New Moon in Pisces

by M. Kelley Hunter

Yet another boat-rocking NEW MOON opens a unexpected doorway to surprising new perceptions and perspectives on the Ides of March, the high tides of March, that’s March 15 at 5:01pm EDT (10:01pm GMT). Invisible sparkling energy is vibrating in the aethers and the flow of change is reaching the river rapids. “Things” are likely to go in unexpected directions, as the turning point continues to pivot. We ourselves leaning with the movement to maintain our balance. No one is going to finish this moon cycle unchanged.

JUPITER leads the way in Pisces at 14 degrees, strong in its rulership sign. The New Moon in Pisces is at 26 degrees, with MERCURY and URANUS right next door at 27 degrees. Lots of water is surging and flowing—in tides, storms, underground streams, ice melting, ocean rising, and in our emotional bodies. Go for the ecstasy, as Uranus lights up your psychic sensitivity. Don’t look around and get caught in the chaos. Look up and in, look down and deep into your heart. Are you feeling the vulnerability, the fragility of life as you row row row your boat down the stream that has become a rushing river? Scientists say we lost a milli-second of our day in the Chilean earthquake, but doesn’t it feel like we lost more time than that?

Let’s look at the Sabian symbols for these two Pisces degrees. There is bound to be a storyline.
New Moon at 26 Pisces:
TWO RAPT LOVERS AND A PHILOSOPHER WATCH THE NEW MOON
So appropriate! This IS a New Moon we are watching here. We’re in the dark of it until the crescent shows, probably on Wednesday, accompanied by reborn VENUS fresh from her sabbatical with the Sun. She reappeared just in the last few weeks. Have you seen her yet? This would be a good time. Venus with the New Moon crescent is such a celestial treat. Venus is the lovers. Jupiter is the philosopher, first to rise in the morning, first to set at night. We are learning so much under the waxing rays of this Moon.

Mercury and Uranus (communications from higher mind via feeling flow)
at 27 Pisces:
THE HARVEST MOON RISES IN TRANSLUCENT AUTUMNAL SKIES
This image takes us down under, where the southern hemisphere is soon approaching autumn equinox. It also calls our attention to the blossoming Full Moon on March 29-30 that reveals the meaning of this New Moon. By Moon’s fullness the Sun will have moved across the Aries equinox threshold to initiate a new scene in the transformational drama playing on the world stage now. That Full Moon will plug directly into the Saturn-Pluto dialogue that is moving us inexorably further into Earth-changing events.

Speaking of earth, there isn’t much in this New Moon. Only PLUTO is presently in an earth sign, digging deeper and deeper into Capricorn for the next 15 years, insisting that we restructure our reality. This new monthly cycle is not about practical realities. It’s about new vision, the Big Dream. Haven’t you had one? A dream that you feel is about more than just you, it’s about our shared Story. We are all crackling with electricity with the New Dream that is opening up. Your role may change beyond your current recognition. Uranus and Jupiter move into Aries in the month of Gemini, May and June. All sorts of new options open up. This month the wagon trains prepare to head out. The scouts go beforehand to find the best route. The bold and courageous are rewarded.

AQUARIAN CONSPIRACY
This New Moon in Pisces highlights the subtle realms of NEPTUNE, the Dreamer. Neptune and Jupiter both rule the sign of The Fishes. Jupiter brings out the greater meaning of the times and expands our learning curve. Neptune opens us to mystical melting, spiritual upliftment and compassionate service; yet can also bring storm clouds of confusion, illusion, delusion and anxiety. It’s up to you to fine tune your frequency to the channel you want to be listening to.

Neptune is in an extended conjunction with CHIRON, the Shaman, for this whole year, suggesting a critical moment of potential healing. In Aquarius we need to beware of our techno-addictions and dependencies. The electrical fields are charged up, affecting all systems, hard-wired and otherwise. That includes our nerve wirings and the way the winds blow through our bodies to keep us fresh and alert. Keep breathing! Let the prana, the life force, fan your vitality and creative fires. inspire and delight you.

The BLACK MOON LILITH is coming in to add her ineffable influence, like a miraculous Black Madonna. This vortex point, intimately aligned with the Earth-Moon system. Black Moon will align even more closely with Neptune as we head into June, the same time that Chiron takes a brief dive into the seas of Pisces. Ever more subtle energies in the aetheric field, charging the Aquarian air waves and the Piscean ocean waves.

