Liar’s Moon

This May the Full Moon in Scorpio is bringing the energies of the Dharma Moon cycle to a radical level of realisation. The ongoing influence of Neptune’s energies, currently direct in spiritual Pisces, is being intensified towards a point of maximisation and emotional intensity with this Moon – we should expect the unexpected to be revealed and we will need to keep our ears to the ground, more particularly for the sound of Truth – deception is afoot, but, there-in lies a tale waiting to be told! The Sun’s position on the fixed star Algol will feed a serious edge directly into this Full Moon and beyond – it is an influence that demands a certain approach! With careful exploration we can begin to bring out its full import; how we do so on the personal plane will complete the picture……first, we must begin with Time and the planetary movements.

The importance of the Moon cycles continues to grow, highlighting the rhythms of the cosmos and how we can dovetail our personal work into this natural pulse. Whatever we set in motion now, or develop further, will be expanded and sustained through the next Moon phase as Jupiter will be on the cusp of Taurus at the next New Moon – at that time, Jupiter will be sextiling Neptune, which furthers our spiritual work through the Neptunian vibration. This gives a much needed grounding and disseminating impulse that will push the work we do now out into the wider world and help us to spread the compassionate and imaginative aspects of Piscean spirituality into the world with beneficial effect. The re-emergent presence of the Goddess within consciousness is pulsing through these cycles, pushing the masculine principle to the extreme, an inevitable culmination of the ‘Yang’ side of the process before it gives way to the ‘Yin’. So, already we have a sense of the ongoing process influenced through Neptune that will find a Natural expression and, with Algol influencing the Sun, the earthing influence of Taurus becomes crucial. The planets are pushing Earth issues to the top of the agenda….

Venus conjunct Mercury is following Mars into the Taurean fields, and these planets are sextiling Neptune and Chiron while trining Pluto – at the high end here we have extra energy for communicating from the heart, engaging with the sensuously spiritual in Nature and communicating it outwards. As the world shifts further into dis-order on the physical plane, in anticipation of breakthrough, an energy available for finding strong ways of bringing this to bear in the world is essential at this time. The trine to Pluto provides us with such an energy, one that takes  the transformative power of our voices to much deeper levels – this not a time for superficiality, but, for words and deeds of real courage. And we will surely need this, as Algol will clearly demonstrate. Pluto in sextile with Neptune brings this out with widening effect in the collective and Chiron continues to bring the ‘wounded’ aspects that underly the breakdown of order into the process. Daily we are seeing the push for exposure and truthfullness being highlighted – particularly within the fields of politics, economics and power. Fukushima is a potent symbol that carries all three and, with exquisite if brutal honesty, Algol brings the reality of this process to an emphatic and extreme point – nowhere is this more pertinent than at Fukushima! With Scorpionic intensity this could be dangerous. But, we need to continue within our time-frame……timing is everything.

In the collective we can also look to another system for measuring time, and here the time-line of western astrology is in perfect synch with Mayan calendrics through this phase. Time acceleration has become a key to understanding the way that our earth-experience is playing out and Carl Calleman has given us the most grounded and demonstrably accurate view of the Mayan end cycle, so we will refer to his interpretation that has this cycle end on 28th October this year…..(weve touched upon the relationship of this date to the popularised 2012-12-21 date in previous Moon posts).

According to Calleman, in the Mayan calendar we are now also coming to the end of Night 2 of the 9th wave in the Mayan/Gregorian calendar cycle, the final stage of the longer 26 thousand year process. Night 2 itself will culminate on 20th May, a few days after this FM, and the incoming energies of Day 3 will peak just as the next New Moon in Gemini is priming – just one day after that New Moon Neptune goes retrograde (with Chiron following suit 6 days later). There, in short, is the parameter for this phase of spiritual activation to become fully realised – by the 2nd of June our intent should be clearly working and spiritually speaking this can be most successfully achieved through sound and entrainment with the vibrations within silence, attuning to primordial sound. There is powerful opportunity for making ‘good medicine’ here…..

