#he.... he integrates so much into the planet he does become an energy traversing through earth. he becomes life itself but in the least self

[thecoolerbrother]

i think something moonage daydream was really good at doing was capturing a vibe

[marsandchariot]

Lunar New Year Considerations

In honor of the Chinese Lunar New Year on February 12th, we wanted to draw into conversation a few of the archetypal relations between planets, signs, and Tarot. By acknowledging these alignments we feel we can begin to speak to strategies of conceptualizing universal, long-term intention within the space of individual will.

By some accounts, the order of the signs in the Chinese Zodiac was determined by the outcome of a race between the animals, which involved crossing a river. In the case of 2021’s sign, the Ox, fording the river was an easy feat. For the Rat it was more challenging, and so he enlisted the help of the Ox. This kind of assistance, to the Ox, was nothing, so he was glad to do it. However, when the Ox reached the other side, the Rat leapt to shore, coming in ahead. As a symbol of this new year, the Ox may speak to principled provision for the movement of others whether or not they “deserve” it and whether or not that provision is “rewarded.” A race contradicts the shape of the zodiac, in which all signs are both before one and after another. Beyond the conceit of the race, there is no hierarchy in the signs. The Ox may remind us of ways that we can expand our understanding of achievement through sacrifices we make in the interests of others--even if that understanding applies to an increased sense of when sacrifices are too great or too many, and require us to more clearly elucidate personal boundaries as a result.

Though we may expect movement or lightness from Saturn’s transit into an air sign, Aquarius is also fixed (as opposed to cardinal or mutable). The experience of fixed air, rather than a dramatic deviation from the cardinal earth sign of Capricorn, highlights points of synonymous connection between fixed air and cardinal earth. It does us well to remember that Saturn is domiciled in both signs. While Capricorn felt heavy, almost cloying at times, as if a weight were intent on dragging us backward rather than helping us move forward, we were still moving, even if only in resistance to inertia, and with considerable, discernible effort. Taking into account the scant although intense time spent in Aquarius thus far, we might be learning that levity does not necessarily lead to momentum, or greater range of motion does not equal speed. Instead of the cold weight of earth, we have parched, stale air. In the interest of minimizing dejection, however, let us also remember that both Capricorn and Aquarius have experience with and valuable perspectives of water—Capricorn of its depth and Aquarius of its vast surface.

We might describe perspective as individual, and movement as collective. Though in some ways we feel the energy of forward-orientation, we have to wait for this energy to disperse and manifest itself across a spectrum of ritual processes and understandings before it results in something more akin to collective action. Perhaps it feels like the childhood game of “Mother, May I”. We probably wish we could sprint ahead and leap across the river (though it’s more likely we will wade and sink into it: next month is a new moon in Pisces; in May Jupiter will move into Pisces, its ancient domicile), but that feels in many ways like it requires a power of flight we don’t yet possess. Even though we have entered a prolonged period of air, we’re still more or less stuck on the ground for now.

Here are the cards we selected to help us consider this feeling of stasis more deeply:

THE STAR:

The Chinese Lunar New Year occurs on the first new moon that appears between January 21 and February 20. On February 11th, when the moon was at its newest, she was near the end of her stay in Aquarius, whose tarot equivalent is the Star. The Star is the phase that comes after a huge disruption, a radical change, like an attempted coup or a violently contentious regime change. The Star wants to recuperate, wants to reconnect with what’s essential: the conditions for positive transformation and healing. The Star is the first in the sequence of Star, Moon, and Sun in the Major Arcana, which occurs after the Tower and before Judgment. It is a fall from the Tower that conversely sends us upward, through a celestial sequence that concludes in resurrection, re-embodiment and re-integration. The Star wants us to ask ourselves--wants us to remember--what it is we actually want: for ourselves, for our communities, for our planet. In this way, this new moon was a good time to set intentions and goals for not only your individual growth but also for transformation at a source level for all. And that is the first step. The Moon explains for us step number two.

THE MOON:

Although the new moon occurred on February 11th in Aquarius, its transition into Pisces on the day of the Lunar New Year shows that the moon does not conform as cleanly to our measurements of her cycle as we would like to imagine. Pisces is also the equivalent of The Moon card; in considering Piscean modes we can draw from the Moon a few ideas of how to approach our unconscious selves in ways that advance individual needs within collective conversation, which is to say we progress from the aspiration of the Star to the meditative contemplation at play in the image of the Moon.

