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Janus Tag

Miracles and Wonder—Light and the Dark of the Moon January 2018

56838d5aff9f13ef84692959b204257bIf you want to fly, you have to give up the things that weigh you down—Toni Morrison

The first month of the calendar year, is named in honour of Janus, two-headed god of thresholds.

“This year will be better…” we say hopefully, perhaps as a talisman to ward off the aftertaste of the year gone by. As the effervescent bubbles of New Year’s Eve flatten into the sober days of January and we minister to the minutiae of our daily lives Fate may enter softly through the open door, catching us unprepared. She brings news that that skids and spins us off the smooth tarmac of your carefully scheduled New Year planner.6b6a23914dceb57b5308f1808a99e48b
“God never gives us more than we can handle”, is the trite knee-jerk response to desperate calamities and unspeakable suffering that so many endure. A visit to a psychiatric hospital, a war zone, the trauma unit in your local hospital, witnessing an execution on You Tube, makes me question what kind of god who would gift us with this kind of suffering.

The uncomprehending stare of a young mother’s eyes when she is told her child has died, a young man paralysed from the waist after diving into an azure pool one hot summer’s day, the black dog of depression that gnaws at so many, trapped in a snare of excruciating loneliness and loss.

 

63bb2d49cd6977e9cd095104c19e7230For many of us this year, we will have to bow our heads to the necessity of getting out of bed each day and finding something to be truly grateful for. We will yoke ourselves to the inevitability of change: children who leave home, a lover who no longer loves us, a dear friend who moves far away, a beloved parent who now needs the same vigilant caring as a toddler. As we eat of the bitter herb, may we know that there is milk and honey also, in the acceptance of things as they are.

Our ancestors lived close to the cycles of the seasons, the rhythm of Life. During the unrelenting grip of famine or displacement by war, flood or fire, they walked with the primordial goddess of Necessity. She was Ananke, also called Force or Constraint, she was mother to three daughters, the Moirai, the Fates. As omniscient goddess of all circumstance, greatly respected by mortals and gods, it was she who ruled the pattern of the life line of threads of inevitable, irrational, fated events in our lives. Ananke determined what each soul had chosen for its lot to be necessary—not as an accident, not as something good or bad, but as something necessary to be lived, endured, experienced. Necessity has been outcast in our mechanistic material culture where we, in our hubris and our self-inflation, actually believe that are all powerful—we can fix, manifest, cut away, or buy our way out of any mess we make.
1e64214c60f641fd56a4da1dd54af859Ananke is an ancient goddess, and the resonance of her name has its tap root in the ancient tongues of the Chaldean, Egyptian, the Hebrew, for “narrow,” “throat”, “strangle” and the cruel yokes that were fastened around the necks of captives. Ananke always takes us by the throat, imprisons, enslaves, and stops us in our tracks, for a while. There is no escape. She is unyielding, and it is we who must excavate from the depths of our being, our courage, tenacity, and acceptance of what is.

This New Year, Necessity may lay her hand on a defining moment in your life. The ending of a love affair, the barren womb, the not-so-exciting job that pays the bills. She may still the tug-o’-war of the heart’s calling, block the mind’s plan, and fasten the collar around our neck. There may be no escape, except a shift in perception, and the courage to accept that which cannot be otherwise and a resilience to stay the course and just do it. Author, Doris Lessing once said, “whatever you’re meant to do, do it now. The conditions are always impossible.”185d87a49608548f1fc31957c125ab58


The astrological signature this month accentuates persistence, discipline, and realism. The quiet dignity of commitment. The promises we keep. The words we honour. Mercury changes sign on January 11th, joining the Sun, Saturn, Venus and Pluto in Capricorn. And the month of January is bound by a pair of full-bellied Moons that hang melon-ripe, luscious in the night sky. They nudge so close to our earth that they appear larger, brighter than usual. American astrologer, Richard Nolle, coined the term Supermoon, in 1979, and symbolically these Moons amplify and illuminate those areas in our lives, casting their silvery luminescence on what might have been obscured or denied. On January 2nd, at the threshold of this new year, the Cancer Moon nestled protectively close to her sister Earth as we shrugged off the old year to gaze with hopeful eyes upon the pristine newness of the year ahead. This Moon was a harbinger of the total lunar eclipse on January 31st, at 12 degrees Leo. Observe the interplay of the elements—fire and water, yin and yang. The contrast in the terrain of the landscape this month might be a template for the choices we must make to fly as we let go those things that weigh us down, or stoically accept that things are as they are for now. Leo is associated with spontaneity, with self-expression and with courage.
This lunar eclipse is the first of the eclipse season this year, the next lunar eclipse occurs on 27th/28th July five degrees Aquarius.

As the shadow of our Earth sweeps across the face of the Moon she grows darker. Imagine how our ancestors would have observed the goddess growing darker, redder, or paling into blue, depending on the amount of dust in our atmosphere—a sign, an omen.

