THE FILIPINO AND THE WORLD

The "suspected" Filipino mysticism in The Mystic Rectangle becomes concretized by the presence of a Yod or a Finger of God configuration. In this rare and little known planetary formation, considered the most fated in astrological tradition, two planets are forming a sextile to each other by 60 degrees. In this case, Lilith (Dark Moon denoting a dark force) and Mars (drive, ambition, aggression) are making a connection or in a mystical sense, a communion with a third planet –Uranus (Divine Intellect) conjunct ascendant on 3 degrees Sagittarius (the people) which rests opposite the midpoint of the sextile. The two planets at 60 degrees apart are both 150 degrees (quincunx) from and pointing to the third planet. These three planets would form the letter “Y” in the heavens (draw it for yourself and you’ll see).

This represents a highly intimate linking of centers (God and human) and symbolic of an internal spiritual sensitivity, called a mystical union with God. The planets involved in the “Yod” are usually not compatible with each other, so the energy is not necessarily the easiest. But if you look at where the Yod is pointing, it’s a direct hit. Again, the planets involved in the Yod are not compatible with each other. If one is in a near union with God, the other energies may not be. I would explain it as a matter of levels of vibration that are interacting particularly when the Pinoy is overseas, although this does not exempt incompatible psychological interactions within Filipinos themselves. One level is vibrating on a higher range, the other is lower, indicating incompatibility of natures. The same case would apply anywhere, here or abroad, in the person who has in her nativity a Yod or Yods.

The Yod is pointing at Uranus on 3 Sagittarius Ascendant, the sign of God, foreign travel, foreign peoples, and higher studies, such as philosophy, religion, metaphysics. Young Filipinos who earn scolarships or travel grants usually travel to take up advanced studies abroad. Sans scholarships they may be also the more affluent ones. The greater number of the people travel to work, to improve living conditions of families in the home country. Some nine million OFWs are recorded (unrecorded can be any number) as having left the country over the years, and the number is still increaing, as many first world countries have expressed a preference for Filipinos for employment over other Asian nationals.

Freedom is for the Pinoy a proud and jealous possession. Freedom means he is able to travel to distant shores, and with the Yod formation it is a karmic pattern that connects him/her to foreign peoples overseas.

An unruly imagination may run away with the native at times, but it will give him a keen and ready insight as well. He will not avoid trouble (as indicated by the uneasy, uncomfortable quincunxes of Lilith to Uranus, Mars to Uranus, and Ascendant), but his scent will be so delicate and his wits so piercing as to enable him to take off at a glance the most untangled situations and to tell accurately truth from falsehood, right from wrong..

A Yod produces a sense of conflict as the soft and hard aspects mix their very different influences together. A Yod also produces a sense of fatedness, of a karmic obligation that must be paid. In this configuration, the planets involved must learn to work together despite the challenging influences of the two quincunxes, but there is always a price to be paid, or a lesson to be learned, something must be given up, Will it be an old, outmoded behavior or belief? Whatever it is, the process will be difficult but ultimately good for the soul. Yods signify the need for compromise in the areas of the planets involved, but also grant the tools they need to renew or ultimately to perfect their soul. Yod means number “Ten,” or completion in Hebrew. It denotes the “perfection” of a soul through a sort of crucible-of-fire process of refinement, this may vary in degrees of intensity.

The greatest danger is a certain tendency to get into scrapes through association with reckless people. Where other astrological data fit into the picture of a rebellious and knavish character, this may go as far as to mean penal conviction, sometimes as a result of conspiracy and murder as in the birth mark of cops and robbers. In an honest and law-abiding nativity, danger will derive from other people’s light-mindedness (like traffic accidents, due to traffic snarls that are a daily fare in the urban centers like Manila and suburds and other accidents harmful to people).

Filipino communities usually are constructed and designed with a church or iglesia placed in the center of the public plaza in provincial towns. Abroad, if a group of migrant Pinoys can afford it, they will rent a chapel or an old abandoned church to provide sanctuary for the groups’spiritual bonding.

