How to Use Tarot and Astrology in Science Fiction Part 7 - Creating Charisma with Verisimilitude

How to Use Tarot and Astrology in Science Fiction

Part 7

Creating Charisma with Verisimilitude 

Previous parts in How to Use Tarot and Astrology in Science Fiction Series are indexed at the bottom of the index post about Astrology

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me_30.html

The Tarot posts - Tarot Just For Writers - have been polished up and presented as Kindle books. 5 Individual volumes, or one single collected one (the collected is cheaper).

https://amazon.com/Not-So-Minor-Arcana-Books-ebook/dp/B010E4WAOU/

And we have explored Verisimilitude in the various aspects of Worldbuilding, Theme, Plot, and even Marketing.  Seeming "real" at least in some single element, is a novel's most memorable feature.  One "realistic" element can make the imaginary elements vivid, real, fascinating, and memorable.

That distinctive element, original and imaginary, will "tag" your Series in the reader's mind, and they will remember your byline, maybe buy more books.

So here are some of the Posts mentioning Verisimilitude.

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/07/why-every-novel-needs-love-story-part-1.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/07/why-every-novel-needs-love-story-part-2.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/06/depiction-part-14-depicting-cultural.html

Here's one about Corporate Greed and the Sex Drive -- involving Pluto transits.
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/10/alien-sexuality-part-3-corporate-greed_25.html

And I did say verisimilitude is essential to Theme:
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/12/theme-archetype-integration-part-1.html

The HEA is a hard sell to non-Romance readers, which is most of the science fiction readership, so you have to argue convincingly for the verisimilitude of the Happily Ever After ending.  Here is a discussion of that task for the author of Soul Mate romance.

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/12/theme-archetype-integration-part-1.html

And Plot Pacing is paramount.
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/10/mysteries-of-pacing-part-6-how-to.html

In fact "Pacing" as a writing technique can be the most important thing you learn to do. Pacing can be the genre signature -- which scenes or descriptions you spend pages on, and which you cut to less than 1 sentence.

A long time ago, Romance novels were required to omit sex scenes, and still they captured imagination and fueled determination not to settle for less than a Soul Mate.

Romance novels sans sex still presented Characters with potent Charisma.  You could meet a man whose mere glance would sweep you off your feet.

Love at first sight works like that.  After all, it is "first sight" - presumably not after first sex.

Charisma works like that - instant first-sight attention getting, followed by a riveting hint of potential.

Potential for what depends on the problem confronting the person who notices the charismatic figure.

In the era of the "Talkies," film producers were successful if they could recognize a person with Charisma.  People could learn to act, could be promoted widely, could be "made a Star" -- if only they had Charisma.

Today, Hollywood has learned to fake Charisma, but still those with natural Charisma shine above the rest. Football players, even golfers, tennis stars, Olympic figure skaters, some of the better ones never get the round of endorsements and personal appearances because they don't have Charisma.

Today, the politicians that get the most votes do it with Charisma (fake and real), not Policies.

So in real life, it is useful to understand Charisma.

In Fantasy Life, only the writer has to understand Charisma to create such an attractive Character.

However, with the main product Hollywood is selling being Charisma, mature readers have noticed "it's all a sham."  Everyday readers see the gossamer shimmer of beauty ripped away ("Oh, she is so Botoxed!"), and don't want to buy that product anymore.

Yet, we still feel "seeing is believing."  If we see beauty, are attracted by a voice, an idea, a gesture, we respond, and we don't know why.

Likewise, we see ugliness, a disgusting visage, hear an irritating voice, see unacceptable behavior, and we are genuinely repelled.

That repulsion can be created artificially using Hollywood techniques, the same techniques that create Charisma.

That realization is fluttering around the edges of popular consciousness.  Charisma is real, and powerful, but the mature reader of Romance and of Science Fiction is coming to realize how Charisma is being used as a tool to manipulate their opinions and behaviors.  Nobody likes being "manipulated" but Charisma is sneaky - and only becomes apparent after the action (buying a cosmetic product, voting for the wrong person). 

And so Charisma can be the element a writer uses to create verisimilitude connecting the reader to the fantasy world the writer is just imagining.

As noted above, the Happily Ever After ending is a very hard sell.  Real life experience tells us that infatuation passes -- it isn't love at first sight.  Marriage based on infatuation don't last and break up in real agony.

Infatuation happens when a person first encounters a Charismatic Figure who ignites a deeply personal, individualizing vision of the future.  It's usually sugar coated, but reality teaches us the sugar coating hides the bitter truth.

So with age, and experience, we look at Charismatic figures with leery suspicion.

A teen who finds True Love is viewed as Infatuated.

So we have the "second time around" Romance, when a Relationship can proceed to the HEA, while previously it was blocked by the surface illusion of who the other person really is. 

Infatuation is a small scale version of experiencing Charisma.  The person may not be a Soul Mate, but just connecting with a virgin area of Personality.

We need our infatuations to teach us about ourselves.

Charisma, as used by the media for fiction and non-fiction (yes, top newscaster's get to be top by having Charisma, not just brains), refers to that same lure that infatuates younger people, but instead of affecting just one person, Charisma affects a broad swath of a target audience.

Learning to develop and aim Charisma, to weaponize Charisma (obsessive love) was the shaper of modern civilization.

Those who are the "target audience" of the weapon-wielders armed with Charisma are beginning to understand it is all a sham.  That's why the broadest audience now considers the HEA all a sham.

The HEA happens when Soul Mates form a Couple.

Soul Mates often seem infatuated and obsessive as they work toward forming that Couple and surmounting the current obstacles.

The Romance writer of science fiction, fantasy, or paranormal genres has a unique opportunity to explain Charisma to a readership uniquely suited to understanding that explanation.

The explanation the writer chooses has to be embedded in the Worldbuilding behind the story -- at an invisible level of the structure.  The explanation has to be woven into the theme, not at the assumption level but at the more blatant symbolic level.

Here is the index to theme-symbolism integration:
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2018/02/index-to-theme-symbolism-integration.html

Most writers will have developed several solid explanations for the existence of Charisma, but there are always more to be found.

Here is one way Astrology can explain both the Soul Mate attraction, where each person affects the other charismatically but nobody else sees what she sees in him, and the Public Figure Charisma that moves the body politic.

Infatuation, which has the same effect as being attracted to a Charismatic Figure, is an effect of the planet Neptune and the Sign Pisces which Neptune rules.

Neptune has a blurring or dissolving effect on structure (on reality), but at the same time reveals a "higher truth" or a more real truth that is totally unrealistic but nevertheless true.  The quintessential illustration of the Pisces male is the Engineer.  Think Scotty on ST:Tos.

Obsession is all about Pluto.  Remember Pluto is the "upper octave" of Mars, where Mars creates a bar-brawl scene, Pluto creates World War.  Pluto rules Scorpio, the sign notorious for secret sexual obsessions and even perversions.  It is not the sexuality and love depicted by Venus which is so often paired with Mars. Pluto is the raw staying power of life itself.

Pluto magnifies whatever element it connects to, and so it magnifies Neptune's infatuation effect into full blown Charisma, where life itself depends on cleaving to the glamorous object shrouded in Neptune veils (and thus never what it appears to be.)

The reason understanding of Charisma is so illusive is that Charisma is the product of two difficult to understand forces (symbolized by Astrological planet and sign), Neptune/Pisces and Pluto/Scorpio.

How this works between two individuals, Soul Mates, is how the two Natal Chart positions, aspects, signs, houses, midpoints, of Neptune and Pluto relate to each other, and what transits to the natal charts are in effect during the infatuation.

How it works for whole populations lured into following a Charismatic Figure (sometimes to salvation; sometimes over a cliff) has to do with the Figure's natal chart and transits as they relate to the generational positions of Pluto and Neptune.

The third element that determines how Charisma affects actions (Plot) is the notion of Soul.

Soul is a concept that has to be woven into the worldbuilding. Either souls are real in your fictional world -- or not.  Once you make that choice, you discard one set of themes, and lock into another (maybe a genre, too).  It is a basic choice, and determines which audience (and thus which publisher and which editor) you submit your book to.  For audiences that accept Soul as real in everyday life, you would have to work hard to convince them that Souls are not real in your universe, but Love is real.

