Cancer 12. A diamond light enough to float. (Omega Symbol) Transforming/Sensitive
(Degree Angel: Omael (O-ma-EL) Building Bridges, Fertility, Multiplicity
Defeats frustration, despair and depression)
TITLE: EXTREME SUBTLETY AND CAREFULNESS IN DELVING INTO LIFE
You seek what is perfect, and rather than being frustrated by the flaws you find everywhere around you you need to realize that all is already perfect – the perfect situation and circumstances for your personal growth. Perfection needs to be something that uplifts other by giving them a beautiful, clear, and light-filled picture of spiritual realities, rather than a burden which only serves to make one feel limited and inadequate.
The Chandra Symbol for this degree is “Carefully a surgeon begins the dissection of a corpse.” This image is about research into the structure of life – the attempt to understand the function of various aspects of existence and how those functions relate to each other – as well as what can go wrong with the system.
How radically this contrasts with the lightness and perfection of the Omega Symbol. The message is that in the realm of the material and imperfect we find, it we look closely enough the light, purity and harmony of the spiritual, that is always trying to shine through. This degree strives toward perfection, and knows, intuitively that to find it will take patience and much careful looking.
The 12th degree of all the signs is always about learning to let go of the burden of one’s fears and worries and to have faith that the universe is perfectly set up to assist in one’s growth. The message here is that there is no ultimate security in the physical plane, but if one can embrace the perfection that exists beyond it, one can find the enduring security that Cancer is always striving for.
Pleiadian Symbol: A woman breast feeding a baby is seeing in her mind its former incarnations.
Azoth Symbol: In the dark depths of the ocean a glowing fish encountered.
Seed degree: Leo 16. An angel appears to lost travelers and shows them the right direction. (Omega Symbol). Through allowing in the generosity of the universe we become increasingly generous ourselves, meaning that we grow impervious to confusion and discord.
A red faced man, tears running down his cheeks. He is laughing convulsively. (Chandra Symbol). Allowing our system to purge itself of heaviness, sorrow, and other negative emotions, we are able to come into a deeper understanding of the inner workings of our own being.
Fulfillment degree: Virgo 9. In a freshly plowed field, a man searching for arrowheads. (Omega Symbol). Sensing the presence of perfection underlying everything, we become content with the small things of life, and desire to recapture the lost sparks of light, which are those energies that have been wasted on negativity.
A man mixing cement. (Chandra Symbol). Having looked deeply into the inner workings of things – including ourselves – we fee an intense desire to – put the fragments of life back together in a meaningful way.
Omega Oracle
The inner traveler Tinarus speaks of diamonds so light that they bear only the vaguest connection to gravity. They are found on a certain hidden island that wards off explorers, for the island resists all thought and perception, and so is never seen by passing travelers.
Tinarus says that beings from the star called Shenkar are the ones who grew this island to be as a womb to hold these miraculous gems, which the island is devoted to both concealing and protecting. It is said that the purpose of these gems is to draw into themselves and digest a part of the heaviness of our world, so that we may be, at least to an extent, unburdened of our darkness.
Occasionally by the action of an earthquake or volcano or the undermining of a cliff by the perpetual pounding of surf one of these diamonds is dislodged and floats away, wandering the ocean until it washes up far from its home on one of the coasts we know.
Tinarus says that even when a diamond of this island enters in this manner our world that it is never found, for it becomes invisible, and is only to be seen occasionally in dreams, where it finds a new home in which to work its magic, but is hardly ever remembered.
Azoth Oracle
There are several mysteries surrounding Lake Mano, called, because of its size, The Inner Ocean. Why is it so round? Some say it is because it was formed by a gigantic meteor which fell on Aab millions of years ago. And why is its water so clear? No one knows how deep it is – the bottom cannot be seen, but when one gazes into it it seems as if vision penetrates with complete clarity into an infinite blue, pure as the finest sappphire.
Irnad’s tower is on the shore of Mano, and he has often seen, at night, the mysterious colored lights that seems to well up from its depths, pale and shifting like the flames of a fire, only fainter, and of a curious iridescence that palpitates erratically with strange, indescribable hues.
These colors are said to be the emanations of a great fish who lives deep in the lake, a fish they call The Uquad, though since this creature is so rarely seen, and the reported sightings of it vague, many consider the Uquad merely mythical.
The Uquad, so the traditional story goes, is a white glowing fish with iridescent scales who possesses profound wisdom, a wisdom imparted through the language of color. It is also said that the Uquad, as he sleeps in the depths of Lake Mano, dreams, and that his dreams glow forth from him, which accounts for the colored lights seen occasionally arising at night from the lake’s depths. Irnad says that when his vision is at its clearest he has occasionally seen these colors, or has thought he has seen them, in daylight, though the power of the sun generally hides them just as it does the light of the stars.
Many of the various levels of Irnad’s tower house his alchemical implements, herbs, and potions. One day as he happened to be browsing through these he found a glass bottle which had been handed down to him from his teacher. The bottle contained one hair of a mermaid, and when he held the bottle up to the light he saw that the hair had completely dissolved in the water in which it was preserved.
