Celestial Fireworks, Spring Festivals of Light and Life
Welcome to the Pisces Solar Festival, Virgo Full Moon & Spring Equinox 2015 edition of the Satya Center Cosmic Weather Forecast.
Warm greetings from your Editor, Curtis Lang and your co-editor, Jane Sherry.
The path of healing is the antidote to the path of war. And March is the month most suited to begin a process of healing. For this is the month Archangel Raphael’s presence appears on planet Earth, and Raphael is above all the Archangel of healing. So this full moon is the ideal time to connect with Archangel Raphael and to seek healing for our personal problems, for human civilization as a whole, and, indeed for the environmental balance on planet Earth, which sustains us and is our true Mother.
Cosmic Weather Forecast
The Cosmic Weather Forecast for March presents a coruscation of celestial fireworks that will undoubtedly mark this month as the most conflicted, stressful and generally difficult month of the entire year. Yet at the same time, this month presents us with an opportunity for much-needed healing to begin on many levels of existence.
On Wednesday March 4, the day pagans celebrate the Feast of Rhiannon, the Celtic Moon goddess, Venus conjuncts Uranus, squares Pluto and Trines Jupiter, empowering Venus to break free from the grip of Plutonic, unconscious, underworld forces, and triggering the sudden, electrifying release of stress, tensions and repressed energies that have been long simmering beneath the surface of things.
This is a very volatile moment, energetically, which can coincide with disruptions in financial systems, escalation of geo-political conflicts, and extreme weather events.
This month’s full moon takes place on Thursday March 5, 2015 at 1:05 PM Eastern time, or 10:05 am here on the West Coast. It will be followed two weeks later by a total solar eclipse, simultaneous with the Spring Equinox.
At the time of the Full Moon, the Sun will be conjunct Chiron and Neptune, while making a sextile to Pluto, so these harmonious relationships point to the possibility of inspiration and spiritual guidance (Neptune) that can trigger the healing of long-standing wounds (Chiron) that have long resided in the unconscious (Pluto).
Nine hundred million Hindus celebrate the Spring Festival of Holi on Friday March 6, commemorating the victory of Lord Vishnu, Sustainer of the Universe, over the dark powers of Hiranyakashipu, the King of Demons, and this Festival of Light leads into the Hindu New Year Festival on March 21 of this year.
On March 20 we will experience a New Moon Solar Eclipse at 29 degrees of Pisces, on the morning of the same day that the Sun enters Aries, signaling the Spring Equinox.
This entire month of March represents the climax of the tumultuous, epochal energies of the Grand Cardinal Cross, which we have discussed at length in these newsletters the last several years. Although the series of outer planet aspects that mark the seven year long Cardinal Cross series end this month, their effects will continue throughout this year and beyond.
The Grand Cardinal Cross is associated with the breakdown of financial, political and other social structures on a global scale.
From January 2008 through March 16, 2015 the powerful outer planets Saturn, Uranus and Pluto have moved into hard aspects with one another, primarily within Cardinal signs of Capricorn, Cancer, Aries, and Libra.
From June 2012 through March 16, 2015, we have experienced a 33 month long waxing square between Pluto in Capricorn (the establishment, the plutocracy) and Uranus in Aries (the revolutionary). After mid-March of this year, these two planets will remain within one degree of being square to one another, and the tension and drama will undoubtedly continue worldwide.
The last time these outer planets were in a similar difficult series of aspects was in the period of 1928-1934, which marked the beginning of the Great Global Depression of the Twentieth Century, which created global economic and geo-political tensions that led directly to the Second World War.
The last seven years have seen the collapse of the global financial system followed by multi-trillion dollar bailouts of the world’s largest banks and investment firms, a global economic slowdown that has impoverished entire countries, including Greece, Spain, Italy, and Portugal, and seen the politics of austerity for the common people ascendant throughout the world.
This same period has seen the rise of a new class of world-spanning billionaires who have seized control of the political institutions in both developed and developing countries around the world, with the predictable result that there has been an unprecedented transfer of wealth from the 99% to the 1% who comprise the new global oligarchy. Beneath the surface, political and class tensions are rising, which could soon eclipse more traditional political divisions reflecting racial, religious or ethnic identities in competition with one another for resources and political power.
This increasing income inequality, combined with a much larger role for money in politics in America, has led to widespread talk in the United States about a “deficit of democracy”, in which the voices of the voters are drowned out by a tsunami of billionaire dollars pouring into the system.
