Dear Friend and Reader:
This weekend, we have a guest writer: Genevieve Salerno, bringing us some beautifully written prose on the pagan holiday Lammas, the eclipse and the ending of summer. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.
Enjoy the days off, and scroll below Genevieve’s article for the Oracle and the weekend’s aspects.
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Genevieve Salerno at work on the week ahead aspects at Book of Blue studio. Photo by Eric Francis.
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Midsummer is the sexiest time of year. The word itself conjures images of luscious fruit, eternal twilight, warm nights dotted with the firefly’s peridot lights and feverish days punctuated by bursts of thunder and warm rain. It is a time when romance wanders freely in the mind, and when the bounties of earth are so plentiful, they are intoxicating. Life seems to spring eternal.
Midsummer is a pagan sabbath that falls on a cross quarter of the Great Wheel. It occurs 45 degrees away from the summer solstice, and 45 degrees before the autumn equinox. For the pagans who celebrate strictly by the astrological clock, the Sun will enter the middle of the sign Leo on the seventh of August. This marks the time of Lammas. For pagans and otherwise, it is an important time for life-assessing, dream-designing and thanks-giving. This year’s Lammas comes at a very special time as well, because of the solar eclipse that occurs on the first of August.
There are few times throughout the year when the change of the season is more obvious. Whereas the months previous were marked by the arrival of insects, birds and mammals; buds bursting with a fervor; and the nights getting only a fraction darker than twilight, the time of Leo communicates the beginning of the autumn’s return.
The green of the trees begins to take on a darker, more exhausted verdancy, animals go about the business of rearing their growing young, instead of birthing them and the nights and hottest days are filled with the gnawing presence of insects. Lammas, or Lughnasadh (pronounced: loo-NAH-sah), the sabbath which celebrates the beginning of the harvest year, is a time of maturity and of age. It is also a surreal moment in the year when death and life coexist in physical manifestation.
The fertile, feminine energy of Cancer comes to its most voluptuous. Pistils impregnated by pollinators begin to swell with the promise of fruit and the flowers die. Japanese beetles and the like crowd vegetation in orgies that, if left unchecked, devour the tender portions of rose, grape and corn. There is no better time in the entire year to witness decomposers like worms and maggots in action: the sides of the roads are populated with roadkill.
But while these events, in isolated doses, can disturb or revolt, they take place with a reverberating certainty that can only be granted as the assurance of passing time. At the peak of summer we are given ample proof that for life to continue, life must pass from one entity to the next.
For many celebrants of this time, bread baking is the most important ritual. Roughly translated, Lughnasadh is “Festival of Loaves”. Flour has been ground from grain that was sown and then reaped. It is an excellent image for the experiences in our lives: they begin, they flourish, they end and then we have time to figure out how they nourish our spirits. Bread making is also a way to understand the wisdom that not only do we shape our lives, but our lives shape us as well. We are both the bread and the bread maker.
Leo is the zodiac sign of the king. Since Rome and Mesopotamia, the lion has been equated with divine power, and royalty. The Sun, Leo’s ruling planet, is the archetypal personification of the father. Here, the Sun is the lord of life. Now that midsummer makes its progression, the arc the Sun makes across the sky continues to diminish until we begin to feel the coming of Autumn, and the return of darker, colder nights. The king, who up until now enjoyed his vitality, begins to grow older.
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On an energetic level, the promises that have been made throughout the spring and up until this point in the summer have not had the energy to come to fruition. In order for that to happen, energy must pass from one body to the next. Transference is necessary for the change of maturity to take place. We must switch roles, we must move on, we must die and we must be reborn.
Ancient polytheists celebrated this time of year by sacrificing their king in the literal sense. Each year a new king was chosen to consummate his right to rule and make decisions for the good of the people with the queen, who represented the land. After the king was sacrificed, the queen chose a new king. This was at once symbolic of the eternal life of the king and queen, and the value the earth places on our lives.
Coincidentally, according to modern witchcraft, midsummer is the time when women hold the most power over menfolk. It is the time of the spider woman, weaving the web of life that connects all things to the present and past. Now is the time for her Lover to consummate with and be consumed by her. Out of his body, she will weave the future.