Vision: A very large-headed snake.
This symbolizes for the Pinoy, wariness, wisdom and skill in the highest measure which can be sublimated unto the cardinal virtue of prudence and as easily swerve into cunning, sneaking toadyism, venomous treachery usually applied in politics, the bane of civil society and good governance -- for such are the extremes of wariness, wisdom and skill. Otherwise, he is simply a double-tongued trickster who exerts the greatest influence on his neighbor through his mastery of words, or gift of gab. Whenever the Pinoy is caught in catastrophic situations like a dreadful typhoon, on land or at sea, or a horrendous man-made disaster he/she will not curse the calamity, instead the native will beg God for pardon and mercy, and will surrender it to Mary, Mother of Miracles.

A sign of protection: The Mystical Rectangle consists of high but subtle vibration energies that serve as invisible High Walls of cosmic energies that often shield these people against super typhoons known to Pagasa the nation’s weather bureau as nearly miraculous. Some powerful typhoons have swerved away from the country’s territorial waters as though avoiding an invisible wall of more powerful energies, in order to ominously roar to wreck havoc on vast areas, unimpeded, beyond. In the field of pandemic viral diseases like the deadly SARS, and now the Bird flu, the country has been declared by WHO as not in danger (but still advised to remain vigilant) .

The Mystical Rectangle combines awareness (opposition), understanding (trine) and productivity (sextile) as well as linking complementary elements. But all is not well in the garden as symbolized by the opposition planets. Sinner or saint, or a combination of both, the Filipino is a great subject for astrological study. Here, one can get a clear and profound insight into the duality of the Gemini-Sagittarius Filipino having Sun flanked by Neptune and Pluto, with his characteristic ambivalence -- one side, virtuous, psychically keen, prophetic; the other side, dark, inscrutable, sinister, obviously a double-tongued trickster or worst, a criminal genius with the matchless skill of a logician, depending on the degree or level of his mental and spiritual development.

The Sun on 21 Gemini conjunct Neptune, conjunct Pluto can hardly expect to a free and independent position as, in spite of his sometimes quarrelsome, eccentric and unsociable character, he will have to put up with playing second fiddle. The divine purpose of this pattern is for him to always connect. As a group race, the Filipinos’ great contribution to humanity is surely their sense of this time the twenty-first century, as prophetic, and urgent; a time for divine breakthroughs, for the coming of a new life, deeper justice, and truer peace.

To these people, the Creator says: Behold the universe. Behold its fulsome mysteries. Behold its glory which is that of my Creation. Behold your connection to all things, great and small. Beauty abounds. Partake of it. You are of it. Be still and know that I am God (Psalm 46:10) And you are part of it.

To fathom the depths of the Filipino soul, one must understand the nature of Neptune, the cosmic principle of the Divine heart, having Neptune conjunct Sun in Gemini. The boundary- eroding effect of Neptune which governs the Inner self of the Filipino (Pisces on cusp of fourth house of his psyche) can enhance his/her awareness of the Oneness of all life, increasing his empathy and feeling of being connected to everything else in the universe. The typical Filipino’s emotional attitude towards others derives not from reason but from feeling and intuition. The fish (symbol of Pisces) can slip through the net of a rationally evolved system of thought as easily as water through any sieve. The Pinoy is inclined to be more intuitive than rational.

Grasping the concept of the essential unity of all life is not easy. It’s especially difficult for Westerners who have been thoroughly inculcated to believe that “I” ends in one place and “You” begins somewhere else. This is not to deny that both Eastern and Western mystics have always spoken of another dimension of reality in which nothing exists in isolation. Although on the surface “I” may appear different from “You”. And a table is not the same thing as a chair, at our deepest levels we share the same basic Beingness or Is-ness. The Neptunian Pinoy feels the urge to dissolve a rigid sense of individuality and separateness when he/she extends his welcoming hand to the visitor from a far away country, offering him the best of fare available and his bed and thinking nothing of it. For whatever the world asks of him, his strongest feelings are the security he feels inwardly of being true to his Creator.