Oscar Wilde ett predeterminerat rötägg?

Inför nyheten (SvD,) att Oscar Wildes roman Dorian Grays porträtt ges ut utan censur av homoerotiska stycken, kan det passa att lyfta in en tio år gammal text från en insomnad engelskspråkig sajt.

I den diskuterade jag med Oscar Wilde som ett exempel ett karaktärstydningssystem från Mingdynastin som moraliserar utifrån en tänkt rytmik inneboende i Tiden själv. Tider av sinnesklarhet varvas med mörklagda tider, och den eviga själen väljer att träda in i tid och rum utifrån de upplevelser den vill eller behöver göra.

Full förståelse för läsare som inte uppskattar en facktext som kräver att en kontextuell förståelse byggs "on the fly" ur samma material som det läsare som avser att informera och förnöja! Och att texten därtill är 4.600 ord lång (mer än dubbla längden hos en lång söndagsartikel i en dagstidning).

Jag tycker dock fortfarande det finns en och annan allmän tänkvärdhet och frågan om den fria viljan är alltid aktuell, särskilt för det sekulära och värdesubjektivistiska Sverige som som kollektivanslutits - fast svenskarna vet inte om det - till en världsbild som är helt materiellt deterministisk à la Isaac Newton.

Ska vi fortsätta leva i skuggan av 1800-talets materialism förtjänar folk att få veta att de inte är verkliga, och att deras liv är helt meningslöst. De är bara död materia som - bråkdelen av en sekund efter att livet redan agerat ut som en blind psykopat med deras egna kroppar som värnlösa agenter  - upplever illusionen att de haft något alls med skeendet skeendet att göra.

Kort och gott, dagens vetenskap hävdar att den fria viljan är en inbillning förorsakad av att blind evolution "råkat" frambringa en liten spegelfunktion i hjärnan - en sjuklighet - som misstar sig för att vara en individuell person.

Så ser det döende västerlandets sista sjuka fantasi ut sedan det egenmäktigt bestämt att varje tanke på en "övervåning" som åter introducerar en avsikt med det här spektaklet inte får inverka på den officiella, självdestruktiva myten.

Det här i sanning en värre hållning än Adolf Hitlers febriga fantasier sista dagarna i bunkern om en Världsbrand. Kanske såg faktiskt Hitler västerlandets logiska slut givet dess materialistiska förståelsehorisont.

I det gamla Kina ansågs livet meningsfullt och moraliskt till sitt väsen. Moral var inte en social konstuktion utan frukten av en människa som medvetet satt sig i samklang med Tao (Dao) - den kosmiska vandringsvägen.

Tao är det Medvetande som fanns redan i begynnelsen och som vi i våra liv (våra många återfödelser) lär oss identifiera. Till skillnad från västerlandets hatiska och nattsvarta myt om alltings omedvetenhet och meningslöshet hävdade bortre orienten för många tusen år att allt är medvetet.

Är det sedan att undra på att asiaterna mäter högre i intelligenstest än kaukasierna? Kan den livsmyt en kultur lamarckskt återverka på dess genetik och därmed hjärnkapacitet? Väst vet ingenting. Absolut ingenting.

I studiet av ålderdomliga system från östern tycker jag mig ha sett att mänskligheten tagit mer lyckade grepp på livet förr, låt vara att varje modell till sist kommer till vägs ände och avslöjar sig vara just bara en beskrivning. Här är en av de modeller som aldrig förändrade världen, fast de kanske t.o.m var bättre än många andra. Hur kan en människans allmänna disposition förutsägas utifrån enbart Tiden? Detta är den gåta de gamla kinesiska undersökningarna ställer den flata västerlänningen inför.

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Bad seeds (Does the Yin Yang Horoscope moralize?)

 

I recently came upon an excerpt from some of Oscar Wilde's late writing; a confessional piece where the author, imprisoned and now dying from venereal disease because of a lifestyle excessive in every imaginable way, faced up to the moral bankruptcy of a life all but over.

He, the genius to whom all the doors of high society had stood open; he, the representative of the finest in culture had totally squandered it all by shortsighted hedonism - trivial pleasure seeking.

Seeing Wilde's two birth symbols - both problematic - made me wonder. Depth psychologist James Hillman caused a stir in the mid 90s with his best selling The Soul's Code wherein he argued that each soul is born with a particular motif, a design for life prepared beforehand in Heaven, so to speak.

