It's Been a Rough Month, But the Stars Say Help is On the Way!
Welcome to the Aries Solar Festival and the Libra Full Moon, Sunday April 17, 2011 edition of the Satya Center newsletter and Cosmic Weather Forecast. Warm greetings from your Editors, Curtis Lang and Jane Sherry.
Friends have been calling to share with me this week and their stories, each one unique and highly individual, all share one key theme -- frustration.
A typical story line: Folks are doing the best they can, but new issues -- even new emergencies -- keep popping up, deadlines are not being met, high-tech tools and toys are behaving badly, and there's a sense of high urgency that threatens to overwhelm our better instincts and impel us into rash acts of unthoughtful and unsophisticated impetuosity that will do nothing to endear us to loved ones, neighbors and co-workers.
Jane and I sympathize with the sense of extended terror, nervous exhaustion and frustration that has been building in the collective consciousness since the Japanese Earthquake, Tsunami and Nuclear Disaster a little over a month ago.
Some of that is legitimate emotional response to the worst nuclear disaster in human history, and some of this energy is connected to the current Cosmic Weather pattern that's been unfolding the last few months.
And that Cosmic Weather pattern tends to put everyone on edge. The most difficult area is relationships. No surprise at the time of the Full Moon in Libra, who is symbolized by Lady Justice, with her blindfold, sword and scales. She's all about relationships, so I ask you about yours.
Are you feeling frustrated because no one seems to be paying attention to you these days?
Are you feeling like you're getting the short end of the stick in your relationships?
Do you feel you're being asked to do more with less, and to somehow make good on a surplus of unnecessary or unwanted commitments that threaten to take over what little life you have left to yourself when the work day is done?
Do you feel like you live in an insane asylum, and that the most intransigent inmates have installed themselves in the administration office, where they are busily enforcing a new regime of incalculable stupidity?
Is it all starting to make you a little upset, big time fearful, maybe even, angry?
That's OK. . .Know that it's par for the course, given the nature of the current Cosmic Weather pattern, and know that even in the midst of tragedy we're all due for some slowly strengthening currents of spiritual bliss and expanding consciousness to provide an uplifting and clarifying atmosphere in the near future.
Fortunately, Jane and I are aware of the Cosmic Weather conditions prevailing this season, and so we are able to console ourselves with the thought that although Mercury retrograde and Mars are opposing Saturn retrograde and although Pluto is waxing toward another Square with Saturn, this too shall pass.
The good news is that the current Cosmic Weather pattern is definitely impermanent. That's what the stars show us -- an eternal dance in which the night sky appears to Earth-bound observers to be as changeable as the weather.
Here in the San Francisco Bay area, the weather is like a living being, very present and active night and day, changeable, with a mischievous personality.
Here the play of sun and wind, fog and dew, heat and light is so mutable that Jane and I often say that every single day has several different mini-weather patterns built into it.
Speaking of big changes, despite some world-shaking difficulties written large in the stars over this last month, this Full Moon on Sunday, Divine Mother calls upon us to rejoice in one another and to engage one another in playful and open-hearted loving enjoyment of life. This will be our challenge and our spiritual practice this weekend!
Because the stars promise that if we enter the weekend with an open heart, cleared of the emotional detritus from frustration, disappointment, fear and anger at the current state of the world and at the widespread difficulties in our individual lives, we will be rewarded by a tremendous increase in joy, in love, in clarity, and in compassion.
Through this increase we will achieve greater balance in our relationships. Improving our relationships will enable us to overcome all obstacles in our lives, for by helping one another we will all ascend together! Let all things be made new, the time is at hand.
Full Moon Cosmic Weather Forecast
This Full Moon is the Third Super-Moon in a row, meaning that the moon is very close to the Earth and exerts a more powerful than usual electro-magnetic influence on the Earth. This Super-Moon occurs at 28 degrees of Libra on April 17 at 7:44 p.m. PDT / 10:44 p.m. EDT. The Sun will be at 28 degrees Aries at that time. The Farmer's Almanac calls this the "Pink Moon", and the Almanac says the name comes from the "herb moss pink, or wild ground phlox, which is one of the earliest widespread flowers of the spring."
