THE PRAGUE ZODIAC

The book The Prague Zodiac is a story of two men, the elderly Guide and a twenty-seven-year-old youth, who walk together through Prague and, at the same time, through the depths of the human soul. Their walk takes a whole year – it unfolds according to the year cycle of the Sun, in the rhythm of twelve signs of zodiac between the spring equinox of one year and the spring equinox of the following one. And namely, they walk in a direct connection with the cross constellation of five Prague churches – of St Stephan, St Kliment, the former church of Ss Philip and Jacob, the cathedral of St Vitus and the rotunda of the Holy Cross – oriented according to the positions of the Sun at the sunset of the summer solstice and at the sunrise at the winter solstice that create a sort of stone calendar under Prague’s surface, reflecting the motions of the Sun in the sky itself and dividing the terrain of Prague into four sectors, corresponding to four seasons of year, and respectively into twelve months: the twelve signs of zodiac.

 

As for the astronomical-technical basis, the book is inspired by the work of Milan Špůrek Praga Mysteriosa (published by Eminent publishing in 1996) who was the first to point to the mentioned churches’ constellation and to their astro-symbolical connections. It might seem, from the title, that the primary crux of the book Prague Zodiac is astrology. However, the book muses upon the zodiac-- imprinted into the genome of the town as a mirror of the starry sky above it - as upon a symbolical communication space in which the physical becomes spiritual, outer becomes inner, objective becomes subjective. A space in which the aforementioned twenty-seven-year old man, experiencing a fundamental life crisis and being simply lost in himself - while accompanied by his Guide, a Knower of Prague’s mystical subsurface, as well as a reflection of the youth’s higher Self - walks through the seemingly lifeless stone of the ancient city, as if on a journey through the living tissue of his own heart. A journey where he discovers both the wide open Universe and himself, right there, within the recesses and streets of Prague herself.

 

And so the walk through the Prague Zodiac is an existential pilgrimage of a human individual through the stream of life who, despite his limitation by time and space, despite the negligibility of his fate, reaches up towards the very heart of all being and tries to touch it with the hands of his own soul: with an aim to attain his essential happiness, the full experience of himself, and, on the palm of the infinite starry sky, being touched by the palm of the Prague Zodiac, in spite of the insignificance of his minute existence, to discover his true, universal meaning and life orientation.

 

The search proceeds while walking through Prague, conversing in detail about Prague’s buildings and the related historic events. However, the Guide’s goal is not to “inform” his partner and listener about history, but rather to lead his protégé through history and all forms. Through and through, from one side onto the other, as through a screen, a divider, a wall and a theatrical set  – beyond which there is full, essential experience unfolding, the full, essential experience of the surrounding world and of his own, individual, personal (and trans-personal) humanity at the same time. And this all still sparkling through Prague as such, which, in the manner of a mysteriously transcended Threshold, turns from being an indifferent object separate from humans into a vividly sensed subject and an essential part of his own being.

 

If the searching man perceives this city, in which he was born and has lived for all his life, in a very remote way at the beginning of the book, despite the city’s curious beauty, as if it was a mere scenic scenery of his inner confusion, of his personal disorientation, hovering therefore with its age-old houses, bridges, palaces and gardens in half-transparent images above a dark-grey wasteland of chaotic nothingness in his heart, like smoke, like Fata Morgana-- then sign by sign, he perceives Prague more and more essentially in the course of the book until he merges with its soul and with the Soul of All at its end.