In the Moon card, we see two towers, much like the twin pillars in the card of the High Priestess, a card which Selah Saterstrom describes as representing the alternative to binary consciousness. In the Moon we also see the emergence of a subterranean entity, a third figure. This feels reminiscent of all water signs, but the card’s equivalence with Pisces elucidates the relationship we may cultivate to our unconscious as dark or esoteric, from which we expect certain “truths” to emerge, sometimes without developing a practice that brings us into communication with ourselves in a regular or sustainable way. When we think of our deeper self as a catacomb from which painful ideas might burst forth and surprise us, it becomes harder to cultivate a loving relationship with those dimensions of our emotional life that we suppress as abject or inappropriate.

The coinciding of Pisces with the new year might suggest the beginning of a process in traversing the boundaries between conscious and unconscious awareness, without characterizing our unconscious as perhaps secret or forbidden. On this occasion we may reject the binary imposition of progress, which implies that we leave one state and enter another; we embrace a “third” option, which is that of fluid exchange, of exit and re-entry, an experience of consciousness defined by a fluctuation of coming into and out of. This is the nature of the moon.

While the Sun is about creative and contemplative dream work in service of conscious action, the Moon is about facing our shadows and integrating them into our conscious being as a basis of our presence in the world. The Moon reminds us that we can’t move forward without meaningfully addressing and integrating our flaws and wrongful past actions. While on the level of individual consciousness the Moon is about shadow work, on the level of the collective it is about reparations.

Tarot decks used: Smith-Waite Borderless; Small Spells

[aurification]

I can be a handful, but that's why you have two hands.

basics —

FACECLAIM: Peter Gadiot FULL NAME: Michael Jon Carter NICKNAMES: Mikey ALIAS: Booster Gold BIRTHDATE: December 29th, 2442 BIRTHPLACE: Gotham City AGE: 35 HEIGHT: 6’5” HAIR COLOR: Blond EYE COLOR: Blue FAMILY: Jon Carter (father), Ellen Carter (mother, deceased), Michelle Carter (twin sister), Rip Hunter (son), Rani Carter (adopted daughter), Daniel Carter (21st century ancestor), Rose Levin (21st century ancestor), Skeets (robotic sidekick) AFFILIATIONS: Justice League, Time Masters OCCUPATION: Model / Socialite   MBTI: ESFP SEXUALITY: Bisexual MARITAL STATUS: Divorced → Michael was married to an older woman named Gladys who was his sugar mama. Their marriage didn’t last long before he asked for a divorce. IDENTITY STATUS: Public RELIGIOUS BELIEFS: Atheist

powers / abilities —

LEGION FLIGHT RING: provides him with the ability of flight.

POWER SUIT: uses an advanced microcircuitry-powered all-purpose combat suit that allows him a wide range of options to use in combat.

ENHANCED DURABILITY: the suit is extremely durable and very lightweight. It’s able to withstand bullets without losing its integrity but getting shot will still hurt.

SUPERHUMAN STRENGTH: the microcircuitry woven into the mesh affords him a high measure of super-strength, enough to easily shift twenty tons - and a great deal more if he exerts himself.

FORCE FIELD GENERATION: the suit is capable of generating a force-field that was powerful enough to take a direct punch from doomsday and leave him intact.

TIME TRAVEL CIRCUITRY:  time-travel circuitry is built into his suit, enabling him to travel through the time stream, both into the past and the future. the suit has also been been upgraded by rip hunter to enable michael to traverse chronal anomalies without any adverse effects.

GAUNTLETS: able to provide powerful energy blasts via blasters in the suit’s gauntlets. at the highest setting they can plow through two feet of concrete. they also allow him to create an absorbing field which acts similar to a tractor beam, in which he can grab hold of objects and move them about or hurdle them at foes.

VISOR DEVICES: his visor is outfitted with sensory amplification devices for auditory and visual. also has an hud for targeting and indentifying threats.

ENHANCED VISION: the visor can scan along the electromagnetic spectrum, provide infrared, ultraviolet, and x-ray vision.

