Welcome to the April 2019 Good Friday Full Moon in Libra, Aries Solar Festival, Passover and Easter Cosmic Weather Forecast. Warm greetings from South Florida from your editors, Jane Sherry and Curtis Lang.
This week we celebrate the annual victory of the Sun during springtime festivities, and this supports our efforts to prepare ourselves for a new cycle of spiritual growth. We honor the love and wisdom of the Blessed Mother and the power found in overcoming the limitations of ego through self-sacrifice personified by Christ Consciousness.
We reaffirm that this Divine loving wisdom and the ability to transcend our egoistic personality is present within each of us and we celebrate that reality during this Full Moon festival.
Stainglass of Jeju Island Church in Korea; Isaiahk [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)]
The April 19 full moon at 7:12 am EDT occurs at 29°06′ Libra coincides with the second Aries Solar Festival in a row, and with the Jewish Feast of Passover beginning on sunset that same day, followed by Easter Sunday. For a beautiful deep dive into the esoteric spiritual meaning of the Passover Feast, please see our article Passover 2019: Group Empowerment Through Self-Sacrifice, which contains a very important message about the transition between the Fossil Fuel Age and the new Solar Age called the Anthropocene.
The Cosmic Weather patterns prominent during the latter half of April are dominated by a mutable T-Square with Mars in Gemini, Jupiter in Sagittarius, and Neptune in Pisces. The Mutable T-square contains a vast reservoir of energy, but there is difficulty in finding focus and in directing that energy toward a clear goal and a well-defined purpose. The end result is often that we are caught between conflicting demands, or embroiled in seemingly unresolvable conflicts that dissipate the energy in a torrent of emotional turmoil, mental upheaval and wasted effort.
The challenge is to establish clear goals and priorities, and to direct our energies very clearly and carefully. This Full Moon issues a clarion call, asking that we clarify our plans for the future to avoid wasting precious resources. Now is the time to review our plans, consolidate, minimize, reorganize, rectify and restore a balance among conflicting demands on our time, energy, money and emotional equilibrium. All these activities are harmonious with the energies of Libra, and will find substantial support during what could be a chaotic period of time.
This late degree Libra Full Moon is opposed by Uranus in the early degrees of Taurus, conjunct the Sun in the last degree of Aries. Uranus is the planet of electrifying change, emotional turmoil and mental breakthroughs, so this week is a time of dramatic and unexpected events, full of symbolic meaning.
As I write this newsletter on Tuesday morning, the fire at Notre Dame cathedral has reduced the interior of the 850 year old monument to smoldering rubble. The fire broke out yesterday, the same day that French President Macros was slated to address the restive French people about their grievances, expressed in the gilets jaunes movement, which has spread like wildfire across the country. This is a good example of a Uranian event, symbolic of the destruction of the old order, and perhaps a portent of sweeping social change to come.
Notre Dame has needed a $40 million restoration for many years, but the French government has budgeted a mere $2.4 million per year for upkeep of one of Western civilization's definitive architectural marvels, one of Christianity's most sacred sites, and a must-see tourist destination for 13 million people every year.
"Broken gargoyles and fallen balustrades had been replaced by plastic pipes and wooden planks," according to an article in The New York Times by Michael Kimmelman. "Flying buttresses had been darkened by pollution and eroded by rainwater. Pinnacles had been propped up by beams and held together with straps. In some places, limestone crumbled at a finger's touch."
This year the periodic attempts to affix a band aid to Notre Dame's deep structural problems may have been the proximate cause of the conflagration according to preliminary reports.
This is remarkably synchronous with the symbolic meaning of Tarot Trump XVI, The Falling Tower of the House of God. Undermined from below, and suddenly struck from above by a Uranian flash of lightning, the House of God crumbles, as highly abstracted figures fall from a great height into an inferno.
This indicates a situation where life changes have been postponed for too long as a result of procrastination, insufficient energy, or willful denial of reality. As a consequence the entire structure of one's life collapses in an emotional firestorm of forced transformation.
We have all seen the iconic images of the Notre Dame spire collapsing into the inferno raging within the doomed cathedral. The parallel with The Tower is all too obvious. By postponing needed renovations, those in charge of the cathedral, the state of France and the Vatican, have created the conditions responsible for this disaster.
