Out of the Darkness Fly the Arrows of Inspiration

Knowing how passionate I am about the link between the zodiac and the seasonal cycle from which its meanings derive, people often ask me how I reconcile the fact that the fire sign Sagittarius falls within the darkest season of the year.  I have done a lot of searching reflection on this over the years and have come to see how absolutely perfectly it fits.  We can easily see how the other fire signs, Aries and Leo work perfectly with the element in a very visible and obvious way.  Aries is the like the first buds of Spring bursting with life force, Leo the summer heat which makes everything grow so abundantly.  With Sagittarius, that fire comes from within, filled with anticipation, promise, hope and faith.

I often think of Sagittarius as being that sign that carries the strongest "light" / "positive" energy in the zodiac, and this would fit with the symbolism we find in eastern traditions where the yang force emerges strongest when the yin is at its most saturated and we can reach that point in the Scorpio phase.  In Scorpio we faced our darkest fears and shadows, journey into the underworld, as the sun accelerates lower toward the horizon and the realisation of death in nature confronts us, as the nights draw in ever closer.  In Sagittarius, while the night still draw in closer, the rate acceleration of the sun toward the horizon is checked and begins to decrease as we move toward the solstice.  And with that comes the ritual realisation that the Sun will return again, and it is this event which is anticipated in Sagittarius.  This is celebrated, of course, in Christianity, with the season of Advent - which anticipates the birth of Christ, perfectly synchronous (and many would say derived from) with the Winter Solstice tradition which honours and celebrates the return of the Sun.  So in Sagittarius, we can be inspired, like Magi-astrologers who predict the holy birth, to take that leap of faith, soar beyond our fears and limitations, rise again out of the depths of our shadows, with renewed hope and vigour.

I have also reflected that even in Scorpio, where we have a very male symbol Mars, which drives us downward into the depths of our soul - the arrow symbol in the Scorpio glyph is beneath the ground level - and represents how the seed of life's continuing cycle is sown under-the-ground, even though it appears that nature is dying.  In Sagittarius, the symbol clears the ground and that realisation of eternal life rises up into the light of consciousness and we are given the possibility to travel beyond death into a bigger, more inclusive understanding of life.

In our recent alchemical journey workshop for Sagittarius, we imagined ourselves re-kindling the fires of inspiration that the goddess Hestia has been tending for us and spreading that fire far and wide.  In the cycle of fire in the zodiac, Aries lights the spark that gets the fire going, Leo tends the fire and keeps it burning with an eternal flame, and Sagittarius, takes that fire and spreads it abroad with infectious energy and vigour.  Sagittarius has the power to light up even the darkest recesses of the mind to realise the interconnectedness of life.  Sagittarius provides the perspective to bring ideas together that we have forgotten are connected.  It connects the heavens with the earth, the above with the below.  It helps us to think symbolically, mythically and of life in terms a journey.  It is the sign of pilgrimage and in many ways it defines our alchemical journey which is really born out of the Sagittarian perspective.

Mars, Pluto & the Poppy - Flower of the Underworld

I have just walked the labyrinth in my garden to mark the armistice, and found myself, on this day of remembrance, meditating upon the symbolic qualities of the poppy.  It is said that when WWI veterans returned to the fields of Flanders the year after the end of World War 1, they saw fields of red poppies where the bodies of their fellow soldiers had fallen, and it is said to have reminded them both of the blood that had been spilt there.  The poppy was then instituted as the symbol of remembrance and it has been traditional to wear one in your buttonhole in the first weeks of November each year to remember those who gave their lives.

"In Flanders fields the poppies grow between the crosses row on row..." (John Macrae)

It has always struck me as so deeply significant, both that November should be chosen as the month of remembrance and that the poppy should be its symbol.  As I have discussed at length in earlier blog posts, this is the season of the dead, the season of the scorpion, and it is the time when traditional cultures in the northern hemisphere honour their ancestors, remember the dead, and conduct underworld initiation rites, of which the poppy is commonly found as the traditional symbol.

The poppy has always been associated with both sleep and death.  In Greek mythology it is a flower of the Underworld, and the twin brothers Hypnos / Somnus (god of sleep) and Thanatos / Mors (god of death) both have poppies closely associated with them.  These two sons of the goddess of Night live in a cave that one reaches having travelled along the river of forgetfulness, the River Lethe.  Near to the entrance of the cave, shadowy figures beckon the sleeper into the cave with fingers to lips ushering in silence, and shaking bunches of poppies in thier hands.  Hypnos is often depicted with poppy heads in his hands and adorning his head.  He is also said to have carried a goblet of poppy juice in his hand as he welcomes the sleeper into his realm.  This obviously makes us think of opium, which can induce a liminal experience between sleep and death, and was the drug of choice for the romantic poets.  Interesting that with so much current focus on the war in Afghanistan, we find that their most coveted and valuable asset (not to mention the most controversial) is the opium poppy.

Archaeological finds at ancient burial sites confirm that the poppy was used as a sacred plant in underworld rites of passage rituals.  In some variants of the Perspehone myth it is through an underworld poppy that Kore (destined to become Perspehone), the innocent daughter of Demeter, is tempted into Hades realm.  And in her long, desperate search for her daughter, Demeter is said to have found temporary relief from her pain from ingesting the poppy.  It is interesting to note that the poppy is a companion plant of wheat and barley, the grains which Demeter granted as gifts to humans.

Poppies make us think of blood, with their bright crimson colouring, and of death with their black core.  I've been reflecting on this in relation to the sign Scorpio, for these two colours represent the colours of Scorpio's two ruling planets - Mars (red) and Pluto (black).  In the Greek tradition, Mars is called Ares, and was the most disliked of the Olympian gods - his warring impulses not suiting the palette of the supposedly more philosophical Greeks (Mars was a more celebrated figure in the Roman tradition).  Yet Ares was certainly an ally of Pluto/Hades - unsurprisingly as the wars he helps to start offer up so many souls to Hades realm.  When considering the influence of Mars, we should remember that many of the qualities that are celebrated in remembrance of those who die in war are governed by Mars.  Courage, devotion to the cause, passion, focus, loyalty and leadership in battle - these all belong to Mars.  And dying courageously for the cause unites Scorpio's two ruling planets perfectly.

There is a more profound aspect to this synthesis of Mars and Pluto, red and black - that again brings the poppy to mind. Having the courage is to enter into an unknown realm - to sacrifice what is known, what is safe, what is predictable and familiar.  And as those poppies grow up between the crosses in the fields of Flanders, they perhaps honour that instinct that Kore-Persephone first modelled. For, in her story, she willingly sacrificed her own pure innocence for the crimson promise of underworld passion, embodied in the poppy, and entered willingly (at least, if not consciously) into possibility of death and transformation that follows closely in its wake.

So I find myself reviewing my position toward the red poppy, which I have always tended to want to replace with a white one, more indicative of peace and light.  Yet for our Scorpio phase of the journey, meditation upon the red poppy seems entirely appropriate. However I might feel about the absurdity and futility of war, there is no denying the compelling power of the Mars archetype. It will always seek to find an outlet for its powerful red energy, and our innate fascination with death and transformation will, however unconsciously, draw us through Mars's warrior impulse into Hades realm.  And until we finally grasp as a race that we are all interconnected and that when we aggress or kill another we are really aggressing or killing an aspect of ourselves, swords will continue to be drawn, in ignorance, in the name of that red-blooded god.

Crying Tears For the Gods...

This post is inspired by a very moving dialogue on The Alchemical Journey forum, about death, despair, grief, loss, shame - and how sometimes we need to surrender our mental constructs and journey deep into the mystery of those perspectives in order to find catharsis and healing. Often it is not enough to just "understand" the psychological dynamics of a situation or apply positive thinking strategies or other mind games. We're in the Scorpio phase, in our natural alchemical cycle of the year, it seems like a very appropriate time to surrender our rational mind those perspectives within a safe ritual container.