The Sabian symbol for the Sun at 28° Aries is: A large audience confronts the performer who disappointed its expectations.
In the wake of the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster, the pro-democracy uprisings in the Middle East, and the total capitulation of supposedly progressive President Barack Obama to the extreme Right wing agenda of the Republican party, it is fair to say that there is tremendous disappointment among Lightworkers and political progressives alike in the abysmal behavior of the ruling classes on planet Earth.
I think we are all a little stunned to find that our political leaders and our most respected, wealthiest citizens around the world are the primary historical obstacle to the birthing of a new human civilization based upon Green Technology, equality of men and women, democracy, and a greater degree of social co-operation and social responsibility that readjusts the balance between the right of the individual to acquire and amass wealth, and the right of the society as a whole to goods held in common such as clean air, clean water, healthy soil, claims on health care, and claims by young people for a good education.
Our elites excel at egotism. Our elites are made for TV. They are become as gods and goddesses whom we perceive in our humble homes as Talking Heads. Their lives are as big as the big screen at the IMAX theater. They see in themselves the most powerful, rich and in-control human beings who have every walked the planet.
They have developed their own ego-forces to the point where those ego-forces are mistakenly identified with Divine Will forces, and likewise they mistakenly believe that consciousness and other spiritual realities arise from material forces rather than the other way around.
In short, our elites are in the grip of Marie Antoinette syndrome, and in my mind's eye I can see the Count St. Germain whispering a warning in the ears of Parisian aristocrats in between demonstrations of the unique energetic signatures of various gemstones.
And I think also we all have a nagging deep-seated feeling that we each have to bear some responsibility for the current deplorable estate of humanity's affairs, which could be said this last month to resemble in many ways twilight at the nightfall of a New Dark Age rather than the approach of a Dawning Age of Love and Light. We all know the inner narcissist quite well, I'm sure. 'Nuff said.
The big question for those of us in the large disappointed audience is "What next?" "What do we do next?"
The stars have something to say about all that, although we will have to find the difficult answers to these large questions, over time, for ourselves.
And that will also involve looking inward to see where we have also failed to take our brothers and sisters in the human family into account, and thereby caused harm, through negligence, or greed, or indifference, or ignorance.
For in that we are also like our very disappointing elite brothers and sisters. And in many other ways as well, which we can all discover through reflection.
So there is much food for meditation and a deep and profound impulse toward self-transformation and transcendence of petty egoistic concerns in the stars at the time of this month's Aries Solar Festival.
The Sabian symbol for this month's Full Moon at 28° Libra is "A Man Becoming Aware of Spiritual Forces Surrounding and Assisting Him".
According to Dane Rudhyar's interpretation of these symbols, the keynote for this Full Moon is "The realization, at any level of existence, that one is never alone, and that the 'community' -- visible or invisible -- is sustaining one's efforts."
"Every individualized organism is part of a larger organized whole, whether or not it is aware of this or of the sustaining power of the whole," Rudhyar continues. "A man, however, can deliberately choose to follow the dark path of ego isolation which always sooner or later leads to destruction and self-loss in 'matter'. At the animal level the whole biosphere is the community; for the ordinary human being it is the tribe or family, the village community, the nation. As the individual expands his consciousness, he may become aware of a spiritual community, even beyond the 'noösphere' (the one mind of Humanity), i.e. the realm of the pure light of the Supermind."
Once again this month, at the time of the Full Moon, the opposed Sun and Moon harmonize their energetic signatures, presenting a spiritual theme that reconciles Mars and Venus, warrior and lover, man and woman, conqueror and nourisher, Egoist and Mistress of Relationships.
We are being asked to open ourselves up this Full Moon to an increased experience of being constantly connected to the Web of Life.
