Full Harvest Moon in Pisces, Virgo Solar Festival 2014
Welcome to the September 8, 2014 Harvest Full Moon in Pisces, Virgo Solar Festival edition of the Satya Center newsletter. Warm greetings from your Editor Curtis Lang with Jane Sherry.
Here in the Northern Hemisphere farmers are using the light of the waxing moon to harvest tomatoes, corn, beans, and other fall crops before the weather turns cold.
Here in the San Francisco Bay area, we are in the third year of an extended drought cycle that some meteorologists believe began in 1998. We are noticing that our favorite organic stone fruit, strawberry and vegetable farmers in the local farmer’s market are struggling.
They tell us stories of neighbors with dry wells, and explain that it takes a year and a half to get someone out to your farm to drill a well deeper. So if your flow gets too low, your farm is toast.
We are noticing that stone fruit and strawberries just aren’t what they were a year or two ago, even with unlimited sunshine and generous irrigation that is drawing down deep wells to the point that farmers are terrified. Vegetables and fruit that used to last a week or two after we got them at the farmer’s market only last a few days before they go bad. It’s pretty scary to us too.
But we are finding that these fruits and vegetables are still wonderful when cooked before they turn. Jane offers our readers several seasonal recipes that capture the Harvest Moon flavor.
It's Tomato Season, Slow Roast Some Tomatoes! “There is no better way to enjoy cooked tomatoes during the harvest, than by slow roasting them to bring out the full rich sweetness of this favorite fruit of the Americas,” Jane says from her kitchen garden experience.
I love Jane’s Tomato Raisin Chutney. “Try this East-West flavor fusion that combines fruity, sour, sweet and hot and goes well with rice dishes or fish,” Jane urges our readers.
For the total end of summer Harvest Moon experience try Jane’s Tomato, Peach & Corn Relish. “I recently discovered this recipe in a recipe journal that I started when I moved to Houston with Curtis in 1984,” Jane recalls. “I used to get lots of local peaches in Texas, one of the fruits that state is known for & make peach salsa, peach chutney & this peach relish! The acidity of the tomatoes & the peaches seems to complement one another. If you're a corn, tomato or peach lover like we are, their abundance now in the late summer makes this a fast & easy relish to add the sun's energy to any meal!”
Curtis Lang's Cosmic Weather Forecast
This month the skies light up in a dizzying concatenation of celestial events that indicate tremendous tensions fueled by intractable conflicts on the world stage, impacting all of us in a variety of ways.
Monday, September 8 we will see a Full Harvest Moon at 16º Pisces, marking the Virgo Solar Festival and occurring at 6:38 pm west coast time, or 9:38 pm on the east coast of the United States. The Sun will be at 16º Virgo, opposite the Harvest Moon, which is also the third in a string of summer 2014 Supermoons.
As we shall see in the course of this article, this Harvest Moon, occurring at 16º Pisces, is ideally placed to mediate between the conflicting stellar influences, to open the hearts of all Lightworkers to the ocean of love and compassion known to the Bodhisattvas, and to provide a glowing nocturnal link to the wisdom teachings, inspiration, grace and guidance embodied in Higher Mind, Higher Self and to link up with our Spiritual Guides and Teachers.
The Harvest Moon is the full moon nearest to the time of the autumnal equinox, and depending on the year, the Harvest Moon can come anywhere from two weeks before to two weeks after the autumnal equinox. For all of us here in the Northern Hemisphere, the 2014 autumnal equinox comes on September 22, so the September 8-9 full moon counts as this year’s Harvest Moon.
You can read more about the scientific, cultural, historical and metaphysical significance of the autumn equinox in my article entitled Autumn Equinox: The Archangel Michael Meditation.
At the time of the Harvest Moon, Pluto in Capricorn will square Mercury in Libra and both will be 90 degrees apart from Uranus in Aries, creating what is known as a T-square in the heavens.
The timing of Pluto’s entry into Capricorn, on January 25, 2008, put the planet of sub-molecular transformation in the sign associated with big business, big government and big finance, and coincided with the beginning of the Global Financial Meltdown, which was predicted on this web site in February 2008 in an article I wrote entitled " The Coming Collapse of Globalization". Pluto will remain in Capricorn until March 23, 2023.
Astrologers who attempt to predict future trends and events associate the planet Pluto with the energy of purifying disruption and total renovation of outmoded or diseased elements. Thus when Pluto enters Capricorn a total restructuring of our large financial, corporate and governmental systems seems assured.