Colette and I entered such a container this weekend. We've been doing a very intense tantric course - and it was a real weekend of shadows - it brought up so much shame and grief and deep, impenetrable emotions, which included joy and desire, as well as rage and fear. I cried more deeply on Sunday than I have for many years - without even really understanding why. Colette said she'd never seen me cry like that in 8 years. Looking in from the outside, one might ask why on earth would anyone want to go into that? Why risk opening up such deep wounds, wounds that go even beyond this one life? Yet by doing so we both experienced such an incredible sense of healing and re-connection to one another, and beyond that to something more profound, more-than-human.

We realised the extent to which we just been going along in a really kind of low-level way in our relationship - putting up with the way things were between us. And it reminds me how most of the time, in our everyday dialogues, we are just superficially dancing on the surface of life, playing with words, ideas and concepts - and they don't get anywhere near the powerful truth - which is always buried deep in our shadows through our complex relationship to sex, money, power, death and so on. And those shadows belong to the underworld realm of the soul, where deep memory resides - and that is vital to who we are - not something to be denied or suppressed.

I think astrology is very helpful here - especially when we treat it as a naturalistic path of transformation that can reconnect us to the divine, heavenly half of our natures. As Paracelsus said: "Heaven retains within its sphere half of all bodies and maladies" - that's the imaginal half, as Jung and others have described it - the part that belongs to the soul and cannot simply be "understood", fixed, or rationalised. It needs to be honoured in its heavenly, imaginal aspect. I like what James Hillman says, specifically in relation to astrology:

"The zodiac returns events to the gods. Each time an astrological consultation can return a characteristic to its divine character, polish a problem so that it shines in a different light, reveal the god in the disease, let the client see clearly for a moment that heavenly half, the astrologer is performing an epistrophe, returning a mess in the human to a myth in the gods”

Maybe this weekend was a kind of epistrophe for me (more than an epiphany - I've had those too!), and maybe my tears were for the gods...

In my opinion, astrology is far too easily reduced to an explanatory psychological model. Not by experienced practising astrologers, generally, though I have (too often) heard astrologers attempt to justify their alchemical art in quite reductive terms. For me astrology should not be used to reduce the complexity of our life experience to convenient, psychological "sound bites" - rather it should be capable of amplifying our experiences and opening us up to a more mythical, more-than-human realm of possibilities.

Astrology is not a reductive science, and should not be dragged, like psychology has been, down that cold, clinical and ultimately futile path, where the creative impulse to tell stories and connect to natural rhythms is starved of imaginative nourishment and imprisoned by the impossible fallacy of "objective truth". The paradigm of modern science is too narrow and exclusive to contain the mythic richness of astrology and the complex soulfulness of the psyche.

So when I work with the Zodiac, I seek to follow a naturalistic rather than psychological path, deepening the fabric of our understanding of natural cycles and systems in more-than-human terms. In other words to embrace the persectives of animals, birds, plants, trees, sacred places, each capable of embodying a divine presence. Let us not forget that this is accepted as real by every traditional culture other than our own, even though our maninstream culture has arrogantly dismissed them.

An experiential engagement with the zodiac reveals layers of mystery that cannot be comfortably be explained (away) by purely humanistic tools. Those layers of mystery can help to reveal our embodied connection to the songs and stories of the earth, songs that are ever chanted and re-chanted, stories that are ever told and creatively re-told, with modified and verses, additions, nuances and harmonies.

I believe the zodiac has the possibility to re-awaken awareness of our soul life. Like the zodiac, the soul is irreducibly plural in its perspectives. It helps restore our relationship to the gods, and although it is more comfortable nowadays to call them archetypes, we must remember that they have agency - they are alive, autonomous, capricious, and liable to surprise us at every turn.

The Alchemy of Darkness

"Night and dark are good for us. As the nights lengthen, it's time to reopen the dreaming space."(Jeanette Winterson)

This post is inspired by a beautiful article by Jeanette Winterson in Sunday's Observer. In the article she reminds us just how important it is for our sanity and well-being to embrace the cycle of the seasons, and especially the autumn and winter cycles, as nights draw in and the air becomes colder and damper. She creates a lovely image of her "24-7 friends, high on electric light" coming to visit her at her home deep in the woodlands and her feeding them root vegetables like turnip, beetroot and suede, "grown in rich-black earth...food with darkness sealed in it"!  The alchemical image of the black sun reminds us of Autumn, of the Scorpio cycle - the Sun radiating inwards, into the earth, where the seed of life has now been sown under the ground. 

We have becoming so accustomed, in our culture, to conquering the darkness with electric light, and overcoming the cold with our fossil-fuel heating systems that we too easily neglect the value of the darker season. The ready availablity of perpetual light spawns the illusion of perpetual growth in our culture, makes us believe that we can conquer nature, live beyond our natural means, disregard the fact that we are part of the earth and subject to its rhythms and cycle. Inevitably our language, our metpahors reflect this - metaphors like light, growth, gain, new, development, evolution, progress, expansion, positive are welcomed and thought to be "good". By contrast, words like dark, decay, old, contraction, loss, shadow, negative - these ideas are considered to be best avoided, overcome, put out of mind and thought to be "bad".

This is an extreme perversity of the modern condition, endemic in our political system, our economic system and our personal ambitions. It is hopelessly out-of-balance and entirely unsustainable to wish for perpetual light, perpetual growth, to be perpetually "positive" in our outlook. That is why I love this season and want to embrace it. In spite of the fact that I'm sitting here at a computer with the light on, as darkness closes in outside, struggling with that paradox, yet I want to surrender to the deeper truth that only the darkness knows.

Jeanette Winterson makes the salient point in her article that "when the lights are on" conversations tend to be focussed on outer things, projects and plans, ambitions and strategies for changing things, making them "better". When the lights are out, and we sit by candlelight or around a fire, our thoughts slow down, turn inward and we become more reflective, more sensitive, more intimate with one another.

Last night, my wife and I turned all the lights off in our house and lit some candles. We live in the countryside and it was pitch dark outside, save for the moonlight. We realised that we hadn't sat together like that for a long time - within a few minutes we were reminiscing, journeying into the deeper areas of our relationship, and listening to each other at a level that we rarely do these days, so busy we are with our projects and plans. It was a rich and very rewarding experience.

I am of the belief that we should pursue what is pleasurable to us in life. I am a great believer in pleasure and there is plenty of it to be had in the alchemical wheel of the year. But pleasure comes in many forms and flavours, and each season brings a different flavour. Following the wheel and embracing each stage of the journey, as it takes its turn enriches our lives - keeps us awake to who we are. Eating, sleeping, loving, dreaming, in a way that honours the season we are in offers us so much more possibility to feel connected, in tune, in balance. This is at the very heart of The Alchemical Journey, and the stories and symbols of the Zodiac signs offer wonderful reminders of how to make those connections.

Link to Jeanette Winterson's article: "Why I Adore the Night"

Scorpio & The Beauty of Autumn's Decrepitude

Thinking more about Scorpio and why I love this late autumn season so much, I'd like to share this beautiful reflection by Valerie Easton from a recent article in The Seattle Times. (Thanks so much Marcia for sending it to me)

"I’ve been trying to figure out why I love my garden most right now, when it’s so not at its best. And finally I think I understand: I find the garden’s quiet decline comforting, the mellow colors of autumn soothing. Only this late in the season is it possible to see the garden without a scrim of ambition and hope between me and reality.

It’s not that I didn’t appreciate it…But it’s now, during the garden’s waning weeks, that I relax into its pleasures and see every flower, falling leaf and remaining pumpkin most clearly. And it isn’t just the clarity of the low-lying sun slanting across the horizon; it’s the clarity in my head, where I’ve stopped anticipating, plotting and planning the ideal garden. Maybe this is the only time of year that most of us can get beyond our projections of gardens future and remembrances of gardens past. By this point in autumn, the garden is what it is.