We are being asked to become increasingly more aware of our brothers and sisters, our community, and to expand our awareness of how our own thoughts, words and deeds impact that Web of Life and all our broad human family, and to be considerate and loving in all our relations in the Three Worlds.
We are asked to become a Warrior of Love, a courageous Lightworker ready to be active in the world to be of help and service to others in pursuit of the common good.
In this way we are asked to set our inner Mars and Venus free to be of service in the world. Working together, Mars and Venus will perfect their relationship. That is the theme of this month's Libran Full Moon Festival.
The Libra Full Moon sets the tone for our relationships during the coming astrological year.
And that tone is fraught with tension, infused with urgency, and carries overtones of fear and anger, but also there is a sweetness, a subtle spiritual current of healing energy abroad in the sky. There is a commitment to peace, to increased co-operation, and a pledge of better times to come.
Above all, there is the celestial promise that during the next twelve months, the Emergence of the Divine Feminine and the Reconciliation of the Divine Lovers will offer us new and profound opportunities to dramatically expand the flow of love and light between us and all our loved ones. You can bet that a series of meaningful co-incidences in your life will turn into a synchronistic spiritual journey that leads you to a new and Higher Love than you've ever experienced before. That's the big picture and the long view.
Meanwhile, right now, this weekend, Pluto, Saturn and Mercury are all retrograde, which is one reason why it's so difficult to get anything done, minor health issues keep popping up, normally reliable technology is going pear-shaped, and everyone is feeling challenged, knowing that our entire civilization is about to undergo a forced transformation from the Age of Oil to the Age of Green Technologies.
The Sun, Uranus, Mars, Mercury retrograde and Jupiter are all in Aries, opposed by the Moon and Saturn retrograde in Libra. All these planets are part of a T-Square formation which features Pluto retrograde in Capricorn as the linchpin.
With Mercury and Mars moving into ever-closer opposition to Saturn there is a feeling that we can't move ahead with crucial projects, and that we can't seem to formulate coherent strategies and tactics because there are too many interruptions, we keep getting sidetracked, or our schedules are just too conflicted for us to find time for what we most need to be doing or to take time out for calm reflection. This will continue for a few more weeks.
Here we see a conflict between between Self and Other, between the imperatives of the Ram and the Lady of the Scales, between Aries and Libra. Here is a conflict between the individual sphere and the social sphere, here is a conflict between a human being and the Earth Herself. This conflict takes place within each one of us and it takes place on the world stage, writ large for all to see.
This conflict takes place in the context of a forced transformation of social, governmental and economic systems currently in place around the world, which is the doing of Pluto in Capricorn, and will continue for the next twenty years or so.
We will all be asked to rethink the nature of our boundaries with our communities, and with all humanity, to become more attuned to the myriad ways we are all connected, and how those connections are both our greatest strength and our deepest weakness. Of course with Moon in Libra it's always all about relationships.
At this time, on a personal level, keeping our inner balance (Libra) is vitally important, maintaining our emotional equilibrium, and exercising patience and forgiveness in any challenging relationships with loved ones, neighbors and co-workers.
On the plus side, the Full Moon trines Neptune in Pisces and Chiron, providing a highly charged spiritual current of healing and inner transformation, which is quite likely to manifest as a stream of meaningful synchronistic events that act as guideposts for us during this time of stress, when we most lack clarity. These synchronicities will open up new doorways for us, providing us with golden opportunities for accelerated spiritual advancement.
Thus we can expect to find a benevolent Universe supporting our Higher Purpose, our loftiest material and spiritual goals, and our heartfelt desires for peace, understanding, right relations, and an increase of love in our lives.
This benevolent energy stream will certainly enhance the power of the Seasonal Spiritual Festivals being celebrated this month, and is the first of a series of positive developments written already in tomorrow's stars.
Passover starts at sunset on April 18th and continues until Tuesday April 25th.