Modern astrologers tend to agree that eclipses are wild cards, and the effects are unpredictable, though solar eclipses tend to be externalised and lunar eclipses are subtler, more internal, often related to the past, to our emotions and perceptions.

Poet and novelist, Ben Okri writes, “bad things will happen, and good things too. Your life will be full of surprises. Miracles happen only where there has been suffering. So, taste your grief to the fullest. Don’t try and press it down. Don’t hide from it. Don’t escape. It is Life too. It is truth. But it will pass, and time will put a strange honey in the bitterness. That’s the way life goes.”

As we honour Necessity, we can choose which threads and which colours we wish to weave into the cloth of our lives. We can discover the Miracle in the suffering, we can taste the strange honey in the bitterness of our grief as we feel what needs to be felt—in the light and in the dark of the Moon.0000e417_medium

 

 

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The bucket list – Say what you need to say my dear

0513-fireworks-flash-across-full-moon-670So as this New Year rushes into existence, carrying with it a flutter of new intentions, a new impetus to make this year a “better year”, the Old Year lingers like an out-breath, for the briefest of moments and is gone.

2015 for so many was blighted with division and Otherness in our homes, in our families, in our communities, in our nations. The ghost of Christmas Past is the repository of memories that haunt family gatherings and stains corridors of government with dusty rhetoric that spills fresh blood.  There is a vast trove of psychological literature on the diverse ways people are held back by the hidden capsules of memory. Current thinking is that childhood fears and adult traumas are stored differently in the brain than happy memories. We carefully tend to the wounds of betrayal: those words or behaviours that landed in our hearts and cruelly hooked our innocence, tore at our trust. We tend to remember the trauma. Families and nations have unhealed memories too and our challenge both personally and globally is how to empathise with one another even though we may not agree with, or condone their words or actions.  In an article entitled, The Year of Unearthed Memories, columnist for The New York Times David Brooks writes, “Even after a tough year, we are born into a story that has a happy ending. Wrongs can be recognized, memories unearthed, old hurts recognized and put into context. What’s the point of doing this unless you’re fueled by hope and comforted by grace?”bucket list 35

In her book, Secrets of Your Cells: Discovering Your Body Inner Intelligence, Dr. Sondra Barrett describes that the intelligent cells in our wise bodies need a certain amount of attachment, and Tensegrity, a stable structure, in order to thrive. But they also need to let go of the attachment.   “When our cells let go of their attachments they can become mature, much in the same way as in the Buddhist tradition when we let go of our attachments we can move towards the Light.”

We live in “Interesting Times.” The energy of the Collective symbolised by the Pluto-Uranus square has cast a long dark shadow over our blue planet heralding the dawn of a new paradigm shift for us personally and globally as we move through a  process of irrevocable break down of untenable structures. This waxing square is in orb as we enter this new calendar year. We will probably only recognise it’s implication if we could time travel to the future. The next waning square of 2073 – 2074 (Pluto in Aries and Uranus in Capricorn) will reflect perhaps a new Heaven and a new Earth.

This series of Pluto-Uranus squares began in 2012. The sky did not fall down and those who foretold of the End-Times discretely disappeared into the brilliant light of the solstice.

In an2015-03-02-girlphoto-thumbcient Rome, Janus, the two-headed god, presided over transitions and new beginnings.

Astrologer and brilliant blogger Joanna Watters quotes Albert Einstein who famously is thought to have said, “we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” Joanna’s  beautifully crafted New Year post  underscores the need for a new awareness. Letting go of our attachments to our old stories and Victim consciousness. Perhaps a child-like sense of wonderment and curiosity. Most certainly a parent’s sense of pragmatism and realism as we choose again and again to live our lives differently this year. Inevitable change and impermanence mark the progression of time.  The only firm foothold we have is standing firmly in the Now and trusting that no matter what circumstances swirl or ebb and flow around us, we are in exactly the right place and in the right time.bucket list 30

 

As we savour the last days of the Yuletide holiday or settle back into the familiar routine of our working week, let’s take a moment to allow some of the commercial Christmas sparkle to guild our memories of what was good about this year gone by. Let’s shine the light on those moments when we brought our Best Selves to our relationships. When we felt good about ourselves. When we made the world a better place by a random act of kindness or heartfelt compassion. Let’s pick through the discarded wrapping of this Old Year and marvel at the Present of being alive. Let us say what we need to say and may our words be loving and gentle. Our Bucket List may contain brave adventures that take us out of the soft comfort of  our lives. May it also contain heartfelt love and kindness for all things  great and small.

 

 John Mayer – The bucket list – Say what you need to say my dear

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Between The Shadows

In real life lipstick comes off when we kiss our lover. In real life our noses run and our mascara meanders darkly down our flaming cheeks. In real life the people we love with all our hearts die too soon.

