Mercury at the very same time.
Happy birthday to Our Lady Queen of Angels! The City of Los Angeles is a Virgo, founded under the sign of the virgin, proving once again that the gods have a sense of humor. As we move into the fall season the scent of dusty sycamores, jasmine, citrus, various smokes, and smog waken the Spirit of Halloween which is doing boffo seasonal business at various locations across the Southland. Expect Dolly Parton, Tim Curry/Frankenfurter, and Perez Hilton to be big this party season. Gloria Steinem is also in the running as a top holiday icon, since her stint as a Playboy Bunny allows for plenty of gender play and lingerie.
Whatever the season, Los Angeles has its haunted spots, one which, the Hollywood Tower, is featured in an episodic documentary, The Tower, directed by award winning screenwriter Scarlett Amaris, who released the first installment on her YouTube channel August 22, as the sun entered Virgo. The harvest has begun.
Built in 1929, the French Normandy-style Hollywood Tower has passed through several incarnations, including a brief detour as a retirement home before once again housing starlets and mistresses, actors, dancers, writers, reprobates, even a pirate radio station which produced live concerts on the roof. The show people prevail; after all this is Hollywood. The ghosts prevail as well.
It was a sublime honor to be in one of the haunted apartments, experiencing the astounding Patti Negri’s mediumship for the first time and in contact with the dead who float within the Hollywood Tower, itself designed by a Rosicrucian architect Lester Cramer, with pyramids on the roof aligned to the north and east. Amaris is regularly releasing episodes of her documentary on the Hollywood Tower ghosts, featuring music by William Piotrowski, on her YouTube channel. No accident that the release date, at the start of Virgo, ruled by Mercury, the planet of media and communication, psychopomp who guides the dead; Amaris is a storied magician, and her practice infuses all aspects of her work.
Full disclosure: I am visible in the séance and aftermath. I am not acting, I am a dreadful actress; I can’t remember cues or lines. This séance was not staged nor stage magic. As a regular visitor to the Magic Castle, I know the difference between legerdemain and the dead!
Mercury goes retrograde one last time this solar and calendar year, October 24 through November 13, in Scorpio, the sign of sex, death, and (other people’s) money. Are you prepared? I have been dealing with retrograde Mercury since birth; Mercury is my ruling planet and I was born with it retrograde, something pointed out to me when I began working at the Phoenix Bookstore, specializing in psychology, philosophy, and metaphysics, in Santa Monica circa 1984. The owner, Mr. Goth–his real, true, government namewas a Serious Astrologer. There were enough books, new and used, arcane, esoteric, and sometimes woowoo to help me build practical steps for dealing with Planet Little Buddy going–or at least appearing to go–backwards and wreaking complete chaos across our own personal Gilligan’s Island.
Sooooo when the opportunity arose to share my experience, strength, and hope in dealing with Mercury retrograde, I leapt, and on the Aries full moon, Saturday September 26 I will be teaching a class in coping with, surviving, thriving, and succeeding Mercury retrograde at The Cooked Path in Burbank. You can sign up with them here.
Come, mighty child of Memory, Mercury, Hermes
giver of communication, understanding, and fullness of mind.
Appear in your own form, gracious and favorable.
Be present with me in this work.
Guide my speech, my understanding, and my perception.
Make clear what has been confused;
open what has been obstructed;
bring the hidden into understanding,
and lead this work toward its proper end.
Mercury, Hermes, messenger and guide,
be gracious to me and be present.
Adapted from the Hymn to Hermes, Greek Magical Papyri PGM V.400–421; E. N. O’Neil, trans., in Hans Dieter Betz, ed., The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation, Including the Demotic Spells, 2nd ed. (University of Chicago Press, 1992).
