Spring Full Moon Newsletter
Welcome to the Passover and Easter Aries Solar Festival, & Libra Full Moon 2015 edition of the Satya Center Cosmic Weather Forecast.
Warm greetings from your Editor, Curtis Lang and your co-editor, Jane Sherry.
Cosmic Weather Forecast
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.
In fact taking some quiet time 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 year and last.
Prepare yourself for an energetic and emotional roller-coaster ride this weekend, as we celebrate Passover on Friday April 3, a Full Moon Total Eclipse on Saturday April 4, and Easter on Sunday April 5, 2015.
The Libra Full Moon Festival and total full moon eclipse takes place on Saturday April 4th, at 5:05 AM, Pacific Daylight Time, at 15° Libra, with the Sun at 15° Aries.
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.
These perennial themes resurface each year at this Full Moon Festival, and clearly reflect the energy signature of Easter and Passover as well, as you will see in our discussion below.
The Cosmic Weather Forecast for this weekend is a good news/bad news moment, celestially speaking.
The bad news is that the series of Uranus-Pluto squares which have been activated the last several years as part of the Grand Cardinal Cross configuration we have written about so often will continue to exert a powerful influence, even though the last of the seven Uranus-Pluto squares occurred last month.
Pluto in Capricorn will be square the full moon in Libra, and also square the Sun and Uranus in Aries, re-activating the energies of this powerful outer planet drama and creating a highly charged T-square formation in the heavens.
Moon square Pluto is an aspect that guarantees emotional melodramas will exhibit new and unsettling levels of dramatic tension, while the Moon opposed by Uranus is an energy signature of volatile mood swings, turning the most grounded and balanced of us into temporarily addled bipolar drama queens.
The Uranus-Pluto square remains within 1° of perfection throughout the rest of the month, and will persist in a similar configuration for the remainder of the year.
So be aware that any ongoing, unresloved dramas in your life are likely to continue to demand your attention for quite a while longer.
The good news is that the Sun in Aries is trine Jupiter in Leo this weekend, creating a powerful cosmic energy field that is extremely supportive of creative self-expression, meditation and other spiritual practices.
The Moon is sextile Jupiter, which is an inspirational aspect, fueling our creativity and imagination with expansive new visions of what we can yet become, and we can be inspired by a vision quest or a trip that will expose us to new ideas, new people and new opportunities.
The Sabian Symbol for the Sun at 15° Aries reinforces the cosmic message to seek inspiration, respite, relaxation, and illumination in inner work this weekend.
The Sabian Symbol for this Solar Festival is “An Indian weaving a ceremonial blanket”. This symbol indicates that the Sun’s energy, on this weekend when we celebrate the Victory of the Sun during springtime festivities, supports our efforts to prepare ourselves for a new cycle of spiritual growth.
In fact taking some quiet time 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 year and last.
Scroll down for a look at our own Easter meditation practice which we are pleased to share with you.
The Feast of Passover
Passover is the festival commemorating the Exodus of the Jewish people from bondage in Egypt. This year the Jewish Festival of Passover, begins at sunset on Friday, April 3, 2015 and concludes on Saturday, April 11.
This year Passover partakes of the unique energy signature of this month’s Full Moon in Libra, Aries Solar Festival, on April 4, which represents a blending of the energies of Aries and Libra. As we shall see, all these energies are interconnected in a very meaningful way.
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.
Aries is the “Lamb of God”, as well as the Ram, the “Lamb of God” that is sacrificed for the Passover Feast, at the time of liberation.
The Feast of Passover is a beautiful example of the path of Group Empowerment through Self-Sacrifice.
The people of Israel were slaves, but they had to risk their lives, their homes, and their future 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. As individuals, the Israelites had to exhibit a blend of the energies of fiery, determined Aries and cool, diplomatic group-centric Libra.
Our global civilization is currently in the same position as the Jewish people in bondage in Egypt. The Israelites were slaves to the most powerful Imperial nation of their time and place, with the largest military-industrial complex, and the most advanced technology available.
Today 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 at the end of the Age of Cheap Abundant Hydrocarbon Power and the end of the Age of Cheap Abundant Water.
We are going to have to make sacrifices as individuals so that society can conserve resources and preserve a healthy environment for future generations. This is made perfectly clear in an amazing slideshow of pictures from around the world illustrating the results of overpopulation and overconsumption of natural resources from the Guardian newspaper.
To do this may require confronting our own individual habits to reduce wasteful consumption and confronting powerful special interests in our society whose privileged positions allow them to consume scarce resources without concern for the effect their activities have on the rest of us.
This week Jane and I are enjoying a break from the heat wave that has gripped California this spring so far. California’s governor, Jerry Brown, has declared a drought emergency and issued an executive order requiring a 25% reduction in water use as we enter the fourth year of an unprecedented drought.
Governor Brown asked California residents to cut back on household water use, but only about 4 percent of California’s water consumption comes from individuals and households.
Large farms, which use the bulk of water consumed in California, are exempted from these requirements.
Nearly 8 million acres of California farmland are irrigated, and although many farms rely upon the unregulated pumping of groundwater from beneath their farms, according to the USDA over 3 million acres of farmland are irrigated from off-farm surface water supplies.
Farming consumes some 80% of California’s developed water supplies, while accouting for only 2% of the state’s GDP, according to an article by environmental reporter Mark Hertsgaard in The Daily Beast.
