2014 in L'Alpe di Siusi, fresh from the US and Australia.
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THE EASTER FESTIVAL 2019
THE 2ND FULL MOON OF ARIES
19 April 2019
© Malvin Artley
And Happy Easter
Recent events
Aries, and a story
The Golden Egg
The Christ within
Easter and service
The full moon
Mars out-of-bounds
Our greatest field of service
Missing the mark
Getting religion
Oil and nuclear
Transition energy
Emerging scenarios
Leaders
Another collapse?
The path to liberation
Greetings Everyone!
And Happy Easter to the Christian world. Since Easter is a Christian festival, we’ll start with an Easter message:
“The Church has wandered far from the simplicity which is in Christ. Theologians have lost (if they ever possessed it) the “mind that is in Christ” and the outstanding need of the Church today is to relinquish theology, to let go all doctrine and dogma and to turn upon the world the light that is in Christ, and thus demonstrate the fact of Christ’s eternal livingness, and the beauty and the love which it can reflect from its contact with Him, the founder of Christianity but not of Churchianity.”[1]
We’ll have more on that after discussion of the full moon.
Recent events: I usually begin these letters with a short story on my travels through life, but given the news cycle that has presented itself in recent weeks, especially this one, that is where I have been focused. These past weeks have certainly been nail-biting in terms of events. We might list them to get an idea:
In the first Aries letter this year mention was made of the full moon axis lying across Aries points and how this would likely produce very significant events, and it has yielded fruit. This happens every 38 years and it always produces powerful results. And now we have the astrological blue moon of Aries, which in turn will produce significant events. We will look at why later, but first we take a more esoteric look at Aries and what this festival means for us.
I grew up in the Christian world, in the South of the US. Easter is a big deal. Perhaps here is my story for this letter. To my family, Easter was not so much about church (It was to my mother.) as it was a celebration of childhood. Like Halloween, Easter was about sweets – chocolate eggs, disgusting (now) little sweets in the shape of chickens and rabbits and having to search for them before we could enjoy them. Symbolic, really. I had no real appreciation of Easter until after I was grown. After we were allowed to have one sweet in the morning (after a breakfast of Cap’n Crunch or some other sugary cereal), we were dressed up in our Sunday best and bundled off to church. There we would listen to the story of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection. It was supposed to be a happy tale (the resurrection) but the story of the crucifixion always ruined it for me. Now, living here in Italy, there are images all over of the dead and crucified Christ, still hanging on the cross, with the story of his via crucis – really rather morbid and macabre, actually.
This eventually “leads through the golden gate to the city of free souls”.[5] This is done through service, through self-forgetfulness and through meditative practice, all taken together. It was the path that Jesus demonstrated through the example of his life, whether we see it as allegory or as fact. Either way, the path as outlined in his story is spiritual fact. And in so doing, we find the ‘golden thread of truth’ which leads to our highest essence and universal consciousness. There is also an analogy between physical gold, money, service and the dual path – one leading to endless rebirth and the other to liberation. The golden thread, the golden gate, the golden bowl and so forth, all lead to liberation and enlightenment. And the use of gold in service can lead to liberation for humanity, when used selflessly and in the spirit of giving/sharing. We’ll get to the latter point after the full moon. But how does all this relate to the Easter Festival? And why is Aries associated with Easter? The answer to the latter question is that Aries represents birth into a new order of being, represented to us in the northern climes by spring, with life springing forth from the (apparently) dead and frozen earth. And the relation to Christ and Christianity?
The Christ within: Technically, the ‘Christ within’ is universal in its scope and is not confined to any religion. It is a part of every person:
“The energy of the spiritual man is that of the second aspect, the Christ force, or buddhi. The object of evolution in the human family is to bring this Christ force, the principle of buddhi, into full manifestation upon the physical plane…”[6]
Buddhi is associated with Mercury, the esoteric ruler of Aries. And on a further technical note, this is achieved through the right use and direction of prana via the etheric body. In Buddhism this is called controlling the winds. Anyone who has practised meditation for any amount of time can tell you that there is always a sense of renewal after having entered and emerged from the deeper states of meditation. Unconsciously at first, the breath comes under the control of the higher Self and the etheric body becomes energized. Obstructions are removed. The mind is clearer, the emotions pacified. Insight thus comes. The ‘golden disc’ is progressively ‘pierced’. This is the more occult description of how the ‘Christ light’ is approached.
