Welcome to the start of the Fall season! Here in South Florida, Jane and I can detect micro-changes in the temperature, humidity, and subtle energy around us.
We can enjoy sitting outside on the patio in the evenings now that the onslaught of mosquitos and other insectoid flyers has abated. At night the temperature is a couple of degrees cooler, humidity dips and a wispy breeze creates the fall feeling we've been longing for. The surface of our pool is no longer coated with the dead bodies of tiny no-seeums every morning, so we no longer need to spend five minutes using the net to scoop them out every day. That's a big relief!
We feel blessed that we have had nine months of steady production from our collard greens, and we look forward to the fall growing season! Frangipani is blossoming, and our potted orchids are starting to bud and put out new leaves, in preparation for their late fall growth spurt, but the ground orchids have been blooming for more than six months. Jane and her new garden helper, Chris, have cleared out the summer undergrowth. It's time to add more organic soil, biochar, compost, and mulch everywhere. We must spray neem on the plants that are most challenged by this summer's fungal outbreak, root nematodes and the attacks of rapidly multiplying pests we have endured. Then we'll fertilize and plant herbs and vegetables.
Jane's Boca Garden Where Ground Orchids Bloom Ten Months a Year
Autumn Equinox 2018, Celebration of the Libra Solar Festival
The Autumnal Equinox occurs this year on Saturday, September 22, at 9:55pm EDST, as the Sun enters Libra, and we celebrate the Libra Solar Festival.
Your Editors, Jane and Curtis, celebrate their own Wedding Anniversary this weekend. We chose this autumnal festival for our wedding day thirty two years ago because of its deep spiritual significance.
For us, the New Age of Aquarius is symbolized by the dynamic equilibrium of the Divine Lovers in ecstatic union of all 7 bodies, a physical, etheric, astral, mental and spiritual union. The waning Age of Pisces is represented by the image of the Pieta, grieving Mother Mary cradling the dead and crucified Jesus Christ in her arms.
The Age of Pisces was an age that required physical sacrifice even unto death for those who set upon the Ascension Path of spiritual development.
The Age of Aquarius is an age that requires the balancing of masculine and feminine in joyous union as a prerequisite for a two part process of spiritual development that includes mutual shared Ascension practices, and shared rituals of manifestation to re-sacralize Planet Earth and restore this battered, scarred, imbalanced planet to health and harmony. For more on this topic, read our article entitled The New Age of the Divine Lovers.
The Autumn Equinox is a day of approximately equal day and equal night, and the day to celebrate equality of the sexes, and of the masculine and feminine forces within each human being. A fine day for a wedding indeed!
The knowledge of the Equinoxes, attributed by many scholars to pre-literate Neolithic societies, and evidenced by structures such as Stonehenge, rests upon very careful, long-term study of the heavens and a sophisticated understanding of the Earth’s shape and movements throughout the year.
The Earth wobbles in its orbit around the Sun. This is the source of our seasonal cycles.
The North Pole of the Earth leans toward the Sun for half a yearly orbit, then leans away from the Sun for the rest of our Earthly year.
The Northern Hemisphere experiences spring and summer as the north tilts toward the sun, and fall and winter as the north tilts away from the sun.
Twice a year, on the Vernal Equinox and the Autumnal Equinox, the Earth offers half its face to the Sun, and day and night are of equal length.
At the Spring Equinox, traditional communal spiritual festivals celebrate the appearance of first flowers after the long dreary winter season. Communities work together to plant crops in the Northern hemisphere, and an outpouring of Universal Life Force energy expresses itself in dancing, singing and free spirited sexuality.
The Autumn Equinox occurs as the Sun enters the sign of Libra, symbolized by the figure of a masked Goddess of Justice, behind a scale balancing the Aleph and the Omega, with a sword in her hands, depicted in Tarot Trump VIII, called Balance or Adjustment. This card is often associated with weddings and other contracts in mundane cartology. The spiritual keynote for this seasonal festival is balance, and balance in nature always refers to a dynamic equilibrium.