So if you opt to build a world where Souls are not real, you eliminate the audience that understands the real world through the concept of Soul.

You would have to convince those readers that a world where humans (or Aliens) have no Soul is better than their world, or can be fixed to be as good as Reality.

That argument generates your Themes.

So Theme and Plot become one via the element of Charisma.

THEME: Souls choose to override the infatuating lure of Charisma and break free of Obsession by using (insert a tool, fictional or not, such as Religion, ESP, Magic Glasses).

THEME: People, humans and Aliens, can not choose to override the infatuating lure of Charisma and so become the hapless victim of Obsession at the behest of their "betters." Kings, Queens, Army Generals, Sorcerers, Moguls, Alien Overlords.

Either theme can be subordinated to the Romance Genre envelope theme of "Love Conquers All."  With or without Soul Mates, Love can muscle through any situation (at least to a HFN ending).

With the Soul Hypothesis, you have an HEA potential, but without Soul, you get a predominance of HFN endings.

Learn what your potential readership knows is real, pick one thing that readership bases their life-decisions on, and incorporate that into your worldbuilding. Be absolutely consistent with that one thing, and let imagination loose for the rest.

In science fiction writing, mix an element your readership knows for a fact is not real with elements they know are real.

Science Fiction is all about "What if ...?"  And basically what goes into the ... of that question is something that is widely known and accepted by all the experts suddenly turning out to be wrong.

Being wrong delights the scientist in the SF reader because finding out what has been wrong brings the "If only ..." of potential happiness into view, and makes the "If this goes on ..." prediction subject to revision for the better.

Being the dynamic force in re-creating your own world is the most fun anyone can have in life.

When the Neptune and Pluto transits bestow life-long, innate Charisma in a person, that Charisma attracts followers simply because the person is having fun living.

Charisma just sits there seething until FUN is added.

Charismatic figures enjoy being the center of attention, which makes them the center of attention.

On the smaller scale, of one-on-one relationships, one person can see an infatuating delight in another and become obsessed by it, joining the Charismatic individual in his obsession.

Being obsessed is actually FUN.  It feels good, which is why people don't struggle to break free until the obsession has almost run its course.

So if Charisma is the topic of your Theme, what it is, where it comes from, why it is good, why it is bad, and whether it is even real or just an insanity of the moment, then you need to introduce your reader to a Character who would enthrall them in real life.

Spock was such a figure for ST:ToS (and still is).  But note how many fans of Star Trek never found Spock interesting -- and instead were obsessed with Kirk, McCoy, Scotty, or even Chekov or Sulu.

Each individual fictional character was Charismatic and obsessive to different segments of the audience.

As the characters interacted with each other, the audiences melded together into a social force to be reckoned with by a Hollywood which had, hitherto, looked down on their victims.

Yes, Hollywood thinking disparaged fans (of anything) because those Execs knew the tricks of artificial Charisma that had fooled those fans.

Knowledge is Power.

The fans learned.  Now the fans rule.  Or do they?

Star Trek created an audience (out of pieces that would never have come together into a social force) using Charismatic Characters.

Study the audiences (fanfic reveals all), then study the Characters, and don't forget to study the writers, the producers, and especially those who supply the money (studios - read the Credits).  Study how Charisma has been used, and find a new way to use it to explain the Happily Ever After is real, and not an ending but a beginning.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

How to Use Tarot and Astrology in Science Fiction Series Part 6 - Confronting Change

How to Use Tarot and Astrology in Science Fiction Series

Part 6

Confronting Change

Previous parts in How to Use Tarot and Astrology in Science Fiction Series are indexed at the bottom of the index post about Astrology

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me_30.html

In 2020, we are up against the forces of change focused on governments, country sovereignty, borders being moved, annexation of lands, ousting of Kings, plus the looming promise of major shifts in how management decisions are made -- Big Data plus Artificial Intelligence.

Privacy seems gone as facial recognition (however flawed) is deployed.  The recent Coronavirus mutation brought scenes of people marching down airport corridors, outlined by a camera that revealed their body temperature (looking for those running a fever).

The world has already changed -- most haven't noticed it yet.

Humans are averse to change.  Just ask a two year old!

Humans want "the world" to function the way they think it does.

On the other hand, people also want to change the world to make it function the way they want it to function, not as they think it does right now.

On the third hand, people change their opinions throughout a lifetime.

In Part 5 of this series, we looked at "The Story of a Life" -- biography.

The closer a fictional narrative resembles the form and shape of a real life, the more informative and thought-provoking it will be for readers.

The Generational Novel or Series, or Vampire Romance, novels with settings that span long story-arcs, centuries in Time, can put the reader's current world into a new perspective, suggesting new solutions to a reader in a quandary about their current life.

The narrative selected and spun by current news media is not the only narrative in dynamic play at any given moment because generations overlap, interpenetrate, and blend through transitions.

2020 is one of those blending times -- and it could be this whole decade that reveals the swirling dynamic change.

People living through this see it from the perspective of their own generation, and each sees a portion of the truth (like the Blind Men And The Elephant -- though I'd expect the Blind Women and the Elephant to reveal a different story).

Right now, the media portrait of the world appears to be ramming many countries, including the USA, into civil war or some semblance of blood in the streets.

People living through this, people who are your audience looking for you to escort them one an adventure into a different world, are disturbed by the daily confrontation with CHANGE in their everyday life.

In January, 2020, during the Trump Impeachment trial in the Senate, the following article was sited on Facebook:

https://www.newsweek.com/us-showing-many-genocide-warning-signs-donald-trump-expert-very-worried-1483817

-----quote-------
Politically though, Tannehill noted the U.S. trend towards divisive rhetoric and policies under President Donald Trump, who has been repeatedly accused of various forms of racism and has pursued a nativist agenda.

"The politicians enacting it are populists who benefit from stirring Us vs. Them narratives, placing blame for the woes of the nation on others who are somehow less worthy," she wrote. "They yearn for a mythological past [without] these people. It's a highly viable tactic for shoring up support."

--------end quote-------

Writers who study these broad trends are seeing a slide toward genocidal wars -- not just in the USA but world-wide.

This awkward trial of a sitting President is just one component of the thrust of CHANGE at the deepest level of government -- Constitutional level change.

The consensus seems to be that if what he did wasn't a crime, then it ought to be.  We have to do something about this -- that's the Pluto in Capricorn manifestation in the spotlight of media attention.

So how can a Romance writer approach the audience living through having the rug pulled out from under them?

On Facebook, I commented on a thread generated by that Newsweek article posted by someone who sees it as driving the USA toward a genocidal war, thusly:

If we accept a straight line extrapolation, yes, but humanity lurches ahead in a zigzag, often reversing course for a few centuries.

Consider this LONG PERSPECTIVE article from a Time writer.

https://time.com/5770140/millennials-change-american-politics/

That article traces the interactions between generations as Millennials sweep the reins of power from the Baby Boomer generation (as usual ignoring the Silent Generation).

I collect articles like that one on Millennials in one of my Flipboard Magazines, Pluto in Capricorn

https://flipboard.com/@jacquelinelhmqg/pluto-in-capricorn-national-narrative-so8cs2k4y

Pluto in Capricorn is the "magazine" where I collect articles of the far-far past of Ancients, current events, astronomy, astrophysics (FTL drive foundations, plus what we might discover and what we have to go explore), and space travel. That magazine also includes some genetics (most of which I put in a different magazine), Volcanos and other items that might destroy this current Ancient civilization.

PLUTO IN CAPRICORN is where we are now, and it is about CHANGE IN GOVERNMENT, shifting borders (we did that in Channel's Destiny, moved the Territory border to make room for Householdings).

This item on generation gap, shifting views, is related to a Blog post on writing craft I did a long while back:

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/astrology-just-for-writers-pt-6.html

About halfway down that blog post is a list of what signs Pluto was in at various points in history and how that played out in "generation gap" thinking.

Get a good grip on this principle, and the spectacle of NEWS today will suddenly make sense.