The week of the Harvest Full Moon of 2014, Mercury, Pluto and Uranus will form a short-lived Uranus-Pluto square, active between September 8th and the 15th, resurfacing the energy signature of the infamous Grand Cardinal Cross, which has been active since 2010. This Grand Cardinal Cross peaked in April of this year and will continue to reverberate throughout this decade in various forms of outer planet aspects that signal epochal conflict and civilizational transformation. You can read more I’ve written about the Grand Cardinal Cross on our website.
There are seven major Uranus-Pluto squares which occur between June 2012 and March 2015, and they are the signature aspects that signal global civilizational transformation through conflict and suffering.
All this conflict and tension brings to the surface the central truth that our global civilization, based upon cheap fossil fuels, individualistic, ultra-competitive free market capitalism, and world-spanning corporate and governmental power structures, is experiencing inter-connected environmental, political, economic, social and political crises that threaten to engulf the entire planet in a series of slow-motion environmental catastrophes, resource wars, and financial and political meltdowns.
Nation-states throughout the Middle East are imploding and devolving into virtually ungovernable conditions of civil war. Libya, Syria and Iraq are collapsing, becoming “failed states” without a reliable central government, embroiled in seemingly endless civil wars.
In the most advanced countries of the world, an increasingly Feudal level of raw economic inequality threatens to unravel the social fabric and contributes mightily to a broad consensus that democratic institutions are no longer responsive to the will of the majority of the people.
There is a growing sense in America and Europe alike that Western democracies are on the wrong track.
Europe is mired in an economic depression that many economists believe to be more severe than the Great Depression of the 1930s, by many standards of measure.
In Worse than the 1930s: Europe’s recession is really a depression, Matt O’Brien writes, "It’s a policy-induced disaster. Too much fiscal austerity and too little monetary stimulus have crippled growth like almost never before. Europe is doing worse than Japan during its 'lost decade', worse than the sterling bloc during the Great Depression, and barely better than the gold bloc then—though even that silver lining isn’t much of one. That’s because, at this rate, it’ll only be another year until the eurozone is well behind the gold bloc, too."
The New York Times, in France Acknowledges Economic Malaise, Blaming Austerity, reports that, “President François Hollande on Wednesday … indicated that the austerity policies France had been compelled to adopt to meet the eurozone’s budget deficit targets were making growth impossible.”
“The diagnosis is clear,” Mr. Hollande said in an interview published in the French daily Le Monde. “Due to the austerity policies of the last several years, there is a problem of demand throughout Europe, and a growth rate that is not reducing employment.”
Extreme right-wing populist parties, opposed to the European policy elites who have failed to restore economic growth in the Eurozone are gaining strength in Greece, France, and across Europe. Leftwing movements and political parties in Spain, Greece and elsewhere in Europe are also strengthening as disaffected citizens seek solutions outside the status quo.
In America, two very different social movements, Occupy Wall Street on the left and the Tea Party on the right, claim to speak for the disenfranchised majorities.
The Occupy movement presents itself as anti-corporate and the Tea Party as anti-big-government, so at first glance the two movements appear to be polar opposites. Yet both claim to represent the “silent majority”, the “99%”, and both movements claim to favor the rights of individuals as opposed to the Godzilla sized corporate and governmental institutions.
Transnational Corporations and Big Government increasingly dominate our lives, restrict our individual freedoms, monitor our phone calls and online activity, consume our wealth in taxes, enrich a small financial oligarchy with multi-trillion dollar bail-outs and produce an endless tsunami of propaganda designed to bolster support for oppressive institutions.
These types of social movements pit proponents of individual rights and democractic governance against entrenched economic and political elites whose policies seem designed to concentrate wealth and power in fewer and fewer hands, so much so that a global society almost Feudal in its sharp disparity between rich and poor is beginning to emerge.
These types of conflicts between average citizens and corporate and governmental institutions and elites are likely to intensify during the next several years.
Astrologer Bill Herbst, who has written 80 articles on the Grand Cardinal Cross for the Mountain Astrologer, and contributed several articles to Satya Center, has written extensively about the ongoing cultural, political and economic shocks the Cardinal outer planet conflicts are mirroring in our starry skies.
“People who are aware of at least some of the symbolic meanings of the Uranus-Pluto square need to understand that Uranus in Aries and Pluto in Capricorn are both double-sided. One isn’t ‘good’ and the other ‘bad.’ That’s far too simplistic,” Herbst explains.