Libra, ruled by Venus, is a transpersonal sign, and its interests transcend individual consciousness, emphasizing diplomacy and co-operation. It's appropriate that as fall commences, communities work together to bring in the year's harvest in the Northern hemisphere, and rejoice together, celebrating the abundance their co-operation has manifested.
Archangel Michael is the presiding angel of the fall season, and at the Equinox, Michael guides Earthly developments as energy rises in human beings to the upper chakras. For Esoteric Christianity and the Western tradition of alchemy, the autumnal meteor showers, peaking this year on October 9, are a celestial sign of energetic transformation. The meteors, associated with the element of iron, signify Michael's iron sword of purification, which dispels the sulfurous influence of Universal Life Force Energy active in humanity's lower chakras during the season of summer.
For most human beings now alive on planet Earth, the primary task this lifetime is to elevate the life force energy, chi, or prana, from the third to the fourth chakra, from the belly to the heart, and to open the heart. The heart chakra is the seat of transpersonal consciousness, the doorway to inner knowledge of the web of life and the seat of compassion for others and for all life. This is our Ascension practice. In this practice, we can transcend the limits of our egoistic personality and attain the enlightenment that accompanies self-transformation.
Let us meditate together for a moment on the life cycle of the butterfly -- this perennial image of successful spiritual evolution. It is no coincidence that the Sabian Symbol for the first degree of Libra, and the Autumn Equinox, is Transfiguration: In a Collection of Perfect Specimens of Many Biological Forms, A Butterfly Plays the Beauty of Its Wings, Its Body Impaled by a Fine Dart.
The earthbound caterpillar explores its garden world, searches for plant life that will fuel its growth, feeds upon the plants around it, and in its heedless hunger can debilitate or destroy the plants that are the source of its own sustenance and shelter. At a certain point in its evolution, the caterpillar turns inward, and sacrifices the form and life it has known previously. After a period of gestation and hibernation, in retreat from the outside world, the caterpillar re-emerges as a beautiful butterfly.
The ephemeral butterfly has a Higher Purpose in the world than merely to feed and perpetuate its own species. Empowered to soar above the plants upon which it had previously struggled to inch its way, the butterfly spreads the pollen of the plants it visits, extending plant lives and habitat rather than threatening them, as it did when it visited them in its caterpillar incarnation.
The butterfly does not eat plants, it drinks nectar, reproduces, and soars above the garden. The butterfly has undergone a spiritual evolution as well as a physical metamorphosis.
Butterly in Jane's Roxbury Road Garden, Claverack, New York
This amazing creature, which began life as a garden predator and pest, has become one of the most essential garden helpers and one of the most giving of garden creatures.
Thus the butterfly has long been considered a model for human psychic development among mystery schools of both the East and the West.
Christian symbolism depicts the caterpillar to butterfly moment of spiritual elevation in the story of Christ’s Transfiguration in the Garden of Gethsemane. When Christ was impaled by a ray of light from the Heavenly Father, illuminating his mind and heart, he foresaw the path that lay before him. At that moment Christ understood the sacrifice that was being prepared for him, the nature of his death, and the gravity of the work he must undertake in preparation for his glorious Resurrection.
The image of the butterfly impaled by a pin pictures the elevation of the individual existence to the realm of archetype, the expansion of the individuated time-bound egocentric personality into Cosmic, timeless, Unity Consciousness.
This moment is at one and the same time the Dark Night of the Soul and the antechamber of Eternity.
The initiate must surrender completely to the path of Spirit, and in that surrender lies illumination. The very first step on the Ascension path is Surrender.
The Autumn Equinox is the moment for that surrender -- the turning point of the year when energies that had entered the very roots of creation, supporting the summer growth of the animal and vegetal kingdoms, now turn upward on the Ascension path.
