Greetings from Winston Salem, North Carolina from your editors, Curtis Lang and Jane Sherry. In the US, we celebrate Independence Day this Saturday. That night the full moon will pass through the fainter portion of the Earth's shadow, creating a penumbral eclipse, which will be extremely hard to discern, and will be visible in New York City from 11:04 pm through around 12:44 am Eastern Time, when the Full Moon can be seen at 13°37' Capricorn. The Sun will be at 13°37' Cancer and we celebrate the Cancerian Solar Festival. There are four lunar eclipses in 2020 and all are faint penumbral eclipses.
Image Credit & Copyright: Gyorgy Soponyai, courtesy NASA APOD
This composited series of images follows the Moon on January 10, the first Full Moon of 2020, in Hungarian skies. The lunar disk is in mid-eclipse at the center of the sequence though. It looks only slightly darker there as it passes through the light outer shadow or penumbra of planet Earth.
Here in Winston Salem, Jane and I are very busy and we have a lot to share this month. From July 1 - July 8 the Satya Center Crystal Store will be closed. Our programming wizard in New York is working overtime and keeping us both up late as we upgrade our website to a completely new design, with what should be a better, faster user experience.
We are putting all the Vogel wands on sale, as of right now! People bought a lot of the Vogel wands at these special prices before I could even put them on the website, but we do have a dozen or so online now, and there will be another 30+ more coming online soon! If you're interested contact us for availability and to reserve one of these unique crystal creations.
When the store re-opens the general public will enjoy a 15% discount through the rest of July, ending at midnight July 31, Eastern Time. As a special thank you to our loyal newsletter subscribers, we are going to offer an additional 5% discount on all items in the store other than our already deeply discounted Vogel wands. Subscribers please use the code XTRA5 at checkout.
This animation shows the aerosols in the giant plume of Saharan Dust blowing off the western coast of Africa on June 13 through 18, 2020. This aerosol index was created from the NASA-NOAA Suomi NPP satellite’s Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite (OMPS) data overlaid over visible imagery from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS). Credits: NASA/NOAA, Colin Seftor
This last ten days we've all heard about the massive 2,000 mile long plume of Saharan Dust, rising as high as 20,000 feet into the atmosphere, that has been swirling across the Atlantic Ocean. The Saharan Dust Plume turned skies in the Caribbean, Latin America, Mexico and Northern South America an ominous dark brown and eventually traveled north all the way to Winston Salem.
Of course, Saharan dust events are more or less yearly occurrences, and in Florida they are often welcomed because hurricane development is unlikely when vast plumes of bone dry air blanket the Atlantic Ocean. This year's Saharan dust plume was the largest in fifty years. Jane's 96 year old Mother, who lives in Boca Raton, Florida, told us that the Saharan dust was treated as an air quality and health threat, and everyone with bronchial issues, allergies, or asthma was advised to stay inside.
What is less well known about the Saharan dust plumes is that the dust is rich in iron and phosphorus, nutrients vital to both sea plankton and land dwelling plant life. More than 70 percent of the iron available to oceanic photosynthesizers in the Atlantic comes from Saharan dust. Scientists also say that the soil in the Amazon rainforest is very poor in phosphorus, which is washed away from soils during frequent rainstorms. This is yet another example of the miracle of our planetary ecosystem's interdependent nature. The Amazonian rainforest, which acts as a major carbon sink and provides 20% of the Earth's oxygen, could not exist without mineral deposits contained in tiny flecks of dust traveling thousands of miles through the atmosphere every year for millions of years from Africa.
Another benefit of the Saharan dust event is that the layers of dust filter out the shorter wavelengths of light, especially at sunset, so we see less blue, green and purple, and more vivid orange, pink and red colors, creating spectacular skies overhead. Jane and I saw an amazing Saharan Dust Plume Sunset a few days ago visible from our balcony.
Saharan Dust Sunset in Winston Salem, photo by Jane Sherry
Jane has been taking advantage of our nearby farmer's market and all the wonderful vegetables, flowers, and other goodies our hard working neighbors produce to create some remarkable delicious dishes for summertime. Here are some she'd like to share: Cucumber Raita or What to Do With Too Many Cucumbers, Fast Food Summer Meal with Zucchini, and Peach Tomato Salsa.
This month we are featuring on our homepage a powerful analysis of Plutonic influences current in America's natal chart, the history of American racism, and the state of the Black Lives Matter Movement sweeping the nation, written by Esoteric Astrologer Malvin Artley, who has been a good friend and contributor to the Satya Center website for many years.
Malvin has one of the most extensive astrological tookits of any practitioner we have met, and his astrocartography readings played a key role in helping Jane and myself relocate to Winston Salem from Florida. Malvin practices both Western and Chinese astrology. Malvin is also a perceptive geo-strategic analyst and his writings are always informed by prodigious research and an unfailing ability to exercise discernment in a fractured and contradictory media environment.
July 2020 Cosmic Weather Forecast
Every night lately, during Reiki meditation, I have been asking my Guides to help open my third eye and sharpen my inner vision so I may read the hidden messages in the book of nature unfolding all around me, especially the transmissions visible in the perpetual dance of the planets and the stars overhead.
Each night I meditate upon the words of the philosopher Plotinus - “The stars are like letters that inscribe themselves at every moment in the sky. Everything in the world is full of signs. All events are coordinated. All things depend on each other. Everything breathes together.”
Image Credit & Copyright: Dave Lane, courtesy NASA APOD.
