in 26 colors, eight different shades of red for each stripe on the car for his “Founding Fathers” art car.
Hieronimus says that aside from elderly ladies who often scoff at covering the surface of a classic Mercedes, he gets appreciative reactions from onlookers, whether he’s at Artscape, an Oriole’s game, or out running errands.
With four books from four different publishers in the works, Hieronimus says he has no desire to design a new art car but will continue to showcase “We the People.”
He does hope to inspire potential art car artists and offers advice.
“You are allowed from that standpoint to build your own little story — a story about who you are. If you follow through, you will really have something later on to enjoy. You’re bringing pleasure to all kinds of people.”
Jolene Carr is Bmore Media’s summer intern and a graduate student at Towson University. She is originally from Syracuse, N.Y.
PHOTOS:
Bob Hieronimus and his art car.
A detail of Bob Hieronimus’s art car.
All photographs by STEVE RUARK
as published by bmore – https://bmoremedia.com/features/artcar071712.aspx
Thank you to everyone who posted birthday wishes for me on Facebook
Thank you to everyone who posted birthday wishes for me on Facebook
(and sent cards and Emails)!
Happy Birthday! Thank you to everyone who posted birthday wishes for me here (and sent cards and Emails)! My family knows I take birthdays very seriously, celebrating for weeks in advance. I’m sorry I’m not on Facebook much, and don’t post immediate responses, but that’s the way it is with the promises I made this lifetime. It won’t surprise some of you to learn that I have lived many lifetimes as a soldier, including my last lifetime during the American Revolution, when I paid the ultimate sacrifice and died in battle even before the Declaration of Independence was signed. This lifetime I was allowed to serve our beloved nation in the capacity of educator, artist, and author, and within these boundaries I am still motivated to serve every waking moment challenging the forces bent on destroying our Constitutional Republic.
These thoughts are at the forefront of my mind lately, as I’ve been working on a book about the Statue of Liberty to show how she is a manifestation of the Divine Feminine. Once again, I am astounded at the conspiracy theories that a small pocket of ill-informed paranoid bigots spread about this female symbol, and am reminded of the current conspiracy theories being collected around our first black president. The Statue of Liberty is attacked by the fundamentalist-conspiratorialists because she is a goddess, and as such, they see her as a threat to their concept of Christianity, where any depiction of divinity other than their paternalistic God the Father and Son is, by necessity, Satanic. Right now the hate-mongers are raging that Mr. Obama was raised a Muslim and therefore they fear he will be too tolerant of Muslims entering what they call “this Christian nation”. These American extremists fear Muslims because they believe Muslims are intent on taking over the world and wiping out Christianity. There are so many holes in this argument, I will focus on just the one. America is not a Christian nation. It was not founded as a Christian nation. The majority of our Founding Fathers were Christians, but as Deists, they were motivated by the philosophy of reason and the Age of Enlightenment, in which one of their priorities was to create a land were religious tolerance was enshrined in Law. The separation of church and state was the goal. Christianity was not promoted – liberty and religious tolerance were promoted. America was never a Christian nation.
In addition to my work on the Statue of Liberty, I’ve also been working on my memoirs (in which a number of you will play a part), as well as a revised version of my book on the Yellow Submarine.
Anyway, that’s one of the reasons you don’t see me lurking the halls of Facebook much. But your heart-warming birthday greetings brought me out of my lair long enough to pen you this missive. As Ben Franklin wrote for his epitaph, showing his belief in reincarnation: “The body of B. Franklin, printer, (like the cover of an old book, its contents torn out and stript of its lettering and gilding) lies here, food for worms, but the work shall not be lost for it will appear once more, in a new and more elegant edition, revised and corrected by the author.” My own hope is to revise and correct my own edition before returning to the other dimensions. Life is a school, and as usual, I’m late for class. See you on the radio! (please visit the 21st Century Radio page and give us a “like”!)
The Restoration of the Apocalypse Mural: Progress Update August 9, 2015
The Restoration of the Apocalypse Mural
Progress Update August 9, 2015
by Robert R. Hieronimus, Ph.D.
The main wall of the recreated Apocalypse Mural completed by Julie Horton, MFA under the supervision of Dr. Bob Hieronimus.
I originally completed the Apocalypse mural at Johns Hopkins University in February 1969. It was commissioned by Dr. Chester Wickwire, Chaplain of the Johns Hopkins University. A crew of artists and I have been working on restoring this mural since May 2015. It must be completed by August 20, 2015 when the students return. Although we have been making great progress we still have a very long way to go.
Dr. Bob Hieroniumus, 1969
The major difficulty resulted from changing to a water-based paint, instead of oil-based for the gold and silver colors. The fumes from the oil-based paint are dangerous, and especially in regard for the children who share the space for the Johns Hopkins University tutorial project, we decided to switch. At least 50% of the mural is covered in gold and silver. Using water-based paint, we found we had to apply three coats each to cover over effectively. Worse, the ceiling of the mural, the most difficult to paint, is covered in at least 70% gold and silver. Having to paint so much of the mural three times over again has been an exceedingly difficult task, and it has forced us to increase our schedule to working seven days a week to get the job done on time.
Check our website for the first update on the restoration progress and more background on the meaning and interpretation of this mural, plus an introduction to the artists I have entrusted to rebirth this piece. This Progress Update is divided by artist and the sections they have concentrated on to show our progress through the summer.
Our Team: Justin Williams, Ph.D., foreman; Ashley Pratt, BFA; Julie Ann Horton, M.F.A.; Kristie Winther, BFA; Ashley Stafford; Andreina Mijares Cisneros, Senior, Studio Art Major, Notre Dame of MD University, 2016.
Before they began working on this restoration project all the artists had to prepare with a mini-course in Symbology 101. They needed an introduction to the mural’s meaning, its history and why it is so controversial. How its use of symbols tells the story of how, why, and who was responsible for the destruction of the democratic republic of the United States and who turned it into an oligarchy which gave the power to the 1%, and denied the 99%, the We the People, their right to self-rule. They were all given copies of my research and a booklet that detailed the mural’s meaning and interpretation. They all got a copy of The Dictionary of Symbols by J.E. Cirlot. They each received a box containing 144 images from the many hundreds of photos and slides taken of the original 1969 mural. These photos included the changes forced on the mural by Johns Hopkins University without my knowledge. They also were assigned to read articles on the mural and reviews.
All of this material was given freely, not to expect them to believe any of the information, but because it was important they know the origins and the struggle to keep this public work of art in existence. They also got to see the 1971 PBS documentary “Artist of Savitria” that shows me talking about this mural and my approach to creating art for public consciousness-raising. After all this preparation I was assured they knew what the mural was about and how it came into being. None of the artists worked for less than $20/hour, a higher wage than most artists get, and which none of them had been paid before. We felt it important to give value for value.
On May 15, 2015 we entered the Fray!
The heart of the mural depicts the American Eagle with a broken right wing (the right wing of the Republican Party) from which fire and water flood the Statue of Liberty and bridges on both the West and East Coasts. The American Eagle is sinking into the sea and the names of the corporate powers that dominated America in 1969 when the mural was original (and continue to dominate today) are found covering the body of the eagle. America is no longer a republic, meaning our representative democracy has become an oligarchy. Corporate power is vested in the 1%, a dominant class whose patriarchal philosophy is domination. Their success will be short-lived, however. Nature will take care of them, and the 99%. Above the dying eagle is a purple spiritual eagle, which is rising to the ceiling and eventually turns into a Phoenix. In time, America will be reborn!
The first image here is a newly resurrected heart of the mural, done under my supervision by Julie Anne Horton, MFA, MICA. The remaining photos show our crew of artists and the areas of the mural that they are each responsible for resurrecting. For the most part they each got to choose which section they wanted to work on, but in nearly all cases, members of the entire crew contributed a hand in the redrawing and some of the painted details elsewhere when needed.
Dr. Zohara Hieronimus, D.H.L.
The most important soul of this incarnation is my beloved wife of 35 years, Dr. Queen Zohara. She is a wise soul who knew we were to join forces when we first met. She was aware of my purpose in this life and from the very beginning gave me the glorious freedom to focus on what we needed to accomplish together as a team. From this bonding a great deal of good and sacred work has been accomplished, including this 2015 restoration of the Apocalypse Mural. My wife Zohara is the lead funder of this project, and we are all eternally grateful to her for her generosity of spirit.
Click images to enlarge.
The first photo shows Zohara introducing her proposal to Johns Hopkins University for a gallery-like seating arrangement for visitors to the mural and the after school CSI tutoring program.
Here is Zoh meeting with Flux Studios principal Glenn Shrum in search of a creative solution for illuminating the mural.
Collaboration between Dr. Zohara, CSI-Tutorial teacher Young Song and Glenn Shrum of Flux Lighting.
Zoh in front of the “Annuit Coeptis” red flower.
Dr. Zohara in front of the Christos-Gnosis alcove which she studied in the early 1970s.
Zoh before the Egyptian Sphinx and pyramids which we visited together and photographed in 1981-82, arranging for a Sister-City relationship for Mayor William Donald Schaefer and President Anwar El Sadat.
Lemurian Ancient Temple Blocks
The entrance to the Apocalypse mural is a stairway, and on each side are stones 1.5×3 feet in size that serve as the foundation for the ancient temples of Lemuria and Atlantis. These stones were said to have been covered in precious metals of silver, gold and bronze. Our foundation stones have lost their alleged metals and are a reddish stone bearing other sacred elements. I wanted to recreate them and put a little “magic” into them.
Dr. Bob Hieronimus before the purple flower that gives birth to “E Pluribus Unum,” out of many, one, found on the Obverse of the Great Seal of the United States.
Two photos show the terrible condition of the stairs nearly obliterating the stones.
First stage of the stone’s rebirth.
Second stage of the stone’s rebirth.
Two photos of the final result.
Justin Williams, Ph.D. is the foreman on the Apocalypse Mural Restoration project for 2015, just as he has been for several other mural project and artcars I’ve worked on in the last few years. He has turned into one of my dearest friends and co-workers, and I have depended on him to get the job done at all costs. He always delivers!
Justin C. Williams, Ph.D., foreman
Born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1962, Justin C. Williams began practicing art as a young child. In 1986 Justin graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in architecture and design from the University of Wisconsin and then worked for two years as an industrial designer in a Milwaukee-area firm. In 1996 Justin returned to drawing and painting, following several years away from practicing art while he pursued a graduate degree in systems analysis from the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. Since the late 1990’s his artwork has focused on several themes. His work has been shown in solo and group exhibits in Anchorage, Alaska, Milwaukee, and Baltimore. A complete portfolio of his work can viewed at the Facebook site “JCW Artwork”. Justin has had the pleasure and good fortune to work on four of Dr. Bob’s other public art projects including restoring the “A Little Help From Our Friends” mural (2008), his “We the People” art car (2008), a live painting performance at the Wind Up Space in Baltimore (2009), the “We the People” mural (2013), and the restoration of the “Apocalypse” mural (2015).
Justin chose to focus on the stairwell of the Apocalypse, depicting the lost continents of Lemuria and Atlantis and their demises.
The first photo shows a little of what he was faced with in restoring this area:
The following images show he returned Poseidon to his former glory.
After Justin completed this area he continued his contributions, and overseeing the crew making sure everyone stayed on schedule. He is an excellent problem solver!
One of the most difficult areas to recreate on the Apocalypse mural was the main wall. We call it the American Eagle wall. This was undertaken by Julie Anne Horton, MFA, and she completed it on July 28, 2015 as seen here, with all but the dedication panel complete.
Julie Anne Horton, M.F.A.
Julie was raised in Zanesville, Ohio and received her BFA in Painting and Art Education from Ohio University. After living and working in Seattle, Washington, she returned to the East Coast to attend graduate school in Baltimore, Maryland. She earned her MFA in Painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art. She is currently painting and teaching in Baltimore, Maryland.
Here is what the main wall looked like before Julie began her work
The following photos show how she accomplished this difficult task.
Once she finished the American Eagle wall, Julie continued painting elsewhere.
Another MICA-trained artist who has assisted me in previous projects, is Ashley Pratt, BFA, who worked with us on the “We the People” mural restoration in 2013. Ashley was always the most colorfully attired of our team! She is also full of practical ideas as to how to get the job done efficiently and she shares her ideas selflessly.
Ashley Pratt, B.F.A.
Ashley’s canvas is often edible, as she was trained at Charm City Cakes and worked professionally at La Cakerie as a cake decorator. Ashley earned a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) Magna Cum Laude in 2014. She studied under famed American painter Vincent Desiderio at the New York Academy of Art (NYAA). Pratt’s paintings range from hand held memories to work bigger than she. Ashley worked under Dr. Bob’s tyranny in 2013 on the We the People mural.
Ashley undertook the difficult task of recreating the Isis Temple. Just take a look at what she was faced with in the first photo, and how she completed it over time in the following photos. Ashley Pratt restored the temple of the Goddess!
We were blessed by hiring Kristie Winther. Perhaps it was her MICA training that gave her the confidence and drive to recreate nearly an entire wall of the most challenging problems. From the very first day I saw her work I remarked on her no-nonsense, quiet and deliberate attention of getting the job done. She was among the fastest and most accurate artists I’ve ever worked with, and these are invaluable skills when working with such a tight deadline.
Kristie Winther, B.F.A.
Kristie grew up in Mastic Beach, New York, and attended the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), where she received a BFA in Painting. She lives in Baltimore and works as a freelance mural artist, scenic painter, and community artist. Her work is inspired by nature, sensuality, and historic textiles.
Just take a look at the mess she had to transform in the first few photos showing the Christos-Gnosis Alcove. She perfectly recreated it, and see how well she accomplished it in the remaining photos.
Kristie worked so efficiently that she was able to also recreate the Osiris Alcove which can be seen in the before and after in these last two photos.
During the first month of the mural restoration project Ashley Stafford joined us only as a part time supplemental assistant. A month or so into the project we had to hire her full time because without her help we wouldn’t be able to complete the restoration on time. Ashley concentrated on the landing level of the stairwell depicting the end of the Lemurian civilization and the rise of the Atlantean civilization.
Ashley Stafford
Ashley Stafford has lived in the Baltimore area her whole life. She is a self-taught artist, although it certainly helped that she came from a family that places great value in artistic pursuits. She has experience as a painter and illustrator in both traditional and digital media. She started working in the field painting murals with her older brother about eleven years ago. She is currently working as a freelance digital comic book artist and illustrator. In the future, she would like to be able to work full-time on her own mixed-media comic series.
The before photo indicates that every inch of the Atlantis temple, its flooding and coded lettering, needed to be repainted. The following photos show how she mastered all of its elements. Note how much gold and silver were needed and remember, at least three coats of each were needed to do the job. Once she finished the stairwell landing, Ashley put her energies into Noah’s Ark as seen in the last photo.
Andreina Mijares Cisneros is a visiting student from Venezuela who joined our team as a non-paid intern to earn credit for her work as a student art major at Notre Dame of Maryland University. After we saw photographs of her work, we knew she was more than qualified to join our team, but the fact that she wasn’t paid for her time really saved our budget from crashing into the pit. She always brought great joy to the work, with her ever-smiling face and her precise work – she has been a real gem to work with.
Andreina Mijares Cisneros, Studio Art Major
Notre Dame of Maryland University, 2016
Andreina Mijares Cisneros was born in Caracas, Venezuela in 1992. From a young age she moved to Tours, France with her family where she lived for 4 years, and was constantly exposed to European art through her parent’s love for art museums. She then returned to Venezuela where she graduated from High School. It was not until she was accepted into the United World College located in Montezuma, New Mexico that she began her studies in art and developed a passion for painting and drawing. She is currently completing her Bachelors of Art with a concentration in Studio Art at Notre Dame of Maryland University in Baltimore, Maryland.
Andreina tackled the Sphinx and Lemurian wall, and the two “before” photos show what she was up against. Note the enormous amount of gold and silver paint in these sections, and how both required a minimum of three coats of paint.
The following images show how Andreina progressed with this wall showing humanity’s evolution from a hermaphrodite state to the separation of the male/female sexes so very long ago. Andreina’s time and energy were a great support to all of us on this restoration.