On the Autumn Equinox, Archangel Uriel, Master of Universal Life Force Energy, who has been directing and energizing the growth cycle of plants and animals during the summer months, surrenders his position as Seasonal Archangel to Archangel Michael, who comes armed with subtle fire and a sword of iron, to redirect the Cosmic Forces from the Stars and the Life Force Energy welling up from deep within the Earth toward the support of accelerated spiritual growth.
Energy which has been energizing the three lower chakras during the earth's energetic exhalation during summer, now begins to stimulate the heart, the throat, third eye and crown. At the autumnal equinox we enter the season of increasing darkness, when the subtle senses must become ever more acute to guide us ever upward toward our lofty yearly spiritual goal -- giving birth to the Divine within ourselves.
That rebirth is scheduled for the period of the Winter Solstice, and much work must be done to purify and attune the physical, emotional, mental and energetic vehicles of the human body in preparation for that new birth.
Take this opportunity at the Autumn Equinox to call upon Archangel Michael. Ask Michael to guide you along your own personal path of Spirit. Ask Michael for protection from all energies that would impede you on your way. Ask Michael to remove all obstacles, inner and outer, from your Ascension path.
May you Ascend safely and freely, with the aid of the Archangel of Autumn, whom we honor at this time of year.
The Autumn Equinox is always about balancing social and individual needs and priorities, and about balancing the energy of male and female within each one of us. So this is the perfect time to take a step back from impulsive action, meditate to attain clear vision, and then be sure that your intended actions reflect the best and highest good for all involved. Share your blessings with those in need this Autumn Equinox week and you will align yourself with the most positive energy of the moment.
To protect yourself against ambient conflicted energies, astral glamours and social confusion, call upon Archangel Michael, the presiding Angel of the Fall season. We offer you a beautiful Archangel Michael meditation that will jumpstart your Autumn Equinox Festival.
For us, the Autumn Equinox is above all a Festival of the Divine Lovers in a state of harmony and dynamic balance. This alchemical moment of the year, a time of transformation, purification, and the rising of the Universal Life Force energy into the higher chakras, celebrates the dynamic equilibrium precipitated by the sacred marriage of the Divine Lovers, and the establishment of a New Age civilization based upon the balance of male and female principles in a Union designed to serve the needs of the lovers, their families, the greater community, and Mother Earth herself.
Conscious intent is very important in all spiritual undertakings for very specific energetic reasons. In terms of partnerships, it is necessary for both partners to have a conscious alignment at the levels of the astral and mental bodies. Shared dreams, aspirations and spiritual beliefs provide the container for love shared between you. Without this energetic container, you have no fuel with which to create a shared future, and you cannot create a shared store of vitality in the form of loving energies that will help your relationship to grow and flower over time.
For more information on the seven energy bodies and how to know if you are compatible with your lover on all seven levels of being, read our article entitled The New Age of the Divine Lovers.
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| Self Portrait, Photo by Jane Sherry |
Subtle energy is the creator of the forms that are used as templates of future creations, and thus it is these subtle energy templates that govern the evolution and growth of living beings on Earth. Biologist Rupert Sheldrake calls these energy templates morphogenetic fields. The embryo's morphogenetic field contains the template for the adult.
The treasures of the Earth, such as gems found deep in caves, are created by beings such as gnomes and other nature spirits, who fashion the energetic forms for these marvelous crystalline beings to grow into their mature splendor. Before any form can be manifested in the material world, the energetic or subtle form must be created first in the spiritual world.
For human beings, the practice of loving visualization is the engine of co-creation, the fuel for manifestation of harmony and balance in the world. Love is not a feeling or an instinctual drive; love is the energetic circumscription of sacred space. Lovers circumscribe sacred space through conscious shared intent, and this space then can be filled with energies of love and light from the Divine Source, activating energetic forms created by shared intent, which eventually crystallize into the physical, material world. In this way lovers co-create new ways of living, new types of relationships, new myths and archetypes for a New Aeon.
