The Pesle-Mesle

Ducks. Socrates and his problem. Black Moon Lilith and dangerous females. Pell-mell. And…

Maybe there isn’t an “and”.

But maybe there is.

Oh yes, oddly disturbing dreams.

Where shall I start? Does it matter?

This morning I awoke from a rather annoying dream. I forgot the annoying bit as soon as I came out of the dreamscape… Oh… just recalled it several hours later.

Sometimes in my dreams I log-in to my blog.

When that happens I may write an entire post, think it’s brilliant, but when I wake up I have no idea what the brilliant post was… which is just as well since it probably wasn’t brilliant. Not every illusion bubble needs to be popped, and what goes on in dreams often stays in dreams.

This time I was checking out a new comment on a recent post. It was being held in moderation because it came from someone who hadn’t commented before.

A cursory glance at what the person had to say made my head groan, and the groan was so heavy it dropped down through my body hitting organs along its way to my toes.

Without any greeting or introductory small talk (I’m not a fan of small talk, but a little bit if you’re a new person who has never commented on my blog before is appreciated… it helps to know you realise I’m a person like you’re a person), the person had launched straight into sharing with me how much they disliked everything I’d written. They saw it as all wrong, and felt compelled to let me know – although they did not explain why they’d read something they thought was all wrong and stuck around to fill out the form to make a comment and then made the comment. Seems like a lot of unnecessary effort to spend on something which you don’t like.

I started to formulate a reply, but then I pressed pause on my reaction.

I hadn’t approved the comment yet, so… I could just move the comment to trash just like they’d just trashed my post.

Except I’m a tad averse to being petty – it’s an addictive behaviour and… too easy to fall into, do and keep doing once you do it once.

Besides I like to make things hard for myself… make things interesting… challenge myself to rise above or at least step outside of negative childish reactions and actions (which is fine to do when you’re a child, but becomes awkward once you’re an adult).

I’m mainly averse to it because I’ve been there, done that and still have the T-shirt to remind me just what you get out of doing that – if you’re me, you get stuck in a rut, brewing and stewing up a storm of destructive rage, and your tongue turns into barbed wire which hurts the throat and others, and then they hurt you back, and then the vicious cycle keeps repeating until you’re all torn apart, slow death by words.

Here’s an astrological perspective on that:

“If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.” – William Blake

Lilith in Gemini could in short be called – challenging opposites. Every one of us carries within him two natures that are opposed to each other. The need for agressive behaviour belongs to the person who is essentially a coward, just as the most understanding for others will be shown by the loneliest of people. Lilith positioned here gives the possibility for these two opposites to meet. A person with this position constantly feels as if before a mirror that breaks every lie, ego trip, illusion. However, this process does not happen spontaneously and unhindered.

…

This is an exceptionally analytical mind that must think. So if it does not create, if it is not completely free in the ways of expression, then it will passionately indulge in small, mundane things and create dramas there! She will be suffocated by her desire for change, since she is in principle a changeable type. By accepting monotony, she only beckons the moment that will inevitably come, and in which, with furious nerves and rebelled, she will destroy all that she has built until then, change her profession, faith, life philosophy and with the unbelievable lightness of “nothing” begin to learn, create, travel, conquer new spaces from the beginning.

…

People born with Lilith in Gemini get everything with a smile. They seem naive and calculated, lucid and childish. Their communication with others goes from one extreme to the other, from sweetness and kindness to the worst statements, threats and curses. If it is used positively it can give a unique individual that will courageously follow her own way.”

excerpt from Lilith in Gemini by Aleksandra Sanja Peric

If you’re interested in the astrological angle – my natal Black Moon Lilith is in the 10th house (how the public perceives you, status, etc) square natal Pluto in the 1st house (of self, how you perceive yourself) which atm has Venus transiting over it, so both of them are being stimulated by desire.

In the dream I contemplated my options with regards to the comment, and in so doing got to see aspects of myself, past and present, interacting.

My initial reaction was to approve it and reply to it (this is an old habit borne out of growing up with narcissists), attempting to be fair to the person who felt compelled to criticise me, not wanting to do to them what they had done to me, not wanting to attack their position because I didn’t like their words, while also wanting to stand by my self’s side and defend myself.