“Each planet-sign pair has positive and negative meanings as judged by context and perspective. Uranus in Aries can mean standing up for individual freedom through the protection (and sometimes the reassertion) of personal rights against the draconian power of a collective — whether governmental, corporate, or social — that no longer considers the needs of individuals, which is the dark side of Pluto in Capricorn (rule by and for a privileged oligarchy). But the equations can work the other way, too. The power of the collective to force conformity against ‘outlaws’ who harm society can be the cavalry riding to the rescue to defend the common good by preventing willful, insensitive, or even sociopathic depredations by individuals or companies whose actions harm everyone’s safety and well-being. Each kind of battle has its heroic champions and staunch opponents who are often in entrenched camps, neither of which will give an inch toward compromise,” Herbst contends.
The political and cultural conflicts that are being unleashed can be easily seen in the ongoing highly polarized debates surrounding such disparate topics as climate change, women's rights to healthcare and equal pay, the proper role of the police and the national security state, the role of big banks in our financial system, and the right to keep and bear arms in the United States.
During the next decade as these conflicts heat up further and polarize the population more and more sharply, there is a danger of civil strife and most likely a bitterly divided government in Washington will be unable to forge compromise solutions to our most profound problems.
Eventually a consensus will emerge. That consensus will be informed by increasing levels of social and personal pain, dysfunctional government and economic predation in the United States and around the world.
Clearly there is a tremendous need for all of us to make unprecedented efforts to achieve higher levels of tolerance, discernment and compassion than ever before, in order to see and understand all sides of these contentious issues, and to achieve a vision of our future that will insure the best and highest good for the greatest number.
This Harvest Moon, occurring at 16º Pisces, is ideally placed to mediate between the conflicting stellar influences, to open the hearts of all of us to the ocean of love and compassion known to the Bodhisattvas, and to provide a glowing nocturnal link to the wisdom teachings, inspiration, grace and guidance embodied in Higher Mind, Higher Self and our Spiritual Guides and Teachers.
The Sabian Symbol for 16º Pisces is as follows: In the quiet of the study, a creative individual experiences a flow of inspiration.
The recommendation is for seclusion, contemplation and inner quiet. The challenge is to stay centered and grounded and not to be swept away in a watery tsunami of negative emotions related to the many very difficult aspects that are creating collective and individual crises around the world.
It would be wise for all of us to turn off our phones, computers and tablets in the day or two before the September 9 launch of a new array of Apple gadgets, to meditate upon the change in seasons represented by the Harvest Moon, and to ask for guidance to help us navigate the treacherous terrain unfolding all around us as we move forward into “no man’s land” – the space between the old world which is dying all around us and the new world, yet unknown, which is yet to be born.
Now is the time for us to meditate upon our own lower nature as well, to see how our own base impulses are mirrored in the conflicts being waged all around us in the world today, to understand how our monkey mind and reptilian hind-brains, both essential elements of our humanity, are perhaps undermining our own highest aspirations as individuals and as a species.
We are being asked to open our hearts in compassion to ourselves and to our brothers and sisters and all life around the world, and ask for the grace and guidance we need to overcome our evolutionary heritage and transcend our worst impulses in order to be of maximum service to humanity and the world at large, helping to usher in a new paradigm for humanity.
The Sabian Symbol for the Virgo Solar Festival at this month’s Harvest Moon, occurring at 16º Virgo is: In the zoo, children are brought face to face with an orangutan.
For those who may feel that evolutionary biology reveals imperatives in our genetic structure that predispose humanity to predation, hierarchical social structures and social strife, all of which are to be found in the societies of our simian cousins, and in the historical record of ancient humanity, it may be interesting to read an article I came across on the Internet a day or two ago, as I was thinking about the topics for this newsletter.
The article, written by Bob Sutton, is entitled The Baboon Group that Mellowed Out After the Alpha Males Died.
“Biologists Robert Sapolsky and Lisa Share have followed a troop of wild baboons in Kenya for over 20 years, starting in 1978,” says Sutton. “Sapolsky and Share called them The Garbage Dump Troop because they got much of their food from a garbage pit at a tourist lodge. But not every baboon was allowed to eat from the pit in the early 1980s: the aggressive, high status males in the troop refused to allow lower status males, or any females, to eat the garbage. Between 1983 and 1986, infected meat from the dump led to the deaths of 46% of the adult males in the troop. The biggest and meanest males died off. As in other baboon troops studied, before they died, these top-ranking males routinely bit, bullied, and chased males of similar and lower status, and occasionally directed their aggression at females.”
