The Sun enters Libra, the last season of the year is eventually here. How is it possible? Where did summer go? It’s been like just a moment of fresh air, a sigh of relief caught between all the restrictions we’ve been through. And boom—it is already gone.
The Autumn Equinox was supposed to be a moment of perfect balance. Light and darkness meeting each other perfectly halfway, exchanging the baton. But this year knows no balance at all. 2020 is going to be remembered as a year full of extremes.
And now that fall is coming, we can feel it in the air. We need more light, more warmth, more life. Too much death and fear have been running through the ethers. We are not ready for darkness and cold yet, nor for witnessing Mother Nature’s death.
When there was light out there we faced our own shadows, in isolation. Now that the time of darkness is getting here we feel like we’ve already payed the price. Never have we experienced such a great need for inner light.
Contentment becomes self-composure
From Courtesy to Contentment. It’s like if the zodiacal virtues pointed out by the great spiritual leaders of the 19th century were mocking us. Or—being so difficult to develop—are they rather even more valuable right now?
This year has given us so little, and took us away so much, that contentment sounds almost like a threat. As if it suggested to keep our heads down since it could get even worse. But is it really so?
We can’t deny that we’re used to get more and more. Always more. The first economic crisis of 2007 taught us that this never lasting growth is nothing but an illusion. And now the Covid-19 crisis is giving us another hard lesson of the same kind.
becomes
self-composure
So, why is Contentment a virtue? Simply put because the human appetites are insatiable. Driven by our burning desires we eventually end up consuming and destroying the perfect balance of Nature. Contentment is a spiritual virtue because it goes against this challenging part of the human nature.
The challenge is of course trying to stop. Can we do it? Apparently, we can’t. Covid-19 stopped us for some time. And we realized that we all live in a mechanism where stopping is not contemplated. The system always has to run, like a sort of machine gone crazy.
Technology is a world that never sleeps. And so is the industry. In a mechanized world inner peace is just a desert mirage. Keep moving or you’re going to die dry. The summer forces of sulphur get poured in the ahrimanic gears exhaling toxic astral fumes.
Approaching Michaelmas
September 29th is going to be Michaelmas, the festival of the Archangel of the Sun who defeats the dragon. It doesn’t matter if you believe in angels or not. This festival is a human recurrence aligned with natural-alchemical processes.
The forces of sulphur are at their peak on late summer. Human beings shines spiritually like fireflies during summer nights, attracting to the surface beings who’ve been sleeping in the depths of the earth. This light is akin to the dragon, the power of Nature which holds matter itself.
And when this process starts getting dangerous we receive from above the counterbalancing force. A meteorization process begins—meteor showers—and the cool cosmic iron from the stars freezes down the impulse of the sulphuric forces.
With the virtue of contentment we address specifically that sulphuric impulse of greed that wants always more, decreasing its fire until extinguished. If we won’t be able to do it then all this excess of sulphur has to go somewhere. So we might experience some “hot ailments” such as inflammations or fevers that will try to get rid of that excess.
Mars Retrograde square Saturn: the Need of Nurtuting an Inner Light
As we know from previous articles, Mars Retrograde in Aries is going to make a square with Saturn Retrograde in Capricorn exactly on Michaelmas. The ahrimanic forces of the Dragon inflamed by sulphur are very well represented here by this square. Especially because Saturn is going to be stationary, stopping moving exactly during the festival.
Usually, fall is a season of trials. And this aspect, as well as those that are going to follow—combined with Mars Retrograde that is going to last till November—addresses the same issue. This is meant to be an encouragement to dedicate yourself to an inner activity that can turn on an inner light within.
All the solar festivals, symbols, myths, saints, etc. that accompany us through fall address the natural process of the light shifting from the outer to the inner world. Libra is the door that establishes the moment of passage from one direction to the other.
Learning to turn on this inner light is crucial. As always If you enjoyed this article please subscribe to the Astronomicon Newsletter with the bar at the top of the website. Thanks for reading, have a good week and remember to illuminate inside your path through this season.
I consider myself a free researcher in western spiritual disciplines, in particular Rudolf Steiner’s Anthroposophy and the Neoplatonic Hermetic tradition. I have a three-year training in Astrology at the CIDA delegation of Trieste, the Italian Center for Astrological Disciplines. I graduated in Computer Engineering from the University of Trieste.