The ceiling in the main room of the Apocalypse Mural was nearly covered in gold and silver. Early on we knew this was going to be a greatly tiring task because painting while craning your neck backward with paint dripping into your face grows torturous quickly. We tried rotating each artist to this section to share the pain. Originally in 1969 I did the whole ceiling by myself from a ladder and I remember very well how much paint (oil based back then) that I got in my hair, my eyes, and ears. For this restoration, Johns Hopkins University loaned us a scaffold on wheels that was a great help, but because we had to do a minimum of three coats on almost the entire ceiling it took three times longer than any other location.
None of the artists ever complained about this behemoth part of the task, but I knew we had to hire another artist to focus on the ceiling so the main crew could finish their selected areas. Fortunately for us, Jonathan Gherkin was available and he came highly recommended as someone who was fast, accurate and could take a beating. Jonathan became our “hired gun,” or in baseball terms, our “closer.” What a relief it was when he proved he could take it! It meant we could get the mural finished by our deadline of August 20th.
Jonathan Gherkin
Jonathan Gehrkin was born in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1985. He is a candidate for BFA in Painting at the Maryland Institute College of Art, class of 2017. He is a veteran of the United States Army where he served as a helicopter maintainer from 2006-2012. He currently lives and teaches art in Baltimore, Maryland.
The first photo shows Jonathan getting his paint in proper consistency to begin painting.
The following series of photos show how Jonathan attacked the ceiling from the chair on top of the scaffold, as well as on various ladders and how he had to climb down to the floor again and again to check his progress from a distance.
Notice how the majority of the ceiling is painted in gold and silver, meaning it all had to be painted at least three times over! No doubt, Jonathan’s service in the United States Army prepared him for the discomfort and fortitude needed to complete this job.
The Ceiling in the Main Room
As noted, the greatest drain on our energy, time and budget was the ceiling in the main room, which contains a zodiac, winged-bear carrying a serpent, phoenix, Poseidon riding his sea horses, and the Apocalypse great pyramid. When we arrived to begin painting after the repair crew had fixed the cracks and holes, we were horrified to discover the greater percentage of the celling in the main room was covered in white plaster. It was an enormous shock! The first photo shows Justin Williams surveying the damage and realizing we had an area that needed mega-attention.
The ceiling is painted in about 70% gold and silver and in order to switch to the safer water-based gold and silver, we were forced to use at least three coats of paint to cover it properly. If we’d stuck with the more toxic-oil based paint, we would have been finished weeks ahead of our 8/20/15 deadline, and we would have saved tens of thousands of dollars, and the crew would not be exhausted from working seven days a week. My team wouldn’t give up, however, and dedicated themselves to do the honorable thing. We wanted to prevent the odors that come with oil-based paint that would have permeated the space for months to come, and children use this room as part of the CSI-Tutoring classes. That’s just one of the reasons that my crew were the best team I’ve ever worked with. It was truly a heroic feat, but as the saying goes: “No good deed goes unpunished.”
In order to share the burden of painting the ceiling three times over, each of the artists took turns periodically working from this uncomfortable angle. After a few months we realized we had to hire another artist, Jonathan Gehrkin to give his full attention to the ceiling, and now he goes it alone, so that the rest of our team can tackle the other areas that were left untouched until now.
The heaven world on the ceiling contains the following symbols:
The Great Sphinx
and Zodiac
The Phoenix (one)
The Phoenix (two)
The Winged-Bear
Poseidon riding his double sea-horse
Poseidon’s horses heading
toward the Apocalypse pyramid
There is still much more work left to complete the ceiling’s story.
Each member of the team gave it their best!
Foreman Justin Williams
going at it.
Julie Ann Horton on the ceiling.
Kristie Winther
working on the ceiling.
Andreina Mijares Cisneros
on the ceiling.
Ashley Stafford taking her turn.
Ashley Pratt giving it her best.
Jonathan Gehrkin coming to the rescue
and taking it to the eventual end.
butler-interview-2017.html
Above: Meryl Ann Butler at the Women’s March in Norfolk, Virginia, with a sign she painted the day before.Secret Life of Lady Liberty Authors
Laura E. Cortner & Dr. Bob Hieronimus
Interviewed for OpEdNews
by Meryl Ann Butler, 11/19/2017
Originally appeared on OpEdNews.
The Secret Life of Lady Liberty: Goddess in the New World by Robert R. Hieronimus, Ph.D., and Laura E. Cortner is a multifaceted tome exploring the missing piece — and missing peace — in American society: the power of the Feminine. Since the last major election cycle, the deadly imbalance in America’s toxic patriarchy has become unmistakable.
The US ranks 104th in women’s representation in government. Women and girls currently make up more than half the population in the US, but they’re represented by a Congress made up of 80 percent men. This isn’t just an issue in terms of equal representation — the proportion of women in government profoundly affects how all of society views women.
—Vox
Annually, four million people are drawn by the iconography of the symbol of the feminine to make the pilgrimage to Liberty Island to pay respects to America’s version of the Great Mother. And what inspires such yearning for the Lady with the torch? Can it be this lack of balance in American society and politics?
November 19, 2017 is the 130th anniversary of the death of Emma Lazarus, who is best known for her sonnet, “The New Colossus,” immortalized in a bronze plaque in the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. The sonnet was written in 1883 when Lazarus was 34 years old, just four years before her death.
“The New Colossus”
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”Emma Lazarus, 1883
OpEdNews is glad to welcome authors Robert R. Hieronimus, Ph.D., and Laura E. Cortner as our guests.
Robert R. Hieronimus, Ph.D. is an internationally known historian, visual artist, and radio host and has appeared on the History, Discovery, BBC, and National Geographic channels. The host of 21st Century Radio®, he lives in Maryland.
Laura E. Cortner has coauthored previous titles with Robert R. Hieronimus including Founding Fathers, Secret Societies; Inside the Yellow Submarine; and United Symbolism of America. She is the director of the Ruscombe Mansion Community Health Center for holistic services in Maryland.
Meryl Ann Butler: Thanks for visiting with OpEdNews, Laura and Dr. Bob! I really enjoyed your newest book, The Secret Life of Lady Liberty: Goddess in the New World. I was born in NYC, and have many memories of visiting the Statue of Liberty as a child. She has appeared in my artwork many times over the years, most recently as the poster I created to carry in the Women’s March.
Engraving of the Indian Queen entitled ‘America’ by Martin de Vos as engraved by Adriaen Collaert II ca.1595.
(Image by Public domain via wiki) Permission Details DMCA
I’m so happy to feel her deep importance to this nation beginning to return. One of the most important “vacuums of the feminine” in America has to do with our structure of government. While we based it on the very successful model of the Iroquois Confederacy, what was left out of our Constitution was, in my opinion, the most important aspect of checks and balances. Can you speak about that?
Laura E. Cortner: Thanks Meryl Ann! This is one of our favorite topics and one of the reasons we wrote this book about the Statue of Liberty in the first place.
One of the biggest “secrets” about Lady Liberty that we are referring to in the title of our book is her Native American ancestry. This is evident symbolically and from an art history standpoint when you examine the images of the so-called Indian Queen on the earliest European travel literature of the late 1500s.
Illustrates the Iroquois influence theory, and how closely the U.S. self-governing structure mirrors that established by the League of Iroquois over 500 years earlier. Chart rendered by Amy Ford based on the concept in ‘The Great Law’
(Image by Amy Ford) Permission Details DMCA
These European artists depicted the new land as a voluptuous, mostly naked, dark-skinned woman — and we can elaborate later, if you like, about how this “Indian Queen” image unconsciously continues to influence our domination paradigm in the United States even today, in terms of environmental stewardship. But what you’re pointing to with your first question is the missing element in the U.S. Constitution: namely, the voice of the Council of the Clan Mothers.
Our founders borrowed heavily from the Native governing structures they observed in their neighboring societies, in particular the League of the Iroquois. And when you compare the two governments side by side, U.S. and Iroquois, you can immediately see the esteemed position in which the Iroquois held their women.
The Council of the Clan Mothers among the Iroquois, or to more correctly name them, the Haudenosaunee, is on par with the U.S. Supreme Court. The wise women made all the most important decisions for their nation. The women determined when to go to war and when to negotiate peace; they were the ones who voted in the chiefs, and they held the power of impeachment; the women owned all the property and retained it in times of divorce, and on and on.
But though John Adams and others acknowledged their indebtedness to the Native Americans for inspiring the American Revolution and providing a framework for their new experiment in self-rule, Adams spoke for many when he voiced his fear of giving too much power to the women.
I’ll let Bob tell you what John Adams said in praise of the Iroquois, but here’s what he said in reply to Abigail Adams when she famously told him to “remember the ladies,” (i.e, women’s rights) when drafting this new declaration of independence they were all talking about. His reply to her was tongue-in-cheek, saying women are already so powerful that the men were at their feet. He joked that if in their declaration of independence from the King that they simultaneously freed the women from the centuries of legal repression that was preventing them from education and employment or even personhood, then they would face what he called the dreaded “petticoat revolution.” In other words, it scared him less to take on the King of England and his mighty army of redcoats and mercenaries than it did to change the laws that continued to suppress women’s equal access to full citizenship.
Dr. Bob Hieronimus: That’s right, and thanks for inviting us to this interview, Meryl Ann. Practically all of the founders we learn about in school wrote at one time or another about their praise for the governing methods of the Indians. John Adams said that the U.S. Constitution was the Americans’ attempt to “set up a government of . . . modern Indians.” That was in his Defence of the Constitutions in 1787.
Thomas Paine wrote, “To understand what the state of society ought to be, it is necessary to have some idea of the natural state of man, such as it is at this day among the Indians of North America. . . . [Poverty was a creation] of what is called civilized life. It exists not in the natural state. . . . The life of an Indian is a continual holiday compared to the poor of Europe.”
This respect that our founders felt for the Native Americans is a subject that I always try to bring up whenever I’m being interviewed by the History Channel or the Discovery Channel or the many other shows I’ve done about the “secrets” of the founding fathers.
You know my doctoral dissertation is a humanistic and transpersonal interpretation of the Reverse of the Great Seal, that mysterious eye in the triangle over an unfinished pyramid.
Today, thanks to these many documentaries I’ve appeared on, most Americans THINK they know this symbol means “Illuminati” or “Freemasons” or worse, “Satanic.” That’s why I almost always refuse these interview requests any more. They will cut out the parts when I’m talking about the influence of the League of the Iroquois and how much we owe to them, and they will leave in all the edited bits from my symbolic analysis of the Great Seal or the layout of Washington, DC, that links them however tenuously to the Freemasons. Oftentimes what I say will be skewed into whatever conspiracy theory they are trying to spin for whatever ratings season they are in.
Personally, I find it far more fascinating to focus on the convincing evidence of the influence of the Native Americans on the founding fathers. This research has been collected by dozens of scholars such as Roy Fadden, John Mohawk, Bruce Johansen, Donald Grinde, Oren Lyons and more.
Contemporary image based on oral traditions of how the Ancestors influenced the Founding Fathers.
(Image by By Iroquois artist John Kahionhes Fadden, Director of the Six Nations Museum, NY) Permission Details DMCA
For crying out loud, the Indians were right there with all the famous men in that hot building in Philadelphia in the pivotal summer of 1776. They were right there! The Second Continental Congress actually invited them to observe their debates over independence and give their feedback.
In May and June of 1776 twenty-one Iroquois sachems camped out in the room above Congress on the second floor, and Secretary of the Congress Charles Thomson, himself an adopted member of the Delaware Indians and whose Indian name translated to “Man Who Tells the Truth,” recorded their visit in detail in the official minutes for the Congress.
MAB: Wow, Bob I never learned that in American History class! That’s enlightening!
BH: Right! But that’s not all. At the end of this observation period, they gave John Hancock, the president of the Congress, an Indian name, Karanduan, or the Great Tree, likening him to their own Great Law of Peace, the central hub around which all their laws radiated.
And you’re absolutely right in terms of what they left out. We believe the main reason that the Iroquois system of the Great Law of Peace survived for hundreds of years (successfully maintaining peace between sovereign nations), and the U.S. system has only marginally succeeded over the past two hundred years (going to war at least once a decade and providing unequal opportunity for health and security of its citizens) is the missing element of the clan system and their value for the power of women.
The Iroquois acknowledged that men and women had different strengths, but considered them equally powerful. In fact, due to their quite different creation stories, they considered women more powerful than men in many ways, and would never dream of attempting any action without their guidance.
Corn Maiden
(Image by By Iroquois artist John Kahionhes Fadden, Director of the Six Nations Museum, NY) Permission Details DMCA
MAB: I agree about women being more powerful. As an example, there is a video on social media which shows a couple of men who get hooked up to a labor pain simulator because they want to prove that their wives exaggerated the pain of childbirth. Of course, they begged for mercy as their wives high-fived each other!
And that is only one of the ways in which women are stronger than men. Also, women are typically more apt to want to cooperate and they are less inclined to let testosterone-induced competitiveness push them into war.
In Michael Moore’s film “Where to Invade Next,” he interviewed the women who ran the only Icelandic bank that survived the country’s famous financial collapse. Here’s the clip in which they explain why they believe a women’s bank succeeded:
It seems that a generous application of the feminine perspective can be healthy for humanity. Do you see any ways that we can get back to more of the feminine influences here in the US? Can the archetype of Lady Liberty help us?
Iceland’s banks all failed except one run by women Iceland’s banks all failed except one run by women. Clip from .Where to invade next. by Michael Moore.
(Image by YouTube, Channel: Marianne) Permission Details DMCA
LEC: Oh yes! And thank you for this opportunity to talk about Chapter One in our book, The Secret Life of Lady Liberty!
One of the most compelling revelations we had when we did the research that went into this book started when we read announcements in brain science that claimed to explain the differences between men and women. A lot of the reports centered around research into the hormone oxytocin, a naturally occurring chemical produced by both men and women, but mostly ignored for the past 100 years. Up until recently, scientists thought oxytocin was solely related to women’s health because they had identified its role in breastfeeding, and the birthing process, and bonding with the baby. But when someone labeled it “the love hormone,” and neuroscientists started talking about its ability to induce feelings of trust and safety that could impact the financial markets as well as riot control, suddenly oxytocin was a hot topic.
We thought we had an “Aha!” moment when we first read how this primordial hormone and its receptor system explained why women were better at some things than men were, and vice versa. But when we dug deeper, we learned that not only do many feminists cringe at such conclusions (those who have been fighting for decades to show that women are completely equal to men), but the really serious neuroscientists were not the ones making these conclusions.
It was journalists and science reporters who were leaping to the more extraordinary conclusions about oxytocin, so we kept digging until we found someone to interview who really knew her stuff. We went straight to the top and interviewed Dr. C. Sue Carter, Ph.D., whose pioneering research led the way for the social psychology experiments in this new field. She discovered that it was the oxytocin system that explained monogamy in the prairie vole, one of the very few other mammals that practice monogamy besides humans. Her team recorded phenomenal levels of oxytocin in the brains of the prairie voles when compared to other voles or rodents who did not practice monogamy. Oxytocin also explained how much “love” they demonstrated in their family units.
Oxytocin is produced equally in males and females but women are able to use it better, especially in times of stress. Others have concluded this is why in high stress situations like revolution or environmental disasters, you’ll often see groups of women who will circle together to come to a solution for the group. They are using the oxytocin their brains are producing to stay calm and focused.
As you say, where men are testosterone-driven — either after millennia of social conditioning or by predestined genetics, we don’t know, but it’s true men approach tasks differently than women do, generally with a more goal-oriented end in site. Study after study have shown that when both men and women are present at the board of directors meetings, more compromise happens, and the bottom line of the company grows.
When more compassionate actions are practiced by the human resources department, like providing physical amenities for pregnant employees and generous family care leave for both men and women, productivity and creativity among all employees benefits enormously.
When a prairie vole gives birth, there is such a surge of oxytocin in both the father and the mother that oftentimes, the father will be the first to reach the pup to begin licking and grooming it. Aunts and uncles also pitch in to help, as the young tend to live together in bonded family units. More research is needed, but it’s clear that the “love hormone” is designed to help humans get along with each other, and if we can figure out how better to adapt to its power, we might advance to a new kind of humanity.
