Happy Solstice, everyone! My personal solstice tradition usually includes cleaning, completely dismantling and recreating my altar, and often spending at least a little time wondering why I did not plan on doing something with friends or in community. Today I plan on doing a bit of all of those things.

Photo by graywacke/A Landing a Day

I once again find myself kind of longing for friend-time while at the same time being aware that it is the only day in a 12-day stretch that I have almost entirely to myself. Plus, Cancer is about home, right?

All joking aside, I have quite a bit of drive to really do something meaningful for this solstice, specifically in the form of ritual. I realized earlier that when Saturn entered Scorpio in October 2012, my intention was to create an altar to Saturn. With each intensification of the transit, I’ve re-resolved to see that intention through. Now, almost three years later, I still haven’t done it. Clearly it’s time to get it done.

I always look forward to re-building my altar. Washing the tapestries and altar cloths, cleaning out the censor, refreshing the candles and seeing what clicks into place at the last moment. I believe it was last year that I suddenly had the urge to find a statue of Isis for my summer solstice altar. I found one and then realized that on the day of the solstice the asteroid Isis was conjunct the Sun. I’m not sure what that asteroid’s orbital period is, so perhaps the conjunction has happened repeatedly in recent years. In any case, it was the first time I’d noticed it, and it was quite the happy coincidence.

So, friends, this will be the occasion I finally build that Saturn focus into my altar. Skulls and porn and onyx, oh my! As Saturn shifted back into Scorpio this week, the emotional roto-rooter has definitely been back in effect. And although I’m grateful for the movement I’m also keenly aware of how much I’ve been avoiding dealing with what’s coming up for review. The time for Saturnian devotion is now.

I’m also keenly aware of how much I tend to somaticize things — to hold them in my body. I’m sure this has always been true, but it wasn’t until I spent a year writing a thesis about apocalypse and grief that stress began to manifest as physical symptoms quite readily. As time goes by, I’m aware that this tendency seems to be increasing, and is especially exacerbated during world-grief spikes.

Waking up earlier this week to news of yet another mass shooting murder intensified the feeling that my heart is literally breaking, and that my body could use some assistance at all levels. Part of what the Saturn signatures in my chart indicate is a tendency towards being extremely self-contained. The effects of ‘holding it all in’ are not treating me well at the moment. All the more reason to embrace structures and discipline that can help all that holding to flow.

I’ve been bouncing back and forth about what to put on my Saturn altar. In the past, I’ve justified the purchase of stone and gem jewelry or beautiful statuary when dedicating an altar or doing a significant ritual. This time around, I’d love to use the justification for an onyx mala or stone skull. But alas, part of that Saturnian discipline thing is probably best displayed by using restraint during times of limited means.

What would Saturn appreciate more — adherence to a budget or honoring with some new tool? Before I could answer that question I made a last-minute decision to add a half hour massage to a busy 12-hour day because I could feel my shoulders, ribcage and pectoral muscles crying out for much needed attention. The massage was brief and effective; so practical, and worth my resources.

Said massage occurred the day my heart felt particularly broken due to the news of the South Carolina shootings; grief and then a sense of heartbroken surrender. Something has to change…right? That change, for me at least, has to be in channeling the grief and anger into resolute love and dedication to kindness, at least once the rough edges of the tougher emotions have been dealt with.

On that day, I also found myself posting on Facebook about my desire to lead an in-person bi-monthly group that would serve as a gathering spot for community to deal with the heartbreak of the world. As I see physical symptoms increasing in the people around me, and a need for more ways of coping, I’m increasingly called to help create containers for healing at more communal levels. I suppose that’s a Saturn-in-Scorpio (containers-for-strong emotions) response to the deluge of unconscious contents streaming up as well.

Saturn in Scorpio seems to be offering us the opportunity to take a deep look at the personal and collective laws governing our relationships with sexuality, money and emotions. I know that at the personal level, although I’ve been taking the mandate pretty seriously, it’s time to add more discipline and consistency to the mix. Everyone in my life assures me I am not lazy, but still — the gap between what I know I’m capable of and what I’m actually doing is huge. I can step it up a bit. Unless, of course, my body tells me otherwise. Ah, paradox…

I have come up with a ritual activity that I’m going to incorporate into my Solstice-Saturn altar rebuilding ritual that might be helpful to you, as well. Because I have been feeling quite lost and cut off from Source, it occurred to me that it might be a good idea to write a letter to my higher self during the ritual.

