We have been spared the worst of the country-wide heat dome, but it's still in the mid-90s and high humidity most days, so we are concentrating on artwork and our website. All work and no play wouldn't work for us though. We are enjoying much needed entertainment indoors with Sophia most evenings.
Sophia watching cats on TV rolling in catnip, photo by Jane Sherry
As we approach the Full Blue Super Moon in Pisces, brain fog spreads, communications break down, computers exhibit perverse behaviors and relationship challenges multiply. Whatever we try to do, it seems tiny glitches create bigger than expected issues.
No wonder, with Venus, Mercury, Uranus, Saturn, Neptune and Pluto all retrograde at the end of August. Jupiter will go retrograde on September 4, just after the Full Moon, and at that time all outer planets will be retrograde in unison.
As a result, prior to and after the Pisces Full Moon on August 30, you can expect mysterious, unexpected, intermittent interruptions in your work life and domestic routines that can disrupt busy schedules and make it difficult to meet crucial deadlines.
That retrogradation in the stars, mirrored in human consciousness, will continue for weeks and possibly months to come.
Fortunately, there is some relief from the pernicious effects of ass-backwards starscapes on the admittedly somewhat distant horizon.
Venus will go direct on September 3, and relationships should equilibrate, along with our emotional life in general.
Mercury follows her lead on September 15, so we'll have clear heads to deal with the other, slow moving retrograde planets over the next few months.
If you're keeping score, Pluto goes direct in Capricorn on October 11, and Saturn in Pisces goes direct on November 4th.
Neptune in Pisces goes direct on December 6, and Jupiter finally goes direct on December 30th.
We will all be ready to celebrate the New Year of 2024 at that point!
But we don't need to wait that long to have a party!
To end the month of August, we celebrate the Pisces Full Blue Super Moon and the Virgo Solar Festival on Wednesday. August 30th at 9:36 pm EDT.
A supermoon appears about 7 percent larger than an average full moon. NASA / JPL-Caltech
Three or four times a year we see a Super Full Moon, when the moon's elliptical orbit around the Earth brings Luna to its perigee, the point where it is closest to the Earth, and at that time the Full Moon appears approximately 7% larger than normal in the night sky.
The August 30th Pisces Super Moon will be the second Full Moon in a month, called a Blue Moon. NASA says that a Blue Moon appears only once every two or three years, on average. A Blue Super Moon occurs on average about once every decade, so this is a rare and energetically powerful event as well as a star gazer's delight.
Look for a prominent star near the Full Blue Super Moon and you'll find Saturn in the night sky.
The Moon at 7º 26' Pisces will conjunct retrograde Saturn and both luminaries will oppose the Sun as Sol enters Virgo.
The Sabian Symbol for this degree of Pisces is A Girl Blowing a Bugle, symbolizing the awakening of the Divine Feminine archetype in anticipation of an evolutionary crisis challenging the individual and humanity in general.
This Pisces Full Blue Super Moon represents a call to awaken the intuitive, feminine consciousness, associated with Pisces, and to deploy our intuition in service to suffering humanity.
Culturally, this is a moment of peak feminist consciousness, and it is perhaps no coincidence that as of today Mattel's Barbie movie has grossed over $1 billion in global ticket sales. Not that Jane and I think that Mattel's Barbie movie is a feminist statement, no matter what you read in the mainstream media.
This powerful Pisces Moon is conjunct retrograde Saturn in Pisces, so it is possible that the positive Piscean energies of the Full Moon could be inhibited by Saturnine social restrictions embodied in the dead weight of oppressive patriarchal social structures.
New 2023 image of Saturn from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope
Courtesy NASA, ESA, and Amy Simon (NASA-GSFC); Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI)
Individuals who can awaken their higher consciousness will utilize this social resistance as inner strength training, and this aspect can empower them by increasing their will forces.
With the help of strong will power and intuitive guidance, we can achieve great things in the weeks to come, despite all obstacles, through patient perseverance.
The opposition between the Pisces Moon conjunct retrograde Saturn in Pisces and Sun in Virgo can be unpleasant for those with health conditions. Individuals with chronic or unusual ailments often find their conditions worsen with Saturn retrograde, depending upon where Saturn hits their charts.
