Dear Friends,
Today I’m sharing with you the first two parts of my editorial foreword to this year’s From Eclipse to Apocalypse: Star Wisdom, vol VI. My intention is for this to be food for thought for the upcoming retreat at the Osage Forest of Peace, from October 12-16 (see here: https://sophiafoundation.org/upcoming-events-sponsored-events/). I’m looking forward to seeing some of you there!
In solidarity,
Joel Matthew Park
Editorial Foreword: From Eclipse to Apocalypse
I. A Memory: Reflections on the Great Conjunction as a Turning Point
(Written in December, 2020)
On August 21, 2017, thousands of people gathered together across the United States to witness an event that had not occurred since 1918: a total solar eclipse whose pathway crossed from coast to coast of the contiguous United States. With well-deserved hype emerging throughout digital media, this eclipse came to be called the “Great American Solar Eclipse.”
(Image from https://www.space.com/35171-great-american-solar-eclipse-coming-in-2017.html)
I can remember this eclipse quite vividly. At this point in time, I was still living at Plowshare Farm in Greenfield, New Hampshire. Since 2014, I had become increasingly involved with a local group of Sophians and Hermeticists, some of whom might be known to some readers, as they have been long-time friends and facilitators of Sophianic work: Richard Reho, Gail Dupre, Jim Wetmore—just to name a few. All told, there were nine of us locally who had been working together.
Specifically, our work centered around the Grail Knight’s Practice, a mantric distillation of Valentin Tomberg’s Lord’s Prayer Course, to which Robert Powell had given eurythmic movement. We also focused on a new form of working with the Tarot of Marseilles, which came to be called “Hermetic Conversation.” Eventually, I would present something of the work with Hermetic Conversation at the Sophia Foundation’s Annual Meditation Retreat in Santa Fe in 2019.
In both 2014 and 2015, this New Hampshire group had periodic retreats facilitated by Robert Powell and/or Estelle Isaacson. However, after 2016, Robert Powell entered into a much less intense travel and workshop schedule. He has not traveled to the United States since then. Our group had a weekend intensive with Estelle Isaacson in the summer of 2016, and as we looked to the summer of 2017, we decided we wanted to have another intensive with Estelle.
This was not to be, however—the weekend we chose to have our event was centered around the Great American Solar Eclipse. This happened to be at exactly the same time as the Sophia Foundation’s Annual Meditation Retreat in Idaho—and Estelle had already made the commitment to co-facilitate this retreat with Karen Rivers. Due to health reasons, as well as massive shifts in her spiritual life, this was to be the last year that Estelle was able to attend a Sophia Foundation event, at least up through the present time.
And so, undaunted, we decided to carry on and co-create a retreat of our own. We invited friends like Kevin Dann and Ian Clyne. We left the evenings open-ended, during which Ian (a professional jazz pianist) guided us through musical experiences of our birth horoscopes. In the mornings we had Hermetic Conversation on the The Devil, Temperance, and Death. In the afternoons we experimented with more improvisational forms of Choreocosmos, and entered deeply into the Grail Knight’s Practice. The weekend culminated with experiencing the Solar Eclipse, the cosmic configuration of which created the foundation for our improvisational Choreocosmos. All the while, we kept in consciousness that we had another group of Sophians actively engaged in complementary spiritual work on the other side of the country—like the two pillars of the 4th Apocalyptic Seal.
It was an incredibly rejuvenating weekend. We had begun to engage in content and processes that felt new, yet were also natural continuations of the work with which we had all become so deeply familiar. Unexpectedly—although it felt like a new beginning—in reality it proved to be the fruition of that which we had been cultivating together for the past three years. By the year’s end, five of our nine would move—four of them to Ecuador, where Robert Powell and Lacquanna Paul had found their new home. Two of them would become more heavily involved in their external vocations, making it difficult to meet anymore with regularity. In hindsight, it feels as though this particular group of people were meant to come together to bring something to full expression at the time of this Solar Eclipse, and then go their separate ways. By the summer of 2019, I and my family moved away from New Hampshire to Copake, New York to join Camphill Village—and yet the work begun in New Hampshire carried on, with myself and my spiritual brother Phillip Malone continuing our work on Hermetic Conversation up to the present day.
And why do I write all of this? Because I wonder if others, too, perhaps feel as though they entered a different realm as of this Great American Solar Eclipse—particularly, but not limited to, my friends known and unknown here in the United States. It may be that we stand in the midst of—yes, right now [December 2020], exactly in the midst of—a 6⅔-year long period.
In an extremely rare turn of events, the total solar eclipse that was visible from coast to coast of the United States on August 21, 2017 will be followed by another total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024. This eclipse will be visible not just across the United States, but all the way from Mexico to Canada.
