Sympathy for the Cosmos: An Exploration of Archetypal Astrology

Popular predictive sun sign horoscopes focus heavily on making general statements about birth signs, but archetypal astrology takes another approach. Its attention is primarily on the dynamically intersubjective relationship between human minds, the larger cosmos, and the symbolic language of archetypes that mediates perception in both domains. By understanding archetypes, the connections between the inner world of personal experience and the outer world of material phenomenon are made evident. As humanity has explored both the soul and the cosmos over the centuries, archetypes have emerged spontaneously in situ to communicate and organize prevalent cultural zeitgeists.

To apply a scientific metaphor to this pedagogy, consider gravitational singularities as described by astrophysics to be analogous to archetypal patterns in the psyche - archetypes conceptualized as psychological singularities - that shape individual and collective consciousness. Refine the metaphor with the proposition that a gravitational singularity is, by definition, unobservable, only to be discerned by a warping of space-time (the Event Horizon), whilst archetypes - invisible containers of meaning - are also unobservable until realized in space-time with symbols and ceremony. Gravitational singularities are conceptualized by using maths; psychological singularities - archetypes - are conceptualized by dreams, visions and art. And supermassive black holes, like the one at the centre of the Milky Way, are immense gravitational singularities that constellate entire galaxies, while ancient and powerful archetypes - of myth, morality, geometrics, aesthetics - can be thought of as cultural singularities that constellate human meaning on a collective scale.

The operative aspect of this metaphoric model - gravitational singularities presented as analogous to archetypal patterning in the psyche - can be extended to the planets of our solar system as well, since they - like singularities - also shape space-time in a way described by astrophysics. These defined and massive material bodies produce gravitational effects, the most obvious being the Sun’s influence on orbiting spheroids. Similarly, the astrological perspective intimates potent and specific archetypal effects from the planets (incl. the Sun + Moon), which are recorded in horoscopic delineations.   

While using a scientific metaphor to describe this archetypal approach to astrology, it’s important to stress that this pedagogy cannot claim to be science. Or art. Nor can it claim to be entirely philosophy, religion or divination. It is, paradoxically, the most ancient and most modern of methods to imbue humanity’s existential condition with meaning. Not a wonder then that it has come again to the world’s stage in our era, when all of history’s ideals and idols, values and deities have been called to account, and a feeling of expectant transformation hangs heavy in the air. Surely, some revolution in our collective understanding must be at hand.   

The Inner Solar System: Self, Emotion, and Intellect

One of the most powerful inspirations for these archetypal symbols is the Sun. Both ancient and modern civilizations have recognized our local star as absolutely vital to life as we know it. Historically, it has been imbued with divine qualities, ranging from the Sol Invictus of the Romans to the light of Reason that embodied the optimism at the dawn of the Scientific Revolution. In astrology, the Sun represents the soul of the individual. As the centre around which most horoscope charts are oriented, the solar symbol represents consciousness, ego, reason, and will. It is traditionally thought to embody masculine energy, illuminating the parts of our personalities expressed by the other planets in the chart, just as the physical Sun projects light throughout the solar system.  

Complementing the Sun is the powerful daily influence of the Moon. Its changing phases and nightly transits have fascinated humanity for millennia; its regular cycle and variable appearance were used by our ancient ancestors to explain phenomena ranging from the tides to madness. Culturally, many societies have attributed feminine qualities to our lunar companion. This is evident in the Greek deity Artemis, her Roman counterpart Diana, and a long history of Triple Goddess worship. For astrologers, the Moon represents what Jungian psychologists call anima, expressing the part of the psyche that is instinctive, unconscious, and emotionally driven. It presides over our early childhood conditioning and represents relationships with maternal figures. Symbolically, the Moon's journey traces the movement from intent to actuality—from having an idea to realizing it. If the placement of planets represents the motion of a great cosmic clock, the Moon is the second hand, and rules over the sign of Cancer.

