Sahmain: Connecting Venus and Persephone with the Moon

La Parca in Potter's Field, 1999

Last year I was at the origin of the holiday, at Tara in Ireland.  This year, I took a country ride to purchase a pair of Paperwhite Narcissus bulbs to plant at the dawn of the pagan New Year.  Afterwards, I took walk in the woods at dusk, when the veil was lifted between the visible and invisible worlds.  I didn’t encounter any ghosts on the trail past Potter’s Field, where I originated my La Parca project (above), which found its way into Kundalini’s Daughter: Critical Trilogy, Vol. I.

Along the garden path of the adjoining Bartlett Arboretum, I entered what felt to me like a sacred space during the final aspect of the Moon (see chart, below).

I meditated under this glorious energy, Moon opposing Neptune/Chiron, on the shamanic archetype of attraction.  Venus, naked and shivering, in the Underworld, preparing mentally for her Emergence as Morning Star in the sign of Scorpio.  Below, are my insights, spoken in the voice of Venus:

Having had intercourse with the Sun last Thursday, I know my surrender is complete. I have made the transition to the archetype of Scorpio, the priestess at the temple, the well of ancient wisdom.  I now trust this process of equal partnership, authentic collaboration between the duality of male and female, to deliver the message of my return.  When I arise, in five days, I will not be alone.  I carry with me my manifesto, the creative child of this Underworld collaboration.

As I listened to the voice of Venus right there in the circle, I realized that I did, in fact, honor the cosmic marriage  (chart below) last Thursday through an intense rewriting of my essay on Aldo Tambellini, in which I placed his (r)evolutionary art within my theory of the hieros gamos. And, in fact, my editor, John Wronoski, is an earthly partner in this marriage by enforcing the integration of male structural logic and irrefutability with my female intuition that initially channeled the writing!  Which just goes to show that you externalize what you need to do the job that the universe requires of you!

Venus Interior Conjunction with the Sun

This chart, above, reveals a structure (North Node/Pluto in Capricorn ruled by Saturn on the 5th house cusp) for relationship (seventh house) made extremely dynamic by the exact Sun/Venus conjunction in the fifth house of creativity conjunct Vesta and Mercury!  The rising Moon in Cancer is in a harmonious trine to Uranus/Jupiter and inconjunct Neptune/Chiron in Aquarius (opposing the Moon before it went Void of Course this evening at Samhain).

A day full of illumination triggered by the integration of the pagans within the traditional structure of UUIS service, rather than the ritual in the circle.

This is what I wrote in the “sacred circle.”

I just purchased two paperwhite Narcissus bulbs.  Persephone is in united with Venus as she surrenders to her underground capture tonight.   Venus, having mated with the Sun, will show the feminine soul the passage to female empowerment.  Tonight she embraces the paradox: it is through the sacred marriage that she arrives at the full externalization of the inner archetype of the sacred marriage.  Tonight she descends to fully surrender to the natural process and embrace the darkness, at the Winter Solstice she begins her ascent.  This year, there will be a lunar eclipse on the eve of the Winter Solstice, making her journey all the more crucial.  Yes, the roadmap is laid out tonight.   This week, she puts on her robe, the appearance of a new archetypal energy.   But tonight she is still shivering in the cold.  She knows her life is about to change.  But how?  Marriage after she surfaces in the spring, yes. But to whom?   Is it possible to begin an entirely new life while still in this one?  Is it possible to be so renewed by love as to be young again?   As if I died and was reborn, yet without the physical pain of transition?    But isn’t this the metaphysical definition of the hieros gamos, where two merge into one — and the flower that blooms in winter — the harbinger of what is to come!  Instead of death as a finality, as in the old paradigm, death revolves into life.  RENEWAL!!!

Venus Moon Conjunction at the Helical Rise of Venus

She has five days of naked exposure before putting on her robe, at the first gate of her Return, which incredibly, falls at helical rise, November 5th, a mere 20 hours before the New Moon.  What a sequence!  First, Samhain, the passage into the pagan New Year (which I am honoring through ritual in the writing of this post); and then the combination of the first Venus/Moon conjunction at helical rise (Venus 10 degrees from the Sun) where we can see Venus at her brightest, as the Morning Star (Lucifer); and finally the New Moon  (below).   With the Leo ascendent, the New Moon is ruled by the Sun conjunct Moon in the Third House of communication.

This chart (below) reveals the entire three-step sequence ( Samhain, Helical Rise and New Moon) is about a meaningful (Scorpio) and coherent (Saturn) communication (third house) of a newly emerged archetype of the sacred marriage (Saturn in Libra ruling North Node conjunct Pluto in Capricorn).

With my Mercury (11 degrees Capricorn) squaring Saturn (11 degrees Libra) directly overhead during the final lunar aspect of Samhain (Moon opposing Neptune in Aquarius), the message for me is extremely clear.  Publish the manifesto  or…

…Perish!