The conflagration of Notre Dame represents the apocalyptic destruction of one of Western Civilization's iconic architectural monuments and one of the world's most well known sacred sites, venerated by Christians and pagans alike.
"The Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris was built on a site which in Roman Lutetia is believed to have been occupied by a pagan temple, thence by a Romanesque church, the Basilica of Saint Étienne, built between the 4th century and 7th century," according to Wikipedia.
The destruction of Notre Dame symbolizes the stagnation and possible sudden electrifying destruction of the legacy of Western civilization in the 21st century as we enter the Anthropocene Era, the aeon of climate catastrophes, through neglect of the treasures we have received as our heritage.
For France, the Notre Dame inferno symbolizes the structural rot of the political status quo, which has created rampant inequality and prepared the way for nationwide rebellion on a scale that France has not seen since 1968. For France, the opposition between individualism and me-first winner take all capitalism, symbolized by the sign of Aries, and France's traditional social welfare system, symbolized by the sign of Libra, is glaring and obvious.
Nor is the sudden, Uranian destruction limited to Paris, or to a Christian monument. The AL-AQSA Mosque, the third-holiest site in the Muslim world, caught fire at the same time as the sudden inferno gutted Notre Dame. Although there was significant damage to portions of the mosque that are 2,000 years old, the damage appears to have been contained.
Berthold Werner [Public domain], courtesy of Wikimedia.
"The mosque is located in close proximity to historical sites significant in Judaism and Christianity, most notably the site of the Second Temple, the holiest site in Judaism," Wikimedia explains. "As a result, the area is highly sensitive, and has been a flashpoint in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict."
On a symbolic level, the clash of civilizations between the Christian and Moslem worlds clearly threatens to incinerate the best and highest traditions and spiritual values in both cultures. On a symbolic level, on a global scale, these conflagrations are a warning to us all to seek peace between nations, cultures and religions or face unacceptable destruction.
These fiery omens are a warning not to postpone the expensive and vital work needed to address the problem of a warming planet, that threatens all peoples with civilizational death by fire and water. It is very meaningful that in the Tarot card The Tower, lightning brings fire from above, from the air itself, and destruction emanates from the mouth of Leviathan, the giant sea beast depicted on the bottom of the card, bringing destruction to the base of the tower from beneath the waves.
On a personal level, it is up to all of us this Full Moon weekend to search our lives, our hearts and minds, and determine what crucial values and spiritual traditions we have neglected to nurture, and to resolve to take proactive steps to renew our commitment to our highest principles, to honor our broad social connections and our debts to society as a whole, and to dedicate ourselves anew to the promptings of our highest, spiritual intuition and guidance.
In fact taking some quiet time this Full Moon weekend to restore ourselves by working on our own spiritual practice, whatever that may be, is the perfect antidote to the inflammatory, hyper-emotional energy stream that has dominated this week, this year and last year as well.
Jane thinks "this is a painful symbol of the end of both matriarchal and patriarchal cultures and a sign of the painful birth of a truly new era of balanced sexual energies on this planet. Hopefully the new era will be one where all life will be valued, culture and art will have more importance than endless economic growth, and love can flourish replacing the seemingly endless Thanatos urges of humankind. Today we offer our prayers for this hoped for outcome, calling upon the Sacred to heal the wounded heart of the world,. We ask for special blessings for the healing of the wounded heart of Paris and the burning conflict engulfing Jerusalem."
This Full Moon highlights the opposition between Sun in Aries and Moon in Libra for the second month in a row, highlighting the importance of this dichotomy for our consideration.
Aries is the sign of self-empowerment, resolute determination and individuation, while Libra is a sign of relationship, diplomacy, and dynamic equilibrium, especially social equilibrium, or more broadly, social justice.
Often it is necessary to sacrifice some degree of individual self-determination and certain selfish motivations in order to achieve social justice through the art of balanced relationships. Yet that self-sacrifice by individuals within a group can result in group empowerment by facilitating the achievement of group goals that could never be achieved by individuals acting strictly in their own self-interest.
