Tisha b'Av and Shadow

I know bupkes about astrology, or about the anagramatic permutations of Hebrew G!dnames developed by early-Modern mystics (and popularly known via Myla Goldberg's Bee Season). But I have friends who know about these things, and who assert that this time we call the Three Weeks is a period when our (the Jews'? everyone's?) vantage in the cosmos runs sort of energetically backwards. It certainly is a challenging time: last year the Gaza disengagement, this year Lebanon and the Federation shooting.

Having our outlook crossed up or flipped around, or otherwise upset, is a hardship; but it is also an opportunity, to be shocked out of stale patterns of thinking into B"H a more complete, truer sense of vision. On Tisha b'Av we ritualize this by laying tefillin, the Jewgear for consciousness-raising, not in the morning but in the afternoon when the sun is on the opposite horizon. For those of us west of Jerusalem, this puts the sun at our backs for the Tefillin-enhanced Amidah of Tisha b'Av.

My first reading of that ritual is: Tisha b'Av is for seeing the shadow, with all of the psychospiritual implications you care to draw from that. I think that's a pretty good encapsulation of the spirit of Tisha b'Av as I know it. But it really only works that way for the Western Diaspora.

Here are my questions, then: Is Tisha b'Av afternoon tefillin a Western Diaspora practice, or does it originate in the Babylonian Exile? If the latter, then who can help me make sense of the practice from an east-of-Jerusalem perspective?

Our fasting should be for heightened vision and the opening of Redemption!