Peace Time Soul Season
Peace Time Soul Season
(chant at Peace Ritual at Imperial War Museum 21 September led by artist Misha Horacek)
At Autumn Equinox you can almost feel the planet stopping for a moment. Day and night are in balance across the globe and nature takes a deep breath to release the summer energies and invite in the autumnal. As part of nature, we experience a natural inward pull during this time, like the trees, we shed stuff during the Fall… we have completed the journey with the growth energies of the year since Spring equinox and now we turn inwards to heal and secure that growth in our bodies and souls. All over the world people pray for peace, by embodying it.
We are entering the Water season where the soul inside leads us along the way. Spring is the season where AIR energies lead, opening the light half of the year, getting us moving after the earthy winter period, bringing in new ideas, sociability, connections and ambitions. Summer is ruled by FIRE, it is the time when being active, exploring, celebrating and expressing who we are is at the fore. Now comes the Autumn season of WATER – the time when feelings lead the way. The equinox shift into the balancing energy of Libra Sun reveals how things are in our emotional, feeling bodies following the active Summer period. The pull is inwards, we discover what we need to heal. We see what we have achieved.
This water energy gives the autumn the flavour of the soul. We should take time to tune in to the richness of harvest, take time to absorb the autumn light and colour into body and soul. Emotion is the language of the soul, and as we move from the active mind time of spring and spirit time of summer, we enter a period when the soul can lead the way. There is usually some sadness when summer ends – a sense of loss which we need to honour but not get stuck in or attached to. Beyond that loss are rich places of deep feeling and magical understanding. This is the season when we can learn and discover more about the divine child within ourselves, the part of us that senses the moods and movements of nature, that speaks and sings with the trees, plants and animals. We are entering the time of soul transformation and will be facing and tackling the mysteries of death and rebirth in a few weeks time as the Sun enters Scorpio and Samhain season brings us to the darkest point of the year – the point at which we can most easily see and feel our connections with other dimensions, other worlds, other planes of reality where consciousness also exists.
Doing that helps us to remember that we are not simply these individual bodies and lifetimes…. that we are also part of something much bigger… something eternal, infinite and ultimately blissful. The Wheel of the Year turns and at each cog offers us a chance to remember who and what we really are, what life is really all about. We can listen to other’s descriptions of their own discoveries on this subject (and even become their students), but it is only by walking the wheel ourselves, attuning to spirit, nature and her cycles, that we can awaken our own inner understanding, wisdom and light.
We do not need to wait until Samhain to give the spirit our attention. Right now, nature is in a glorious phase of colour and shift through which spirit is singing to us constantly. We can start lighting candles and making offerings to display our remembrance of the spiritual realms, of the ancestors, of the spirit guides who seek to nurture us but who can help us much more if we actually acknowledge and open to them. Magical spirits are literally rising out of the earth at this time as plant energy pulls into its roots. Mushrooms are a physical sign of this, this being the period for psilocybin and amanita shrooms that can shift our consciousness when ingested, opening our inner sight to the many realms within realms that exist in the multiverse of creation.
This is the season of the soul. The season to remember what the soul is…. to feel and dive into its miraculous waters, discovering, unveiling, revealing, pursuing the many levels of magical awareness available to our human consciousness. A name that has become associated with the Autumn Equinox is Mabon, taken from a Welsh legend and associated with the archetype of the divine child of light. We celebrate the child phase of the life journey in the Spring of course, at the Spring Equinox, but that is the time of the human child. After two seasons of growth in the light now comes our turn to shine the light inside us – having absorbed the summer sunlight we now discover and reveal how much light we have absorbed and how it is changing us. So the early autumn is a time to be humble, gentle, calm… gracefully accepting the turning of the year, the coming of insight into the inner being. Taking steps to nurture the inner divine child through a time of awakening which she will lead us on if we make her feel safe and hold her hand. Embracing that we are divine children, possibly with an unruly human ego that needs a touch of discipline.
