Spirals, and Spring fever

Almost Spring!  This Wednesday is the Spring Equinox, the halfway point in the Sun’s journey between Winter’s southern-most extreme (short days, long nights) and Summer’s northern-most point (long days, short nights).  Equinoxes, this one in March and its opposite in September, mark the midpoints, when day and night are equal.

Those spirals above? That’s the “Sun Dagger,” a petroglyph on Fajada Butte in Chaco Canyon, a remote site in New Mexico.  Angled noon light marks the sun’s seasonal passage: at Summer Solstice slicing the large spiral’s center (top), at each Equinox bisecting the smaller spiral (center), and at Winter Solstice bracketing the large spiral (bottom).

The Solstices are times of contrasting extremes: heat or cold, light or dark, sun far north or sun far south.  The Equinoxes are – in sun-terms – times of balance.  Days and nights are of equal length, and the Sun is “balanced” along the horizon: It rises due East and sets due West.

Chaco Canyon and its extensive ruins are something of a monument to Equinoxes, with alignments to that twice-annual sun-balance embedded throughout the vast site.  Chaco was also the “only culture known in the world to align their buildings to the Moon’s cycle.”*

Spring Equinox is a spring-feverish time as we break out of Winter.  Here in the Rocky Mountain West, Ostara can bring new buds or blizzards, or both.  Mama Earth kicks off Her blanket of snow, and starts to stretch and wake up… and then maybe curls back under Her snow-covers again for a few days.  But from Wednesday onward, the days will be longer than the nights… She’ll be wide awake and leaping up soon enough.

On Wednesday, I’ll watch sunrise and sunset, and note my shadow’s shape at noon.  Balance.  But meanwhile, the weather can’t make up its mind.  The winds are wild and the clouds are crazy… well, me, too.  Spring fever sets in, an undercurrent of anti-hibernation sensory awareness.  So I’ll explore my imbalances and move gently to adjust them, but I might enjoy them, too.  “Dance like no-one’s watching…”  The world is new again.

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* Anna Sofaer, quoted in the video “The Mystery of Chaco Canyon.”  More on Chaco, and understanding and working with Moon and Sun cycles in A Magical Tour of the Night Sky.  Chaco Canyon is an Ancient Puebloan site, c. 850-1140 BCE, and is designated a National Historic Park, covering nearly 34,000 acres.

Grandmother Moon, Sister Moon…

…Daughter Moon, Moon of Myself,

Thank you for the blessings in my life…

This is the prayer I speak to the Moon.  Full Moons like the one coming this evening are a great time for this simple ritual, but so is any moon-time.  If the Moon isn’t visible, I’m happy to talk with a planet or star instead.  I’ve had great chats with very-visible Jupiter in recent months, and with a particular star in the Big Dipper.

I greet the Moon (or other celestial light) and then proceed to say “thank you.”  For life, breath, food, warmth, an incredible circle of friends, a happy car with a great heater, for students, for clients, for health and vitality, for the chance to stand outside – or dance – “beneath the diamond sky.”  (thanks, Bob Dylan)

This is my most often-repeated ceremony these days, super simple.  Maybe I pour a libation, maybe I share a food offering first. Then speak my Greeting and my Thanks, and eventually a respectful Hail and Farewell.  That’s it.

This practice started years back:  On impulse, I stepped outside and just began.  So much spell-work is focused around asking for more.  I could use more of some stuff, sure!  But what if I began by saying “thank you” for what I already have?  Two MAJOR things happened that night:

• First, that “cat” I saw out of the corner of my eye as I invoked, who wandered into the yard and sat down nearby to watch and listen? It was actually a young fox.  She hung around for months, but that was the night we met.

• Second, once I began clearly and out-loud saying “thank you” for what I had, more of that good stuff started flowing in, consistently.  Unless the ________ (Goddess, the gods, Higher Power) knows I appreciate what they’ve already delivered, why should they hurry to send more?  I began saying “thanks,” and the flow in my life altered perceptively, as of that night.

Many friends are writing Gratitude notes, in journals and on Facebook.  While I value reading what others share, for me these practices work best when done live, physically, under the dome of sky.  That’s when I’m most clearly living it, breathing it, speaking and hearing it, feeling it deeply through and through.

So, tonight,

Hello, Moon!…

A National Memorial for Survivors of Rape and Abuse?

A National Memorial for Survivors of Rape and Abuse?  Wow.  A couple of ideas here immediately.

• Many of the ancient sacred sites in the US were earthworks, colossal mounds of earth shaped as animal figures (i.e. Ohio’s Serpent Mound) and/or aligned to particular sky-actions (solstices, equinoxes, lunar extremes). Few remain, but they are profound, and often huge.
• We have a modern “sacred site” that parallels much that we find in the ancient places: a sense of both privacy and community, connection with “something greater,” aesthetically evocative, aligned… That place is the Vietnam Veterans Memorial (shown above in the original design submission).

What could a A National Memorial for Survivors of Rape and Abuse look like? More important, what could it FEEL like?  Safe for all, at all hours of day or night? Open to the moon?  So much food for thought here!

Arcturus over Post Street

   Sept. 4, 2012: I was in San Francisco at the end of August to attend BATS – the Bay Area Tarot Symposium.  On one evening, I went across to Oakland for an author event at The Sacred Well.  A nice chance to sit and talk with folks about A Magical Tour of the Night Sky. As the guests and I discussed the stars and planets, the first-quarter Moon sailed across the sky. Visible!  Other visits to the Bay area have taught me not to count on seeing stars there.  The air is far more humid and likely to hold foggy sea breezes than this high and dry Colorado air that I’m accustomed to.  But the Moon obliged – Thanks, Moon!

A couples of nights later, BATS had finished for another year, and I was back near my lodging, supping at Honey Honey and reading while twilight changed to night-darkness.  Walking back up Post Street, craning around trying to spot the widening Moon between the buildings and along the cross-streets, I suddenly instead saw a bright light in front of me to the west.

Not a plane!  A star!  I looked carefully off to the star’s right, and sure, enough, faint but visible, I could make out the Big Dipper’s handle stars, it’s pan and the pointers and – big surprise – even Polaris.  None of these were bright except for the first one, gleaming in the west straight up Post Street: Arcturus.

It was like walking around in a city in which you’re a stranger and suddenly running into an old friend.  A beautiful addition to new friends, new experiences, new information, flavors, sights and sounds.

A sweet surprise, against all expectations: Familiar.