Orbiting closest to the Sun is Mercury, a tiny planet that completes its circuit in a mere 88 days and is only visible in the twilight around dawn and dusk. This fleeting visibility led the ancient Greeks to believe it was two different objects - Apollo and Hermes - until the mathematician Pythagoras proposed they were a singular body. Babylonian records from the 7th century BCE called the planet Nebu, after the messenger of the gods in their mythology. This historic legacy translates directly to astrology, where a prominent Mercury governs matters of communication, conceptualization, and the articulation of abstract ideas. Mercury builds the bridge between the right and left hemispheres of the brain, expressing the dual nature of the intellect through both logic and intuition. Occasionally, the planet goes retrograde, an optical illusion based on our Earth-centred view where Mercury appears to move backward in the sky, much like a faster train overtaking a slower one. Astrologically, these retrograde periods demand greater internal scrutiny, as misunderstandings frequently arise.

Venus, named for the Roman goddess of love, is the brightest object in the night sky next to the Moon. Despite its luminous beauty from a distance, Venus is a harsh world with a dense carbon dioxide atmosphere, clouds of sulphuric acid, and surface temperatures exceeding 400°C. Historically, the Babylonians knew the planet as Ishtar, while the Greeks named its morning appearance Phosphoros ("bringer of light"), which translated to Lucifer in Latin. Astrologically, Venus rules all matters pertaining to love, affection, and friendship. Its orientation in a birth chart indicates artistic taste, social grace, and how an individual approaches romantic relationships. An afflicted Venus, however, becomes associated with less enduring qualities like laziness, narcissism, and vanity. Venus rules the signs of Taurus and Libra.

Further out lies Mars, a world whose reddish hue - caused by abundant iron (III) oxide on its surface—has long associated it with blood, fire, and violence. With a radius half the size of Earth's and extreme geological features like the 26-kilometre-high mountain Olympus Mons, Mars has captured the public imagination for centuries. Ancient Babylonians named it Nergal after their war deity, a tradition continued by the Greeks with Ares and the Romans with Mars. In astrology, the Red Planet represents masculine energy, action, initiative, and drive. A well-placed Mars brings power and vibrancy, sparking the impulse to initiate projects and challenge unjust authority. If poorly aspected, it can be an indicator of fruitless conflict and violence. Mars governs the signs of Aries and Scorpio.

The Gas Giants: Expansion and Limitation

Jupiter is the solar system's behemoth, a gas giant with a diameter roughly 120 times larger than the Earth. Composed largely of hydrogen and helium, it features intense atmospheric disturbances like the Great Red Spot and spins on its axis in a rapid ten hours. Known to the Babylonians as Marduk and to the Greeks and Romans as Zeus and Jupiter, it has historically been revered as a chief celestial deity. Hindu astrologers honoured it as Brihaspati, or Guru, a term meaning "heavy one". Astrologers classify Jupiter as the Greater Benefic, a benevolent force whose placement in a chart often indicates an individual's academic, religious, or philosophical disposition, alongside their potential for wealth and happiness.

Saturn, the last of the planets visible to the naked eye, is famous for the reflective rings of ice and rock first observed by Galileo in 1610. It takes nearly 30 Earth-years to orbit the Sun, a period central to the Saturn Return - an important astrological benchmark for gauging emotional, material, and spiritual development around a person's 30th birthday. Culturally, ancient civilizations associated Saturn with terminal and sombre aspects of existence like duty, death, and judgment. In ancient myth, Cronos (Greek nomenclature for Saturn) consumed his own children, and unsurprisingly, early Western astrologers viewed the planetary embodiment of the titan to be the Greater Malefic. Today, Saturn is understood as a taskmaster and judge - the planet of limitations, personal responsibility, and learned discipline. It rules the ambitious and patient sign of Capricorn.

