Trish Ball wrote:
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Recently I was fortunate to catch the end of a 9/11 memorial piece
which I found incredibly enlightening to the constellation process.
It involved Mary Chapin Carpenter's song lyrics dedicated to the
dead of 9/11. She derived her inspiration from an interview she'd
heard with an iron worker who described the energy he felt all
around him at ground zero.
He said he felt compelled to go to Grand Central Station every day to help
these spirits find their destination. I immediately found the symbolism of
Grand Central Station poignant, and thought how beautifully it illustrates
constellations. No sooner had the word "constellations" crossed my mind, the
iron
worker said, "...you know, the part of Grand Central Station that has the
constellations on the ceiling?"
Sure enough, constellations were painted on the ceiling, where he was
"called" to take these energies. It's as though the universe set up its very
own
constellation by providing this gentleman with the intent to serve the dead.
It
was very beautiful.
________________________________
Dear Trish,
Many thanks for telling this story. It touched me so deeply because I was
born and raised in Manhattan but left my hometown in 1972 just as the World
Trade Center opened. I was living outside of Nashville, TN when 9/11 happened
and my visceral reaction was that I had just gotten my two front teeth knocked
out.
Ive been back there twice since 9/11, once in early 2002 and in 2004. My
experience both times was quite shocking for me as a native New Yorker. I
actually felt on both visits, that the whole of New York City was like being
inside
a cathedral, with Ground Zero as the tabernacle. I felt a deep and pervasive
religious/spiritual atmosphere that stayed with me through all my walks
through the streets, even riding on the subway, even up to my old neighborhood
of
Inwood where I traveled on both occasions to visit The Cloisters in Fort
Tryon Park.
My old neighborhood could now be characterized as the New Dominican
Republic, and it is still known as a dangerous drug neighborhood, yet all the
while I
was walking down my old block of Arden St., even as the only gringo, I felt
safe and I actually found myself looking at and smiling at the people I
passed.
I would never have imagined this kind of feeling of religious awe and deep
security before 9/11. And I now believe it expresses the actual veneration
of the 9/11 dead, which may be creating an actual ancestral line, so to speak,
in the family system of New Yorkers, indeed, of the whole country, but
especially on Manhattan Island itself.
And as for Grand Central Station, I do remember the constellations on the
ceiling! And since you noted the great synchronicity of thinking of
constellation just before the iron worker spoke of the GCC constellations, I
would like
to ask anyone out there: how did the word constellation come to be the
English translation of the German word Aufstellung?
There are so many possible translations of the German word, yet
constellation does not appear in any German-English dictionaries. So I thought
it might
be instructive to go through a list of the many different meanings and
connotations of the word when translated into English.
auf is a preposition meaning on top of and stellen means to put or place.
So the root connotation of the word Aufstellung (noun form) is to think of
putting something on top of a table, like a plate or even a spreadsheet.
Anything spread out in a line or a matrix (column & row) is an Aufstellung
Thus you can see how these words can all fit as a translation:
Array, assembly, installation, list, arrangement,
line-up (both the line-up at a police station as well as a baseball team
line-up or as a verb, say, to line up single-file),
alignment, disposition, itemizing, billing,
nomination (of a political candidate)
And of course, constellation is a valid translation because it means an
array or arrangement or a line-up of stars, or people or events, to make a
Gestalt, a form or pattern that gives a meaning beyond the individual
elements.
Yet I think there is great wisdom here, because the word constellation in
English implies an order of reality above and beyond the array or line-up or
spreadsheet of the constituent elements. Of course, it strongly connotes stars
and astrology more than anything else, but that keeps us in mind of the
Greater Soul out there and up there and the Hermetic saying: As above, so
below.
But somebody had to be the first to render the word constellation in
English. I wonder who that was and when it happened.
Thomas