Jane and I are enjoying shared spiritual practices, rituals, and meditations this Equinox week, and we are concentrating on visualizing everything we want to manifest together in the coming season, for our benefit and for the benefit of all those with whom we are connected in all of the three worlds. To obtain maximum benefit from this magical moment of seasonal alchemy, join together with a loved one, or with your community, or with Archangel Michael if you are solo this week, and focus on what you most want to see manifest in the world during the coming months. Infuse your visualization with the power of your ardent love for your life, for your many blessings, for the love of your life, for this beautiful planet, for your community, and for all sentient beings in the Three Worlds. This is the way miracles are born!
Full Moon in Aries Cosmic Weather Forecast
On Monday, September 24th, 2018 we have a Full Moon at 1°59’ degree Aries, opposed by the Sun at 1°59’ Aries, and both Sun and Moon are square Saturn in Capricorn, creating a tense T-square in Cardinal signs. Aries ruled Mars in Aquarius is square Uranus in Taurus and Venus in Scorpio, creating a conflicted T-square in Fixed signs.
Most of us will find that we have a strong drive to achieve our long term goals at this time, and we may also find that the current turbulent Cosmic Weather pattern puts seemingly immovable obstacles in our path, creating a great deal of stress and anxiety.
The Cardinal T-square resurfaces all the issues of the Grand Cardinal Cross decade we are currently still experiencing, and the Saturn-Moon Square can easily trigger a bout of depression as we encounter intractable problems and conflicts that have plagued us for years yet again.
The Fixed T-Square thwarts our attempts to work our will in the world (Mars), our desire to manifest that which we love in life (Venus) and all that we consider vital to transform the areas of life where we have become stuck or in a rut that no longer serves us (Uranus). The T-square can ignite a flaring rage if we cannot stay centered and grounded. Patience and self-discipline are required if we are to experience the positive side of these very powerful energies.
Resistance builds strength this Full Moon. Maintaining equilibrium requires dynamic adjustments to our lifestyles, life strategies and the tactics we use to manifest our desires in our world. If we can maintain our balance and use our will forces and mental concentration to focus and channel the strong energy created by the conflicts in the stars, the results can be uplifting. Now we are challenged to overcome fear, anxiety, anger, FOMO and depression and gather our will forces to precipitate a necessary breakthrough in all areas of our lives!
Tarot Trump VI: The Divine Lovers
The good news is that the stars support us in this task. The Moon in Aries is Sextile Mars in Aquarius, providing strength, courage, and eloquence so we can overcome Saturnine restrictions and fears, and channel the conflicted energies of the twin T-squares into constructive pursuits.
Saturn in Capricorn trine Uranus in Taurus supports efforts to overcome limitations and restrictions in your life and provides unanticipated opportunities to transcend limiting beliefs, relationships and situations that are currently causing you various kinds of grief. You may experience an Aha moment of insight or a creative realization that will reveal a path forward through the tangle of obstructions that have littered your path for a long time. The Saturn-Uranus trine will support efforts to make the change you want to see in the world in a methodical and step by step fashion rather than in a sudden burst of rapid transformation. This will allow you to build solid foundations for your dreams and manifest the stable, harmonious future you desire.
Jane and I send you all Love and Light, and we ask that you all receive the grace and guidance you require to achieve your fondest spiritual and material goals this Equinox and Full Moon Festival.
Meditation Moment: Remember by Joy Harlo
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Remember the sky that you were born under, know each of the star’s stories. Remember the moon, know who she is. Remember the sun’s birth at dawn, that is the strongest point of time. Remember sundown and the giving away to night. Remember your birth, how your mother struggled to give you form and breath. You are evidence of her life, and her mother’s, and hers. Remember your father. He is your life, also. Remember the earth whose skin you are: red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth brown earth, we are earth. Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them, listen to them. They are alive poems. Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the origin of this universe. Remember you are all people and all people are you. Remember you are this universe and this universe is you. Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you. Remember language comes from this. Remember the dance language is, that life is. Remember.
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Frangipani in Jane's Boca Garden