Sometimes land and sky are both busy and beautiful. The landscape pictured in the foreground encompasses Bryce Canyon in Utah, USA, famous for its many interesting rock structures eroded over millions of years. The featured skyscape, photogenic in its own right, encompasses the arching central disk of our Milky Way Galaxy, the short streaks of three passing planes near the horizon, at least four long streaks that are likely Eta Aquariid meteors, and many stars including the three bright stars that make up the Summer Triangle. The featured image is a digital panorama created from 12 smaller images during this date in 2014.
This July the celestial hieroglyphs inscribed in the heavens impel us to swift, decisive action. Yet the cosmic weather patterns warn us to beware of re-acting to triggering events without reflecting carefully upon the causes and the consequences of our actions.
On June 30, retrograde Jupiter and retrograde Pluto conjoined in Capricorn, creating a sense of urgency at a deep unconscious level. At the time of the last Jupiter-Pluto conjunction in the spring, Covid-19 spread worldwide, lockdowns proliferated, with Saturn in Capricorn at the same time, and a tsunami of PAN-ic, fear, and anger engulfed the collective consciousness of humanity.
Now, as many parts of the United States have attempted to prematurely return to "normal", the virus is again spreading at an accelerated rate in this country.
As we confront this failure to "re-open" our economy and return to "normal", the nation has been convulsed by the most extensive and extreme demonstrations against institutionalized racism since the Nineteen Sixties.
There is no clear agreement in America about how to deal with the pandemic, and in the United States the response to the pandemic has been so thoroughly politicized that science has been virtually discredited, elementary protective measures have triggered violent responses, and political divisions are flaring into confrontations in the streets.
We are in some ways, experiencing a replay of the spring pandemic panic, but this time, with Jupiter and Pluto retrograde, people are much more impatient, aggressive and angry about the entire situation, and looking for scapegoats. In addition, this time around the social confrontations between Black Lives Matter supporters and the forces of reactionary white privilege are adding an additional layer of fear, anger, and aggression to the already overheated collective consciousness.
Needless to say both PAN-ic and scapeGOATing are quintessentially dark Capricornian aspects of the collective consciousness, which have an affinity with PLUTOnian fears of the Underworld Realm of the Dead. The Jupiter-Pluto conjunction epitomizes this type of highly combustible dynamic.
Adding fuel to the fire, Mars has been in Aries since June 28, and the urge to transform the sparking flood of Universal Life Force Energy entering our lives into concrete manifestation is extremely strong. We may feel a strong impetus to crystallize this manifestation as a vehicle for the progress toward goals ratified by a collective consciousness. Collective thought forms and emotional attachments derived from our blood ties, our ancestry, our race, religion, social class, gender, sex and political ideology are extremely powerful motivators during the Mars in Aries cycle.
Yet Mercury is retrograde until July 12, Neptune is retrograde, Saturn has turned retrograde, and re-entered Capricorn on July 1, and Jupiter and Pluto are retrograde, as we have noted. So on the individual and the collective levels of consciousness, we are feeling an eruption of strong emotions and impelling drives to action, but with so many planets retrograde, it is very unclear what should be done and how any action could be implemented in the face of an extremely powerful set of negative thoughts and emotions dominating the collective consciousness. The sense of frustration is palpable everywhere in the country, visible in the faces of everyone we see in our city and on TV, masked and unmasked alike.
Mars will move through Aries, forward and back, and then forward again, from now until January 6, 2020, so the strong impulse to action is definitely a part of our inner collective consciousness for many months to come.
The good news at the moment is that challenging retrograde celestial signatures offer us a golden opportunity to revisit issues we have failed to resolve, see them in a new light, and make the difficult decisions necessary to blaze a new path toward a positive resolution. Mars in Aries provides the spiritual warrior with the willpower, courage and strength to address even the most intractable problems with vigor.
Whether the issue is institutionalized racism, a dysfunctional health care system, fear of the pandemic, or a polarized and untrustworthy political process, together we can find our way and take the first, most important steps forward at this time, and in the months to come, despite any and all opposition.
The celestial wheel is turning. A very old cycle is winding down, and a revolutionary cycle is about to birth a new way of being. Now is the time to join with like minded groups to become the change we need to see in the world.
July is not all sharp edges and conflict between progress and regression. On July 12, Mercury goes direct and forms a beneficent trine with Neptune, creating a gentle energy signature that supports aesthetic appreciation of the beauty in life surrounding us, interpersonal co-operation, and perhaps a more transpersonal spiritual awakening of compassionate consciousness.
July 14-20, the Sun in Cancer opposes Jupiter, Saturn and Pluto in Capricorn, which could indicate a major turning point in temporal cycles reflected in politics, social movements, financial markets and personal journeys.
During the last months of July, the messaging from both Republicans and Democrats will crystallize. Expect a law and order message consistent with Cancerian desire for security and dark Capricornian control freak tendencies to collide with woke intersectional identity politics. Financial markets may look frothy and toppy, disconnected from reality, and will be poised for either a bullish breakout or a bearish breakdown.
Individuals who have been struggling to find a safe and secure path forward in life, beset with the breakdown of the economic and social order around them, may achieve new productive insights or find that existing ways of being in the world have reached a dead end.
No matter what, this energy signature is also a prelude to dramatic changes, reversals of Fortune, and unexpected outcomes leading to unexplored territories in every area of life.
Jane and I send you love and light from our Satya Center homebase and we affirm that you all receive grace, guidance, abundance, courage, love and light to support you day by day in these trying times.
Meditation Moment: The Worm's Waking
This is how a human being can change.
There is a worm
addicted to eating grape leaves.
Suddenly, he wakes up,
call it grace, whatever, something
wakes him, and he is no longer a worm.
He is the entire vineyard,
and the orchard too, the fruit, the trunks,
a growing wisdom and joy
that does not need to devour.