Simple, yes. But after I’ve written the letter, and perhaps burned it in offering and release, I will listen for a response and write down what comes, so that that insight can be part of the altar for the summer season.

Here’s to summer, reconnection, and the greatness of Saturn.

By Sarah Taylor

This week’s cards are both an echo of last week’s reading and a way of reframing the experience that they described, showing you what you are able to build based on your emerging understanding of what matters to you.

Last week, we had The Tower at left, the Ten of Cups at centre, and the Ace of Disks on the right. Here, the Five of Swords describes the aftermath of The Tower in a more tangible sense. The Lovers brings the Ten to a broader, deeper archetypal point in the present; and the Six of Disks describes how the Ace of Disks is able to express itself in the near future. And so, on to the cards, their detail, and their collective message.

Five of Swords, The Lovers, Six of Disks from The Röhrig Tarot deck, created by Carl-W. Röhrig. Click on the image for a larger version.

As far as the Weekend Tarot Readings have gone recently, you will have been no stranger to “Defeat,” or the Five of Swords. This has now happened; it is in the past — albeit still making its presence known in your life and forming the foundation to where you are now. It is the gateway through which you have stepped into your current experience.

The Five of Swords is conflict — conflict that seems to rip and tear away the fabric of a part of your life. Swords are mind-based. This experience is, first and foremost, a mental conflict, or a war of words — either the ones you have had with another or others, or a war you have experienced in yourself, which you projected on to your outer landscape. It has been sharp, painful, at times unforgiving.

However, what it has done is given you the opportunity to connect with your inner light — the guiding star that brings you closer to a sense of yourself and your truth. There was so much in the way, and it served no-one to keep that truth hidden. As painful as the Five of Swords is when the conflict is underway, what it has done is to create the contrast to conflict: peace. Or, rather, peace of mind.

It can be hard — sometimes seemingly impossible — to recognise the presence of peace when the immediacy of your predicament looms large. It is there, though. Only by knowing defeat can we know what defeat is not, and it is that which endures, no matter how hard it seems to reach, how distant you might feel from it.

It is (t)here.

And so on to the card at centre — the experience that you are in or you are moving into. Many people have a “Two of Cups” response to The Lovers: that idea of romantic love that brings two people together. The Lovers, as a major arcana card, is broader than that, more profound. It is not about that heart-fluttering feeling you get when you first meet someone; it is the state of falling into matter and communing as both sky and earth, spirit and soul, masculine and feminine.

The first card of the major arcana that features two people, The Lovers is duality. Through it, you bring down a disincarnate state and make it incarnate. You are birthed into Eden and what it means to inhabit the human condition.

“Twin,” “Love,” “Attraction,” “Approach,” “connection,” “Uniting of Differences.”

You become more than just I. You are now You and Me. It is a cosmic coupling, and so in The Lovers expressing itself through you, you become aware of what it means to be fully human. And with that, comes choice.

Yes, The Lovers may come to you in the form of another person, but the greater message of this card is that this person, and you, are part of a grander plan. This is the plan of your soul’s evolution on this earth; it is how you acknowledge that there is simultaneously separation and unity — and that without the Other, there is no “you.” We are One, together. We are in this human condition and the only sane and loving choice is to embrace it, knowing that we are all mirrors to each other.

This is the current laying of a new foundation upon which you are building the Six of Disks. After Defeat, and through The Lovers, you know Success. The triangle formed by the six hematite spheres in the Six of Disks is strong, enduring. It is able to support not just you, but others too. Perhaps a family, perhaps a circle of friends, perhaps a collective with a shared vision. And that vision is based on the truth you found when all seemed to collapse around you.

This is a moment in time that defines a re-emerging strength of conviction and service. From one, to two, to many, that light is born by holding to what you know, and holding to what you can co-create from that knowing. First, though, that mirror: can you feel that you are not alone? It is time to start living that out.