It's important to note that Saturn in Pisces has been known to coincide with health conditions that are virtually impossible to diagnose, and you might find yourself confused about how to treat your ailments.
You won't be the only one! Doctors and complementary health practitioners may fare no better. So if you find yourself in that predicament, patience is required.
Be gentle with yourself this moth, and remember, with all these retrograde planets, the Cosmic Weather patterns are not at all supportive of those who seek to implement ambitious plans at break neck speed.
Formula One Race, Yas Marina Circuit - Abu Dhabi - United Arab Emirates
Photo by Abed Ismail on Unsplash
There could be metaphorical multi-car pileups in your workplace, in politics, and even among family and friends determined to overcome all obstacles NOW, no matter the price.
It's time to slow down in all we do and reevaluate our plans in light of new information and unexpected events that are likely to emerge during the next few months.
In addition, Saturn in Pisces opposing Sun in hypercritical Virgo can signal an unconscious tendency to engage in harsh, often unwarranted self-criticism, which can be our undoing.
We are all prone to internalize social restrictions placed on the feminine aspects of consciousness by a patriarchal, hyper-rationalist, overly materialistic culture, and with this aspect prominent in the skies, we would all do well to take steps to free ourselves from the childhood cultural conditioning that can constrain us as we attempt to express our higher consciousness and practice the art of compassion in our relations with others.
On the transpersonal level of social and cultural interaction, the oppositions between these powerful planetary forces indicate that culture wars are once again escalating all over the world.
Women and all people with an awakened intuitive feminine consciousness are subject to attack by the forces of patriarchal sexual repression and rational materialism.
This global struggle is being re-ignited once again, and is likely to increase in scope and intensity over the weeks and months to come, especially in America, in the run up to the 2024 Presidential election next November.
Fortunately, as September begins to unfold, after Venus and Mercury have gone direct, we will quickly approach the end of the long, broiling 2023 summer season, when we will all be ready to celebrate the onset of fall.
The autumn equinox arrives on Saturday, September 23, 2023, at 02:50 A.M. EDT in the Northern Hemisphere.
Autumn Day in Woodstock, Digital Painting by Jane Sherry
Fall is the season when a sea of trees sporting vibrant fall colors stretches across the North Carolina hills and mountains, temperatures drop from summer extremes, and we enjoy the bounty of fall harvests at our Farmer's Market.
Cultures all over the world have for thousands of years celebrated spiritual festivals coinciding with seasonal cycles.
These seasonal celebrations of the Great Wheel of Life depended upon accurate observations of the movements of the sun, moon and planets during the year, and on the ability to track and predict the much longer cycles of the movements of constellations of stars overhead.
The human spirit has since time immemorial sought meaning, order, coherence, and strength in its ability to accurately observe and predict these earthly and celestial cycles, seeking to unite in these community festivals the heavenly and earthly realms, the spiritual and the material worlds.
Celtic Tree of Life Art Gong, Art Gongs, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Cultures around the world have engaged in seasonal communal spiritual practices designed to predict weather patterns, irrigation needs, and agricultural productivity, and to plan communal activities such as crop storage and distribution.
During these festivals communities have enacted rituals that seek to harmonize their earthly social structure with the seasonal and celestial influences that are perceived to embody a Cosmic order characterized by eternal recurrence of new life, abundance, fertility, and power.
These efforts formed the basis for the earliest recorded civilizations on Earth.
Mathematics, astrology, astronomy, agricultural science, hydro-engineering, medicine, meditation, prayer, ceremonial ritual, sacred pilgrimages and ritual sacrifice, sacred architecture, art, music and dance flowed from the individual skills and community interactions that structured these yearly observances.
Tarot Trump VIII, Adjustment, aka Balance, Thoth Tarot
Many seasonal festivals around the world occur during the fall months when the Sun is in Libra. See our blogpost entitled Libra Festivals: Michaelmas, Rosh Hashanah and Navratri.
These autumn festivals provide communities an occasion to create and restore an individual and collective sense of balance during a difficult transitional period of the year in the northern hemisphere, when days shorten, temperature falls, crops are harvested and plant growth comes to an end.