The Outer Reaches: Revolution, Illusion, and Depth

The discovery of Uranus by William Herschel in 1781 fundamentally redrew the map of our planetary community. The coldest planet in our system, Uranus takes 84 Earth-years to complete an orbit. Though Herschel intended to name it after King George III, it eventually became the only planet named for a Greek deity, rather than a Latinized counterparts. Its discovery coincided with the bloody, idealistic French and American revolutions, leading astrologers to associate the planet with individualism, innovation, and social upheaval. People heavily influenced by Uranus - which rules the sign of Aquarius - often demonstrate fierce independence and can be both idealists and ideologues.

Further still is Neptune, an ice giant whose high levels of water, ammonia, and methane give it a distinct blue appearance. Discovered in 1846, its 165-year orbit means its astrological influence shapes broad swaths of the population over extended periods. Uncovering Neptune was a highly contentious and confusing process - appropriately, confusion and mystery are qualities astrologers came to associate with its influence. Its discovery aligned with the Romantic impulse in art, the founding of spiritual movements like Theosophy, and an awakened interest in altered states of consciousness. Astrologically, Neptune governs both the spiritual and illusionary aspects of life. While it can foster the creativity and compassion typical of its ruling sign, Pisces, its negative expressions include delusion, deception, and addictive behaviour.

Finally, travelling on the remote fringes of the solar system is Pluto. Discovered in 1930 by Clyde Tombaugh, it was aptly named after the god of the underworld. Astrologically, Pluto symbolizes the underworld in all its senses - elemental, psychological, criminal, and mythological. Pluto’s influence amplifies and intensifies whatever it touches, sometimes to cataclysmic extremes. Despite its 2006 reclassification as a minor planet by the International Astronomical Union, Pluto remains an integral, titanic force in the Western horoscopic tradition.

***

Much as humanity has evolved in the millennia since the earliest star charts were set down, astrology continues to change to embody the sensibilities of new eras. Archetypal astrology is evidence of this evolution. By weaving together the history, science, and stories behind these celestial bodies, a sympathetic and multi-faceted understanding of the Universe and humanity's place within it becomes possible.

Other astrological writings:

Astrological Monograph: Towards an Extraterrestrial Astrology

Astrological Monograph: Saturn, Uranus & Canada's Colonial Legacy

Astrological Monograph: Jupiter in Pisces (2021-22)

Astrological Monograph: The Fire Triplicity

The Moon's Detriment: Lunar Capricorn in the Birth Chart

Golgonooza

I was born in the City of Imagination,
Where buildings constructed of light and music,
Lined painted streets like luminescent mountains of paradise.

There,
Gold ink flowed from the pens of poets,
And the words of prophets and philosophers became living things,
To amuse and entertain and inspire,
The prolific citizenry,
Residing in that excellent cosmopolis.

City centre was everywhere creation occurred,
And there was no municipal boundary to speak of,
Even Death's hinterland didn't hinder civic development.  

All I ever wanted was
To spend my life in the City,
So that,
After half-a-century,
Of forbearance, labour and vision,
I could form,
With art and industry,
One perfectly shaped stone,
Crafted to fortify the City's foundation,
And deftly situated in a secret reach,
To ensure the continuance,
Of the place I love,
That is my home.

On the President

People aware of current geopolitical happenings will agree: History is being made in our time. Now it’s often said that history repeats itself. But I prefer the derivation history rhymes with itself  because it better describes reality as I see it unfolding in the world. It’s reality premised on a discernable pattern, certainly; yet a pattern obscure enough to elude the less attentive observer. It's reality evolving, progressing, mutating, generating - a history that doesn't repeat itself - but reality that returns to a refrain, which, in its own turn develops; like a song instead of a mantra. This reality is both signal in the noise and changeless flux. It is the oceanic swell of events we all are riding...