Why sound and vibration in particular? Under strong Neptunian influence within its tropical home sign we would be naturally drawn to pay attention to how Neptune operates within the field – infact, Neptunian energy is ‘field’ energy, nebulous and pervasive. Sound is the natural medium for us to work with in the field at this time as it connects quintessence and manifestation. A simple answer then might be that Venus conjunct Mercury and sextile Neptune is emphasising vocalisation from the heart across on a collective level. Surprisingly, it is Algol that brings this to the fore here – this fixed star is associated with the thyroid and the 5th chakra (amongst other more challenging qualities, as we shall see). 5th chakra medicine works through vibration and vocalisation. With the Sun conjunct Algol high consciousness and clear intent can bring this energy out in its higher vibration – its lower vibration demands that we do so or pay the cost! The lower scale of Algol seperates the head from the body and threatens to petrifiy with fear – Algol is also associated with Medusa, the snaky haired goddess who will turn all who face her eye to eye to stone! She is the Gorgon, the Terrible Mother, an aspect of the Dark Goddess, fearsome in the extreme, and protector of Wisdom as innate fundamental truth.

Algol has gained a ‘bad’ reputation, being connected with Medusa – violent ends, particularly with injury to the head, or, more to the point, loosing ones head, quite literally! If we pick up on this, the most common Medusa association, it is fairly obvious that we need to approach any conjunction with Algol with caution – Perseus cut off the Medusa’s head using a shield that Athena had given him as a mirror, so that he could direct the swing of his sword without looking the terrible face of the gorgon directly in the eye. And so, over time, through observations made by the ancient astrologers, Algol’s influence was seen to be born out through attrocities and violent events, some affecting individuals in precisely this manner – in both violent reprisals, meting out of judgements, the loss of leadership in radical ways and accidents that have resulted in decapitation amongst others. This aspect of extreme nature does need to be born in mind on the political front for this period and we could see polarised confrontation escalate to an extreme level – the ‘Arab Spring’ may yet falter unless we persist with and bolster the right vibration collectively. All the more reason for us to further our inner work and to stay focused.

If we come back to the thyroid, the lower vibration of Algol’s influence takes on an even more sinister quality – one of the functions of the thyroid is to assimilate Iodine into the body (as well as enabling us through hormone regulation to resource and metabolise energy) – with irradiated Iodine entering the atmosphere from the meltdown of Fukushima the ‘heads-up’ here is to take care of our Iodine absorbtion levels with Kelp or Potassium Iodide suppliments – these will help fill the thyroid to the point where it will no longer absorb irradiated Iodine; a very effective ‘shield’ that is good for adults and children alike (please follow recommended daily intake levels)! Iodine is of course important to marine life, so the water connection of this Full Moon is also highlighted.

Water is the natural element associated with both Neptune and Pisces (and Scorpio, which we will come back to), symbolising the emotions and the spirit realms, carrying sound over great distance, being very sensitive to vibration and the qualities it carries – it also represents the mutability of matter, its state between solid and gas. Ideally we engage with this vibratory and fluid nature through entrainment with the ‘field’, going with the flow, and this has been our precise focus in invoking the Flower of Life as a symbol of how all Life is connected across all levels of existance – water also connects all life on Earth. When water is subjected to vibration it can manifest patterns, called cymatics, that are remarkably similar to the Flower of Life, depending on the pitch of the vibration. Once again Medusa has connections here with water – she was the daughter of Phorcys, a primordeal sea-god, and was one of three sisters, another manifestation of the triple goddess in her dark aspect. Infact Medusa was considered of extreme beauty, another emphasis on extremes we must take note of. Her damned form was the result of Athena’s wrath after Medusa was found coupling with Poseidon within the inner precincts of Athena’s temple…..Poseidon, the ‘earth-skaker’, was Lord partner of the Earth-Mother….

…..why would Medusa be punished? Here we have the shadow of oppression projected through both Athena and Medusa – it would appear that not only did Athena’s high ideals make her blind to the truth, but, if we move inside the story and explore its hidden precincts, we will find that Athena too has suffered at the hands of the patriarchy and that those ideals were foisted upon her! Not only this, but, Athena herself has her origins as a representative of the Dark Goddess….although Medusa is presented by some scholars as a rival to Athena, in essence Athena is a sister to Medusa within the mysteries, having first made her appearance within Minoan-Mycenean culture in the form of a snake (1). She was originally a chthonic goddess, connected with the earth energies…..her downfall came as a result of Zeus’ fear of his own offspring (Athena) claiming his power – a family trait that shows the patriarchal line’s need to maintain sovereignty (Kronos, Zeus own father, consumed his own children to prevent them usurping him). We might find this surprisingly being played out in current politics……

