The Jewish Feast of Passover, celebrating the Liberation of the Hebrew nation from bondage to the Egyptian Pharaoh, begins during the Full Moon occurring this Wednesday and Thursday, April 5-6 and ends Thursday April 13, 2023.
The Feast of Passover partakes of the unique energy signature of this month’s Libra Full Moon and Aries Solar Festival, which represents a blending of the energies of these two powerful Zodiacal signs.
Justice, Trump XI, Waite-Rider Tarot
As we shall see, all these energies are interconnected in a very meaningful way to produce a dynamic social equilibrium that embodies Divine Justice.
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.
Individuals and families who celebrated Passover, and participated in the great Exodus from Egypt had to demonstrate fidelity to their tribe, their Jewish brothers and sisters, and to their collective faith, above all else.
In their exile, they were guided to the land of Canaan, and, despite guidance from their God that they would be able to successfully wage war with the Canaanites and create new homes for themselves in the Promised Land, they faltered in their faith.
This resulted in retribution from their Lord. The Jewish people were condemned to wander for forty years in the desert, until the entire generation who had lost faith were dead.
Because they lost their collective faith, the promise of Passover was broken. Yet today the Jewish people still celebrate the promise of Passover, the miracle of the Exodus, and the final conquest of their Promised Land in Canaan, decades after they escaped bondage in Egypt.
Preparations for the Passover Sacrifice
מפוכח, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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.
Passover of course is the festival commemorating the Exodus of the Jewish people from bondage in Egypt. The Jewish Festival of the Passover, which begins at sunset on April 5th, is one of the three Festivals of the Pilgrim, or Shalosh Regalim, when devout Jewish people from all over the world traditionally make a pilgrimage to the Temple in Jerusalem.
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.
Moses and Aaron before Pharaoh
Master of the Dinteville Allegory , CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
To obtain their release from the Pharaoh, their extremely fiery but diplomatic Prophet Moses used the power of ceremonial magic and prayer to the Divine to overcome the world-renowned magic of the Egyptian High Priests.
“Who is Yahweh, that I should obey his voice to let Israel go?” asked the Pharaoh, according to the Book of Exodus in the Old Testament of the Bible.
In answer, Moses and Aaron approached the Royal Throne and Aaron’s rod was transformed into a serpent. Pharaoh’s High Priests then turned their staffs into serpents, but Aaron’s serpent devoured the Egyptian snakes.
The Pharaoh refused to release the Israelites from bondage. In response, Moses delivered a series of messages from Yahweh, the Lord of the Israelites, each of which culminated in a plague on the land of Egypt.
The final curse resulted in Divine intervention that inflicted unacceptable losses on the Egyptians, specifically the deaths of their first-born in a plague that spared the Jewish people who marked their doors with lamb’s blood, so that the Avenging Angel of the Lord would spare their houses. Pharaoh agreed to release the Israelites.
Although the Egyptian army followed the Jewish people on their path out of slavery, the Lord parted the Red Sea so the Jewish people could pass safely into their long 40 year exile in the desert, but when the Egyptian army entered the passage in hot pursuit, the waters closed upon them. The Israelites were finally free to go their own way.
But this was only the beginning of the trials and tribulations of the Israelites.
The Israelites had to wander in the desert for decades after their harrowing escape through the Red Sea, again with magical intervention by their God, Yahweh. Yet all these tribulations were merely the stepping stones to attainment of their own Kingdom of Israel and the establishment of their City of God, Jerusalem.
Empowerment through Self-Sacrifice. Short-term pain for long term gain. As a nation addicted to athletics, we should understand the logic of this path well. For the Israelites it was long-term pain for even longer term gain.
Global Climate Change and the Exodus from the HydroCarbon Status Quo
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, 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 all poised to pass over into a new global civilization, 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.
We are currently confronted with prophecies of doom, such as those that were delivered to the Pharaoh of Egypt. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projects that global climate change will cause sea levels to rise 5 feet on average over the next 90 years, and that 700 million climate refugees will be seeking new homes by the year 2050.
The British Meteorological Office predicts that fully 1/3 of the Earth’s surface will be desert by the year 2100, and fully 1/2 of the Earth will suffer drought.
Although global climate change is a topic of political debate in America, with many conservatives refusing to believe the scientists who are delivering our modern prophecies of doom, America’s military leaders and its powerful, globally feared intelligence community are preparing for a series of resource wars and environmental battles without end. They certainly believe the scientists should be taken seriously.
In 2004, the Pentagon commissioned a study entitled “An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States National Security”, which had this to say: “Nations with the resources to do so may build virtual fortresses around their countries, preserving resources for themselves . . . As famine, disease and weather-related disasters strike due to the abrupt climate change, many countries’ needs will exceed their carrying capacity. This will create a sense of desperation, which is likely to lead to offensive aggression in order to reclaim balance. . .Europe will be struggling internally, large numbers of refugees washing up on its shores, and Asia in serious crisis over food and water. Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life. Once again, warfare would define human life.”
Outside the City Walls, Carcasonne, France, Photo by Steve Douglas on Unsplash
In 2007, a group of American military leaders, including General Anthony Zinni, former Commander in Chief of US Command Central, and two Admirals and a US Army general, produced a report for the CNA Corporation designed for use by the Pentagon. This report, entitled “National Security and the Threat of Climate Change” provided a blueprint for navigating a 21st Century global security nightmare. “Climate change acts as a threat-multiplier for instability in some of the most volatile regions of the world,” the report explains. “Many governments in Asia, Africa and the Middle East are already on edge in terms of their ability to provide basic needs: food, water, shelter and stability. . . Projected climate change will exacerbate problems in these regions. . . The US may be drawn more frequently into these situations to help to provide relief, rescue and logistics, or to stabilize conditions before conflicts arise.”