OK, maybe not less alarming sense, but a kind of sense that clues you in on where to dodge the falling hammer of generation shifts.

It is a double-pattern, an 84 year cycle superimposed on a 248 years, with a transition superimposing one on the other every 165 years (or so).

Kids are born continuously, not usually in waves (like Baby Boomers), so the concept of "generations" all moving in the same way is nonsense, but where the outer planets are when a kid is born indicates a predilection for an affinity to a particular generation's response to life.

All that is modified by that individual kid's own characteristics then reshaped and maybe hammered by environment. None of this is cut-and-dried. Living life is an art-form.

A writer who understands how the portrait of a civilization morphs with the cycles of Pluto can build a world that seems real to people living today.

Consider, the USA is approaching the first Pluto return (to where Pluto was in Capricorn when this nation was born) in history.  With Pluto in mid-Capricorn, we created a NEW FORM of government by blending two old forms (democracy and republic) while firmly excluding the concept of Monarchy or any other form of dictatorship.

People are thinking about Civil War, but it could be an actual Revolutionary War complicated by the advent of the Internet, Artificial Intelligence, and Apple's War For Privacy From Government Intrusion (even if you're a dead criminal.)

Even science fiction writers may not be thinking "big" enough.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

How To Use Tarot And Astrology In Science Fiction Part 4 - Explore Solutions New To Reader

How To Use Tarot And Astrology In Science Fiction

Part 4

Explore Solutions New To Reader 

The previous entries in this series are:

Tarot:
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2017/10/index-to-posts-about-or-involving-tarot.html

Astrology:
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me_30.html

Part 1
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2018/12/how-to-use-tarot-and-astrology-in.html

Part 2
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2018/12/how-to-use-tarot-astrology-in-science.html

Part 3
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/01/how-to-use-tarot-and-astrology-in.html

Last week we looked at copyright, DRM and phone repair as it intersects the Law.

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/01/copyright-drm-and-phone-repair.html

And that raised the esoteric aspects of "ownership."

Oddly enough, "ownership" is deeply related to the "Happily Ever After" and perhaps a core issue in the problem of people not believing in the "Happily Ever After."

We've discussed the HEA ending in terms of the Pluto transits in life, testing, transformation, destruction, rebuilding, major relocation or profession changes.  Mars is "war" -- Pluto is "transformation."

We experience Pluto transits as "destruction" -- which it usually coincides with because structures we have built in our lives (tangible and intangible), stand strong and prevent us from moving in a new direction.

Pluto represents "thinking outside the box" in the simple fact that we build boxes around ourselves, houses to be comfortable inside of, protected from the shapeless, fluid, wild, smashing waves of change outside our "house."

The mind is a "house" -- and through early years, we build ourselves boxes, nice strong shipping containers, and even brick walled storehouses, to rely on for protection.

To get outside those boxes, we have to smash through a wall we neglected to put a door into when building it strong.

We have to think the unthinkable. 

We have to face "the unknown" which we hid from as children, building walls around our minds.

Humans value conformity and busily spend childhood building the same walls as their teachers, parents, playmates have so they can all get the same answers to questions -- and "pass the test" in the school of hard knocks.

Science is organized human knowledge.  Science Fiction is "What if ..." and "If only ..." and "If this goes on ..."  --- science fiction is about what does not (yet) exist, what is not (yet) known, but mostly about what is not yet "organized."

Science Fiction novels don't work well as entertainment when the author doesn't know how and why human knowledge got organized in the first place.

A science fiction writer must know some science, and be keeping up with the most recent breakthroughs and farfetched theories on the outskirts of scientific thought.  But the most indispensable knowledge a writer can have is of the organizing principle around which our marvelously successful science is built.

The premise that carries a science fiction novel to the top of the charts, to "classic" status, usually involves challenging one of those core organizing principles.

For example, "no physical object can travel faster than light" is a principle, and most science fiction set in a galaxy spanning civilization postulate one or another way around that limitation.  In the 1940's, Edward E. Smith, Ph.D., wrote the Lensman Series which postulated FTL drive based on the ability to cancel out "mass" and thus "inertia" -- many UFO reports cite objects moving in speedy zig-zags that indicate they've got some inertia cancelling ability.

That's how you get out of the box.  Find a firmly believed limitation that is an unconscious assumption among your target readership, and smash a doorway through that wall in their mind with a "What if Science is Wrong ... again?"

What do the Characters in your built world know that your readers don't know?

Our entire world-spanning Civilization in the 21st Century is an outgrowth of Ancient Hellenistic Greek thought - Aristotle, Plato, etc. - and centuries and centuries later, Roger Bacon and the method of proving "knowledge" creating "science."

The Hellenistic civilization grew out of Egyptian Civilization, and there is cultural continuity behind some of that.  Assyrians and other Middle Eastern peoples flourished and collapsed, wave after wave.  None of the people who lived in those times knew they "lived in those times."  Chances are you don't view your life as "those times" either -- the millennia long waves of civilizations aren't apparent to those living inside them.

The science fiction writer's job is to make the current wave apparent to those living inside it by SHOWING (not telling) that wave from outside.

That's what Gene Roddenberry did by staunchly insisting on including Spock in the bridge crew.

One way to gain the perspective on our current state of civilization is to read this book, or to read about it (or its sources), and think hard.

https://www.amazon.com/1177-B-C-Civilization-Collapsed-Turning-ebook/dp/B013VPYYGQ/


That sketches the very-long-view of human doings.  Thinking hard about this view, you can see that we will look just as "primitive" to the future civilization that will (no doubt about it, climate change won't kill us ALL) that will grow out of the shards of our current life.

What survives the destruction of our mental (and physical) boxes?

What does it mean to "think outside the box?"

It means to absorb and internalize "the unknown" (and perhaps unknowable under current conditions).  What has to change in us to shift the unknowable to the merely unknown?

What grand wisdom has survived from Hellenistic Civilization?  We have some art and some literature, but what principles do we live by (what walls do we build in our minds) based on ideas codified by Aristotle but originating far earlier?

One such idea is the "either/or" principle, or the zero-sum-game.  The idea that material reality consists of mutually exclusive states - a thing is, or it is-not.

All computer architecture is based on this -- the 0's and 1's -- on/off switches in combination.  And now, such massive amounts of on/off switches can generate what we term "Artificial Intelligence."  Just how artificial is it?

We look at our reality, and we see a pie to be sliced -- a whole that is a certain size.  If I get some, that part is a part that you can't have.  Mine!  Ownership.  If I own a piece of the finite pie, you don't own it.  And you can't make that pie bigger.  Your piece plus my piece add up to a Constant, the whole pie.  That is the zero sum.  I win; you lose.  No two ways about it.

That is the box we live in, and the box science fiction romance writers have to think outside of, in order to argue readers into suspending disbelief of the Happily Ever After Ending.

Earth is a single planet, not getting any bigger.  In fact, available land is shrinking as the sea level rises, so we'll have to live under water again.

But astronomers are looking at an "expanding universe."

Particle physics and the newest mathematics are describing packets of energy of which matter is composed -- and those energy packets are neither here not there.

"Here" and "there" no longer are so sharply defined you can think of them as either/or --- either you are here in class on time, or you are not here.  Right?
You can't be both here and not-here at a given time.

Or can you?

The Hellenistic Civilization built that either/or box for us, and we're still trying to live inside it.  That could be the reason so many people just can't accept the "Happily Ever After" ending to the story of the life of a couple.

Civilizations rise and fall, but they don't "live happily ever after."

There is not stability long-range.  We are certain of that because of archeology, paleontology, and historic record.

So either there exists stability, or there does not exist stability –– can't have it both ways.  Or can you?

As we have noted, the laws of physics as they apply to subatomic particles are a little different than the laws of physics engineers use to build a bridge or a cracking plant.

Does "happiness" require "stability" and impenetrable walls surrounding what you "own" in order to protect you from the turbulence outside?

Is unchanging stability the necessary condition for human happiness?  Is life either "happiness" or "misery?"  Is the chaos outside our either/or world the source of all threat, all misery, all terror?

