Uttaraphalguni, Nostalgia, and the Persistent Memory of a Joyful Age that Never Was
The Bather by Frantisek Kupka, Uttaraphalguni Sun
If one observes the artistic creations of Uttaraphalguni, especially in the fields of writing and music, one will notice that a curious theme recurs again, and again: nostalgia.
In the recesses of the Uttaraphalguni mind perpetually hangs a cloud of nostalgia which shrouds almost all of their perceptions and understandings. There is always a Golden Age that exists there, with the Uttaraphalguni native wistfully longing to be a part of it again. Their current circumstances are seen by them as a fall from grace from these bygone ages, and so they constantly gaze, teary-eyed and yearning, into the past, glazed with a rose-colored shimmer.
In Messages From Her by Uttaraphalguni Sun native Sabrina Claudio, she sings:
“A piece of me ain't there/
'Cause nothing can compare/
Just reminiscence of the best parts of my youth/
I wish I was her for good”
From The Great Gatsby by Uttaraphalguni Sun native F. Scott Fitzgerald:
“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
In the film based on the book, Uttaraphalguni ASC native Leonardo DiCaprio played the fantasizing Jay Gatsby.
From Ode: Intimations of Immortality by Uttaraphalguni Moon native William Wordsworth:
“There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
Apparell’d in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it has been of yore;—
Turn wheresoe’er I may,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.
Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy…”
Uttaraphalguni and the cosmic phase it occupies represent the trappings in the mires of the dualistic world, especially with Hasta and Chitra. These nakshatras in the middle of the cosmic wheel each represent the corruption of duality in their own way. Uttaraphalguni fixates on many kinds of duality, particularly the male-female dichotomy and all of its horrible consequences.
The Beginning of Life by Frantisek Kupka, Uttaraphalguni Sun
Uttaraphalguni is without a doubt one of the main vehicles with which the divided feminine principle deludes the mind. Uttaraphalguni has an insistence on preserving the archetypal female form and its reproductive function, which is why it is so strongly correlated with the birthing of offspring and thus the increase of multiplicity in dualistic existence. And the ways in which the divided feminine deludes is manifold. She promises ephemeral pleasures, lush jungles and groves, “romance”, “La Dolce Vita”…
The one time that CIaire Nakti made a content series to explain Uttaraphalguni, what was it about? The female who dissolves into “blissful trust” for her male consort, and the female who is a “manic pixie dream girl” who exists to cater to the male fantasy. A proxy for someone else to live their individualities.
In the Taittiriya Brahmana, Uttaraphalguni is ruled by Bhaga. Over the years, both Phalgunis have switched rulers across various texts, but in my view, the divided feminine delusion emerges most strongly in Uttaraphalguni. One of the meanings of the word Bhaga is the female reproductive organ, which as we all know, is what the essence of the Immaterial Feminine is reduced to in this world. As I mentioned in my Krittika piece, the Mother of this world, who is the divided feminine, sees herself and all women as nothing more than birthing factories that are nothing more and nothing less than machines that serve to pop out offspring. And so, Uttaraphalguni is the point at which the Immaterial Feminine has been degraded and trapped in material form, enslaved to a system that sees Her as a submissive tool. The ephemeral “sweetness” promised by the Mother and dualistic roles she insists on are the ultimate delusion. Ironically, it is the dualistic foundation of the world which leads Uttaraphalguni to confront its greatest conundrum: divisions in spacetime, divisions in the Original Essence.
This is why Uttaraphalguni natives are always looking into the maze of their past, trying to recall or relive a time when everything was okay.
But, there is a myriad of problems with this fixation on the past. First, the past as one knows it is never as blissful as one may make it out to be, and second, the divided nature of spacetime ensures that whatever joy one experienced before would inevitably come to an end. And so the rosy past that Uttaraphalguni conjures is yet another one of the delusory tactics that the Mother uses to encourage the continuation of the cycle of “life”, “just one more time”, which as I mentioned in the Krittika piece, is brutal, unrelenting suffering. Uttaraphalguni takes the lie told in Krittika and gives more life to it, with lush jungles and blooming flowers and bursting fruits. But again, this is the Mother who does not care about you. And I cannot help but notice that asterisms like Krittika and Uttaraphalguni, upheld by patriarchal systems as being “righteous” and “orderly”, represent the rose-colored delusion that the brutal, uncaring Mother perpetuates.
And so, what is the Uttaraphalguni woman to do?
What I say to her is that if she is looking for happiness, a true joy that cannot diminish because it has no end, she must turn away from the past. She must look in another direction, a direction in which she is not divided, not a tool, not a part of a false dichotomy, not a footnote in someone else’s story. She must look forward to a time and place where the promise to her is She Herself, where She is one in Herself, and where She is at total peace in the totality of Her undivided self. A point where “romance” is not even an afterthought, because the fullness of what She is to Herself is so far beyond what division can offer. She must not look to the withered garden of the past, nor to the ephemeral bounty of this world, but the evergreenness that exists where She is complete in Herself.