Knowing of Hillman's Platonic leanings goes a long way to explaining this suggestion. How brave and audacious of Hillman to reacquaint us with the original western version of the theory of a reincarnating soul! Plato dealt with depth psychology before the word was coined - and he may yet come to be seen as a founder of psychologist in the west. (In that respect Hillman prefers Heraclitus.)

In this book Hillman also launched the idea of "bad seeds," that indeed some people appear to arrive on earth with an altogether "negative mission" - perhaps a missing piece in the puzzle of the individual soul that must be acted out and thereby experience. The soul is all about experience.

(Don't miss Hillman's classic Re-visioning Psychology. This author has been a most rewarding reading experience for me; he had the guts in the 1970s to reintroduce the concept of the soul into western thinking. Aficionados of Chinese philosophizing over the ever flowing Tao should be at home with his concept of the soul, individually and collectively as the anima mundi, the world soul.)

Hillman's ideas find vague echoes in the Ho Lo Li Shu method underlying these Yin Yang horoscopes or portaits of character potential. Or at least, the birth patterns are open to such an interpretation. Hillman studied the case of dictator Adolf Hitler and found him a representative of the "bad seed" category.

Now it is one thing to point out a glaring case from the past, but the idea of an astrological system having foreknowledge of bad seeds will mean stepping on a lot of people's toes, and not only those having had the "misfortune" of being born under some of the less flattering Chinese signs! Page through the I Ching and take stock of the vast number of typological situations of a problematic nature. Some prognoses appear to promise very little indeed.

The cyclical character of this astrology implies history will repeat  itself. There will appear moments apparently reserved for "difficult" life experiences. The whole idea of being "born bad" fits ill in with opinions on this system offered elsewhere on the site.

But the method of calculation was presented "as is" in "The Astrology of I Ching" by Chu & Sherrill in 1976 and it was pretty obvious the authors themselves had provided a philosophical backdrop to the method of calculating the birth pattern (like mentioning karma which, admittedly, was present in China as a concept during the Ming dynasty, the age during which this astrology was created).

We no longer know what the makers of the system thought about its great 180 year cycle of time consisting of a shimmering flow of the 64 hexagrams, borrowed from the I Ching. Perhaps this system was conceived in a fatalistic way... We will follow that road for a while in the following.

But the very idea of predestination seems gruesome to modern westerners. Since the secular so-called Enlightenment they have cultivated the myth of man as the measure of all things; man as divorced from nature - a nature which itself is totally devoid of intelligent design. To the ancient Chinese, nature instead manifested many signs of an hidden, underlying order.

Accordingly, every year there will be several "time slots" of the very type that once delivered an Adolf Hitler to the world. Will this particular time slotinvariably produce a person with an unfortunate and harsh childhood like the one Hitler had, and which in turn fosters a angry and shallow emotional quality in the person? And will this person then invariably cause a mess in whatever he or she chooses to engage in.

I have no answer to these questions since out of the 600 world celebrities whose horoscopes I have so far calculated, the only other person sharing hexagram and controlling line with Adolf Hitler belonged to classic composer, conductor and pianist Leonard Bernstein! This name will probably carry positive connotations to those who recognize it.

Both men were born exactly in the center of their "double hour" and so were represented by only one hexagram and its controlling line. In other words, both are supposedly clear-cut cases of this one symbol. On the surface of things, the hexagram's metaphoric story seems to fit Hitler perfectly but Bernstein not at all: the story of an dysfunctional well whose waters will certainly poison anyone who drinks it!

Indeed, this is one of of the 384 individual hexagram lines which may be taken as a literal statement: the well is in fact poisoned or unhealthy and not even animals would drink such water (implication: and how much less suitable is this water or refreshment to men).

How true a picture this is of Hitler's racist teaching and dreams of world supremacy! But how poorly it seems to correspond to the life achievement of the famous composer and conductor, if not indeed this system considers classical music to be dirty water, that is, nourishment poisoning the sould and clouding one's judgment. One might wonder since classic composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was also born under bad auspices! :-)

(Remark. Actually, Mozart's slightly critical symbol seems rather to refer to either a some psychological symptom of the "hang-up" variety, or to the psychologically unhealthy situation of having to substitute for another family member, or both. One thing about these hexagrams are they may manifest in a number of ways and still stay true to their core message, or archetypal idea.)