Oh… I just figured out what inspired that part of the dream. Socrates! I was going to write about him and his problem in the post, but I hadn’t connected him to the dream comment… because that wasn’t the part of the dream which I was originally intending to write about – which was the part where I was caught in a storm.

A wild Big Bad Wolf storm with wind trying to knock thick house walls down, and lightning which was targeting people – I was trying to save a young woman and child who were standing directly in the path of the lightning… I woke up not knowing if the shelter I chose was adequate or whether it was the worst possible place to hide and seek safety. I think the lightning storm and our immediate danger interrupted an argument between the woman and me, it was something about the mother not approving of me… and me being confused about it.

That may have had something to do with the ducks.

Nature is in Autumn mode now, and the local ducks have been taking to the skies en masse to migrate. I was watching them and they would fly east, then swing around and fly west, one or two went North, a few went south while the others still dithered in the air, qua-qua-ing away.

It was very pell-mell… but isn’t nature supposed to know what it’s doing and where it’s going.

Except for human nature, which is in mingled confusion and disorder especially when it’s trying to order itself around… or at least my human nature is pell-mell.

No, that’s not Greek…

But Socrates is… was… probably… that bit comes later, but first…

In Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, Socrates is a recurring character whom your character interacts with, learns from and does missions for. Conversations with him are great fun, and his missions are different from regular game missions.

Last night we had to save Socrates from prison. He’d been framed by the Cult of Kosmos, and… he didn’t actually want us to help him out (we did it anyway), as he was looking forward to his trial and defending himself, and he saw the enforced time in locked-up seclusion as an opportunity to think about a puzzle he’d recently been given.

He was puzzling over something he’d been told by an Oracle known as The Pythia (she’s a lying conniving bitch who used to work for the Cult of Kosmos, who was still being exactly that only this time on behalf of her own needs and greed, using Socrates to get herself out of service to the C of K – it was a confusing disorderly manipulative mess of a plan and she’d have achieved more by taking a simple approach… or maybe not) – that he was the wisest.

He didn’t like being called the wisest at all, because he viewed himself as knowing nothing.

Below are two quotes attributed to Socrates:

“One thing only I know, and that is that I know nothing.“

and

“True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.“

Socrates

Some people like to use those well-known and widely traveled quotes to prove how intelligent and wise they are because they’re openly and publicly admitting to know nothing. And by now we all know, nudge-nudge wink-wink, that saying – I know I know nothing = I’m smarter than those who think they know something.

Do they really and truly believe what they’re saying about knowing nothing or are they just humblebragging?

My mother often humblebragged… and then she’d brag about her humblebragging just in case you missed what she was doing and thought what she didn’t want you to think about her.

Or are they saying they know nothing to not have to know anything, using it as an excuse to not do any thinking, researching, learning?

Perhaps it’s a disclaimer to avoid confrontation, deal with challenges, a defense against attack – if someone accuses them of being wrong, of having written a lot of drivel, like in the dream comment, they can simply reply – Well, I know nothing and never said I knew anything. And checkmate in the game of human chess!

Game-Socrates said that one of the reasons he didn’t write things down, and was not best pleased when others tried to record his teachings in writing, was because he feared that people would use his words, repeat them for effect, to appear wise, knowledgeable, smart, without having done any thinking for themselves.

“To find yourself, think for yourself.“

Socrates

Game-Socrates also pointed out that the people who did that – parroted things they’d read, quoted other people’s words as though they were their own – couldn’t debate the merit and value of their statements when questioned because they didn’t come up with it themselves through thinking for themselves so they didn’t have the backup of the structure behind the idea.

My mother was like that. She’d parrot things which other people had said that she thought sounded clever, so that she would sound clever when they came out of her mouth. She never credited them unless crediting them would impress others with her erudition (and even then she was reluctant to give credit where credit was due), instead she pretended the words and ideas were her own.

She also did that with things that I had said to her… it was the only time I got confirmation that she listened to anything I said, but it was also a slap in the face because if I pointed out – I just said that – she’d deny I’d said anything, she hadn’t heard me speak, and besides I certainly wouldn’t have said anything clever, anything she’d want to repeat. And how very dare I suggest her original content wasn’t original!