The above shows the path of the 2024 eclipse, which might be called “The Great North American Solar Eclipse.” Below shows the intersecting point of the two paths, from 2017 and 2024:
(Insert image 4)
(Image from https://www.wlky.com/article/cities-that-will-have-a-total-solar-eclipse-in-2017-and-2024/10378429)
Notice that the midpoint of these two American Eclipses is December 14-15, 2020, less than one week before the Great Conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter on the Winter Solstice (December 21). In fact, there is a total solar eclipse visible in South America, in Chile and Argentina, at the exact midpoint. From this we can see that the third week of Advent leading up to the Great Conjunction is a kind of turning point or pivot in this 6⅔-year time period. We might imagine the 3⅓ years from August 21, 2017 through December 21, 2020 as the winding up of a clock, with the 3⅓ years from then until April 8, 2024 as the clock beginning to mark the time—of that which has been seeded to begin sprouting and revealing itself. The image of entering a vortex, of traveling one spiraling arm on the way in; entering the center point (the “eye of the storm”); and then traveling the other spiraling arm on the way out, presents itself to the eyes of our minds and hearts.
In another sense, humanity at large—and certainly the United States—stands at a crossroads. The time for choosing is before us: Christ or Ahriman. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity—or Surveillance, Technocracy, Plutocracy. As this Great Conjunction occurs on the darkest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, we can feel the spiritual world holding its breath as humanity enters into the time of deepest darkness, wondering if they will choose for the Light to be reborn. Indeed, there are historical indications that are quite encouraging in this regard; for those who would wish to read further about these indications, turn to my “Editorial Foreword” to 2019’s Saturn—Mary—Sophia: Star Wisdom, Volume II.
By turning our hearts and our thoughts to the cosmic memories of the configurations of these two eclipses and the Great Conjunction, we make ourselves more receptive to the intentions of the spiritual world for this time. The Great American Solar Eclipse from August 21, 2017 was monumental in this regard: the occultation of the Sun by the Moon occurred at 3° Leo, conjunct Eta Leonis. This very closely recalled the seventh healing miracle of Christ from the Gospel of John, the Raising of Lazarus from the Dead. This miracle also occurred during a New Moon (every solar eclipse is a New Moon) conjunct Eta Leonis, one of the most powerful megastars, on July 26, AD 32 (all of the dates from the life of Christ in this article are drawn from the work of Robert Powell in Chronicle of the Living Christ and Christian Hermetic Astrology).
Looking to the Great Conjunction, this meeting of Saturn and Jupiter occurs at 5° Capricorn. This is only 3° shy of the Sun’s position at the first healing miracle, the Changing of Water into Wine, during which the Sun was 8° Capricorn, on December 28, AD 29. Notice that both of these miracles have an emphasis on drawing the cold light of the spiritual heights of the Father down into the darkest, warmest depths of the Mother in the heart of the Earth—the fusion of the furthest extremes. We can feel, then, that the time period from 2017 through 2020—the first spiral of the vortex—is a movement in reverse through the seven healing miracles from the Gospel of John. This movement backwards is taken up by Valentin Tomberg in one of his final works, published posthumously as Lazarus: The Miracle of Resurrection in World History, in which he brings into relationship the healing miracles and the seven days of Creation in the Book of Genesis. The final healing miracle of the Raising of Lazarus is a recapitulation of the first day of Creation—“Let there be light!”—while the first healing miracle of the Changing of Water into Wine is a recapitulation of the seventh day of Creation, during the primal Sabbath, when the Elohim declared all of Creation to be “very good.” During these past three years, therefore, we have had the opportunity to become a new Creation through Christ.
The Great Conjunction is even more closely related to another event in the life of Jesus—the Adoration of the Magi. While the Solomon Jesus was born on March 5, 6 BC, it took the Magi over nine months after his birth for them to arrive at the house of Jesus and his family. The three Magi bestowed their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh on December 26, 6 BC, to the nine-month old child they knew to be the reincarnation of their great spiritual teacher from prior incarnations, Zoroaster (Zarathustra). On this day, the Sun was 6° Capricorn, only 1° away from the alignment of Saturn and Jupiter in this year’s Great Conjunction.
And what about the Great North American Solar Eclipse that we look forward to on April 8, 2024? On this day, the Sun and Moon will conjoin at 24° Pisces. This too recalls the incarnation of the Solomon Jesus. The year 7 BC also saw a Great Conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter—but this year was special; as sometimes happens due to retrograde motion, the two of them were conjunct not once but three times. It was this series of conjunctions that awoke the Magi to the reality of Zarathustra’s descent once again into an earthly body. In particular, it was the first of these conjunctions, which occurred on May 27, 7 BC, at 24° Pisces—the same position as the Sun and Moon on April 8, 2024. It was shortly after this Great Conjunction that Zarathustra was conceived and began his descent to Earth, on June 7, 7 BC.