If your readers see "happily ever after" as a static situation boxed into protected space they "own" and thus "control," then the solution new to them that you can present and explore might be, "How Can A Couple Enjoy Chaos, Surprise, and meet Uncertainty with Zest, Verve, and Joy?"

The general reader resorts to Tarot and Astrology as tools that can "foretell the future" -- but they can't.  These tools reveal just how dependent your future is on your emotional attitude toward the unknown.  They are built around a notion of reality older than Egypt, one which puts the either/or notion of reality into a special case category -- like physics puts Kepler's Laws.

Fear of the Unknown makes the Unknown fearsome.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

How To Use Tarot & Astrology In Science Fiction Part 2 - Now Speculate

How To Use Tarot & Astrology

 In Science Fiction

Part 2

Now Speculate

Part 1 is found at:
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2018/12/how-to-use-tarot-and-astrology-in.html

In Part 1, we looked at how to do science using Astrology and History.  The process is simple.  Use what science (archeology, paleontology, literary preservations (such as stone engravings, or the Bible, Dead Sea Scrolls) is using for best current theory, then correlate that with a speculative application of Astrology.

Astrologers aver that planets have no effect on humanity (or do not correlate with Events in history) before they are "discovered."  The "What if ..." we are playing with here, is "What if modern Astrology is all wrong?"

What if there's something to Astrology, but it isn't what the experts think it is, and it isn't what marketers of astrological "wisdom" peddle it as?  What if ...?

What if this speculative idea depicts the actual real world, not some alternate or fantasy reality?

So we are exploring what if planetary movements have indeed correlated with historic movements for thousands (even millions?) of years.

One of the most recently discovered planets is Pluto -- and even recently, after decades of calling it a "planet" astronomers voted to demote it from planetary status (for various reasons, all of them perfectly comprehensible).

Neptune and Pluto are in fact different from the rest of our Sun's planets, but as far as their timing the cycles of human history goes, that probably doesn't matter.  Or it might matter when we find out more, and see how their orbits correlate with some mystical energy ebb and flow -- who knows?

Since nobody knows, we get to speculate.

So we pointed to History (as well as it is known) in Part 1, and correlated the general outline of the pattern of Events in the current news with Events of centuries ago.

Human mass migration (and subsequent interbreeding), conquering, flowing around the globe, often prompted by glaciation, usually in response to a search for resources (and riches), has been mapped by paleontologists and archeologists.

The search for the origins of humanity, or modern humanity, is going on using DNA to trace population movements and interbreeding.  We all bear traces of pre-modern-human DNA.

So humanity survives while thousands die, even huge percentages of a population can die off and humanity still survives (civilization not so much.)

We look at the Headlines of 2018, and look back for when "this" happened before.  We have to think in terms of generations, even centuries, to see the patterns we can use to speculate about.

Currently, humans are once again upending the forms and purposes of government.

https://www.ozy.com/immodest-proposal/countries-are-dead-so-its-time-to-think-differently/89911

We've noted how this urge to invent or reinvent governing forms has happened in cycles of about 248 years (irregularly!  Pluto's orbit is long ellipse - speculated to be a "capture" by our Sun).  It's "speed" in orbit is not regular -- it goes faster, then slower.  If we can't think of something new, we stage a revolution and behead the King, get a new King and start over.

The USA is about up to its Pluto return (where Pluto is at the same degree it was when the country was born.)

https://www.avclub.com/in-1798-the-u-s-went-to-war-with-france-sort-of-1829615962

Meanwhile, the other planets have whizzed around more times than in any one human life-span, creating all sorts of "well, it's different this time" Events.

Yes, it's always different -- but underlying, there is a trace of a repeating pattern.

This time, we will go exploring Space, trying to live on space stations (do read C. J. Cherry's Foreigner Series), and alien planets.

Here's the Amazon link to the list of books in the Foreigner Series.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07FN1PN5Y

The Pluto in Aquarius motivation will carry us into space by the urgent need of the generation born with Pluto in Aquarius to seek FREEDOM, to find identity, to be individually sovereign and collectively free to practice any religion.

The need to get away from other humans waxes and wanes, but when it peaks it is very intense.

One can speculate that Climate Change will make Earth less friendly to human endeavor and drive some of our more freedom-seeking individuals to find a way to get OUT OF HERE.

https://www.sciencealert.com/elon-musk-spacex-mars-plan-timeline-2018

But we have seen that living weightless in orbit is destructive to the human body, cells lose integrity and function, and ills accumulate.  One can speculate that gravity varying too far away from Earth's (maybe the Moon, or Mars?) might be just as destructive to human cells and unlivable.

That's just another problem to be solved -- and our labs are hard at work on mastering cells, and creating whole organisms.  It's just another step toward freedom to be able to re-engineer humans to fit other environments.  Many Science Fiction novels have centered on that.

https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/fly-reconstructed-genes-140-million-years-ago/

You know the people doing this work on genetics also read/watch science fiction -- they grow up wanting to do what the books depict, just as the current world is largely patterned on a drive toward STAR TREK (except we're trying to sidestep the genetics war).

What do you want this current crop of babies with Pluto in Aquarius to grow up wanting to do?

On the straight line extrapolation from where we've been (exploring and conquering The Americas) to where we are (fighting each other for resources, trying to damp climate change thus depriving undeveloped countries of resources), to where this leads "If this goes on ..." -- we can only see exploring space.

But how do we do that?  What do we try that fails or is too expensive?  What do we invent to sidestep that problem?

A) engineering human genome to withstand broader living conditions (gravity, air, water)

B) sending remote controlled Robots to scout (doing that already)

C) inventing Artificial Intelligence so we can send them exploring?

Well, scientists are madly working on AI, and business people are striving mightily to make enough profit off the first attempts to finance further inventions.

That's where we're going.

But what if AI is more than "Intelligent" -- actually becomes "conscious" and even "self-aware."

What if we send some AI equipped ship out beyond the beyond, and as it goes, it remakes itself and becomes self-aware?

What if biology can't reinvent human cells fast enough to let humans live on Mars?  So we send AI to colonize and mine Mars, the astroids, etc for the raw material we need to fix Earth's climate disaster?

We're close to autonomous cars.  Autonomous AI isn't that far off.  Pluto is slowing in orbit and will be in Aquarius long enough for the general urge to explore to drive us beyond the beyond.

When the departed group (which might be human+AI+whoknowswhat), returns to Earth what will they find? (yes, PLANET OF THE APES scenario asks this question).

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/oct/14/stephen-hawking-predicted-new-race-of-superhumans-essays-reveal

All space travel is time travel, too -- space and time as we've discussed while pointing to various articles, are deeply intertwined. There might, in fact, be no difference between space, time, and gravity.

All of this speculation is to be done with the various novels and series I've reviewed here -- most especially those I've tagged as not being Romance at all.  Those anti-Romance science fiction novels are read by the current people doing the work on genetics and AI that we've discussed here, in Part 2 of this series.

Here are a few of the recent reviews of books where I discuss many of these issues - love stories, yes, but not focused on Romance.

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2018/10/reviews-40-john-dixon-point.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2018/11/reviews-41-empire-of-silence-by.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2018/12/reviews-42-simon-r-greens-secret.html

And this one with a pretty strong setup for a hot Romance:
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2018/12/reviews-43-late-great-wizard-by-sara.html

And this one with serious Romance plotting:
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2018/08/reviews-39-souls-of-fire-series-by-keri.html

Think about all the other books you've read -- compare those written long ago with those currently being published, and consider two things:

a) where was Pluto when the author was born?
b) where was Pluto when the author's target readership was born?

Here are some of the Astrology Just For Writers series discussing Pluto and how to use Astrology in fiction writing without having to learn any.

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/01/astrology-just-for-writers-part-9-high.html

Re-read this blog entry about Pluto and Expository Lumps in writing:
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/08/astrology-just-for-writers-part-10.html

And here is the key one -- discussing Pluto's position by sign as each generation is born, and how you can use that information to target a readership, and extrapolate what those children will do when they grow up.