Experts expect the Koch brothers to spend $790 million dollars during the 2016 election cycle, which is already starting up, an amount The New York Times estimates to be nearly as large, or larger than the expected expenditures of the Republican Party.
Money talks. It’s becoming a “one dollar one vote” society. America had been a “one person, one vote” society. In other words, our democratic institutions are dysfunctional.
In a statistics-rich and heavily researched September 2014 article published by Princeton University, written by Dr. Martin Gilens and Dr. Benjamin I. Page, the authors analyzed 1,779 policy outcomes in the United States. The two political scientists begin by asking the perennial political questions.
“Who governs?” ask Gilens and Page. “Who really rules? To what extent is the broad body of U.S. citizens sovereign, semisovereign, or largely powerless?”
Their findings? “Not only do ordinary citizens not have uniquely substantial power over policy decisions, they have little or no independent influence on policy at all. By contrast, economic elites are estimated to have a quite substantial, highly significant, independent impact on policy.”
I believe it. Give me $790 million dollars to spend in Washington and I guarantee you I’ll have a substantial impact on government policy too!
“In the United States, our findings indicate, the majority does not rule – at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes,” Gilens and Page conclude. “When a majority of citizens disagree with economic elites or with organized interests, they generally lose. . .Even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it. . .We believe that if policymaking is dominated by powerful business organizations and a small number of affluent Americans, then America’s claim to be a democratic society are seriously threatened.”
Democracy is under assault in the Eurozone as well, where governments of varied political parties have found that they are powerless to set basic fiscal, tax and monetary policies, or to make basic decisions about the funding of their social safety nets, because decisions made by the unelected Eurozone bureaucrats in Brussels trump the will of the people. Socialists, center-right and center-left parties in Greece, Spain, Ireland and Portugal have proven powerless in the face of austerity politics imposed by the German dominated European currency union and the European central bank.
Democratic elections in these highly advanced European countries are now more or less unnecessary since the elected officials have no real power to fulfill the will of their people, who have voted again and again for politicians who promised to tax the rich, stand up to corrupt financiers and bankers, provide relief to the besieged middle and lower classes, and generally force the costs of the multi-trillion dollar bank bailouts throughout the Eurozone to be borne, at least in part by the financial sector, the most wealthy investors, and corporations.
In the Middle East, entire nation-states have been transformed into zones of conflict with multiple parties engaging in civil conflicts with religious overtones financed and supplied by major regional and global powers.
This overt geo-political conflict and turmoil during the last seven years has led to the implosion of numerous nation-states in the Middle East, including Iraq, Libya and Syria, and to the simultaneous rise of ISIS, the most successful jihadist movement in recent history.
Not only are human social structures over-stressed but the Earth itself is protesting the excesses of Industrial Age human civilization.
Extreme weather events worldwide have fostered a widespread global awareness that greenhouse gas emissions created by the Industrial Age of Cheap Fossil Fuels have upset the delicate climate equilibrium that has provided humanity with a Goldilocks environment the last few tens of thousands of years.
People around the world have witnessed a growing list of spectacular systemic failures in every area of human civilization structured by large institutions, public and private, during the last seven years.
This is indeed the energetic signature of the Grand Cardinal Cross. The Cross is a turning point and a watershed moment which marks the end of the stability of the status quo in every area of social life, and this breakdown of the old order of things is causing conflict, fear, pain, confusion and suffering on a global scale. For we live in the first truly global society, and the institutions that support our global civilization are stressed to the maximum.
And, after seven years of the Grand Cardinal Cross, so are we. Jane and I have found that the Cross is impacting people on a personal level as well as on the transpersonal, social level.
Jane is a Cancer and I am a Capricorn, and we both have Saturn and Neptune in Libra, which is typical of our generation, so we have felt the effects of the Grand Cardinal Cross in exquisite detail, reverberating through every area of our lives.
Financial stress? The economic contraction has made it far more difficult for Jane and myself to earn a living from our Satya Center website, and I am sure that millions of other small business owners would tell you similar stories if you asked them.
Survival and health threats? We both have had numerous health issues, and we both have experienced the pain of caring for elders in decline who live far away, culminating in the death of both our fathers.
Spiritual and personal relationships crisis? We have also found ourselves re-evaluating our close relationships, and have seen friends, associates, fellow-spiritual seekers and teachers, and other loved ones disappear from our lives.
Legal and economic conflict initiated by aggressors seeking to expand their influence, power and financial gain at the expense of others? We have been assaulted by a variety of corporate predators, including patent trolls, voracious competitors who attempt to stretch the law to punish their rivals, and others. We now have legal representation in New York, Houston, and California, and our attorneys are among the top in their field nation-wide.