The planetary pace is picking up swiftly. Await the signal for your turn to enter the game. Tune in to the flow as the context of your life shifts. The dominoes start to fall forward. People move around, coming and going in our lives. The world is changing and so are we.

Kelley Hunter, Ph.D., C.A.P., is an internationally-known astrologer and mythologist. Her psycho-spiritual approach to astrology is supported by studies in Depth Psychology and interdisciplinary doctoral studies in Philosophy, Cosmology and Myth. She appears on John Edward’s new InfiniteQuest.com web channel and is a columnist for The International Astrologer. Kelley is astrologer for the Self Centre at Caneel Bay Resort in St. John, Virgin Islands. Living in the Caribbean, she tells star stories under the tropical night sky. Her free Cosmic News e-letter goes around the world on new and full Moons. She is the author of Living Lilith: Four Dimensions of the Cosmic Feminine and the upcoming expanded version of Black Moon Lilith. Visit her website at www.heliastar.com.

The photo is of dancer, Jacqui Lalita is a goddess in motion. The photo blurred when increasing size, very appropriate for this New Moon energy. Be inspired at http://www.danceofthedivine.org/

Family Egg Traditions

From LoriDeMarre

After my mother died, I inherited her cedar chest which was full of things from family members deemed important enough to save and pass on. I’m continually fascinated by the odds and ends of what has remained.  So much of it is such a mystery, and is left to my imagination.  As I go deeper, I pull out an odd assortment of random possessions, such as an ancient cardboard assortment of black snaps for making clothing, the much used Ouija Board and a small booklet called: Text Book of Osteopathy from the Standpoint of Mechano-Therapy, copyright 1910.

One of the most precious findings: a string of painted eggshells– still intact and whole.  The eggs have delicately painted flowers on them and there is a ribbon that connects them.  One egg has Easter 1906 painted on it, although Easter is misspelled.  Another egg has the name of Robert on it.

As a child, I remember being fascinated by these magical treasures and asking my mother for their story.  She didn’t know the mystery, so we would just put them back into her grandfather’s trunk that lived in our dirt cellar.

These fragments of family myth and mystery, have inspired me once again to pick up my camera and other art supplies, in a way that I haven’t done in many years.  Art is my personal way of exploring the creative mystery of living.

Pysanky: Ritual Eggs

Decorating eggs is one of my favorite spring time rituals. Every year around this time, I set out the pots of dye and the cartons of eggs, the tools and the candles and the beeswax I need to make pysanky.  And for the few weeks before Easter, I spend a few hours every night or so, inscribing patterns on eggs. I can get lost for hours, totally absorbed in this process.

The art of decorating eggs may be the oldest art form. A recent find in South Africa of colored and etched ostrich shells dating back 60,000 years has scientists speculating on their meaning. Having made pysanky for years, I recognize them as ritual eggs, and the designs chosen as those that are easiest for beginning egg artists to create.

Eggs are  symbols of spring, found in cultures and ritual meals all over the world. Some of the most beautiful decorated eggs come from the Ukraine where they are called Pysanky.  Pysanky feature elaborate designs made with beeswax resist and are always raw. These eggs are magic talismans. The designs on the sides are messages (pysanky comes from a root word meaning “to write”) invoking fertility, long life, luck, protection and hope. Eggs with wheat and fruit designs might be buried in the fields to encourage the crops. Eggs with blue and green meander designs were kept in homes and carried around a fire to contain it.

I learned how to make pysanky from a book called Ukrainian Easter Eggs written by Anne Kmit, the Luciow sisters and Luba Perchyshyn. They have written many books on this topic but also sell tools and provide instructions on their web site: Ukrainian Gift Shop. Pysanky were always made by groups of women working together, late at night, during the week before Easter. The children were in bed; the men were not invited; the eggs were always fertile eggs. The women asked for specific blessings for each egg they made and sang traditional songs as they worked.

The eggs were distributed in a ritual manner. One or two eggs were given to the priest. Eggs were placed on the graves of family members. Eggs were given to all the children and godchildren. Unmarried girls exchanged eggs with the eligible young men in the community. A few eggs were placed in coffins to be ready in case someone died. Several were kept in the home to protect from fire and storms. Two or three were placed in the trough or the stables so the animals would have many young. One egg was placed under each beehive and one was saved for each grazing animal to be taken out to the fields with the shepherds in the spring. An egg with wheat symbols was placed at the start of the first furrow plowed and another at the end of the last. A bride would take an egg to her marriage ceremony in her skirt and on returning home, drop it saying. “Let me bear the child as easily as the egg falls.” If that didn’t work, the husband might receive an egg with a rooster on it or an oak leaf.