Astrology/Elemental correspondences: Five of Swords (Venus in Aquarius), The Lovers (Gemini), Six of Disks (Moon in Taurus)

If you want to experiment with tarot cards and don’t have any, we provide a free tarot spread generator using the Celtic Wings spread, which is based on the traditional Celtic Cross spread. This article explains how to use the spread.

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

I read a snippet this week from some dolt who insisted that the concept of separation of church and state was a liberal subversion of the founders’ intent. I read a similar comment decades ago and laughed it off as the meandering of a theocratic, not to mention deluded, mind. This would affirm, given the issues of the day, that Goebbels was right when he said, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” At this point in history, you can’t separate church from state with a crowbar.

Let’s start with the bad and the ridiculous, and save the good as balance, shall we? This week, 21-year old Dylann Roof attempted to kick-start a race war with a massacre in one of the oldest black churches in the nation, South Carolina’s Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. One must have a darkened heart to sit among people you plan to murder for more than an hour and not be moved to compassion. Dylann told the police that he almost changed his mind because “everyone was so nice to him,” but ultimately decided to go ahead with his murderous “mission.” That mission put him in the league of so many of the young white terrorists we suffer with a yawn these days. And I’m reminded that this is why we fight wars with kids his age: their brains have not matured much beyond — forgive me — point and shoot mentality.

Announcing that he had to do it because blacks were taking over the country and raping white women, Roof stopped to reload five times as he gunned down two men and seven women ranging in age from 26 to 87 who were studying the Bible in the church sanctuary. The parishioners were, perhaps, collateral to the main target, the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, an African-American state senator, which makes this not just tragedy but a political assassination. Be assured that the Confederate flag, which flies over the South Carolina state house, was not lowered to half mast, although a black cloth was spread across the senator’s desk.

While speculation about Roof’s mental health continues to rumble, media-wide, at this writing I’ve not heard a single pundit call the kid “a thug.” Being a racist does not make you crazy, but if you’re a racist and you are mentally disturbed, you are a ticking time bomb, destined to explode somewhere. Racism MUST be called out as an unacceptable factor contributing to this form of home-grown terrorism. We will have to wait and see how this youngster’s mental health shakes out. Meanwhile, I appreciated this snip from a piece by HuffPost reporter, Julie Craven: “Racism is not a mental illness. Unlike actual mental illnesses, it is taught and instilled. Mental illness was not the state policy of South Carolina, or any state for that matter, for hundreds of years — racism was.”

And wouldn’t ya know! It took FOX News just moments to put on their blinders and turn what was obviously a racial hate crime into proof that Christianity was being targeted in these evil Gawdless times. Wee Lindsey Graham was first in line to proclaim this bit of chicanery, followed quickly by Santorum and others, insisting that this was an assault on faith, nothing racist about it. I’ll let Larry Wilmore from the Nightly Show rebut that bit of nonsense, and soundly. I know it’s difficult — scary even — to jump off the fundamentalist propaganda train when it’s moving this fast but PLEASE! With all the white churches in the area, Dylann Roof chose the one most historically serving people of color? The kid with the apartheid patches on his jacket and confession that his intent was to incite a race war, Helter Skelter fashion, simply trumps any self-pitying rhetoric about long-suffering Christianity.

Let’s not forget that the NRA and FOX are dance partners, keeping step with one another. If the good Reverend Pinckney had been armed, doncha know, he would still be alive today. THAT is something the founders meant, as well — that each of us would become gun-slingers in the name of liberty and justice for all. NOT! This is just another chapter in the nihilism and self-hatred that grip the world as it faces its own darkness, gun in hand.

The egregiousness of this event — dished up cold to a horrified public — has potential to be a game-changer that begins a dialogue about our common humanity as opposed to our splintered ideologies. Certainly there can be no waffling about what was meant, even if FOX wants to thump its Bible (when convenient) and distract from the obvious. Few of us who have, ourselves, sat in a sanctuary — designed as a place of safety and solace — can accept this kind of event without allowing it to be personal.