As far as the solar eclipse is concerned, this is one of the most potent times to mentally let go of those things that must be set free in order to make their transformations. Darkness is a vital part of the germination of many different kinds of creatures, both in the plant and animal kingdom. The solar eclipse is a reminder of the realm in which the seed springs forth, and where the root calls home. What this means is a time to assess life in a manner that keeps balance in mind.
Life and death coexist on midsummer, and the veil between the two is very thin. This spells out a fortuitous time of transformation. While emotions, memory and intuition mix together to form a kind of healing broth for the consciousness, it is a good time to admit to yourself things you have been afraid of letting come to light. In the safety of the eclipse’s darkness, the self, and only the self, becomes the most important witness. Just like in actual life, good footing is the key to great strides: balance is the key to progress.
There is no time like the present to let go of those things that weigh you down. When you decide finally to leave them behind, you give them a chance to blossom. Step lightly away from those things that you can finally admit have done you no good, and you will return to find a garden. What you left behind was your hang-ups, your guilt, your regret. What you have found in the fruit is memory transformed into soul-sustaining, character-building experience.
This weekend’s Oracle takes us to June 01, 2004 – Capricorn – Monthly
Mighty lessons of relationship abound in the world right now, and you are not the only one going through huge changes. Ask around. Or maybe you don’t need to; you may have become the local therapist, thinking it’s positively absurd that people are investing so much faith in you when your own life is so unpredictable and unstable. But it’s all part of the same process. You are getting to know yourself. That is what this is all about. Your direct experiences, your influence on the ones closest to you, and what you learn when others confide in you, all are contributing to what amounts to a massive self-study project. You cannot change what you do not know, and from the look of things, you’re learning a lot.
Saturday 02 August 2008
Eros (17+ Leo) trine Quaoar (17+ Sagittarius Rx)
Mercury (13+ Leo) sesquiquadrate Pluto (28+ Sagittarius Rx)
Mercury (13+ Leo) sextile Arachne (13+ Libra)
Mercury (13+ Leo) square Psyche (13+ Scorpio)
Mercury (14+ Leo) trine Great Attractor (14+ Sagittarius)
Mercury (14+ Leo) trine Juno (14+ Sagittarius Rx)
Mercury (14+ Leo) quincunx Jupiter (14+ Capricorn Rx)
Venus (25+ Leo) square Admetos (25+ Taurus)
Apollo (28+ Leo) sextile Hades (28+ Gemini)
Eros (17+ Leo) quintile Amor (5+ Gemini)
Mercury (15 Leo) sesquiquadrate Aries Point (0 Aries)
Arachne (14+ Libra) semisquare Orcus (29+ Leo)
Atlantis (22+ Libra) quincunx Uranus (22+ Pisces Rx)
Juno (14+ Sagittarius Rx) conjunct Great Attractor (14+ Sagittarius)
Arachne (14+ Libra) sextile Juno (14+ Sagittarius Rx)
Arachne (14+ Libra) sextile Great Attractor (14+ Sagittarius)
Venus (25+ Leo) septile Kronos (4+ Cancer)
Mars (19+ Virgo) sextile Varuna (19+ Cancer)
Pandora (11+ Scorpio) septile Logos (20+ Virgo)
Sunday 03 August 2008
Pallas (29+ Taurus) sesquiquadrate Jupiter (14+ Capricorn Rx)
Mercury (16+ Leo) sextile Sisyphus (16+ Libra)
Mercury (16+ Leo) semisquare M87 (1+ Libra)
Amor (5+ Gemini) quincunx Chariklo (5+ Scorpio)
Mercury (17+ Leo) trine Quaoar (17+ Sagittarius Rx)
Venus (26+ Leo) trine Galactic Center (26+ Sagittarius)
Sun (11+ Leo) quintile Pallas (29+ Taurus)
Mars (20+ Virgo) quintile Hylonome (2+ Sagittarius Rx)
Ceres (23+ Cancer) semisquare Saturn (8+ Virgo)
Sun (11+ Leo) square Pandora (11+ Scorpio)
Arachne (14+ Libra) square Jupiter (14+ Capricorn Rx)
Sun (11+ Leo) sesquiquadrate Galactic Center (26+ Sagittarius)