ENHANCED HEARING: amplified to super human levels allowing him to hear sounds and frequencies no other human can hear.

HAND-TO-HAND COMBAT.

ATHLETICISM.

headcanons —

Four years ago back in his universe, Michael rescued a Daxamite child from the planet Daxam while Darkseid was invading it. Her parents were killed, and unfortunately witnessed the traumatic event. He took her back to Earth since she didn’t have any friends or family left after what Darkseid did done to her planet. The child quickly became attached to Michael, that much was obvious — even carrying around a teddy bear dressed up as him around the house. Michael adopted her shortly after, her new name now Rani Carter. She’s thirteen years old now in the present and has grown comfortable enough to call him dad. Now since she’s a Daxamite, that means she has powers similar to Kryptonians under a yellow sun. This surely keeps everything interesting for Booster.

Michael isn’t from this universe but is actually from an alternate timeline. Everything is the same for the most part except for one thing. His Ted Kord is dead because of what Maxwell Lord had done. It has been seven years since losing his best friend. This spiraled into him getting sole ownership of Kord Industries and taking on Jaime Reyes as a mentoree to respect his best friend’s wishes. How he ended up here will be explained in his biography at the end of this!

Normally Booster would always be clean-shaven but has grown a beard in recent years after falling into a deep depression. His daughter has never seen him without it. He does make sure to trim it when necessary but hasn’t thought about getting rid of the beard since this is just part of his look now.

personality traits —

- RECKLESS. Michael has a tendency to think with his heart sometimes and act on his own personal interests. He doesn’t care about being respected, being the greatest hero you’ve never heard of for a reason so this impacts his decisions in being impulsive or putting himself in a dangerous position.

- ECCENTRIC. Some might think of his sense of humor to be rather strange. He tends to laugh at the wrong times and not say the right thing when it’s important to be serious. He always thinks this makes him unique but it might be annoying instead to others.

+ AMIABLE.  He’s always friendly and upbeat unless given a reason not to be. This has been harder since his his best friend died and Rip told him there was no way to go back and save him. He’s starting to slowly become his old self again with each day though. You wouldn’t know that meeting him since he keeps the lighthearted attitude when talking to a friend or a stranger. He’s an optimist despite the tragedy filling his past.

+ CONFIDENT. He’s charismatic and has confidence in his abilities. This isn’t only just applied to what he does as Booster Gold but also with his modeling career also. The charisma is applied to conversations too, no matter how stupid his ideas might be there’s no hesitation in throwing them out there to someone.

biography for the last seven years —

When the ban started here in this universe, Michael had still been in his own attending a funeral. His best friend was gone and this made him fall into a deep depression. They had two memorial services — one for the businessman everyone knew Ted to be and another for the hero he was. Booster ended up being the last person to arrive at the service and didn’t know what to say when it was his turn to speak in front of the rest of the Justice League. He didn’t believe in anything ever getting better after that but it was with the support of his sister that there was a glimmer of hope. It was hard, really hard. The hardest thing he ever did to not go back and try rewriting history.

His life has been busy since, putting most of his efforts toward either helping the rest of the Justice League or keeping history intact. It does him good having something to do, keeping his mind occupied on how empty the world seemed. It wasn’t until four years ago after adopting Rani that Michael started to experience what it felt to be happy again.

Now bringing it all to the present, a few weeks ago Michael was helping some other heroes fight a creature terrorizing New York. His daughter was a teenager now and recently was gifted one of Michelle’s old Goldstar uniforms for sentimental reasons. Rani wants to be her father’s sidekick but Michael couldn’t lost anyone else. He’s always firm with saying no. She appeared at the scene begging to help but just as they were bickering the creature bursted through a nearby building. Skeets informed them that it was coming right for them. Michael did the only thing any father would do — whatever it takes to protect his family.

He used his time travel technology in his suit to take them away from the destruction coming for them. He meant to only hop a few minutes into the future but something went wrong and they crash landed in a different universe. The not-so-glamorous landing busted the device so there’s no way of getting home but at least Rani and Skeets were okay. This was all he cared about at the end of the day. Maybe it could be possible to build a life here until figuring out a way to fix his suit but seems unlikely right now. Michael realized the Booster Gold of this universe hasn’t been around for a while but has a history of being a model too just like him. He uses this as an easy way to get some work while they’re here.