So, just as in my first answer when looking to the Iroquois for a role model, my response would be: elect more women to positions of power. Look around wherever you have the chance to influence your world, from the county fair and PTA meetings to local and national government. Identify the women whose platforms you can support together with the men who recognize the importance of an equal rights agenda. We want to support anyone who can see that valuing compassion leads to strength.
The more compassion and care we give to young children in their first 5 years, the better developed their brains will be, the better workers they will be, and the more creative will be their solutions for the problems facing the world right now. We need to create more compassionate and highly creative people to envision and create the solutions needed to break out of the box of the materialistic domination paradigm we seem stuck in, and these new patterns start in the home. Our votes need to go to leaders who will support caregiving from the start.
BH: And yes, we do believe that focusing on the Statue of Liberty, particularly in her true role as the American goddess, can help Americans make this shift.
She’s taken a lot of flak lately from our current administration who seems hell-bent on reinventing America as the land of the selfish and the me-firsters, but see how resilient she is! She is still standing noble with that torch held high in New York Harbor because as a very effective symbol, she represents whatever is everyone’s private notion of the best that America can be.
She is both flexible and hollow (literally and metaphorically) and that’s what enables her to withstand both the winds of Hurricane Sandy, and the winds of abuse coming from the ill-informed anti-immigration advocates.
Construction of the Statue of Liberty
(Image by Wikipedia (commons.wikimedia.org)) Permission Details DMCA
She is in essence a powerful woman, confidently striding forward, comfortable in her power. As such, she is a great role model for young girls seeking to overcome the social conditioning that their talents are less valuable than the boys.
But it’s her deeper background in the lore of the goddess-worshiping cultures of “pre-history” where her true value lies to Americans right now, I think. If more of us could wake up from the spell of the Christian church’s mindgrip of patriarchy, and realize that for thousands of years “God was a woman” (Merlin Stone), it would allow us to access the freedom and great truth that comes when you tap the divine in female form.
The ancient Hebrews had their own version of the female half of divinity, but most of us never hear about Her, because like the early Christian church’s promotion of women to leadership positions, these teachings were suppressed by some misogynistic bishops about 400 years after the death of Jesus Christ. Once the Roman imperial system was overlaid on top of the Christian religion, women were voted out, and patriarchy ruled supreme for the next two millennia.
Check out some of the early American advocates for women’s rights like Matilda Joslyn Gage who wrote the prescient Woman, Church and State. Elizabeth Cady Stanton edited The Woman’s Bible and was another who bravely pointed to the Christian church as the source for the fundamental patriarchal suppression in society. Radical stuff for many of your readers, I know, but it’s nothing new.
State seals featuring Goddesses
(Image by Public domain) Permission Details DMCA
‘Liberty Displaying the Arts and Sciences, or The Genius of America Encouraging the Emancipation of the Blacks.’ This painting demonstrates the early abolitionist movement which argued that the newly won liberty should be extended to slaves, too.
(Image by Samuel Jennings , 1792 (Public Domain))PermissionDetailsDMCA
Once you wake up to the fact that the Statue of Liberty is not an “it” but a “Her” and a “Goddess” at that, you can start to question your assumptions about why that word “Goddess” might bring up feelings of fear or suspicions in your consciousness. Is it because you were taught in Sunday school the same prejudices taught by the early Roman bishops trying to suppress all the pagan religions in favor of the new Christian patriarchal orthodoxy? Why did the early American patriots not feel this same fear or suspicion when they depicted their new nation as a goddess in all their early statuary and flags and state seals and newspaper mastheads?
Because they were better schooled in the classics and in symbology than we are today, that’s why. She may not have symbolized anything to do with female empowerment to our patriot forebears, but at least they appreciated her power to inspire virtue and nobility of spirit, and yes, even inspire the newly minted “Americans” to be more compassionate with one another.
Lady Liberty is the American nation’s version of a Mother Goddess. We can learn a lot that will help us in the future by acknowledging her as such.
MAB: Thank you both for sharing your insights.
Laura, I think it’s odd that some feminists have been fighting for decades to “show that women are completely equal to men.” Of course, I agree with equal human rights, and I certainly believe that any women should get equal pay for equal work. But even back in my hippie teen days, I was confused by fighting for equality, it always felt to me like a step down!
I grew up being taught the Bible stories, and how the world was created in Genesis. But it never made sense to me that a creator would create a lot of cool things, each one getting better and better, and then decide that the second-to-last creation was the most evolved!
Liberty Sowing the Seeds of Victory by Frank V. DuMond, 1917
(Image by Library of Congress) Permission Details DMCA
As an artist, involved daily in the creative process, I live that creative process. I know what it is like to be in the creative flurry, making something and then improving it in the next iteration, and on and on until I finally feel like I have made it as perfect as I can…and then I rest for a while and look at my finished art before moving into the next creative cycle.
So it makes sense to me that the pattern I experience would be a copy of the pattern experienced by a Divine Creator, and that, therefore, the last iteration in a creative cycle would be the most evolved.
I am grateful for your book as a guide toward getting our country back into balance, and I certainly agree that electing more women into political positions is required. And thank you for your “flexible and hollow” metaphor, Dr. Bob, I love that, and I do think that it is the image and symbolism in our Goddess of Liberty which will be pivotal in saving us.
Thanks again, both of you, for visiting with OpEdNews. Do either of you have any final thoughts as we complete this interview?
BH: I really appreciate your description of the creative process and how it brings you closer in tune with the Divine. That’s great!
I always like to remind everyone that they have an artist inside of them, and to work on using their creative energies. It’s good for your health and your own spiritual evolution.
Now, in terms of what you were saying about feminists back in the day demanding equality, every cause has its militant adherents who insist on a black and white kind of definition of their ideals. This reminds me of one of the extremist views of the Statue of Liberty that is gaining traction in these days of more and more people turning to conspiracy theories.
I would like to close with a simple warning to your readers not to fall for the claim that the Statue of Liberty is proof of an Illuminati conspiracy to rule the world. This is a popular theory on Internet conspiracy sites and it’s presented with slick and compelling videos that will frighten the ill-informed. They call the Statue of Liberty a demonic Whore of Babylon. That particular theory, however, is a complete red herring.
Of course, there are real conspiracies all over the world where powerful men try to manipulate events, as they have for all of time. But there is absolutely nothing that links the Statue of Liberty to the Bavarian Illuminati, and there is very little that links her to the Freemasons. Furthermore, when you dig a little further it becomes clear that the conspiracy theorists who attack the Statue of Liberty by claiming she’s demonic are emotionally disturbed people who resent women having authority, especially when it comes to controlling their own reproductive cycles. The crazy rumors on the Internet calling the Statue of Liberty the Whore of Babylon are linked to the rise of the theocratic right wing in this country and their determined assault on women’s rights. All religious fundamentalists around the world prioritize pushing women back to their so-called traditional place. We learned a lot from Stephan Schwartz on this, and I highly recommend his latest book The Eight Laws of Change.
MAB: Thanks for the reminder about Stephan’s work, Bob, I should interview him, too!
How about you, Laura?
Detail from the ‘Apotheosis of George Washington,’ the 1865 Constantine Brumidi fresco on the ceiling of the Capitol dome. The figure representing Revenge holding the two torches is a portrait of Jefferson Davis, and the white bearded fellow representing
(Image by Architect of the Capitol) Permission Details DMCA
LEC: Thanks for one more chance to share a few more ideas Meryl Ann. I really loved your story of how your young self sorted out the Genesis creation story to make sense to you in a proto-feminist way! That’s priceless.
Instead of encouraging women to be strong like men, we should be encouraging both to respect what each brings to the table. Much more can be achieved in every endeavor when both halves of humanity work unitedly to cultivate each other’s strengths and grow together.
What was revolutionary about the American Revolution was their creation of a republican society where all can be considered equal under the law, something the designers of the Statue of Liberty emphasized symbolically by placing that tablet of law in her left hand.
The future definition of American liberty, as the liberty to do good and improve the world for others, will outshine the liberty to make a profit. If we want to work toward that, we can bring it about by living it in our own lives right now. We are all connected, and changing our own lives can change the world. Because we are all Liberty’s children. We are all one.
Symbols are powerful because they are a bridge between the conscious and unconscious minds. Symbols are far more effective at motivating people’s emotions than words and facts are. The Statue of Liberty has achieved the premier status as the symbol OF America, and despite the complexity and confusion of what “America” means, she continues to represent the best that all of us hope America can be.
To us, the Statue of Liberty is the goddess of the NEW world, for she has become both a symbol of the myths that unite us and the diversity that strengthens us. There’s that hollowness and flexibility again. The Statue of Liberty, with her torch of enlightenment/wisdom held high, reminds us that through learning, and reaching for the infinite goodness of divinity, we can secure true liberty. This is why we love America so. This is the AMERICAN Liberty, based on enlightenment and embodied by a goddess.
Mab: Wow, what a lot to think about, thank you both, again, for a great interview!
Dr. Bob Hieronimus Interviewed About Baseball Hall of Famer Leon Day
Dr. Bob Hieronimus Interviewed
About Baseball Hall of Famer Leon Day
Dr. Bob Hieronimus was interviewed for the new book The Call to the Hall: When Baseball’s Highest Honor Came to 31 Legends of the Sport by Kevin Warneke and David Ogden. He shared the story of his friendship with baseball legend Leon Day and the dramatic hospital-bed celebration of his election to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1995. Like most Negro Leagues players, Major League Baseball had snubbed him by not electing him to the Hall of Fame, and after interviewing Day on 21st Century Radio®, Dr. Bob made it his personal mission to get him elected.
Buy the book online at McFarland Books or Amazon. Read an excerpt below.
(c) 1998-2018. All Rights Reserved
Dear Jerry: Grateful Dead Tribute Concert
Dear Jerry: Grateful Dead Tribute Concert
Left to right: Trixie (daughter, Jerry Garcia), Dr. Bob Hieronimus, Carolyn “Mountain Girl” Garcia (Jerry’s widow), Sunshine (daughter, Ken Kesey), and Annabelle (daughter, Jerry Garcia).
2015 marks the Grateful Dead’s 50th anniversary, and the band kicked off its series of farewell concerts with appearances at the May 14 Dear Jerry: Celebrating the Music of Jerry Garcia concert at Merriweather Post Pavilion. All four surviving bandmembers—Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann, and Mickey Hart—performed. Dr. Bob was a special VIP guest of Jerry Garcia’s widow, Carolyn “Mountain Girl” Garcia. He brought along books from his library and other gifts for Jerry’s family and other performers.
Click thumbnails to enlarge.
Chatting at the VIP pre-party and enjoying dinner:
Enjoying the Artist Lounge
Visitors and VIPs left their marks
Dr. Bob goes over the astrological aspects with filmmaker Nicole Boxer,
daughter of Sen. Barbara Boxer
Dr. Bob having lunch with Bobby Weir
of the Grateful Dead
The Concert:
Every show on the farewell tour sold out quickly. The audience for Dear Jerry filled Merriweather Post Pavilion as 26 musical acts jammed on stage through the night.
Reggae star Jimmy Cliff
Jon Gutwillig, Disco Biscuits
Mickey Hart, Grateful Dead
Phil Lesh, Grateful Dead
Live tweets from the audience (hashtag #dearjerry) were projected on screen.
After the Show
Dr. Bob with Jon Gutwillig
Dr. Bob with Jorma Kaukonen of Jefferson Airplane
Sunshine, Trixie, and Dr. Bob
Dr. Bob and Carolyn at his car
Dr. Bob Celebrates His Birthday in Style
Dr. Bob Celebrates His Birthday in Style
With two trips to Oriole Park in one week, Dr. Bob dressed his “dapperest,” despite 90 degree heat on the second game.
Here he is on his birthday trip when the special “Happy Birthday Dr. Bob” message showed up on the screen.
Click photos to enlarge.
Notice his Ravens-appropriate socks:
Dressed to the nines, but full of attitude!
A few days later he was treated to a very special outing with friends Chris Kaltenbach of the Baltimore Sun and Val and John Astin of acting fame and Johns Hopkins Theater professor.
See the four of them here sweltering in the unseasonable heat.
Both John Astin and Chris Kaltenbach are the serious kind of fan who keep score as the game is played!
After the game, Dr. Bob managed to convince another fan to sell him their game-played ball so he could present a memento to Chris Kaltenbach. They all signed it in commemoration of the day.
Joined by family members afterward at the One World Café.
Here is Vesta Kaltenbach (second from right), and John’s son and fellow actor Sean Astin (furthest on left), in town for the Baltimore Comic-Con where he was signing autographs for fans of Lord of the Rings:
Sean Astin borrowed Dr. Bob’s camera for a series of selfies. This is what he looked like after we told him he should have won an Oscar for his portrayal of the faithful Samwise Gamgee in the Tolkien classics.
One World! One People! One Planet!
Happy 74th Birthday Dr. Bob! May you have many more.
(c) 1998-2017. All Rights Reserved
21st Century Radio® Interview: Dr. Bob Hieronimus, Ph.D. speaks with Dr. Zohara Hieronimus, D.H.L. on her new book, White Spirit Animals, October 15, 2017
Dr. Zohara Hieronimus, D.H.L.
Dr. Bob Hieronimus, Ph.D.
Listen to the the entire interview on our audio archive page.
— — —
DR. BOB HIERONIMUS: Welcome back to 21st Century Radio. I’m Dr. Bob Hieronimus, our Executive Producer and Research Assistant is Laura Cortner, and our engineer is Anita Brockington.
Tonight our very, very special guest is my beloved sweetheart, and the co-host of this program, Dr. Queen J. Zohara Meyerhoff Hieronimus. Zoh is my teacher when it comes to the animal kingdom, and we are very proud to announce that her latest book has just been released and it’s destined to be a best seller. It’s called White Spirit Animals: Prophets of Change, and we’re going to talk to her about it for two hours tonight, so hang on to your hats!
I told Zoh she should go brew a cup of tea for or something for a few minutes, because I have a rather lengthy introduction, where I want to explain my personal connection to the animal kingdom, together with the essential role my wife has played in my understanding of the different species.
When I was just a miniature Dr. Bob I used to play on Old Oriole Ballpark, which was behind our house at 2930 Greenmount Ave. This was the ballfield where the International League Baltimore Orioles had played, including my favorite player, Babe Ruth! Old Oriole Ballpark was also the home for many small animals like turtles, frogs, rabbits, and garden snakes. I used to enjoy looking after them, because one of our local boys used to take pleasure in torturing and experimenting on these creatures. When I found them dead, I would bury them and say a prayer. Back then I thought animals were like people and my feelings for them ran deep.
As I grew to be a teenager around the age of 15, however, I entered that stage where I thought I knew everything. I became an agnostic, and a know-it-all, and the most important thing in my consciousness was GIRLS. My relationship with animals completely disappeared. I believed humans were superior in all ways.
Later in college I discovered the reports about the incredible intelligence in dolphins who are even more intelligent and caring than humans. This reawoke my interest, but still my rational mind would not accept that ALL animals were intelligent and caring creatures.
It was not until I met my beloved wife that I discovered my true mentor in this area. Zohara’s actions proved to me that not only did all animals have intelligence, but they also shared psychic abilities and could communicate with humans! This was something I never considered before I met her. I watched her work tirelessly to right the wrongs and injustices for all life forms on planet earth and easily fell in love with her.
Dr. Queen Zohara is more than a genius, she is a visionary. Her contributions to the planetary good are permeated with love, and in the words of mystic Rudolf Steiner, works permeated with love will become world happenings. I have proudly watched her research evolve from the mystical Kaballah, to remote viewing and quantum theory, into her new passion, speaking to the animals. Her new book just released this week from Inner Traditions/Bear & Co. is called White Spirit Animals: Prophets of Change and in it she shares the message of these totemic animals sacred to indigenous peoples around the world.
This book is racking up some stellar reviews already, such as:
Stanley Krippner, Ph.D., the Alan Watts Professor of Psychology at Saybrook University and co-author of The Shamanic Powers of Rolling Thunder, who said:
“Zohara’s magnificent White Spirit Animals reminds her readers of the human/animal bond and its continued importance. Her book hearkens back to shamanic practices that employed spirit animals as copractitioners. . . . White Spirit Animals can teach, protect, and heal their human siblings, and in so doing expand the boundaries of what is possible.”