A prophecy informed Zeus that this fate would befall him, so, he swallowed Metis, Athena’s mother, in an attempt to contain the emergent threat. Hephiastos, also a chthonic divinity, a smith-god, smote Zeus head (here is Algol again) and out sprang Athena! The process described here reflects the re-figuring of the goddess as a product of the division of supra-consciousness (Zeus), and the birth of self reflecting awareness in the form of ‘wisdom’ – but, for Medusa’s story to make sense within this it should be remembered that Athena had become stripped of her chthonic power, this now becoming idealised and intellectualised – here too is the birth of the moral and ethical philosophical basis upon which the Athenian State became established and out of which was born the politic of ‘democracy’. When Medusa enters the inner sanctum of Athena the plot thickens….

Athena’s most famous temple is the Parthenon – Athena remained a virgin, Parthenos means ‘virgin’, and her ‘wisdom’, now denying its chthonic roots in carnal knowledge, embodies the celebate idealisation of union with spirit in the higher mind – here too we see the basis for Christian idealisation of spirituality in seperation from the body – Heaven is split from Earth. It is this oppressive regimentation of the inner spiritual light of consciousness and its seperation from the body, effectively an exile to the head, that was challenged by Medusa’s copulation within the temple. Infact, Medusa was bringing the roots of Athena’s own innate wisdom home, and we will see how the story of Perseus reveals this. And, in case you think we are straying from the current Full Moon, read on…..!!

Remember that Medusa was copulating with Poseidon in Athena’s temple (feminist theory has her being raped)…. well, she was one of three daughters to Phorcys and Ceto (also a primordial sea-goddess) – the three were known as the Gorgons, the other two being immortal, all bearing wings of gold, having tusks (or horns) and most famously having the skin and fangs of the snake. The fact is, these traditional tellings of the story hide deeper meanings that reveal the threat that Athena’s action against Medusa was playing out – Medusa, like Athena, is a protector of wisdoms, and in this Full Moon it is the uncovering of the falacy that overlays the true nature of this wisdom that we are now coming very close to revealing……..we need to look at the older version of the Perseus myth in relation to Medusa to find the necessary clues.

Perseus, the ‘destroyer’, personified the breaking of the Triple Goddess power through his myth, a theme that occurs over and again throughout European mythologies. He is seen in the pursuit of Medusa wearing sandals with wings, which connects him with Mercury and Hermes, and in turn embues him with poetic language and insight…..it is said that he could not begin his mythical task until he had visited the Graeae, three older sisters of the Gorgons. The Graeae are synonymous with the Norns (remember them from our previous Moon cycle?!) and it was from them that he learned how to find the three Nymphs from whom he recieved the means to slay the only mortal Gorgon, Medusa. The Nymphs gave Perseus the sandals, a helmet of invisibility and, most significantly, a bag to put the head of Medusa into. Hermes himself gave him a sickle, honouring the Lunar Goddess (and Demeter), with which to carry out the gruesome task. Infact, in the classical myth Zeus is attributed with the gifting of the adamantine sword used for this purpose, but, there-in is yet another later distortion at the hands of the Olympians. But here is the crucial evidence – the Graeae were older than any mortal time could relate and were keepers of the mysteries connected with ‘seeing’ and divination; the Nymphs and Hermes, bringing this power into a more contemporary form, provided Perseus with the means to enter the inner sanctum of the Gorgons and the bag, being an appropriate container, also belongs to this ‘seeing’ tradition. Why an ‘appropriate’ container? Within this tradition we find the ‘Crane Bag’ which holds the sacred instruments (connected with the first alphabet) used in divination – divination connects us with the primal language that unites the divine with the mortal, and here is the underlying deception – the Gorgons were protectors of this primal language, the means of exposing ‘fundamental truths’! (2)

The ‘modernised’ myth has Athena punishing Medusa for her desicration of the inner sanctum by giving serpents for hair and the petrifying gaze – this is Olympian spin on the truth. Athena, stripped of her chthonic connections now embodies wisdom seen ‘through’ the higher mind, seperated from the earthy kenning ways of the old Goddess – she has become virginised, imbued with masculine qualities and is as herself cut off from her feminine knowing. The carnal act of Medusa bringing the oceanic and chthonic knowledge into this puritanical zone of spirituality is an attempt to reverse the process – Athena herself might have understood this had she not been ‘brainwashed’ of the connection. Instead it is the patriarchal shadow, projected through her and the classical role of Perseus, that casts Medusa as the demon and condemns her to her fate at the hands of the patriarchal divine.