The Easter Festival of Love and Light
Easter is the first Full moon Solar Festival of spring and the first of three Spring Festivals occurring at the Aries, Taurus, and Gemini Solar Festivals. These festivals were instituted by the Tibetan Ascended Master Dwaj Khul and given to humanity in the middle of the 20th century through the telepathic stenography of Alice Bailey and others in the Theosophical Spiritual Tradition.
These three Full Moon Solar festivals incorporate elements from Mystery School teachings of both East and West, drawing from Hindu, Jewish, Buddhist, and Christian Esoteric traditions. These three Solar Festivals are intended to be a focus for spiritual development for humanity around the world, based upon the yearly seasonal cycles in co-ordination with the rhythms of the Sun and Moon, and the stellar entities that inhabit the Plane of the Ecliptic, the Zodiac, far beyond our Solar System.
During these three Spiritual Festivals, humanity unites with the Earthly Elementals and with Angelic presences, all presiding over the structure and growth of mineral, vegetal and animal kingdoms, uniting human beings with the Web of Life on our blue-green planetary home.
Humanity, united with the Elementals and Angels associated with planet Earth, illuminates the physical and subtle realms with energies of love and light during these three Global Festivals, and the Spiritual Hierarchy, in turn, pours forth vast waves of healing energy along all the colors of the Seven Rays, directed toward the Earth, with the goal of accelerating the spiritual progress of all sentient (and non-sentient) beings in our realm, with the specific goal of supporting humanity on our Ascension Path toward Unity Consciousness here in our physical bodies.
Easter celebrates an intensely personal moment, the self-sacrifice of the Spiritual Master Jesus Christ, who achieved his own spiritual liberation through this selfless act of service to humanity. Christ blazed a trail to spiritual heights for those who choose to follow his example. Aries personalities, of course, are the trail-blazers par excellence of the Zodiac.
This supreme act of spiritual generosity thus had immense spiritual implications for the entire community of human beings. Libra personalities are considered to be concerned with the well-being of the community as much or more than their own, so the death and resurrection of Christ exemplifies the highest Aries and Libra virtues during springtime, and heralds the Victory of Light over the dark seasons that preceded this one.Good Friday, the day Jesus Christ was crucified, falls each year just before Easter Sunday. We rejoice and remember the day Christ rose from the dead, appearing in his Luminous Light-Body to Mary Magdalene. According to Christian Wisdom Teachings, the sacrifice and resurrection of Christ balanced the Cosmic Scales, and brought forgiveness for all human beings for original sin, which had weighed heavily on the souls of all incarnated humanity for long ages of time.
This "original sin" was the sin of plunging so deeply into material reality that humanity lost its connection with Higher Self, Higher Mind and Higher Purpose, becoming enmeshed in the illusory world-view created by the egoistic personality and mistaking that egoistic world-view for the true reality, which includes but also transcends the reality we can apprehend with our five senses. Christ exemplifed the virtues of the spiritually evolved Aries personality, which puts personal integrity and one's own spiritual guidance above all other considerations.
Christ's Self-consciousness was tempered by a Libran concern for the well-being of the community. In fact, Christ sacrificed his life to create an energetic bridge that would allow humanity to re-connect with Spiritual Realms by following Christ's teachings and connecting with the energy of the Cosmic Christ.
In the 21st century, the worldview of rational materialism has come to dominate humanity's consciousness. It is more important than ever for Lightworkers and spiritual seekers to seek to Unify their consciousness with the energy stream initiated by Jesus Christ through the Mystery of his death and resurrection.
In this way all of us can experience Unity with our Higher Selves, Higher Mind and Higher Purpose, and transcend the self-imposed limitations of the egoistic personality, with its narrow, individualized perspective.
Easter is also a Festival of World-Renewal. Esoteric Christian teachings tell us that the death and resurrection of Christ infused the energy of the Cosmic Christ into all the realms of creation, from the lowest Underworld to the Earthly plane of existence, and upward to the highest heavenly peaks.
In the 21st century humanity is required to Unify consciousness with the Web of Life on planet Earth, while simultaneously subordinating the egoistic personality to the guidance of Higher Self, Higher Mind and Higher Purpose.
At this time of the Easter Festival, something Divine seeks to restore equilibrium between humanity and the natural environment of Mother Earth. Christ is the perfected Aries personality, the “Lamb of God”, whose sacrifice takes away the “sins” or “karma” of the world, wiping out debts in a Spiritual Grand Jubilee, and preparing the way for the spiritual liberation of humanity, just as the sacrifice of the “Lamb of God” at Passover heralded the Exodus of the Israelites into freedom!