Some of the words of others which she repeated as though she’d just come up with the idea herself were excerpts from books which I’d been reading. She liked to ask me about what I was reading. If I offered to lend her the book she’d looked appalled and bored – I’m not reading all of that, just tell me what it says, summarise it for me. If I’d misunderstood what the author was saying… then so would she because she didn’t bother to check things out for herself, do her own reading and research, question my version of information.

Although there was that one time when she told me about this clever thing she’d read in a book… but then I pointed out that it came from a book I’d written and she looked shocked.

If I challenged anything she said, questioned her ideas which weren’t hers… she’d get on her high horse, kick me with its hooves, trample me, then ride off.

When she suddenly decided that she was a poet… I didn’t bother to point out that her poems were almost identical to the ones I’d written as a teenager which she’d insisted on owning copies of “just in case I did that thing I always do – destroy what I’d created”. There was no point in pointing it out… I’d just get trampled again.

Game-Socrates would have found her very annoying because he enjoyed testing and questioning the ideas of others and hearing their reasoning.

He also loved debating his ideas with others, explaining his reasoning, and putting them into practice to see if they worked.

Game-Socrates was based on what we know of real Socrates… which all came from the writings of other people, his peers, philosophers of his time (such as Plato – we briefly met little child Plato in the game), and which has led to something known as – The Socratic Problem.

“In historical scholarship, the Socratic problem (or Socratic question) concerns attempts at reconstructing a historical and philosophical image of Socrates based on the variable, and sometimes contradictory, nature of the existing sources on his life. Scholars rely upon the extant sources, such as those of contemporaries like Aristophanes or disciples of Socrates like Plato and Xenophon, for knowing anything about Socrates. However, these sources contain contradictory details of his life, words, and beliefs when taken together. This complicates the attempts at reconstructing the beliefs and philosophical views held by the historical Socrates. It is apparent to scholarship that this problem is now deemed a task seeming impossible to clarify and thus perhaps now classified as unsolvable.

Socrates was the main character in most of Plato‘s dialogues and was a genuine historical figure. It is widely understood that in later dialogues Plato used the character Socrates to give voice to views that were his own. Besides Plato, three other important sources exist for the study of Socrates: Aristophanes, Aristotle, and Xenophon. Since no extensive writings of Socrates himself survive to the modern era, his actual views must be discerned from the sometimes contradictory reports of these four sources. The main sources for the historical Socrates are the Sokratikoi logoi, or Socratic dialogues, which are reports of conversations apparently involving Socrates. Most information is found in the works of Plato and Xenophon.”

excerpt from Wikipedia – Socratic Problem

The Socratic Problem isn’t just one which happened with Socrates…

If you think about it, it’s a common problem for all of us.

Our public status, the image people have of us, is often something which is created by others for us, about us… through word of mouth, gossip, opinions, first impressions, personal likes and dislikes, judgments, and once they’ve decided who we are, that version of us may become the “real” us even if it’s nothing like us or is a small facet of the whole.

Celebrities, public figures, past and present, all have that happen to them. Even if we know a lot about them… well, what do we really and truly know about them, who they are, what they’re like, what they feel and think, believe, experience. Who they are is sometimes more about how we perceive them for personal reasons.

“WHO IS LILITH?

Above all, Lilith may be the most deeply misunderstood figure in all of astrology. Her story has been exploited to suit the Lululemon spiritual agenda and incorrectly quoted. Even the most common image used to depict her has been proved to a different deity due to an outdated translation of the Epic of Gilgamesh, but mystics haven’t caught up. To their credit, it’s probably because we don’t have all that much to go on. She’s mysterious, and references to her are cryptic and sparse.

Modern New Age lore tends to focus strictly on Lilith’s positive characteristics, largely ignoring what facts we do have. Here’s what we know: Lilith was a Jewish demon before being syncretized as a goddess. She’s named in the book of Isaiah and the Dead Sea Scrolls among “destroying angels”, “spirits of the bastards”, and “goat-demons”. Why was she so reviled? Jewish tradition holds that Lilith was Adam’s first wife before Eve. When she asked to take the dominant role in sex — a.k.a. do anything besides missionary — she was cast out of of Eden for upsetting the power dynamic.

In the same way, her astrological energy is that of disruption. She’s the sexuality that we as women are told to hide, and the anger we’re told is too much to show in public. She’s the overwhelming lust that comes on without warning.