As the weather cools and the days shorten so dramatically, we’re no longer aspiring. It’s not that fall dashes our dreams, but rather that it diminishes them enough so we can accept fall’s decrepitude as beautiful in its own right.”

(Valerie Easton)

The Season of the Dead

I've been thinking about why I love this time of year so much, this Scorpio time, why I find it so compelling.  I'm not a Scorpio and have no planets there (except for Neptune - and I do have a prominent Pluto). Yet for me, an Aries child of the Spring Equinox, so full of the optimistic endeavour, it is during this intimate Scorpionic interface with death, when the veil between the worlds is at its thinnest, that I feel most in touch with who I am and what it is to be alive.  The Sun entered Scorpio on 23rd Oct and will move into Sagittarius on 22nd Nov, and I thought it was worth reflecting on the number of annual events celebrated during this period that have a Scorpionic flavour connected to death and remembrance, seasonal transformation, due enactment, and the journey to the underworld.

Dia de los Muertos
Today is 1st November, recognised and celebrated in Spain, Mexico & other Latin American countires as "Dia de los Muertos", or the Day of the Dead.  Families and friends gather to remember relatives who have passed, and private altars are built to honour the deceased.  While in the Christian calendar, this co-incides with All Saints Day, it also traces back a lineage in Mexico to an Aztec goddess, Mictecacihuatl, The Lady of the Dead.  All Saints Day is a direct descendant of All Hallows and, in Northern European Pagan traditions, the cross-quarter festival of Samhain, meaning "summer's end".  In the Celtic calendar, Samhain marks the end of summer, the end of the harvest, and the beginning of winter.  Indeed it marks the moment of the Celtic New Year.  Traditionally, doors are left unlocked and food and drink is left out for the dead.

Remembrance Day
And at this time of year, of course, during the Scorpio cycle, it is traditional to wear a red poppy, in remembrance of those who died during the two world wars of the 20th century.  World War I famously ended on 11th November 1918 (during the 11th hour) - and this established the date of remembrance day.  Poppies have long been associated with sleep and death, and they have long been used as offerings to the dead.  The poppy is associated with Persephone - Queen of the Underworld.  In a particular variant of her myth, it is her picking of the poppy that Hades makes grow that allows the God of the Underworld to abduct her.  It is interesting to note that the choice of date for Remembrance Day involved the mystic Wellesley Tudor Pole, who founded the Chalice Well Trust in Glastonbury and was a trusted advisor to Winston Churchill.  Tudor Pole is also the inspiration behind the "Silent Minute", a daily meditation that Churchill instated during World War II, and is often cited as a major factor in unifying the British people during that time.

Remember, Remember the 5th of November!
Next week, on 5th November in the UK, we still celebrate Guy Fawkes Night, where we traditionally light a bonfire and burn an effigy of Guy Fawkes, the Catholic restorationist, who attempted to blow up the Houses of Parliament in 1605.  He was arrested in the early hours of 5th November during that year, and as a mark of due enactment, and possibly a reminder to others who might be so inclined to copy him, his effigy is ritually burned every year.  Extraordinary that such a tradition should have last over 400 years, but it has, and perhaps it has because of its incredible timing, during the time of the year when it is traditional to light bonfires.  A bonfire was originally a bone-fire, a Samhain tradition where animal bones were burned as a way of warding off evil spirits.

In Sussex, Bonfire Night takes on a different slant, being associated with the execution of the Protestant martyrs. Hence, on 5th November the largest bonfire celebration in Britain takes place in Lewes, the county town of Sussex, and site of the last protestant execution.  This is always a heated affair (forgive me!), and tensions run deep in the town.  Thousands of people attend every year, and the police have a policy of announcing that it has been cancelled to try and reduce numbers, though they would never dare cancel it of course!  Several bonfires are lit simultaneously in different parts of the town.  The most controversial of these involves the burning of an effigy of the Pope.  I attended this event about 12 years ago with my girlfriend at the time, who was Italian - brought up a Catholic - and she couldn't believe what she was seeing! 

And there are many other calendrical traditions around the world that honour the dead at this season, and honour the journey into the Underworld that Scorpio represents.  There is a marvellous website that gives details of these:  http://www.novareinna.com/constellation/scorpioevents.html

To observe so many Scorpionic traditions constellating together at this time of year reminds me of the way that the calendar focusses our imagination and activates our deep knowing about the alchemical year, even if as a culture we have become largely unconscious of the process.

The Zodiac Memory Theatre

When we open ourselves up to astrology through the imaginal realm and get can our whole body involved through play, movement, music, dance - acting out mythical stories, stories of the seasons - we start to remember the possibilities of who we are, where come from, the opportunities open to us. It can give our lives a profound sense of meaning and purpose, as it opens our imaginations to a richer, more meaningful narrative. Through connecting with the mythical images and symbols, we re-connect to our soul.

The work we do on The Alchemical Journey programme draws out this rich vein of symbolic resonance. The work is full of soul. For me, the Zodiac like an archaic memory theatre – a storehouse of cultural, psychological and spiritual knowledge. In alchemical terms, it operates as an alembic, a coherent vessel that can contain the pain, the suffering, the confusion that we experience in life, without judgment or analysis. Instead it offers us stories, stories that we can act out, play with, identify with and allow ourselves to carried away by - within a ritual setting. I see this as a powerful form of alchemical gold-making, or in James Hillman's terms, "soul-making". It enables us to transform our perspectives, and realise that there are many perspectives – when we do that, miracles happen.

I love Thomas Moore's analysis Ficino's astrological ideas. He shows how, for Ficino, illness comes in the form of monotheism, life dominated by a single god, imagiantion fixated in a singular consciousness. The beauty of astrology, engaged with as ritual theatre is that it maintains its polytheistic integrity. Each season has its own characteristic, as does each god, each zodiac sign. They have their entrances and their exits, and by honouring each appropriately at the appropriate time, we encourage the natural diversity of life to express itself.

I talk a lot about embodied learning, experiential learning. We all carry this incredible knowledge and wisdom within us, and when we engage the body as well as our minds, I believe it allows us to access a deeper knowing. When I first discovered astrology 20 years ago it was a very embodied and highly charged experience. It was like being flooded with memories – I was in a real crisis at the time - and it really helped me to weave my life back together in the most magical way. It helped to place my story into a mythic narrative – and that seemed to absorb the pain I was going through and enabled to me to re-create myself again – it was incredible – it helped me come out of a deep depression. It really brought me back to life. And that’s the value of experiential astrology, astrodrama, astrological theatre. It's a way of us bringing ourselves and the world around us back to life: re-animating our experience of the world.

The Imaginal Zodiac

I consider astrology to be an imaginal art and the role of the astrologer, I believe, is that of artist weaving the threads of this mythic imagination in a meaningful and coherent narrative. The Imaginal Realm is the realm of Soul and it is irreducible plural in its perspectives and outlooks. The 12 perspectives of the zodiac cannot be reduced to one another, and neither the planets that govern them. The Zodiac belongs to the realm of soul, and is by its very nature a mystery that it will unfold its wisdom to us, only through our own imaginative participation. As James Hillman says: "the soul is not a sustance, but a set of perspectives..it is the imaginative possibility in our natures, the experiencing through reflective speculation, dream, image and fantasy - that mode which recognises all realities as primarily symbolic or metaphorical."

The Zodiac has formed the basis of mystery traditions, and initiatory journeys throughout the western world – we see this in incredible sculptures, mosaics and bas reliefs from all over Europe and the middle-east. The traditions have been carefully preserved in mythic memory, and through our own imaginative participation, we can still take that initiatory journey today.

