Sirius and the 3 kings

“Hello, I am ept.”
“Hey, I’m inept.”

It’s time to get Sirius about the 3 kings and what better way than astronomy, my secret crush. It’s always been fascinating to me, looking up at the stars, trying to find myself, trying to find planet earth in the beautiful array of lights, dust, everything. Trying to look far to see close knowing that eventually my vision will come back to me, seeing myself as never before. Often times when walking home from school or a friend’s house late at night I stop and stare: lost. Lost in the universe, it’s center being as close and as far as we want it. We’re at the center of it just as much as it is at the center of us: we’re all made from stars.

We’re all made from the same thing whether it be a stramatolite or any other rock, the sea, a tree, or the air. Without the infinite number of particles and facets there wouldn’t be any. Maybe that’s what we mean about from one comes all, but then all should also come from one if I’m not mistaken. It’s that reverse relationship, that duality of being that actually, if we take its two ends, makes a perfect circle. Maybe that’s why all arguments eventually get that way, because we finally can understand the one from the many and the many from the one, how they are the same thing, how we are the same thing, and vice-versa.

I wanted to talk about Sirius and the 3 kings and try to understand this sense of being, this essence of oneness from multiple things, eventually becoming the one from the spare parts. I still don’t understand understanding, let alone the conscious and logical way that we break up the infinite particles of the universe and then give our lives to uphold them. Truth, god, the unknown, knowledge, astronomy, homosexuality, rape, fear and the like all stem from the same things, from our minds ability to be conditioned from the people and things around us. If anything our consciousness is a culmination of everything we have seen and heard as well as all those that we haven’t. But that’s where we’re wrong: because we have.

The Egyptians could see all the constellations, building the pyramids to assure the divine on earth would make it back to the stars. In modern times we call this heaven, the other world, the afterlife, etc. It’s the combination of all the things we think we don’t know, the things that we create by calling Chaos a different name, and then going to sleep at night because we feel more at ease.

They did this with no telescopes, no artificial light, nothing that we have today, and in some ways they did it better than us. It’s not because they were smarter or dumber, as the information is continuous and ever changing, never standing still. That is why it hasn’t left us, because the minute we separate the present from the past and the past from the future do we begin to not understand. And instead of putting the pieces back together, the ones that we have shredded from our experience, we turn to religion, to science, and we put our trust in them, the exploitation of ourselves by ourselves. It has to be this way: we have to survive and so we have to work, we have to have good and bad, light and dark, polar opposites because we choose to define them with each other, invoking an eternal relationship and stopping ourselves in our tracks. Can we define life without death? Light without dark? God without religion? The stars without science? Or should we just continue to lose ourselves in the abyss, the one that looks back at us, and tell ourselves that it has to be this way, that our jobs are our lives, and that as long as we can understand what we do and make up what we don’t, that we’ll be okay. Nothing really matters, right Farrokh?

I wanted to talk about Sirius and the 3 kings, as I just finished the Epic of Gilgamesh. I wanted to talk about astronomy, our capacity to create and what that means to us, how we understand our own understanding. Last week I attended a bible study with a group of friends from the program. My initial reaction was, “great time to piss off a lot of jesus freaks!” but I found out that we are all trying to understand, trying to find this truth, and so we become sheep and believe what we hear, what we read, and what we say, because it’s what we want to hear, it’s how we want our questions to be answered. If it’s not direct then we call it allegory, if it’s abstract then we say it’s not concrete, and if it’s too obvious then we call it over-simplified. When will it ever be enough?

Refreshments were provided, we sat in a circle (how ironic) and began discussing where we came from, what religion meant to us, what kind of backgrounds we were in, etc. I started, saying that I felt free the moment that I was able to mentally free myself from all the constraints that christianity had put on me throughout my life, or rather how I let my own ideas and thoughts cloud and deter other ideas. When I was younger I would tell myself what to think, how to think, and I did this because I saw people around me and wanted to be like them, think like them, be them in a literal and figurative sense. I never realized that in order to be the same we have to be different, as it’s the only way that we are to learn. I don’t find pleasure in sitting in a room where everyone agrees. Unfortunately that’s how business gets done.