In very early Judaism, rabbis also assigned Lilith a host of other uncomfortable associations and warned women against them, including the following: abortion, growing long hair, and sitting down to pee (yes, really). Nocturnal emissions also fell under her domain, so it’s also probably safe to say that self-love is her thing too. On the other hand, she could also be invoked for protection — Jewish incantation bowls that were buried upside down in houses to trap demons and protect the home were painted with her likeness.

Curiously, Lilith was later subsumed into the Greco-Roman pantheon as part of the Lamia, a group of female vampiric demons named for the sinister Queen Lamia. (Google her story — it’s juicy.) Others believed her to be the daughter of Hecate, the goddess of witchcraft; she’s also associated with magick in modern witchcraft.”

excerpt from Erotic Astrology: Lilith Signs by The Hoodwitch

I was reading last night about Victor Vescovo having completed his deep dive challenge, and how he was considering turning his attention to space travel next.

I got annoyed with him. Why? I know nothing about him… except for what I read and it was mostly about his contributions to science thanks to his adventuring spirit and willingness to invest his money where his adventuring spirit wants to go.

Perhaps it was nothing to do with him… often our like and dislike of others has nothing to do with them and everything to do with us, stuff we know and don’t know about ourselves.

I was very tired and I get cranky when tired… little things set me off, things I’d normally not notice or be prickly about. Tiredness can be revealing sometimes, showing us what we may hide from ourselves – our defenses against ourselves are down, and all the inner pell-mell comes out from where we’ve locked it up.

Or maybe it was transiting Venus poking and prodding natal Pluto and Lilith.

When I was a child if there was a body of water in my vicinity, and I disappeared… I could be found underwater. I’d surface long enough to get more air, then down I’d dive again.

In the dream, when I was with the woman and child watching the precise lightning strikes in the distance getting closer… we were by the pool of my parents’ house in Italy, from where you could see for miles around to the valley below and the hills up above, and we took shelter in the makeshift pool house, a very 70’s tent… with a framework made of metal – I recall thinking in the dream that a structure made of metal probably wasn’t the best place to shelter from a lightning strike.

One Summer when I was about 5 yrs old, we spent a few weeks sailing around the Greek Islands, the home of Socrates and where AC ODyssey takes place. The crew of the boat were in awe of child-me (they told me so, that’s how I know) for doing something I thought was normal – throwing myself off the boat into deep waters without looking or knowing what lay beneath.

I did hit something with my foot once while treading water, something which wasn’t there seconds afterwards… a big fish? A large jellyfish (there were a lot of those around but not on that day)? A dolphin (they often accompanied the boat)? A shark (I hadn’t gotten in to sharks then but I did like the shark song, a folk one from Italy, pishcare i pishican – in Italy if you asked about sharks in the water the fishermen would tell you their ancestors had fished all the sharks and there were none left in the waters)!? Perhaps it was my own foot but it felt rubbery – the sense of touch changes in water, especially if you’ve been in it for some time. That made me a bit more cautious about the ocean.

Years later I became infatuated with the Cousteau life – that’s the life I wanted to live, living on a ship, sailing around the world, exploring the ocean and places only reached by those willing to go there. I was also fascinated by plate tectonics and especially the deep water trenches no one could get to – what lived there?

Like the ducks… I flew off this way and that way, changed direction repeatedly in mid air, seemingly confused and disordered, and… well, I never quite got to where I wanted to go, instead I ended up in all these other places doing all these other things which never quite felt like home or purpose and weren’t my dream.

I guess that’s what the news about Victor Vescovo stirred up – he’s living a life I dreamed of living, but that dream never became real for me. It was an echo of an old annoyance at a life not lived which was desired.

However I don’t really want to live that life now. I like the life I have now, I like where I am and what I’m doing. It took me a long time to get here… a lot of deep diving into trenches in the psyche, being willing to go where others don’t, explore the inner ocean.

“Lilith’s astrological significance, as channeled through the stimulus of Gemini, is a whirlwind of cerebral sagaciousness that pulverizes the circumscribed scope of societal misinformation. Its function in society, (as Lilith’s astrological energy maneuvers the masses) is to make knowledge available to all forms of humanity in a manner that is accessible, lucidly understood, and ultimately, used to provide revolutional awareness.

In a natal chart, the house placement of Lilith in Gemini, along with its aspects, indicate the availability of this energy within the individual.

