Dark Goddess
Meditation for full moon in Libra
Meditation on the seed thought of the moon:«I choose the way which leads between the two great lines of force.»
1. Remain in silence for some minutes.
2. Sing three times: OM.
3. Ponder upon the seed thought for 3 to 5 minutes:
«I choose the way which leads between the two great lines of force.»
4. Recite the following mantra:
I am a point of light within a greater light.
I am a strand of loving energy within the stream of love divine.
I am a point of sacrificial fire, focused within the fiery will of God.
And thus I stand.
5. Sing again three times: OM.
6. Recite three times: May all living beings in all the worlds be happy.
7. Remain in silence for three minutes, than end with:
Peace, Peace, Peace.
Full Moon in Libra, Thursday, April 13, 9:40am PDT
«I choose the way which leads between the two great lines of force.»
A Full Moon in Libra asks each of us to practice one particular relational skill: the ability to listen attentively and deeply, with an open heart, an open mind, and without interruption or feedback. What will we be listening for? We will attend to the voices of All Our Relations. This includes every living thing, on all planes of existence, on this planet, in our solar system, in our galaxy, and all throughout the multiplicitous universe. When the Moon is full in Libra, the Sun is shining brightly in Aries. The polarity of these two opposing signs represents knowing self in an effort to know others; thereby allowing others to truly know us. The Libra Moon reflects the light of individuality and uses it as the fuel for greater understanding of others. Know thyself and the true nature of all things will be revealed. This year, with Venus (heart), Mercury (mind) and Uranus (awakening) in Pisces, and Jupiter in Scorpio, revelation could come in the form of direct experience of the pure transcendent nature of self and its connection to all sentient beings. The sense of oneness will be palpable on this Full Moon in Libra. Add Chiron and Neptune in Aquarius to the mix and the field of consciousness will become an unlimited playground of knowledge!
This Full Moon is the time to celebrate our common source. Call it what you wish, God, Goddess, Infinite Intelligence, Pure Consciousness. By any name it is the same. We are all a manifestation of this unmanifested light and bliss. Think of this day as an invitation to enter into a sacred circle with everyone and everything you encounter. Talk less, listen more and learn from every word, every movement, every intimation, and every action. With the light of the Full Moon making all things knowable, it is our job to open ourselves wide and take in all of life: the joy, the pain, the suffering, the ecstasy, the extraordinary, the ordinary, the pure, the defiled, the ignorance and intelligence.
Libra rules karma (action) and it is Libra's job to give us the ability to pursue "right action". What are the principles of right action?
1. Seek justice with fairness and balance.
2. Embrace your differences without being attached to them.
3. Work to understand viewpoints other than your own.
4. Remember "the truth" is relative and based upon one's perception.
5. Initiate compromise, the basic building block of all solutions.
6. When we give a little we get a lot. When we give a lot, we get more than we can imagine.
7. Negotiation can always be the first and last response to conflict.
8. Violence is not a viable way to bring peace. Violence only begets more violence.
9. Insist on peace and non-violence.
10. When you cause pain and suffering to others, you destroy yourself in equal measure.
11. Saying and doing everything with love, compassion and respect is the only way to win.
These principles are applicable to all our relationships, be they intimate, familial or professional. Think of how different our world would be if we all practiced these principles. It is every person's responsibility to make sure that every other person lives in peace, free of violence and fear. That every person has shelter, food, access to good medical care and an education.
This is the Full Moon to gather with others and celebrate togetherness, commonality, love and peace. It is important to fully experience how your actions affect the people in your life. If it's been ages since your family sat down together for dinner, this is the night for a good meal with great conversation. Sharing and listening breaks down barriers and engenders love. If you choose to do a nighttime Full Moon ritual, revel in the natural beauty that surrounds you. If it is warm enough, have your celebration outside under the Full Moon and invite the birds and animals to come into your circle of love. Believe me, an openhearted invitation is all they need and boy so they have a lot to say! Those of you celebrating Passover with family and friends, have a built in opportunity to be in relationship with those you love.
This is a great Full Moon for a lunchtime party at your office. Make the theme working together to achieve common goals. Set up chairs in a circle and make it a time for deep listening and sharing of ideas. Pass an object round the circle: whoever has it talks, and everyone else listens without interruption. Allow the thoughts and ideas to flow. You will know what subject is the best one to focus on. It could be a current project, or your company's bottom line, or team building. Make sure you leave some time to discuss how the company can give back to your local community through volunteerism or project funding.
Libra perceives differences, but understands that humanity's underlying commonality makes it impossible to "do unto others without simultaneously doing the same to ourselves." How long will it take our species to realize that violence only begets more violence? It is time for Americans to awaken to the senseless destruction we have wrought in Iraq over the last three years. Each day that the war drags on, and more innocent people die, my pain increases. Every bad outcome the pundits predicted before the war started has been realized: Iraq is in civil war, terrorist organizations are rampant in the country, and the Iraqi people live in fear for their lives. The fear and ignorance of our leaders has destroyed a nation.
America's needless aggression has unnecessarily sacrificed the lives of over 2000 of our service men and women, and somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 Iraqis. Every morning I say a prayer for peace, a prayer for forgiveness and a prayer for our soldiers in Iraq. Their job is fraught with pain. Their power to destroy is awesome and terrible. Yet they are as vulnerable as they are powerful. I know they want to come home. I want them to come home. I find myself feeling ashamed of my country, and my own inability to effect change within it.