Speaking of what trumps what, self-proclaimed billionaire Donald Trump effectively constitutes the ridiculous. Peopling his audience with hired extras at $50 a head, Donald Trump and his comb-over announced their intention to join the Republican circus train as a candidate for president this week. His fortune puts him in the fiscal stratosphere of the Koch Brothers and Sheldon Adelson, but his ego has him yearning for the spotlight, and this week, he got one.

I’m overjoyed for Jon Stewart, who has dreamed of such comic fodder for years and has, roughly, five more weeks to enjoy it. Here is Jon’s enthused initial response. Aptly mocking Donald’s rambling and largely irrelevant speech on Monday, here’s a rambling Stephen Colbert — mid-reinvention as late night host in the fall — sporting his own comb-over. Even the Democratic National Committee took a jab at Donald, with a statement that “He adds some much-needed seriousness that has previously been lacking from the GOP field, and we look forward hearing more about his ideas for the nation.”

It should be evident to those looking on from the reality-base that there is no serious threat in Trump’s ambitions, but these things don’t seem so clear to us all: polls show him among the top 10 Republican candidates, ensuring him a place at the debate podium. One polled conservative said he’d vote for him because he “knew how to fire people.” Now that capitalism has morphed with approval from Gawd Himself, thanks to decades of televangelist rhetoric, we can’t discount Trump’s political ascendency, based on his bank balance alone. Although this absurdity does not reflect the original church/state argument at the top of the page, let’s remember that the Almighty Greenback is actually America’s religion, with those who know how to wring cash from a stone its admired and respected High Priests.

Trump has suggested that he’d like Oprah as his VP — sure they’d be a shoo-in — but Ms. O has not returned the compliment. At this point, the only female face beaming his way is that of Sarah Palin, who would, it seems apparent, happily throw the evangelical base under the bus to take another shot at the White House. Opportunistic, self-centered snake oil sales-staff, both, they would be perfectly paired on the con artist ticket, although if both spoke at the same event — dueling word salads — our heads would likely explode!

Largely ignoring the usual suspects, Trump took exception to those who criticized his announcement over at FOX, perhaps miffed that he did not receive their support. He directed much of his ire at conservative talking head, Charles Krauthammer. Krauthammer, paralyzed in an accident in his youth, annoyed Donald by saying his most important campaign revelation was the statement that “I am rich,” and that his running diminished the stature of more serious Pub candidates. The very rich wanna-be leader of the free world told “Fox and Friends” that Krauthammer was a “loser” who did nothing but “sit there” (in his wheelchair) and behave like a “jerk.”

Consider this as stunning a faux pax as when our Dubby waved hello to Stevie Wonder, or when the vice prez blessed the heart of the Irish Prime Minister’s dearly departed mother, who hadn’t yet departed — but not nearly as innocent. We can chalk it up to the buffoonery of an inflated ego, unexamined in the mirror (obviously, think hair). Frankly, Trump’s announcement does not bode well for Chris Christy. It seems evident we can only support one blowhard of this decibel per election.

And should Trump’s mojo last until the debates, where he can strut and blow and raise questions that others in his party would like to avoid, there might even be a shift in perception among the party faithful, watching the hopefuls stumble over their clown shoes or tweak one another on their big red noses. Trump fancies himself a politician, but he doesn’t have the couth to know what to avoid and when. This could play out nicely among the candidates and their audience.

Now, lest you think all the news a fright, there was an extraordinary event, news of which was — in this country — occulted by the Charleston shooting. It’s Fathers Day weekend, and while three men captured our attention this week, only one attempted to meet the larger concept of that title. The one they call Il Papa issued an encyclical in which, wrote Charles Pierce for Esquire magazine, “Pope Francis called out the world” (on climate change).

Here’s a YouTube created by a Brazilian climate action group that you will want to watch (probably more than once) because it will amuse, but also because it breaks through the walls of religious hierarchy and the traditional pomp of Catholicism. Imagine the possibilities! This was passed around happily, rather than written by the Onion and shared as snark, as anything starring Ratzinger would have been.