Mercury will go direct on April 23rd and this will definitely help to clear the fog from the brain and open a path so that forward movement is facilitated rather than impeded by the celestial environment.
Next Friday is Good Friday, the day Jesus Christ died, and is also Earth Day this year.
Easter is next Sunday, April 24th.
When the Sun enters Taurus on April 20th, a good dose of much-needed grounding will be provided by this Venus-ruled Earthy sign, and we will all be able to relax a little and enjoy one another a little bit more than we have lately.
By this summer we will all get some much needed relief from the continuing drama of the Saturn-Pluto Square, which has been highlighting the collapse of the global economy and the restructuring of global civilization the last few years. This Square, which is part of the Grand Cardinal Cross pattern we've talked so much about, will reappear at intervals over the next several years, but we can say that the forecast calls for a lessening of intensity this summer, at least in this area of the Universe.
So we all have some more pleasant times ahead after a really rough month.
At this time of the Libra Full Moon Festival 2011, something Divine seeks to restore equilibrium between humanity and the natural environment.
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.
This subtle energy is the energy of rebirth, the prelude to the restoration of the Dominion of the Divine Lovers -- it is the Sacred Emergence of the Divine Feminine.
And that's the Cosmic Weather Forecast for now.
April Spiritual Festivals: Aries Full Moon, Passover, and Easter
The astrological new year begins with Spring Equinox, a couple of weeks prior to the Libra Full Moon, so this is the first full moon of the new astrological year.
The theme of this time is rebirth!
Mother Earth is producing an overwhelming bounty of floral hotspots here in the San Francisco Bay area, weather is mild, and planting season is well underway.
The Libra Full Moon is the first of the 3 great Summer Full Moon Festivals, and is associated with the Christian Feast of Easter, another Festival of Resurrection.
The other two Summer Full Moon Festivals are the May Festival of Wesak, celebrating the yearly Gathering of the Spiritual Hierarchy at Shamballah, and the June Festival of Humanity.
“Sunday is the first Full moon Solar Festival of spring and the first of three Spring Festivals (Aries, Taurus, Gemini),” says Risa D'Angeles, Founder & Director of the Esoteric &Astrological Studies and Research Institute, a Wisdom School, in Santa Cruz, California, who has a marvelous website, NightLight News.”
“These festivals were instituted by the Tibetan [Dwaj Khul] and given to the New Group of World Servers (and humanity) in the middle of the 20th century (1940s),” Risa continues. “Forming the foundations of the Aquarian new world religion these festivals (full moons, solar festivals) are built upon the foundations of previous religions (Hindu, Jewish, Buddhism, Christian/Catholic) - forms through which the humanity’s hope, suffering, sacrifice, prayer, spirituality, progress and the flowering of evolution were fostered.”
“The great commonality for humanity worldwide is the sky with its patterns of stars and rhythms of the ever-moving planets, Sun & Moon,” Risa explains. “Following the timings of full and new moons, when great spiritual energies are released into the earth, three major spring festivals and nine minor festivals (all spiritual events) were created in order to ‘lead humanity into a prolonged united spiritual effort.’”
“The first of these festivals is the Aries/Libra Full Moon Festival, the great Western Christian festival of Easter/Resurrection,” says Risa.
“The Aries Festival, also called the Resurrection Festival, and forming part of the new world religion, is about the Love of God which is dispersed to all of humanity during this Festival time (the day of the full moon and three days thereafter),” Risa explains. “It was Christ’s love of the world, of humanity, of His Father and of all the Earth that allowed Him to be sacrificed. Again we remember that at the core of sacrifice (the first Law of the Soul)…. is Love. Thus we can begin to understand, in the midst of chaos and conflict occurring worldwide the esoteric meaning of the words ‘Love (that) underlies the happenings (sacrifices) of the times.’”
As we celebrate this multi-denominational global Spiritual Festival, the world is engulfed in worry, fear, anxiety and yes, anger.