This caused in him great excitement. Let me explain why: The hair of mermaids is extremely hard to come by. First of all, the hair is only effectively used as a potion if it is given to one, and not if it happens to be found, or is plucked from a mermaid’s head who does not wish to give it. How this mermaid hair came into the possession of the alchemist who originally received it is not germane to this present story, so I will skip over it. Suffice it to say that mermaid hairs can only be used in potions once they dissolve in water, and to dissolve them takes around 200 years. And as Irnad saw that the hair had dissolved in the water he had the immediate idea of using this tincture, for it was now ready.
Mermaid hairs are a most curious substance. They look like exceedingly fine trickles of water that seems to well up from nowhere (the scalp end) and which disappear at their termination in a fine mist. The hairs shimmer with thousands of shades of blue and green, though red one’s have also been reported, though I have never seen one. When one holds a mermaid hair one feels that, as it seems liquid, it would have no substance and would drip away instantly. But it does not. It flows like a little stream in the hand.
Irnad knew exactly what he would do with the tincture, for one of its properties is that it allows one to breathe under water without the usual distress and death resulting normally in this process, and also allows one to withstand great depths of water. Its power lasts as long as one stays in water. In fact, it is said that some alchemists, having ingested tincture of mermaid hair have taken to the ocean never to return. Some say this is how mermaids came into being in the first place, which is a highly interesting idea, and has given rise to the old saying, “It is not the mermaid that grows her hair, but a single hair which gives birth to her.”
It also solves the problem of mermaids having no sexual organs in the usual place, for their sexual organs are their hair, and to spawn they need only comb it, allowing the ripe ones to flow out into the sea and generate new ones of their kind.
Irnad decided to ingest the tincture of mermaid hair, and he knew from his training that he must ingest all of it, for to ingest only a part would have no effect whatsoever. Here is a way, thought he, of being able to visit the depths of Lake Mano to seek the Uquad, and possibly spend some time being tutored by it, if it were willing to take him on as a student.
And so one night, when the only light which held sway was that of the stars, for the Moon was not in the sky, he drank the tincture and rowed out on his small skiff onto the lake. He had thought of simply walking into the waters, but apprehensiveness as to the outcome of his journey had made him somewhat unsure and cautious, and he wanted to give the tincture time to take effect.
The waters of Lake Mano are known to be rather impervious to wind. Its surface does occasionally tremble with slight ripples, (some say this is the lake itself quivering, and not an effect of the air), but even on the windiest of days the lake maintains an oddly undisturbed surface.
When he had rowed far out onto the lake he found himself in a seemingly infinite darkness, with only the stars above providing him with enough light to know he was still in the world. As he grew heavy with sleep he remembered, just as he drifted into unconsciousness, that one of the effects of the mermaid hair tincture is that it is a powerful sedative.
Abruptly, but gently, he seemed to awaken, and without even thinking of what he was doing he took off his robe and slipped effortlessly into the water, noticing that the usually cold waters seemed to be no different in temperature from his own body. Moving head first into the depths of the lake he sighed deeply, and felt a marvelous pleasure as he inhaled his first breath of water. His mind was at once vague and uncertain and yet possessed of a clarity he had never before experienced.
He became aware of lights, which, as he attempted to describe them later in his journal he could not to his satisfaction fashion into words. Some light shot through the water like faint darts of lightning in the sky. Others seemed to want to form themselves into something recognizable and seemed on the verge of doing so. But as there were so many of these lights, moving in all directions his focus was constantly flitting amongst them. Far below he could see their source, and he swam toward it. As he neared it it formed in his vision into the shape of a white fish, but, as he says, at the time he had no thought that this must be the Uquad – he only swam closer and deeper, attracted like a moth to a flame.
As he approached the fish it seemed to grow bigger and bigger, and simultaneously became less distinct in its outline, as if it were a ghost. And as he swam he realized that, as he could no longer perceive its boundaries he swam into it, and felt as if it were swallowing him up, though simultaneously, he says, he experienced a great desire to be overwhelmed by it, as if he were a morsel of food whose only desire is to be consumed.
I regret to say that my story must break off here, for according to Irnad’s journal he lost all memory of what happened. When he opened his eyes and found himself floating on his back the next day, he swam to his skiff, got back into it, and putting on his robe rowed back to shore.
He says, though, that for years afterward he had occasional dreams of talking to the Uquad, of visiting inside it a kind of library of color, the pages of whose books flowed into each other and whose words incessantly melted, running together to form new ones. Hence his mysterious saying, “the Uquad’s dictionary is infinite. It forms words like dew and evaporate just as readily.”
He also says that after his meeting with the Uquad he ceased to read all books, and, to the great delight of his fellow alchemists, gave all his precious and rare tomes away. When asked why he said, “I now prefer to read auras, which are everywhere. There is no knowledge that cannot be found in light whose rainbows both the ones seen and unseen, shine everywhere.”