We each have a responsibility to make sure that every other living thing on this planet is accorded the right to exist. They are All Our Relations; what we do to nature, we do to ourselves. We are our eco-system: our poisoned water, air and land is a reflection of our own poisonous thoughts and actions. We will have to learn to live together in harmony and peace. So celebrate the love and commit to peace on this Full Moon in Libra.
©2006 Lisa Dale Miller
Healing the Heart
My personal God and Goddess embody their dark faces.Somehow this must be perfect for the development of
the Self, the Divine face. This is the mystery which I
embrace; I hold that all experience is perfect to the
evolution of heart centered existence. If I continue
to hold the dark God and Goddess as separate from
myself, then I also reject their light, nurturing,
active elements within myself. The process of
recognizing and owning their dark faces within my own
psyche is slow and painful. I see only their
destructive power in my life. This is the reason I
rejected their image in my biological parents in the
first place. Although they provided a good hook for
the projection, what was hidden in my shadow was their
presence in my own psyche. Since I first recognized
the dark God and Goddess in them, I believed that they
WERE dark God and Goddess and also believed it was my
own inadequacies which caused their light faces to be
forever inaccessible to me. I didn’t realize that in
projecting both light and dark outside of myself, I
was left impotent to effect any action in my life.
As I embrace my desire to re-dream my old reality, as
I connect to my sexual being and creativity, I meet
their dark, destructive faces in my thoughts and
actions towards myself and others. I must not reject
them, but only watch them painfully. I notice how
much power and energy they hold over me; the power I
crave to effect change in my life is held in their
wounded hearts. I watch the destructive, castrating,
manipulative, devouring feminine respond to imagined,
habitually anticipated slights with bitterness and
vengefulness. I watch the cruel, cold, heartless
masculine who debases the feeling function, who brutalizes
anything soft and vulnerable. As I watch myself want
to retreat into these habitual, previously unconscious
patterns of relating, I am saddened and hopeful. As I
go to close my heart in bitterness and heartlessness,
I open it tentatively to the healing Love of the
Divine Feminine. I allow fresh oxygen, blood and
nutrients to bathe my wounded heart. I'm not yet
saying Yes to love. And the difference is now I'm not
saying No. I allow the heart to relax it’s fearful
contraction against imagined outcomes. I surrender to
the new dream. I surrender the darkness to the light.
Saturn-A New Look at an Old Devil by Liz Greene
Saturn symbolizes a psychic process as well as a quality or kind of experience…by which an individual may utilize the experiences of pain, restriction and discipline as a means for greater consciousness and fulfillment…Saturn is connected with the educational value of pain and with the difference between external values-those we acquire from others-and internal values-those we have worked to discover within ourselves. Saturn’s role as the Beast is a necessary aspect of this meaning, for as the fairytale tells us, it is only when the Beast is loved for his own sake that he can be freed from the spell and can become the Prince.In traditional astrology Saturn is known as a malefic planet. Even his virtues are rather dreary-self-control, tact, thrift, caution-and his vices are particularly unpleasant because they operate through the emotion we call fear…He is usually considered to be the bringer of limitation, frustration, hard work, and self-denial…by his sign and house position Saturn denotes those areas of life in which the individual is likely to feel thwarted in his self expression, where he is most likely to be frustrated or meet with difficulties. In many instances Saturn seems to correspond with painful circumstances which appear not to be connected with any weakness or flaw on the part of the person himself but which merely “happen”, thereby earning the planet the title “Lord of Karma”. This rather depressive evaluation remains attached to Saturn despite a most ancient and persistent of teachings which tells us that he is the Dweller at the Threshold, the keeper of the keys to the gate, and that it is through him alone that we may achieve eventual freedom through self-understanding.
…It is only when (a man’s) conscious ideas of what is right or suitable come into direct conflict with the underlying path that he is unconsciously following that real pain begins, and this is usually the gnawing inner pain of a sense of futility and purposelessness. There are many men pitted against themselves, where regardless of what they believe that want in life, they continue to the last moment to do something to destroy the dream before it blossoms. Often this destructiveness is connected with guilt and fear, and this is one side of Saturn’s expression. Equally often, behind the guilt and fear, there lies another purpose which is perhaps wiser and more meaningful a path than the one which the conscious man has chosen. Usually all that is seen is the destructiveness. It has often been termed evil and given personification as an external energy or person known as Satan-who is of course very close to Saturn, complete with the hoofs and horns of Capricorn the Goat. The nature of this conflict between conscious and unconscious, dark and light, is neither good nor evil; it is necessary for growth because out of it comes eventual integration and greater consciousness. The duality which a man finds in himself below the threshold of consciousness is usually very disturbing for we are likely to forget that anything standing in the light casts a dark shadow. God and Satan, whether they have objective existence or not, most definitely exist as impulses within the human psyche, but they are not what they at first appear to be.
There is no fast and easy method of making a friend of Saturn. In many ways the ancient art of alchemy was dedicated to this end; for the base material of alchemy, in which lay the possibility of gold, was called Saturn, and this base material, as well as having a concrete existance, was also considered to be the alchemist himself. Modern psychology, which is paralleling more and more the path of the alchemists, also seeks to make a friend of Saturn ..If one is persistent, it is possible to extract the gold, and in the end one may find, if the effort is made, that Saturn has a sense of humour after all-when we have become subtle enough to understand his irony.