This week it’s worth getting up for the ceremony of dawn when the crescent Moon crowns Venus as the morning star.
Venus is somewhat low to the horizon, among the stars of Cancer which we can’t see just now. Still, it’s worth noting that to ancient cultures, Cancer aligned to the rib cage in the human form, revealing the belief that it was from the divine beings of this region that human beings received the forces to guard and protect the vital inner organs of heart and lung, the way the rib cage does.
Venus, as a wandering star, is described as a goddess of love and beauty, and what interests her most is what lives in the human heart.
So here we have the goddess of love and beauty among the stars of Cancer at dawn, about to be crowned by the crescent Moon ~ it’s like she’s preparing a sacred place for receiving the full, dawning light of love, and to support all of us in doing the same.
The Moon will appear to crown Venus in this task on Thursday, August 25th, the same day that the planet Mercury will pass over the Autumn Equinox point, a place of balance.
I’ll let these words of DH Lawrence inspire us all to get up and greet this wonder:
Man has little needs and deeper needs. We’ve fallen into the mistake of living from our little needs til we have lost our deeper needs in a sort of madness. Let us prepare now for the death of our little life and reemergence in a bigger life in touch with the moving cosmos. We must get back into relation through daily ritual. We must practice again the daily ritual of dawn and noon and sunset, of kindling fire and pouring water, for the truth is, we are perishing for lack of fulfillment of our greater needs. We are cut off from the great sources of our inward nourishment and renewal. Sources that flow eternally in the universe. Vitally the human race is dying. It is like a great uprooted tree with its roots in the air. We must plant ourselves again in the universe.
With you in the rosy-fingered dawn,
Mary
Featured image from Sky&Telescope. Catch this episode on Interlochen Public Radio and podcasts everywhere!