“But when the top ranking males died-off in the mid-1980s, aggression by the (new) top baboons dropped dramatically, with most aggression occurring between baboons of similar rank, and little of it directed toward lower-status males, and none at all directed at females. Troop members also spent a larger percentage of the time grooming, sat closer together than in the past, and hormone samples indicated that the lowest status males experienced less stress than underlings in other baboon troops. Most interestingly, these effects persisted at least through the late 1990’s, well after all the original kinder males had died-off. Not only that, when adolescent males who grew up in other troops joined the Garbage Dump Troop, they too engaged in less aggressive behavior than in other baboon troops. As Sapolsky put it ‘We don’t understand the mechanism of transmission… but the jerky new guys are obviously learning: We don’t do things like that around here.’ So, at least by baboon standards, the garbage dump troop developed and enforced what I would call a no asshole rule.”
This article suggests that our destiny is as much a product of social structures as of genetic heritage. Biology is not destiny and primates living in groups are quite capable of changing behavior patterns that seem engraved in stone.
And that’s good news for humanity at this Harvest Moon.
The Autumn Equinox and the Archangel Michael
Surround Yourself this month with the Electric Blue Light of Archangel Michael!
September 22 is the Autumnal Equinox, which takes place this year at 7:29 PM PDT, or 10:29 PM EDT. The Equinox, celebrated around the world as a time symbolic of equal day and equal night, is one of the four cross-quarter days of the year.
The solstices and equinoxes were the highly sophisticated preoccupation of the oldest civilizations we know to have inhabited the Earth – in both the East and the West.
This time of year provides us all with a marvelous opportunity to honor the varied ways that different cultures and religious traditions mark the autumnal turning point in our yearly seasonal cycles. Read all about it in our article, Libra Festivals: Michalemas, Rosh Hashanah and Navratri.
The Autumn Equinox is the moment to surrender to Spirit -- the turning point of the year when energies that had entered the very roots of creation, supporting the summer growth of the animal and vegetal kingdoms, now turn upward on the Ascension path.
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 energizing the three lower chakras during the exhalation of summer, now begins to stimulate the heart, the throat, third eye and crown, as we enter the time of increasing darkness, when the subtle senses must become ever more acute to guide us ever 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 birth.
Call upon Archangel Michael to guide you along your own personal path of Spirit. Ask Michael for protection from all energies that would impede you on your way. Ask Michael to remove all obstacles, inner and outer, from your path.
May you Ascend safely and freely, with the aid of the Archangel of Autumn, whom we honor at this time of year.
Read more about the historical, scientific and esoteric significance of the Autumn Equinox in our article entitled Autumn Equinox: The Archangel Michael Meditation.
Ask Archangel Michael to be with you at this yearly turning point in the seasonal cycle and to help you awaken your spiritual warrior that you may thrive and be of maximum service in the world during this time of global conflict and transformation.
Read Mirabai Starr’s article at Satya Center entitled Archangel Michael & the Sword of Discrimination. “Michael represents the Spiritual Warrior inside each of us who, with unconditional love in his heart, is willing to stand up for what he believes is right,” Mirabai explains. “The weapon Michael wields is what the Buddhists refer to as the Sword of Discrimination, which cuts through illusion and lays the truth bare. Who couldn’t use a dose of this medicine?”
“The spiritual warrior is committed to non-violence in all his relationships,” says Mirabai.
“The conflict he engages in is the battle within. This is the struggle to discern his true calling from the endless stream of life’s distractions. It requires great courage and forbearance to step onto the inner battlefield and strike down whatever internal demons stand between our real self and our false self,” Mirabai contends.
“The spiritual warrior is the most peaceful person in the community. Because he has dedicated himself to truth at all costs, he is incapable of engaging in any behavior that creates misunderstanding or strife. He is the champion of those who suffer and the protector of those who long to be free. In ancient England, he is represented by Saint George, the legendary dragon slayer.”
“The spiritual warrior wields the sword of discrimination. With this weapon always at his side, he is ready to cut through illusion and liberate that which is real. He is never unkind, but he is not always gentle. He is perpetually honing his blade, and his powers of detection are sharp. When he perceives falsehood, he names it, and then he destroys it. He is not afraid. He has nothing to lose.”