You would think that if you want to save water in California you would want to regulate water use by factory farms. Yet California’s farm sector, which is dominated by gargantuan mono-culture industrial agriculture, is exempt from water conservation measures.
Brown’s plan includes demands that restaurants stop serving water to customers unless specifically requested, and directs homeowners to water their lawns only twice a week, but there are no enforcement mechanisms in place to insure compliance with the new rules.
According to Hertsgaard, “A shift to more efficient irrigation methods could reduce agricultural water use by 22 percent, an amount equivalent to all the surface water Central Valley farmers lacked because of drought last year, according to an analysis that Cooley of the Pacific Institute co-authored with Robert Wilkinson, a professor at the University of California Santa Barbara, and Kate Poole, a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “
Alfalfa and almonds and other crops requiring intensive irrigation will be spared regulation, and giant agribusiness farms will continue to receive federally subsidized water, as well as being allowed to pump unlimited amounts of water from farm wells, which are unregulated. It’s not uncommon to see factory farmers drilling wells 1,000 to 2,000 feet deep, which threaten the aquifers that supply entire eco-systems in California.
Ten percent of California’s water, over 1.1 trillion gallons per year, goes to almond farming, which is dominated by giant factory farms.
Ironically the bulk of almonds and alfalfa grown in California are exported to China, so current political decisions have resulted in a situation where California is shipping huge amounts of water to China while enduring what scientists say is a 1,000 year drought.
Water usage for consumption of beef is another huge water sink in California, and the numbers suggest that changing our eating habits may be a key to water conservation measures that really help reduce over-consumption.
“Most people shower every day an average of about seven minutes of hot water with the showerhead flowing out about two gallons of water a minute,” according to a recent article from One Green Planet. “The Water Education Foundation calculates that every pound of California beef requires about 2,464 gallons of water to produce. You would save more water just by replacing a pound of beef with plant foods than you would by not showering for six months!”
“Eating more veggies, fruits and grains, and reducing or eliminating our consumption of meat, milk, and eggs will help your family decrease their environmental footprint, get healthy, help animals, and preserve enough fresh water for generations of Californians to come,” reports One Green Planet.
Oddly enough there is almost no public outcry demanding a re-evaluation of California’s water priorities, and very little reporting on the politics of water in California. Almost all good reporting on this issue has been done by national news outlets and websites, and by scientist/bloggers with relatively few readers.
We are all poised to pass over into a new global civilization, a new and unexplored land which has yet to reveal its contours to us, so this month 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.
What kind of passage will we encounter on our journey to the new civilization, and what kind of civilization will we create?
Right now, here in California, we are set to encounter a landscape increasingly shaped by desertification and the undoing of the elaborate human engineered California miracle of abundant agriculture in an arid land.
We are faced with the need to confront the Barons of Agriculture who have a stranglehold on our diminishing water supplies, just as the Jewish people had to confront the Egyptian Pharaohs, and escape their control in order to successfully traverse the desert that separated them from their new home.
“It is important to pray and meditate for peace, for a more compassionate and better world," the Dalai Lama once told a group of spiritual seekers. "But if that is all you do, it is a waste of time. You also must take actions to make that happen. Every single day.” That is the lesson of Passover. Take ACTION!
To read more about Moses the Magician, and the esoteric meaning of the Passover Feast, read our article on The Feast of Passover 2015.
The Easter Festival
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.
This is a very auspicious moment indeed for our meditation practice. Now is the time to celebrate the subordination of the ego in favor of the Higher Self. Now is the time to demonstrate our willed intent to connect with the Higher Self, Christ Consciousness, through meditation, prayer, ceremony and ritual. Now is the time to surrender and allow ourselves to be guided on the path of Spirit.
Easter Meditation to Unite with the Cosmic Christ and Mother Earth
Esoteric Christians know of a special mantra that encodes the entirety of the 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 healing work 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 matter 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.
To read more about the esoteric meaning of Easter to initiates of the Western Mystery School traditions and for a beautiful Easter meditation Jane and I have devised, read our article entitled Eastertide: Uniting with the Cosmic Christ, Honoring the Divine Mother.
May you receive this weekend the enhanced spiritual guidance you need to move along your unique path of Spirit during these tumultuous times. May you be blessed with the energy, grace and personal power you need to gently remove all obstacles to the attainment of your spiritual and material goals in this life.
Jane and I wish you abundant love and light!
Meditation Moment
"Spring is the season of renewal, the time for the energies concentrated in the seed to be released. But in order for this release to occur, the seed must first die. This death is the necessary condition for the sprout to appear and form roots, stem, branches, leaves, flowers and fruit… Until then, the seed is a fixed, inert creature, waiting for the right conditions to perpetuate life and produce fruits, which in turn will provide new seeds.
For a while, the seed definitely seems to be dead, like a corpse left in a tomb. But in the spring, as warmth returns, with every seed comes resurrection – each tiny tomb opens, the stone is removed and the sprout appears. The cause of this resurrection is the light and warmth of the sun. And similarly, for those human beings who have long been exposed to the light and warmth of the spiritual sun, one day the moment arrives for resurrection."
Picture Credits: Sun Streaming Light photos by Jane Sherry, one of Satya Center's founders, "The Diver", mixed media original drawing by Jane Sherry, Photo of working at Roxbury Farm CSA in NY, Stained Glass window of The Christ and lastly a Byzantine picture of Mary Magdelene.