Fall Equinox, 2024
Fall Equinox Sunday, September 22, 2024, at 07:44 am (CST)
Dear, Calm and Steady Children of the Earth,
The Autumnal Equinox is here! The time when Night and Day are of equal length. The Great Wheel of the Year is turning from Summer to Fall here in the Northern Hemisphere. We can feel the light beginning to shift toward longer nights and shorter days.
The Season of the Harvest is culminating. Farmers are bringing in the Earth’s bounty, leaves are beginning to turn colors and trees are dropping delicious nuts, apples and pears for us to enjoy.
This is a time of year for gathering with loved ones and sharing the abundance of what we have. It is also when the Sun enters the sign of Libra, known for balance and beauty.
Venus, the Planet associated with Libra, is the part of us that knows how to be in relationships, bring things into balance and create peace and beauty.
We honor Venus at this time of year by bringing our awareness to gratitude, sharing what we have and recognizing how important our personal relationships are to us. None of us can exist without being in relationship with others.
Astrologically speaking, this equinox features a Grand Trine including the Sun (Core Vitality), Moon (Safety and Nourishment), Uranus (Imagination) and Pluto (Power). Grand Trines indicate very easy energy flows that can be expressed with minimum effort.
As Pluto leaves Capricorn and enters Aquarius a generational shift to healing our outmoded beliefs is taking place. Pluto has spent the last 15 years in Capricorn, diving deep into the structures of our Society and Institutions, bringing what's not working to the surface.
As Pluto moves into Aquarius (for the next 20 years) the transformative focus will be on rigid belief systems that stop us from peacefully achieving equality for all.
This grand Trine speaks to a new beginning in our lives. It forms easy aspects with Neptune (Kindness and Healing) asking that we all use our power, our wisdom and our imagination to create a new paradigm.
Whether we’re talking about the macrocosm of world-wide issues or the microcosm of our personal relationships, we are entering a new reality and we are all a part of it.
Click the button below for a guided visualization I created to help you find that Autumnal connection, anytime you need:
Autumn Equinox Meditation on YouTube
Below is a poem by Diane DiPrima. I usually choose short poems for this newsletter but in honor of Diane and her concept that “the only war is the war against the imagination” I include it here in its entirety. It’s best when read aloud.
Blessed be,
Mary
Rant
You cannot write a single line w/out a cosmology
a cosmogony
laid out, before all eyes
there is no part of yourself you can separate out
saying, this is memory, this is sensation
this is the work I care about, this is how I
make a living
it is whole, it is a whole, it always was whole
you do not "make" it so
there is nothing to integrate, you are a presence
you are an appendage of the work, the work stems from
hangs from the heaven you create
every man / every woman carries a firmament inside
& the stars in it are not the stars in the sky
w/out imagination there is no memory
w/out imagination there is no sensation
w/out imagination there is no will, desire
history is a living weapon in yr hand
& you have imagined it, it is thus that you
"find out for yourself"
history is the dream of what it can be, it is
the relation between things in a continuum
of imagination
what you find out for yourself is what you select
out of an infinite sea of possibility
no one can inhabit yr world
yet it is not lonely,
the ground of the imagination is fearlessness
discourse is video tape of a movie of a shadow play
but the puppets are in yr hand
your counters in a multidimensional chess
which is divination
& strategy
the war that matters is the war against the imagination
all other wars are subsumed in it.
the ultimate famine is the starvation
of the imagination
it is death to be sure, but the undead
seek to inhabit someone else's world
the ultimate claustrophobia is the syllogism
the ultimate claustrophobia is "it all adds up"
nothing adds up & nothing stands in for
anything else
THE ONLY WAR THAT MATTERS IS THE WAR AGAINST
THE IMAGINATION
THE ONLY WAR THAT MATTERS IS THE WAR AGAINST
THE IMAGINATION
THE ONLY WAR THAT MATTERS IS THE WAR AGAINST
THE IMAGINATION
ALL OTHER WARS ARE SUBSUMED IN IT
There is no way out of the spiritual battle
There is no way to avoid taking sides
There is no way you can not have a poetics
no matter what you do: plumber, baker, teacher
you do it in the consciousness of making
or not making yr world
you have a poetics: you step into the world
like a suit of readymade clothes
or you etch in light
your firmament spills into the shape of your room
the shape of the poem, of yr body, of yr loves
A woman's life / a man's life is an allegory
Dig it
There is no way out of the spiritual battle
the war is the war against the imagination
you can't sign up as a conscientious objector
the war of the worlds hangs here, right now, in the balance
it is a war for this world, to keep it
a vale of soul-making
the taste in all our mouths is the taste of our power
and it is bitter as death
bring yr self home to yrself, enter the garden
the guy at the gate w/ the flaming sword is yrself
the war is the war for the human imagination
and no one can fight it but you/ & no one can fight it for you
The imagination is not only holy, it is precise
it is not only fierce, it is practical
men die everyday for the lack of it,
it is vast & elegant
intellectus means "light of the mind"
it is not discourse it is not even language
the inner sun
the polis is constellated around the sun
the fire is central
by Diane di Prima
from "Pieces of a Song: Selected Poems"
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Please see the following links for more information on the Autumnal Equinox
2024 September Equinox: All You Need to Know by Deborah Byrd
5 Ways to Celebrate the Autumn Equinox from FirelightCamps.com
Fall Equinox: Rituals and Traditions from We’Moon