In real life we reach cyclical turning points, each one of us on our very personal journey, which will lead us inevitably across the threshold into the shadowy unknown. So often we stray from the path, lose sight of our Life Purpose. Dante Alighieri wrote “when I had journeyed half of our life’s way, I found myself within a shadowed forest, for I had lost the path that does not stray.” We stand at the threshold, not sure of who we are or who we are about to become.  For many of us threshold times can be disorientating, painful, even terrifying. To our ancestors, thresholds were holy places. The Latin word for threshold is limen. It was a sacred space guarded by the gods and goddess: Janus, Hermes and Hecate.  As we traverse the space in-between we may have lost our faith in the primal gods or goddesses. We have only our Faith and the tenacity of our spirit as we follow the elusive lantern light of our becoming, to meet the shadowy dark night of the soul. We may not know that they are still there to guard us as we take the perilous journey across liminal spaces, and that the  supernatural elementals, the  faery folk surround us as we wander alone through the dark woods.  

In medias res, in the middle of things, is a fecund state of birthing. A profoundly sacred crossing where we are required, at every age juncture, to ask ourselves “Who is the I that stands at this point of no return?”

There are no right ways or wrong ways of crossing a threshold. We may eagerly seize new opportunities to pioneer a new path, to live our “unlived lives”. We may garner those scattered or buried parts of ourselves and become more conscious, more whole, more of Who we truly are. Or we may crouch in rigid status quo, or regress to old ways of being.

Transition times are holy times. Marriage, divorce, the birthing of our babies, the end of a career, the beginning of a new one. The inevitable ageing of our bodies. The ultimate transformation of our dying. Transition times are accompanied by conflicting emotions. Joy, trepidation. Fear and unspeakable sorrow as we leave the  old behind and step into the new. The transition from youth to old age is a threshold we must all traverse.  There is no elixir for eternal youth. Each one of us will exhale for the very last time.

The Pluto in Leo generation in the Western world (those born between August 1938 and October 1956) have capitalised on transition times associated with ageing in a plethora of therapies, books, blogs and workshops.  Pluto in Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius and Capricorn generations will deal with the process of age and death very differently, I suspect.

Baby Boomers living the affluent west mostly do live longer than our grandparents did. Midlife has become a moveable smorgasbord, celebrated in cinema and song and glamorised in specialist magazines aimed at the over 40s. In a feature entitled Fifty Shades of 50, journalist Lisa Depaulo writes with breathless ebullience about a brand-new breed of 50-plus women – stronger, smarter, sexier than ever, dubbed the new Alpha Goddess who has a penchant for fast cars and luxury holidays, travelling solo and saying “it’s my turn”.  The article bubbles on cheerfully, “almost every woman I know over 50 seems to be doing things that none of us were expecting to be doing at our age. We’re making choices, in both little and big ways, just for ourselves.”

Demographics and photo-shopped aspirational women’s magazines aside, shrewd Pallas Athenas were rare – there just was no room for a brand- new breed of Alpha Goddesses on Mount Olympus. Despite the sacrifices of The Suffragettes of the 19th and early 20th century and the courage of the  Feminists of the ’60s, between the shadows of our politically correct social constructs there exists today the very same polarisation in gender and power that has existed for eons. In affluent societies, many women in midlife and in their elder years live in straightened circumstances after divorce or the death of their spouses. Women still do not, in the main, earn as much as their male counterparts. Women still bear, birth, and nurture the children.  

Each one of us will have thresholds to cross. Yet not all of us will have the luxury of time or sufficient financial security to say “it’s my turn” as we support our children through their college years, nurse our dying parents, care for once-virile partners, now stricken with depression or facing terminal illness. We find we don’t have the physical strength, the financial clout, the confidence or even the inclination to be an Ageing Alpha Goddess. We find we have never wanted to travel solo to Peru, buy a sports car or learn to play the piano. In real life, we accept that we have lived more years in the past than we have allotted to us in our future. In real life, we do not all die peacefully in our sleep.

So, in real life, we distil the essence, the magic from the simple things in life – a hug from the one we love. Watching a bumble bee in the languid embrace of a still summer afternoon. The intoxicating scent of white jasmine.

In real life, it is time that becomes the most precious commodity. Many men and women enter the second and third acts of their lives with less attachment to fast cars or yet another pair of shoes, less clinging on to the bricks and the mundane mortar of life. More reverence for the here and now.

 “Opposites throw light upon each other”, said the philosopher Schopenhauer. Our lives are animated by the dappled shades of light and darkness, chaos and meaning, the cacophony of sound and long stretches of silence… And in the silence we begin to notice the brilliance of the rainbow as it arcs over the rain-washed sky. And how quite suddenly, the swallows have returned for the summer.

In our life’s transitions we may find our purpose, our passion. In our ageing and in our dying we may discover the meaning of Love, and in the shadows of our inevitable parting, our redemption.

Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life? –
Mary Oliver.

Art by Casey Baugh. Between The Shadows Loreena McKennitt

 

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