Jean Shinoda Bolen, M.D., Jungian analyst and author of Artemis: The Indomitable Spirit in Everywoman, said:
“White Spirit Animals is a beautiful and deep work of art and heart. It provides a wealth of cross-cultural, historical, shamanic, and mythical information. It is likely to connect the reader with the symbolically deep realm where dreams come from. The images and stories resonate with that place of inner knowing in us. I am enthusiastic about this book–thank you, Zohara Hieronimus!”
And one more from Dr. Gay Bradshaw, author of Elephants on the Edge: What Animals Teach Us About Humanity and Carnivore Minds, who said: “Brilliant visionary work that pulls humanity into alignment with our animal kin and forgotten souls.”
I don’t think we need any further biographical introduction for this 21st Century Radio audience, so with that, I’d like to welcome you back to the guest microphone on 21st Century Radio, Dr. Queen J. Zohara Meyerhoff Hieronimus!!
Zoh, I believe this book, White Spirit Animals promises to be your best and most important contribution to our planet and to all the living beings which call her mother. Congratulations.
What are White Spirit Animals and why did you decide to write a book about them?
DR. ZOHARA HIERONIMUS: You know it’s an interesting thing as an author, and you know and anybody in the listening audience who’s an author knows, your last work is your greatest work. But I like to think that all of my works have contributed to my ability to write this particular book. When I wrote about the prophets and the prophetesses, I practiced coming into a rapport with their consciousness, which all of us do. We do that with anybody that’s deceased when we read their writings, when we look at a picture of them, when we think of them. Whether it’s a human, whether it’s an animal, whether it’s a place on Earth, whether it’s a building, whether it’s a tree. Anytime we put our attention on something, we come into rapport with that which can connect us to it. It’s through our attention and then in terms of communicating, whether it’s with a tree or a dog or a deceased cat or a loved one who has passed over, even if you never met them, like a great grandparent that you never had a chance to meet. The process is the same in coming into rapport with all of life because all of life talks. All of life is connected through light because all of life is light.
Having said that, quantum physics has made it possible for us to really appreciate that there are particles and waves. And the research that we’ve done on prayer that I’ve covered in my other work over the decades shows us that when we ask for thy will be done, there’s a bigger impact, it’s like riding the wave. Versus the particle, which would be praying for a specific outcome. And I say this all as preamble to talking about this particular book because I joke sometimes, as you’ve heard and our audience has heard, that we can intend to do something but the bigger impact is if you compare our goals to being an archer and there’s an archery target. Conditioning the field, meaning not aiming for the bullseye, will eventually enable you to hit the bullseye even with your eyes closed.
So, this long preamble as to why did I write this book, I spent decades practicing non-local consciousness arts. And when you and I first met, as you know I had a keen interest in radionics, which is a form of at a distance healing through implements or patterns of consciousness that the operator works with even if it’s not plugged in and even if it’s just a design because what we have found as in remote viewing, what we put our attention to we then can come into rapport with. I have spent a lifetime of loving animals and loving nature and being an activist and trying to support nature in all ways, both philosophically, personally, literally, scientifically, broadcasting support through all of the various people around the world who are doing such important work. And what happened was in March 2013, when I was washing the dishes, this sounds like a zen story but it’s really the truth, wash dishes and you’re likely to have a bliss experience. That’s what they say you know, there’s no spirituality outside your daily life. And that takes a long time to adjust to because when you’re young you just want all the highs of spirituality, you want to go to workshops and have your bliss and you go home and it gets very difficult to continue with your life in a normative way.
But here I was washing the dishes and I had this experience of these white spirit animals. Animals who are all white coated unlike their kin, and there was a white bear and a white wolf and a white horse and a white shark and a white whale and a white lion, et cetera. And I was in awe. I mean when you practice non-local consciousness and you become comfortable with having visions, which I have had my whole life since I was very, very young, probably at the age of 3, when I saw the blessed mother when I almost drowned. That was really the beginning of my being conscious that there was a whole other dimensional way of interacting with the visible and the invisible terrain of existence. So, these white spirit animals came to me and I said to them feeling like that I was standing before revered elders, “Why have you come to me? And what can I do for you?” I recount this in the book, White Spirit Animals: Prophets of Change and they asked me to tell their story. They made it very clear to me that they wanted the story told collectively, not about one of them at a time, not a book on just one spirit animal and then another book on another spirit animal. They said, we want you to tell our story collectively because then our purpose and our pattern will be better understood.
I was very ill at the time with hyperthyroid and had just finished another book and was in no position in 2013 to commit to doing a book. So, it took me another year and a half in terms of a) being able to write three sample chapters, dreaming with the animals, which I started to do to see if i was I even capable of doing what they asked me because I don’t know these animals personally. It’s not like I spent personal time like I have with dogs and cats and ferrets and rats and birds, et cetera, or even raccoons and groundhogs and animals that are around us or animals that I’ve nurtured while they’ve died because they’re on our property or somebody’s brought them to me. I can’t tell you how many birds have been brought to me on their deathbeds that I nurture and take care of until they pass on. That seems to be part of what most animal communicators run into at some point of their life is stewarding animals that cross over and that kind of empathy is what you cultivate over time. So, I had cultivated this empathy and shamans historically have used dreaming as a way to communicate with all life, whether it’s a tree or a location or a deceased person or the animals they’re working with. And so, I began to practice after talking to Dr. Stanley Krippner, who I write about extensively in the book and who has been our guest numerous times, who headed up the Maimonides dream laboratory in the 60s and 70s. I had an opportunity to ask him about this process of shamanic dreaming. It’s basically what is more modernly referred to as lucid dreaming, but it’s a little different from lucid dreaming because you’re not controlling the content yourself, in fact what you’re asking is each animal, and this is what I practiced for 4 years, was for each animal to communicate in my dreams what it was they wanted me to share.
So, the process is very particular to this book. I didn’t do this with any of the other works I’ve ever authored or produced, whether it was for TV or magazines or radio. It’s that I really waited until the animal had told me what it is they wanted shared and I didn’t do any research initially. I spent a year dreaming with the animals before I started reading other people’s books on each one of them, whether it was the white buffalo or the species of buffalo, or the lion or the wolf or the bear. And in this way I believed I could come into authentic rapport with each one of them.
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B: In your book, White Spirit Animals: Prophets of Change you say these five white spirit animals and their species, the bear, lion, elephant, wolf, and buffalo, are critical to the Earth’s survival. Why?
Z: You know it’s an interesting phenomena when you go into a mystery trip, which this really was, it was a journey for me. I really didn’t know what I would find out once these white spirit animals asked me to tell their story. What I did notice initially when they first came to me and I started this dreaming exercise for a year before I even submitted a proposal to my publisher, was I thought these are pretty interesting mammals, that was the first thing I recognized, that these were land mammals, these particular five. Then I thought, that’s strange because some of them I knew were represented in the star systems. Then I thought about their relevance to various religious traditions. Historically, we’re going back thousands and thousands of years. Actually, we could go back millions of years because that’s how long they’ve been around the planet in various sizes and scale. But because they are all mammals, because they are critical to various traditions, the buffalo to the Native Americans of course, the bear to indigenous peoples worldwide, the lion to Africans and Asians, at one point there were lions all over the world but they’ve basically been made extinct as have most of the animals that these derive from. The elephant is sacred to the Hindu tradition and the Buddhist tradition. The wolf of course to almost any native tradition anywhere on the earth where which the wolf is present. At one point, the wolf was the most populous land mammal other than humans worldwide.
So, we’ll start with the fact that they were and still are all epicenters of cultures. Each and every one of them. The lion, the bear, the elephant, the wolf, and the buffalo. The second thing is what I learned as a result of doing the book and doing the dreaming with them. It was not something I thought about beforehand, and it wasn’t really something I was conscious of. But what I learned is they are all matrilineal traditions. They all center around the mother and her offspring. And that this is actually what they urge us to restore, this ethos of care which we have lost in humanity. They’re critical to the planet itself because each presides and is the hierarchical apex, the guardian if you will, of entire ecosystems. The bear over the woods and the rivers, the wolf over the plains and the mountains, the lion over the Savannahs in Africa and Asia, and the elephant whom without we wouldn’t have watering holes for many other animals in Africa, we wouldn’t have the opening up of the forest canopies when they go in and pull down fruit. Each of these animals is basically a bioengineer of the ecosystems they preside over.
The fact that each faces extinction is a horror show for us on Earth because the truth is, and I didn’t know this when I started the book but it’s what they taught me and what I present in the book, White Spirit Animals: Prophets of Change is that without any one of them we will have even more significant ecosystem collapse than we currently have and what we currently have is pretty significant. We’re in the sixth extinction and people don’t often talk about that. They don’t talk about how serious and what a rapid decline we are having of our guardians and those which preserve our ecosystems. The World Wildlife Fund wrote a report in 2014, called “The Living Planet Report” and they show that Earth’s wild vertebrate population, that’s mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish, and when I read this I was stunned, as informed as I am and as many times we’d bring on guests who talk about the change in the Earth and climate change and Earth changes, when you read these statistics it’s very sobering. So, those that I mentioned, the population of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish declined by 52% between 1970 and 2010. Right now we are losing 27,000 species a year. We used to lose them at a background rate of 1 to 10 a year. It’s so increased that it’s estimated that at this accelerated rate of ecosystem collapse we’ll lose 50% of earth’s species in 30 years.
So, back to your initial question, why are these animals important? Each presides over an entire ecosystem whom without will collapse more rapidly. What these mammals taught me and what they said in the very beginning to me, their exhortation was “Save as many of us as you can.” It wasn’t like, “oh save us because we’re important and nobody else is.” They were explaining to me through dreams and through the kind of information that elder lore cherishes around the world about these sacred animals is that we’ve seen the positive effect. As a good example, when the wolf was nearly extinct in Yellowstone National Park, and then wolf was reintroduced to Yellowstone and what we saw was an extraordinary reintroduction of other animals in the ecosystem. The elk got healthier because the coyotes weren’t as plentiful because wolf took its place again. Each of these animals makes sure that the entire ecosystem under them and all the other animals and insects and wildlife populations, and the ecosystem itself stays intact. So, like buffalo, and buffalo were brought to near extinction on the continent of North America, we had horrendous topsoil loss, that’s what happened all during the depression. A large part of that was not only were we doing single crop planting of wheat at government request and destroying all the perennial woods and the incredible way an ecosystem grows itself from the forest to the land. But the buffalo was responsible and still is capable of turning over the soil and when they turn over the soil, you don’t have as much runoff from water and it encourages the micro-organic life of the soil. The same thing I mentioned with the life of the elephant earlier. The bear is a wonderful example of what they bring to any environment because they manage to keep through their scale a balance between all the other animals in the ecosystems in which they exist. And it’s not as though apex guardians, you know some people will call these animals predators, the wolf, the bear, the lion, and they justify killing them. But the truth is that these are the very essential animals that we should do our best to bolster and restore their environments, not in captivity, but restore the wildlife environments in which they live because once you reintroduce them and we stop killing them, they invigorate the ecosystem on their own.
B: I’m certain that most of our listeners never even believed that was even possible. Now, you are a known telepath. How did you use these skills both for the book and in your life? Would you share a story from the book to demonstrate this? Maybe one about the bonobo that you befriended?
Z: Well, you know when I started this work, I had expressed an interest and I always talked to domestic animals since I was a child, and woodland animals that I grew up knowing, raccoons and blue jays and squirrels and other animals that are particular to the eastern woodlands, which I have been around my whole life. But I interviewed Dr. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, who was the lead scientist at a bonobo sanctuary in Iowa, where she worked. And she was responsible as a scientist for showing that bonobos are extremely intelligent and she taught them how to use computers in order to communicate. Matata was the matriarch of a group of bonobos in captivity; her son Kanzi whom she kidnapped after he was a few months old, maybe as old as 6 months old, and adopted him as her own and then she had other kin of her own while she was in captivity. She actually is one of the oldest bonobos ever held in captivity as long as she lived, she lived for 40 years in captivity. So, after interviewing Sue, and by the way Kanzi who was Matata’s son one day started using the computers after Sue was unsuccessful in getting Matata to do this, Matata was not interested in the lexigram boards, she actually mentioned it being stupid and it made no sense to her, as in “Why should I bother doing that?”
B: A lexigram board is?
Z: It was like a computer board that they had created for the bonobos to communicate all their needs, their wants, their feelings. It was interesting because she actually communicated specifically about that one day to me. She was saying that she wanted different kinds of signs. That she wanted signs for fruit that was in her native Congo and she wanted signs for saying she was tired of doing certain things, not things that were already part of the lexigram. But what happened was she was not interested in doing this but her son, Kanzi, one day just started doing it and then his sister started doing it. So, having interviewed Sue about the history of their effort and her effort at that time to give them autonomy while they were in captivity with the hope of eventually raising enough funds to take them all back to the Congo so they could live in freedom, Matata managed to contact me. This will sound strange to people, but she appeared to me. I was at the river where I do most of my writing and she showed up in our bedroom and our dog Bella, a white shephard, saw her like I saw her. And it wasn’t that she was densely physical, she was in her astral body, but if you’re a visionary and you practice remote viewing and dreaming and meditation and using that part of our anatomy, our spiritual anatomy which we all have but we don’t cultivate and I’ve been cultivating mine my whole life a little bit at a time, after a while it can do what it needs to do without you having to think too much about it. I looked at her and I am thinking how strange this is. But what followed afterwards were these exchanges where she would just show up in my consciousness and tell me stories about the bonobo’s history during the ice age. She talked to me about the lab. She complained about the cold floors, and she would tell me she had a headache. So, what Sue and I did for a while is Matata would come to me and give me information and then I would write it up and the I would send it to Sue to see if there was any kind of correlation between what Matata was telling me and her daily life. I mean she told me some exceptional things. But one of them was one day she was complaining of the noise and a headache and she couldn’t shut it off. And so I sent it to Sue and Sue said, oh yeah, the alarm system broke today and it was ringing and ringing and ringing, and Matata had a headache.
What’s interesting about this kind of work, when you do telepathy work with animals, a little different from telepathy with humans, is it’s good if you can find somebody who knows the animal or is in a situation with the animal, like if I am doing a reading for somebody’s dog, I can call the owner or email the owner and say, does your dog have a green bowl that is now missing? And the owner will go, “oh my God, how did you know we had a green bowl and it’s missing?”
B: Yeah, you’ve done that hundreds of times. People call you with their cat and what’s wrong, and within seconds you get back to them and their problem is solved.
Z: Absolutely, for decades. Well, you know I think for people in the audience who experience this maybe with their own pets and the way to practice and develop it as remote viewers do, is you hold the very first image that comes to mind and try not to interpret it, try not to doubt yourself, and over time if you have a period of years practicing it, you’ll start to see that the images animals or trees or nature spirits are giving you are very clear. The problem for most of us is that we judge what we’re getting and we try to analyze it. We think, it can’t be true that the tree is telling me that its neighbor died, I mean trees don’t talk about its neighbors. But in fact they do.
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B: In White Spirit Animals: Prophets of Change you show how dream telepathy and trans species telepathy can be used to communicate with other lifeforms. Can you explain this more fully?