However, looking at Bernstein's biography one finds his father almost aggressively opposed to young Leonard's interest in music. Hitler's problem with his father and early artistic ambitions comes to mind... Maybe the symbolism lets us eavedsrop into the childhood home and hear its warning to both the young men,"Don't drink that water, my son!", as elsewhere the possibility has been pointed out the birth symbol may only delineate the outer circumstances, leaving man the to handle his challenges with a "free will."

Due to the scarcity of cases, would a study of the "secondary omens" provided by this method be of assistance to distinguish between Hitler and Bernstein? No, because Bernstein was born under an even poorer general degree of "auspiciousness" than was Hitler.

The horoscope calculation puts the auspiciousness at minus 3 for Hitler. This is about where "inauspiciousness" should begin to be felt (and objectively noticeable in personality and/or destiny) while minus 5 for Bernstein would indicate no uncertain deprivation of the stuff that makes for a good, comforting childhood milieu!

The rumored self-hate of Bernstein after cheating his wife on her life investment, may hint at a private feeling dimension to that life not too dissimilar to Hitler's after all. We seem to sense darkness to the inside of both these men.

Once again we confront the issue of what a birth hexagram symbol is meant to convey. I believe the upper and lower "trigram" should be read as a simplistic blueprint for the outer, action oriented side, and the inner, feeling oriented side. This would give us the trigram Sun, belonging to the principle of Yin (darkness) as the foundation inside both these men. The characteristic of "wind" is that it is not settled, it is variable - to an sometimes almost sickening degree. We also seem to hear voices in the wind, so it is most assuredly associated with mental phenomena.

Psychologist Hillman and some philosophical branches hold that since the soul chooses when and with what people to incarnate, it follows that this circumstantial, external or "outer clothing" somehow connects with the soul's interiority at that time of being born as a human. These are the outer circumstances that will best serve the soul; they are the "clothing" it either needs to grow into, or outgrow!

In the cases Hitler and Bernstein that outer world is described by the trigram K'an, a rush of water, a plunge into an abysmal depth. The symbol of running water figures time and again combined with other trigrams in  hexagrams that deal with troublesome times or situations.

Still, the idea of being born a "bad seed" fits ill with these two cases of the same birth symbol - what separates Hitler from Bernstein seems to be so much more than what unites them, at least if we look to the effects of their activities while on earth!

Seeking further explanation as to how the image of "dirty, poisonous water" may have manifested in Bernstein's life is perhaps given by his wild promiscuous homosexual life (according to Wikipedia which quotes a biography).

Indeed, this strikes up a common denominator of the birth hexagram here referred to, the one called The Well (#48). That symbol has come to my attention as being especially frequently associated with sexual problems and the issue of finding one's true identity. It has frequently resulted in people getting stuck in shallow imitation or external patterns/styles or even simple consumerism.

This is highly politically incorrect as many would like to see a "third sex" (and possibly more, as yet undiscovered variants may be brought to light) be given an equal standing with heterosexuality. As against this, the birth symbol The Well would seem to address some people born under the symbol of the well to dig deeper before pronouncing themselves to have found the "identity" of, or "reason" for a phenomenon. In this hexagram is found the explicit warning not naively to take the city's outer appearance to indicate its deeper nature. "Things may not be what they seem."

This admonition to be wary of outer appearances certainly causes the entire situation (or psychology) to vacillate or even start to oscillate. For what if the interior ("the well") says another thing than the city walls, and then the contents of the well too turns out to be a facade? Are we slippiing into en endless regress here, where a final "essence" can never be pin-pointed? Indeed, what is "flowing water" anyway?

Does not this formless substance falsely seem to conform utterly to its external containers when in fact merely waiting for an escape route? Water is a symbol for the in-it-self boundless and as such is naturally freed from narrow considerations of gender.

(Still, the trigram connected with water symbolically refers to semen and blood - visible vehicles or representations for the invisible life-force, ch'i or prana). Apropos water's negation of a final form we do find two people possessed by a death wish born under this hexagram, morose writer Hans Christian Andersen and Gary Gilmore, the latter notorious for having insisted on receiving the death penalty after committing two murders.

Thus this hexagram housing the symbol of an essentially formless flowing water (contained within a well) cuts both ways. Who is to tell whether one's experience of having arrived to the wrong "city," having been equipped with the wrong body, is not the fruit of a shallow emotionality and very crude ad hoc rationalizing?