And so this second 3⅓ year period, leading out of the vortex of 2020, draws our gaze to the individuality of Zoroaster or “Radiant Star”, yet again moving backwards through time, from the Adoration of the Magi when he was nine months old, to the time just before his conception. We might imagine this, on the one hand, to indicate a resurrection of the ancient Star Wisdom of Babylonian Astrology—a “moving back” to the Solomon Jesus’s incarnation as Zoroaster in the 6th century BC. The April 8, 2024 solar eclipse also very closely recalls the miracle of the Feeding of the Four Thousand (March 15, AD 31; Sun 25° Pisces); Peter receiving the Keys to the Kingdom of Heaven (March 19, AD 31; Sun 28° Pisces); and the Triumphant Entry to Jerusalem on “Palm Sunday” (March 19, AD 33; Sun 29° Pisces). All of these star memories combine to give the strong impression of the “Return of the King”—of true Authority overcoming false authority, putting things into their proper order.
II. The Age of Eclipse
I begin this article with the above piece, which I wrote in December 2020, in order to give the reader a sense of my inner orientation at that time, the mid-point of what I have come to consider the “Age of Eclipse.” The perspective I came to then—that we entered a particularly hazardous twilight zone in August 2017 and would remain wandering there until April 2024, with December 2020 as the turning point in the vortex—has only been reinforced by my experiences since. Am I the only one who feels that the past six years have witnessed a total eclipse of values, of logic, of orientation, of social health?
There is an old legend concerning Zarathustra, that he incarnated seven times, accumulating all the wisdom the world could offer in each of those lives through his conscious clairvoyance and perception of the spiritual world. Then, in an eighth life he was born blind inwardly and outwardly—without perception of the physical world or the spiritual world. He was put to the test as to how much of what he had gained of his prior experience had truly united itself with his eternal spirit, and could be reborn as though out of nothing—out of his own inner resources alone, without any help from the spiritual world. Perhaps during these years, humanity as a whole has been confronted with a similar trial—when left completely to our own resources, with no help from the benevolent spirits, and in the face of the incarnation of Ahriman in human form, are we able to draw the necessary forces seemingly out of nothing? What of that which we have been given over the past century and half, from guides such as Rudolf Steiner, Beinsa Douno, and Valentin Tomberg, has actually taken root and come to life in a totally individualized way in each one of us?
To this day I still worry and wonder if we passed our examination—perhaps better said, if I passed my examination!
In addition to the perspective that 2017-24 was an age of eclipsed sanity on the part of humanity, the part that the Great Conjunction had to play as a midpoint or a pivot has also been greatly reinforced for me, even down to small details. The group of Sophians who gathered in 2017 only to split apart shortly afterwards has begun to regroup in the region of Copake, New York over the past year and a half. The work on the Minor Arcana of the Tarot that I began with Phillip Malone around 2017 is coming to its completion.
Most pertinent of all in this regard has to do with my editorship of this publication. I first became involved with the Journal for Star Wisdom in 2017, right around the time of the solar eclipse. As the years have gone by, I have felt increasingly taxed by the amount of time, effort, and inner resources I need to pour out each year to make this publication possible—particularly in regards to the commentaries. This past year, Julie Humphreys began to share a weekly stargazing commentary on Starlight, the Substack of the Sophia Foundation. They have been immensely popular and successful (there are no commentaries in this present volume—they will be found on Starlight weekly throughout 2024). It made me realize that this is a much more flexible way for me to share articles on astrosophy: I can post them to Starlight all year round, with no deadlines for publication. And so I do intend for this edition of Star Wisdom to be the last; as of 2024 what would otherwise be published in these volumes will become a part of Starlight. I would like to extend my deep gratitude to all of the contributors, as well as everyone at SteinerBooks (Jens Jensen in particular) who helped bring this publication to the world over the years.
Returning to the main theme of this article: my intention now (in the summer of 2023), as we look towards the gateway leading out of the “Age of Eclipse” on April 8, 2024, is to look more deeply not only at the astrological signatures of the Solar Eclipses of 2017 and 2024 and the Great Conjunction in their midst, but also beyond these events. We will also investigate the Annular Eclipse of October 14, 2023, whose path also moves from the west to east coast of the United States, as well as another American Solar Eclipse in the far future—August 12, 2045.
My hope is that out of a multiplicity of details—hatchmarks on the page so to speak—an image will begin to arise for me and for you of the cosmic intentions, possibilities, and results of this Age of Eclipse, such that we can unveil that which is veiled, and move from Eclipse to Apocalypse.