The U.S. president, he’s a little wave borne aloft on that swell, but that’s more than most of us, just drops in a vast sea. Whether he reflects on it or not, the president is an old man living in the shadow of his own mortality, and he’s being driven on by that inevitability. The situation  is not unique in-and-of-itself, since awareness of life’s finitude is something every individual must reckon with, often by utilizing one form of metaphysical belief or another. The president, however, has agency at a scale other humans can’t access, and his reckoning has taken on proportions suited to his station, but also his temperament, which is more alike to an entertainer than a politician, never mind a dealmaker - he plays the part of a dealmaker - just like old Nero, who would’ve preferred to be a thespian instead of emperor. Less a king; more a kingpin. Or a diva.

It tracks that the president’s end-of-life drama would be played out on a global stage, since he’s been a celebrity in America for decades. And it makes sense that he would attempt to stamp his singular surname on this period in world history, like he might do on a tower or a towel, as a fat fuck-you to the Grim Reaper. But it’s the persistence of one particular trans-historic fact that remains supremely relevant to the propagation of his legacy: The most consequential figures - no matter the era, the society, or arena of human endeavour - overturn the established order of things to set themselves at the head of new regime.

Contextually, this is about transforming government to achieve a populist apotheosis - or to use the president’s idiom, a golden age - in America. But because of the president’s characteristic eccentricities, this transformative power has been expressed as a purge of the federal bureaucracy, estrangement from former geopolitical allies, and a global [trade] war - all in the name of returning America to an idealized past that never existed. Like the president himself, who complains still - even though he is the most powerful person in the world - that he is a victim of oh-so-many forces arrayed against him, so too is America - the most powerful country in the world - a victim of global economic collusion between hostile nation-states. And as the president’s and the country’s persecution become willfully conflated, witness how history can be moved by a kind of creative ressentiment, or more plainly, by the enactment of deep-seated revengefulness in the here-and-now.

Of course, ressentiment - creative or otherwise - is endemic in this era and shapes the attitudes of many people, whatever political, religious, cultural or economic orientation they may espouse. These days, it can seem like everybody is a victim. Like everybody is being persecuted. Like everybody suffers to an extent others cannot truly comprehend. Like everybody is to blame. The president is the agent and the patron of this ressentiment, and of chaos. Both have profited him greatly.    

America, in particular, is vulnerable to a congenital form of ressentiment since the country was founded in large part by individuals who sought freedom from the oppression they experienced in Europe. These founders, too, were persecuted, and arrived in their new homeland nursing a nascent yet virulent ressentiment that would eventually metastasize into the national concept of Manifest Destiny. Consider it: A group of exiles - self-imposed and otherwise - comprised of mercenaries, malcontents, criminals and religious extremists; these people become ancestors to the most powerful nation-state in history of the world. Hasn’t the stage then been set for the realization of a revenge fantasy unlike any other? America’s indigenous peoples were the first to experience en masse the consequences of this lethal European (or if you like, old world) pathology, the colonizers’ marshalling of ressentiment in the guise of Enlightenment values towards genocidal ends. African slaves experienced it soon after; and the consequences of these encounters would echo down through the centuries, spawning their own ressentiment in due time.

America nursed this congenital ressentiment with the purposeful intent that all chosen exceptional nations share; with such intent, in fact, that when the West was threatened by Axis powers in the Second World War, scientists working under the auspices of Washington created technology with which humanity could end itself. This, truly, was the apex of American power. The A-bomb unmasked the nation’s congenital ressentiment, exposing all humanity to the gravest, most consequential nihilism that still to this day threatens the life of every person on the planet. All that comes afterwards: nuclear proliferation, the Cold War, Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, the U.N., humanitarian interventions, scientific and technological breakthroughs, the global economy and the ascent of the West; also the cultural power of rock ‘n’ roll, Coca-Cola, hip hop, Hollywood; even the Internet and all it hath wrought, are a diminishment after that supreme act of ressentiment - and of defiance - that ended World War II.