On the Alchemical Journey, we’re really walking in the footsteps of countless ancient mystery traditions, following follow a twelve-fold path of initiation. It’s an alchemical training following the path of the Sun through the seasons, through the twelve months of the year and through the twelve astrological portals or gateways – the 12 signs of the zodiac. It’s really one of the richest and most coherent imaginative frameworks we have available to us as human beings. We’re working with a really ancient form of magical work, and we’re making it really relevant to the challenges we face in our modern lives, but without losing the magic. We’re really careful to honour that magic straw that takes us into the other world, the imaginal world.

We find the theme of the journey through the Zodiac repeated in the Greek, Babylonian and Egyptian iconography, but also in Christian, Jewish and Islamic art also. We find it in the stories of Arthur and his 12 knights, the 12 labours of Hercules, Jesus and his twelve disciples, the 12 tribes of Israel – they all carry a memory of this twelve-fold journey. They are relate directly to the Zodiac. The idea of an initiate taking a cyclical transformation journey around a wheel of animal figures – it has a powerful coherence for our imaginations – and it seems to be deeply woven in our collective psyche.

So The Alchemical Journey is a journey through the Imaginal Sky, the Imaginal Heavens. It is about re-connecting to the heavenly half of our experience, that more-than-human half, that we have neglected so much with our modern secular thinking. The heavens are the place of soul, they are a place where our imagination can play and these fabulous animals and beings in the night sky – they can enchant us – reconnect us to a meaningful cosmos.

Scorpio - Journey into the Underworld

"The dimension of soul is depth (not breadth or height) and the dimension of our soul travel is downward" (James Hillman)

Scorpio offers us a poignant reminder of how the zodiacal journey can serve a process of soul retrieval. It is the experience of the three water signs that most suitably reveal the qualities of soul in the zodiac, as we have already experienced in the sign Cancer. In the sign of the crab, we first level of initiation, through reconnecting with the ancestors, with a deeper sense of home, memory, roots and origins. But in Cancer, we were still in the season of the light. Now in Scorpio, the season is darkening, and it is time for us to take responsibility for our deepest fears, desires, and destructive impulses, if we are to proceed along our soul’s path and re-discover the truth about who we are. In all traditions of initiation there is a journey into the underworld that must be undertaken in order for the initiate to know her/himself. In our alchemical journey process, this is it!
Image courtesy of Josephine Wall

The Sun wears a dark cloak in its Scorpio phase, Samhain marking summer’s end, reminding us that Mother Nature has exhaled all that she can on this turn of the wheel. Revealing the thin veil between worlds, she prepares now to breathe in, focussing deep within herself. While the beauty of her turning colours may have distracted our senses during the Libran cycle, so the stark reality of Autumn’s mission now confronts us in Scorpio. Nature’s once verdant mantle rots down on the damp forest floor, and fungus devours the leaf corpses.

Scorpio is the phase of the zodiacal wheel that we in the west seem to have collectively chosen to ignore, failing to acknowledge our own shadows, or deal with our waste; turning away from decay and death and refusing to see this as essential to the sustainability of life. We have created unsustainable structures based on perpetual growth and increase, which break the essential life cycle of transformation, and pile up toxic debts for ourselves and the planet. Our fast-disintegrating monetary systems pervert nature’s gift of abundance with their artificial reliance on debt and scarcity rewarding the few and condemning the majority to poverty. As Scorpio’s ruling planet Pluto moves now into Capricorn, I believe the self-destructive potential of the corporate structures that prop up these systems will be exposed and, ultimately, transformed.

This phase of the year teaches me the importance of learning to die well, so that I might be able to live more fully, relinquish my dependence upon what I already know and have the courage to face that which I may once have feared. It confirms something for me about the true nature of alchemy. Far from attempting to control nature and bend it to his own human will, the alchemist is always seeking to submit himself to nature’s power and mystery. Through practice, she learns to transform the hard shell of the human ego so that she might enter that liminal realm between worlds and experience the very common ground that we share with plant, animal and rock.

On The Alchemical Journey programme, we seek to penetrate nature’s deep mystery by cultivating an attitude of ‘wonder’ toward it, exposing our imaginations to a range of initiatory processes, which draw on astrological and seasonal myths and traditions. In this way, we seek to complete the cycle of transformation, and thus learn to live both magically and sustainably in our everyday lives.

"One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious." (C.G. Jung)

Tensed Like the Strings of Amphion's Lyre

There is a new moon in Libra this weekend and the Sun, Moon, Mercury and Venus conjoin in that sign.  The image I have for this line up is of a four-string lyre, played by one of my favourite characters from Greek myth, Amphion.  Libra holds taut the tension of the strings, without which there could be music.  I'll tell you the story of Amphion who I see an archetypal Mercury/Venus in Libra character.  It's a beautiful Libran story!

Amphion and Zethos were the twin sons of Zeus and Antiope.  Like many of the herous of Greek they were raise in secrecy of a remote mountainside to avoid the malevolent forces that sought to destroy them in their infancy.  While they were growing up on Mount Cithaeron, Amphion, the more sensitive of the brothers, attracted the favour of Hermes (Mercury) who gifted him a lyre.  Amphion became devoted to the instrument and played it night and day.  Zethos, his more practical brother taunted him and accused him of being lazy and good-for-nothing.  As far as he was concerned, Amphion's love of music prevented him from doing anything useful.

But later, after the two brothers had conquered Thebes and were set the task of rebuilding and fortifying the city, it was Amphion who had the last laugh.  For while Zethos toiled to shift the mighty stones, Amphion simply played his lyre and the resonance of his music was so perfectly in harmony with the cosmos that the stones simply slid effortlessly into place.  So it was that Seven-Gated Thebes was raised through the power of music!

This weekend is a perfect time to come together with someone you love and experience the creative tensions that exist between you, not by trying to make something happen and move the stones into place - but by tuning into the cosmic music and allowing it to happen naturally.  It's a time, where you can experience the world of possibility that opens up when you really allow that person's unique "otherness" to meet you head on. Often, we relate to the significant others in our lives simply as a projections of the judgments and assumptions that we already hold about them.  So take the opportunity during this beautiful Libran line-up to open up to this "other" really is. 

I'm doing just that this weekend.  I'm off to a couple's tantra weekend with my wife Colette.  I'm slightly apprehensive (I have an exact Venus-Saturn conjunction after all), but nonetheless open and ready to experience our relationship again, as if for the first time.  How appropriate that it should be happening over a Libra new moon, with Amphion hitting the sweet spot!

Beautifully Balanced in the Claws of the Scorpion

It is worth remembering that Libra has not always been represented as a pair of delicately balanced scales. There was a time when that constellation was actually marked as the claws of the Scorpion. The memory of this is beautifully depicted in this image of the constellation. I've been thinking a lot about this symbolism and would like to share the follow insights that have come to me about this.

I think of Libra as the sign in the zodiacal journey around the wheel where we become conscious. If we think in terms of its association with the 7th house, then, it is the sign where raise our head above the horizon for the first time. It is the sign where we first encounter opposition (in its opposition to the first sign, Aries). So it is the sign through which we become conscious of ourselves in relation to the other, where "otherness" comes to meet us!

So here we have a threshold point, where dwells the threshold guardian, whose persective is directly opposed to that of our own most personal, Arien / first-house identity.  I somemtimes think of it as personal blind-spot in the wheel.  And this "otherness" that both opposes and mirrors us, might appear in our lives as a lover, a business partner, a soul mate, or a worthy opponent. But whichever it is, there is an irresistible attraction that draws the other into our midst during this stage of the journey. And the spirit of Libra throws us another prop too - a very fetching pair of rose coloured spectacles through which to view our "mate".

