Every New Moon for the last twenty Moons, Teresa Wild and I have co-created a painting in conscious attunement to what we call The Lightning Path. Previous documentation of our painting process can be seen at www.lightningpath.net. Unfortunately, Terry was unable to join me this month so what I present to you now is not yet a co-created piece. However, what I have is smaller than the 2 ft x 2 ft canvas we have been using and the vision is that it will be encompassed by a larger "framing" image created by us both at a later date.).

On The Lightning Path It is a 6 BEN Moon cycle in the current lunar year and what this means to those of us consciously treading this mythic pathway is that we have reached a stage in the collective journey that calls for activation of both the sixth chakra and of the qualities associated with hieroglyph BEN.

There is yoga for each chakra and at the sixth, or brow chakra, we encounter yantra yoga that focuses the mind using mystical diagrams or meditation symbols called yantras. Astrology, with its many circular mandalas, is included in this group as are the many other symbol systems from around the world. The general aim of this yoga is to develop our capacity to understand the world objectively and to envision future possibilities. (In the painting, number six is depicted geometrically in the central white circle.)

Hieroglyph BEN (shown in the centre of the painting) refers to the alignment of human creativity with cosmic order (pillars of Heaven and Earth uniting). It also refers to time/space travel, fluid reference points and teaching.

I am currently writing a book about The Lightning Path and over the last Moon cycle, I have been researching as well as writing. I recently finished reading a major new book on astrology by Richard Tarnas called Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View. Tarnas presents a very in-depth analysis of the archetypal currents running through a vast array of human creativity in the formation of the Western worldview. These currents are seen through the astrological eye of a scholar who initially was very skeptical of astrology but who has since, because of his own direct experience of astrology, become one of its major proponents. Fundamentally, he sees the ancient art and science of astrology as providing a more holistic worldview than will ever be possible from the highly materialistic view currently dominant.

Going into the Tarnas book, I had the distinct intuition that it was going to reveal something important and as I reached the final chapters, I became more and more excited when I rewalized that he too has been looking ahead to an upcoming astrological event that promises to have great worldwide importance. I am referring to a point in the currently unfolding cycle linking Saturn and Uranus that will bring these two planets into exact opposition. Tarnas speaks generally about this event but does not make evident the fact that this exact opposition occurs on the very day of the next American federal election, November 4, 2008!

Although I have been aware of this fact for quite some time, I was not paying strict attention to (this is where Tarnas has been so helpful) the fact that during this upcoming era, Pluto also plays significantly in the picture widely forming what astrologers call a T square aspect to this opposition. (Pluto itself was previously in exact opposition to Saturn during the world-changing events of September 11, 2001 and it was this configuration that astrologers pegged as the astrological axis of that event.)

Why am I telling you all this? Because my New Moon painting is an astrological mandala meant to focus contemplation and dialogue about this upcoming Saturn/Uranus/Pluto event. For any of you who are knowledgeable about astrology and who are able to read what is in this chart, you will want to be aware that the house structure of the mandala derives from my own birth chart as the basic orientation, with the world transits for November 4, 2008 in the outer circle. This, of course, is something I encourage anyone interested in astrology to do for themselves. Doing so puts ones natal birth chart to work as a multi-dimensional map of consciousness, a mandala of personal selfhood that facilitates divination of appropriate and harmonious future action in relationship to world events.

I hope to share more about what this astrological mandala reveals as the months ahead bring us closer and closer to what promises to be a very significant convergence of world events.

For anyone interested in hearing a CBC radio interview with Richard Tarnas regarding Cosmos and Psyche go to www.cbc.ca/tapestry/archi...006/031906.html

As for a free website on astrology useful to astrologers of all levels of experience, I highly recommend www.astro.com