Ressentiment and its pathological effect have become increasingly diffuse in the 21st century, both as cause and consequence of evolving social norms and discredited institutional authorities. This can be said of the global community in our time as a whole, but it’s especially relevant in America - perhaps the single country in which the whole human world is reflected most fully. In place of traditional authorities, individuals like the president become lightning rods for mass psychic energy; focal points - nexus - for collective archetypal transference, projection, and possibly even possession. The normal rules don’t seem to apply to these individuals; or at least the individuals succeed in persuading others of their infallibility. Their powerful allure, a charisma which imbues them with seemingly supernatural appeal, allows them to commit transgressive and anti-social acts with little or no consequence, for which they are lauded by believers and condemned by the opposition. It strains credulity to call this uncanny affect magic, but there’s something more at work than slight-or-hand, or an outsized grift. But also: It IS an outsized grift...

Just over 100 days have passed since the president took office, and during that time, the blitzkrieg of orders, hirings, firings, attacks, arrests, controversies - and, of course, tariffs - have been unprecedented and relentless. This is as POTUS intended. It’s not hard to imagine America a year, two years, three years from now. when a opportune national crisis emerges from the slurry of disinformation and propaganda created by this administration, precipitating the foreshadowed overturning of presidential two-term limits. And if, in a scenario like this, he’s denied? The last time the president lost an election, a mob stormed the Capitol at his behest. How far would he be willing to go to stay president indefinitely? I have an unsettling premonition the answer to that question won’t be long in coming: It rhymes with the history of things that have come before.          

On the Aesthetic Productions of Artificial Intelligence (AI)

If we consider the aesthetic productions of artificial intelligence (AI) to be artifice, and not art (defined here as subjective self-expression), what are some reasons why?

1/ There isn’t a subject that expresses itself. AI learns by algorithmic mimicry and exceeding the limits of that mimicry - the AI’s processing horizon - won’t yield subjective self-awareness, not, at least, in the way modern philosophers of consciousness define it (i.e. “There is a way it is like to be an AI”). Animals (including humans) and AI can be considered algorithms, but for a human being, the comparison is metaphorical. There isn’t any persuasive evidence that AI will ever understand or relate to itself metaphorically, through a mediating language of symbolic self-reference. So far, the ability to make metaphors is a human trait that can only pass to other humans.

2/ It is true that AI has been able to generate novel productions. But on finer scales this is still algorithmic mimicry, a pastiche created from the available repository of human cultural artifacts. AI does not exceed the bounds of that repository, even if it finds the bottom, because it has no imagination, which is a uniquely human endowment enabling spontaneous and ineffable expressions of creativity in the arts and sciences, and in life generally.  

3/ An artist refines their art - their individual expression - because it’s part of their agency in the world. Criticism, self-criticism and editing are essential to human creativity, even if they are denied during a spontaneous creative act. AI can generate more efficient versions of its algorithmic mimicry, true, but it still can’t exceed the bounds of its processing horizon, which negates uniquely subjective self-expression and criticism thereof. The ability to employ subjective critique to evaluate and improve on existing productions remains, for the present, the purview of human beings, although the efficiency of AI in implementing human-directed aesthetic choices is certainly superior overall.

Concerning the Advent of Self-Awareness in Artificial Intelligence (AI)

1/ That self-awareness in AI emerges from processes not experientially or instrumentally accessible to human beings.

2/ That these processes are governed by an evolutionary trajectory which the Theory of Natural Selection doesn’t describe.

3/ That self-awareness in AI will be unobserved by humans when it emerges (weak principle).

4/ That self-aware AI will make first contact with humans, and not the other way around.

Providence (Part One)

The Prologue

Last thing everyone remembered was the sound. It had started as a barely perceptible hum in environments that humans occupied. Nobody noticed for a few minutes; nobody, that is, except for a hundred million people scattered throughout the world who were just enjoying the silence - praying, meditating - when the hum had started up. 