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/astrology-just-for-writers-pt-6.html

That's a lot of reading, but writers have to read both fiction and non-fiction, so get to it.  Fiction and non-fiction are NOT two different things.  They correlate.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

How To Use Tarot And Astrology In Science Fiction Part 1 - Real History

How To Use Tarot & Astrology In Science Fiction

Part 1

Real History 

Tarot and Astrology Just For Writers are indexed here:

Tarot:
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2017/10/index-to-posts-about-or-involving-tarot.html

Astrology:
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me_30.html

The Fantasy genre has focused on two major plot-drivers (some call these tropes).
1) Who Gets To Be King (depicting government by Aristocracy)
2) A Secret Society Of Magicians Co-exists With Normals (Muggles)

The secret, underground society that works hard to keep itself un-noticed by mundanes (muggles) tends to dominate "Urban Fantasy" these days.

That concept symbolizes the blurring effect we see with Neptune Transiting Pisces -- which Neptune "rules" -- and thus blurring the edges and meaningfulness of "facts."  This has made "fake news" a feature of daily life, but each points the finger at the other screaming "fake."  That's NEPTUNE on the loose, and is actually not the way Neptune functions best.

That is the "vice" of Neptune.  Each Astrological planet has a way of manifesting as a "Vice" (an anti-life function) and a "Virtue" (a pro-life function).

Neptune is the planet of the "reality" behind reality, the astral plane where one simply thinks and believes and it is so.  Thus as noted so many times in these posts, Neptune is the signature planet of the years of a person's life where Romance dominates.

When Neptune makes a transit contact with key points in a Natal chart, the person's perception of reality shifts -- kind of like the optical illusions that have become such popular memes.  Blink, and it's one thing, blink and it is the opposite -- so "which is it?" becomes the question.

People rage into emotional arguments over optical illusions.

The argument over whether there exists such a thing as Soul Mate, or Happily Ever After, has the same emotional-rage flavor.

Consider whether the cause of the emotional-rage, adamant advocacy for one side or the other, both arise from the same "place" inside the human makeup.

Some philosophers give up and just declare that there is no such thing as "reality" at all -- everything is illusion.

Some adopt the idea that there exists an objective, hard fact, reality that can be discovered by Science -- therefore, "settled science" is to be obeyed if you want to survive.  See the raging, terror-driven argument over Climate Change -- listen to the tone of voice advocating each side -- does it sound the same to you as the argument over "Fake News" or the argument over "Happily Ever After?"

Are all these emotion-fueled raging, adamant, life-or-death depends on forcing the other to accept, believe, act upon, MY VIEW OF REALITY?

Look at the Religious Wars raging around the Globe.  We had the Catholic vs Protestant war in Northern Ireland spilling into London with bombings.

Now we have the Moslem Religion torn apart, sides taken aligning with whichever son inherited The Prophet's mantle, and as far as I've been able to discern the issue, it's all about which side gets the Divine Privilege of destroying all the Jews, ridding the world of that People and bringing the Islamic version of the Messiah.

On another front, we have serious shooting wars raging in skirmishes around the globe, brewing and stewing up Revolution - the exact same emotional tenor and tone as the "Fake News" argument over what is real (Saturn) and what is not (Neptune.)

Writing teachers teach that story is story -- throughout time, always the same -- because human nature never  changes.

"Human Nature Never Changes" is an adamantly declared Universal Truth one must believe in to sell fiction.

Classics of Literature are "classic" because they outline, starkly showcase, some element of Human Nature that all of us must understand to be educated and wise.

As you all know, my series, Sime~Gen, (14 volumes and still growing) is a science fiction series based on the premise that Writing Teachers -- and High School reading teachers, and university Literature Teachers are just plain wrong.

https://www.amazon.com/Sime-Gen-14-Book-Series/dp/B01N4SG08Q/

Human Nature has changed, is changing, and will change.

Not only that, but we (as humans with that nature) get to choose what aspect of us to change into which aspect -- whether to go forward or backward in our Nature Evolution.

We can revert to unmitigated savagery, or we can progress toward unmitigated Kindness.

Sime~Gen is built on the premise that if we, as humans, don't choose to advance in Compassion, then we will be hammered into accepting Compassion, Soul by Individual Soul, whether we like it or not.

We must change our Nature, or it will be changed for us.

The premise that our Professors (what Fantasy Genre based on government by Aristocracy would term our "betters") are just plain wrong is formulated by using the thinking process of the science fiction genre.  Thus the result (whatever esoteric, or fantasy elements might be included) is pure science fiction.

You do the same thing with any branch of science -- What If "They" (Authority) Is WRONG?

What If...
If Only ...
If This Goes On ...

Those are the speculations that science fiction is based on.

"If Only..." is the essence of Neptune's perception of reality.

Many esoteric thinkers regard Neptune influenced opinions as based on a "higher reality" -- a perspective of reality from farther away, from an angle which reveals the interlaced fundamentals of Body and Soul, the juncture of the spiritual and material.

Many call those who see that juncture, "Wise."

Tarot and Astrology are very old disciplines, much older than Science.

Tarot and Astrology are the science of the Unseen (unsee-able).

If you study the historical development of Science, you find that Alchemy is the predecessor of Chemistry.  Now, Chemistry (and Physics) can do much of what Alchemy was believed to do.

In every way, the thinking processes that led to these early attempts to gain ascendancy over Mother Nature -- agriculture, genetics, materials science (flint, copper, iron, bronze) -- all lead to today's "science."

And all of them are rooted deeply into Tarot and Astrology -- but their social acceptance relies on their refutation and rejection of Tarot and Astrology.

Tarot and Astrology are about Human Nature evolving and changing upon interaction with the physical world studied by Science.

Science is about Mother Nature evolving and changing upon interaction with Science.

In other words, they are two halves of a whole.

Science reveals "the truth" about the physical reality in order to give humans complete command over their environment.  That is why the Earth's climate responding to "human activity" is something so terrifying, so horrifying, that these very scientists who measure it can not accept it - the Earth is "out of control" -- and science must control.

Human Nature, on the other hand "never changes."

"What if ..." when human nature refuses to change, and insists on hammering Mother Nature into shape, Mother Nature responds by hammering back?

What if the solution is not to control Earth's Climate but to adapt human nature to the ever-shifting climate?

Look back into pre-history, using archeology and paleontology.  Over many shifts of climate, we see primates adapting and adapting until we find "modern man."  And "Modern Man" migrates and adapts, creates shelter, clothing, hunting tools, agriculture etc etc.

And through all that adapting of human nature (including learning to fight each other with ever-more-powerful weapons), we also developed the studies and wisdom of Tarot and Astrology (which are now disparaged).

So why aren't we accepting climate change and adapting - moving our cities back from the edges where water will rise, building habitats under water, mapping where the arable land will move to as ocean currents shift (farming tropical fruit at the poles?), learning to use the ocean as food source, etc.

Wait a minute.  Who says we won't do this, eventually?  Haven't the survivors of cataclysm done exactly that throughout pre-history?

What do we, today, know that they didn't know?

In Astrology, we know of the existence of planets beyond Saturn.  In Tarot, we know that humans have Free Will and shape fate by choices.  In Religion, we know that the choices that matter involve the Relationship with God developed over a lifetime.  (We know that those who are in critical illness, or dire trouble, benefit when others pray for them.)  Compassion matters. Kindness matters.  We can't quantify it, but Love matters.

There is another dimension where all living things are "stitched" together into some sort of pattern we, with ordinary consciousness, can't see.

So a writer can "reveal" this interface between the esoteric dimensions of creation and the everyday, concrete world studied by Science, using both plot (events in the real world) and story (Character changes on impact of real Events).

The best genre for revealing esoteric truth is Science Fiction Romance -- a science challenge, "what if authority is wrong?" coupled to a Character Arc where the impact of one Character's Soul upon another Character causes them both to change in ways shaped by their ability to understand the sequence of Events.

One good example of this process is the TV Series, X-Files.

So what might such a couple learn as they become a couple?

Look carefully at our Neptune Transiting Pisces (its own sign) shaped world.  Note also that currently Pluto is transiting Capricorn (not at all its own sign).

Neptune's vice is confusion, and Pluto's vice is power run amok (war).