Z: I sure can. And I started to about Matata and got a little sidetracked in the history of her lab work. Matata is an excellent example of a bonobo because bonobos are very close to humans and Matata insisted that a long time ago, back during the Ice Age and that’s what all the white spirit animals are said to be reminiscent of and that’s why they are white coated unlike the rest of their kin. She said that they used to take care of discarded humans, the bonobos did. She also told me stories about the white lion living in caves next to the white dragon. It was just a fascinating experience. But as I started to mention earlier about telepathy and telepathy with any form of life manifest or not yet manifest, is that it’s all the same process. The truth is and what’s sort of been hidden from us and we’re made to think we need all these intercessors to do all of these things for us, be they psychics or spiritual leaders or shamans or whatever. Shamans are really showing us what each of us is hardwired to do if we choose to develop those organs of perception for looking into the future, looking into the past, basically anywhere and anywhen. The easiest way to do it and everybody in the listening audience can practice this the next time you feed the birds, just look at them, close your eyes and feel if they are communicating something to you. And you might say, “oh yeah, they’re communicating they like a particular seed” or maybe “they’re arguing over the territory on a branch.” It doesn’t matter really what it is, it’s the practice that matters. There are always going to be times where we’re actually in complete rapport with some other living form and we know exactly what it is. Other times when we might get a piece of it, and that’s okay. Getting a piece of it is like when you have a rug and you grab the corner and then from the corner you can unroll the whole thing even if you don’t know what the rugs going to look like. But you had a corner of it. So, the same thing with telepathy and the way to make it useful is if you, for instance, with all the Earth changes and all the distress going on in Puerto Rico or Florida or Texas or California, wherever it is we now know there are people enduring such hardship, whether from fires or floods or winds. You can actually talk to the natural systems, and prayer is certainly one form of this rapport, asking it to cause no harm or to lessen harm. And the reason we know it works is prayer is very effective, traditional meditation, transcendental meditation shows us that wherever they meditate, the crime rate goes down 16%. We know for a fact that when we pay attention to something, and it doesn’t matter what it is we’re paying attention to, our attention allows us to see what comes into view. The same way a lighthouse does for ships at sea, it lights the waters they can see around them. So, that when we intend to communicate with a dog or a cat or our neighbor’s dog who is barking and you want it to stop barking, you can talk to that dog at a distance. You don’t have to go outside to talk to the dog. If you know the dog’s name here’s the answer, you just call that dog three times, you picture them coming into your heart, it’s really important to have empathic love, that’s really the key to this whole puzzle is love and empathy. And you can say to the dog, “What’s wrong?” and they might say to you, “I’m locked out,” or they might say, “my foot hurts” or “I’m just really excited” or “I don’t get enough attention” or whatever it is. And when you learn the source of what it is that’s causing distress, whether it’s in a human or a weather system or an individual, you then earn a position to be helpful. And it might be the best thing you can do is send them a prayer. It might be that the next day, you say to the owner, “You know Charlie was outside barking and if you don’t have time maybe I can walk him when I walk my dog?” Sometimes, it’s a very simple shift that has to happen. A good example is that I was in a meeting and a woman came to me and all of the sudden I see her cat drinking out of her toilet bowl and I see her knocking her water bowl over in the kitchen and then she’s telling me there’s not enough water. I said to the owner, “Your cat’s really having trouble getting fresh water.” And she looked at me like “wow, that’s really strange and how did you even know I had a cat?” And I can’t say how I know these things, it’s just that I’ve become accustomed to paying attention to the images that come to the conscious mind. It turned out they had closed the toilet top, they had stopped leaving the water down because she made a mess and the cat was complaining.
B: Well, I just heard a terrible story just the other day concerning these floodings and one was called dog island on which there were 400 dogs on it in various levels of pain and they all died.
Z: Yes, it was a sanctuary for a particular kind of dog.
B: They all died and I think unfortunately with the Earth changes that are coming we are seeing the beginning of what we will see over and over and over again. And I bring this up because I know everyone is trying to put their islands back together again but those islands and Florida and Houston and other areas are going to be hit time and time again.
Z: Well, along those lines of Earth changes, it’s very important to say the white spirit animals are prophets of change. And in every tradition in which they’re revered, the elder lore makes it clear that these animals, whether it’s the white wolf, the white buffalo, or the white elephant, the white lion, the white bear, is that they would return and we would see more white spirit animals when the Earth was ready to cleanse herself again. I mean historically in all of these native traditions, whether it’s in India, Asia, the United States, or elsewhere, is that each of these mammals helped humanity, not only with telepathy, but helped humanity survive the Ice Age. They were our teachers, our guides. In the same way wolf taught us to hunt, bear taught us how to find healing herbs, lion was able to show us how it is to work as partners, to have courage, to bring love into our hearts, et cetera. So, all of these animals actually are part of elder lore that says they will reappear when we’re in the midst of Earth changes again. And that time is now. And they are here.
B: Well, shamanism is part of the story of the white spirit animals in what ways?
Z: Shamanism, along with the last Ice Age, kind of come together as a package because shamanism really came out of prehistory. When humans began to understand that everything was a massive signaling system. And that’s really what quantum physics has allowed us to appreciate and understand; that what is invisible doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. It’s coming into materiality but we exist in so many dimensions simultaneously that the physical world is the most dense of the planes in which we exist. Shamans understood this. They understood that everything represents a power and a possibility. Not just itself alone. So, bear as an example, to a shaman helps with healing and is chief of medicine, as I like to call bear. A shaman who works with a lion might be working with group power, might live in Africa and therefore if they are part of lion shamans will do whatever they can to protect the species and be sure they don’t go extinct. I think the interesting part about the Ice Age and shamanism is that the two aspects of being able to come into rapport with that which doesn’t speak our language but is speaking life, is what shamans have gifted to us. What is being practiced now worldwide by many westerners and they’re being trained by many shamans of various traditions around the world because the elders of all these traditions appreciate that we’re in quite desperate times and the quicker we can awaken these non-local consciousness skills, each and every one of us, whether it’s using prayer more, using telepathy, or just having more compassion and empathy for everything we encounter in our daily lives. This is the key to the restoration of the world. It’s not just about patching things up. It’s not just about restoring the soil, it’s about restoring our hearts and opening our minds and using all of these incredible gifts that we are born with that make us what we are really termed, which are co-creators.
B: I love that co-creator thing because most people don’t realize that it’s your actions on this planet, your actions that really account for what you are and who you are and what you are going to leave this planet as you cast off. And if your actions are positive to help others, it certainly encourages other people to feel and do the same things automatically, they don’t have to be told.
You said in the prologue of your book that you wanted to become a writer at the age of 9 and at the end of your book you stress not to discount the visions and dreams of children. Why is that?
Z: Well, I think like myself, this book is actually the fulfillment of two childhood dreams. One was to be a writer and the other was to write about animals, and I never did that. I’ve been a utilitarian writer my whole life, writing about various topics, which our audience is certainly familiar with, the broad spectrum of the new paradigm. Children until about the age of 10 are still tapped into the invisible realms, and their imaginations are still very fertile and open, and their hearts if they haven’t been wounded or abused, unfortunately so many of our youth are when they are very young, are still able to communicate with the spirit aspect of their existence and their soul is still very present, if you will. The ego hasn’t totally developed, there’s not a big backlog of modern day history for them. So, they tend to stay open to what often adults term imaginary. But if we think about it carefully, what is imagined in one decade or one century, often becomes what is manifest form in the next. Children will often and particularly children incarnating now, they’re souls that are incarnating at a very difficult time on Earth. Jupiter is now moving into Scorpio which gives us all expanded access to what’s invisible, to what’s hidden, to the deep hidden part of ourselves and the Earth and nature. So, children, and this is also predicted in so many traditions that prophecy would now come through women and children during this time period. It’s very important not to diminish a child’s imagination, and if they say they have friends you can’t see, don’t just assume they’re making it up because they’re playing with something that doesn’t exist, they may in fact be in rapport with deceased beings, human or otherwise, who are helping them help us. And so, it’s just very important to nurture children’s imagination, dreams, and playtime.
B: Of the many experiences you had as a child, visions and seeing the future, et cetera, what would be the most outstanding one?
Z: Oh, there’ve been so many and I really can’t think of the most outstanding one. But I will just share the earliest one which was when I was drowning and I saw light, which was the surface of the water, and I saw this beautiful woman about the size of a cloud, telling me to come to her. And it turned out, I didn’t find out until years later, that this was the Blessed Mother. And she held me and kept me alive until my own mother took me out of the pool and saved my life.
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Welcome back to 21st Century Radio. I’m Dr. Bob Hieronimus, our Executive Producer and Research Assistant is Laura Cortner, and our engineer is Anita Brockington.
We are continuing with our guest, Dr. Queen Zohara, whom you all know as the co-host of 21st Century Radio, but she is also my mentor on the consciousness of all living beings. Zohara’s latest book is called White Spirit Animals: Prophets of Change and it’s just been released this week by Inner Traditions/Bear & Co.
Here are a few of the early reviews:
John Perkins, New York Times bestselling author, says:
“Great Book! White Spirit Animals combines shamanism, transspecies telepathy, historic research, and native stories to show the reader why we must save the bear, lion, elephant, buffalo, wolf, and other species from extinction and how they have guided humanity in the past. A unique testimony to the close relationship between humans and animals and our ability to communicate and collaborate with each other.”
And Stephan A. Schwartz, author of The 8 Laws of Change: How to be an Agent of Personal and Social Transformation had this to say:
“Zohara Hieronimus provides an important bridge linking modern objective science and ancient and traditional shamanic beliefs–a very useful contribution.”
This hour, I would like to finish what I started in the introduction to hour one when I described your work, Zohara, as permeated with love and that which will become world happenings. That line of thought is taken from Rudolf Steiner. I want to read a little quote from his book, The Bridge Between Universal Spirituality and the Physical Constitution of Man, Freedom and Love, and Their Significance in World Evolution. This was republished by the Anthroposophic Press in 1958.
Here is the quote from Rudolf Steiner:
“Humanity is the bearer of the seed into the future. The thoughts of the past, as realities, are as it were the mother-soil; into this mother-soil is laid that which comes from the individual egohood, and the seed is sent on into the future for future life.
On the other side, man evolves by permeating his deeds and actions, his will-nature, with thoughts; deeds are performed in love. Such deeds detach themselves from him. Our deeds do not remain confined to ourselves. They become world-happenings; and if they are permeated by love, then love goes with them. As far as the cosmos is concerned, an egotistical action is different from an action permeated by love. When, out of semblance, through fructification by the will, we unfold that which proceeds from our inmost being, then what streams forth into the world from our head encounters our thought permeated deeds. Just as when a plant unfolds it contains in its blossom the seed to which the light of the sun, the air outside, and so on, must come, to which something must be brought from the cosmos in order that it may grow, so what is unfolded through freedom must find an element in which to grow, through the love that lives in our deeds.” (end quote)
Zohara, I know you are a student of these Western Mystery Traditions and have read a lot of Rudolf Steiner’s work. Before we return to your book, can you share your reflections on this passage of his that talks about how love becomes world-happenings?
Z: You know it’s an interesting phenomena because I’ll just jump back into the book actually because in White Spirit Animals: Prophets of Change one of the dream experiences I had was for a period of three nights I kept seeing these men’s faces and I couldn’t place them. And finally, I realized who they were. It was Charlie Rose, the TV host, and former Senator John Warner of Virginia. I thought at first, well, maybe this is connected to my political work. How could it be connected to this issue? And what you’re just talking about is what elephant taught me because what happened was when John Warner went to his alma mater they were having a mock political convention and there was an elephant named Jewel there, and I tell a long story in the book about the Jewel elephant who was a Barnum and Bailey Circus elephant I believe. But Warner evidently was very kind to the elephant. I looked up Charlie Rose in a very minimal google way, like Charlie Rose and elephant, and came across a wonderful TV series he had done on stopping the brutality and the ivory trade and slaughtering of elephants. So, in these two instances and I think it’s important that I explain this is how dream telepathy is done, is I ask the elephants, I was on the elephant chapter, “What do you want me to learn?” And they showed me these two men. And then the following day I googled their names with elephant and what I discovered is exactly what Rudolf Steiner says, which is what the elephant says as well, which is that anytime anyone of us performs an act of love, of compassion, of generosity, it literally stirs into deep space. The elephant is considered the guardian of the Milky Way road along with wolf and the elephant is what stirs the Milky Way really to give birth to compassion on the planet. Each one of these animals holds a cosmic role, not just over physical space like bear presides over the northern part of the planet where all the longitudes come together, bear, Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, the great bear in the sky presides over the pole star.
B: I have to say this you have some great photographs of bears and the constellation bears. I’ve studied a lot of bear constellations and you’ve picked out some great ones.
Z: Well, there are beautiful historic prints in the book which I did deliberately to help us appreciate that this kind of reverence for animals has always been a part of planetary history and is so vital. We’re talking about revering kin that have very similar needs to our own. You know I think Dr. Gay Bradshaw who founded trans species psychology has done such a beautiful job demonstrating for the academic community that we have to stop this nonsense of thinking you can make an animal suffer with some sort of experiment, or separating them from their mothers, or taking them out of their natural habitats and thinking it has no consequences. Or that they don’t have the same kind of experience of pain and family and pleasure and memory that we do, because they do. Everything has memory of its own kind and everything has consciousness of its own kind. But when we’re talking about sentient animals and mammals they share a culture and as she would put it, the difference is so slight it’s like visiting a foreign nation and maybe not knowing their language but recognizing what they’re doing. It’s the same thing with our animal kin, they aren’t less evolved than us they just have a different purpose. Ok, so they’re not building cities but guess what, they can keep nature intact and we can’t. We’re destroying nature. And that’s really an interesting thing that came out of the book for me is that humans have this notion of, “oh my God, what will the Earth do without us, we’re going to go extinct.” Well, the Earth will be in really good shape without us. Different but initially definitely better because we’ve done so much to destroy the metasystems and that’s the thing the animals are imploring us about. It’s not just about saving them, it’s also that if we don’t save them, we’re finished. And if we don’t save them, the ecosystem will collapse much more quickly.
And so, what Rudolf Steiner and what the elephant is telling us is that our good acts of love towards anybody and anything is extremely important. It’s kind of like the weave and the warp of spirit and love is really what keeps everything contiguous and in harmony. And that doesn’t mean you have to have feelings of emotional romantic love, we’re talking about empathy. Having an association with everything as having value. That’s the problem with humanity as we have assumed this kind of species entitlement, that we’re entitled to abuse, we’re entitled to take what we want, we’re entitled to make other things and other people suffer, and that’s just not the truth. Our role, as lion will teach us, is guardian. As bear will teach us, it’s healer. As wolf will teach us, it’s to be guardians of life and death, of the newborn and the dying. So, each of these great mammals have taught humanity over the centuries. Like buffalo, buffalo teaches us in such a superior way what it is to give of our life, what it is to be part of a community, what it is to be stewards of the land wherever we are. Each of these great mammals teaches us ecosystem principles, agricultural processes, and spiritual values.
B: Well, in the ancient wisdom teachings it is taught that love is the cohesive force of the universe, not just here on this planet, or in this city, or in this state. That love is the cohesive force of the universe.
Now, the bear, lion, elephant, wolf, and buffalo are all sacred to different indigenous peoples worldwide. Can you share some of the things they all seem to have in common, whether Buddhist, Hindu, Zulu, or Cherokee traditions, to name some of those profiled in your book?
Z: Well, I think as I mentioned at the start of our discussion, they are all apex guardians of ecosystems. The elders who have revered them have always understood this. So, they would go out of their way, for instance when they hunted buffalo because that’s how they survived, they wouldn’t go after the master leader of the herd. They wouldn’t deliberately try to take the most beautiful, as hunters do today. Hunters will often kill the matriarchs of a herd and the patriarchs of a herd, thereby causing great disintegration to the entire herd life. When we have this notion that you can kill an animal and in front of its herd mates, and that they don’t have psychological distress from it. Gay Bradshaw’s beautiful work in “Elephants on the Edge” shows us in fact they do, they suffer the same kind of post-traumatic stress that humans do. The animals are experiencing such stress on the planet, as is humanity. When you consider how many of us and how many of them are now displaced from our homes as a result of Earth changes, poverty, war, appropriation of habitat. It’s frightening truthfully, when we become more conscious of how teetering on the edge everything is. So, the elders in each of these traditions revere these animals as being their teachers. Not just as, “oh aren’t they nice animals to have around because we need to eat them”, or “we need to keep them around because they’re part of our tradition.” They are literally teachers.
The other thing is most of them are represented in the star systems. So, it shows that they have a purpose cosmologically. And we don’t have time tonight but it’s in the book. To discover what each one of them teaches and I touched on it a little bit. But in telepathic dreaming with these animal, for instance wolf wanted me to learn, and I tell it in great detail which I really encourage you to read, that they made it certain in the beginning that I understood that they had relatives and friendship with coyote but not with fox. They were really insistent that I understood they have a relationship that’s different with coyote than they do with fox. And then what I would do as an example of how to use dream telepathy like I shared with Charlie Rose and Senator John Warner, who I had dreamt about and then found out they had done these great elephant acts of kindness, is that the wolf wanted me to understand that they were also responsible for guarding the dead. And it’s a very long story that I tell and I’m not going to give away the end because it’s really one of these… the real seeking stories in the book about the relationship between wolf and Anubis, the Egyptian guardian of the dead.