When implemented in a detached and genuinely altruistic manner, as Lilith indicates the necessary dissolution of ego-driven desires, Lilith in Gemini provides the individual with an interminable supply of knowledge, ingenuity, and the necessary faculties to effectively translate information so that it is understood and used as a tool for continual expansion.”

excerpt from Lilith in Gemini: Mercurial Maelstrom of Revelation by Saturn and the Sun Astrology

The excerpts about Lilith in astrology which I’ve shared are all ones I like… and even though I know nothing about the people who wrote them, I like them because I like what they wrote.

However there is one I didn’t like at all and found myself immediately strongly disliking the person who wrote it.

If I was the sort of person who commented on posts I don’t like to tell the blogger how much I don’t like what they wrote… I’d have probably left a comment like the critical dream one. Ha… how things go this way and then that way like migrating ducks in Autumn.

If I read something I don’t like, I stop reading, click away if I’m online…

but,

I quite like bumping into things I don’t like – similarly to Game-Socrates being told he was the wisest by The Pythia, and him being annoyed by that, it’s a meeting with a personal puzzle.

I want to solve it. Take a deep dive into the ocean of psyche. Something has been stirred up. A crack in the foundations. Bubbles popping. Where do those bubbles come from? A vent, hot, boiling… hmmm…

I’d share the excerpt I strongly disliked but I don’t want to link to their site and… unlike my mother, perhaps because of her but also because of my father and his likes and dislikes due to being a professional artist, I like to give credit when I share things which others have said.

The person said that Lilith in Gemini has a “voice of God” complex and thinks everything they say is of great value – I’ve not experienced that at all, quite the opposite. Mostly I think nothing I say is of any value, not to anyone else anyway… until I notice that someone has stolen it and is pretending my words are their words. It ramps up a notch if I’ve interacted with them and they’ve made me feel as though I wasn’t worth listening to.

However after they pointed out everything wrong about Lilith in Gemini (I did briefly check to see if all the other Lilith signs got a similar treatment – I wonder if they were gentler with their own Lilith sign? They did state that they were focusing on “the dark side” since they viewed Lilith as representing mainly that, but whose dark side did we really get shown?), without pointing out anything right with the placement, they went on to say that there are three levels to Lilith (slightly a la Alan Oken in his Soul-Centered Astrology) – Inferior, Intermediate, and Superior – but you, the reader, can’t read the Superior entry until you click on this link. Yeah, like that’s going to be any better. Fuck the clickbait off! What a load of unadulterated bullshit!

The person who wrote that is female… why is it so often females who come down hard on other females – in this instance it’s a mythological female, Lilith, but still…

The woman with the child in my dream viewed me as a dangerous female. I’m not entirely sure why but it had something to do with my unconventional approach to being – I wasn’t embodying a traditional or conventional female role, I wasn’t something she could relate to or recognise, and it bothered her, made her wary and afraid of me. She used her child as an excuse, but really it was my possible influence on her which worried her more than my potential influence on her child.

Although I’d only just met them and hadn’t said or done much other than said “Hello”… and maybe “What are you doing here at my house?”

That dream scene reminded me of some of my RL interactions with women. Throughout my life other females have not quite known what to make of me… and because of that uncertainty, the not knowing and the seeming lack of interest to know other than what they think they know which is that I’m not someone they want to get to know more about, too strange, too wild, too not the type of person they’ll ever like, understand, they tend to feel the impulse to make me feel wrong about the way I am.

Or maybe that’s just the impression I get from their behaviour… most females won’t tell you what it is you did which bothered them, which they saw as being wrong on your part, you have to figure it out for yourself. They’re too polite to tell you… but you’re the difficult one?

If they do tell you – it’s character assassination time, and you’ll be given a long list of everything wrong with you, about you. Then they drop you from their social contact list. They seem to like lists… and sharing them to “help” others be more orderly. Not so pesle-mesle (I’m pronouncing it ‘pestily-messily’ in my head because what goes on in there stays in there… except when it doesn’t and it doesn’t matter or does it!?).

So… let’s unfocus from me and focus on you.

Have you come across anything which or any person who has annoyed you, has stirred up dislike recently?

Did you go for a deep dive within to see what it was really and truly about?

What did you find out, if you care to share?

Oh and you, yeah you, you know who you are… Hi!