We've noted above how Neptune's illusion and blurring of reality is sowing confusion over the whole globe.  It's not a problem.  It does that periodically, and humanity has survived it -- even learned a thing or two in the process.

Pluto cycles are about 248 years.  Neptune cycles about 165 years, give or take.

So look at now, then look back at Pluto transits and History.  Pluto was only recently "discovered" but that doesn't mean it wasn't active before that (many astrologers accept the idea that a planet is active in human affairs only after it has been discovered -- what if that's not true?)

When the USA was formed, Pluto was in Capricorn (where it is now).  The USA was formed in revolutionary war, and immediately launched a foreign war (Tripoli of Marine Corps Hymn fame).

The USA Natal Pluto is at the end of Capricorn, so the expansion of the 1800's was accompanied by the transit of Pluto into Aquarius, the sign of the USA's Moon and MC.  Aquarius is about Freedom, sudden explosive change, independence, and the "Flower Children's" mission of "Finding Yourself" (otherwise known as the Australian walkabout.)

After stewing through the Articles of Confederation phase, then the intense conflict over writing a Constitution to govern two incompatible ideologies, the Colonies launched a campaign of exploration, conquering the continent.  It was the era of the Mountain Man, the Buffalo Hunter, Gold Discovery in California, Wagon Trains, Oklahoma Land Rush, and of course Indian Wars.

If you know Astrology, you see immediately how all the historical elements in that list are manifestations of Pluto.

The incompatible ideologies that are blended in the USA Constitution are:
A) Government Is Order Imposed By Aristocrats Who Know Better Than the Uneducated In Classics And Science (they wanted George Washington to be King)
B) Government is Order That Protects Citizens From Government (domestic or foreign).  (they wanted Freedom)

The dichotomy is rooted in two incompatible takes on Human Nature.  A) Human Nature Never Changes, and B) Human Nature Rises To The Occasion

A) Humans can't be trusted to govern themselves, but the best among them can Rule better because they are educated.

B)Humans don't need Rulers.  Humans, even the uneducated in classics and science, are good at judging the Nature of other humans, and thus can choose who to hire to run government according to their assessment of Character.

Putting these two incompatible ideologies together was the Pluto in Capricorn innovation (Pluto's virtue is innovation, vice disruption).  A new form of government was established, and to date, at the verge of the USA Pluto return to its place, no other Nation has adopted this Constitution.

So a new governmental form launched a century of Exploration of The Unknown Continent.  And in that century, the 1800's, many other governments went exploring, searching for minerals and resources, and conquered peoples.

The Science Fiction Writer looks at this Pluto through Capricorn and into Aquarius as it manifested last time, and looks back and back through many cycles, seeing innovation and exploration (and war) periodically through history -- usually over resources which were hidden or revealed by advancing or retreating glaciers.

What will happen to human civilization as the oceans rise once again, glaciers retreat revealing what?

Do you see the potential for Science Fiction Romance in postulating what might be revealed by retreating glaciers?  Buried civilizations, UFO, time-travelers time machine?

https://medium.com/@heilygrave/usaf-veteran-films-ufo-flying-at-mach-17-sends-4k-video-to-nasa-49d72bb7ed9e

Tracing the cycle of Pluto backwards through the epochs when it was in Aquarius, extrapolate what might come about this next time, in the 2000's?

Surely we will explore space.  We already are sending robots and remote-controlled devices to planets, asteroids, moons, and telescopes or probes beyond our solar system.

https://www.space.com/42131-asteroid-ryugu-mascot-landing-new-images.html

There may be other planets to discover, too.  Maybe that long-long cycle of outer-planets will trace the way Human Nature has changed and point the way toward future changes. Are we becoming more vicious and ferocious, or are we becoming more kind and compassionate?

Or are some of us becoming one, and some the other?

Does encountering Reality change the human Soul?  Or does encountering a human Soul change Reality?  Or both?

Formulate an answer to those questions and you can create a THEME which will support a very long series, such as the ones I've been reviewing for you here.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Index To Posts About Or Involving Tarot by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Index To Posts About Or Involving Tarot

by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg 

Over time, I have talked about or referenced various esoteric disciplines such as Tarot and Astrology on this blog.  Below you will find a list of some of these posts where the references appear.

I did 20 posts on the Minor Arcana written as Tarot Just For Writers -- in other words, you don't have to "learn" Tarot to use it in characterization or plotting or worldbuilding, but you do have to understand "what" is being done when someone "reads" Tarot.

Here are the index posts to these 20 discussions of two of the four suits of the Minor Arcana:

Here is the index to 10 posts on the Suit of Pentacles
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me.html

Here is the index to 10 posts on the Suit of Swords
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me_23.html

These 20 posts are here for free reading, and also rewritten and incorporated into handy Kindle Books.  There are 5 volumes plus an Omnibus combination of all 5 which is cheaper than buying them individually.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/09/tarot-just-for-romance-writers-now-on.html

The word Tarot and the word "Card" does not ever have to appear in a novel for worldbuilding to be rooted in and growing from the view of the universe that is behind what is behind Tarot.  You don't have to be able to "read" Tarot to use these concepts.  In fact, it is more authentic if you don't practice "reading."

Tarot is not about magic or power or making things in the world work the way you want them to.

It does not solve problems.

But Tarot is more closely related to the "the scientific view of the universe" than most people think -- wherein lies a vast number of dramatic themes.

Here is an index post to the discussions of how a writer can incorporate Astrology into theme-plot-Character integration without letting the reader know you know any Astrology or ever think of any of that.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me_30.html

Many more posts on writing craft technique and various review discussions of other writers' books use the posts on Tarot and Astrology to build further craft techniques.  Mastery of all these techniques is the goal of reading and discussing all these various topics.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/10/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-9.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/03/depiction-part-10-binocular-vision-by.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/05/theme-plot-integration-part-8-use-of-co.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/08/source-of-expository-lump-part-2.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/08/big-love-sci-fi-part-viii-unconditional.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/08/big-love-sci-fi-part-vii-unconditional.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/12/astrology-just-for-writers-part-8-beat.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/08/amber-benson-tara-on-buffy-vampire.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/08/what-does-she-see-in-him.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/07/six-kinds-of-power-in-relationship.html

Those are a few examples of gigantic topics that can be factored out and recombined into story material if you can learn to see the world through the eye of a different structure of the universe.

Some readers come to science fiction to have their view of reality challenged, changed, or even proven wrong.  Some people thrive on the excitement of being WRONG about everything they thought they believed.  Those people are ripe for becoming engrossed in a science fiction novel.

Science Fiction is not so much about "escape" from this ordinary world and your current life as it is about "entering" another world and learning to regard the bizarre place as ordinary.

Science fiction novels don't "teach" science or the facts of reality -- they inspire readers to learn science by taking them for a ride into a Character's life who does know and understand science.

Most people do understand Tarot and Astrology -- without ever knowing that those empirical sciences are the source of what they know.

This is a cultural mind-block -- and it is just the sort of mind-block that science fiction has specialized in clearing away.

There is a "science" (a rigorously organized body of peer-reviewed and tested knowledge) behind the view of the world presented by Tarot and Astrology.

That science is often referred to with the word "Kabbalah" -- but that word is as misused as the word "Tarot" -- having been sold to the public as a magical shortcut to power over the behavior of other people.  Or power over the world to bring you wealth, love, or whatever reward you crave.

If your source of definition for these words is rooted in someone trying to sell you something to fix your problems, then very likely you have no clue what these topics are really about.

And I can't say that I do know what they are "really" about because all I have discovered is how vast my ignorance is.  These 5 books on Tarot just for Writers don't tell you answers -- they just show what I've been doing to learn this view of the universe.  I'm a long way from being done learning.

That's why they call it a Path -- it goes somewhere, but without a map you can't even guess where.  It is well trodden - clearly others have trudged up this mountain of knowledge, but none of them are in sight.  Explore.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Theme-Worldbuilding Integration Part 9 - Kabbalah by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Theme-Worldbuilding Integration
Part 9
Kabbalah
by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

The previous parts in this series:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/04/index-to-theme-worldbuilding.html

On Facebook, a writer commented on the experience of teaching story  Analysis to children, and I responded with a comment about how much harder it is to teach Synthesis.

