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Title:

Ringing the Changes Date Published: 2/08/2007 by John Townley

Bio: John Townley John Townley

Early in his astrological career, John Townley introduced the composite chart technique for analyzing relationships in his book The Composite Chart, and twenty years later wrote the definitive work on the subject, Composite Charts: The Astrology of Relationships. He has pioneered techniques for astrological cycle analysis and proposed a new, physical basis for astrology. He is also the author of Planets in Love, Dynamic Astrology, and Lunar Returns, has been the president of the Astrologers' Guild of America, was the editor of The Astrological Review, and is a contributor to professional and popular astrological magazines. His books have been translated into seven languages.

John is also a well-known journalist, elected member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors, historian, preservationist, performer, and record producer. He can be regularly found, camera and microphone in hand, covering cultural and technology events ranging from the Consumer Electronics Show to the Toy Fair, from international music festivals to ocean sailing races. When he's not behind the camera and microphone, he's in front of them, performing at maritime concerts in the U.S. and across Europe.

He's written for:

The Mountain Astrologer	Dell Horoscope
Considerations	Fortean Studies
Streaming Media Magazine	The Warsaw Voice
Flying Your Way	Sexology Today
Sail	Boating
Sea History	The Mariners' Museum Journal
Northern Mariner	Sea Heritage News
South Street Seaport Reporter	Digital Cinema
Surround Professional	Recording Media
EQ Magazine	ProSound News
eDigitalPhoto Magazine	The Toy Fair Times
World Of English	Intelligent Transportation Systems Daily
Firefighters' Quarterly	The Rappahannock Record

He's been featured on:
the BBC, CBC, PBS, NBC, CBS, ABC, CNET and Granada radio & TV, Polish National Radio/TV, Voice of America, Armed Forces Radio, and cable TV.

Definition:
Change ringing is the art of ringing a set of tuned bells in a series of mathematical patterns called "changes". It differs from many other forms of campanology (such as carillon ringing) in that no attempt is made to produce a conventional melody — Wikipedia

Anyone who hasn’t been totally asleep knows the buzzword for 2008 is change. All the political candidates on every side of every issue are promising it. Astrologers are predicting it. Stock market analysts are afraid of it. It would seem this is the year when everything becomes different, the old dies and the new comes tumbling in.

For astrologers, that’s indicated by Saturn and the nodes switching signs, the usual yearly change of Jupiter (this time into Capricorn), but above all the generational change of Pluto into Capricorn, a move that planet of ineluctable change hasn’t occupied since just before the American Revolution. So, it’s easy to predict change of all sorts, especially along the Capricorn-Cancer axis which is all about political and business structure and how it affects how and where we live at home. Wherever you are, Pluto is ringing the changes and we all will be dancing to the new beat.

Most of the predictions have been pretty dire, because that’s what grabs people’s attention and makes the news: war, political turmoil, foreclosures, recession. But there’s an upside to the change that’s going on, too. After years of talking up the environment while drowning in oil prices, pollution, and global warming, suddenly a greener way of life seems within reach, if not quite yet grasped. There really is a non-petroleum car in your future, along with all kinds of gentler ways of coaxing energy out of the environment, from the timeless power of the sun, the winds, and the water to the renewable energy of life itself. This new generation will see a totally different way of life rise up as the old one collapses or is dismantled through necessity.

The trick is to stay out of the way of falling objects in the process and learn to ride the rising tide into the new reality — to catch the wave, literally the wave of the future. And what’s the trick to doing that? It’s what you always do to outfox Pluto — don’t hang on, just hang loose. Literally. If you’re looking around to grab the new direction, you won’t, because you can’t see it and you can’t say it until it has actually arrived. If someone is saying it’s this way, it’s not. If someone is saying it’s that way, it’s not. The essence of Pluto is that you can’t tell until it’s over, and then you’re right there, sitting on it, where you never noticed you were all along. You find yourself dancing to a new tune that you hadn’t recognized was a tune at all, because that’s how Pluto rings the changes. While you’re dodging the toppling old trees, the new grass is growing up under your feet.

Celestial Bells

Bell ringers know it, and it’s so cyclical, so planetary. The very term to “ring the changes” comes from the practice of church bells being rung according to a rotating, mathematical formula so that all possible combinations of the bells are eventually sounded, like the continual repositioning of the planets over the eons. As the ringers finish one combination, the head bell ringer (like Pluto) calls a new change and suddenly the whole order is rearranged. At first the new change seems like chaos, because you can’t pick out the new pattern. Then, as the sound cascades over you, you begin to sense the repeating theme and the rising swell, as deeper bells (like outer planets) sustain their rolling tones, the mid-range bells (like Jupiter and Saturn) march along with certainty over the top of them, and the higher ones (like the Sun, Moon, Mars, Venus, and Mercury) beat a shrill cadence above it all. Each time the bell-ringers progress the pattern, you can feel the change resonate in your bones.

And the trick — yes, that trick — with Pluto is not to impose your image of what’s going to happen and try to make it happen. You can’t make Pluto do anything – it’s the other way around. Right now, contrary to the self-imaging, envisioning recipes of The Secret, if you’re painting a picture of yourself and your future as you think it’s going to be, you’re painting yourself into a corner. Let the picture paint itself and include you, and you’ll realize it was there all along, and so obvious.

That’s how to take a year of universal turbulence, with the planets all topsy-turvy, and turn it to your own ride of a lifetime. Don’t buck the tide, surf it, because it’s going somewhere, even though you don’t know exactly where that will be. When in doubt, don’t make bets and hang on them, be the one others are betting on (so what do they know?), spend your time steering your own boat, letting the tide do the rest. And above all, attend carefully to the music as it shifts from perceived chaos to obvious order, from one moment to the next. There really are glorious tidings to come, but you have to listen for them — as the celestial bells are already ringing in the changes of a generation to come...

Find out more about change-ringing and listen:
http://www.cccbr.org.uk/ringing/ringing.php#history
http://www.cccdub.ie/bells/tower/changeringing.html

Lots more info plus virtual bell-ringing software:
http://www.ringing.info/

Great explanation, sounds and video:
http://www.nagcr.org/pamphlet.html

Change-ringing recordings (lots):
http://www.inspirewebdesign.com/home/mpaw/soundindex.asp

But a great music video (Jethro Tull, “Solstice Bells”) to go with it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qcPS-J0HTg

The science of church bells video report:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RtN3urZiDk

Trinity Church change-ringing bells:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPMUkwaA3X4

Change-ringers at practice:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRTKbNc2DnQ

Ringing in 2008 in Swanage, with bell-ringer actually calling the changes (great example):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVYFyx3DoCk

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