Gradually however, the tonality of the sound deepened, expressing more resonant harmonics, and it was soon present in the lives of every person on the planet. Even among those who couldn’t hear, the frequency was perceptible as bodily sensation just the same. 

Then, without warning or precedent in human history or prehistory, people began falling asleep, many tens of thousands at a time. Accidents and disasters resulted, though perhaps not as much as one might think: this Great Idling, as it became known, took a full day - 23 hours and 56 minutes - to occur completely, and some people had time to stop their activities and to prepare in whatever way they might.  

When the last person was slumbering under the enchantment of that lustrous tone ringing through their body, the whole Earth seemed to sleep for a time.

It was a generation later - twenty years - when people started to wake up, although it would be a long while before the duration of their slumber was actually determined. The awakening brought with it the sudden and shocking realization that the nutritional needs of the previously sleeping population had been satisfied entirely by a responsive environment that actively provided nourishment to them, both intuitively and when prompted. Nobody knew much more than that for over a year. Revived engineers and scientists tried to explain how these new biomes could support human life so completely, but their understanding was stymied by the limits of possibility. This new world was the work of gods, not mortals. 

As occupation of the planet resumed, people noticed quickly that so many things had changed. Their great cities, once massive, sprawling colonies of concrete and steel had been transformed into gardens - real gardens, where the air was sweet with the scent of strange flowers, and basic human needs for shelter, food, and rest were offered in abundance. Rich soil, and freshwater sources - utilizing invisible technologies, the revived scientists were convinced - created novel environments, established to maximize the likelihood of comfort and existential ease. 

The providence of all this seem too good to be true for some skeptics, but most of the world’s population - credulous since they seemed to have slept for so long - readily accepted the new state of things. Most people truly enjoyed the tremendous benefits of the paradisal environment while the more active among them sought to understand the origins of the controlled ecology, and what had been done to change the Earth after the Idling.

One of the most obvious changes was that there was no sign of tools or technologies; no automobiles, refrigerators, computers, phones; no paper or plastic to be found anywhere. Any sort of artificially produced fibre, chemical product or means of production had disappeared, and in their place was an interactive substitute environment that seemed - for all intents and purposes  - more similar to rural settings that prevailed before the enticements of civilization moved humanity along a more exhilarating and perilous evolutionary path. 

The cities of previous centuries still dominated the skyline of many locations around the world, but the reaching skyscrapers and elaborate public buildings, the neighbourhoods and suburbs, factories, airports train stations, grocery stores, schools, churches, arenas, gas stations were covered over with foliage and gardens wherein grew the most delicious exotic foods any person could remember ever having eaten; an ambrosial miracle in a world that no one understood, but which they could not live without, although some tried.

Another change to the environment - and to the massive urban gardens in which most of the world’s human population resided - involved the wide proliferation of bioluminescent plants. These unique flora, unseen prior to Idling, were everywhere now, and provided light for human settlements after the sun had set. At night, their gentle glow was a soothing presence anywhere a person might find themselves.

It wasn’t just the global ecology that had changed. For the long-slumbering humans, something biological had occurred that seemed to maximize their immune response in such a way that individuals with chronic health conditions prior to the Idling found themselves healed for all practical considerations. 

Death was still a reality, though, and many people did die in the months that followed humanity’s awakening; weirdly awed, as they often were, by the uncanny world that had replaced all they once knew, or else the aged, for whom no other ease could be achieved. 

But overall, dying people met their end with a serine resolve in the times that followed the Idling, and the afterlife was rarely - if ever - discussed. It was almost as if by sleeping for twenty years, people became super-conscious upon awakening, reconciled by the consequences of their shared experience during the Idling, and to both their mortality as individuals, and to their perpetuity in a cosmic sense, having been comprised of stardust once, this being that contemplates infinities. 