B: What a discovery, what a discovery.
Z: Yeah but we don’t want to give it away do we.
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B: You also profile various animal champions and the efforts to save each of these endangered species. What did you learn from the people you profiled in White Spirit Animals: Prophets of Change?
Z: Well, we’ve heard from some of them in little drops tonight. Gay Bradshaw, Charlie Russell, you just heard from Cynthia Heart, Tamarack Song, Carol Buckley. What one discovers is the kind of not only compassion but endurance that any animal lover, preserver, protector, guardian exhibits in their life and we’re not talking about easy lives. Cynthia Heart’s experience with the White Buffalo Association, which I tell in great detail in the chapter on buffalo, takes her over a period of 16 years, of first her father giving her a prophecy that she would become a buffalo protector, then having a meditation and hearing a voice telling she and her boyfriend to go to a certain place to see the white buffalo which they did, and it’s a very long story about how she listened to the buffalo and she took them wherever it was they wanted to go. And this is what you find in all of these animal champions, that they’re all telepaths. They all, because of their love and their compassion for the animals that they protect and guard and serve, have come into conscious rapport with them. And it’s not necessarily that anybody sets out to be these things, it’s that when you come into a loving relationship with anything on Earth, whether it’s in existence or non-existence, you are in rapport with it. Because if everything is light and we know that everything is connected through love then consciousness is that which makes everything relatable. So, each of these people, you know Gay Bradshaw is the woman who really founded trans species psychology and has moved the needle in science away from anybody being able to justify animal torture, animal experimentation, or a two-tiered system of analysis that their brains somehow are different and they don’t experience the kinds of pleasure and sorrow that we do, but they do. Like we know from elephants for a fact and bears, when you watch these animals grieve and the distress that’s caused to them through the hardships humans have caused them, it’s extraordinarily heartbreaking.
Each of them has pioneered, in some way, a new generation of people appreciating that what each one of us does matters. Whether it’s what we eat, what we grow, how we treat animals in our own neighborhood, how we talk to scientists we know who might be involved in animal experimentation, where we send our donations, whether it’s to PETA or to the Natural Resources Defense Council or to any group. They show us that it’s by a community of people, each doing their own work whatever that is, for some of you it might mean feeding the birds, for somebody else it might mean taking the vines out of the trees, somebody else it might be volunteering at a dog sanctuary, for somebody else it might be sending a check, for somebody else it might be praying. Or for those of you who want to practice dream telepathy, do you mind if I take a minute to go over this?
B: Oh, please do, I know our listeners would love to learn more about it.
Z: Yeah I don’t talk about it actually a lot in the book and I haven’t talked about it much tonight but I think it’s really important to appreciate that all of us are in a position to be telepaths. We’re all designed to be telepathic, and all of us experience it at certain times in our lives. Sometimes we might think of it as premonition, where we think of something that’s going to happen and then it does. Or the phone rings and we just know that it’s Aunt Doris. Or whatever it is that happens in our lives from day to day, where you get a hunch about the lottery number and that’s the number that hits. These are all related skills and they all are happening because you’re paying attention to something that you really put your focus on. So, animal telepathy I’d really like to encourage everybody in the audience to practice it. If you have a domestic animal that you love or that is deceased or sitting right there with you now in your lap, when you go to sleep at night ask a particular question. And if you have an animal who is sick, and this is how the Greeks used to dream their own healing was through dream telepathy and dream incubation, and they could come into rapport with elders who had passed on. But ask a question, you know as Dowsers will tell us, the more specific the question, the more specific the answer. So, if you have an animal that’s sick, you can ask that animal before you go to sleep at night, “Please show me what I can do to help you?” You don’t have to know what’s wrong because I’m not a medical diagnostician and I’m not a medical animal healer, though a lot of people call me with their medical problems. What I do is I just ask the animal what can we do for them and they show us. They might say “I am ready to go.” They might say, “no I want you to finish moving before you put me to sleep.” They might say, “my water bowl is just too dirty.” Or “where I’m sleeping outside has maggots or parasites.” Or whatever it is, the animals will tell you. The trick to it is not to analyze what they tell you but to just appreciate it.
I’ll give you a very quick story. Somebody came to me about a dog they had rescued and that since they had moved it was very, very anxious, never settling down, causing a great deal of stress among all the animal companions in the household, a cat, a rabbit, a tortoise, et cetera. And the dog showed me very quickly that it had had a orange mat at one point in its life. And I said to the owner, “Well, you packed away it’s orange blanket.” It was like a blanket. And they looked at me and replied, “I can’t believe you said that!” I said, “Well, I didn’t think of it, your dog just told me it wants its orange blanket.” So, they went into a box they put into storage that had been hidden away for two years, brought out the orange blanket. I said to “put it at the end of your bed, the dog needs to know where its home is, where its center is, that it’s still needed.” Within 24 hours they had a different experience among the pack. So, these things are very minor in the same way with a human being, sometimes it’s as simple as opening the window at night or drinking more tea or whatever it is, the animals will tell you. And if you find yourself ever in a situation where you don’t trust yourself, let me encourage you to trust yourself. Don’t analyze the answer you’re getting. Or a tree can be sick and you can say what does the tree need? The tree might just need to be loved. You know, everything in life responds to love and that’s why we know prayer is so effective. Prayer is one of our great tools as speaking humans and I write about that at the end of the book because we’re in a time period of such drastic change and it will just get precipitously worse over the coming decades. All of us really need to cultivate our intuition, our telepathic abilities, our empathy, our prayer, all of these non-localized skills are those tools that will allow us to communicate when there are no telephones, will allow us to communicate when the satellites go down, will allow us to know what to do for each other even if we’re far away from our loved ones. The more we practice now, the easier it will be in times of emergency.
B: Great advice, great advice. You emphasize the qualities we learn from these animals throughout the book. Can you give us a few highlights for each of these great apex mammals?
Z: I can and it was such a beautiful journey with each, they’ve all changed my life so profoundly in ways no humans ever have. Well, bear as I mentioned at one point is really the Earth healer. And when we think about a bear hibernating, the bear has given us all kinds of secrets that scientists are trying to tap into, which is why don’t they lose muscle mass when they hibernate for six months, or why is it that a mother bear can nurse even though she has eaten nothing and it doesn’t suffer her body. The bear teaches us how to heal from Earth and how to prepare for Earth changes. She’s very insistent about preparation. And I don’t stress it in the book but all you have to do is think about a bear, a bear hibernates and those six months they plan for, they eat well. And they come out of hibernation and they breed and then take their cubs and they stay together. You know, that’s the other thing that’s really amazing about all these animals is that the mother is the center of these mammalian traditions as it was when we had matriarchies and the children. iIn this case the animals stay with the mother for long periods of time, so the bears stay with their mother until they’re three. And then the male bear goes off and will mate with another bear but the female bears will stay around in a loose affiliation.
The elephant really teaches us that they live a long time, they live 80 years, the same span as a human. The teach us a great deal about telepathy and they teach us a great deal about kindness. They’re so kind even though humans have treated them so horribly and they’re strong enough to do any human around them terrible harm and they seldom do. But there was a great story about Lawrence Anthony who is considered ‘the elephant whisperer.’ When he passed away.elephants he had not seen for over a year and a half actually showed up, several different herds came by his home after he had died in order to pay homage to him. Nobody told them he had died, nobody sent out an announcement hundreds of miles away. But they all showed up and every year on the anniversary of his death they still show up. So, elephants teach us a great deal about compassion, telepathy, caring for each other, living long maternal lives. The herds stay together, the females stay together their entire lifetimes, it’s the males who go off and mate and form new families.
The lion really teaches about our hearts and about heart alchemy. Because of where they appear on the Nilotic Meridian, there were whole cultures devoted to the lions in Babylonia, Sumeria, et cetera, where they were considered the queen of heaven. So, the lion really teaches us what it is to guard the Earth and that’s our noble hearted purpose.
The wolf, as our spirit guardian is really our companion. The wolf is closest to human than any other mammal and always has been. Our dogs are mostly wolf. It’s interesting though that wolf and bear are 97% the same genetically and they diverged a few million years ago. But we have a Mountain Pyrenees dog that actually looks like a bear and I call him bear for fun. It’s interesting how close they are. But wolf is really a spirit guardian and teaches that life is a continuum. It’s not life and death, that it’s not that we’re here and then we’re not here and we’re gone. We’re always here and they show us that we’re always present.
That’s the beauty of all these animals, it’s that shamans work with them to use the skill that these animals naturally have and it confers on the shaman, or the animal telepath, those same talents. So, if you want to be a healer, bear would be a good animal to come into rapport with. If you want to fly and look over terrain to see what needs to be done, you befriend birds of some sort. And then the buffalo, I don’t want to forget to say because buffalo are very dear to me and are my spirit guardians and they’re six of them that came to me years before I did this work and really showed me what’s possible in the invisible spectrum. But they’re really our Earth stewards, our Earth teachers, and they show us what it is to sacrifice for the good and the welfare of the whole. So, I’m really glad that President Obama signed into law that the bison is now our national mammal. Because to me the buffalo rising is the most wonderful sign that we are awakening to our purpose as Earth guardians. The buffalo are the most sacred mammal to the northern continent and reviving their herds, there used to be 60 million or so buffalo that roamed our Earth and kept the Earth vibrant and kept the land from turning to desert. But more so they invigorate spirit. So, I close all my letters now and I sign everything “Buffalo Rising” and what I mean by that is that the awareness in us is rising. That animals are our kin, brother and sister. That all of the elder traditions speak to them in this fashion. And any elder stories that I have included in the book or that you read on your own, you will see that these are mammals that are co-creators with humans and they are not less than us. They are our collaborators and that’s what needs to be driven home. They’re not there to be exploited, used, and eaten as table food or table product. They’re literally our teachers and they’re here to help us preserve what we can of Earth until the Earth can be restored properly.
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B: Do you know what Tamarack Song said about this book? He said, “In these times of turmoil, it is critically important that we listen to the phantom shaman animals who have stepped forward to guide us. Zohara Hieronimus knows where to find them and she knows their language. With White Spirit Animals she has given us an invaluable portal into their world. I implore you to go there.”
Z: Can I add something to that? Because you know this book fulfills two childhood dreams of mine and Thomas Moore once said to me in an interview, “The soul is always circling home.” So, I want to firstly thank Inner Traditions, Bear & Company for giving me the opportunity, not only to fulfill a childhood dream of mine but to have done something in a way that very few publishing companies will permit an author to do, which is use telepathy or some other form of PSI skills. They have been such supporters of so many wonderful people around the world that I really want to thank Ehud Sperling, who was the founder, and all of his staff for making it possible for so many of us who have sort of lived a little differently than perhaps the status quo but have something to contribute that is important.
One of the things that I want to say about that though is that when we’re young, some of us have dreams of what we want to be and we always meet people who go, “oh yeah, I knew by 7 I’d be a doctor” and they went straight on that path. Well, I always loved animals and wanted to talk to animals. But I thought, probably like most people until I got much older and did practice all these non-local consciousness arts, radionics, dowsing, healing at a distance, prayer at a distance, et cetera. I thought I would learn how to interpret a birds call or I’d learn how to interpret a cat’s various meows, like I was studying a foreign language. That’s how I imagined it as a child, that one day I would understand their languages as if they were a foreign language. What I didn’t know then, is that everything talks in the same language, which is it speaks through images. And the receiver will receive it in whatever language it is they need in order to interpret what it is they’re receiving. We’re all receivers and senders. We’re bio-capacitors. So, as light beings we’re receiving signals, which are light signals of a certain frequency and then our bio-capacitor, our non-local consciousness has the ability to translate those signals into shape and form and meaning. So, symbols which you are certainly expert in and why Egyptians and other cultures used forms and symbols to communicate because they tell whole stories through which the whole universe is connected.
And these animals communicate sometimes through images, sometimes in language but it really depends on the receiver. So, some of you may get an image from your animal. Some of you may hear a story, some of you may smell something, some of you may remember something, or get a feeling somewhere in your body. And all of these things are right, there’s no right or wrong is what I want to say. What I learned later in life is that no, I never learned to interpret a dog’s bark, though I love it when our dogs sing, Omaha is a spectacular singer, two range of octaves, extraordinary really. It’s that it’s through telepathy that we can understand anything. And what that simply means is opening your heart to whatever it is you want to communicate with, whomever, whatever, wherever. And once you open your heart you come into rapport with that which you put your focus on. But I do want to say it’s really important to appreciate these are sacred contracts. You know, shamans when they work with animals or when I work with animals, I will do what they ask me to. If I come into rapport with an animal and it says “I’m sick and my owner’s not taking care of me will you tell them?” I have to follow through on that. These are sacred contracts that shamans make with these animal helpers. These are not loose affiliations or weekend workshops like, “Yeah, I’m going to work with the jaguar and I’m going to be a jaguar shaman.” Well, it doesn’t work that way. Once you make a commitment to an animal or to a person or to a tree or to a bird or to an anthill or whatever it is, these are sacred relationships so don’t minimize what they ask you if you ask. This is why I am saying it, if you ask and they give you an answer, we have an obligation to do something about it. And it’s very important that we appreciate that these are real things of a substantial nature. These relationships are sacred. So, I never learned how to interpret any animal language, but through telepathy you can talk to anything and anyone, living or nonliving, anywhere.
B: Well, as you know, I very much enjoyed the first part of your book in which you talk about what you did as a child, which is something similar to what I did as a child. And that is you gathered all of your stuffed animals, all dozen of them or so, and had one sitting close to you and the next night you’d have someone else sitting next to you.
Z: Oh, I had a whole egalitarian chart of rotation so that each one would sleep next to me at some point, which they all did. And I had a glass menagerie of animals, I collected china animals. I wanted to be a vet, truthfully, from the time I was probably three onward and so when I was nine, our lovely vet let me come to his veterinary center one day and a cat was brought in who had been hit by a car and it was bleeding to death. That was the end of my being a veterinarian. I was so sensitive to the trauma and the pain that it physically hurt me. And that’s something that I want to say about coming into rapport with real life suffering, whether it’s of human, nature, or animals. It does affect you, it did affect me. I found this book the most difficult thing I’ve probably ever done in my life. And I cover it, the abuse and suffering that each of these species has experienced and continues to at the hands of humans is atrocious. Whether it’s the elephants with their bodies being hacked to death for their ivory. Or bears being put into cages in Asia to have their bile farmed like they are corn and they die after five years of total trauma and suffering, even though their lifespan is 30 plus years. When we come into rapport with things that suffer, you may feel that in your body and I don’t want to minimize that for some people. Now, not everyone is as sensitive as I am and I don’t know how to turn that off. Some people seem to have that talent, I don’t. So, each time I would study the suffering an animal was going through in current time and in the past, I suffered. I cried a lot writing this book, as you know.
But the dream telepathy is magnificent and I really want to encourage everybody in our audience, please, use your dreams. For whatever it is, if you’re trying to solve a problem in your marriage or your trying to solve a problem for one of your grandchildren or you’re looking to make a change in your life and you don’t know what it is. Ask before you go to sleep. And you may not get the answer immediately. Or the answers or information you get in your dream, you need to keep something by your bed to write with, it’s not easy if you don’t practice this kind of work but I promise you, if you do it a few nights in a row, over a period of time you will get much better at it. And sometimes you might not have a whole dream, it might be right when you’re waking up you’ll hear something. Write it down because whatever little piece you’re gathering, you’re really gathering it from the soul. You know our souls all come together when we sleep, we’re no longer limited by our experience to the edge of our skin. And it’s in that state that any one of us, with scientists we know this for a fact that many of the great discoverers have said, I got the answer in my dream. Our dreams are a sacred part of our consciousness and are a great tool that we have been given and we spend half our lives dreaming. So, make use of your dreams. And you can even incubate good dreams, you can say, I want to dream what my future is going to look like or I want to dream a better future for the Earth. What should I do? Whatever it is, just ask very clear questions and keep notes. And over a period of time you will really be able to interpret it to some degree. Like one dream I had, and I tell this story of what the wolf finally tells us, it gave me a dream about preservation and restoration and conservation. And I understood a few days later what they were telling me was CPR, the Earth needs CPR. Conservation, preservation, and restoration. So, they may speak to you in signs and symbols, but keep track of it because over time, as you see demonstrated in my book, White Spirit Animals: Prophets of Change, I relied on the dreams and then what I would do would be go do the rational research afterwards. I would take what they told me and then I’d go look it up and they were always right. Whether it was science or philosophy.