The New Moon (in the third house) delivers the vehicle, providing the deed* is done!

How this for a New Paradigm approach to a manifesto of a New Paradigm!!!???

The necessity of imaging the deed as done, and acting in a manner appropriate to this resolution, while still in the process of struggling with the birth!

It seems to me that this is how the gods have protected this knowledge from arising before its time: the midwife of the message has to be fully embodying the message in order to make the delivery!!  She, in fact, delivers the wholly new Self to replace the decaying image of the uncooperative, uncompromising self of the distrustful female genius!  This process of shedding skins is reflected in the heavens by the absence of the brightest star, Venus, who is naked and vulnerable in the underworld.

* Pluto/North Node of the New Archetype (moving the Uranus/Jupiter out of the 12th house of the collective unconscious on Samhain to the New Moon flowing trine from the 8th house of partnership to Mercury in Scorpio in the 4th house of personal mythology)

 

EQUINOX FULL MOON: FALLING INTO MA’S ROADHOUSE

SOMETIMES IF FEEL THAT MY LIFE IS A SERIES OF TRAPEZE SWINGS.

I”M EITHER HANGING UP IN A TRAPEZE BAR
OR SWINGING ALONG

OR, FOR A FEW MOMENTS IN MY LIFE

I’M HURTLING ACROSS SPACE
IN BETWEEN TRAPEZE BARS

THE TRANSITION ZONES IN OUR LIVES

ARE INCREDIBLY RICH PLACES

THEY SHOULD BE HONORED

EVEN SAVORED

THEY ARE THE MOST ALIVE

MOST GROWTH FILLED
MOST PASSIONATE

MOST EXPANSIVE MOMENTS OF OUR LIVES

BECAUSE HURTLING THROUGH THE VOID

WE MAY JUST LEARN HOW TO FLY

Danaan Parry

Full Moon at Zero Degrees Aries on the Fall Equinox, September 23, 2010; 5:17 AM EDT NYC

Quite an amazing feeling of Falling into the New as the Full Moon in Aries lined up on the E/W axis of my natal chart at 5:17 AM this morning.  I am full of new plans to apply my theory outside of the insular NYC art world.

The Otisco docked at the family port in Lyons, NY

I was away for nearly a week on a family trip to realize my brother’s dream, to travel the Erie Canal in a boat, entering the locks that we never tired of experiencing from the outside on visits to our grandmother’s house in Lyons, NY.

The Otisco's descent into Lock 28 A in Lyons NYC

Descending...

The experience was so apt for the onset of the Fall Equinox. Being inside the lock as the water was drained felt like a descent into the Underworld, and then arising, prompting a spontaneous outpouring:

As the leaves start to turn

View of the grandfather's bridge from the canal

And Persephone begins her descent into the Underworld

We four Streitfelds are reflecting on the joyous frutation of a long-cherished dream

to be inside the locks of the Erie Canal as our boat descends and ascends

After a childhood spent gazing upon the process from outside

With our ancestry passed through four generations of matriarchal lineage

(Vocker, Klippel,  Deachler and Seligman) in the lock town of Lyons

We grew up in the mythical lore of the Erie Canal

As we would pass over the bridge passing over lock 38A

My mother would declare, “Your grandfather built this bridge.”

This youthful refrain now met an upward gaze

Thank you Midlakes Navigation for providing a bridge to our youth!

–entered into Otisco logbook on September 20, 2010

The opening of the Locks

Signs pointing to a vacation spot frequented by ancestors

We spent the day of the Fall Equinox hunting down the haunts of our ancestry.

Virginia Volcker Streitfeld seeking her ancestry in Lake Como, the family vacation spot of Lake Como, NY

And the evening with entertainment provided by my brother, delivered via the airwaves…

Ma's Roadhouse, an AMS production on Tru-TV

MA’S ROADHOUSE

My  brother’s new reality TV show, Ma’s Roadhouse, aired for the second time under this full moon,  challenges my new orientation of interpreting a newly emerged archetype in the pop culture.   The series offers a descent into Texan biker culture, where scantily clad woman are treated like cattle, evidenced in last night’s episode of rounding up the bikini contest babes with a prodding towards the stage.

Mother and her non-Prodigal Son at Strokers in Texas

The truTV series actually surprised me as a unique art form reminiscent of Charles Mee’s  bobrauschenbergamerica that I reviewed as “breathing a fresh wind into American theater”  in its premiere at Stamford Center for the Arts.  Told from a dramatic personal perspective that hits the universal through some brilliant editing, Ma’s Roadhouse sums up the blend of authenticity, entertainment and folklore…

..that attracted my family to such unique “slice of Americana” locales as  on our cross country road trips with our own mother, who is diametrically opposite the  raspy foul mouthed mother spotlighted in his TV show!

Mother and Son on the Erie Canal