During this period of attraction and seduction is the Autumn season greets us first in its more balanced Libran phase.  And it meets our gaze with the most remarkable natural beauty and quality of light as leaves turn a rich array of colours and shades. But remember the scales are really a pair of Scorpion's claws. Autumn is possessed of a darker intent, and will reveal its true identity in the next sign.  The pans, or the claws? Either way, they hold us transfixed in the immutable grip of death and re-birth, that so characterises this extraordinary season.

Capturing the Sunset
Again when we consider the Libra association with the seventh house and, thus, the setting sun, we find powerful imaginal resonance. One is at once enthralled by the beauty of the sunset, and capivated by its myriad colours. There's a kind of nostalgia held fast in that moment of the day as light it fades and darkness approaches. It seems to me a perfect mirror of the seasonal moment. So the Libran artisan attempts to capture the beauty of the sunset, the beauty of Autumn, trying to hold the tension in the colours as they turn. What we want, it seems, is to preserve that moment, freeze it, dedicate it to memory, capturing it with our camera, or on the canvas or in a musical score.

So it is in this confrontation with that which opposes our known identity, through having to dance with the tension in the opposition that we are prepared, nature-readied for the unfolding process of death and re-birth. For six months, since that first Arien bud broke seed pod on the first cherry tree, we have been shown nothing but visible signs of life, that are so obvious that they overwhelm us with their vitality and presence. Now on that cusp of death, of night, of dreamtime. We are readying ourselves for the journey of the soul into the underworld-wonderworld, where we will need very different instruments of navigation that we required during the 'light' phase of the year. We must learn much about our shadow if we are to make a successful crossing, and embrace death as an essential part of life. Through this we come to know that the opposite of death is not in fact life, but birth - and that life indeed has no opposite, for it is all-embracing, all-composing, all-engaging.

From the Wedding to the Marriage
Life, then, is the journey and re-birth is a stage in that journey that we will learn about as Autumn's true mission begins to confront us now.  In Libra we are still flirting with commitment, playing the mating game. And we may try to play along with that Libran lightness, long after the colourful leaves are composted in the ground, and we are left dancing with shadows - mourning the lack of response that we receive back from the other. We may marry in Libra, quite appropriately too, for it is the sign of the wedding and nature's backdrop could not be more poignantly beautiful.  As we enter Scorpio, though, we are confronted, inevitably with the truth of that marriage - as the confetti withers and the albums of memories begin to gather dust, and the real work of marriage - transformation - begins. The marriage that is unable to foretell, or embrace, the shadow and when it inevitably arises, unable to experience the depths of its transformational power, is liable to suffer the confines of a lightweight, compromise union. Or else have it played out repeatedly to some form of conclusion through the dark arts of the divorce lawyer or criminal investigator.

In terms of time, of course, the astrological year is a metaphor for our life's journey, but not "just" a metpahor, for its cycle is relentless and existentially 'real'.  We may spend years, or lifetimes, predominating our attention in the Libran phase, vaguely glimpsing or consciously avoiding the successive phases. The power of following the year in this ritual way, as we do on The Alchemical Journey allows us to imitate Nature's extraordinary teaching in an embodied, processional way.  As we start to weave that deep understanding back into our lives, so we begin to recognise the symbols, the metaphors, the deep, timeless archetypal stories when they appear to us, in our dreams, and in our everyday encounters.

So, here we are in Libra - held fast in the pans of the scales, in the claws of the Scorpion, illuminating the tension in our lives between light and shadow, such that we might know a deeper truth of our destiny and be prepared to surrender the known for the unknown, the identity for the Soul.

PostScript:  The Southern Hemisphere
As you might imagine, I am often asked the question "what about the southern hemisphere?", where the seasons are reversed and thus not in synch with the symbolism of the signs, or else opposed to them.  I have done quite a bit of deep thinking about this and have some quite passionately held views about it - which I am more-than-happy to converse about here or any other other internet platform for that matter.  And I may write up my ideas as a blog topic in the future.

A Time To Consider. To Be with the Stars

Libra holds a unique place in the zodiacal wheel. It is a sign full of paradox. As the only sign in the zodiac not represented by an animal or human figure, we might expect it to be less possessed of animal instinct than the other signs, somewhat aloof, too from the emotional roller-coaster of human experience. It is possible to recognise both of these traits in the Libra, yet here we have the sign that is the representative of relationship and marriage in the zodiac. It is through the Libran perspective that two people are drawn together in union, in matrimony. Libra is the sign of marriage, the marriage of opposites. It is the sign that holds the tension of the polarities - male and female, light and dark, yin and yang.

People born under Libra often describe how they cannot make their minds up, find it difficult to decide which way to go, which lover to choose, when to act. During my 18 years as a practising astrologer, I have observed a predominance of clients with strong Libra (and 7th house) themes in their charts, looking for guidance. Whereas a strong Aries type will just act, and then work out the consequences later, the Libran must consider the consequences first, weigh things up, assess the pros and cons, and perhaps seek guidance for others as to what to do.

During our recent Libran weekend on The Alchemical Journey, we addressed this issue through experiential play, and what emerged was quite revelatory, especially for the two strong Libra-types that we had present in our group. The gift of the Libran perspective is to resist the tempatation to act, to suspend judgment, to hold the opposites in tension, to hold the middle ground. This is why Librans make natural mediators of course, why they can facilitate individuals and groups with violently conflicting points of view to sit down at the table together and "air" their differences. Libra belongs to the element of air, the element of communication, dialogue and exchange of ideas. People who can stand authentically in the Libran perspective have to ability to hold up a mirror for each side and enable each side to cultivate an attitude of reflection, to see themselves reflected in the other, to enable self and other to remain engaged, in relationship. This is Libra's great gift and it is a profound one. It is little wonder however, in a culture that values action over reflection, that Libra has such a hard time!

This does mean, of course, mean that Librans should just avoid make decisions. But it does seek to honour value of reflection and consideration. Libra is the 7th sign of the zodiac, and it offers us the first opposition in the wheel, the opposition with Aries, the first sign. So the "I" of Aries becomes the "We" of Libra. The desire (de-sidere - to be separated from the stars) of Aries becomes the consideration (con-sidere - to be with the stars) of Libra. As astrologer Darby Costello has noted in her beautiful essay "Desire & the Stars", (http://www.darbycostello.co.uk), the gift of consideration, is the gift of union with the other half of our being, the heavenly half. Our two Librans found this realisation to be extremely helpful, as they were both anxious that they should be making a decision - and perhaps hadn't really given themselves permission to truly "consider" their options before resting upon an actual decision.

As with all the sign perspectives, the gift of Libra is not just for Librans. It is a perspective that we all have the ability to hold, and during the month when the Sun travels through that sign, as it is now doing, we can draw strength from nature, which mimics the Libran disposition and thus teaches us how to integrate that perspective into our lives. That great Libran figure from Greek mythology, Themis, teaches us that the social order is derived directly from natural order. Themis is always depicted blindfolded with a pair of scales in one hand and a sword in the other. As daughter of the original pairing of Ouranos (sky-god) and Gaia (earth-goddess), she is close to the centre of things, and it is her wisdom of balance and natural justice to which the divine hierarchy of the Greeks must always defer. In the Libran cycle of the year, initiated by the equinox of equal day and night, Summer turns to Autumn and nature is held in a delicate balance. So the Spirit of Libra invites us to imitate this situation in our lives, and consider what is in the balance for ourselves, and to both recognise and allow the tensions to exist, for these are creative tensions, tensions out of which beauty, insight and opportunity may emerge.

Bless you Libra!