Every aspect of making the egg was important from the colors chosen to the designs. The most ancient and widely used symbol was the sun. Certain eggs, covered with symbols of water, flowers, growing plants and little wings, were used to “call spring.” Other eggs, called “noise insect eggs” depicted birds singing, crickets and the chirping noise of the forest to invoke the sounds of spring.

Here’s a list of some symbols.

Star: Success

Birds:  Spring, good harvest & pushing away evil

Hearts: Love

Fruits, vegetables, wheat: Good harvest

Flowers:  Beauty and children

Spiders:  Healing powers and good luck

Animals, especially deer:  Prosperity and wealth

Ladders (given to older people):  Moving to a new level of existence

40 triangles (a traditional pattern):  Wishes for the many facets of family life

Circle: Protection

Thirteen years ago I finally purchased the appropriate tool for making Ukrainian eggs, a kistka (I got mine in the art department of my local university bookstore). Ever since then, I’ve been hosting egg-decorating parties for me and my women friends. Each woman brings some eggs (either raw or hard-boiled). Meanwhile I set up several tables with kistkas, blocks of beeswax, a candle for each woman and some way of holding the egg steady (paper towels are the simplest—we also use the little plastic tables that come with your delivered pizza). The same stores that sell kistkas and special beeswax (dyed a darker color so it’s easier to see) also sell lathes on which you can turn your eggs so you can achieve perfectly even lines. We’ve never used one of these. The same stores also sell electric kistkas but I’ve scorned these as too modern. I like the simple ancient process.

However, I do buy the packets of Ukrainian dyes—most of which are highly toxic—because they produce brilliant colors—turquoise, black and maroon, among others–you can’t find in ordinary Easter egg dyes. These are made with boiling water so mix them ahead of time so they can cool. I also use the regular Easter egg dyes you buy in kits at the store, particularly because I like the little wire dippers that come in these kits, handy for putting eggs in and out of the jars (I use wide-mouthed canning jars). We also use spoons for this task. I leave my dyes out, often for two or three weeks, so I can continue working on eggs. I love the way they look: the gleaming jars and the brilliant colors.

To make the design, you put a little bit of beeswax in the funnel of the kistka, then melt it over a candle flame and draw on the eggshell with the molten beeswax. Begin with a white egg and put wax on all the areas you want to stay white, then dye the egg yellow, and cover all the areas with wax which you want to remain yellow, and so forth through orange, red and a dark color (brown, black or purple). When the egg is done, place it in a low-temperature oven for a few minutes to melt the wax, which is then rubbed off to reveal the intricate designs and glowing colors of your egg. I love the delicacy of the designs, the smell of the wax and the flickering light of the candle, which combine to create a trance-like state.

If you don’t have a kistka, you can decorate eggs using a pin. Simply dip it into melted wax and drag it across the surface of the egg. It will leave a little comet-like trail. When done in concentric circles, you will have created sunbursts. The eggs, even though they are not cooked, can be kept for many years if they are stored so the air can move around them freely. I store mine in egg cartons in the basement but I have had an occasional egg go bad. Last year, I put varnish on all the eggs, hoping this would help preserve them. It’s a messy process (since there’s no way to hold an egg without getting varnish all over your own fingers) but it seems to have helped and it certainly brought out their colors. You can also blow the inside out of the eggs after they’ve been painted.

For more information on making Ukrainian eggs, you might enjoy this website created by Artist Ann Morash. For inspiration, or just amazement, check out the stunning examples of pysanky from Kolomiya Museum of Hutsul Folk Art. This web site featuring the work of Sofia Zielyk shows the way an artist might interpret this traditional craft. And then there’s Martha Stewart. She features 56 different ways to decorate eggs on her web site including marbled eggs, glittered eggs (very classy), gilded eggs, eggs dyed with natural materials, silk-dyed eggs, lace eggs, stenciled eggs and many more.

Fractal Yin and Yang

A guest post from my favorite almanack maker, Bill Felker.