You will want to read the Esquire piece if you haven’t seen the leaked encyclical, skimming the best bits of 184 pages, as Francis takes to task climate deniers, plutocrats, politicians “and anyone else who marinates in apathy while the crisis first overwhelms the poorest of the poor, as most crises usually do.” While the Pope and I do not agree on many things, I find there are, surprisingly, many we do agree on, and in this instance, he is well named “Father” as he urges nurture and dedication to — as he quoted St. Francis of Assisi — “our Sister, Mother Earth.”

This Thursday, the Sun infused with cosmic intent as it opposed the Galactic Core, Pope Francis told the world that climate change is the Earth’s way of protesting “irresponsible use and abuse of the goods that God placed in her.” He acknowledged her personhood, opened the way to a more nuanced and complex way of perceiving the planet as self-protecting, self-aware. Those are Pagan concepts, my friend. Ancient concepts that revere Goddess. No matter what his church continues to put forth as cultural absolutes, this is a man who came to change the conversation.

In Fe’s piece last week, An Inconvenient Pope, some of us offered our concerns about the traditional iron fist of the Catholic church, both its history and its future potential. But at least for the moment, it seems evident that its leader is a man of heart and intellect, a surprising combination of both science and faith. A true Jesuit, practicing humility. Given that, you won’t be surprised to find that a pundit on FOX News deemed him “the most dangerous person on the planet.” And although token-liberal Juan Williams jumped in to defend the Pope’s appreciation for “God’s green earth,” the pundit’s earlier take on the leaked encyclical perfectly fleshes out the smack-down in conservative consciousness between the evolving Catholic position and the Lord Almighty Greenback: “All he [Francis] needs is dreadlocks and a dog with a bandana and he could be on Occupy Wall Street.”

Bandana? Hippy nonsense to frighten the conservative children. Francis has a very astute and nuanced view of our problems, including a cool appraisal of Neoliberalism — marked by deregulation and privatization — which considers everyone and everything a market awaiting plunder. The following statement does not endear him to the political right or any others who remain faithful to old paradigm commerce. What would a Congress embattled over TPP, for instance, say to a man who tells them, “We need to reject a magical conception of the market, which would suggest that the problems can be solved simply by an increase in the profits of companies or individuals.”

Of course, the majority of those for whom Francis is spiritual leader are not the ones who are plundering Gaia or taking lethal advantage of her resources. Still, this encyclical has the ability to change the zeitgeist. The block of religious-right voters who have led us a merry dance for well  over a decade consists of a wary alliance between southern evangelicals and northern Catholics. Should the Catholics change their way of looking at environmental science and grasp the importance of putting ethical necessity and stewardship above consumer growth, everything could change rather quickly.

There is more to that Goebbels quote about repeating lies to blindside the public. It finishes:

“The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

As difficult and dark as is this time, as fractured and faltering as are our systems, as vulnerable as we feel in a nation gone unstable and a world at odds with itself, we can celebrate progress in that “the lie” can no longer be maintained. If voices are being raised against one another, that means the thin veneer of falsehood that existed before has vanished and we’re getting to the heart of it. If the conversation suddenly contains glimmers of truth, shining in the darkness, then know we’re moving toward evolution. This grand experiment is well under way.

Not to be forgotten, Happy Day to you Dads, out there — and so many of you Moms who took on those responsibilities as well. Nurturing and assisting one another, no matter the title we assume, is why we came. May Sunday be a day to appreciate those who have contributed to our welbeing over our lifetime. And, bizarre weather patterns not withstanding, Good Solstice to us all!

The shooting in Charleston is the result and the product of a protracted political genocide resulting from institutionalized racism, centuries of dehumanization and the current denial of economic and political equality of opportunity.
— The Reverend Jesse L. Jackson, Sr.

Two days ago a lone gunman walked into one of the oldest and most honored churches in the U.S., and with premeditated malice, gunned down the pastor and eight other productive, law-abiding American citizens. In his own words, the motive of the gunman was unambiguous: genocide.

It’s time, people. It’s time for each of us to rise with the Sun and state just as clearly “Not in my name!”