Opening just one further Russian doll figurine may lead to an opposite conclusion if this is indeed an endless regress! The question of Hitler's sexual bent (see professor Lothar Machtan's book on the subject, "The Hidden Hitler") may turn out he was not unlike Bernstein, who went in both directions before later in life settling on gayness.

In fact, after beginning as homosexuals, both men realized this would hinder them in their ambition and at least played it down. This supposedly occurred around 39 in the case of Hitler and in the early 30s in the case of Bernstein through his marriage (subsequently broken, when reverting to homosexuality).

The bottom line of The Well would therefore seem to moralize; shouting out a warning to people not to contaminate themselves (or others) with "the dirty water of the well" (- could that be read as anal sex?).
Bernstein's sometime wife would have been well advised by this horoscope too had she only known about it! "Don't drink this, or suffer the consequences." Chu & Sherrill in their "The Astrology of I Ching" equates the dirty well water with ill-founded ideas, rousing up the muddy sediments at the bottom of the well, that is.  "Muddied sentiments" would seem to fit both cases of the bottom line quite well.

Born to the fourth line we find Leonardo da Vinci who, true to the fashion of the 15th century, acted out a homosexual lifestyle too. The line judgment merely notes that a "well being restored will not be blameworthy any more" (restoring it will prevent the muddy water of its corresponding line at the very bottom). Not even now "home-free" according to the symbolism!

Given the admiration accorded to da Vinci in the West, one wonders what lifestyle it takes to make this Chinese systems nod approvingly. Of course, it is a fact that da Vinci sometimes wasted his talent, compromising any higher values by designing military machinery. (According to one view-point, the military would perhaps have wished him to prioritize machinery and let go that useless "arty" inclination...)

Again we get the distinct feeling there does seem to be a bit of moralizing going on with this system. It does take sides, depending on whether the symbolism detracts from the Tao, the set of universal and supposedly moral laws of the world, or points toward it.

In fact, this is the only hexagram where I have noticed an unusually percentage of sexual deviation, 6 out of 22 celebrities. Besides Hitler (uncertain as to his later life though) and Bernstein, there is the writer Truman Capote, the philosopher Schopenhauer and the hard-to-pin-down pop star Michael Jackson (asexual?) - his birth time is also not confirmed. These six homosexuals were distributed among various controlling lines.

I also have the non-celebrity cases of a person raped twcie (!) in her life and the case of deep-rooted frigidity under this strange hexagram of "dipping (stuff) into the well," attempting to retrieve something nourishing from the depths. Things may go awry here, that much seems clear.

Needless to say, the majority of cases on file are straight but as mentioned, this is the one hexagram which I noticed homoerotic bent is unusually noticeable. By this lengthy excursion on the acute discomfort accepting one's present bodily sex, I by no means intend this to express the concept of being "born a bad seed."

This body/soul dichotomy seems also to appear in "projected" or "externalized" forms - what for instance of American TV host Jay Leno's (The Well, line three) obsession with "phallic extensions" (he collects fast cars and motorcycles)? Who do usually need to "ground" his/her gender by objectifying measures? One at odds with his/her bodily sex? One who is latently homosexual?

Loosely related to these thoughts, I have also come across a (non-famous) female case of being into traditionally male extreme sports, lending support the the pent-up water of the well "wishing" to plunge ahead and take risks. (The death wish again? Bbreaking with the constriction imposed by bodily sex?) 

"Plunging ahead" and acting the dare devil  is one psychological characteristic ascribed to running water in this system. Not for nothing do we find rushing water in the hexagram of coping with war or other extreme circumstances. But in the Army, Shih (#7) the running water is naturally collected within the earth - not locked up in a man-made irrigation system. The difference in symbolism is perhaps worth pondering.

It may be noted as well that our main characters in this meandering story, Hitler and Bernstein, were both seen in the role of educator. Hitler in giving speeches and "educating" the nation, and Bernstein as televised teacher of classical music, aiming to haul in a new young generation. We should expect leadership tendencies, and a wish to "water and fertilize its surroundings" with the metaphorical well. 

In connection with the warning against superficiality, I noted another parallel between Hitler and Bernstein: Hitler loved to collect pictures of German peasants and their laboring in the fields (well water used to irrigate the lands!); he seemed to have entertained some quasi-religious notion of himself as the savior of the lower classes.

