(Or: The Amazing Adventures of Jacques Varian)

 Part I: Brazil On The Hod

 By Lex MacKenzie

 "Is there such a thing as Canadian astrology?" a colleague
 once asked me. If not a method or system,then an approach.
 One that might be considered typically Canadian?

 I was flummoxed.

=-

 (Or: The Amazing Adventures of Jacques Varian)

 Part I: Brazil On The Hod

 By Lex MacKenzie

 "Is there such a thing as Canadian astrology?" a colleague
 once asked me. If not a method or system,then an approach.
 One that might be considered typically Canadian?

 I was flummoxed. Despite decades of doing astrology, mainly
 in Canada, wrestling with high-latitude lives and horoscopes,
 hunkering down on the medicine-wheel hills of Alberta at dawn
 to watch solstice or star-rise, trumping through the sparse
 bush of local histories to find signs of Aquarius, I had never
 really thought about it. I had discovered enough about this
 country and its people to satisfy myself that there was indeed
 a Canadian identity, however elusive it seemed to southern
 Ontarians, and I could see how astrology reflected that, but
 it never occurred to me that my experiences, along with those
 of others with a similar bent, might contribute to the
 development of a unique sub-branch of the discipline. But now,
 having pondered that possibility, I think this will happen,
 sooner or later, and perhaps spectacularly.

 Not so much as a result of what Canadian astrologers have, so
 far, been able to put together, but due more to what has been
 happening with researchers in other fields. There's an
 accelerating convergence of various interests, and astrologers,
 I hope, will not be so preoccupied with their own as to be
 overtaken unaware. But aside from this, and of far greater
 import, there may already exist at least one person who
 embodies, and knows, what Canadian astrology can be -- even
 if he isn't an Astrologer and I don't know his name. Not yet
 anyway.

 He's also elusive. I'll just call him "The Professor", and
 try to keep you informed of new developments. In the meantime,
 I can make a start by letting you in on what I've learned, or
 think I've learned, to date.

 *  *  *

 After an expedition to Brazil my betters had returned with
 soil samples from a cave and stored them in the lab. The
 Professor by then was connected to the University only in
 spirit, and although he was not in the habit of haunting
 the campus, one night he did show up.

 I was working late, testing hundreds of samples with the
 magnetometer, when I heard the door open. I was about to
 get up, take a much needed break, but he gestured that I
 stay put. He only wanted to nose around. See how things
 were going.

 After checking my readings and seeing how disappointing
 they were, he wandered off, musing and mumbling.

 "Don't mind me, I just want to retrieve something that
 I left here last year, and go". He opened a bottom drawer
 in a desk on the other side of the room and, after a brief
 rummage, pulled something out and slipped it into his
 pocket.

 "I'm sure no-one will miss it," he said. "Too bad about
 those tests, eh? Still, you'll have to complete them,
 so you might as well not waste time. It's the wrong cave,
 obviously. Will you be back up north this summer?"

 I told him I hoped so.

 "Well, then drop by. See you.." And with that he was gone,
 closing the door gently behind him.

 "Drop by," sure. As if anyone could find the right needle
 in a jackpine forest. Yet, I knew I'd run into him, if
 the moon was right.

 When was it I'd seen him last? Must have been at least
 seven months ago. I'd told him about the cave and hints
 of hearths. Brazil was hot. Ever since the Pedro Furada
 cave had produced evidence of very early occupation,
 long before Clovis, every archaeologist and his or her
 dig was looking for better clues and back-up -- preferably
 unambiguous artifacts -- in other caves in the northeastern
 region.

 Thirty, possibly forty, thousand years ago in equatorial
 America some people must have gathered in gloom around
 crackling fires, fearing jaguars and dreaming like sloths.
 But that far back, they could have been Neandertal, even
 Erectus, who would have laid down an archaic cultural layer,
 older than the creation myths about Crow or Coyote, unless
 that's who they were.

 An astrologer is easily bored by testing soil samples night
 after night (at minimum wage). The science behind it is
 fascinating, but interest wanes after the first few days
 -- heck, the first few hours!