When we can adequately maintain such a state of non-duality, i.e, a state wherein we live as much as possible as souls in our physical daily lives, we live according to the ‘Christ principle’. The soul is analogous with the Christ within. The soul is neither spirit nor personality. It is the middle principle. It is the attractive principle in everything, that which draws everything together.[7] It is the great unifying principle in nature, non-dual, connected, the channel between the universal and the particular, that which puts us in contact with the infinite sea of Consciousness of which we are but a drop, yet connected with all others.
Easter and service: Regardless of our spiritual or religious orientation, the Easter festival – or if you prefer, the Aries festival, or April full moon – is the celebration of our inherent interconnection, the realization that we are in truth never separate from anyone else. It is the celebration of that which renews us, that saves us, that connects us with each other, and which fosters the growth of that which will flower eventually into ‘the brotherhood of nations’ and which saves us from ourselves. It is not external. No person can give that to us or do it for us. We do it by fostering goodwill, showing compassion, sharing what we know, giving what we can in service. In doing so, evolution will take us swiftly to the ‘golden gate’ beyond which lies the ‘golden egg’ for which we have been searching along our long series of lifetimes. And when we find it, we are given a gift without price, a gift to ourselves, and even more importantly, a gift for all those who come along after us. That golden egg emanates a brilliant golden light, illuminating the Way. It is ours to share. And share, we must. All we have to do is realize it. Aries, the Christ light, renewal, birth into greater light – these are the things we celebrate at Easter, or should do – forgetting our own individual via crucis and finding joy in our work together. So, what about this full moon, this 2nd Aries festival for this year?
The full moon takes place on 19 Apr 2019 at 11:12 UT (9:12 PM AEST). The full moon figure is quite dynamic, with the Sun conjunct Uranus, strong quintile activity and several octal-based geometric patterns in the chart, especially if one includes Ceres as a planet, which I do now as a matter of course. There are two interlocked quintile triangles, two wide t-squares, a trapezoid with a Moon/Mars sesquisquare as the wide base, and a hard rectangle. What more could one ask for in terms of moving energy? One of the t-squares has Pluto as the apex with the full moon axis, which marks the figure as one that clears a path toward greater soul expression, producing those crises which should serve to draw out the soul. That t-square also has Saturn within 2 ½ degrees of Pluto, effectively a conjunction, that conjunction being particularly important in the first part of next year and signaling many important changes in the world.
Mars out-of-bounds: What do we see in these midpoints, then? We see that this full moon indicates a point of precipitation, either of a major conflict, disaster or experience of mass crisis, or of the emergence of heroic efforts along some line – and probably both. Given that Mars will go out of bounds a couple of days after the full moon – indeed in the full moon period – we can expect significant events. The last time Mars was OOB was from 8 Jul – 24 Sep 2018. In that period there was the leadership spill in Australia, the Morandi Bridge collapse, the Caspian Sea Convention, the Kerala floods in India, re-imposition of sanctions on Iran by the US, the Ebola outbreak in the DRC, the Facebook scandal, the Greek wildfires, the largest bilateral free trade deal ever, signed between Japan and the EU, and the 12 boys rescued from their 17-day ordeal in a cave in Thailand.
The time before that, when Mars was briefly OOB from 18 Mar – 7 Apr 2018, the period started with the re-election of Putin and ended with the supposed sarin gas attack (later de-bunked) in Douma. There were also four terrible accidents/tragedies (including Kemerovo), the expulsion of over 100 Russian diplomats as a result of the Skripal poisoning, demonstrations against gun violence in over 900 cities, and the extinction of the northern white rhino. The time before that was the 15th May to the 28th Jun 2017. In that period there was the terrorist bombing at the Ariana Grande concert in the UK, the withdrawal of the US from the Paris Climate Agreement, the London Bridge terrorist attack, the blockade of Qatar, terrorist attacks in Tehran, May losing the Conservative majority in Parliament by calling a snap election, the Grenfell Tower fire, the Otto Warmbier saga, and the Petya malware attacks in Ukraine. What we see, then, is true to the actions of Mars: There are disasters and acts of barbarism amidst acts of great courage and heroism when Mars goes out of bounds. Given that this ushers in the Taurus interval and is the Easter festival, any events that are precipitated are likely to have more than the usual spiritual importance. And this brings us to our main points of consideration for this letter.