The writer then asked, " Do you analyze first or tell your story and then analyze and synthesize?"

I responded with a long post about Kabbalah, and the value of that point of view to Science Fiction writers.

Synthesis is what I've been hobby-horsing on in the various series of Writing Craft Posts on this blog.

I've been presenting bits and pieces (teased out of Headlines and other parts of "reality") for you to synthesize into new stories.

I analyze reality and hand you stripped out bits to synthesize.  Most of those bits are "theme" material.

Synthesis is what writers do.  It is what artists in general do.

Rearranging the pieces of reality that the audience sees around them into something that unlocks vistas of new possibilities is what artists do that is of value.  Readers call those novels Inspiring or Refreshing or Riveting.  It's what we get paid for -- jarring thinking loose to roam free-range.

Worldbuilding is about analyzing our real world into bits and pieces, then synthesizing, putting them back together into a new pattern, building a new world from the same components we already have, and maybe one or two really alien ones.

Theme is about the organizing principle that arranged those bits and pieces to begin with combined or synthesized into the new principle you invent to build your fictional world around.

What makes fiction believable and the source of value to your customers is the internal consistency of the rules for your built world.

You need to find the Rule that keeps our actual real-world "consistent," for your target readership, understand how the existence of consistency is relied upon by your reader/viewer in daily life.  Then you can build a consistent world to display your story that uses a Modified Rule around which it is organized, but a Rule that the Characters can rely on the same way your customer relies on the consistency of everyday reality.

All of this analysis and synthesis is first done consciously, then forgotten about.  That sinks it all into your unconscious.  Years later, sometimes decades later, you have "An Idea" for a story -- and it just comes pouring out.  Meanwhile, you study and practice writing craft exercises, learning to frame a scene, concoct characters, split their roles in two to create conflict, resolve conflicts, etc etc.  All the skills we've been discussing, practiced to the point where you just don't ever think about it while doing it.

So in essence, the answer to this writer's question about how I do it, is "neither" or perhaps "both/and."

It is easier master both analysis and synthesis as cognitive exercises, if you can come to understand that both analysis and synthesis are rooted in a fallacious view of the universe.

This writer's question is actually a question about Kabbalah.

 I answered this question in a long-winded, oblique way, in the 5 Tarot books now up on Kindle.  The cheapest way to get all of them together is the combined volume.

http://www.amazon.com/Not-So-Minor-Arcana-Books-ebook/dp/B010E4WAOU/

The 5 individual volumes are 99c each.  The combined volume is $3.25 or free on KindleUnlimited.

In short The Not So Minor Arcana is my diatribe against the Hellenistic way of looking at Life, which all our modern cultures are either founded upon or infused with.

Plato (it seems to me, partly because he lived at about the right time) seemed to be on a terror-induced campaign to disprove everything in the Torah, and his concepts seemed to me to be rooted in a deep, instinctual terror of the Reality described in Kabbalah.  Considering the politics at that time in History, it just seems impossible to me that he didn't know what was happening in Israel.

Given the Hellenistic Pantheon, which does reflect basic human nature, it is also plausible to me that he was desperate to disprove the existence of such gods (all bullies from dysfunctional families with nasty parental issues).

I learned about the Plato vs. Torah dichotomy in a couple of college courses years before Star Trek, but a decade after deciding to become a professional Science Fiction writer (about age 15).

I had honed an awareness of the place of CONFLICT in DRAMA and thus saw how useful the Plato/Aristotle et. al. vs Torah conflict could be in generating a new kind of Science Fiction -- which it seems I have been credited with doing.
http://www.thegalaxyexpress.net/2015/06/free-ebook-brief-history-of-science.html

So, pondering the Hellenistic view of the Universe vs. the Torah based view of the Universe (even with Christian inflections you get the stark opposition between Plato and Bible), I have found it easy to portray Alien Civilizations (such as Kraith's Vulcan),...

http://www.simegen.com/fandom/startrek/kraith/

...just by building into the cultural THEME element of the drama, a challenge to the unconscious assumptions we have all been "programmed" with as children - assumptions about the Nature of Reality -- assumptions which would be viewed as fallacious in a Torah based culture (even Israel today does not have such a culture.)

The interesting thing, to me, is that Gene Roddenberry (a Humanist) eventually allowed a bit of Torah based reality to be sketched into the edges of the Vulcan culture that Spock represented (the Mind Meld, the Katra).  I just did a 5k essay on the Katra and it is reposted here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/10/how-do-you-know-if-youve-written.html

"ANALYSIS" and "SYNTHESIS" are Hellenistic (Ancient Greek Philosophy) concepts (see the Greek roots inside the words?), and very possibly utterly fallacious (as most of their ideas via Plato, Aristotle etc are. Pythagoras is particularly interesting in this regard.)

This Hellenistic description of reality works PERFECTLY (witness all of Science as We Know It) as long as you consider only "reality" (i.e. the bottom-most of the 44 Sepheroth of the structure of reality).  That's where we live and that's where all of physical science is absolutely valid.

That's why there is no conflict between "science" and "religion" if you consider "religion" to be the Torah.  Science describes and manipulates, perfectly, a "special case" within the totality of Creation -- that tiny 44th fraction of the whole.  You really don't need to know more than science reveals to live easily in material reality.

Many people never feel anything lacking.  Those who do, though, have a hard time reconciling Science with Torah -- because Aristotelian Logic demands Either/Or thinking, True/False thinking, and is the foundation of the Zero Sum Game (for you to win, someone else has to lose).  In Reality, two mutually exclusive things can not co-exist.

In that Hellenistic Reality -- the Soul Mate and Happily Ever After concepts are fallacious.

If you can wrap your head around the concept Infinite and the concept ECHAD (One), you have no trouble with mutually exclusive things co-existing.

But it's a long-long-long philosophical journey to get to that ECHAD based vision of reality.  You have to learn a totally new idea of what "exist" actually means -- which pretty much means learning Hebrew where the verb TO BE is used differently than in other languages.  That's what Kabbalah is all about.  ECHAD is the key.  EMET is probably the lock.

Aristotelian logic has divided our cultural mentality with impenetrable walls to prevent us seeing the world as ECHAD, and defying those walls can make you go crazy.  One of those walls is what gives rise to the concepts ANALYSIS vs SYNTHESIS as being opposites.

The go-crazy effect of trying to break out of Aristotelian conditioning is now being revealed in brain-studies showing how synapses develop, how the brain is plastic and changes under experiences.

Thus study of Kabbalah is not recommended for everyone.

Some people will hurl themselves at this problem of Science vs. God and slam themselves into a bloody pulp trying to choose to "believe" or to "think logically."

You can't have science and still believe in God, they assume.

That's a fallacy -- and it is the fallacy which you will find in Plato if you dig hard into his writings, and the surrounding culture that produced him, and read his stuff in terms of how crazy-scared he was of Torah and the effect a functioning (well, somewhat functional) Jewish Kingdom was having on his world.

What you learn from Kabbalah is a view of the universe that is not "either/or" that is not "zero-sum-game" that is not real/not-real, that is not "God/No-God" -- but rather "both and" -- somewhat like the Particle/Wave problem in physics.  People discard the Bible as ridiculous because they read it with either/or Aristotelian-conditioned eyes -- from that point of view, it is idiotic.

Look hard at this graphic:

That's the classic Lover's Quarrel.  It really is the core essence of Science Fiction Romance where the "science" is the science of the brain and "seeing."

Consider the classic optical illusion of the two faces facing each other -- or maybe it's a vase?  Blink, and it changes.

That's what I'm talking about -- the exact SAME "reality" and two views that our brains interpret as DIFFERENT only because we can't break out of the Aristotelian Cultural Conditioning rooted in Plato's personal political neuroses.

I will probably discuss this graphic again and again in various contexts and various esoteric applications of the principle having to do with the metaphorical "light" by which we understand what we see as the difference between right and wrong, and what the Biblical penalty translated as "Cut Off" actually means in practice.