B: Well, you know even though you cover the various animals difficulties with the way we’ve been torturing them. There are sections, like with in the book on elephants. You introduced me to their families, how their families work, and how they move, and how they stick together. And the love that is shared with them. So there’s a lot of positive parts and you do that with the bison and the wolf, et cetera. But I was especially impressed by the way the elephants, that could step on us and squash us, would much rather want to love us and care for us. And yet we treat them so badly.
Z: I really think the elephant is our Buddhist way shower and it is fascinating when you read in the book actually, their real connection to the Buddha himself.
B: Well, how did writing this book affect you?
Z: It changed my life tremendously. I tell a story about animals screaming in my head. You may recall in 2011 when I decided I wanted to broaden my work outside domestic animals to wild animals. And at first I thought I would go to the zoo, but I decided it would be way too full of suffering because that’s not a natural place for an animal to be. Wolf said, we’d never put anything in a cage.
It changed my appreciation for what shamans do worldwide. It changed my appreciation for animal telepaths worldwide, and the fact that all of us have this ability. You know me, I have to show myself something is true, it’s not enough for me to read it in a book. I really wanted to see if it was possible for me to do what shamans have been doing for millennia. And the answer is yes. And if I can do it so can anybody else who really makes their heart committed to listening to the animals speak. It takes practice. That’s really the key, is to come into loving rapport and to know that you’re serving them and that it’s not about you. It’s about being of service to them and that was really the key for me is that now I know I have the capacity to help anybody in any situation, however limited it might be, but I might be able to offer a key that will be helpful. That’s why I want to encourage everybody to do it, but because we never know if it’s somebody in the grocery store whom we have an impression of that we say, “you’re really a beautiful person”, that could change their whole life. This one little thing. And that’s what the elephant taught me and that’s what you mentioned about Rudolph Steiner. An act of love is a great colossal reality.
B: We’re coming to closing comments, regarding the lessons you’ve learned and what you’d like to leave us with tonight?
Z: The most important thing is love. And to be committed when we make a commitment to do something, to follow through. That it can’t just be sort of a casual, “I hope the Earth gets better.” Well, the Earth will get better if all of us do something wherever we live and our local efforts are probably the most important thing we can now do wherever we are. It doesn’t mean we stop being aware of the world, but each of us has the ability to change the terrestrial terrain where we live, both politically, literally, physically, spiritually. And if you find yourself unable to do something physically, just remember prayer. Prayer is one of the most powerful tools we speaking humans have and the animals also make that very clear.
B: Do animals pray you think?
Z: Animals are prayer.
B: We have a minute left, what would you like to leave our listeners with?
Z: To encourage everybody to read White Spirit Animals: Prophets of Change. The book gives you a broad education, not only into elder lore which we certainly couldn’t touch on tonight, but also the science and the magic of our ability as humans to help the animal kingdom help us. Because that’s what they’re here to do, they’re here to help us with the changes that are coming and to guide us. And I thank them forever from this life to the next for their great beautiful majestic generosity.
Transcription by Joseph Ford.
(c) 1998-2017. All Rights Reserved
The Solar Eclipse and the President: Headed for a Divorce from the USA
The Solar Eclipse and the President:
Headed for a Divorce from the USA
Interview with Rosemary Clark on 21st Century Radio®
with Dr. Zohara Hieronimus, DHL, August 13, 2017
NASA Eclipse Map. Click to enlarge.
Rosemary Clark
Dr. Zohara Hieronimus, D.H.L.
Following is a transcript of an interview conducted by Dr. Zohara M. Hieronimus D.H.L. and world-renowned astrologer Rosemary Clark on 21st Century Radio® on August 13, 2017. Clark addresses the larger astrological influences affecting the 45th President, with a particular emphasis on the solar eclipse that took place on August 21, 2017. She also addressed the hate rally of white supremacists described as “Unite the Right” under the pretense of opposing the removal of a Confederate statue of Robert E. Lee that took place on August 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia where Clark lives. That day ended in the death of three people and the injury of many that went unreported as a result of the violence perpetrated by gun-toting, club-swinging white supremacists. Their chants of anti-Semitism, racism, and threats of a neo-Nazi / KKK uprising in America were not emphatically decried by the President, but instead they were given a powerful boost by his efforts to blame a few counter-protestors for resisting the intentional violence used by the white nationalists — whom Trump endorsed by his failure to emphatically condemn.
As Dr. Hieronimus writes, “Despots love violence and chaos. Many mental health professionals believe our president suffers from malignant narcissism, which despots and dictators in general exhibit. Malignant narcissists actually thrive on the pain and diminishment of others. Doing harm to other people, their lives or reputations, is how they derive their sense of inner power and pleasure. They believe they are exempt from all laws. They always blame others for their own misdeeds. They cloak their hideous lack of an ethical barometer by trying to soothe wounds after they have inflicted them. We can see this behavior in most of Trump’s tweets and actions. Malignant narcissism is an untreatable mental disease. The 25th Amendment to our constitution provides a remedy to remove such a mentally unfit president.”
During our interview, Rosemary Clark astrologically considered the date of September 10, 2017 as the beginning of a formal divorce between the Trump Presidency and the United States of America. As we all know from life, deciding on divorce and actually having full and final separation can take a great deal of time. However, because the selection of this the date is based on astrological realities, and a comparison of many charts and influences, we are hopeful we will see such proceedings beginning to manifest at this time. Removing this most unfit and dangerous man from the White House is instrumental to protecting our nation and the world.
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DR. ZOHARA HIERONIMUS: Welcome to 21st Century Radio. Rosemary Clark, our guest this hour, is a practicing astrologer who for several decades has been helping others learn what it means to be who they are based in astrology. She is the founder and has run for several decades Astrologic, a counseling service in Charlottesville, Virginia. In addition to her work in teaching and consulting, Rosemary’s special study of ancient Egypt’s sacred science has led to many accomplishments in the distinctive field of archaeoastronomy. Her work to date has been published in two volumes, The Sacred Tradition in Ancient Egypt: The Esoteric Wisdom Revealed and The Sacred Magic of Ancient Egypt: The Spiritual Practice Restored. Both are published by Llewellyn Worldwide and have been translated into Russian, Bulgarian, and Czechoslovakian. A current work in progress, “Sacred Oracle,” will disclose a previously unknown system of ancient divination that offers profound insight and guidance for seekers today. As Rosemary says, Astrology is a sacred science, it was not intended to stereotype us with sun signs. It is rather a wise system of understanding our relationship to the universe. And in this way we can gather meaning and purpose in our lives. She has monthly updates on cosmic events and you can find them on her website which is linked to ours at 21stCenturyRadio.com.
And since last year’s national election, like every good astrologer we know, Rosemary has been closely watching the celestial currents, how they are affecting our culture and values. And today she will share with us what she sees as the most significant of these currents in an upcoming, well-publicized, formidable American eclipse.
Thank you so much for joining us, Rosemary.
ROSEMARY CLARK: Thank you for this opportunity to speak at this very eventful time. The upcoming eclipse, as well as what events are taking place right here in my hometown of Charlottesville, Virginia, certainly presage things that are brewing and going to be coming to fruition very soon. Politically, geographically, and for everyone in our country, even internationally, there’s going to be some effect, some influence that we hope is going to have constructive ends eventually.
H: Amen, amen to that. So, let’s talk a little bit about, you know, the media has said that this will be the single largest celestial event to cause a mass exodus in the United States. I point out ‘in the USA’, because millions go to holy lands and shrines, Mecca or the Ganges or somewhere else annually. But why is this so important and what is it that draws humans to go, “oh my God, I’ve got to travel a thousand miles to go see this eclipse.”
C: Well, this is the first eclipse that is going to be visible in the continental U.S. since 1918. So, the total darkness of the eclipse, where the face of the sun is going to be obscured completely for a period of 2 minutes and 47 seconds. It doesn’t seem like much, but we astrologers view this as having a very long term effect.
H: And then an astrologer would say what about this particular eclipse and then eclipses in general that’s useful to our audience?
C: Well, let’s talk about eclipses in general. Each year we have two solar eclipses, two lunar eclipses, and in certain years there may be three of each depending on how our calendar is going to be moving forward. And with the solar eclipse, you have a new moon, the sun and moon are in the same place in the sky. However, they are both horizontally and vertically in the same place. Hence, a shadow is going to fall on the Earth at some point because the face of the sun is obscured by the moon.
At a lunar eclipse, we have the sun and the moon opposite each other with the Earth in between and so the Earth creates a shadow on the moon’s face. It’s kind of spooky to see because sometimes due to the atmosphere the face of the moon will turn blood red or it will turn very gray. And there’s been some sort of prognostications about what that means.
But for centuries the solar eclipse has always brought fear into every culture, every place because it’s the darkening of the light in the middle of the day where it’s visible and the mythology is that demons are swallowing up the sun and that dark forces are coming out in the middle of the day when they’re usually in their caves or under their rocks and safely put away. So, we in general know however, astrologically looking at the eclipses and the times and the places where they occur and where they’re visible, that heads of state are very often affected and certain cycles of disease, like the 1918 flu epidemic, wars when also in 1918 the Czar and his family were assassinated in Russia. These sorts of things set into motion great changes.
H: That was the Romanov family you were talking about?
C: Yes.
H: It’s interesting because I just want to add this before Mr. DT got into office, I had a vision that he was Alexei, the youngest son of the Romanov empire and that he is a reincarnation of Alexei and that he really believes himself to be a Russian emperor and wants the world to treat him in that way. And when you look at his sort of malignant narcissism it really looks just like that. I was so shocked because I knew nothing about this guy before he ran for office and didn’t pay a whole lot of attention until he got in and then was shocked like lots of folks.
C: I find that very interesting though because my feeling is that the Trump family are the reincarnation of the Borgias and that Donald is Rodrigo, Pope Alexander VI. Donald Jr. is Giovanni, Eric is Cesare, and of course, Ivanka is Lucrezia. [Rosemary explained after the show that she said this in jest.]
H: Either way these are great dramas. But these are archetypes and that’s what is so interesting about this particular constellation of people.
C: They are an archetypal family of alleged crime, of great fear politically, and of course we’re going to associate those images with living people who bring out the same sorts of emotions and thoughts.
H: And astrologically you look at their charts, you see these patterns in despots, et cetera. I remember talking with Joyce Levine earlier this year and she was talking about the President’s Mars running across the Balkans and North Korea this summer and that’s not a good thing. And it also hits the ascendant of the United States’ astrological chart. But coming back to the eclipse and then we’ll definitely leave time for all this because your experience in Charlottesville right now and your experience as a world-class astrologer gives you a perspective that will be very useful to our listeners.
But I want to come back to the eclipse so we can really do that first and then we’ll move into body politic in Charlottesville.
C: Certainly.
1918 Solar eclipse painting by Howard Russell Butler
H: So, this eclipse going back to 1918 is when it last happened. I’ve also heard that it’s an eclipse that has an18 year cycle, one that Reagan was shot on and that JFK was assassinated and Clinton was impeached. Is this true?
C: Well, the eclipse that I spoke of earlier in 1918 was of a different family. We categorize the eclipses according to their number in the Saros cycles. What we’re dealing with this time around is Saros 145, which began January 4th in 1639. Let’s look back at what happened there. In the United States on that date was the first government established, in the state of Connecticut, which a lot of historians sort of overlook and that is indeed the first time that a gathering of people in this country made the decision to create a little constitution by which they would live.
From that we have another from this eclipse family in 1927 and in that year there was great changes in aviation, communications, and the first television demonstration.
H: So, these are good things. So far you’re listing things that are really to our advantage as a society.
C: Yes, yes. And then in 1945, the same eclipse brought us the atomic bomb, dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
H: Not good.
C: Then, in 1963 the Kennedy assassination, of course. In this same family in 1981, the Reagan assassination attempt. In August of 1999, the Clinton impeachment.
And now, on August 21st, 2017, we have this eclipse occurring in a different place in the sky at the 28th degree of Leo. Why is this significant?
I want to talk about these royal stars because the 28th degree of Leo is where we would find Alpha Leonis, also known as the Heart of the Lion, Cor Leonis. And it’s one of the so-called royal stars of Persia, which many other cultures recognized as well. The others were Aldebaran in Taurus, Antares in Scorpio, and Fomalhaut in Pisces. Now, why is this significant? Well, Donald Trump has his ascendant at 29 Leo.
H: Wow, he’s a Leo rising. I didn’t realize it was so close [to the ‘heart of the lion.’]
C: I thought it rather interesting that there was a poll that was taken just a couple of months ago where people were queried what animal the president represented to them and it came out unanimously as a lion.
H: Yeah, even without knowing his astrology. It’s fascinating.
C: So we have that going on and with Regulus we also have a very unusual event that took place in 2011. For the last 2100, almost 2200 years, the star Regulus was in the last degrees of Leo. But we know that stars move very slowly. In one lifetime, a star will move [very little] and that’s it. So, it takes thousands of years for it to traverse a section of the sky. Well, what happened in 2011, in November, was Regulus moved from the constellation of Leo into Virgo. And that is very significant because you’re seeing the royal star moving from the royal ruling class of individuals into the class of the workers, of the service to others, which is the sign of Virgo. So, here we have symbolically the idea that the royal star has shifted its focus, its energy into the realm of the working class. And also, let’s not forget that Virgo does represent the health of humanity and sanitation and the provision of food and nourishment to the community.
So, we have this shift archetypally into another realm of experience globally for all of the human race. What does that mean for someone who has this star astrologically defined and prominent in their horoscope? For this president that we have now, the star Regulus rising at his birth tells us that he has the potential for royal prerogatives and also the grace that is given to royalty, makes me think of Princess Diana for example, where their touch heals and brings joy and compassion to others. There was this opportunity in this person’s lifetime, our current president. Will it shift into the benevolence of Virgo’s compassion for the community rather than the hierarchy?
H: Wouldn’t it be a beautiful phenomena to take place? It just seems so unlikely but you never know what millions of people praying for the highest good to come through might do.
C: The time is now. The test is now because the eclipse is occurring at 28 degrees of Leo, right on this ascendant and moving into the next day the conjunction with the star Regulus. So, it is going to be on Monday the 21st and Tuesday the 22nd where we will have our sort of final understanding of where the trajectory of this administration under the guardianship, so to speak, of this president is going to be headed. And so, I will leave it to everyone to form their own opinions but frankly it doesn’t look good and there’s other reasons for that.
H: We’re going to take a break and we’re going to come back and pick up there. Because from my vantage point, I’ve used astrology I guess since I first started in the 70s and then my husband was emphatic that I really study and he was right. I’m so grateful for him saying, look, if you study astrology it expands your view of the world and how you can better appreciate things. And so, when I talk to you and other astrologers it’s such a joy for me personally. Sometimes I feel we leave the audience a little bit in the astro-language field but we try to make it accessible and I thank you for that Rosemary because you do such a beautiful job of not allowing me to strip us down into astro-language and really you’re putting it in such a way that everybody can appreciate that something enormous is happening.
So, when we come back we’ll talk about the trajectory you see and the one others see and we’ll be right back. Rosemary Clark is our guest.
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H: Welcome back to 21st Century Radio. Rosemary Clark is with us. She’s a world-class astrologer and we’re talking not only about the eclipse but what it means for our current president and our current world as we know it.
One of the things you said earlier disturbs me and I assume every other listener that this particular eclipse when it happened in 1945 was when the atom bomb was dropped. And you said before the break that the trajectory for Trump, while he has a choice of destiny right now, he can either go the way of a philosopher king, a server, or he’ll go the way of a dictator and God knows what else he might do. And you said before the break that trajectory does not look good. Tell us why.