Our greatest field of service, from now until 2025, and into the future, lies in educating ourselves about and overcoming what is outlined in the following quote. It has yet to be realized. But, we are quickly on our way to achieving a victory for humanity along such lines. Each person who wakes up to what follows is a victory for humanity. Consider the following:
“The prostituting of life to the task of providing the bare necessities or to making it possible for a few rich and privileged people to have too much when others have too little, will come to an end; men everywhere can now be released into a state of life which will give them leisure and time to follow spiritual objectives, to realise richer cultural life, and to attain a broader mental perspective.
But, my brothers, [some] men will fight to prevent this; the reactionary groups in every country will neither recognise the need for, nor desire this new world order which the liberation of cosmic energy [nuclear power] (even on this initial tiny scale) can make possible; the vested interests, the big cartels, trusts and monopolies that controlled the past few decades, preceding this world war, will mobilise their resources and fight to the death to prevent the extinction of their sources of income; they will not permit, if they can help it, the passing of the control of this illimitable power into the hands of the masses, to whom it rightly belongs. The selfish interests among the big stockholders, the banking firms and the wealthy organised churches will oppose all change, except in so far as it will benefit them and bring more financial gain to their coffers.
Signs of this opposition can already be seen in the utterances of certain powerful men who are today encouraging a gloomy outlook in London and in Washington and elsewhere; the Vatican, that wealthy and reactionary ecclesiastical organisation, has already expressed its disfavour, because that Church knows—as do all the vested and monied interests—that their days are numbered, provided humanity governs its decisions during the next fifty years by the idea of the greatest good to the greatest number. World decisions must therefore, in the future, be based upon a steady determination to further right human relations and to prevent selfish control, financial or ecclesiastical, by any group of men, anywhere, in any country. We believe the determination of Great Britain, the United States, and Canada, who are in possession of the secrets [of nuclear energy], is along these lines.”[8]
The first paragraph of the quote has been possible for some time, since the end of the World War. That it has not been attained is obvious. The question is why, and that was answered for us in the succeeding two paragraphs. Clearly, the reactionary forces mentioned above have held sway, and increasingly, since the end of the World War. We might argue otherwise, saying that poverty has been reduced in the world and the overall world population has enjoyed a level of material security and wealth never seen before. In some respects that is true. But when we look at nations like the US, Canada and the UK, as mentioned in the quote, what we see is a trend toward to opposite. As was warned against, what we have seen in the past decades is an accelerated transfer of wealth into the hands of the few at the expense of the many. This has been done in graded steps over the years, beginning with the Nixon Shock (1971), deliberately and in the face of the ignorance of the public, and all the while the media hails the benefits of the systems under which we now live.
Who are these ‘reactionary forces’? A reactionary is defined as anyone who wishes to restore the status quo ante – i.e., the previously existing state of affairs, whatever that might be. MAGA is an instance of this. They can be either right or left wing, communist or capitalist, extremist or not, but they are ordinarily painted with a conservative brush. That would be a mistake. We see this in the US in Republicans and Democrats, in Russia with people who want a return to socialism, in religious reactionary politics (as in the US, and Australia) and in Israel and the Muslim world, too, with the rise of fundamentalism. Essentially, the reactionary forces are those who oppose social progress, or to put it more pointedly, who oppose progressive policies. It is a topic that causes heated discussions on social media, with all sides of the argument stating the justness of their views. It will be an even more heated debate in the next years as the system under which we are living becomes ever more unstable and unsustainable and reactionary forces lose their ground.