We have been stressed to the max, and now we are in need of healing.
That is the energy signature of the Grand Cardinal Cross, which upends existing relationships and stress-tests the very foundations of your life in every area of existence. The ideal end result of the process, of course, is to understand what no longer works for you and to begin to explore the new options available that will lead to healing and to the establishment of much more secure foundations in the future.
Jane and I have been traveling between New York and the San Francisco Bay Area the last year -- we spent about 2 ½ months in Manhattan and the rest of the year here in Antioch -- and we have seen the effects of climate change throughout the United States.
We’ve had extreme drought in California for the last four years, and there have been unprecedented winter storms in Chicago, New York and Boston every winter. Hurricane Sandy, we all remember. Last March in Manhattan it was about 20 degrees when we visited for two weeks, and there were 50 mile an hour winds on several occasions. This winter we were again in Manhattan for two weeks. We were there when they closed the New York subway system for the first time in history, and a series of storms brought seven feet of snow to Boston. Last month, it was the coldest February in New York history.
Over the last three years, there has been a Ridiculously Resilient Ridge of high pressure off the coast of California during the winter, which has pushed the jet stream far to the north, directing the winter storms that normally supply California with rain and snow into northern Canada, and then down through the Midwest into the South or across the Midwest to the Atlantic seaboard.
Water has been warming off the East Coast, and this has also been a factor in the “new normal” weather patterns in the United States. During winter the East Coast often experiences “nor’easters”, storms which come up the East Coast from the South, and because of warmer waters in the Atlantic, these storms have picked up a super-abundance of moisture which then falls as snow.
The Ridiculously Resilient Ridge has persisted this winter season, prompting New York weather guru Al Roker to comment that the extreme weather events in California and New York appear to be connected, and appear to be the result of ocean warming, which may have set up the Ridiculously Resilient Ridge and certainly is responsible for the Atlantic ocean warming we have seen recently.
“The increasingly frequent and severe droughts that have punished California over the past two decades—including the current record-breaking one—are primarily the result of human-caused climate change and will likely grow even worse, scientists at Stanford University warn,” according to an article on Common Dreams by Sarah Lazare.
“Published in Monday's issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the new research analyzes historical records, as well as computer simulations of global warming, to investigate the role of changing temperatures during California droughts over the last 120 years,” reports Lazare.
“The researchers concluded that human-driven global warming is exacerbating and increasing the confluent warm and dry conditions that have produced the state's most severe droughts,” says Lazare.
So we are all being stressed by extreme weather patterns, climate change, financial pressures, political polarization, a deficit of true democracy, conflict over increasingly scarce resources, and an increasingly aggressive social environment, in which competition is intensifying year by year and predatory tactics are becoming common business practice.
We have two choices.
We can choose the path of healing or the path of war.
The war of all against all. This is the great danger of this historical moment. The danger is that humanity will react to these difficult conditions, which are highlighting the areas of human civilization and individual human life that are most in need of reform and restructuring, out of fear and anger. The danger is that humanity will act out of egoistic impulse and that as a result, social formations such as religions, classes, nations, and races will act out collective thought forms of exceptionalism and predatory aggression against all rivals. The war of all against all.
The path of healing is the antidote to the path of war. And March is the month most suited to begin a process of healing. For this is the month Archangel Raphael’s presence appears on planet Earth, and Raphael is above all the Archangel of healing. So this full moon is the ideal time to connect with Archangel Raphael and to seek healing for our personal problems, for human civilization as a whole, and, indeed for the environmental balance on planet Earth, which sustains us and is our true Mother.
“It is the Archangel Raphael who reigns over spring,” explains Bulgarian spiritual teacher Omraam Mikhail Aivhanov. “This archangel has command of a myriad of spirits who work under his supervision on the regeneration and growth of vegetation. So at the beginning of spring you must establish a bond with the Archangel Raphael. Ask him to make you receptive to the virtues hidden in trees, grasses and flowers, so that this new life penetrates you as well.”
The name Raphael means “God cures” and Raphael is the Archangel of both healing and vegetation, who dwells in the sphere of Mercury. It is no coincidence that the Archangel of healing also presides over the development of the healing herbs that have provided human beings with the core of their medical practices around the world, from prehistoric times to the present.
It is no coincidence that the ancient spring Hindu festival of Holi is a fertility festival, which involves the burning of wheat and oats in a sacrificial fire, and also the use of colored powders composed of medicinal herbs.