Now, something of the kind appears to have been a figment of Bernstein's mind too, according to the novel based on actual facts and published in 1970. The chic New York elite, so the story goes, had a penchant for identifying themselves with worthy causes and in this case Bernstein staged a meeting between the Black Panthers - voicing the oppressed black people's sentiment - and the socialites of the Big Apple

Tom Wolfe re-creates the incongruous scene—and its astonishing repercussions—with high fidelity. But he gives us more than just a wry account of life among the Beautiful People; he also provides a historical perspective on that impulse of the upper classes to identify themselves with what they imagine to be the raw, vital lifestyle of the lower orders.
http://www.tomwolfe.com/RadicalChic.html

Again the curious warning not to mix outside with inside comes to mind; did Bernstein commit the same mistake as Hitler did toward the Jews, Gypsies and other minorities? To value them as something lesser, each in his own way trying to produce a "solution"?

The Well warns of even trying to evaluate things before investigating the well (which water, of course, tells of the common essential identity).

We'll leave the sub-theme of Hitler and Bernstein here, hardly having exhausted a deep subject which has a lot to do with the credibility and applicability of this astrological system. Two trying "double hours" in a row - more than a warning? 

So then what of Oscar Wilde (16 Oct 1854 03:00 AM, Dublin, Ireland), mentioned at the very beginning? Here is a man with the commonplace occurrence of being born under two symbols about equally strong. Whereas I have conjectured that some celebrities was"saved" from a "difficult" symbol by an altogether favorable complementary one, in other cases both symbols were problematic. 

So, as in the case of Hitler/Bernstein  no certain conclusions can be drawn as to whether this system even statistically deals with predetermined "bad seeds." The abovementioned pair has shown the possibility of living out a "life theme" in more or less harmful ways, yes, even realizing it to be "politically and strategically" wise not to let one's personal sexuality become a stumbling stock in one's career.

To that extent both Hitler and Bernstein "improved" upon their shared and very poor birth omen. Hitler arguably made matters worse by instead wildly projecting his "inner demons" onto the outer world...

Seeing celebrities born under one harmonious sign and one inharmonious, and sometimes succeeding and sometimes becoming notorious, I have toyed with the idea that perhaps it is only under very rare cases of two consecutive symbols of a trying character - a cosmic "assault" lasting four hours of western time - we find those manifestations in life sometimes referred to as "bad seeds."

The fate of Oscar Wilde is one such case having fuelled this hypothesis. 

Only time segments of prolonged "depression" would be those periods during which, according to psychologist James Hillman, the soul voluntarily enters the world in order for a full "shock treatment" designed to bring it to a fuller awareness of an already established trend or tendency within itself that can only be explained by the theory of reincarnation.

That is,with two consecutive "bad" birth omens one would so to speak confirm the badness of the other and result in a "born bad person."

Please let me repeat this is highly speculative, but we are tasting the "other view" now, that of a full-fledged predeterminism! 

Reason for even hypothetically setting "free will" aside for a second are some exceptional personal dreams during the last 25 years (some confirmed to having contained obscure historical personages). These have caused me to at least contemplate the possibility of a soul sometimes undertaking an extreme journey, pushing things to their ultimate limit so as to fully live and experience the consequences of that line of commitment.

Famous Swedish seer and metaphysician Emmanuel Swedenborg is a  typical case of one birth symbol not promising much good, while the other is highly auspicious (again, alas, the birth time is not 100% verified). In this case one can certainly see criticism leveled at Swedenborg's philosophy in the less auspicious hexagram (Emmanuel Kant mocked him badly for erecting a huge edifice of unsupportable speculation), but just as apparent is the connection between the "good" hexagram and the visionary and religious side of the man's nature.

The somewhat critical hexagram was Shêng (#46), "The One Who Pushes Upwards" (theme title indeed reminiscent of Swedenborg's ascent to the heavens to envision the world of angelic beings up above). This is not criticism in any way (indeed, confirmation from the "Great Man" is promised!), but a birth to the third line in the linear complex is given a rather ominous verdict: "[He is like one who] pushes upwards into a empty city."

It should be noted the word "empty" in Chinese has a secondary meaning of "worthless," "insubstantial."
This is held to indicate a non-reflecting and gullible type of personality. The city may be nothing more than a mirage in the desert, but it may also have been deliberately emptied, leading the "pushy type of person" into a staged ambush!

