These are the places upon our bodies where we can wish upon a star. The Somatic Asters are the Inner Circles of the Penters that are mapped onto the human body. They are the wishing stars of Megâk, the major arcana. Your wishes may be granted by the Inner Circle.
The Asters are not spaced equidistantly due to the way that the Penters interlock, as clicking on the Penterat the bottom of the interactive map below, will show. This is what gives them their geometrically justified positioning.
The bottom Penter's two lower kirkoi (circles) wrap underneath the body and encircle each leg. The pattern of the interlocking Penters then continue up the back in the same way as is seen on the front. The top Penter similarly wraps over the head connecting with the Penters on the back, producing an entire casing of the body.
This is a mapping of a method using sacred geometry upon the physical body. The Asters are not upon the surface of the body, but within it, and their performance is a mental exercise of a spiritual nature which ignores any physical actualities. Their physical locations are the separating of the different spells to be woven within them. The associative links from the physical locations are useful resonators and contributors to the mental act accompanying the performance. This is the magick of Megâk.
The Encephalic Aster is positioned so that the centre of the Inner Circle is also where the pineal gland is situated in the middle of the skull.
The Encephalic Aster, located within the head, is concerned with psychic matters and their conjuration via conceptual methods. This is where we project our concept of the world and create our reality.
The Aster is accompanying to the Earth sound experienced within the head and which changes note according to what latitude of the planet you are on.
This performance can also be a method for inducing an OBE, as the encircling of the Aster within the head allows for the separation of the mind from the somatic mapping due to the dizzying nature of the exercise, and can unhook it, with the consequent potential of leaving the body. Proceed with caution.
The Cervical Aster is centred behind the Adams apple. This can be used to address any neck issues, the movement manipulating the cervical vertebrae into a properly aligned and extended neck.
The Cervical Aster is associated with communication, and desires performed within this area will be to do with conversing with others and integrating with society. This is also the place where Tibetan dreaming methods visualise a symbol which is a little like an 'A', to induce lucid dreaming. In the Megâk configuration though, the 'A' of the Aster is upside down. Maybe the reversed aspect of the symbol signifies staying awake; maybe the symbols are irrelevant and only the intent is important! The orientation of the Aster has no negative implication. Some silly people associated the downward aspect with the devil, but that is their fiction and is wholly false and ridiculous. What is true, is that you can associate anything with anything and create a world around you according to your belief. It is your choice.
The Glossaster can be performed synchronously alongside to add the integration of its feeling and sound to the presence of the Cervical Aster.
Vindication, and the authority of societal power lends itself to this Aster. Ease of communication because you believe you are understandable because of empathy and root kindred soul sight. Pure awake, attentive consciousness and the knowing that you know, provides the confidence to be who you truly are. Lucid within the waking dream.
The Thoracic Aster is where the hands will overlap and rest on the chest when the arms are lifted while keeping the elbows pointing downwards. This is the place that "Haaa" reverberates strongly in the chest and the place where you assume the heart to be when you are a child. This is the spiritual location of the heart.
The Thoracic Aster is your hearts desire. This should be the very foundation of what you want out of life. The thing that makes you go "haaa", which probably has something to do with love in some way. When you get what you want, you are contented, and so why not just go straight to that contentment and be the love itself. This is what the heart is associated with, and grace is its expression.
Grace is a state of gratitude that sees how wonderful everything is and how it is the best it can be for you and everything is working out perfectly. It is a state of bliss. Everything is fantastic; there is nothing wrong at all.
Your greatest wish or desire should be for joyous love itself, as anything else you wish for can have a tendency to backfire! When in the state of joyous love, everything else that is good comes to you anyway.
The Solar Plexus Aster lies between the 'Believe' and 'Integrate' areas of the ORBIT of Self Form, and hence is the place to wish for the integration of faith. The divine acceptance that comes from the fact that you know you are a child of nature, trusting the way, confident and self assured; a part of it all and meant to be this way. Justified. Everything coming together in its right time and sequence, and forming into a coordinated whole. To be one with nature.
Using this composure we can take our power with the justification that summons true confidence. This Aster is the key to the integration of the self, creating self-assuredness and confidence, and with such attributes only a positive and beautiful world can be seen.
People respect confidence — they will look again if they see confidence and won't bother if they don't see it. To be confident is to be with faith and means that you have no fear, you are assured because you see the good; you go with God. You are divinely protected by having the attitude that no harm can come to you because you are not committed to that ego which is that vulnerable 'you'. To transcend that 'you' is a mental and physical posturing consisting of integrating the breath, relaxation and detached observation with belief. It is the whole of ORBIT.
The Solar Plexus Aster is the Aster of confidence and sits atop the Penter of ORBIT like a cog driving the wheel of ORBIT around. It encompasses the integration of love and centredness with relaxed breathing and this transcendence into faith. Fear is felt here in its absence. It is the distractedness from the principles of ORBIT that allows fear to fill in instead. The draining downwards of this sensation, getting cleansed through the Omphalos Aster of the First Self with the dissolution of the ego, and down to the Mirror circle of the Observer where a centring and realignment and restarting of the ORBIT can reinstall confidence and banish this suffering.
The Solar Plexus Aster area contacts the Liver, Stomach, Colon and Small Intestine, as well as the heart above it in the central circle of the Middle Mirror, and so can incorporate the associated aspects of each and combine their Taoist attributes: faith, integrity, absolution and love and the desire for these. This makes the Solar Plexus Aster a cauldron for the mixing of emotions into an elixir of affirmations. This is a picture of your-self; your ego.