In the same connection, among the lower aspects of the sixth ray are to be found all forms of dogmatic, authoritative religion as expressed by the organised and orthodox churches. All formulated theologies are the lower expression of the higher spiritual truths because they embody the mind reactions of the religious man, his confidence in his own personal mind deductions and the surety that he is obviously right. They do not embody the spiritual values as they truly exist. Consequently the dreadful nature of the lower expressions of the sixth ray and the control by the forces of separativeness (which are ever the outstanding characteristic of the lower sixth ray activity) can be seen [Page 40] nowhere more potently than in religious and Church history with its hatreds and bigotry, its pomp and luxurious appeal to the outer ear and eye, and its separativeness from all other forms of faith as well as its internal dissensions, its protesting groups and its cliques [sects] and cabals.[9]
Following on that:
“…man’s salvation is determined by the processes of evolution and is not a question of ultimate achievement but simply one of time [the processes of evolution, in other words]…the life within a man will bring him ultimately to his goal and that the experiences and the type of incarnation will inevitably lead him to “his desired haven.” His salvation is not determined by his acceptance of some dogma, formulated by men who have lost their sense of proportion (and consequently their sense of humor) and who deem themselves capable of interpreting the mind of God for their fellowmen.”
These quotes on religion go hand-in-glove with our present politico-economic system, which recently has been ‘invaded’ by such fundamentalist religious strains, Christian, Muslim and otherwise. Thus, the reactionary elements have co-opted religion to fulfill their material purposes. This is not to say that all religious people in politics are reactionary. Quite the contrary. But the more fundamentalist, dogmatic strains of it are definitely reactionary. Our existing order over the past decades for most readers has been capitalist, somewhat democratic (one might say pseudo-democratic), oil-based and neo-liberal. Very soon after that economic order was established (in the 1970s) we saw the rise of ‘the religious right’ throughout the Western world, but especially in the United States. That is changing.
But consider this: Nuclear energy is solar fire, solar fire representing the soul, the ‘fire of love/consciousness’. Oil is material fire, or fire by friction. The analogy is clear. The everyday energy interests in the three nations mentioned in the quote are all focused around oil, the Piscean/Neptunian energy source – the energy that is/should be passing out. It is thus an increasingly regressive influence when put forward as the main way of life. Gas, analogous with gaseous elements in general and thus thought, is seen as a transition energy source. Well it may be, but it is still petroleum-based. That is one of the main subjective reasons why hydrocarbons must pass out of usage except in special cases. And that is not even counting the costs of climate change and pollution. If research and development had been poured into the peaceful and clean uses of the atom instead of its use for ‘security’ and aggression, who knows where we would be now?
A small tangent is in order here. There are clean sources of fission nuclear energy, but these are left virtually untouched, except in Russia. One of the main uses for many nuclear reactors is for the production of material for nuclear weapons, aside from power, and those produce significant nuclear waste. There are two nations of particular interest in the production of cleaner nuclear energy, though, and those are India and Russia. Russia, remembering it has a 7th ray soul,[10] is the only nation in the world that has a reactor that actually burns nuclear waste, and produces none. In fact, it produces its own fuel from nuclear waste. We might call such a process ‘nuclear alchemy’. This one reactor is housed deep within an old mine, and it produces enough electricity to power over 3 million homes. If there were enough of these reactors operational there would be no more nuclear waste within the space of a few decades. Why mention is made of Russia’s 7th ray soul is that the 7th ray is associated with the mineral kingdom, the transmutation of elements and nuclear energy by extension. It is the energy of the Aquarian Age, along with electricity (which it is used to produce), which also carries the energy of the 7th ray. And we can already access the power of nuclear fusion via our life-giving energy source, the Sun. I know people who power their houses solely with solar panels, living off-grid. Of course, the energy interests and cabals see this as a threat, and there have been efforts to limit the use of solar panels.
The other nation, India, has the biggest stores of any nation of a particular type nuclear fuel that shows great promise. That fuel is thorium. Thorium is termed as a ‘fertile’ rather than a ‘fissile’ fuel, and it needs processing to make it viable. But the fuel has many benefits, aside from the higher costs of using it. We don’t have the space to go into all the details here, but the linked article explains it. India has very low levels of uranium, but the high levels of thorium have prompted the Indian government to pursue the R&D necessary to produce the functional reactors. Given India’s high population density, such reactors would be a tremendous asset to India and solve many of its energy infrastructure problems. It is fast on its way toward bringing such thorium-fueled reactors into operation. India has a 1st ray soul, which is closely allied with the 7th ray. So, it is not surprising that these two nations are spearheading development of advanced nuclear energy solutions.
