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Week of July 12

I gave myself to the senses’ revelation

And lost the thrust of my true self.

Thoughts like unto dreams, in numbness,

Stole my self away.

Yet, in the senses’ show

Cosmic thinking wakes and nearer draws.

[From Calendar of the Soul, July 7 – 13]

Dear Friends,

We’re in for a bit of a wild ride this week! The Sun will pass through the zodiacal longitudes of Pollux and Castor, the cosmic representatives of loving siblings. In and of itself, the Gemini realm is the bearer of inspiration for true brotherhood, whereby the ways in which we can cooperate are made manifest. The mythology that surrounds the half-brothers adds yet another dimension to our theme: the willingness to sacrifice for others.

As these grand forces stream toward humanity by way of the Sun’s passage through their zodiacal longitudes, we may well imagine that sundry adversarial forces might be aroused. We’ll follow this thread when we reach this week’s final commentary.

On Monday, the Sun and Mercury will unite for an inferior conjunction at 26° Gemini: the longitude of Castor. In a sense, we are all Castor—partly mortal, partly divine—who was lifted aloft through the sacrifice of a divine being. Perhaps the cosmic intention of this alignment is to fully awaken to the sacrifices that have been made on our behalf.

When on the near side of the Sun, Mercury frequently bestows upon us blessings of healing. (There was an inferior conjunction of the Sun and Mercury at the Transfiguration and at the healing of the man born blind.) Can relationships frayed by temporal concerns be ‘knit together’ once again?

Still later on Monday, Venus (9° Leo) and Uranus (9° Taurus) will stand ninety degrees apart—the only such aspect this year. One danger of this configuration is egotism, which can agitate the soul and blind us to the miracles that are all around us. A Venus-Uranus square occurred on 26/Mar/31, when the paralyzed man who had been healed at the pool at Bethesda informed the Pharisees that Jesus was responsible, and that his cure had been effected on the sabbath. From Anne Catherine:

[The Pharisees] gathered around [Jesus’s] chair and again brought forward the old story of his sabbath-breaking.

. . . Jesus taught for two hours in the temple before a large audience. His subject was the Passover sacrifice. He said that his heavenly Father desired no bloody sacrifices from them, but rather a penitent heart. [He added that] the paschal lamb was merely symbolic of an infinitely higher sacrifice which would soon be fulfilled. Many of the malicious enemies among the Pharisees came forward, railing at him and disputing against him. Among other things, they asked in scornful words whether the prophet would do them the honor of eating the paschal lamb with them. Jesus answered: “The Son of Man is himself a sacrifice for your sins!” [Visions, vol. 2, p. 331]

July’s New Moon (27° Gemini) will occur on Tuesday the 14^th. Perhaps the purity associated with the union of Sun and Moon derives from the zodiacal contact between the arbitrary will (Moon) and the mandates of our immortal individuality (Sun)!

The Sun enters Cancer on Friday: Thou resting, glowing light. Steiner’s phrase evokes an imagination of the beating heart at the center of our being—the birthplace of the love that inspires willing sacrifice. The ‘heart’ of the Crab has been compared to a beehive and a manger, where life is protected, nourished, and worshipped.

However, the Sun will spend most of Friday in the last degree of Gemini, a zodiacal position that thereby bears the memory of a regrettable day in 1945: July 16^th. That was when the first nuclear weapon—“Trinity”—was detonated in New Mexico. (Its success rendered it the prototype of the bomb that, during the next month, took tens of thousands of lives in Nagasaki.)

Not only was the bomb powered by plutonium, but Pluto was (in fact) in the ‘manger’ (15° Cancer) when Trinity blew. Fear and the desire to control are inextricably linked in the planet Pluto: we attempt to exert control over that which we fear. Indeed, it’s been said that the Manhattan Project was spawned by the fear of Germany’s own nuclear program.

There can be little room for doubt that our spiritual adversaries had a hand in the Trinity event. From Robert Powell:

Although 1945 signified the end of the conflict in the human realm on Earth, the confrontation went on to continue in the sub-earthly spheres, into which Christ descended. This signified the opening of the gates of hell. [The ongoing descent of the I of Christ is described in detail in The Christ Mystery.] The explosion of an atomic bomb at Hiroshima (and then at Nagasaki) was a man-made sign of the opening of the gates of hell, whereby the Earth’s surface—which may be likened to an eggshell (enclosing the Earth’s interior, comprising the sub-earthly spheres and the Kingdom of the Mother)—became shattered. Through the Hiroshima bomb, the first major crack appeared in the ‘eggshell’ separating the Earth’s surface from the underworld (‘hell’). Actually, the first crack appeared already on July 16, 1945, with the first test explosion . . . near Albuquerque, New Mexico. [The Christ Mystery, pp. 35–36]

Evil, as we know, is not creative; it imitates, and seeks to bend goodness to its will. That the Trinity could be invoked in this way is one such example. Recorded observations of the blast are eerier still.

Thomas Farrell, Chief of Field Operations of the Manhattan Project, said: “The whole country was lighted by a searing light with the intensity many times that of the midday sun.” Compare to the gospel of Matthew:

There he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light. (17:2)

Lastly—if Wikipedia is to be believed—when Oppenheimer witnessed the explosion, a verse from the Bhagavad Gita sprang to his mind:

“If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky. . .”

In fact, the radiance of a thousand suns was perceptible to initiates at that time. Not only was the ‘I’ of Christ at work at the level of the Earth’s crust between 1933 and 1945—but 1933 also marked the beginning of the presence of Christ in the etheric realm (i.e., surrounding and permeating the Earth).

Many blessings on your week!

~ Julie H.

Image: The John Muir Trail near Dunbar, Scotland