During the fall season, northern hemisphere communities must work together to manage the autumn harvest and put aside sufficient food for winter.
Mother Earth comes to the end of the energetic cycle of spring and summer exhalation that extends the breath of life across the surface of our blue-green planet, and she begins the long inhalation characteristic of fall and winter. The extroverted summer energy of plants in the fields begins to turn inward in anticipation of the little death of winter.
The planet’s surface becomes barren during winter months, but the interior of the Earth, more receptive now to the light streaming from cosmic sources, is quickening with new life.
At this time of year, the spiritual component in human nature surfaces after a long summer slumber when activities in the physical world captured the energy and attention of the entire community.
Archangel Michael and His Angels, Magic Lantern Drawing by Jane Sherry
On the Autumn Equinox, Archangel Uriel, Master of Universal Life Force Energy, who has been directing and energizing the growth cycle of plants and animals during the summer months, surrenders his position as Seasonal Archangel to Archangel Michael, who comes armed with subtle fire and a sword of iron, to redirect the Cosmic Forces from the Stars and the Life Force Energy welling up from deep within the Earth toward the support of accelerated spiritual growth.
Energy which has been nourishing the three lower chakras during the earth's exhalation during summer, now begins to stimulate the heart, the throat, third eye and crown.
At the autumnal equinox we enter the season of increasing darkness, when the subtle senses must become more acute to guide us upward toward our lofty yearly spiritual goal -- giving birth to the Divine within ourselves.
That rebirth is scheduled for the period of the Winter Solstice, and much work must be done to purify and attune the physical, emotional, mental and energetic vehicles of the human body in preparation for that new birth.
Archangel Michael's Electric Blue Flame of Karmic Liberation
Archangel Michael is the patron of all those seeking protection, purification, and release from karmic burdens. Michael is always available to help us overcome fear, doubt, and negative emotions and thought-forms. Michael and his legions of guardian angels wield the electric blue flame of karmic liberation.
Take this opportunity at the Autumn Equinox to call upon Archangel Michael. Ask Michael to guide you along your own personal path of Spirit. Ask Michael for protection from all outside influences that would impede you on your way. Ask Michael to remove all obstacles, inner and outer, from your journey on the Ascension path in preparation for the Winter Solstice.
To learn more about the spiritual significance of the Autumn Equinox, and for an alchemical visualization designed to aid in purification and karmic release, please read our blogpost entitled Autumn Equinox: The Archangel Michael Meditation.
May you Ascend safely and freely, with the aid of the Archangel of Autumn, whom we honor at this time of year.
The Autumn Equinox and the Divine Lovers
The Autumn Equinox is also the time when your Editors, Jane and Curtis, celebrate our own Wedding Anniversary. We chose this day for our wedding thirty-seven years ago because of its deep spiritual meaning.
Portraits of Jane and Curtis by Jane Sherry
Libra is the Zodiac sign symbolized by the Scales of Divine Justice.
The Autumn Equinox celebrates the balanced, dynamic equilibrium between day and night, individuals and communities, male and female.
The Autumn Equinox is a Festival of the Divine Lovers, and celebrates the energy of unconditional love and balanced sexual affinity, within the individual and within all relationships.
This alchemical moment of the year, a time of transformation, purification, and the rising of the Universal Life Force energy into the higher chakras, celebrates the sacred marriage of the Divine Lovers.
The establishment of a New Age civilization will be based upon the balance of male and female principles within individuals and in balanced equitable relationships between lovers.
Restoring the balance between male and female aspects of the Self and between male and female within relationships will heal the wounded heart of the world.
How can a species at war with itself survive?
Establishing love relationships that create an equitable dynamic balance between the lovers creates a new energetic container for life-affirming families, and a family dynamic that can better serve the needs of the lovers, their children, the greater community, and the web of life supported by Mother Earth herself.
Healing the Wounded Heart of the World, by Jane Sherry
The New Age of spiritual freedom will be founded upon the principle of male and female balance (both within the self and also among the sexes), upon the primacy of Unconditional Love, grounded upon the Earth through balanced sexual affinity.
