The Age of Virgo (approximately 15,000 – 12,500 BCE) is an extremely fascinating time. It is the age just coming out of The Garden, and moving headlong toward the vast changes that will be brought in by the Ages of Leo and Cancer.
My sense is that those during this time of the zenith of consciousness knew what was ahead, and they prepared for it. I offer a series of questions that can help us to see this era mythically:
- What if the biblical ‘fall’ was falling debris from space that created huge firestorms?
- What if The Fall is the movement of consciousness into gradual ignorance from the zenith with the turning of the Great Wheel, Hamlet’s Mill?
- What if The Serpent is the constellation Draco, and the Tree of Knowledge is the World Tree Axis that, when it shifted, brought destruction and ignorance, but also the promise of eventual regained consciousness as a cyclic event, with ignorance at the nadir (through which we are just exiting)?
- What if Woman could converse with the Serpent, i.e. She was an astronomer who knew The Fall was coming?
- What if The Apple was a symbol for a piece of Knowledge from the World Tree, available to Woman because that was her province – to know?
What makes Myth so powerful is its applicability throughout all time. But all myth has an origin, a reason, a ‘truth’. Since I was very young I’ve had the ability to read between the lines of the ‘great’ stories and myths to see the applicability, but more importantly to feel the deeper truths. And that is all that mysticism is: discovering the key that unlocks the doors that the collective mind has erected in fear, ignorance, and the belief in the need of protection. Mysticism is not a left-brain function. It is not something that can be proved, only experienced. If one doesn’t resonate with an interpretation, unravel your own, but do not blindly follow ‘tradition’ in lieu of your independent thought and exploration. Follow your inner guidance and explore your own terrain.
Here is my own myth and since I have formulated it, academic evidence to support it has come to light. I find this happens often enough to know that the axiom, “when the student is ready, the teacher appears” is in active service right now if we but pay attention.
When the shift was known and immanent to the people of the Age of Virgo, they set about preparing to encode what they knew about embodied life and to codify systems of maintaining ‘relative’ high consciousness until the upward swing again would bring us into the light of increasing consciousness. Some of these systems are healing modalities that have been used for millennia such as Ayurveda, and Traditional Chinese Medicine. Some are only recently widely known and used: healing with crystals, shamanic practices, our energy anatomy, meditation, pranayama, etc. Tarot is an excellent example of this type of stored information currently in use. All were encoded with the purpose of maintaining consciousness via access to wisdom and knowledge, to remember who we really are, despite the downward drag into ignorance that would eventually devolve into patriarchal times.
It is in these latter times of ours that all these systems, and more, have been ‘discovered’ or ‘developed’ and used for our personal healing and re-membering journeys. By coming back into relative balance by means of these so called ‘New Age’ healing systems and lifestyle adjustments, we have been heading toward the upswing of consciousness called by many: Ascension. It is, in reality, the movement over the cusp from the Age of Pisces into Aquarius.
It would have been vitally important to ensure this wisdom for future generations during Virgo so that humanity would have a method and a means to carry on even as the gravitational pull of lessening consciousness continued as precession carried on its natural cyclic course. Many of these systems went underground and were only available to the initiate. During our lifetime, holders of sacred wisdom have ‘inexplicably’ shared it with ‘uninitiated’ individuals, and sometimes the masses. It was time.
Our new era is one of following one’s heart, not dogma, not any book, not any guru. Your heart alone has the answer, distilled from your own individual experiences through the ages. We may discover our answer through uncovering our heart’s wisdom. It can seem difficult these days to determine who is a true, knowledgeable spiritual teacher and who is just in it to rake in the money and ego strokes. We are all really adept at fooling ourselves. There are those that are real: By their lives and their works will you know them. But the best advice, because we often do not have appropriate powers of discernment yet when we are so in need of Truth, is to cultivate, use and cherish our intuition.
As I mentioned, I recently came across the quote below by an academic whose research corroborated my intuition on the encoding of valuable information for future generations to use. Our ancient grandmothers encoded this information in natural holy places; our later grandmothers encoded the information in the megalithic monuments and shrines across the globe. The author is experimenting with encoding information that she personally wants to recall, in essence creating her own oral tradition (explore her fascinating website here).
“When I first read about oral tradition, I kept reading about history and religion. Almost nothing about science. Yet about 70% of the songs at [Australian] corroborees are about animal behaviour, plant properties and other natural phenomena. The Navajo had a knowledge to three levels of classification of over 700 insects! All kept in memory – and then there are all the other animals. Plus plants, astronomy, navigation, genealogies, resource rights, marriage rules, ethics … it goes on and on. If oral cultures didn’t have formal ways of remembering so much stuff, they would not have survived. Mythology, songs, chants, dances, stories – they all greatly enhance the ability to remember pragmatic information. There is a robust body of research on that – under the topic of primary orality – my field of expertise.