While there is evidently no “vast right-wing conspiracy” behind the misguided actions and twisted reasoning of the of the young, Caucasian millennial male implicated in this heinous crime, there is undeniably a vast complacency.

Now, that complacency has become the evident enabling factor for this most recent and tragic link in a long and unmistakable history of overtly murderous racial oppression in the United States of America.

On the cusp of a new season, which holds the anniversary of America’s birth, complacency has once again served the cause of mass murder, motivated by racism. It’s time to declare, people. It’s time to come together even as Venus and Jupiter are steadily coming together in tropical Leo and the western night sky. Come together and clearly state, “Not in my name!”

Tell the policeman. Tell the judge. Tell the politician. Tell the teacher. Tell the priest, rabbi and preacher. Make it part of every statement to every vestige of social and legal authority. Tell them so they will know you by a single statement.

Not in my name!   

Take to the social media as Mercury gradually regains its footing in its Gemini home. Refuse to equivocate (or accept obfuscation) as Mercury confronts slippery Neptune in Pisces one last time. State it clearly. Repeat the words until all the ostrich heads ‘un-friend’ you. “Not in my name!” Bring the servers down if necessary to make it clear that you do not serve the complacency that aids racially-motivated mass murders and gives them comfort.

Refuse to give aid and comfort to a cold-blooded and cynical murderer who intentionally left a survivor to pass on his pernicious propaganda. Don’t let his words have the worth that silence confers. Refuse to let this pass, lest everything you love, cherish and serve in your own life also pass. Make no mistake, you must speak if only to say “Not in my name!”

For the United States is entering a summer following a winter when even the most bitter cold did not dissuade justifiably outraged people from taking to the streets to confront murderous authority. If you do not speak, incite others to speak, and come together to act, what can you expect from a long, hot summer? What can you expect if it is not made clear that institutionalized racism and its murderous inevitability cannot any longer be perpetuated in your name?

This is no rant. This is what we have come to. All of us. Together. We have come to the point where sports jerseys must be replaced by homemade T-shirts stating our refusal to be complicit in genocide. We have come to the point where every ‘post’ and ‘tweet’ should sing the same lyric and repeat the same ethic until the walls of institutionalized racism come down.

We must let every potential racial mass-murderer know that there will be no walls to hide behind. We must bring every office of authority and person in power to understand that the insidious system allowing such criminals to feel supported must now be intentionally and systematically brought to an end.

Otherwise, those who murder will hear support in your silence, and the families of those murdered will infer that you will allow this to happen again. Let them at least know that if it does happen again, it will not be in your name. If silence can make horrific things possible, then a refusal to be silent must certainly at least further the cause of making the unspeakable less probable.

Offered In Service                  

Len is available for astrology readings. You can contact him at lenwallick [at] gmail [dot] com.

Sunday, June 21, is the Cancer solstice — also known as the summer solstice in the Northern Hemisphere, where I live. This is the longest day of the year here (shortest day Down Under), and the start of a new season no matter where you live.

Photo by Amanda Painter.

People in my part of the world tend to think of summer as the ‘free and easy’ season, thanks to the amenable weather and memories of childhood summers off.

But in all honestly, how often have you over-scheduled and overextended yourself, racing to make the most of summer fun, only to find yourself exhausted and wondering when you’ll get to slow down and enjoy the season?

In the process, how much fun do you actually have? How often have you told yourself you’ll do things differently next year?

The Sun ingresses Cancer at 12:38 pm EDT Sunday (16:38 UTC). From now through then, Mars in late Gemini will be in opposition to the center of our Milky Way galaxy. (Mars opposite Galactic Core is exact Saturday.)

You can think of the Galactic Core (GC) as the ‘spiritual homing signal’ in astrology. It is vast, and it speaks of a deeper and wider perspective on existence; one Eric Francis described earlier this week as “not normally available while staring at a row of buildings or gas pumps.” The energy of the GC can be difficult to pin down and identify, compared to something like Mars or the Moon.

If you’ve ever had that feeling like something you’ve encountered really means something profound but you’re not sure just what, or like you are part of something larger and more loving than you could ever articulate, that’s how I sometimes think of it.

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