“When we call upon the spirit of Michael, we are invoking the courage and strength to see the truth and live it, to hear the truth and share it, to know the truth and let it change us,” says Mirabai.
The Archangel Michael Meditation
To begin an Archangel Michael meditation, sit quietly in a cross-legged position or in a chair if that is more comfortable, place your hands palms up on your knees, and close your eyes.
Begin to breathe deeply, from the belly. Breathe in slowly, through the nose, to the count of five if possible, then breathe out even more slowly, through the nostrils, to the count of ten if possible. Continue to breathe in this manner. If you inhale to the count of two, then exhale to a four count, and so forth.
Repeat this for a minute or two until you feel yourself shifting into a space of peace, quiet and meditation.
Say this – “I call upon Archangel Michael for protection against all detrimentalenergies in my environment, and I ask Michael to use his sword of light to cut the cords that bind me to all those individuals and sentient beings, in the material and spiritual worlds, that transmit negative emotions and thought-forms to me or who take my energy without my consent.”
As you do this, visualize Archangel Michael, a giant being of Light armed with an electric-blue sword of cleansing fire.
Visualize Archangel Michael with his great flaming sword, and see a bright shining arc of electric blue energy traveling from Michael to you. See yourself surrounded by this electric blue energy. See Michael’s hand descending toward you. See Michael’s great sword of electric blue light scanning your body from the crown chakra to beneath your feet.
As you see Michael’s sword at your crown chakra, ask for release: “I ask Archangel Michael to cut the cords that bind me to all those with whom I have negative karma that resides in my crown chakra, for whatever reason. I ask Archangel Michael to cut the cords that bind me to all those who have presented themselves to me as spiritual authority figures in an attempt to substitute their will for my own.”
See Michael’s sword cutting the cords that bind you to others through the crown chakra.
If you like, ask Michael and your Guides to show you the people with whom you have these hooks and cords. They may or may not want to share that information with you, because it may or may not be necessary at all for you to know the specific details.
If you are shown these people, bless them and forgive them for any interference they may have caused, and see Michael releasing you from your connection to them. Then see them standing before you without any hooks or cords connecting you.
Always take some time to savor the feelings that arise in you while this hooks and cords work is done and take the time to allow any negative emotions to bubble up to the surface and to be released for healing.
As you see Michael’s sword at your third eye chakra, ask for release: “I ask Archangel Michael to cut the cords that bind me with negative karma to all those who are connected to me through the third eye chakra, for whatever reason, and to restore my faith and trust in Spirit, releasing me from all energies of depression, despair, mistrust and cynicism.”
See Michael’s sword cutting the cords that bind you to others through the third eye chakra. If you like, ask Michael and your Guides to show you the people with whom you have these hooks and cords. They may or may not want to share that information with you, because it may or may not be necessary at all for you to know the specific details.
If you are shown these people, bless them and forgive them for any interference they may have caused, and see Michael releasing you from your connection to them. Then see them standing before you without any hooks or cords connecting you.
As you see Michael’s sword at your throat chakra, ask for release: “I ask Archangel Michael to cut the cords that bind me in negative karma to all those who are connected to me through the throat chakra, for whatever reason, and to restore my self-confidence and my ability to communicate my truth, fully and completely to others in Spirit, releasing me from all energies of self-doubt, self-suppression, shyness and inability to communicate.”
See Michael’s sword cutting the cords that bind you to others through the throat chakra. If you like, ask Michael and your Guides to show you the people with whom you have these hooks and cords. They may or may not want to share that information with you, because it may or may not be necessary at all for you to know the specific details.
If you are shown these people, bless them and forgive them for any interference they may have caused, and see Michael releasing you from your connection to them. Then see them standing before you without any hooks or cords connecting you.
Always take some time to savor the feelings that arise in you while this hooks and cords work is done and take the time to allow any negative emotions to bubble up to the surface and to be released for healing.
The heart chakra and the lower chakras generally tend to be like pincushions over the course of a lifetime, since the majority of love relationships, sexual relationships, family relationships, business relationships and friendships impact the lower chakras more than others.
Observe the example of a typical “love” relationship. Seen on an energetic level most such relationships are dominated more by lust and desire than by true love. Often, the lover seeks to capture the energy of the Beloved in the form of sexual activity, attention, and emotional interchanges. The intensity of the sexual and emotional interchange is far more important than the quality of the interchange. Emotiona