Returning to the quote, and using the analogy of nuclear energy, we have reached or are nearing a critical mass of human awakening as to what has befallen us since the World War. We have covered much of this before, especially in the Gemini letter for last year, speaking about the present economic system we have now. Given that system, 40% of the world’s billionaires now live in the US, and they control politics in the US. There have been a couple of scandals recently in the US that illustrate this quite well – the college admissions scandal and the Ted Cruz Citibank and Goldman Sachs scandal. It is a similar situation in the UK and in Canada, and in other nations as well. And certain billionaires also control the foreign and domestic policy of the US, as witness all the moves made by the Trump administration towards Israel. What has happened since the World War is that, in the name of ‘freedom’, financial protections for the public/regulations on financial dealings have been steadily removed, and the media, which has also been bought, has been used as one of the chief tools for achieving it. We won’t go over it here, as we have looked at it before, except to make a few points.
Emerging scenarios: There are several emerging scenarios in various parts of the world that are a direct result of the economics and consequent political leveraging we have lived with in the past decades. That economic system is extant worldwide, at least until recently. What we have been sold as our best economic system has instead become ‘the best democracy money can buy’. Those emerging scenarios are as follows:
The first thing the great majority these leaders have/had in common is that they worked toward restoring a measure of rule by the people of their nation. Workers’ rights, social welfare (that dirty word in the US) rolling back of militarism, free education, universal health care and so on are all fairly typical of the policies of these people. As a result, all of them were or have been marginalized, subjected to coups, smeared and even assassinated as a result of their work, their programs dismantled over time and any mention of them now followed by a stream of comment on the dangers of socialism, for instance, and how their policies helped to bankrupt and corrupt their nations. The latter is propaganda aimed at ‘putting the fear of God’ into people when it comes to socialism and progressive policies. In the US it has been quite successful. It is difficult to find reasoned, balanced consideration of their policies, no matter the nation, what those people actually represented and why their policies were seen to have failed, the latter failing to take into account the resistance they met from vested interests, open and covert. Conservative media outlets are consistently used as attack agents against progressive policies, and this is especially evident in the US and the UK, where media giants like Murdoch, Bezos, Sinclair and others reign supreme.
Another collapse?: And now in the US, where much of this started, for the past two years because of de-regulation (‘freedom’ in other words), banks and other financial companies have issued more than $1 trillion in risky corporate loans, which is exactly what was happening before the 2008 financial crash. The protections put in place then have been swept away under the Trump administration. True, it has injected money into the economy, but quite a bit of it has been in the form of ‘leveraged loans’, i.e., loans to companies that are on shaky ground financially and who may not be able to pay off their debts. The other thing it has done is to enable stock buy-backs, boosting the stock market (Wall St.), but not in general benefitting the average worker.
The path to liberation: As I was finishing this letter I ran across an article that explains what needs to be done quite well, and also offers a few insights into enlightenment, good themes for our Easter considerations this year. The path to liberating humanity is the same as the path to liberating the individual. It is a theme we have examined many times before. The article is worth reading all the way through. Unless we can show the Christ light (live as souls) at a very functional, demonstrative, practical level we will not change the world in the way we know it can be. Esotericists often fail because they come from too high a level. The reference to that escapes me at the moment, but the point is, if we talk constantly in an esoteric echo chamber and do not give practical measures to address problems, we may as well talk to ourselves alone in the woods. It is of little service to those most in need. People’s material needs (not desires) must be addressed if we are to see any progress, if we are to renew our societies. Value to life must be restored, and money must reflect that. Value must also be restored to politics, too – human values, cultural values and so on. The reactionary forces almost succeeded in their quest for total dominance and control, but the human spirit has no price, and nothing will quell it for long. We are indeed at a critical mass in our collective awakening. We just need that extra little push to make our voices heard and headed. It is coming. It is close. All we need is more light. May yours shine brightly in these times ahead.
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