Something Divine seeks to bring peace to the warring classes of humanity.Something so sacred, so subtle, yet so powerful that in its global balancing act it is both disruptive & healing at the same time.
At the time of Easter, we celebrate the blending of the energies of Aries and Libra. Esoterically, Aries represents the egoistic personality, and Libra the Cosmic Equilibrium of the Higher Self.
Meditation Practice for the Easter Festival of Resurrection
At the moment of his Death, Christ unified his own Body of Light with the etheric body of the planet, permanently infusing the energy of transcendent Self into the Earth’s aura, according to clairvoyant and Esoteric Christian spiritual teacher Rudolf Steiner.
After his death, and a descent into the underworld, Jesus Christ appeared to Mary Magdalene on Easter Sunday in his immortal, subtle energy body. Thus the Resurrection of Christ, which we celebrate this Easter Sunday, is the Feast of the appearance of the Immortal Light Body of Christ walking upon the Earth. Easter is the Feast of the manifestation of Holy Spirit within the four elements of the material creation.
Esoteric Christians know of a special mantra that encodes the entirety of these Wisdom Teachings of Jesus Christ in a few syllables, a mantra that invokes the energy of the Cosmic Christ for protection, for healing, and for sharing with those in need, those who suffer, those who are in danger of death.
This mantra was given to Jane and myself by Bishop John Rankin of the Liberal Catholic Church in the early Nineteen Eightes, when Jane and I were doing healing work with individuals infected with the HIV-AIDS virus. Bishop Rankin told us to use the mantra for our own protection and for healing others. We have found over the years that this powerful mantra can be chanted aloud when clearing spaces of detrimental energies, or when performing healings and clearings of individuals in need. You can also say the mantra silently over and over as you meditate and in this way bring your own aura into resonance with the energy field of the Cosmic Christ.
Here is the mantra.
Invoke the secret name of Christ. Chant the following to yourself over and over, "Yod, Heh, Vau, Heh, Yod, Heh, Shin, Vau, Heh", pronounced "Yod, Hey, Vow, Hey, Yod, Hey, Shin, Vow, Hey". These Hebrew letters stand for JHVH or Jehovah, and JHSVH (Jeheshua or Jesus). The four letters comprising the name of Jehovah, YHVH, stand for the four elements, fire, water, air and earth. The fifth element, which is spirit, is called Shin. When you put Shin, or spirit in the middle of the four elements, into YHVH, you get Jeheshua, or Jesus.
Jesus indeed infused spirit into the material world through his Divine presence and ability to sacrifice everything, even his own body, for love. So chant these nine letters over and over to yourself as you meditate and breathe deeply and slowly. In this way, you can attract Christ consciousness, the spirit of Jesus, into your aura, your mind, and your heart.
Subsequent to this great spiritual victory of Jesus the Christ, on Good Friday and Easter Sunday, Christ infused the material elements with the energy of Spririt.
Connecting with the Cosmic Christ while out in nature at Easter time is a powerful spiritual practice that connects us to both Spirit and Nature simultaneously.
At Easter, the energy of Christ Consciousness is accessible to all aspirants through meditation upon the beautiful forms of nature, through immersion in the elements of nature, through communion with the sky, the sea, the rivers, mountains, trees, and flowers.
Sit quietly in your garden, walk slowly and thoughtfully through a park, meditate in a forest or by a running stream, and speak directly to Christ. Begin by saying the Mantra of the Cosmic Christ aloud or silently until your mind is still and peaceful.
Say his name, give thanks for his Blessing upon the Earth, and give thanks to the Earth for nurturing the spiritual evolution of human beings, and your own personal evolution.
Whether or not you are a Christian, if you have faith, if you quiet your mind, and if your intent is pure, you can hear Christ speaking directly to you, and experience a moment of Unity with the Risen Christ impulse.
Ask and it shall be made known to you, make a request and it shall be granted to you, open your heart and the chains of ego will fall away. Ask for your freedom and you shall be freed. This is Christ’s Easter promise.