At least that is what the propoganda would have us believe – in giving the mirror to Perseus, with which he could slay Medusa, Athena herself gave him an instrument of ‘seeing’ – in giving the head of Medusa to Athena, which she subsequently wore on her breastplate, and in Athena also putting this on Zeus’ shield (that she carried), the deception is made complete and absorbtion of the now divided Triple Goddess into the patriarchal pantheon of divinity is sealed. It is with this Moon that the exposure of the roots of this deception are now being exposed…….

Algol’s bad press is the story of the stripping of the Goddess of her innate powers, the seperation of spirit and matter, and the projection of deep shadow as a psychism of denial into our consciousness. The myth reveals to us the root of Fear.  The re-emergent and denied powers of the Goddess bring their original energies to bear with chaotic and tectonic effect – Uranium and Plutonium carry its signature in its most dishonoured form through meltdown. The rape of the Earth is a crime that carries a heavy penalty……the cover-up, now over 5 thousand years in the making, is so deeply embedded in our western constructs of politics and power that only full engagement with the Plutonic energies of total transformation that enables re-birth can rectify the crime. Life will continue, as the Earth is far greater a being than our sciences would have us believe. Algol fuels the Sun with consciousness of the need for retribution and the Moon mirrors this back to us through the Scorpionic field of transformation, healing and empowerment. Scorpio fills our personal and collective psyches with enduring, fearless and deeply emotional energy through this Moon – it is a warning that we may loose our heads if we choose to confront the shadow side of Sun on Algol, but, it is also a sign that we ‘in the zone’ to take back the raw power that resides within our deeper selves, our own chthonic wisdom, and use this for the restoration of the Feminine Divine. This could be seen as a deeply pagan Moon – and with the Norns, the Nyphms and the ‘divining’ tools restored to us we can claim our own ‘Crane Bag’ and bring balance, healing and pragmatic wisdom of the medicine ways of the ‘seers’ into the world again.

Deception about radiation levels, political agendas, weather manipulation, economic usury, media conditioning – the list goes on, and we are becoming more aware by the day. ‘Seeing’ is entering our way of being and were we see suffering, inevitably now we will also find the raw truth exposed within the wound – there is an indigenous knowing within this. What is wounded affects the whole. Equally, what is healing heals all – every single one of us and all that we do through our personal medicines count here.

Our timing is perfected in this – the 2nd Night of the 9th cycle of the Mayan calendar is the phase of darkness in which’the seedlings fight for space in the crowded fields – a time when polarised factions may come to blows’ – in this we have conflict, and yet also, beneath this is an energy that seeks to find our true place in which to root, to make our connection with the Earth…..it is an energy that prepares us for Day 3, in which we engage with ‘the development of a root system and send out the second set of leaves that will become the permanent outer manifestation of the plant’, our means of harnessing the energies of heaven and earth within the one body. As Carl Calleman tells us, this is the phase in which ‘the new consciousness becomes viable’ (3).

There is a poigniant twist at work through Athena and Medusa here as well – as Black Athena she is believed to have originated in North Africa, born not from Zeus head, but from Lake Triton in Lybia – amongst the ancient Greeks the Lybian Triple Goddess Neith was known as Lamia, from which Lybia takes its name – can we see her re-emergent energy at work in this stricken country right now?! Here we have the governing patriarchs fighting it out with their deceptions and vested interests exposed for all to see for sure….. and Medusa never was stricken with a head of snakes – the protectors of the chthonic powers of sacred law wore masks adorned with serpents, a powerful deterant to any usurper of the true knowledge of the Earth Mother, but, never a deterant to those true of heart, a heart empowered with courage and the deep knowing of the initiate!

May our voices be strong and our hearts be protected with the awesome power of the Great Goddess………

(1) ‘Sophia – Goddess of Wisdom’ : Caitlin Matthews, Aquarian Press, 1992

(2) ‘The White Goddess’ : Robert Graves, Faber and Faber, 1988

(3) Carl Calleman : Maya Portal