The collective consciousness is well aware at the Soul level that we are approaching the end of industrial civilization, the end of the present World Order and the need to totally restructure our human civilization. Yet our world leaders are focused on one thing – maintaining their power and maintaining the status quo which has been so beneficial to them.
We are being asked to rise to the occasion, to ascend beyond our previous limits as individuals and as groups, to assist in the global transformation that is coming, and to guide our leaders toward a compassionate, equitable and sustainable future. We are learning that our leaders will not guide us into the New Aeon, instead in Aquarian fashion, it is the people who will show the way.
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| These two combo photos released Saturday, April 9, 2011 by Tokyo Electric Power Co. via Kyodo News show before (top) and after (bottom) the March 11, 2011 tsunami triggered by a strong earthquake hitting the compound of the Fukushima Dai-ni nuclear power plant in Futaba town, Fukushima Prefecture, northeastern Japan. (Tokyo Electric Power Co. via Kyodo News) Courtesy of Cryptome.org |
We are all being asked to observe the ongoing Nuclear Catastrophe in Japan and ponder the meaning this weekend. Remember, it is up to the people to show the way. In the last month we've learned a lot.
We are learning that we are all one human family when it comes to nuclear radiation. It's invisible and it travels by air and water, potentially contaminating areas thousands of miles away from the source of radiation.
We are using nuclear power to boil water so we can get steam to turn turbines and produce electricity. Nuclear power technologies derived from the creation of the atomic bomb. Nuclear fuel and spent nuclear fuel are highly radioactive and must be stored safely for thousands of years, in some cases.
Today we routinely produce electricity in nuclear power plants, over 400 around the world. These are giant facilities full of incomprehensibly toxic solids and liquids kept from spontaneously combusting by a kind of Rube Goldberg array of cooling systems and nested containment structures. India, China, and many others plan to build a whole new generation of nuclear facilities, as quickly as possible, to meet energy needs in a time of perceived potential supply shortages triggered by environmental catastrophes, acts of war or terrorism, or market manipulations by speculative investors awash in a tsunami of "hot money" seeking risky high-yield returns.
Many of these nuclear power plants are aging, as were the reactors at Fukushima. There are dozens more of similar vintage in the United States.
They are collection points for nuclear fuel and the highly radioactive solid and liquid byproducts created by the reactor. There is no viable plan for storing the spent nuclear fuel so it just accumulates in situ, on site, at the various nuclear power plants, in spent fuel pools full of radioactive water, and so forth.
We are seeing that the decisions we make unconsciously as a group have far-reaching consequences. In the case of nuclear power, we decided to place the availability of abundant electrical power above the health and safety of our citizens.
In Japan, it's really only a matter of luck that prevailing winds and poorly timed rains didn't contaminate Tokyo. Hot spots abound in areas nearby Earth's largest city and the maps I've seen of radiation counts across Japan show that the hot spots appear more or less at random, obviously the result of weather conditions during the first few days of maximum contamination.
Do we want to continue to use nuclear power to boil water when we cannot contain the contamination from nuclear accidents successfully? History shows us that we cannot, with our present technology.
Do we want to continue to operate nuclear plants that are aging or on fault lines or in zones where seismic activity or tsunamis or hurricanes are likely to occur? History shows us that we cannot predict the consequences, nor can we control the negative surprises that are sure to eventually surface.
Do we want to continue to allow nuclear plants and military forces to create radioactive waste which our present technology cannot contain nor control effectively? So far, since the advent of the nuclear age, we have not yet even conceived of any workable strategy for dealing with nuclear waste.
Although it is to be hoped that during humanity's long evolution as a species, we will attain to the heights of loving wisdom and knowledge that would permit us to manipulate radioactive materials safely for the benefit of humanity, unfortunately we have not yet arrived at this happy historical moment.