Life in The Balance

I've been thinking a lot about my relationship to the sign of Libra in the last week or so as I contemplate our forthcoming workshop for this sign (26/27th Sept). Being an Aries, it's my opposite sign, so it's one I know I have a lot to learn from. I went through a phase when I was in my twenties of being irresistibly attratced to Libran women. I always put that down to the "attraction of opposites" and there's certainly a lot in that. The perspective that is directly opposed to my own most familiar perspective is the one I'm likely to be attracted to if I am looking to complete myself and become more than I am. And Libra is really the sign where we confront the principle of both opposition and attraction. It encapsulates the much publicised "law of attraction" principle, in that if we focus our desire in a particular way toward what we want, we will attract it to us and ultimately unite with it. But equally (and fasincatingly), as we face up to what is, in effect, our mirror image in the people and circumstances we meet in the world - that which we attract, being different from what we already know - it inevitably stimulates tension, conflict and even repulsion when it actually comes knocking on our door! So, I've been working on the Libra chapter of my book over the last few days. Here are some extracts from what I've written...

Embracing Paradox

As the wheel turns from Virgo to Libra, our attention turns toward beauty, balance and harmony. With the harvest in, the crop can now be weighed in the scales and, as day and night find their equilibrium again, so we are gently prompted by nature's alchemical cycle to redress the balance in different aspects our own lives, especially in relationships. As our elemental focus shifts from earth air, the Zodiac invites us to lift our gaze, raise our vibration, and take time out to reflect upon, and really appreciate that which is other than ourselves. Libra is the sign through which we may learn to relate to phenomena as it appears to us, learn to respect its 'otherness'. It is an invitation to suspend our hasty judgments, relate more openly to those who cross our path, however different or opposed their viewpoint might be from our own. Libra offers us the perspective through which we may learn to become more accepting of paradox, develop our aesthetic appreciation of life, and consider the possibility that things are what they seem.

Autumnal Reflections

This time of the year offers us a perfect opportunity to appreciate nature, reflect upon her gifts and give thanks for her bounty. The harvest moon, the full moon closest to the Autumn Equinox, is the second moment in the year when light and dark are again balanced. Just as the Spring Equinox initiated a period of light, growth and verdancy, so the Autumn Equinox initiates the elevation of darkness over light as nature begins to withdraw from its outward expression, and we move into a more reflective mode. Just as Aries, embodying the dawn of the year, is sunrise time; so Libra embodies the setting sun, the dusk of the alchemical year. As the scales tip gradually toward shorter days and longer nights, it seems an appropriate time to weigh our own lives in the balance, embrace other viewpoints, suspend judgment and hold out an olive branch for peace, understanding and reconciliation.

The Alchemical Wedding

Libra represents the archetypal wedding of opposite forces, the uniting of male and female, of light and dark, of day and night. It invites an alchemical fusion that is fraught with creative tension, yet which enlivens the imagination to create new ways of combining opposing energies. It is the taught strings on Apollo's lyre that will bring forth the harmony, the stretched canvas of the painter mirrored in his own struggle for expression pulls at his heart strings and motivates his art. Libra, always looking for refinement, for that ideal partnership that will transcend conflict, elevate the soul and resonate with the harmony of the spheres. This notwithstanding, Libra is the divinely packaged usherette of death and transformation par excellence. The reality of this may not be felt until we meet the next sign, yet the preparations for that transition are all made here. It is Libra's role to disguise the deeper truth we must face in Scorpio, and seduce us into the mysteries of transformation through her beauty, her art and her gift for diplomacy.

Autumn leaves, in the process of their dying, inspire the artist to reach for her palette as colours turn golden, red and orange. So too, the myriad colours of sunset constellate our imaginings and turn our minds toward mystical union, which always involves the death of that which is known and a leap of faith into that which is not. The Wedding, too, so beautifully designed, choreographed to produce a perfect image of togetherness, seduces us into a marriage that will require us to surrender our individual status, give up our singleness of outlook, and merge our own unique light with that of our opposite. So it is that Libran beauty and idealism precipitate the reality of union in which we must learn to embrace otherness, recognise that which confronts us and learn to appreciate an opposing perspective.

Libran Mythology

In Egyptian myth, Libra is Ma'at, the goddess of the scales who, at the time of death, weighed the human soul on one pan and an ostrich feather on the other. If the scales tipped, then the soul must re-incarnate with the aim of releasing the surplus weight. Ma'at reminds us that the prime goal in life is balance, and for the Egyptians this was necessary to prepare the soul for the afterlife. In the Greek tradition, she is the seer Themis, who wears a blindfold and holds a pair of scales in one hand and a sword in the other. Themis is the daughter of Gaia and personifies the social order of law and customs on Mount Olympus, reminding us that social order is always drawn from natural order. In Christian tradition, the scales are held by the archangel Michael, who is celebrated during the Libran phase of the year at Michaelmas. Each of these deified beings bears a similar function that maintains both social and spiritual order.

There was a time before the Greek zodiac established its autonomy, when the constellation we know as Libra was actually an extension of Scorpio, its claws, and it is worth remembering that there is always a sting in the Libran perspective, as the blind prophet Tiresias found out to his cost. Before his blinding, Tiresias was granted by Hera the rare opportunity to experience life as a woman, so that he could have knowledge from both male and female perspectives. This trans-sexual initiation gave him a unique insight, which the gods exploited in the settlement of argument. Zeus and Hera were arguing over whether man or woman enjoyed greater sexual pleasure. Asked to adjudicate, Tiresias shared his honest experience that woman enjoys nine tenths of the pleasure, while man only one tenth. Furious that Tiresias should divulge such secret knowledge, she strikes him blind, while Zeus grants him the gift of prophecy in respect of his honesty.

"To the Fairest"

Adjudication is an obvious Libran theme and it features prominently in one of the most fitting of Libran stories, the Judgment of Paris. When uninvited guest Eris (also known as Discord, a classic aspect of the Libran shadow) gatecrashes the wedding of Peleus and Thetis, deep passions are stirred. She throws a golden apple before the gathering of goddesses. It bears the inscription "To the Fairest". Paris is called in to judge the beauty contest that ensues and is set the unenviable task of choosing between Hera (goddess of marriage), Athena (goddess of wisdom) and Aphrodite (goddess of love). Paris is seduced by the latter choosing love over wealth and power, a decision that seals the fate of Troy. Lest we forget that is was for the beauty of Helen, Aphrodite's prodigy and "the face that launched a thousand ships", that the bloodiest war in Greek history was fought.

Reflecting on Eris's challenge, I am struck by the wonderfully Libran ambiguity in the wording inscribed upon the apple. "To the fairest". We would naturally translate that as to mean the most beautiful, but the actually wording throws up a question as to what is meant by that. The fairest equally implies even-tempered, well balanced in judgment and possessed of the quality of equanimity. It is interesting that this Libran story should emphasise "fairness" rather than voluptuousness or sensuousness. For Libra is not a sign of passion, but rather a sign of balance. In our story though the aesthetic pleasure derived from a well-balanced deportment is inevitably rejected in favour of a deep lust that lurks insatiably in the heart of the cool headed adjudicator.

The Libran phase of the alchemical journey around the wheel of the year, then, offers an opportunity to ponder, consider others opinions and learn to walk a middle path. It forms the first and most fundamental opposition in the Zodiac, that which exists with Aries, its opposite sign. We are six months in, half way around the wheel and for the first time in our unfolding journey, we are compelled to stare face-to-face into the eyes our opposite number. As much as Aries is impulsive and self-willed, with a single-minded, warrior-like passion, so Libra is considerate, reflective, and relationship-minded, with a taste for mediation and refinement, fairness and reconciliation. This is the first time on our journey where we are really forced to consider the consequences of our actions, and the impact they have on others. It is thus through the perspective of Libra that we first become truly conscious.

Transforming Relationship

Libra is a double-edged air sign, presenting us with both our partner and our opponent, stretching us to acknowledge our differences, learn mediation and find ways of reaching agreement, even if it forces us to reconsider our own cherished view of the world. Libra teaches us above all else that it is no longer enough to simply satisfy our own individual appetites, for we must now embrace our mirror image, and recognise how that which we do not appreciate or understand in ourselves, will inevitably manifest through those with whom we are drawn to unite. Whether as lover, business partner, opponent or rival, we are challenged to establish the principles of engagement in Libra, to draw up contracts, learn to listen to one another, develop strategies for meaningful exchange and learn to see the world through the eyes of another.