 The samples were loamy sand, dark or reddish brown, packed
 tightly into plastic, inch-size cubes, and aside from minor
 variations in colour, they were all exactly the same. But
 put them in the magnetometer, depress the pedal, and spin
 for a minute -- each one six times to get a reading from
 every angle -- and other differences appeared: magnetic
 alignments induced by the Earth's ever-shifting magnetic
 field. If the soil had been disturbed over time, it would
 show. The imprint of the field would vary from that of the
 more ancient matrix. But long before a hundred cubes and
 600 separate rotations of each, one is on the verge of
 going Rubikally round the bend, and I had several hundred
 cubes to test.

 I took breaks, of course, and then my mind was free to
 wander as usual. I scanned the walls of the lab, tops of
 desks, sills of windows, and peeked in cabinet drawers.
 There was always something to discover in the way of maps,
 diagrams, journals, and such; and in the drawers, row upon
 row of drill-cores skewered from the far corners of the
 tectonic world. In one corner of the room was a lead-
 shielded closet.

 I'd never been in a geophysics laboratory before. I was
 honoured, amused, and slightly baffled as only an astrologer
 studying anthropology could be. I was no stranger to science
 but what is going on when the mind is constantly applied
 to earth and stone rather than symbol and star?

 The Professor had, inadvertently or not, as a result of his
 brief and enigmatic visit, kindly identified his old desk,
 so I checked it out. I sat down and tried to imagine myself
 as him, saw what he could see, and wondered about what he
 used to think and do. There were several sheets of paper
 taped to an adjacent wall: a Gary Larsen cartoon, a memo
 from the Department, a page from an article about the
 Greenland ice-cap; but they appeared recent. Not that I
 expected to find anything still there from the Professor's
 sojourn but, well, one never knows.

 Then I spied a candidate item. A diagram on smudged paper,
 corners curled or torn, Scotch tape yellowed, almost hidden
 by the end of the desk. It was a photocopy from a journal
 article about the path of the north pole. Pleased at last,
 I ventured to open a bottom drawer, maybe the one from
 which he had taken whatever it was that he had come for.

 Inside there was only a stack of blank paper, several layers
 in different hues, but at the back, partly crumpled, was one
 typewritten page. Maybe the Professor's, I couldn't tell at
 first, but after reading it, I'm certain it is.

 POLE-SHIFT PRELUDE
 (Easter Tuesday, April 6, 1909)

   Some dogs sleep curled at the Pole
   beside the tents of six dead men:
   Kokwih, Utah, Eginwah, and Siglu,
   along with Matt Henson and Robert E. Peary --
   all dead to the world and dreaming.

   No-one else has ever done this.
   There has never been the need.
   In fact, no-one near the area knew
   that such a place existed
   until the crazy whitemen showed up.

   The seal
   they sought with the zeal of the hunt
   was not of the sea
   nor any of Sedna's brood,
   but emerged as they spoke
   from a different ocean
   with waves not wet but aery;

   and that game would be won
   not with spear but staff --
   a standard
   pole with flag,
   fluttering

   here:
   under the star which will no longer be
   the center of Heaven
   above the still point of the turning Earth,
   yet stay as always our zenith light,
   invisible now in motionless space,

   turning blue since March the First
   when off they shoved in moonlight
     from Cape Columbia into the golden dawn
     that would last for weeks
     and subsume all constellations;

   and roughed it
     through the equinoctial day,
     measured from one white heave to another,
     as the sun rose in a circle  
     to embrace the blinding whole horizon --

   soon,the only witness
   to the slow spiral upward of sun
   during six lunations in daylight

   without man or dog,
   though their reflections
   prisoned in ice
   are attractive:

   always getting here,
   standing,
   slumping,
   sleeping
   without image,
   mind full of crystal and light;

   bodies variously rising  
   to re-cross the cold, crucifying cap of our sphere;
   to find their way home
   without leaving.

     Then Pluto will enter the sign of the Crab,
     the pole will shift,
     the War will start --
     a world First
     and last.

     Forever    
     Again  
     Renewed  

     Forever
     Renewed
     Again

     Again
     Renewed
     Forever

     To spit fire across ocean.

               [signed:]  Ken Traquair
                          Samhain 85

 I didn't suspect the Professor of having had any connections
 with the British RAF (Royal Air Force), but there was enough
 in the poem to link him with its authorship. (The signature
 was probably a herring, if not quite red then at least faintly
 blushing). And, after studying the pole-path diagram on the
 wall, I was convinced that magic was afoot. As terrestrial as
 it was celestial, as delightful as it was perilous, and truly
 Canadian.

 I will explain..

 [To be continued]