Connecting with the Divine Mother at Eastertime
This is a season especially sacred to the Divine Mother. Around the time of the Spring Equinox, in mid-March and through April, the Divine Feminine is adored as Cybele, the Great Mother Gaia also known as Rhea and by many other names. In Japan & China, this is the season to worship Kwan Yin, the Lady of Compassion. Kwan Yin is known to many in the East and West for her unselfish action upon reaching the final spiritual goal of enlightenment. She refused her own personal Liberation to become a Bodhisattva--one who works for the liberation of all before accepting it for herself. Kwan Yin brings her Compassionate Service to all in the hopes that their souls will evolve & receive liberation from the endless cycles of despair. Call upon her in your hour of need and she will respond, for that is her nature, her service, and her highest desire.
It is no accident that Our Lady is Worshipped at this time of year, when the Life Forces are rising, when the chi is evident in the first golden hues to paint the weeping willow branches, when the birds' song serenades you at dawn, when the first robin is sighted, when animals & people alike mate & seek union. The fecundity of our fields, farms, hearths & bodies is very much present in our consciousness, our daily tasks & all around us for "those with eyes to see” and hearts to hear.
Now is the time to practice walking meditation. Go out into nature & observe the earth as it awakens. In the northern hemisphere, and especially in the Northeast US snowbells appear, daffodils are poking through the cold ground, alliums emerge from hiding, the iris shows us her blades & the first shoots of purifying spring plants make their appearance, bursting through the sometimes still frozen ground.
Our slumbering winter selves need spring herbs: hyssop, angelica, mullein & dandelion as they too begin their springtime emergence from the awakening earth to help enliven our bodies. Time to purge the accumulations of sloth, the energetic residue of the heavy foods of winter & to emerge from the gestation of the inner worlds of wintery contemplation. Now is the time to rejoice as we move into the increasing sunlight, feast upon early spring green shoots & move our bodies with renewed vigor.
Lightworkers, meditators, and all those who are sensitive to world events have also been connecting to the sometimes turbulent energies we feel around us, not just from spring's energy breaking up our frozen places, but also from the broader changes our Garden Planet & Humanity are undergoing at this point in Gaia's Soul evolution.
This spring, at Satya Center, our hearts are full – we sense increased planetary sorrow when we hear about & think of our sisters & brothers, our grandmothers & grandfathers and all of our children around the world who emerge from winter without enough to eat, with no place to sleep, no fields to plow or small piece of earth in which to grow healthy food.
Now, during this Festival Season celebrating both Christ and the Divine Mother, more than ever we feel the need for the re-emergence of the energy of the Divine Lovers and the need to usher in a time of balanced male & female relations. (Those who want to understand more about the ancient Wisdom School teachings of the Divine Lovers, and their significance to the New Aquarian Age, can read our article, “The New Age of the Divine Lovers”.)
The last gasp of the patriarchal war-mentality of the Age of Empire with its emphasis on wielding 'power-over' others is fast coming to an end. More and more, the ugly face of Imperial greed shows itself naked to the world. It seems that the wealthy among us are waging war against the rest of humanity and upon Mother Nature herself in an endless quest for more and more profits. Greed seemingly takes the upper hand in political decisions to divert water from people and gardens to industrial farming operations that deplete the soil and produce nutritionless food, in political decisions to displace thousands to create dams that will power environmentally unsound industries in the Third World, in the power of unscrupulous landowners in communities large and small to blast gravel mines deep within the earth, in the willingness of nations large and small to wage wars to usurp natural resources -- the list is endless.
Unfortunately, this greed leads to assaults by the predatory and warrior classes upon the great bulk of humankind and upon our environment. In this undeclared class war, many casualties & horrors are perpetrated every day. This class war cannot continue unabated without destroying our human civilization around the world.
The fallout from this unrelenting war of the greedy against the rest of the world is spiritually and factually related to the tumultuous changes taking place both politically & environmentally across the globe, from both human created disasters to Earth changes taking place in order to cleanse the many toxic assaults made upon our Mother Earth.
However, there is something else going on, sometimes more subtly than the cacophony of war & greed that seems so overwhelming. Something is taking place in the auras & the hearts & minds of many of us as well as in the etheric body of the earth itself; something which acts to bring the unbalanced state of human existence into balance.