Dear Friends,
On Sunday, Venus enters Aries: Take hold of growth’s being. With her abiding love for humanity, the planet of love draws the human intellect (whose formative forces arise from the realm of Aries) toward the heart. Although Mars—her planetary opposite—rules Aries, none can deny that Venus shares a deep resonance with the first sign of the zodiac. By Robert Powell’s reckoning, the Ram’s corresponding letter-Arcanum within the Tarot is the twenty-first: “The Fool”—that of the fire of love. It corresponds, in turn, to the twenty-first letter of the Hebrew alphabet: Shin (ש)—whose esoteric name is, indeed, Love.
Venus was in the first degree of Aries on 23/Mar/33, when Jesus spoke to the Pharisees on this very subject. From Anne Catherine:
One [of the Pharisees], a lawyer, asked [Jesus] a question, to test him. “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is similar to it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and all the prophets.” (Matthew 22:35–40)
Although the Pharisees could be counted on at any time to claim the moral high ground, Judith von Halle offered a countervailing assessment based upon her profound spiritual understanding:
[They] expounded an extreme doctrine of cleanliness which related primarily to one’s external mode of life, rather than the inner soul. . . .
Here again we have the sharpest contrast between reality and the sensory world of appearances: the Messiah whom they hoped for stood before them and, quite at odds with their decadent ideas of cleanliness, was besmirched and defiled. [Jesus was bloodied, and had fallen into some wastewater.] Here, like a thunderous sign, the world of spirit was telling them that the kingdom of God is not of this world, and that it was their task to perceive true, inward purity of the soul. But they remained blind to all such signs. [Secrets of the Stations of the Cross and the Grail Blood, pp. 105–06]
The First Quarter Moon will shine from 18° Leo on Tuesday, at which time the Sun will be in the central decan of Taurus. The Moon was thus positioned on 4/Dec/30, when Jesus continued the Sermon on the Mount. He spoke particularly about the fourth beatitude (Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied). Later, Jesus conferred upon the twelve disciples the power to cast out unclean spirits.
On Friday, Mercury—not to be outdone by Venus—makes its own leap into a new zodiacal realm as it waves hello to Gemini: Embrace joyful striving. As the ruler of the constellation of the Twins, Mercury finds an easy home here through the shared qualities of joy, youth, and levity. Within the Christ chronicle, we find the cosmic healer, Mercury, in the first degree of Gemini as Jesus was entreated to visit a house in which lay ten lepers (18/May/32). From Anne Catherine:
The apostles, dreading contact with the leprous, went on ahead in a southerly direction, with the intention of waiting for Jesus under a tree. The lepers, enveloped in their mantles and full of sores, lay in a retired part of the house. Jesus commanded them to do something, and it seems to me that he touched one of them, and then left them. The lepers, one after another, were taken by two people to a little pool near the house. There they were washed in the bathing tubs, after which they were able to present themselves to the priests as cured. [Visions, vol. 2, p. 470]
The Moon (29° Virgo) will conjoin Spica from below on Friday the 6th. (We’ll see moon and star high in the southeast after sunset.) Each month, when the Moon aligns with Virgo’s brightest star, we are given an opportunity to reflect upon the advent of the same alignment in the fall of 29 AD—for it commemorates Jesus’s arrival at Mount Attarus: the last day that the torments of the temptations in the wilderness would lie before him in their entirety. And yet, he saw it through until it was finished. From Tomberg:
Just as the three mages offered their presents to the new-born Child—gold, frankincense, and myrrh—so did the three Angels [who ministered to Jesus at then end of his ordeal] each offer a present to the Master, after his Baptism in the Jordan and his Confirmation in the wilderness: the crown of gold, the breath of incense from the throne of God, and the divine word become food. [MOT, pp. 149–50]
May your week be filled with joy!
~ Julie H.