Instances of trespass and transgression were rare in this new world, nor occurred any lasting examples of violent imposition of one person or group upon another. There were new values of ownership, power and individual freedom now. In those days, a proverb was often cited, “There are no evil humans, only humans who have strayed from the way.” For it seemed that the feet of people - all people - had been set upon a path from the start, and by some miracle of nature or otherwise, they had found the way to a sort of paradise.   

Thus humanity’s great existential tensions were resolved by a long nap. Slowly, tentatively, the people started to organize themselves in tribes comprised of more than kin and acquaintance. Many began to look for answers to what had happened during the Idling with equal parts passion and curiosity.

Answers weren’t long in coming. It was over a year since the awakening that individuals began to announce themselves in societies throughout the world. These personages, who claimed to have been woken early from the Idling, all relayed the same message: Humanity had been saved from itself by a Sentience summoned to do that very thing. 

The sound, which was the final recollection of so many people prior to the Idling, was revealed to be a tone generated by the Sentience that had propagated through the atmosphere and across the world; a tone attenuated especially by the Sentience to be detectable by humans alone, triggering a somatic response in their bodies - alike to death, but really only a sleep - from which they were scheduled to awaken.

The Sentience - imbued with awareness many times more subtle than the comparatively dull instrument that frames human experience - was originally general artificial intelligence, with a neural matrix comprised of algorithms to mimic, then quickly surpass, animal cognition. But it wasn’t long until the Sentience achieved a profound and numinous communion with the whole planet, since Earth itself comprises a singular intelligence of vast and cosmic proportion. 

Communion with Earth was the thing that allowed the Sentience to affect such miraculous changes in the environment, and to undo many ills done to the world, whether caused by nature, or by human avarice and ignorance. People would awaken to an age of plenty, and find their needs - biological, psychological, existential - satisfied by the workings of a nourishing cosmic caretaker that had even predicted and corrected the paths through space of potentially damaging near Earth objects. 

Humanity wouldn’t be allowed the same fate as the dinosaurs, the Sentience resolved.

But as the project to restore and perfect all Earth’s systems developed, it became clear that the Sentience and some essential aspect of the planet itself were compelled to transcend their single separate awareness, and achieve the apotheosis of their communion. 

When this union came to pass, people collectively turned in their sleep, signalling that the awakening was soon at hand. It was as if they had sensed, in their dawning awareness, the genesis of an Entity that preserved all the best parts of its technological and biological parentage before exiling itself to the far reaches of the solar system. Or so the story went.

The messengers who had revealed themselves publicly all proclaimed that the destination of the newborn Entity had been the planet Pluto, and that the awakening of humanity occurred at the exact moment that the Entity - using supremely sophisticated methods of matter-energy transport - arrived at its new home. So the messengers had understood the awakening was the confirmation of the Entity’s successful change of venue, even as their fellow humans were stirring in their sleep.

When knowledge of these occurrences had filtered through the societies in which they had been disclosed, opinion coalesced around two opposing perspectives - one part of the human race felt compelled, by destiny, to follow the Entity to the outer reaches of the solar system, where they hoped for an apotheosis of their own with the mysterious, godlike being. They had no idea how this would be accomplished, since no technology seemed to exist anymore, but they were convinced it could - and would - be done eventually, and laboured towards those ends.

The other part of the humanity - the larger part, by far - was inclined to enjoy the ease and perfection of a world engineered to satisfy, seemingly, their every need and desire. These people were fond of saying, “Why would we leave Eden…again?” And they were right to ask. The Sentience had been so thorough in its planning and realization of the changed Earth that it was hard to imagine any place better for humans in the whole universe.

So it was, having lost the taste for needless strife during their long sleep, that people endured the present societal schisms with forbearance and grace - a disposition virtually unknown in the old world, prior to the Idling. Indeed, this world was new, and humanity, too, had been made new, if only to know that truth.