I talked about our power to create, how we create god, a being, something we don’t understand, because we want to understand it. After creating him we create him creating us, completing the circle and having a place to start. We do this because we need a reason, any reason, any excuse to go to school and to work, not worrying about the answers to these questions that we put on ourselves. Something happens after we are done creating this god or gods that create us: we sever ourselves from the deal, we separate ourselves from our own ideas, and then we use them in order to get more people to do the same.

I believe in truth, knowledge, and love, which means that everybody believes in them, and if they don’t then I will try to convince them to, otherwise I will quit and move along to the next set of atoms that fall into my self-proclaimed predetermined path that I choose for myself (thanks to this “creator”). These ideas are not mine at this point, they are outside of me, in another world, another reality, and now I use them to function, to proclaim my values, make my decisions and think. I forget that I created them from what I saw, what I learned, and what I lived. It’s not catering to me to remember the beginning, just how it is not smart for a salesman to give honest advice. If he did that, he wouldn’t be a salesman anymore. Good, in this sense, revolves around manipulation, lying, and thievery, things that our society conditionally judges unless they aid in the well-being of the few that can make a difference.

To me, very simply, there are two types of people that walk the earth: those who have to work (the slaves) and those who don’t have to work (the masters). More than 99% of us are slaves, and less than 1% are masters. We don’t want to be masters, but we try to be masters. We do this by being the best slave that can be, because if we aren’t good slaves then we get punished. We accept being slaves because our masters proclaim life as sacred, and the decks that we were dealt were dealt for a reason, a reason that they give us. Our masters as well as us (I consider myself a slave) either have to work or be worked.

We, however, have another option: help each other. We can’t do this, however, in a capitalistic and fascist society where competition (wars) reins and where questioning of authority (thinking critically a.k.a a terrorist) is punishable by death. We have yet to realize this fully, as we are not allowed to do so given our current freedom stipulation.

I never understood how freedom could be defined, how it could be upheld, how it could exist in a society with laws. Doesn’t it defeat the purpose?

I wanted to talk about Sirius and the 3 kings, our understanding of ourselves, the continuum that changes with every instant. I wanted to tell you about my thoughts, my ideas that change with the time that I create.

We were talking first about separating ourselves from our ideas, something that we do when we say “god.” Without us, without writing, there is no god. He/she/it/them/blah cannot exist without its creator: us. We become the gods, and the gods become our slaves. We become the masters and we put the gods to work for us, we tell them what to say to us, how to treat us, and what to do. We make them think like we think: close-minded. We give them our power and then close the book, allowing nothing more to come out or go in. And then we wait. We wait until it’s time, until we read the book, wondering for so long where we come from, what we are doing here, and how we should live. What life is, where it came from, and who we should thank. We should thank ourselves for writing the book, but we can’t, since we have separated ourselves from our own thoughts and ideas. I still don’t know why we do this.

As we continued to talk in the bible study one colleague approached me, telling me that if everyone thought the way I did then the world would be a chaotic place. I took her statement as a reassurtment (a new word I just created at this moment) of my argument. I responded saying that my normal, although it might be someone else’s strange, is no more right or wrong than the next person’s, and it is this classification and hierarchy that lead us to believe that we exist in a stagnant state where nothing moves. This couldn’t be further from the truth that we create with our own minds. It doesn’t make the concept any less real albeit we still believe in it.

I lost myself that night, both in the stars and in my own thoughts, which if you have been reading so far would realize are the same thing. The minute we bring measure, the minute we start to break things down, to force upon our slaves knowledge, truth, understanding, and love, the minute they become destroyed by us. It is now us to make them up, to start from nothing, to pull thoughts from thin air?