The Wisdom Schools of the East are the most ancient on Earth, and their practices are the gold standard by which other, later schools are measured.
At the time of the Vernal Equinox, Raphael’s hosts, including angels, but especially the devas, elementals and nature spirits entrusted with the growth of vegetation, spring into action, surrounding the dormant vegetation covering the surface of the Earth, and eventually, entering into the Earth itself, bearing the Cosmic Forces that have been transmitted from the Sun and from other Stellar sources.
These spirits of vegetation impart this energy into the Earth, and their activity actually draws plants upward into the air, pulling those energies and forces that have been residing deep within the Earth during the long months of winter into plain sight, in the form of stalks, buds and blossoms. Raphael’s hosts hover unceasingly around the growing vegetation, coaxing it upwards, providing each plant with the precise geometrical form and biological structure required for optimum evolution.
Click here to learn more about Archangel Raphael, and to read our instructions for a lovely Archangel Raphael meditation to help you connect with the healing energies that are available in abundance this Full Moon.
For the Full Moon is a time when a unique frequency of energy is transmitted from the Cosmos, and comes streaming into the aura of planet Earth.
At the time of the Full Moon, the golden light of the Solar Logos streaming from the Star that vivifies our Solar System is captured in part by the Earth’s Moon. The Moon transforms and reflects the radiance of the Sun, which we perceive from our Earthly observation point as a silvery light pervading the ebony veil of terrestrial night.
This is the moment each month when an alchemical transformation occurs in the Solar System which benefits all Earthly life-forms. The masculine, yang energy of the Sun is transmuted by the feminine, yin energy of the Moon, and the energy that streams forth on the night of the Full Moon partakes of the energy signatures of both Solar Wisdom and Lunar Love. This Full Moon Light, which contains the energy of Loving Wisdom, the energy of balanced sexual affinity, travels to Earth, to vivify and nurture all that lives upon our planet.
This silvery moonlight contains golden solar pranic particles in abundance, and this unique frequency of light enters human beings through their crown chakra and through their eyes, activating the subtle energy centers in the heart, the third eye, and crown, and provides us all with the energetic raw material needed to build a bridge between the lower mind and the personality self and the Higher Mind and Higher Self.
Antakharana Reiki Symbol
Ogikor, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
In addition this unique Full Moon radiance permeates the human body with the Cosmic energy signature of the Divine Lovers, the healing energy of Cosmic Creativity and Balance that is essential for human beings to experience so that they may ultimately transmute their own energy signature to be in close resonance with the energy of Cosmic Creation.
That Cosmic energy partakes of the energy of balanced sexual affinity, on a Cosmic scale, and requires the human being to perform the difficult task of alchemical transformation within himself or herself which will render that which is base into that which is quick-silver, yet simultaneously the finest gold.
It is the particular task of human beings to participate in the evolution of our species and our planet by achieving a state of balanced sexual affinity which will provide a container for the energy of Loving Wisdom, and then to pour out that energy of Loving Wisdom for the benefit of Mother Earth and all other life-forms on our planet, in the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms.
This goal of human evolution is the same goal that spiritual seekers, Lightworkers, and disciples of all spiritual traditions East and West have sought to attain for the many millennia of human existence
This lofty goal requires that each human being purify their body, emotions, and mind, balance their karma and also balance the masculine and feminine aspects of their being, so that they may access the pure energy of Loving Wisdom obtainable only from the highest Source of all Creation, the Christ Consciousness, or Cosmic Consciousness, the Divine Matrix of Universal Life Force Energy.
Once that has been achieved human beings can and will distribute the energy of Loving Wisdom throughout mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms, sanctifying and sacralizing all Earthly activities, and establishing the Kingdom of Heaven here on Earth.
As above, so below.
Visualize this Cosmic energy streaming into the Earth’s aura, and into your own crown, your eyes, your own aura, your own body, this Full Moon week. You will enjoy a lovely, healing, transformative meditation.
The Full Moon on March 5 is at 14º 50’ Virgo, so the Sabian Symbol for this month’s full moon is 15º Virgo — A fine lace handkerchief, heirloom from valorous ancestors.
Here is a Cosmic clue to a source of healing in these difficult times of global transition. We are at a civilizational crossroads and we are asked to choose between two paths.
On one hand, the path of war, the path of ego, of the war of all against all. On the other hand, the path of healing, the path of relationship, the path of compassionate connection – to the Earth, to all sentient beings, to our ancestors, to our great-great-great grand-children and especially to humanity as family all around the world.