And so we see in Plants and all of Nature the Word of God.  Like any Scripture, Earth’s Matter is subject to our Doubt.  But to the one who listens closely to its Cadence, it reveals the sweet hidden Truth.

Reginald Johnson, On the Shapes of Leaves 1697

For the past 25 years, I have kept track of the waves of barometric pressure that pass over my Ohio home.  I have compared their configurations on my graphs and have found similarities in the rises and the falls of the pressure from year to year.  These resemblances are consistent enough to produce reliable weather history forecasts, which can predict likely conditions on any day of the year.

While I have done little with my graphs but reinvent the wheel first discovered by 16^th century almanackers, I have been surprised that modern meteorology has been so reluctant to embrace barometric regularity as a means of long-range forecasting.  Recent research on the El Nino phenomenon is the first sign that academic meteorologists are beginning to take atmospheric rhythms seriously.

Post-chaos theory physicists (who belong to what has been called the “Universal” school) are also looking at patterns in nature and have come up with notions that support the ancient use of barometric patterning in tracking and predicting likely weather scenarios.  In the late 1970s, an IBM research scientist named Benoit Mandelbrot looked at fluctuations in all kinds of phenomena, from the stock market to cloud formations.  He came to the conclusion that these very different occurrences were related to one another, and that they revealed an underlying force that pervaded every aspect of life on earth.

In each of the events he studied, Mandelbrot found “self-similar” systems, which he called fractals.  It is probably easier to picture a fractal than to define it.  Imagine an electrocardiograph analysis of your heartbeat.  The ups and downs are arranged on the paper in an orderly fashion, but never at exactly the same intervals.  Or picture a month or two of a graph of the Dow Jones averages.  That’s a fractal pattern.

Although a weather graph of temperature or barometric pressure may chart very different activities and show much greater variability than the electrocardiograph record (and is much less depressing than a stock market graph), Mandelbrot would posit that all of the records are showing us a life principle, not unlike a yin-yang law, that underlies not only weather, stocks, and heartbeats but almost everything from the shape of ferns and fiords to the filigree in lungs and leaves.

That there is a relationship between heart rhythms, barometric rhythms, temperature rhythms, and the patterns of clouds, the stock market, and even shape of frost on the windshield of my truck in winter, is apparently not a matter of too much debate, at least among post-chaos theory physicists who belong to this “universal” school.  All of the systems mentioned can be charted as fractals, and a visual analysis of their designs reveals their broad similarity.

The real issue, however, is whether the designs have meaning.  If fractals reflect some universal designing set in nature, and if they are, in fact, the signatures of nature, then what are we to make of them?

During the Middle Ages, the Doctrine of Signatures held that the shape of any natural object, such as a leaf or root, held the key to its medicinal use.  Thus, the hepatica leaf, reminiscent of the shape of a human liver, indicated its application in the treatment of liver ailments.  Modern fractal theory posits a not so dissimilar view—that patterns observed in such diverse phenomena as the stock market and barometric pressure might not only hold the key to understanding the rhythm but also the ultimate meaning of those phenomena.  Some analysts believe that fractals could hold the secret key to the universe, explain the causes not only of our personal decisions but also of the outside forces that influence them.  Science writer Mark Ward even conjectures that fate itself might be fractal.

In organizing barometric patterns from the past quarter century, I have found that my charts allow for weather predictions which are unavailable from any other source.  This practical aspect of fractal records is intriguing to me less for its meteorological implications, however, than for its psychological implications.  Always eager to jump to conclusions, I wonder what new fractal highs and lows remain to be discovered, and I wonder if they will really tell us the “sweet hidden Truth” promised by Reginald Johnson in 1697.

Bill Felker studies his barometer, writes essays and creates almanacs and hand-bound journals, great for keeping track of natural changes, in Warm Springs, Ohio.

Flower of March: Daffodil

Daffadowndilly has come to town
In a yellow petticoat and a green gown.

I always think of the daffodil as the flower for the month of March. That’s because I always look for the daffodils on the first of March, and for the past ten years, with one exception, I have always found them in bloom by this date in Seattle.  Lucky for me since I want to wear a daffodil on March 1st  to show my allegiance to Wales (thanks to my ancestress, Nesta, the mother of the first Fitzgerald, who flourished around 1100).