No, because we will always be dependent on each other, just like the flower is dependent upon our carbon dioxide as we are its oxygen. We all work together; this all does not encompass only human beings, another secular definition that we create, thus making our identities.

I finished One, No One, One Hundred Thousand, and can’t remember if I told you. Names. Names. It’s our names that begin the secularization and the individualization of our universe. We then create our identities, giving ourselves numbers, attributes, things that we do, things that we think, dark and light, the same that the Egyptians did when they saw the sun set and then resurrect the next day.

I wanted to talk about Sirius and the 3 kings, how we are all connected and our oblivious ability to forget. Forgetting how to learn, how to unlearn, how to be. All of these continuous forces that we once again establish within ourselves, only next externalizing them.

I was walking home from my internship and I wanted to know about love. It wasn’t written down before the 11th century, and I didn’t know if that meant that it had existed before that or not. I first would say yes, of course it did, just like the moon is still there even when it is covered, or the sun is still there even if it is light. If we cannot see it, does it make it unreal? Is it not there anymore? How can we be sure?

I realized that we still are trying to understand ourselves and so we break things down, we change this one into an infinite number of pieces and then give them certain characteristics in which we ourselves understand because we tell ourselves that we understand.

Does love need a name? I don’t think it does. A powerful feeling that cannot escape language even though by manipulating language we still try to define it. Something inside of us, at the same time outside, as far as the stars, as close as our hearts, and we don’t know what to do with it. Can we leave it alone and still let it be real, can we release the hold we have on our slaves, setting them free and at the same time ourselves?

We need to liberate ourselves from our own preconceived notions, as our reality lies in everything that we are afraid to question.

Sirius lies in the same night sky that loses us. On December 22 of every year it aligns itself with Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka, the 3 kings, with the southern cross being able to be seen as well. They all point to where the sun is going to rise, and at this time during the year, the winter equinox, the sun reaches the most southern point in the night sky (in the western hemisphere where most land is located). It does something strange for the next 3 days: it stays put. On the morning of December 25 is begins to rise again, thus resurrecting and starting a new life.

There are 12 months of the year, 12 signs of the zodiac, each categorized in 4 seasons. We use this knowledge to understand, to create, and then to separate ourselves. All we need to do is realize this, how it has happened and will continue to happen only since it is happening. The present moment is where everything exists, both the past and the future and everything that we throw in its way.

The Egyptians called the son (sun) of god Horus, born of the virgin on December 25, he then suffered died and was buried on the cross, only to be resurrected in 3 days. Upon his birth he was visited by 3 kings. His resurrection wasn’t celebrated however until the spring equinox, when the light on the northern hemisphere finally defeats the darkness, thus easter is born. Horus: another name for the sun, the giver of life, of all that is seen and unseen.

Attis of Phrygia was born of the virgin on December 25. He was named the savior, the messiah, the king of kings, the god of gods, just like Horus before him. At the age of 30 he began his ministry, suffered, died, and was buried on the cross. He resurrected in 3 days.

Dionysis, Krishna, Mithra, Zoroaster, and many others were born of the virgin on December 25. They were saviors of their lands, aimed at saving the population from sin and evil, from the darkness. They began their ministry at the age of 30, and subsequently also died on the cross, and in 3 days resurrected.

Jesus Christ was also born on December 25 of the virgin mary. He had 12 disciples (as the sun as 12 months or signs of the zodiac), at his birth was a star in the east (Sirius) and 3 kings visited his manger. He started his ministry at age 30, and then suffered and died on the cross, only to be resurrected in 3 days, saving humanity and all those who believed in him.

We aren’t different from each other, nor are we different from nature, from the stars, and from the unknown. We lose ourselves in it maybe to answer the questions that we want to be answered. We are the slaves and the masters of ourselves, and it’s time we set one another free.

-Anthony