C: In order to delve more deeply into that I want to jump over to the horoscope of the United States of America. When the Continental Congress had the signatures assigned on July 4th, 1776, we had a horoscope cast. And I use what they call the Sibly Horoscope, he [Ebenezer Sibly, 1751-1799] was a Freemason, he was a British friend of Benjamin Franklin. And it’s fairly authenticated although there’s always among astrologers disagreements saying that we have Gemini rising, it’s actually 12 hours later with Sagittarius rising, the opposite sign where we really have a reflection of the American character. Because I think that Sagittarius, the man-horse, pretty much idealizes the West, the American Indian, the freedom and the striving, always philosophically and morally for the best and the ideal.
In this horoscope of 1776, we have a packed seventh house and that means that the way the world looks at us, the way we relate to the world, and those we choose to represent us to the world is reflected. The first planet there is Mars and Mars is at 21 degrees of Gemini. Well, we’re always going to be combative, we’re always going to be brought into wars, we’re going to be fighting with each other, as well as trying to resolve the conflicts around us. And so, this is what Mars in Gemini is representing in our seventh house. And it’s very significant because it’s the first planet to set on that day and that tells us that there’s some martial energies that we’re always going to be dealing with and we’re going to want a representative that is a president, someone who is able to combat these forces in a constructive way. When we had the election in November, I always do the chart for midnight in Dixville Notch, New Hampshire because they are the one place, the one county in the one state where they are allowed to cast their vote at midnight on November 8th. And since 1960 when they decided to do that they have been accurate in every election as to who is chosen president.
H: How fascinating.
C: And for 2016 there isn’t much happening except that the horoscope of the United States has the moon at 27 degrees of Aquarius. At the election in Dixville Notch, the moon was at 20 and moving into 27 degrees of Aquarius. A woman was indicated to be elected. So, judging from their accuracy for the last 50 years, I would say that’s a fairly reliable prognostication, looking at it astrologically. Then we have the inauguration and we want to look at an inauguration horoscope with the United States like this: one of my astrology teachers many years ago told me this and it’s always proven true, the country is the bride and the president is the groom and the inauguration is the wedding. You want to look at that horoscope and see how is this marriage going to work. Well, we have the United States again, Mars at 21 degrees of Gemini and it’s opposed by Saturn, which in any marriage horoscope says this one’s not going to last.
And what’s interesting is that Saturn goes retrograde, then it goes forward again, so there’s three hits, forward, retrograde, forward again. The first hit was January 1st of this year, so even before the marriage took place the horoscope of the U.S. was not conducive to a marriage. The second hit, took place two days ago on August 9th, 2017. And the third concludes the Saturn transit opposing our 7th House Mars, on September 10th, 2017. And this is when the divorce is going to be filed, let’s say.
H: Interesting.
C: It’s not only interesting but our president’s sun is 22 of Gemini and his moon is 21 of Sagittarius. He was born at a full moon. Which accounts for a lot of the volatility and let’s say the oversensitivity. But there is also in his horoscope Mars rising on his ascendant of 29 Leo.
H: How interesting they have such similarity.
C: Yes, and so we have the eclipse at 29 in Leo happening next week and with his Mars shooting off and threatening war, we can expect that there is going to be a lot of combat and conflict in the air. Now, I doubt that it is going to be manifest tangibly but the atmosphere around the world is going to be very tense.
So, we have the eclipse right on his rising star and his Mars, which is also not very good for health. And we have the Saturn transit affecting his moon directly, opposing his sun, and right on the U.S. Mars in an opposition. So, we know that these two entities, the United States and the president are going to be in deep and dire conflict.
H: And we already are, it just hasn’t surfaced, and the rumblings of it you know. The pathetic, from my vantage point because I’m a registered Libertarian, so people go, well, you like to complain about everybody and I go, I have the right to because I’m libertarian. And I have been so dismayed by the Republicans’ willingness to go along with what is completely insane by somebody who is completely unbalanced, who is mentally unfit, and to think that they are willing as human beings who took oaths to the office of service to the citizens of the states and the Constitution of the United States. Not to a king, not to a party, but to the rule of law. That has been the most disheartening of this entire episode for me. Besides knowing we have an unfit president who doesn’t belong in public office in any form and for all the obvious reasons, but I have been literally dismayed by these Republicans in general who have decided to go mute while our country is burning.
C: Yes, I think that that is pretty much universal amongst the electorate and citizens here in Charlottesville especially.
H: Let’s talk about that because such horrendous things happened there two days ago [with a violent rally of Neo-nazis and white supremicists] and yesterday and today. Talk to us about what is happening from your vantage point as a citizen of Charlottesville.
C: Well, it is has always been very peaceful and progressive in this town. 80% of the town voted democratic in the last election, it’s always been a blue dot surrounded by red, but our state has turned rather purple and is predicted to get more blue as time goes on, in the coming months in fact. And we’ve never had any problems with racism or elitism and divisions among people. It’s a very integrated city by the way. And we also have the university, people from all walks of life and from every culture and country around the world. We have physicians and nurses and researchers doing tremendous work living here. And everyone getting along and being very family oriented and again, progressive.
So, the appearance of these conflicts and these divisions are being felt very personally there’s a lot of grief going on today after everyone has sort of slowly come out of the shock of yesterday. And there’s been a lot of vigils, actually planned now as we speak. In the coming weeks at the university, there is going to be sponsored a lot of talks and organizations bringing people together to cope with and try to understand and prevent these things from happening.
H: And astrologically, can you tell us Rosemary what was going on? I mean I’m sure you know your own town’s chart relative to the day, why so eruptive now? Obviously, the eclipse is coming but there’s also other cofactors at play here.
C: Well, first of all, it’s never the eclipse on the moment or the day or after that its effects begin to take shape. It’s always 30 to 45 days before the event and that’s because of the moon’s influence as she’s passing through the signs and making these contacts and building up to the event. So, what is very unusual is that we had two blue moons. If I could give you a little bit of background about this. We had a new moon at 0 degrees of Aquarius on July 23. Then we had a full moon 14 days later on August 7th and that was a lunar eclipse but it was only a partial one, it lasted almost two hours, which gives us, translated astrologically as a two year influence. So, there’s this sort of debris floating around with this lunar eclipse that took place last week. Then it follows up 14 days later, next Monday, with the big one, the solar eclipse that lasts 2 minutes and 47 seconds, which translated again astrologically gives us 2 years and 8 months of influence. You can expect the effects building up to next week to be lasting almost 3 years.
H: It’s extraordinary, I know some astrologers have said it’s interesting you mentioned if the chart between the president and the United States is a marriage chart and the nation is the bride and the president is the groom, and this is not a good marriage chart at all and that it spells divorce on September 10th. It’s so interesting to me that when people don’t look to astrology, and there are certain world leaders that do have astrologers, and once upon a time most world leaders had astrologers for very good reason, there isn’t an appreciation really of what the moon does to us. And when it’s eclipsed because the moon has everything to do with our feeling nature and our biorhythms and we’re like tidal beings that have forgotten that we are water. So, that it blocks out your feelings and how you feel. Then we have this peculiar Neptune strangeness astrologically which is like the opioid addiction revelation.
C: And speaking of Neptune, for the city of Charlottesville we have Neptune at 26 degrees of Leo. So the eclipse is hitting that right now. Neptune is in the fifth house of parks and educational institutions, so we had the event at our university where there was the torch parade that was very threatening and then the chaos and the disorder and the deaths that took place in the park. So, the place pointed to us accurately here in this horoscope. And the eclipse falling on Neptune tells us that it was deceptive forces, forces of disillusionment and decay that entered into the picture, and this whole business of free speech was certainly just a cover for what was intended. And that was to create chaos. Because this was one of the more progressive cities in the country and this is a place where it would hurt the most, as I’m sure that was calculated.
H: Yes and I’m so grateful for you being an eyewitness there for us in this moment. In the old days when I was a daily broadcaster and cell phones came online, oh my God did it change my life in being able to cover things because real live witnesses, not TV paid shills, were able to report what was happening. And the notion that free speech was behind this, as you pointed out, is ridiculous because it had little to do with free speech and everything to do with agitation and violence and we know who precipitated it and why.
But this Neptune thing interests me because it’s Neptune in Pisces, is that where we are?
C: Yes, that’s where we are now.
H: Right, so Neptune and Pisces can either make us unconscious and unaware of what we’re feeling because Pisces is the fish in the water and our feet anatomically. Or it can also bring out, as you pointed out, an opportunity of seeing and spirituality developing and kind of coming into a knowing of our inner purpose. And so, as you pointed out earlier and I thank you so much Rosemary for your clarity with all these cycles and the chart of Mr. Trump and everybody else, is that these things have a pattern that is visible and predictable. And it’s not soothsaying and it’s not even prophecy.
It’s literally looking at the patterns of energetics that affect all of us in some way whether we are conscious or unconscious of it. And that’s the beauty of astrology.
C: With regard to Neptune and its transit currently in the sign of Pisces, that’s where you have the division here because there’s a northern fish in the constellation which is idealistic and faith oriented. And then you have the southern fish which represents reason. There is always going to be this dichotomy, faith and reason, going on where you have Piscean conditions at work. And we are, of course, in the throes of the end of the Piscean age where these divisions are much more acute. Where we’re looking at these, hopefully with some objectivity and understanding, where each has its role, and where we do have to divide faith and reason. And with regard to current events in Charlottesville, I’ve lived here now seventeen years and we have African-Americans and as I said before people from every culture and country around the world all living in harmony, and none of them wanted this, none of them had expected this, and friends and neighbors of all stripes that we know are recovering from this shock. But it has served to unite us and that’s where the faith and the reason can work together.
H: What haven’t we touched on Rosemary that you think is important? Both about this upcoming eclipse on August 21st, 2017, as well as what is going on with the current administration and our president and his chart relative, as you pointed out, to marriage and divorce on September 10th, 2017.
C: Well, you briefly mentioned your concern and annoyance with the Republican Party and I think one of the reasons that we can’t really put our finger on what’s going on is because the Republican Party has three horoscopes. They’re all set for 1854 and they all have Libra rising but they’re all for different dates according to different parties and different organizations. So, who knows where the Republicans are going to be going through all these current events. But because each of these charts, the three of them we have, all have Libra rising we can bet that they’re just going to sit on the fence, I’m sorry to say, and not do much of anything.
H: Yes, Librans can’t stand things, folks, to be unbalanced emotionally. So, God forbid they actually stand up for the rule of law. Oh what a novel idea! [Instead Librans most often simply want the status quo to stay in place.]
C: On the other hand the Democratic Party, for which we have a definite date and time is a great Aquarian sun, 28 degrees. So, the eclipse is hitting opposite the Democratic Party sun and they’re going to be motivated. Something is going to motivate them, I’m not going to say what, but it’s from the enemy’s side. And the horoscope of the Democratic Party has the nice nurturing sign of Cancer rising. So, we can expect that they are going to be, even though they may veer off at times, looking out for the welfare of the masses.
H: A Cancer sign folks is somebody who is very nurturing and loving. The mother, it’s like the mother of the world. And that’s a beautiful place for a person or a Party. It really shows you the difference. The Republicans don’t like to make any waves but they sure like to help the oligarchy.
C: And the dark side of Libra is conflict and disagreement.
H: Exactly. And even within itself, which is what we see. And with the Democrats with Cancer rising is why it’s always been so socially progressive about including everybody as possible. So fascinating. And what else haven’t we touched on that’s important for us to understand about this time period?
C: There is a Saturn transit, which always brings about some decay and dissolution as well as Neptune. But this is particularly affecting Donald Trump because Saturn is going over his moon. It’s been brushing back and forth since January 1st and opposing his Sun, he’s a full moon birth, so Saturn is nailing him, sun and moon. And this is identity and his feelings and, of course with his Mars rising, it’s the conflict that he is going to revert to, to try to remedy his inner conflicts. I don’t know that it’s going to let up, really, because he hasn’t developed his good side of Gemini. And the last time Saturn transited Sagittarius, in 1988, George H. Bush was elected and he’s a Gemini. And the time before that when Saturn transited Sagittarius was 1959 when John F. Kennedy decided to run for president and he was a Gemini. So, these are the only three presidents we’ve had that are Gemini: Bush, Kennedy, and now Mr. Trump.
So, we’re looking at let’s say the dark side of this situation, where we have a character in the highest office of our country who has not passed the test. And with current events, it may be doubtful that he will. Let’s hope for the best.
H: Amen.
C: But I also want to mention that if your personal birthday is between August 20th and 22nd of any year, that eclipse is going to affect you and also those born between February 17th and 19th, where you have the opposite sign of Aquarius affected, the 27 and 29 degrees. What to do? Don’t react to the unexpected, be calm, maintain your routines as much as possible, and think of yourself as like a cat in the darkness, accustom yourself to what’s going on in the dark and the unseen places of your life because they might erupt, don’t be surprised, handle them calmly.
H: Yes, the things that are hidden coming to the fore. Which is ultimately good for evolution. And you know as uncomfortable as this time period is, it has invigorated our states, our governors, our attorneys generals, the citizens of each state itself to say, alright, if the federal government is going to behave so wickedly and stupidly, then we’ll do our own deal as we should have all along. So, in a certain sense, as a constitutionalist myself, and a Libertarian, it has really invigorated the states and I am ever so grateful for the hidden good that has come with this such a dark package.
And in terms of how these eclipses affect people, you mentioned people for whom it is particularly impactful, but what do you feel if your birthday is not between August 20th and 22nd and February 17th and 19th? The eclipse does what? It brings out what is hidden in us?
C: It is very much dependent on your personal horoscope, but yes, it sort of brings what is dark and hidden out into the light. And so, what you have symbolically is the face of the sun being covered but then the light reappears. So, we have a fresh new view of things. It might be shocking, it might be unexpected. But we have to accept it as the natural course of events that was meant to come about at any rate and so we’re going to work with what is revealed.
H: And that’s what’s so beautiful Rosemary about the work you’ve shared with us this evening. I want to thank you for taking the time to prepare all this so cogently. It’s that the bigger cycle is such a big cycle and to look at these eclipses having hit on the assassination of Kennedy, the attempted assassination of Reagan, and the impeachment of Bill Clinton, et cetera. That these are facts, this is not an opinion, this is based on what happened in these cycles. And as you pointed out, goes so far back in history, you pointed to one in the 1600s when the United States, what date was it?
C: January 4th, 1639. People can look it up, it’s the constitution of Connecticut, it is the first formal agreement to gather as a community and to establish laws in this country.
H: And so, what you have shown us is that when things happen in the universe and in our personal lives, it’s what we do in response to them that counts. And that’s why I love the teachings about concealed good, sometimes the most difficult, the most suffering unfortunately brings out the greatest light. And may there not be any suffering and may the light shine on everybody. And the hearts of all of us open toward unity. That’s what I think all of us can pray for.
C: Yes, indeed. The stars show the way if we just pay attention.
H: And so your own business if people are interested, what’s the best way to get in touch with you? Because you do counseling and you work at a distance with folks by phone.
C: Well, through my website at www.TempleHarakhte.org I have a page called “soothsayings” and I give my prognostications for the month when there’s a new moon and when there’s a full moon. And there’s information on having your chart interpreted and having forecasts.
H: Well, it’s wonderful and I’m going to have to keep in touch with “soothsayings” and to follow go to www.TempleHarakhte.org. And in terms of anything all of us can do for the city of Charlottesville where you live, is there something specific that you feel is useful from us?
C: I think that having seen what happened at the University of Virginia where our students surrounded the statue of Thomas Jefferson and the huge crowds of torch bearing skinheads and KKK white nationalists surrounded them and they stood their ground and they held their hands together, it was such a symbolic image to me that if we unite with each other despite our differences but agree on the one thing, that we’re all in this together. That’s the best thing you can do in your family and your community.
H: Beautifully said. As I always say, we’re either in this, “All of us together or it’s all of us together!” Rosemary Clark, thank you again for being with us. Go to 21stCenturyRadio.com.
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Transcription by Joseph Ford.
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