The Alchemy of Harvest

Virgo must surely be the most misunderstood and undervalued sign in the zodiacal wheel. For beyond the popular image of an innocent virgin, secretary or nit-picker, lies an experienced mistress of purification, discernment, and sexual control. Virgo is the only woman in the Zodiac and one of only three remaining in the whole heavenly sphere. Two of them were chained in the Greek cosmos - Cassiopeia & Andromeda - but Virgo remained free, as the sole representation of the Goddess in the constellations of the night sky. To the Greeks, she was Demeter, with her wheat sheaf, or ear of corn, overseeing the grain harvest and holder of the key to the secret of agriculture. To the Egyptians she was Isis with her child Horus and in the Christian cosmos, Mary with the Christ child. She is a virgin in its older meaning, certainly, as one who owns her own body and chooses when and with whom to unite! Virgo marked the Summer Solstice around 5000BC, and her departure from there is said to have coincided with the end of the Golden Age.¹ She left in disgust, some say, at how humanity had fallen from grace. So, like the mystery school initiates who invoke her return, we are re-imagining her on The Alchemical Journey this month as the Great Goddess that she once was, as we invite her qualities into our lives.

The Virgo phase represents a critical moment in the alchemical year, when the crop must be cut down in its prime, harvested and its essence extracted. In the human life cycle, Virgo represents the rite of passage, where we find out what we’re really made of. This is marked in traditional societies by being cut away from familial roots, through circumcision or ablation, or other initiation rite. We experience Virgo whenever we are examined, judged, cut down to size, as wheat is sorted from chaff. Just as our Leonine experiences have helped us realise and express our confidence and creative potential in life, so our Virgoan ones have set us to task. The harvest goddess shapes and moulds our spontaneous impulses into practical, useful, sustainable projects that serve the greater good. She strips away our indulgences, hones our creative instincts and transforms our promises into everyday miracles, like golden wheat being turned into the food that nourishes a community.

Virgo is ruled by Mercury the wily magician, whose skill and cunning knits together the fabric of life into a seamless dance, his magic embedded in the details of life. Our task in Virgo, then is to sweep, to clean, to tidy, to order, to polish, to wax, to sharpen, to distill, and to become still ourselves as we perfect the ordinary tasks of life. Through bringing mindfulness to our repetitive actions, honouring time, work and our body’s rhythms, we actually open up the possibility of transcending those ritual structures, and entering a liminal space between worlds where transformation can occur.

This puts me in mind of the 1970s rite of passage film, The Karate Kid, in which a young American wannabe is trained by a Japanese zen master, so that he can stand up for himself against a local bully. In one classic sequence, as part of the boy’s karate training, he is set a series of menial tasks, waxing his teacher’s cars, painting his garden fence, sanding the floor. This goes on for days with no apparent connection to karate, until the boy eventually snaps and accuses the old man of exploiting his trust just to get his household chores done. His frustration then turns to revelation in an extraordinary scene, when he suddenly realizes that in the embodiment of these repetitive actions he has actually learned a series of powerful karate moves which are now second nature to him. As with the alchemists, as they attempt to imitate and perfect Nature’s own creative process in their laboratories, these repetitive trials offer the ritual service necessary to precipitate our inner gold.

In the Glastonbury Zodiac, Virgo is “Old Mother Cary”, her figure drawn by the River Cary, a name suggestive of the Celtic harvest goddess, Ceridwen, mother of Taliesin. The river which rises at the springs of “our lady” paints her flowing robe at Wheathill, her swollen belly at Babcary and her breast at the bronze age barrow, Wimble Toot. She holds her sheaf of wheat at Keinton Main-de-Ville, where her hand rests.² These associations continue to enchant our journeys into this landscape temple, which meets us with new synchronicities on every walk.

If you’d like to keep following the journey, please join our mailing list, as I will continue to post a monthly article online. You’ll now find on our website a YouTube film about The Alchemical Journey, superbly crafted by Kevin Redpath & Tim Knock. We have two events lined up in September. On 12^th /13^th September, Anthony Thorley and I are running a weekend for the Isle of Avalon Foundation, entitled “Living the Glastonbury Zodiac”, where we’ll be exploring the origins of the Zodiac and how we can work with it practically in our lives. We’ll be walking in two of the zodiac figures. Our next Alchemical Journey workshop is for Libra, on 19^th / 20^th September, “The Alchemical Wedding: Beauty, Balance & Partnership”. Happy harvesting!

Leo: Alchemical Gold & All That Glitters…

Ever had the feeling that you have a much greater destiny in life, a royal or heroic path? Ever feel like the people you encounter in your life should really be laying a red carpet before you as you arrive? This probably sounds a bit over the top, and one might well be embarrassed to admit ever entertaining such fantasies. Before we dismiss the idea, though, let us indulge the Leo phase of the annual cycle we now find ourselves in, and consider how our personal narratives are stitched together. After all, our life stories are never just a collection of random personal events and circumstances; they are woven through with mythic, archetypal themes that entwine themselves around our everyday experiences, even when we are largely unconscious of them.

We all have the ability to identify ourselves as a King Arthur, a Cleopatra, a Luke Skywalker, or a Lara Croft, and it can inspire us to rise to the challenges we face in life, go beyond our fears and limitations. To have our hearts suddenly ignited with an uncommon enthusiasm, to be in the presence of an inexplicable synchronicity or otherworldy power, to glimpse the possibility of who we are, how we may once have been and what we may become.

This month, as the Sun passes through the sign of the Lion, the Zodiac seems to grant us permission to let the divine light within us shine out in the world. We can take our cues from nature - sunflowers turning their proud faces toward the Sun, or the golden fields of wheat and corn swaying elegantly in a royal summer breeze. The work of the alchemist is mimetic; it seeks to imitate nature’s transformational cycles and evoke their symbolic power. So during this season of fruition and growth, we should celebrate the glory of who we are and allow the natural warmth and confidence within us to radiate out.

Children have no problem playing kings and queens, goddesses and heroes. It just pours forth effortlessly from their creativity and their joy. As adults we’ve become serious and significant, careful to distinguish reality from fantasy, but the line can never be clearly drawn. So let’s welcome this great fire sign of Leo and honour those Leonine characters that bring colour to our lives and invite us to trust the spontaneous impulse to make things up in the moment, play-act, and lose ourselves in fabulous stories.

To experience ourselves within a mythic setting through dreams or visionary journeys, even just being here within the enchanted Isle of Avalon and its great Zodiac temple, is to be in touch with the heavenly half of our being. We should be careful not to overly literalise or personalise this imaginal experience, though. Trying to steal fire from the gods to inflate our individual identities invariably leaves us chained to the impenetrable rock of self-importance! Better to honour that great solar power from which we draw each inspirational breath - allow its fiery force to shine through us and radiate out of us, whilst tending the candle flame of our own personal destinies with dedicated humility.

There is a wonderful character in alchemy, the Green Lion, often depicted swallowing the Sun and causing blood to flow from it. Green is the colour of transformation, and of the earth, and the lion can be seen as the alchemical flask to which the “sun-that-bleeds” surrenders itself. After a series of initiatory stages, the green lion reappears as a king marked with seven stars regurgitating an eternal sun of pure gold, a celestial lion of the verdant earth impregnated by the immortal heavens. Part of our journey into the Leo archetype, then, is to distinguish which Lion / Sun we are dealing with - the golden light of our heroic lion-heart or the glittering ego with its polished surfaces and grand gestures!