The Omphalos Aster is located directly on the navel and is our Original Opening. This is the key to the true self — the First Self. Be who you truly are. Be true to yourself. This is the Aster for the dissolution of ego (and ego is rooted in society conformity), and is the hub of the Penter of ORBIT.
The Aster centred on the navel is the core of your self and a portal to your First Self. The desires here should be for a return to your natural and pure self, without any societal influence.
This First Self has no goals or responsibilities, no allegiances or preferences, no beliefs or belongings; this self is all about just being, where dying is of no consequence and living has no purpose. This self is not subject to the conceptualizing mechanism called the mind. To just be is enough and is everything. To be in this state of acceptance is true grace.
There are no others here. No thoughts of others, no comparisons, no care or concern. Totally free and secure. Safe. The only true sanctuary.
The Sacral Aster sits within the pelvis. The shape of the sacrum echoes the downward aspect of the pentagram, while the horizontal of this Zedexwhyzed configuration is supported by the pubic symphysis. The bottom of the pentagram touches the coccyx and the perineum while the whole sphere fits snugly within the pelvic bowl.
The centre of this Aster is the acupoint Ren 3, called the Central Pivot, and is where our centre of gravity is when we ready ourselves to move, and is also the crossing point of the Liver, Kidney and Spleen meridians. Therefore trust, alignment and integration come with this.
The orientation of the Aster can also be as shown below:
This is a better aspect for exercising the perineum muscles, and which can be performed with a smaller Aster to intensify the exercise.
Within this Aster's location is the bladder — which is paired with the kidneys — and so alignment is the major aspect to associate with it. As the Sacral Aster is the sacred area and therefore the divine, the alignment should be considered to be a divinely guided direction, one that is from the will of heaven, the void of light that encases all and leads the right way. This is the Aster of Wu Wei. The Aster of the Tao.
This area is also where the procreative organs are located which are the organs for perpetuity purposes. The perpetual and infinite circling of the Aster echo's the infinity of the divine and conjures the infinite silence within. The strength that comes from the invulnerability of this centre, gives us the balance and root groundedness that can only come from a divine connection. The balance that provides the momentum when rowing down the stream, following the divine way.
For the purposes of magick, the aspect of alignment could be applied to the etymological source of sorcery, making this an Aster of Sorcery. It is also possible to use a mantra as a song to summon the Kundalini.
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Kundalini
The poetic descriptions of the Kundalini being a serpent coiled within the perineum, can be extended into it performing entwining circles that form the Sacral Aster.
The Sacral Aster is where the dragon chases its tail, going round in circles as it plays in its sacred cave.
My personal experiences of the Kundalini do not have any aspects of a snake attributed to it, but it is an apt and quite useful imagination to have while performing the Inner Circle within the pelvis. The word Kundalini means ‘coil’, and the Aster could be conceived of as a coil, with its perpetually wound encircling movement. But the experience of the Kundalini is as a small area of intense sensation that moves slowly up the spine, without there being any intention or persuasion. For me it has been spontaneous, and it is unmistakeable for anything else! It is significant. I could describe it as being white and hot, but that would be being poetic, even though that is how it feels.
It is I believe a physical consequence of how the spine is constructed in its criss-cross tensegrity way, and it is an energetic alignment in special circumstances that produce a knitting together and movement of a zip like action going up the spine, as each conjunction influences the next causing it to travel. It is a universally experienced phenomenon at the biological level of humans and I can remember it happening the first time when I was a baby, and it is therefore most likely that all people have experienced it but just don't remember.
It is also part of the Taoist practices called the microcosmic Qi orbit, but they say it goes down the front of the body too, but I have only experienced this frontal phenomenon as a broader downward flowing sensation which is nothing at all like the marble sized upward spine experience. These two systems have drawn their own language and methods around the natural physical phenomenon and embellished the experience without knowing what it actually is. Nobody knows.
Such magical imaginations that accompany such experiences and the language used to create methods to try and repeat them, tend to be taken literally by those who do not understand the difference between the telling of a method and the description of a phenomenon. The poetic presentation of something with sacred importance has caused no end of confusion in the later retelling by the pupils who have become the masters.
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The Asters of Sorcery move up the body while the Asters of Transcendency move down in hierarchy, starting with the Sacral Aster and the centre of gravity and ending with the Omphalos Aster at the centre of being. Beginning at the bottom with the Aster of Alignment (Sacral Aster), the next is the Aster of Self-confidence (Solar Plexus Aster) and then the Aster of Authority (Cervical Aster).
Above all these is the Encephalic Aster in the head. This Aster of Creation has under its power all the Asters of Sorcery below it. It heads the combination and synergy of power, confidence and authority to create whatever it wills. After this the next one is the Aster of Grace (Thoracic Aster) and finally the Aster of the First Self (Omphalos Aster) where the cycle is completed and the whole is contained.
The Glossaster is performed within the mouth where the tongue traces a minor Aster and occurs between the two halves of this cycle and can drive the Encephalic Aster above it or the Cervical Aster below it, forming a bridge between the two, and can work in the same way that Stirring the Sacral Aster works. The Glossaster can be used in this way with all the Asters.
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There are other Asters that can be located within the body and there is also the Configuration B, where the Asters are in slightly different places. Asters can be located at the shoulders, the ankles and at other places, as well as wholly or partially outside the body.
at the bottom of the interactive map below, will show. This is what gives them their geometrically justified positioning.