[anearthstruckalien]

In the past, I’ve described Psion technology as highly-advanced and in fact, the most (if not among the most) advanced in the known universe.  Simply-put, beyond their exceedingly high level of comprehension of and skill in PSI, Psions are also dangerous precisely because of the technology that they possess, both on a more standardized level (i.e something that’s accessible to the general public) and in the ways of projects that are kept a little more secret for one reason or another.  And while it’s a bit much to elaborate on every single technology out there, I felt like it would be nonetheless worthwhile to give a general impression of it by noting a few of the many technological advancements of Psions, albeit mainly under broader categories of things:

○ Psion production machine:  as (more extensively) covered in THIS POST, this machine is responsible for producing Psions that are ‘customized’ for specific and predetermined purposes hence why there are certain ‘types’ or classes of Psions at all.  In a few words, the way that this machine produces Psions involves a conversion of energy in response to their coded physical traits and selves (or rather the ‘barebones’ of the self which later grows, develops, and changes based off the environment).

In other words, this machine alters the external world through the code input into it and the intermediary that connects the machine to whatever it is meant to alter; ‘blank’ energy in this case whereby the primary purpose is the creation of new Psions.  It’s almost like an alteration of reality itself, and because this principle can be adopted and applied in a more general sense, there are several other noteworthy Psion technologies that either alter certain parts of the external world via code input (i.e specific-use tools) or apply this idea on a broader and more general-use basis.

○ Repurposing:  it goes without saying that Psions (as far as their ideology goes) hate to let anything go to waste.  They want to pull whatever use and benefits they can out of something until there is nothing left to accomplish such a thing before then classifying it as ‘useless’ and discarding it.  As such, they have quite a bit of technologies that are dedicated to either efficiently converting one thing into another (for example, the energy from a discarded Psion into ‘purified’ and totally ‘blank’ energy again) or for efficiently breaking given substances (ranging from items to the corpses of life-forms) down into their consistuent elements and storing these elements away for later use as resources.  On a broader scale, an extremely noteworthy application of repurposing technologies is that of a kind of resource extracter that gets implemented on conquered worlds and basically sucks them dry of all viable resources… albeit in a way that takes time (compared to most other technologies that fall under this category) because it’s on a planet-wide scale for one thing and for another, it needs to be very carefully extracted as to keep the planet from falling apart before the process is complete.

○ Time travel:  Psions have fully developed time travel such that they can harmlessly (i.e without any negative effects on the individual travelling or to time-space itself) transport any entity through time based on some very specific coordinates input into the related machine.  And in addition to this, the ones that are utilizing this technology can use it to communicate with other versions of themselves at different points in time or a time-divergent self (provided that said variant has this technology as well) and in the case of Psions, can enable a ‘synchronization’ of information across these differing selves provided that they all originate from the same self source.

That is, self A can become the exact same person as self B (and vice versa simultaneously) because whatever experiences either one is missing from the other can be shared and thus filled-in as though that self had gone through it.  During his whole M2 plan, Giegue did this quite a bit.  That is, he had information synced across himself and time-divergent selves to better coordinate his insane and rather complex plan aaaaand to uphold the timeline he had created in an attempt to secure victory this time.  And so, apart from the 10,000 years he spent in his Magicant following M2’s outcome, he can be said to have even more ‘years’ added onto his overall age by virtue of the extra experiences he received through this syncing.

○ Psion home-planet:  as stated on this blog some time ago, the Psion home-planet itself is a greyscale and highly modular world with this dull yet distinctive gleam to it and this angular, simplistic, and very ordered (in a way that seems to suggest an obsession with it) design as far as its surface and underground features go. To elaborate, when I say ‘modular’ I mean that every single parameter as it pertains to the planet’s conditions can be altered using a super complicated control panel at its core.  These alterations can range from choosing to have certain weather phenomena (rather than being totally stagnant and void of it as is the norm) at specific points on the planet to determining its air composition (i.e what it contains + how ‘breathable’ it is for other species) to even distorting its physical features such as its shape and where it contains certain structures—which are either morphed out of it to begin with or connected to its surface after being externally built—as is necessary for their given purposes at a time.