The daffodil is the national flower of Wales which is why you should wear it on March 1, the feast day of St. David, the patron saint of Wales. Or you can eat a leek on this day and become an honorary Welshman (Cymru as the Welsh would say it). I try to do both.

The David Morgan site in its entry for St David’s Day
http://www.davidmorgan.com/stdavid.html
implies that the daffodil was imposed as a symbol of Wales by the English who wanted to downplay the political implications of the leek (worn by wild Welshmen in battle with the Saxons). Julie Ardery’s article at the wonderful Human Flower Project web site
http://humanflowerproject.com/index.php/weblog/comments/the_leek_and_the_daffodil/
mentions David Lloyd George, the Prime Minister of Britain during World War I, as the person who popularized this custom but he was Welsh himself so it seems more likely he was bringing to the forefront an authentic Welsh custom. The creators of the French Revolutionary calendar must have known of the association of the daffodil with St David’s Day back in 1792 when they designed the calendar and assigned the “narcisse” to March 1 (the 11th day of Ventose, or Windy). (The daffodil appears later in March on the 8th of Germinal)

Daffodil is a common name for a narcissus. It may be derived from the plant name asphodel, known to the Romans. Pliny wrote that it grew on the banks of the Acheron, delighting the spirits of the dead. The Romans planted it on tombs, perhaps because it was said to grow in the Elysian Fields. It was the sight of a daffodil that lured Persephone into the Underworld.

Perhaps it is the way they droop that evokes death. It also gave rise to the myth of the beautiful boy, Narcissus, who fell in love with his own reflection. I will let my favorite garden writer, Paghat, tell you all about the Narcissus myth and the secret rites of Echo practiced during the Eleusinian mysteries
http://www.paghat.com/narcissusmyth1.html

The narcissus common in Greece, Narcissus tazetta, is called Little Tear Drops. In Germany, daffodils are called Osterglocken, Easter bells. They are also called Lent Lilies in England. They are favorite decorations for Easter tables, for Nawruz (Persian new year) celebrations and for Chinese New Year.

Gabi Grieve of the World Kigo database
http://europasaijiki.blogspot.com/2005/04/daffodil-and-narcissus.html
mentions a new holiday in Ireland, Daffodil Day, March 24 which is sponsored by the Irish Cancer Society. Resonating as it does with connotations of both death and hope, the daffodil is used as a symbol by cancer societies around the world.

All daffodils have a central trumpet-shaped corona surrounded by a ring of petals. The traditional color is yellow but hybridizers have bred all sorts of fanciful variations, including daffodils with multiple layers of petals or frilled petals and daffodils with contrasting coronas and petals, or elongated or compressed coronas.

Daffodils come from the Mediterranean but there is one particular daffodil, Narcissus obvallaris, which grows only in a small area around Tenby in Wales. The Narcissus pseudonarcissus is also native to Wales. Julie Ardery writes about the way the winter daffodils bloom in January at Quarrelton in Wales, possibly due to the fires still smoldering beneath the surface in the abandoned tunnels of the mines there:
http://humanflowerproject.com/index.php/weblog/comments/daffodils_for_the_miners/
She also describes how Welsh scientists are cultivating daffodils because they contain galanthamine, which is used in the treatment of Alzheimers.
http://humanflowerproject.com/index.php/weblog/comments/the_mind_of_a_daffodil/

However don’t try this at home. Daffodil bulbs are poisonous. Mrs. Grieve says they are a powerful emetic. Even the flowers are slightly poisonous. However, both bulbs and petals have been used medicinally. The Arabs used an oil of daffodil to cure baldness and as an aphrodisiac.

The oil of Narcissus jonquilla and Narcissus Campernella are used to make a sweet-smelling oil used in perfumes, but Mrs. Grieve warns against being in a closed room as the Narcissus poeticus, or Poet’s Narcissus, as the scent of these daffodils has been known to cause headache and vomiting.

The daffodil is also called the goose leek. In the Isle of Man it is considered unlucky to bring them into the house until the goslings are hatched. In Maine, they say that if you point at a daffodil it will not bloom. And in Wales, if you find the first bloom of the season, you will have more gold than silver this year.

May you find the first bloom of the season.

References:
Wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daffodil
Mrs. Grieve’s Modern Herbal:
http://www.botanical.com/botanical/mgmh/n/narcis01.html
Leach, Maria, editor, Funk & Wagnall’s Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology and Legend, Harper & Row 1972