As I ponder the spiritual meaning of this Virgo Full Moon and Pisces Solar Festival I am reminded that Virgo is sign of the healer, and Pisces is the sign of the World Savior, the pre-eminent Master who sacrifices himself out of compassionate connection to all of humanity. I am reminded that it is because of the compassionate actions of many others, over many generations, that I have had access to the Wisdom Teachings of the East and the West. I am reminded that it is because of the compassionate actions of others that I have had the joy to participate in the many, many rich relationships with Lightworkers, meditators, Reiki practitioners, spiritual teachers, and spiritual seekers I have enjoyed in this lifetime.
Those teachings and these relationships, they are the exquisite lace handkerchief that has been passed down to me by valorous ancestors -- a map of human connections that transcends time and space.
The Ancient Wisdom Teachings represent a stream of energy, an elevated state of consciousness, a doorway into a realm of new human possibilities, and at the same time the distillation, the quintessence of the spiritual gifts and accomplishments of a long lineage of ancestors, Master Teachers who attained impeccable Wisdom and who demonstrated unconditional Love in their own lives to such an extent that they transcended normal human consciousness altogether.
The transmission of that energy stream from Master to Disciple is a gift and a responsibility. Each and every one of us has received tremendous gifts from our ancestors, our parents, our peers, our Spiritual Guides, and the living Teachers with whom we have had the honor to study in this lifetime.
The responsibility that we take on along with these gifts is not so much a form of debt owed to the ancestors, to the Teacher, to the lineage, or to humanity, but rather a treasure we are privileged to inherit.
Every human being inherits a treasure from those who have gone before. Our families, our cultures, our technologies, our arts and crafts, all have their roots in the love, wisdom, inspiration, work and creativity of a myriad of individuals who lived long before us, and in the collective efforts of all those on the planet today in both the physical and the subtle energy realms.
For me it is preferable to consider all this treasure as a love-offering, and a measure of my own interconnection with humanity. Even sitting here in my office at the computer, I am aware of the myriad of ways that I am connected to a variety of spiritual traditions, technologies, cultural systems of thought, family values, and economic and social ties that combine within me, that contribute mightily to my own range of possible creative expression, my own quality of life, my own spiritual practice, and my own ability to live a life filled with love and light, abundance and virtually unlimited potential for growth and fulfillment, now and in my own future, in this incarnation, and beyond.
I am grateful and I seek opportunities to reciprocate in my own way and in my own time. That is the great responsibility each of us has as human beings and as spiritual disciples, and that great responsibility is itself a gift, because that responsibility is what helps open my heart, strengthen my will forces and elevate my consciousness to Higher Realms. That gift helps me to transcend my own petty ego, my own limited personality, with its flaws, its attractions and aversions, my own emotional baggage, and my own karmic web of soul connectivity, that ties me to so many beings, some elevated, some not so elevated, scattered throughout time and space.
I bless that web of connectivity, and I acknowledge that I am part of that web, yet blessed with individuality, so that it is my choice how I will utilize these treasures to advance my own evolution and the evolutionary task of all human beings.
There is nothing pre-ordained, nothing mechanical, nothing reflexive about the interactions related to my life and this energy flow across aeons of time and vast regions of space.
For part of the gift I have received is freedom.
This Full Moon let us all acknowledge our own freedom, celebrate our individuality, accept our own limitations, acknowledge our own unique capabilities, and manifest joy, love, abundance, and wisdom in all that we do. Let us resolve to share these treasures with all those with whom we are blessed to share our journey in this life.
The Sun is placed at 14º 50’ Pisces at the time of the full moon and the Sabian Symbol for the March 5 Pisces Solar Festival is An Officer Instructing His Men Before a Simulated Assault Under a Barrage of Live Shells.
In this symbolic representation of the energy signature of the Sun at the time of this Full Moon, social organization is essential to survival. In the military, a rigid social hierarchy operates to efficiently train personnel in how to handle the dangerous situations encountered in warfare.
We are in a dangerous situation in March 2015 on planet Earth.
Humanity is learning what Jane and I have learned over the last seven years in our own lives.
Life is impermanent. The illusion of security is fragile and impermanent. The status quo is always fragile and impermanent. Support systems are fragile. Eco-systems are fragile. Business models are fragile. Metaphysical systems are contingent, socially conditioned, yet open-ended, fragile structures, doorways to the Source, to Spirit.
Yet we continue to do our best to follow the path of Spirit with a loving heart and a commitment to living a life that demonstrates goodwill.