“It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them. I was so preposterously serious in those days… Lightly, lightly – it’s the best advice ever given me…So throw away your baggage and go forward. There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet, trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. That’s why you must walk so lightly. Lightly my darling…” ~Aldous Huxley
Art by Katherine Smit
Happy New Moon!
“We’re at the dawning of something strange and transformative, and the new moon of March 24th is a powerful gateway through it.
The new moon will be in the area of the sky known as Uttara Bhadrapada, at the final degrees of watery Pisces – the last sign of the zodiac. The stars in the constellation of Pisces are ancient symbols of the beginnings and endings of great cycles. Uttara Bhadrapada is associated with loss, death and fire, including the funeral pyre at the end of life. This is a new moon that burns, but also calls forth the Piscean waters of rebirth.
The new moon falls just 4 days after the equinox, and is at a critical juncture that marks a whole new Vedic astrological cycle — the Vedic New year. We are now leaving behind the Year of Vikari, a word that literally translates as “Sick, ill, or diseased,” and entering the Year of Shavari, which translates as “twilight or night.”
Twilight is a mystical time, with deep spiritual potential, and this certainly is a transitional time between darkness and light. A pull toward the inner realm is growing in the year to come, especially for those who seek knowledge and self-understanding.
This new moon initiates the sacred waxing moon of Navaratri – the ‘nine nights of the Goddess’ celebrated in spring and fall. In the waxing moon nights to come, nine different Hindu goddesses, all aspects of the divine feminine, are called on to heal and protect the world.
It’s said that whenever an overpowering force of negativity arises in the world, the goddess Durga is the one who stops it in its tracks.”
~Kari Field, excerpt from AnandaShree Vedic Astrology
“To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places–and there are so many–where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.” ~Howard Zinn, the optimism of uncertainty
Art by Laura Graves
And somewhere in the darkness… the Gambler he broke even, and in his final words I found an ace that I can keep. Thank you for the music Kenny, you really touched my heart.
The Gambler was the first adult song I ever learned to sing as a child. I used to sing it to myself while I was working at my desk in my kindergarten classroom. I had no idea I was singing it out loud until one day my teacher tried to get me to sing it for the other teachers, which was mortifying since I was painfully shy back then. Kenny Rogers has always held a very special place in my heart, so waking up to the the news of him passing last night in his sleep really hit me. He will truly be missed!!!
Happy Full Moon!
“The karmic drama unfolding across the world is The End of Everything That Never Worked Right in the First Place.
As old systems crumble, we must harvest magic out of chaos.
…The mimeograph of our time is the internet, last bastion of global freedom.
Even though corporate ownership is pushing for more control… and even though, now that Google has gone into the pharmaceutical business, alternative healing sites are dropping off their search algorithms, for the most part the web is still within public domain.
Which means we have the ability to spread news counter to corporate views…
Aquarius adds the telepathic communication of the real worldwide web of collective consciousness, announcing the great change rising from the soul of the world everywhere people get done with being puppets on a string.
To harvest magic from chaos we must join together in exposing distortions, speaking truth, untwisting corporate twists, and envisioning the real human being rising up out of a corrupt system.
Don’t buy into the lies. Don’t let yourself be talked out of claiming the magic of an evolving species that has a lot of love left inside.
Feel the change sweeping the soul and let it out in your own way.”
~Mark Borax, from Mystic Mamma
“The world is violent and mercurial — it will have its way with you. We are saved only by love — love for each other and the love that we pour into the art we feel compelled to share: being a parent; being a writer; being a painter; being a friend. We live in a perpetually burning building, and what we must save from it, all the time, is love.” ~Tennessee Williams
Art by Jim Warren
