Tag: Fall Equinox

Red and Not Red

The moon sheds herself into the water

The moon sheds herself into the sea

The moon sheds herself under the mountain

And all will be red, be red, be red.

Our Lady of the Dark Country – Sylvia V. Linsteadt

Ochre Base Coat and Virgo Constellation

A Dream from last Spring had me doing some research because part of the dream was precognitive, and I wanted to know the deeper messages coming through.

I am at my office, where I work as a grants manager. My desk is pushed against the wall, and my things on the desk are placed haphazardly about, and I cannot find my laptop. I start to panic, because that is where all my work is found. I yell at the painter, “Where is my laptop?” Instead of answering my question, he points to the wall and asks me to have a look. He says this is the base paint, Red Ochre. I look and see the wall is painted an Earthy Red color. He holds up a paper, and says this is what it will look like when finished. On the paper is the starry night sky with the constellation for Virgo on it. I begin to realize that is what my home office looks like, I have goddess paintings on the wall, one of Cybele with Lions on either side, and one of the Sleeping Goddess of Malta.

My Feelings upon waking from the dream – frustrated with all the rearranging, and angry I couldn’t find my laptop, there is also a feeling of having an office as a place to call home. The same week I had this dream was when the chaos of DOGE cuts were made known which made everything uncertain in the grant world, and who would have a job at all. My dream seemed to show me there was something deeper going on here, something ancient, perhaps an initiation.

Reality Check – Definitely change is happening, with federal funding cuts, and the office being remodeled. I don’t actually have an office in the building where our company is located on the 10th floor of a high rise building. Office remodeling began a few weeks after the dream, which I had no prior knowledge of previously, although I visited the office recently and everything was pushed up against the walls and in disarray (just like my dream). I work from home and rarely come to the office.

I did a deep dive into Red Ochre, and it tracks back to over 500,000 years, when our ancestors used it in connection with rights of passage, ceremonial body painting, or sacred art on cave walls. It was interesting to find how the word ochre in several lands means, “red and not red” (2).

This deep Earth red ochre seems to be direct communications with the primordial Earth Goddess as the base coat for ancient memory. Neolithic burials may have used red ochre pigments symbolically, either to represent a return to the earth or possibly as a form of ritual rebirth, in which the colour may symbolize blood of the Great Goddess (3).

“In early cultures, the colour’s resemblance to blood linked it to fertility, life and growth, a symbolism that has persisted throughout the ages. Evidence also suggests early cultures were attaching magical, symbolic properties to the potent pigment – it was scattered over the graves of the dead as a form of respectful ritual, seeping into the ground and even staining their bones, signaling a return to the earth or rebirth in the afterlife.” (1)

The other part if the dream is a mystery on becoming, in the Constellation Virgo where the Goddess of the Harvest is seen. Demeter as Earth Mother and Persephone as Maiden whose journey into the underworld makes her a Queen, her return brings the turn of the Seasons. A turn of the wheel to enter the dark time of the year.

She carries a shaft of the golden wheat, a symbol of the Harvest and a rights of passage into the Greater Elysian mysteries with Demeter and Persephone. This year, Virgo season started with the new moon on August 22nd the first of two new moons in Virgo, and also beginning Eclipse Season with a Lunar Eclipse and Blood Moon in Pisces September 7th. A partial Solar Eclipse on September 21st is followed by the Fall Equinox September 22nd to end Virgo Season. These are days of secret initiation.

Elysian Mysteries

It is during September that the Greater Mysteries take place over the week of the Fall Equinox from Sept. 21-27. This year, a week that also includes a Solar Eclipse in Virgo. The Greater Mysteries are held in secret, by pain of death of those who break a sacred vow. Eclipses are a time when the shadows reveal what has been hidden. Perhaps this Solar Eclipse will find Women stepping out of the shadows and reclaiming their agency and their voice, like the Women survivors who came forth to demand justice and release the names of the high powered predators whose identities have been hidden.

The constellation Virgo is Kore the Maiden Persephone, who holds a shaft of grain. The grain itself is a sacred offering of the harvest mysteries. The Greater Mysteries prepares us to take a journey into the unknown with ancient wisdom held in secret, cultivated and kept safe for generations. It prepares us to have a good death, where we will not suffer an afterlife existence, but cross over to the Elysian gardens of peace and tranquility.

References

1) Red Ochre the Color of Survival https://blog.fabrics-store.com/2020/04/28/red-ochre-the-colour-of-survival/

2 ) What the Ancient Pigment Ochre Tells Us About the Human Mind. – https://www.discovermagazine.com/prehistoric-use-of-ochre-can-tell-us-about-the-evolution-of-humans-1775

3) Giulia Battiti Sorlini, “The Megalithic Temples of Malta”, Por Anthony Bonanno, Archaeology and fertility cult in the ancient Mediterranean: papers presented at the First International Conference on Archaeology of the Ancient Mediterranean, University of Malta, 2–5 September 1985, p.145.

Merry Meet Mabon


The Fall is here, and normally we would be so excited about this season where we can look forward to so many festivals and family celebrations, but in 2020 nothing is the same as what we have known before.

We are exhausted, our country is grieving, and we are grappling with how to move forward with our lives as individuals, as communities, and as a country. We are having to look at every part of our lives right now, no stone is unturned, to see the systemic injustices, environmental impacts, feeling the economic downturn, losing loved ones and fearing impacts from the pandemic. This reveals our class system, the racism, the sexism, all the isms. It appears our World is really out of balance.

This is where the Autumn Equinox comes in, as a point of focus, to remind us the universe, and nature herself is always seeking balance. We are in a place where vision is crucial as we move forward. This is a portal we can explore in connection with the otherworld, or the world behind the world, when the veil is thin and the ancestors are near.

Mabon is a Celtic Fall Seasonal Celebration known as the 2nd Harvest. The 1st being in August for Lamas, and the 3rd being on October 31st for Samhain, when the harvest of souls takes place with the Wild Hunt, and the good folk come through from the Other world. A time when Winter and the Celtic New Year begins. It should be particularly Wild this year as it is a Full Blue Moon in Taurus on Samhain. We celebrate the 2nd Harvest on Tuesday, September 22nd, 2020 with gratitude and sharing, releasing and healing, to help bring life back into balance. Incubate a dream and ask, what do I need to do to help bring my world, and the world behind the world, back into balance. The role of the shaman or witch or healer, is to help bring the unseen worlds into balance with the Earthly realms, and thereby protecting the community. When calamity and despair, disease and disgrace starts to appear, it is time to look into the otherworld to see what prayers need to be spoken, or forgiveness asked, permission granted, or repayment of some kind offered. This is a kind of justice, and what we can offer now, will determine what we are able to receive later. So join me in celebrating Mabon and creating balance in our world, and don’t forget to vote this season!