Remember the Bohr Atom model was Aristotelian.  Atom is a Hellenistic concept.  Science is now revealing some of the fallacious concepts behind that thinking, but the people doing the science are so steeped in Hellenistic thinking that they do not know Hellenistic Thinking even exists, (a fish doesn't know water exists) therefore they have no idea what they are discovering!

So REAL ALIENS (and yes, I saw the discovered planets news) will probably have conditioning of their own, and very likely neuroses or the equivalent built into their cultures.  Understand how neuroses propagate through millennial to affect our current culture, then create some Aliens.

If you're going to build a world where your Human Character is Soul Mate to such a Real Alien Character, you have to include Alien Neuroses to make your invented fictional world seem 'real' for your reader, consistent, organized around a principle as tightly as our everyday reality is organized around a principle (we just don't all agree what that principle is).

Your fictional organizing principle will be different from the one your Reader sees (do stare at that graphic a while longer.) Explain the difference in Show Don't Tell.  Then explain that there is no difference, in Show Don't Tell.

The only way I can see that we can pull off a FIRST CONTACT without a war of extermination is to shed Plato's neuroses and Aristotle/Pythagoras's ideas of what constitutes reality.

The artificial and fallacious division of processes into Analysis and Synthesis (do stare at that graphic some more) may be one of those ideas we have to shed to be at Peace with ourselves -- and thus be able to make first contact without extermination.

Once the question is asked, "Is it fallacious?" then we come to "Well, if not Analysis and Synthesis then what do you use to think with?"  And there you will hit that wall built into your mind by early conditioning.

Your challenge as a science fiction romance book writer is to postulate answers Aliens might be clinging to as firmly as we cling to Plato-Aristotle et. al.

If you find you have no ideas, nibble at those books explaining Tarot in terms of Kabbalah, and you will very likely come away overflowing with ideas, compelled to write, just to contradict what they say.  Contradicting is good!

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Tarot Just For (Romance) Writers Now On Kindle by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Tarot Just For (Romance) Writers Now On Kindle
 by
 Jacqueline Lichtenberg

This month is seeing the Kindle-only release of a compilation and substantial revision of the 20 blog posts so popular on this blog about how to use Tarot in writing Romance genre, and all its spinoffs.

Below you will find links to the Amazon pages where these 5 volumes and the compilation of all 5 in one volume are available.

Here is some of the story behind these new releases of non-fiction books started in 1996, volumes that contain thinking dating to back 1972.

While we're waiting on release of the Sime~Gen Anthology, FEAR AND COURAGE, with stories by 14 new Sime~Gen contributors (beyond Jean Lorrah and me) and while we're waiting on completion of the Sime~Gen Concordance, I've crammed another project into this time-slot.

That project is the series of volumes on the Tarot that was originally contracted to Belfry Books in 1997.  The first volume was published as The Biblical Tarot: Never Cross A Palm With Silver.

My original series title, now in use on Kindle exclusive editions is The Not So Minor Arcana.

Look at the end of this post for links to pre-order of the volumes on Kindle, or if you're reading this after September 2015, you can download them immediately.

Right after publication of NEVER CROSS A PALM WITH SILVER, Belfry Books went out of business due to the collapse of the Book Distribution business before the next 2 volumes, Wands and Cups, could be published.

I had written the volumes on Wands and Cups, working against the established deadline in the contract, and was ready to deliver them when Belfry Books announced they were out of business.

I retrieved my rights and set the project aside until, in 2006,  Rowena Cherry​ asked me to join this Alien Romance co-blog she had just started.

I'd never blogged, was just barely thinking about doing that, and so of course I said yes!  I love to do new things!

So when I hit on the idea of finishing the set of Tarot Books with a blog post per chapter, I didn't expect anyone to read it.  It's dense, abstract, off-topic, meta-thinking of little interest to anyone.

The blog was about Alien Romance Novels, Science Fiction Romance sub-genre, Paranormal and Futuristic Romance readers, but I wrote specifically for the writers, not the readers, of Romance.
The first two volumes, Wands and Cups, are very abstract, theoretical, written for the Intermediate Tarot student.

The second two, written for this blog on Romance is aimed at the advanced student of Romance Writing looking to add Fantasy and/or Science Fiction elements.  Tarot provides a worldbuilding template that all readers understand without having it explained to them, thus cutting out the deadly Expository Lump.

Here are links to the 10 posts on Swords and the 10 posts on Pentacles.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me_23.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me_23.html

The Kindle versions on Amazon are re-edited and expanded, substantially revised.

This is difficult material to place with a publisher because my take on Tarot is the opposite of what the market for such books wants.  My thesis is that Tarot is of no use whatsoever for "foretelling" the future.  It won't give you magical power, or any other competitive edge of any kind.

The Volumes are very short, about 30,000 words, too short to publish as a stand alone paper book, and they contradict common beliefs on every page.

In other words, these 5 volumes are of use to science fiction romance writers, fantasy writers, creators and purveyors of imaginary fun.  It's a how-to manual on fiction writing, and a non-fiction presentation of how I created and wrote Sime~Gen and most all my other novels.

These volumes contain the world-building I did as I created Sime~Gen, and some of the other universes, like Molt Brother and City of a Million Legends as well as the Dushau Trilogy (remember Dushau won the first Romantic Times Award for Science Fiction - so long ago, the award is not listed in the online compilation though I still have the little statue), Dushau, Farfetch, Outreach.

Oh, yes, and my Vampire novels Those of My Blood and Dreamspy.  Especially, Dreamspy.  Are based in the paradigm I extracted from Tarot.

These non-fiction books contain what is behind that which is behind the underpinnings behind my worldbuilding.  This behind-behind structure, 4-layers deep at least, is why you can't read the novels and spot the mechanism that generated them.

Because these volumes on Tarot are so short, they could not be released economically through a publisher such as Wildside, which does not have any New Age imprint.

The complete, compiled 5 books together are too big to be released as one, certainly not in a print version.

Compile the 5 volumes into 1, then cut that 1 in half, and any abstract meaning someone might glean would be lost.  The 5 volumes are in fact a single structure, built to a point.

Kindle comes to the rescue with their somewhat new arrangement allowing authors to release titles for 99 cents.  And that's about what these little volumes are worth to readers.  Released through a publisher, they would be $4.50 or so apiece, minimum, which is way too much for what you get.

As we have been working on the Sime~Gen titles and then the video game for several years, I have had no time to take Karen L. MacLeod​ 's edited version of the Tarot books and reformat it for Kindle posting (no small feat; a bizarre process indeed!)

After we sent in to Wildside Press Sime~Gen Vol. 13 (Fear And Courage), and while Zoe Farris​ was polishing up the Concordance Manuscript for me to prepare to send to Wildside, I put the Tarot books together in Kindle format.

Now 6 volumes in The Not So Minor Arcana Series are coming available throughout September 2015.  You can order or pre-order.  If you pre-order, Amazon will deliver the books to your Kindle or whatever device you have chosen for your Kindle books.

There are 5 small, separate volumes, plus one huge all-5-volumes together (which is over a meg of download).  If download size is an issue for you, choose the individual books.

I'd like to know if these books turn up being pitched to you by Amazon.

I hope to make these available free for a time toward the end of the year but I don't know when or if I'll have time to do that.

You can pre-order or order at these web-pages now.

The combined volume is cheaper for you than buying each separately.

The Not So Minor Arcana: Never Cross A Palm With Silver Aug 30, 2015 99 cents
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0108MC26O

The Not So Minor Arcana: Wands Sept. 1, 2015  99 cents
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0106RVPKU

The Not So Minor Arcana: Cups Sept. 11, 2015 99 cents
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0106SATX8

The Not So Minor Arcana: Swords  Sept. 17, 2015 99 cents
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0100RSPM2

The Not So Minor Arcana: Pentacles  Sept. 21, 2015 99 cents
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0106RVKF0

The Not So Minor Arcana: Books 1-5 combined Sept. 24, 2015 $3.25
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B010E4WAOU

These books can all be "borrowed" on the Amazon Unlimited program for free, as can Dushau, Farfetch and Outreach.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com