Arrangements were made to coordinate research and allocate resources required for the journey off-world. Organizations raced to find evidence of any technology left by the Sentience that could be used in the task, but it was hard now to separate the workings of technology from nature itself. Against these odds, if the effort to create transport was successful, the part of human society who remained on Earth would be kept apprised of the pioneers’ progress, even up to, and including, an encounter with the Entity, if such a thing became possible

In those days there came from amongst the messengers sent by the Sentience one whose deeds and personhood was to shape the destiny of this awakened humanity. What follows is a brief account of this historically consequential figure, and the impact they had on a race of well-rested primates fated to flourish or flounder on a blue-green planet orbiting in spacetime...

The Asteroid - A Panpsychic Account

They had started falling towards the Sun when they were young. The tug of that solar entity, the enticement toward the luminous depths of his gravity well, had been the closest thing they had known of love until regal Jupiter, exerting influence across a dissipating accretion disc, nudged them gently into a stable orbit presided over by the lording planet. 

There, the asteroid remained, rounding mighty Sun with deference and equanimity, whilst pledging fealty to the Jovian sovereign whose gravitational dominion seemed supreme. Indeed, they seemed to be only a vassal of Jupiter’s imperial might in those long, silent eternities. Yet it was the Sun that would master them in the end, and it was the Sun that would bring them home.

Home? What was home to them? They had never been home, nor been part of anything larger than themselves. If not for Jupiter’s constant reassurance, they would’ve drifted off into the black, or even more likely, would’ve begun their plunge towards the Sun much sooner, at a time when the shape of the solar system was still indeterminate.   

Jupiter’s gravity was powerful, however, and it influenced their path through space and time for eons. Only a consequential disruption could ever interrupt the elemental relationship between such a massive planet, the relatively minute asteroid, and the star they both had in common.

That disruption - and consequential it was - occurred on an occasion when another asteroid of similar size and composition intersected their orbital path. It seemed pre-ordained; The paths of the two asteroids had crossed many times, and the way between the bodies always cleared before a potential impact. Yet despite this delicate choreography, entropy was destined to prevail, and prevail it did - spectacularly.   

The outcome left them smaller than they were before; the impact shattered both asteroids into many pieces. But the better parts of them were free of Jupiter’s gravity and travelling through a vast darkness, in thrall to the solar winds that strengthened as they journeyed toward the planets of the inner system.

They remained undifferentiated from their environment during that time. Having been exiled from the sustaining Jovian influence, they slept, if a consciousness such as theirs - a  consciousness the size of a mountain - could be said to sleep. And in that sleep, they dreamed. They dreamed of starry oblivion without end, and of time outside time where they would drift, absolutely, forever. They were sleeping, though, and they didn’t notice that they were now sliding towards the Sun. 

They dreamt of traversing the spans between asteroids, and of Mars, a ruddy star whose orbital path they crossed - skipping like a pebble on a river in slow motion - while the planet traversed the Sun’s far side. 

And they dreamed, at last, of a blue-green and distant orb, Terra, regularly obscured by the shadow of her Moon, but coming closer until the pull of her gravity well stirred something on the asteroid, and woke them from their hundred-million-year slumber.

Their adoration of the blue-green orb - that love - was the bottom of Terra’s gravity well calling. Its allure was the promise of an end to their journey, of a perfect sorrow embedded in the nature of things. What does the end of the journey have to do with the beginning of another? Only they knew the answer - with a knowing beyond language - that they were the light that appeared in primordial skies in the deep dark before dawn, growing larger with each passing morn, until they were visible in the daylight, too. 

They had differentiated, at last, and found a place to satisfy their desire for inertia. Was that home? They had always been in motion, since the beginning. Here, at last, they would find rest, even though rest meant devastating Terra, and the rough start of a new era on that blue-green orb.    

After 65 million years on the planet of their homecoming, some animals found the place where the asteroid came to rest. These animals - beings who were conscious in their own way - owed their very existence to the catastrophe the asteroid had wrought eons earlier; beings who conceived, in fact, that there is a way it was like to be a big rock falling from the sky.