It may also be that the city was deserted for a good reason: the Chinese held that a city could be contaminated by evil spirits because of severe wrongs committed within its walls. Like some nuclear disasterarea from which the population had long since left because of contamination... 

Now, here comes a restless and ambitious person and sees the empty city. It looks so easy to enter into and take control of that the soul here appears to be dissociated from sound judgment and capacity for reflection. The soul here physical forward movement being sufficient (shêng, "pushing upward," stressing only effort as such). (Indeed, I take a cue from an instantiation of this very theme calculated for a seriously promiscuous woman, apparently entirely driven by imagines physical needs!) 

But against this dubious situatione - or perhaps only headless outlook - we must also notice the actual hour within which Swedenborg was born (the covert warning against rushing into empty cities appearing a while after his actual birth and perhaps not to be unduly stressed).

In the main this writer, scientist, seer and religious founder was born under the impressive hexagram of "Heaven," and depicted (by its second line) as a "dragon appearing," an image of an immensely creative force manifesting and rendering itself visible in this world, now ready to deliver its heavenly visions. Madonna is also born to this particular line but I won't digress on possible parallels between them. 

The Heavenly hexagram also obtained during the birth hour of Bill Gates, at one point in time the world's wealthiest man. But, as if to underscore how different he is from the tiny representatives of Heaven"only" appeared on the hexagram's ground level" (Swedenborg, Madonna et. al.), Gates controlling line is the uppermost, depicting a "dragon at extreme height."

(The attendant exclamation "Regretful!" should not be taken too seriously. Remember the utter nerdishness of the young Gates, wholly incapable of connecting to the common man. This is exactly as predicated of the top line of heavenly genius. The very fact this dragon always flew so high above the common man is what rendered him so successful in the end.) 

But to return to Oscar Wilde a final time! He suffered the misfortune of being born in the uncertain overlap between two Chinese two hour segments both being of a critical nature. He did, in fact, share Swedenborg's penchant for "pushing into empty cities," indicating a physically vital but naive person who rushes forward whenever an opportunity presents itself (an "empty city" to claim for oneself). Also compare the aforementioned non-famous case of promiscuity!

One may also recall the desolute early lifestyle of former President George W Bush, another famous case born under the very same symbolism. One may certainly characterize his Presidential years as those of "a pushy guy, mistaking empty cities for reality." (The war against Iraq where no nuclear weapons were to be found - the empty city.)

The Chinese symbolism here appears, notwithstanding other good qualities such as charm and sex appeal , to emphasize a combination of heedlessness and greedy opportunism. "Fools rush in where angels fear to go"...

And the complementary theme is if possible even more endangered, and perhaps the one he - without ever having heard of this Chinese method - alluded to towards the end of his life. In this hexagram we learn of "The Advancing One," a brilliant person invited to mingle among the socialites in society's most exclusive salons, even receiving three audiences with the Emperor in a single day!

Whereas the Chinese symbolism so often must be interpreted as an allegory, in the case of Oscar Wilde, this was (excepting the part about the Emperor) the literal truth!

But then comes the backlash: Wilde is allotted the fourth line in the symbol of The Advancing One. Interestingly this (double) hour again refers to greed, perhaps similar to that of the previous time segment where the appearance of an "empty city" ("a free lunch") threatened to empty the person of all sound reason. 

In connection with high society, however, the judgment is sterner. Here is indicated a corruption of those qualities one rightfully should expect from the aristocracy or those admitted to it. Since this tiny elite already possesses all imaginable worldly wealth such a privileged life should not turn to itself to produce even more of the same, but aim to transcend itself. A highly privileged life should concern itself with realizing the higher truths in life, finding the spiritual meaning of it all. 

In this rarefied clime with its high-minded aims, we now find the fourth line pointing afinger and revealing what Oscar Wilde appears to have been predestined to become:

"A rodent advancing [and mixing with the nobility]! How humiliating!"

It would appear this fourth line is warned of entirely missing the point of why one would with to advancie into and move among the aristocracy. Given the combined symbolism with one hungering for an "empty city" to claim as one's own, it is hard to see how Wilde could have avoided the trap of self-aggrandizement and the utter degradation he caused to his life.

Once again this astrological system makes us wonder whether souls to in fact pick "destinies" to experience a bad way to its uttermost limit. In that way they may the more forcefully "swing the other direction" next time around...