The Sun has set. The light at dusk turns red, as if it was filtered by the black earth. The twilight resonates with the deepest parts of our soul. “There is life beyond death”. This is what the Sun tells us, as it goes through the sign of Scorpio.
The golden leaves on the trees begin to fall and rot. Nature falls prey to a magical sleep, shrouded in a thick fog. Our animal part feels the call of lethargy, as our vital forces diminish. And in the mist we can feel the echo of an ancient time when the curtain of the senses had not blinded us yet.
Have we turned on an inner light? Does our lamp have enough oil to make it through the season? Did we rekindle the spiritual flame inside of us?
We all know the shadows are coming back. They are rising quickly from the memory of last spring. The specter of another lockdown hangs over us. And the fear of contagion has now returned. Thus, the questions above are anything but abstract or rhetorical.
Mercury and Mars turning Direct again
As we said in this article about Mercury Retrograde, this is the time for confronting the shadows. The transit of the Sun through Scorpio definitely reaffirms this concept.
Specifically, the first half of November is going to be very interesting. On November 3rd Mercury is going to turn direct again at 26° Libra, performing for the whole week a square with Saturn. We can expect this second stationary point of Mercury to be the most intense of the retrograde period. This means that the first week of November is going to intensify—but also end—the essential part of the Shadow Work for the month.
On November 14th Mars is turning direct, too. As we have discussed in this article, we are leaving the worst behind. In particular, the squares with Saturn, Pluto and Jupiter occurred during its retrograde motion. Personally, I strongly felt the Mars Saturn square during Michaelmas (September 29th). What about you? How did it go?
The final battle between Mars and Saturn is going to take place on December 23rd. Then, eventually, Mars is going to get out of Aries on January 7th. I find very intriguing these Mars and Saturn dates that are for whatever reason punctually aligned with the festivals this year.
Patience becomes Understanding
Whatever happened in 2020, one thing is certain. I don’t think we are yet able to understand what this year will have meant for the next future. Too many things happened, on so many different levels, that only in a couple of years we’ll begin to get it.
This is what the virtue of this month is reminding me (these virtues were given by Rudolf Steiner and H.P.Blavatsky). We need the ability to hold our judgement and patiently wait, to let phenomena speak for themselves. Time connects all the dots drawing for us a bigger picture on global events.
This month is a threshold period. The veil gets thinner, as they say. So even though we are blind there is always something we can do. But not for us, not for the living. This is not our time. We can look back to our fellow humans, to what happened to them—who had to cross the threshold alone.
Crossing the Threshold Alone
From a Spiritual perspective I think one of the worst things about 2020 concerned the way people died. Not because of Covid, I’m not talking about the cause of death. I am referring to the external circumstances that—from a spiritual perspective—always have a great impact on the human soul crossing the threshold of death.
There are two things that I want to stress out:
- People had to cross the threshold alone. Not only because they were in quarantine, but also because they couldn’t have a proper funeral. From a higher perspective what we do here on earth does have real consequences on the other side. A materialistic mindset of course denies it. Ironically, the same mindset basically created the premises of what happened.
- Beyond the threshold, Thoughts and Feelings are real entities. This means that all human beings who died this year had to confront the terrible astral atmosphere that was—and apparently still is—infesting our minds. The appearance of a comet was not accidental. If we overcome fear and paranoid thoughts we offer a great service to these souls.
Prayer for a Dead Loved One, by Rudolf Steiner
In this time of the year our thoughts and feelings offered to the spiritual world can be of great confort to our beloved departed. Here’s a simple meditation Rudolf Steiner gave us as a practical way to help them. When you read the words fever and coldness, you want to think about two specific things, related to the state of the soul beyond the threshold.
Since the soul doesn’t have any physical organ of perception anymore, the desire of using them manifests itself as a burning hot sensation that we can ease. In the same way, the fact that they cannot act on the physical plane anymore manifests as a freezing cold sensation.
Here’s the meditation:
May my love be the sheaths
That now surround you,
Cooling all fever,
Warming all coldness,
Interwoven with sacrifice.
Live, upheld by love,
Light-endowed, upward!
This meditation specifically addresses these conditions, and through thoughts and feelings—which again are real things in the spiritual worlds—it helps our beloved departed to process and overcome the desires that bind them to their last incarnation.
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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.
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