By Cal Garrison, a.k.a. Mother of the Skye
This week’s Horoscopes are coming out under the light of a full, Virgo Moon, with the Sun newly ensconced in the early degrees of the sign Pisces. This is the point in the yearly cycle when the snake meets its tail and new beginnings emerge out of a lot of chaos and change. Those of us who think we know what’s going on may need to stop and take a look at what makes us so sure of ourselves. Too much is getting shaken and stirred – all the rules are changing – certainty is oxymoronic at times like this.
In my own world nothing is the way it used to be and the latest clue to whatever’s next is nowhere in sight. With no map to the current territory, at a total loss as to what I could possibly add to the monthly Full Moon conversation that people in my line of work are duty-bound to engage in, let me take this opportunity to plead cluelessness. Instead of wasting your time trying to pretend I have it all figured out, let’s turn to the Sabian Symbols and see what Marc Edmund Jones has to say about the symbolism behind this Full Moon, and look at what’s going on, at the 3rd degree of the Virgo-Pisces axis:
“Though the consciousness may not yet be able to realize this as fact, man is as surrounded by spirit as fish by water. Angels, devas and the like are entitized forms of spirit. In a sense at least, they constitute a realm of existence complementary to mankind. They are specialized fields of energy, which are apparently conscious but not ‘free’ in a human sense – that is, free to be what they are not. We are told by seers and even by merely clairvoyant persons, that they constitute hierarchies of energy-distributing forms, which sustain all life processes – particularly in the vegetable and telluric realms – as well as protective agencies attached to human beings. Modern psychologists may think of them as symbols of as yet latent powers in man’s unconscious. By being aware of their presence and sustaining power a man may avoid the desperate feeling of aloneness and alienation which usually pervades the Night of the Soul and the symbolic forty days in the wilderness.
This symbol comes to those who greatly need its reassurance. It is an answer to the symbol of the crucifixion. The personal and ego-centered feelings may be quartered and destroyed; in their place man may develop a sense of deep companionship with consciousness which, though utterly different from his, complements his assuaged mind. He may then realize strength within.”
He continues in a section called “Petrified Tree Trunks Lie Broken on Desert Sand: The power to preserve records of their achievements which is inherent in fully matured cultures”:
“When a vast group of men succeeds in building a culture with strong institutions which express themselves in significant symbols and works of art and literature, such an effort of many generations is rarely lost altogether. In one form or another, records of this culture endure or are mysteriously preserved, simply because they reveal the place and function of this particular culture in the long process of unfoldment of the potentialities inherent in the archetypal man. It is such a concept that has been mythified and popularized in the religious idea of the resurrection of the dead on the Last Day. The symbol of petrified wood in the Arizona desert, however, tells us that the actual preservation of the records is never perfect or total. Only fragments remain, significant enough to reveal the essential archetypal form.
“The third symbol … brings the promise of social immortality. (It is) a symbol of indestructibility.”
The Crucifixion and the Resurrection show up in this pair of symbols. This gives us something to go on – especially now that the snake is gearing up to meet his tail. In those moments when we are lost in the wilderness, it is faith in something higher that pulls us through. At the end of the day our resurrection and rebirth are assured through the preservation of what remains true and authentic for, and within us. From there it’s about our ability to remain centered in the truth, and the extent to which we understand what it means to be accountable. Keep that in mind as you howl at the Moon, and if it helps, use it to try to make sense of any meaning that you find in this week’s ‘scopes.