The Divine Lovers represent the Avatars of the New Age of Aquarius, which is now trembling on the historical horizon, its first shimmering rays of light visible through today’s dark night of the planetary soul, to those Adepts with clairvoyant vision who can pierce the veil of Time’s illusion.
Such an Adept is the remarkable scholar and clairvoyant named William Irwin Thompson. His work combines comprehensive knowledge of comparative mythology with the clairvoyant abilities of an advanced yogi. Thompson's scholarship focuses on cultures of partnership.
In Thompson's remarkable book The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light, he discusses the crucial archetypal images of the most recent ages of Earth development and the emerging Aquarian Age.
Thompson says, “Myth, as a history of the soul, is still a history, and each stage of the evolution of consciousness generates its appropriate story. As the spiral of history turns, one archetypal story becomes the recapitulation of the old, the performance of the new, and the overture to what is to come.
The family of Osiris. Osiris on a lapis lazuli pillar in the middle,
flanked by Horus on the left and Isis on the right (22nd dynasty, Louvre, Paris)
“As a story, the myth of Isis and Osiris is a recapitulation of the myth of the Neolithic Mother Goddess and the dying adolescent son-lover, but in the case of Isis and Osiris, where the lovers are brother and sister, the relationship between the masculine and feminine is becoming more equal," Thompson explains.
"In the early stages of evolution, nature dominates the human being, the planet dwarfs the tiny human species, but as civilization emerges, the masculine grows to a new level, and so the feminine responds to meet it at that level. The Great Goddess becomes Isis. The story grows from Lascaux to Catal Huyuk to Abydos, but it does not end there."
“The story of Isis and Osiris is an overture to the story of Mary and Jesus. The dead son in the arms of his mother pictured in the famous Pieta of Michelangelo is a recapitulation of the ancient theme of the dying male god and the Paleolithic goddess.
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The Pietà by Michelangelo, St. Peter's Basilica, Rome
Michelangelo , CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
"But the finishing of a story is also its consummation. In giving his mother away to John while he is dying on the cross, Jesus is preparing to effect his own resurrection. This time it is not the Goddess Isis who raises up the phallus of the dead Osiris to conceive the divine child; the resurrection is not merely the god becoming the Lord of the Dead on the astral plane."
“This time an integral being incarnates on the physical plane, takes on the entire mystery of death in the mortal physical body, and rises from the dead on the physical plane. Osiris expresses initiatic mastery of the astral plane, but Jesus expresses initiatic mastery of the physical plane through the mystery of a conscious death.
“Mary Magdalen is the first to see the resurrected body of Jesus, and in that coupled image of the avatar and the whore is the overture to what is to come in the next world epoch. As the whore, Mary Magdalen expresses the presence and consummation of the archaic feminine heritage and its transmutation into the archetypal androgyne of the future. Peter, the orthodox and conventional Jew, would exclude Mary Magdalen from the mysteries, but Jesus sees sexuality in a totally different light.
Courtesy Lawrence OP, Flickr
“Simon Peter said to them, ‘Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of Life.’ Jesus said, “I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the Kingdom of Heaven.’ Jesus did not mean that women should become like men, but that, in the process of initiation, each sex must take on the character of the opposite, before wholeness can be achieved.”
“Jesus said to them,
‘When you make two into one
And what is within like what is without,
And what is without like what is within.
And what is above like what is below,
And when you unite male and female in one
So that the male is no longer male,
And the female no longer female,
… Then you shall enter the Kingdom.’
“Mary Magdalen, the surviving form of the temple prostitute, became the initiate of Jesus. . .It is Mary Magdalen who first sees the resurrected Jesus. . .John and Mary Magdalen stand at the foot of the cross, for in the next turn of the spiral their story is to become the historical performance of the eternal myth.”
Bird Woman Watches the Lovers, Banner by Jane Sherry
“. . .Isis and Osiris are the avatars of one Platonic Month, Jesus and Mary of another. . .If in the practice of Tantric yoga, one looks into the collective unconscious now, one will see a triptych, something like Grunsward's Isenheim altarpiece, vibrating in the air of the astral plane.
"In one panel we see a painting of the feminine lamenting the fall of the masculine into time; it is a painting of Isis crying above the coffin of Osiris.