Another 2007 report authored by former CIA Director James Woolsey and a host of other political luminaries, entitled “The Age of Consequences: The Foreign Policy National Security Implications of Global Climate Change”, outlines three different global scenarios, which unfold depending upon the degree of climate change, and envisions major global problems to result not from resource wars but rather from the collapse of governments around the world.
“In a world that sees two meter sea level rise, with continued flooding ahead, it will take extraordinary effort for the United States, or indeed any country, to look beyond its own salvation,” the report contends. “All of the ways in which human beings have dealt with natural disasters in the past . . . could come together in one conflagration: rage at government’s inability to deal with the abrupt and unpredictable crises; religious fervor, perhaps even a dramatic rise in millennial end-of-days cults; hostility and violence toward migrants and minority groups, at a time of demographic change and increased global migration; and intra- and interstate conflict over resources, particularly food and fresh water. Altruism and generosity would likely be blunted.”
Now is the time for action! We must all become conscious of the need to blend the energies of the Ram and the Scales, Aries and Libra. Now is the time for each of us to willingly sacrifice some of our material goals and comforts so that humanity may free itself from the yoke of endless consumption, unbridled competition and individual self-gratification which is currently despoiling the Earth. Together we can be free! The only alternative is a war of all against all that would destroy global civilization.
But we must also know that the path to a New Age of balance and social justice is long and arduous, and we must recall that even Moses never set foot in the Promised Land. We must be prepared to leave the predictable comforts and predictable limitations of our current lifestyles behind us forever, for the time of Exodus from our status quo culture is fast approaching. One way or another.
As we contemplate a future of imminent global climate change and resource wars, with hundreds of millions of environmental refugees around the world, perhaps we can reflect upon the ten plagues of Egypt and resolve to make the sacrifices needed to free ourselves and our children and their children from a future of extraordinary suffering.
Of course it is the world’s corporations and military organizations that are the biggest consumers of fossil fuels, the biggest polluters. Individual austerity is a political and environmental trap because it is only through collective action to curtail the greed of giant corporations and the belligerence of the world’s military-industrial complexes that we can restore balance to the Earth.
It is only through political activism on a mass scale that we can force status quo politicians and the world’s reactionary forces, who deny the reality of global climate change, to accept the need to invest trillions of dollars in energy efficiency, retro-fitting of the world’s houses, buildings and auto fleets, and development of sustainable energy technologies, green architectural developments, and large-scale renovations of the global energy grid that will enable individuals to produce their own energy and contribute to overall electrical capacity.
That too requires sacrifice, of our time, our energy, and our money. It requires a fearless willingness to confront our modern day Pharaohs -- the financial Titans of Wall Street, the monolithic trans-national corporate giants, the mind-bending propaganda wizards of Madison Avenue, and the generals who command the military-police surveillance state that is currently preventing the birthing of a new Green Economy and a new politics of environmental sanity and social justice.
As all of us, of all spiritual paths, celebrate Passover this week, let us all pray and meditate upon the fact that this global transition we are now entering, like the Exodus of the Jewish people, will in all likelihood be lengthy, difficult, and demanding.
We will all need Divine intervention to successfully transition from our status quo fossil fuel based civilization to a New Age of Renewable Energy and a new paradigm of compassionate community, equality, and environmental sustainability that puts the needs of people above the greed of financiers and politicians and the the ambitions of ruthless military leaders around the globe.
We know that the door is open, we are as ready as we need to be, and we are at the springtime of the year.
We are being forced into a rushed passage into the New Age, but we know that with the Grace of the Divine, together the world's people will cast off the yoke of the modern day Pharaohs and, courageous as the Jewish people were at the time of the Exodus, we stand ready to make the hazardous journey from this moment of fear and failure into a Promised Land that awaits us all -- a New Age and a new global civilization of peace, love and understanding.
Our task is to keep the faith and do what is necessary to cross the bridge from one world into the next. The alternative could well be a long exile in a global desert.
The collective consciousness is well aware at the Soul level that we are approaching the end of industrial civilization, the end of the present World Order and the need to totally restructure our human civilization. Yet our world leaders are focused on one thing – maintaining their power and maintaining the status quo which has been so beneficial to them.
We are being asked to rise to the occasion, to ascend beyond our previous limits as individuals and as groups, to assist in the global transformation that is coming, and to guide our leaders toward a compassionate, equitable and sustainable future. We are learning that our leaders will not guide us into the New Aeon, instead in Aquarian fashion, it is the people who will show the way.
The task is monumental. Can we succeed? We are not dependent upon top-down leadership to save our children from environmental catastrophe. Together. . .even though Obama let us down, even in spite of Obama’s pathetic record of capitulation to the forces big oil and big money that fuel environmental degradation, YES, WE CAN!
This Full Moon take the opportunity to meditate upon the concept of Passover, and upon the current turning point in humanity’s evolutionary journey that is perfecting during this decade of unprecedented change.
You can meditate upon the qualities of the Lamb of God, the perfected Aries personality, tempered by the best qualities of the complementary sign of Libra, and ask your Guides and Teachers to help you manifest these qualities in your own life during the coming year.