“Australian Aboriginal cultures embed their navigation in singing tracks – paths which crisscross the entire landscape. Along these paths are sacred places, where ‘rituals’ are performed. Those rituals include songs which encode the entire knowledge system. The sung set of landscape locations act as a set of subheadings to the entire knowledge system. My research argues that this system is akin to the ancient Greek Method of Loci, and can be found in non-literate cultures across the world.” (Lynne Kelly, author of Knowledge and Power in Prehistoric Societies: orality, memory and the transmission of culture.)
This is unbelievably exciting stuff to be conscious of in this time of transition and that’s the whole idea. As we all know, the content of the subconscious needs to become conscious in order to make a difference; in order to grant the freedom we all seek. But the implications of her work are what really excited me. Could we not access these encoded messages ourselves in situ, through shamanic journey, or dream states? I believe we have been doing this all along* and I believe this is what the monuments, shrines and natural holy places are all about: Passing on the information spontaneously to those who show up and are receptive. Perhaps this is why succeeding cultures often build on top of earlier holy places – to usurp and destroy the previously encoded messages. Perhaps this is why fanatical sects destroy archaeological sites – on some level they know.
I believe this is why sacred tourism is so popular at present. People are picking up soul saving information subconsciously, bringing it back to their homes and manifesting it in a variety of ways: suddenly developing ‘out there’ healing modalities, becoming a channel for healing – out of the blue – being drawn to crystals, tarot, astrology, sacred art creation, herbal healing, animal communication, etc. and developing these for personal use, for their families, and sometimes for sharing with a larger audience: a ripple effect.
It might be prudent to look at your travels and how life has been for you afterwards. We spend inordinate amounts of psychic energy trying to maintain a status quo in our lives because we are subconsciously fearful of changes. That could create inner conflict after a supposed holiday when really you were entering the Higher Academy of Wisdom Teachings.
What would your life look like if you opened completely to this sacred knowledge available to us? What could you learn? What could you use to completely shift your life? Would you completely shift your life? It is there for us all. No need to pay workshop fees, unless you really want someone else’s knowledge. It is a very different way of being, but I believe, it is the new way of being. As I’ve stated in a previous article, developing your intuition is the single most radical and important thing you can do for the world right now. How can you move forward from right now into the new era?
So, this is the healing lesson of the Virgo Age for us at this time: becoming more self-sufficient with regards to our inner authority. Not constantly giving that authority away to ‘experts’ whether they are clothed traditionally or in new age guises. What have we personally learned through the dreamtime, through our travels; how can we activate it, and share with others? Is there a sacred place calling to us to visit? It doesn’t have to be overseas and famous. It could be a lone tree in a field we pass everyday.
This way of being is fundamental to our survival: sharing our innate gifts with our community and keeping alive the wisdom for future generations to come. Books, and computer hard drives can be destroyed, but psychically encoded wisdom can be of Earth, her monuments and shrines, forever.
*Lest you think I am being overly fanciful, I have personal experience of dreamtime learning that is not my own subjective experience (I have those too). Fourteen years ago I had the privilege of rescuing and raising a tiny, unfurred baby squirrel. I didn’t even know it was a squirrel until I journeyed to discover what it was. Only then could I know how to take care of him properly. He was with me for nearly four months and made his own transition, rehabilitated and happy, into the wild when he was ready. During this time he developed squirrel tools such as building squirrel nests. He had no way of knowing how to do this from ‘outside’ because he had no access to other squirrels. Yet I watched as he showed me he could take care of himself by building a nest outside my bedroom window. He communicated in many other ways, but that is another story. So, how did he learn this craft of home construction if he wasn’t visited by the Overlighting Squirrel Spirit and getting personal tutorials? Science might call it instinct, but they would also caution against getting too close to rehabilitating wild animals because they will be unable to fend for themselves, hopelessly imprinted upon a human. I know this to be nonsense. Sammy came back several months after he left for good, on February 14th actually, to say a brief hello and to let me know he was fine.
Astronology: We are now headed into eclipse season with this new moon/solar eclipse in sidereal Leo at 16º (tropical Virgo at 10º), exact at 2:41 am EDT, September 13, 2015.
This eclipse will bring major new beginnings to the degree we are open to it. The new moon will be close to the fixed star Denebola: non- conforming and doing things in a completely different way than we are used to. It also opposes Chiron, so there will be opportunities for deep healing as well. The energies for new beginnings will take shape over the next six months until the eclipse season next spring. A power packed event, this new moon!
Go within, reflect and seek guidance. The new seeds you plant now will greatly affect your life path as the north node, our compass, is also close to this new moon. This can be an important time to sort out where we are and where we want to go, so take time to be receptive to guidance. Any frustrations you notice, pull back and don’t push so hard. Implement a ‘go with the flow attitude’ and see where the Universe is leading you. The arenas of life affected for you personally will depend upon where these bodies and points fall in your own chart.
- Full Moon in Sidereal Aquarius August 18, 2016 - August 18, 2016
- Lammas New Moon in Sidereal Cancer August 2, 2016 - August 2, 2016
- Full Moon in Sidereal Capricorn July 19, 2016 - July 19, 2016