That's the lesson of Fukushima in a nutshell. It's time for us to take responsibility for transforming the toxic social system we live in. It's not about whether or not to have nuclear power. It's not about whether or not we need nuclear power because peak oil could destabilize global civilization. It's not about what we can do to make things a little safer at existing facilities. It's not about building new, improved nuclear facilities.
It's about recognizing that for the benefit of each of us as individuals, and to help wean our entire human society from sources of energy that have the potential to contaminate huge tracts of land and soil across entire nations and continents, whether they be deep offshore drilling or nuclear power stations, it may be necessary to make safety rather than availability of electricity the top priority when dealing with nuclear power. It's really that simple.
Which matters more to you? You may need to conserve energy in the future if you choose safety, but you will be more likely to live in a world free from the fear of radiation.
And that fear has become all to real for all of us during the last month.
I personally have no desire to see our children and their children and their children for thousands of years living in that kind of fear. So for me nuclear power is no more a viable part of a Green Energy strategy than the use of dilithium crystals, used to power the Starship Enterprise.
So I choose the path of Empowerment through Self-Sacrifice. I choose safety over the status quo. That means shutting down all nuclear plants because they can't be proven safe in any way known to science at this time.
The Feast of Passover
The Feast of Passover is a beautiful example of the path of Empowerment through Self-Sacrifice. The people of Israel were slaves, but they had to risk their lives, their homes, and their souls in the pursuit of freedom and self-empowerment. The path they took was insanely rugged, and none of them could have imagined how it would unfold.
To obtain their release from the Pharaoh, their Prophet Moses used magic to overcome the magic of the Egyptian High Priests. Divine intervention inflicted unacceptable losses on the Egyptians, specifically the deaths of their first-born.
The Israelites had to wander in the desert for decades after their harrowing escape through the Red Sea, again with magical intervention by their God, Yahweh. Yet all these tribulations were merely the stepping stones to Jerusalem.
Empowerment through Self-Sacrifice. Short-term pain for long term gain. As a nation addicted to athletics, we should understand the logic of this path well. For the Israelites it was long-term pain for even longer term gain.
The Jewish Festival of the Passover, which begins at sunset on April 18th, is one of the three Festivals of the Pilgrim, or Shalosh Regalim, when devout Jewish people from all over the world traditionally make a pilgrimage to the Temple in Jerusalem.
Passover of course is the festival commemorating the Exodus of the Jewish people from bondage in Egypt. The Lord spared the Jewish people when he sent a plague that killed the first born of Egyptian families, and Pharaoh released the Jewish slaves soon thereafter. Although the Egyptian army followed the Jewish people on their path out of slavery, the Lord parted the Red Sea so the Jewish people could pass safely into their long 40 year exile in the desert, but when the Egyptian army entered the passage in hot pursuit, the waters closed upon them.
Our global civilization is currently in the same position as the Jewish people in bondage in Egypt. We are all in bondage to a rational materialist global culture of cruel hierarchy, greed and Imperial militarism that is threatening to destroy the livelihoods of billions of people enslaved to the financial and political manipulations of global elites even as it destroys the environment that sustains human life on Earth.
We are all poised to pass over into a new global civilization, so tonight we can all benefit from learning more about the Passover Festival, and from entering more deeply into the consciousness of the Jewish people at their time of Exodus.
The Passover Feast is traditionally a time when Jewish children are prompted to reflect upon their people's transit from one Age to another. At the Seder the Haggadah, the Book of Exodus, is read and celebrated with feasting, songs and prayers.
Children are asked four questions:
Why is this night different?
Why do we eat such unusual foods as Matzoh, the unleavened bread and Maror, the bitter herbs?
Why do we dip green herbs in salt water?
Why do we open doors?
Why do we reclline?
The youngest child at the table answers these questions:
We eat the Matzoh to remind us that when the time of liberation came we had no time to bake bread and took unleavened dough into the desert where the hot sun baked it into crackers.
We eat the bitter herbs to remind us of the bitterness of bondage under the Pharaohs.
We dip parsley into salt water