And so, much like Psions themselves, the Psion home-planet is customizable due to the way hyper-advanced technology has been embedded into it and as a matter of fact, can be moved like a ship to warp out of one place and into another once the nearby star systems are all depleted of available resources. And while I’m still on the topic of the home-planet, I believe that it’s worth re-iterating that the Psion home-planet itself is always inside of a pocket dimension which is ‘locked’ in a way such that not just anyone can get through… and even when someone (unauthorized) does get through, the pocket dimension itself is structured in a way that gives the Psions every single relevant advantage possible in that space by both the ‘laws’ of that space itself and the very fact that the planetary weapons systems are both integrated into the very fabric of that space itself (i.e essentially every part of that space can be used to kill someone) and in the home-planet itself though its ordinary kept folded away in the planet itself.

○ Psion ships:  I won’t get into the deeper details of every single ship that Psions have available for use, but I will say that there are specific ships designed and optimized to perform certain ranges of tasks thereby making some ships better at doing something than others.  Beyond these differences however, each Psion ship is capable of three key functions: traversing through space across a broad variety of conditions be they extreme or not, warping its own form both in a strictly external (i.e maintaining its internal integrity as is) and an internal sense such that functions that range from fitting through otherwise inaccessible areas in space to simply creating more seating and control panels can be applied, and capable of traveling at insane speeds through space such that it’s possible to get from one extreeeeeeeeeeeeeeemely distant point to another almost instantaneously once the systems are ready to jump into that speed.

In other words, these ships are highly versatile (even when they’re optimized for a specific set of tasks), durable, and travel very fast through space. And in addition to all of this, it’s worth noting that as is the case with several other technologies (i.e the Psion production machine and the home-planet itself), only Psions can operate these ships in that these ships will not respond to anyone else attempting to control them unless their systems are hijacked in some way or a non-Psion is manually granted permission by the systems.  As such, ‘lower’ life-forms that are sent to accomplish tasks outside of the home-planet frequently tend to either be under the leadership of a Psion or have a ‘non-Psion’ (though still produced by Psion construction worlds) ship allotted to them which can more or less be regarded as a less advanced (though still potent) variant of Psion ships.

○ Enhancements:  although it is really ‘lower’ life-forms (i.e non-Psions) that get altered and thus ‘enhanced’ by technology… it’s not restricted to said life-forms.  Rather to be more specific, non-Psions get these kinds of enhancements in ways that are very invasive and integrate into their very physiology because it is believed that these life-forms are so ‘flawed’ that true ‘usefulness’ and ‘improvements’ can only be brought about in this manner. And while Psions are rarely (if ever at all) subjected to these enhancements, they do use some form of them albeit in a more ‘wearable’ way whereby it’s something that can be attached and removed with ease aka not truly melded to them at all.

These external enhancements tend to be extremely lightweight (due to being rather thin up to being outright paper-thin at times), need no special application other than just manually sticking them onto the exoskeleton and smoothing it down into it, and often tend to be invisible once applied to a Psion until they are removed again or otherwise damaged.  In turn, the primary reasons behind using external enhancements at all is to account for situations whereas Psions are in need of an additional function or boost to their current functions (if not made that way from the start) and to broadly make life easier in an equivalent way that things like watches, electronic schedules, etc do.  In a sense, given the general format that enhancements for Psions tend to take on as a kind of standard? these enhancements can be thought of as more so akin to function-bestowing patches than anything else.

○ Other:  this is more or less a re-iteration of things I’ve mentioned before… but other noteworthy bits of technology include: the general Psion surveillance system whereby time-space anomalies are (on a continuous basis) being recorded by a machine on the home-planet which itself in turn means that Psions know whenever entities or objects enter in and out of the universe –the main reason why you don’t often see them addressing it is because (most of the time) it isn’t considered to be important enough to devote their time and resources towards for one thing and for another, things entering in and out of the universe are actually common occurences; a goop-like substance which actually consists of microscopic machines designed to heal exoskeleton injuries that a given Psion may not be capable of healing themself via analyzing the injury and reconstructing the required component; and a kind of known universe-wide access to electronically-stored information (i.e like the Internet but, spanning beyond a single planet) with especially strong access to points more situated in space under Psion control.