On The Alchemical Journey workshop this month, we practised being seen by each other and exposing the truth of our hearts. It is one of the most simple, yet profoundly challenging processes that we do on the course. As each person stood before the group, we gently coached each other to distinguish for ourselves that aspect of our nature that is continually trying to impress others, from that which is naturally, effortlessly impressive. What we realised through this exercise is that when we allow our innate presence to shine joyfully through us, our ordinarily inflated egos gradually begin to fall into line and give up trying to run the show!

Our next Alchemical Journey workshop is Virgo: The Alchemy of Everyday Life on Sat 22^nd & Sun 23^rd August. It will be held upstairs at The Avalon Conservative Club on Glastonbury High St. This is the month where we really get down to the business of harvesting our gold. The price is £125 for the weekend (some concessions available). See our half page advert for more information. I’m still here living in Glastonbury, so feel free to get in touch. My number is 07869 133759. Have a great month!

The Mystery of Home

One of the key questions that we pose during the Cancerian phase of the Alchemical Journey is “what does home mean to you?”. What emerges from our enquiries continually is that home is a place of peace or solace, connection, effortless joy, love, warmth, a place to return to, a place that sustains and nourishes us; time and again, the answers seemed to echo each other. Invariably, home is re-called by participants as an experience of being 'at home', surrounded by the natural beauty of the world around them, a return to a temporarily lost connection to the natural world and the divinity implicit within it.

The Greeks have a term oikos, which I find particularly helpful as I ponder this same question myself. It is from oikos that we derive our root term ‘eco’, and it is translated as meaning ‘home’. It is a richly conceived term though. While it can refer to a human experience of home as the place where you live, or originate from, it can also be a temple, or an astrological 'house'.[1] It embraces not only a place, but also an experiential desire or search for home, which incorporates the building and caretaking of temples and precincts, wherein the gods may be accommodated, and wherein both human and divine may dwell together. Our modern term ‘ecology’, coined by the naturalist Ernst Hackel in 1869 to describe the relationships between plants, animals and the environment, thus suddenly seems to carry a more profound, mysterious connotation. It embodies a spiritual longing for return, a desire to reconnect to one's home, to one's roots.

Few things are more important to us in life than finding a home, and we may spend much of our lives searching for that experience. Thomas Moore speaks of the experience of enchantment, “thick in the air”, when we experience, albeit momentarily, this oikos, and how we are “haunted by its elusiveness”, when we lack it. Martin Heidegger describes the experience of being 'at home', as an experience of authenticity, something the human beings tends to encounter only as rare, but profoundly enlightened moments. For Heidegger, these moments exist among a vast sea of inauthentic experience when we feel cast adrift from the experience of being at home. Maurice Merleau-Ponty talks of moments when the distinction between subject and object temporarily dissolves in our perception and we recognise that we are genuinely connected to that which we perceive in a way that no longer renders us separate from it. Such realisations are momentary, and seem to exist outside of the delineation of normal time and space. Or practice of making a home for the soul, then, is one of creating a temple that can accommodate the possibility of such momentary exaltation.

So home must be something more than just shelter. It must embody a sense of belonging, a sense of being in the right place with the right people around, in the right kind of environment, engaged in activities that feel right and that allow the soul to penetrate our experience. For Thomas Moore, ecology is the ‘mystery of home’, a mystery that can embrace more than just the place where we live, for our sense of home can even extend to include even the planet itself as our home; enough that it might inspire us to act to protect and take responsibility for it.
[1] Moore, The Re-Enchantment of Everday Life, p. 41-2

Cancer: The Alchemy of Memory

Re-Membering Where We Come From

As the ever turning wheel of the Zodiac now enters the phase of Cancer, I like to remind myself of what really nurtures, nourishes and supports me, of what is sacred in my life. Considered in many spiritual traditions to be the gateway through which the soul enters incarnation, this is the sign that beckons us to reconnect to our roots. Cancer is immortalised in the heavens as the Crab whose once nipped the ankles of Hercules to remind him of his origins. Somewhat lacking in sensitivity, that great brute of a hero simply crushed that divinely sent creature beneath his feet. In thinking about this myth, it struck me how our own modern Herculean egos can act in a similarly insensitive way towards our own past, our heritage and ancestral lineage. In striving for individuality and independence we may all too easily over-rule our soul’s irreconcilable need for belonging and continuity as a kind of childish homesickness. So I always welcome this phase of the wheel, as it draws me back to the source, to the wellspring, where I can drink deep of Memory’s healing waters, remember where I come from and re-vision what I may have come here for.

Mnemosyne the Memory Weaver

Cancer is the sign that evokes Memory. The Greeks knew her as Mnemosyne (mother of the Muses so beloved of poets and artists) and she is no mere archivist or record keeper. Rather, she is pregnant with imaginative potency, a spinner of yarns, a falsifier of facts and a literalizer of fictions. So it is with our own memories, which are never just factual accounts of what has happened to us, but rather a collection of mythic strands woven through events and circumstances, conjuring images of the past which our minds quickly assemble into a convincing order. So in the Cancer phase of the wheel, I court Mnemosyne with care, re-weaving the stories that feed my soul and reconnect me to the ancestors.

Solstice Crab

The Sun reaches its zenith at Summer Solstice as it enters Cancer, and with tentative, crab-like caution, appears to pause, stand still, before descending. In many traditions, this is the time when the Sun God begins his descent into the underworld. So the energy of the Sun succumbs to that of the Moon, Queen of the Night, whose ebb and flow might echo in our moods, making us more psychically sensitive and closer to our emotions. For here we are, deep in the belly of summer, the trees pregnant with their fruit, their roots drawing deep for water and sustenance.

The Imaginal Memory Theatre

The Greek philosopher Plotinus coined the term epistrophe, to describe the desire inherent in all things to “turn back” toward their original guiding principles or root metaphors, their archai (archetypes). The movement of the crab and the rhythms of moon and tide seem to embody this quality of turning back, as they echo an instinctual longing for home, for roots. One of the most compelling characteristics of the zodiacal wheel, the centrepiece of most western mystery traditions, is that it seems to preserve the integrity of those root metaphors. So when people come to learn astrology, it often feels more like remembering, exposing a tacit knowledge of its imagery and symbolism that already exists within us. I always take care to foster this quality of remembering in my courses through experiential work as it enlivens the learning process. As we enter the Zodiac, I remind people that we entering an imaginal temple, a theatre of archaic memory, through which we may release the alchemical potency of its images and symbols.

Finding the Source

Here in Glastonbury, of course, we are privileged to have those zodiacal images inscribed in the landscape, courtesy of the extraordinary imaginings of Katherine Maltwood in the 1930s. Each month Anthony Thorley and myself ritually journey along the pathways that delineate each sign in the Glastonbury Zodiac, and we are continually met with profound synchronicities. In preparing this month’s workshop, we quietly mused over how exactly we should approach the Cancer figure, it being the least visited in the wheel, located on relatively featureless low-lying land. Seen from above, the figure appears to cradle the divine child in the Gemini figure in a quite remarkable way. Guidance came in the form of a ‘chance’ meeting with a fellow zodiac enthusiast, who took us to see the recently uncapped wellspring on the land adjoining her house near Compton Dundon. Around the spring, this very special lady has created a beautiful sanctuary garden, and, it just so happens, this spring actually feeds the waterways which draw the Cancer figure in the landscape. Not only had we been shown the way in which we should approach the figure, we had actually been taken to the source of it!

Next Workshop...

Our next Alchemical Journey workshop is Leo: The Alchemy of The Heart on Sat 25^th & Sun 26^th July. It will be held at Meadway Hall, Compton Dundon (about 3 miles south of Glastonbury). On Sun 26^th July, we will walk in the Leo figure of the zodiac, which is one of the most dramatic figures in the wheel, and the first that Katherine Maltwood discovered. The price is £125 for the weekend (some concessions available).