"In the second panel, we see the dead masculine in the arms of the feminine, Jesus in the arms of Mary.
"In the third panel we see neither the Fall nor the Crucifixion, but the sacred copulation (hieros gamos) of the reunited young lovers. Once it was physical death and crucifixion which nailed consciousness down into matter; then it was a sacrament of Thanatos [Death]; but in the world-epoch about to begin it is a sacrament of Eros, a physical sexuality in which the lovers of eternity give birth to the world on the physical plane.”
As Thompson makes clear, the energetic form for the New Age has been set in the astral plane, and the energy of the Divine Lovers is available to us all. This is an energy of unconditional love and balanced sexual affinity, an energy Unified with the Source of Creation.
This new marriage of male and female energies is based upon co-operation, balance and co-creation, rather than hierarchical relations between the sexes.
Bringing today's war between the sexes to an end and establishing right relations between male and female has never been more important than it is today. A species at war with itself cannot heal the wounds inflicted by mind-body duality, cannot end war, cannot live in harmony with Mother Earth and the sentient and non-sentient beings with whom we share our lovely blue-green home in this universe.
Tarot Trump VI, The Lovers, Waite Tarot
Those who choose to follow the path of the Divine Lovers back to the Garden choose the difficult but important task of creating a new, conscious form of human love, which has not existed before on this planet.
We are talking about an energetic signature, not a prescribed set of sexual relations. Regardless of your gender or sexual orientation, you can balance the masculine and feminine energies within yourself and you can work with your partner to achieve a balanced loving relationship-this is the essence of the energy of the Divine Lovers.
They are assured of help and blessings from all quarters of the spiritual world.
And in following this arduous but rewarding path, they obtain their release from the bondage of this ancient struggle between the sexes and within ourselves which creates suffering in so many hearts and homes today.
Dolphin Psalm, Magic Lantern Drawing by Jane Sherry
At this critical time in history, the ability of lovers to establish a co-operative spiritual practice, a balanced state of sexual affinity, and an unconditional love sends a healing radiance throughout the collective consciousness of humanity.
Lovers who work together to co-create a shared reality of compassionate service based upon loving wisdom are helping to lay the foundations for a new human culture of co-operation and unity with Mother Earth where individuals, communities and nations live in peace and harmony.
Let us all take heart in this time of great turmoil on the planet.
Lovers always live with a joyful heart, confident of the future, for lovers are in touch with the stream of loving energy that comes to us from the future, when the Divine Lovers will reign supreme in human consciousness, cultivating a restored Garden of Eden.
Jane and I send you all our love and light, and we affirm that we all are given the grace and guidance we require to persevere on the path of Spirit and Love in these turbulent times.
Meditation Moment: I Would Love to Be Your Sun, by Curtis Lang
Sun -- image from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory
I would love to be your sun
Your love is transforming me.
You direct my mind's fingers deep
within the soil of my soul
and there I caress the seeds of the future
hidden within my heart.
In your honor and by your loving grace
I climb the luminous ladder rising up my spine,
and as the vines of life entwine beneath my skull
I enfold you in an eternal, celestial embrace.
I am an ape evolving beyond my elemental nature,
a radiant source of light,
once flickering in the wind,
now stable and steady,
fixed and rooted in a new orbit,
light-years beyond the spot where love took flight.
My one desire is to become your dependable Sun,
to pour out my warmth upon your homespun gown
at dawn, as you step out into your garden,
drowsy and covered in dream fragments.
I live to illuminate your astral treasures.
I would refresh your heart with flaming golden droplets,
mined from deep within my violet crown.
At dusk, I would refresh your lunar smile with streaming light,
transmitting my heart’s delight across the womb of falling night
with the metronomic regularity of a lover’s waltz.
Your quicksilver glances quicken the pace
of our energetic dance of love,
and mirroring our ecstasy,
enigmatic stars embrace the void,
creating rainbow phosphenes in my field of vision,
strewn like diamonds across smooth velvet.
Our souls now sharing one intent,
to count the stations of love’s death and resurrection
in the sacred script of God --
hieroglyphic constellations mirror our ascent.