And this season I bet many of us are ready for this shift into a greater vision of who and what we are….. we are coming out of one of the most challenging summers in a long time. While the natural spirit in us seeks to express itself brightly, to enjoy the sunshine highs and warm nights, we have been under the challenging influence of A ROYAL FLUSH OF PLANETS IN RETROGRADE MOTION. The planets travelling backwards through the sky tends to pull our focus into our internal psychological processes, making this summer a period more about shifting our perceptions, changing our habits and viewpoints, learning about ourselves, rather than riding high on simple, ecstatic summer joys.
SATURN was retrograde from March 14 until August 1st, taking him back from aspirational fire of Sagittarius into deep water Scorpio June 14 – September 17, giving us a final blast of the purification journey he has been taking us on since 2012. Saturn in Scorpio means facing the deepest, darkest parts of ourselves, bringing the need to purify and refine our lives in preparation for Saturn’s time in Sagittarius, where he now is settling for the next two years, challenging us to reach for greater understanding of our relationship with higher or source consciousness.
Outermost planetary body PLUTO, was retrograde from April 16 – September 24. This brought an energy of regeneration into our psyche and psychological patterns, working at deep levels we might not often be conscious of. Pluto rules the underworld, he gets us searching in our souls for what we need to change or let go of during a retrograde period. His current placing in Capricorn can be seen in the shaking and cracking going on in the world’s many patriarchal, long established, institutions. This retrograde period may well have changed how many us are new viewing the power held by those invested interests, and looking for alternatives.
NEPTUNE is retrograding June 12 – November 18 in his home sign Pisces. This retrograde is said to heighten sensitivities and receptivity, so both making the transformational energies hit home hard for some and potentially open us to the universal grace and love that Neptune’s reflected sunlight beams at planet Earth. Heightened sensitivity can be both a blessing and a burden. This is a period when it is essential to be doing some degree of inner work, soul searching and balancing, in order to maintain well being. It is important to listen to the inner voice and it’s a good time to develop psychic abilities, and using protection spells/crystals etc if needed to keep unwanted overload of energies being absorbed can be very helpful too.
URANUS retrogrades July 26 – December 25 and he too is pushing us to look inside and analyse our mental processes and our understanding of ourselves. He is half way through an epoch-making 8 year journey through Aries, where he is literally uprooting human’s complacent assumptions about who and what we are. This retrograde period is driving this change deep into our subconscious layers, and around the world many more are waking up to bigger, wider, more fantastic and miraculous reality than they had previously been aware of. Uranus can awaken in us the need for freedom, to escape whatever is confining our growth as a soul. The retrograde period is the time we become aware of this, but the recommended time to act comes after the planet has commenced direct motion again.
VENUS was retrograde in Leo July 25 – September 8th. This had the effect the crucial high summer wave of Leo energy was dominated by this need to sort out what we really love and feel passionate about. So many planets aligned in Leo for a long period of the summer we were all under an immense pressure to sort out who we think we are, to set our sites on our brightest vision of ourselves and affirm it. All the other retrograde planets pushing us to this place of renewal, of reaffirmation, redirection. Now we are in the period of building the redesigned Sun self. We are through the Virgoan month of self improvement but Mars has just arrived in the practical earthy Virgoan energy (and will be joined in October by Venus), keeping us on mission to build ourselves up into who we can really be, manifesting the best of ourselves in the most joyous possible ways. Venus in direct motion now has taken the chains off and love is free to flow forwards strongly again, many might fall in love , or simply feel more able to express their passions now.
This journey needs to be joyous because – the divine child thrives on joy and wilts on apathy or jaded routine. Joyous because – nature reveals more and more how She is the real teacher of life, teaching us, her divine children. We do not really need dogma and theology on this planet (they seem to create so much conflict), we simply need love, compassion and understanding, from which wisdom grows. We do not need denial, renunciation and poverty, we thrive when we embrace passion, exploration and abundance. The Autumn Season of the Soul is shining its gentle healing opening vibrating light in our direction. We are invited to open and receive the Harvest.
shokti 