Astraea Vision by Iacchus 1980
In 1980 I was working for a cannery factory and my job was to watch the disposal of waste water from the factory which was pumped through an irrigation system. I was placed in a small construction trailer and I oversaw the pump and the irrigation system to make sure that everything was working correctly. The small construction trailer gave me a place that was warm and alone. I was about a half-mile away from the factory and so nobody checked in on me and I was left to my own devices. So I got to read a lot and when this vision occurred I was reading C.G. Jung’s book Psyche and Symbol.
I was in a place in the book where Jung was talking about active imagination so I decided to try it. The back story to this is I was learning about astrology from an astrologer who was fascinated by the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction. He thought that the conjunction acted as a Morning Star/Venus, the light barer that announces the dawning of a new age. I was fascinated by this idea as there was a Jupiter Saturn conjunction coming up on December 31, 1980. However, this Jupiter Saturn conjunction was a very auspicious conjunction in many ways. First of all, the two plants conjunct three times within 7 months through a dance of retrograde motion between the two planets. On December 31, 1980 the beginning of the conjunction started at 9° and 29 minutes, which is within 1° of my natal ascendant at 10° and 22 minutes of Libra. All three conjunctions of Jupiter Saturn in Libra created a waxing aspect to my ascendant. The planet Venus rules Libra and in my chart I have a nighttime Venus that is exalted in Pisces that rules my ascendant. However, I have an exalted Saturn placed in my natal chart at 12° and 3 minutes of tropical Libra and as you see I was approaching my Saturn return at this time.
So on Friday, October 31, 1980 I thought it would be auspicious to attempt my third try at Jungian active imagination. Unbeknownst to me both Jupiter and Saturn were in Libra tropically with Saturn conjoining my ascendant. Also the planet Venus had just moved into tropical Libra and was conjunct in both Saturn and Jupiter.
The active imagination began with me doing deep breathing and relaxing with my eyes closed and opening my mind to whatever came out of the darkness. As I focused on the darkness a spark of light far off in the distant appeared so it seemed. So I focused on that spark of light and it started to draw near. Slowly I could make out an image of a human. As the vision moved closer I can make out that the human was a woman. The vision was now becoming clearer as it approached and at first this woman seemed to be standing on clouds with the sun either setting or rising at a distance behind her.
The vision kept drawing near and her image became clear, the woman was standing on top of a mountain with its peak barely breaking through the clouds. She seemed to be of similar age to me at that time, which I was 28 years old. So she seemed to be about 28 to 30 years old. She was very lovely and shapely. She was wearing a clear, see-through chiffon robe, which left nothing to the imagination but rather enhanced it. She had long black hair and green eyes. The sun setting or rising behind her gave her a golden halo. Her skin was tan, clear and smooth with a golden sheen. As I beheld her, her chiffon robe parted magically and I fully beheld her lovely full breasts with beautiful red areola and aroused nipples. Her pubic hair formed a nice neat triangle with a nice pink cleft in the middle of her pubic triangle, which revealed her labia. She intended to be very sexually attractive, erotic and revealing to me, which got my undivided attention.
At that moment of my complete undivided attention the Goddess revealed or should I say the vision revealed: her left foot standing upon a sword, which her foot had crushed and broke in half, her left hand held the scales (of Libra) and her right hand a goblet filled with fiery and flaming red liquid. As I now beheld the complete vision: a very sexually mature, erotic and attractive Goddess standing naked on a mountaintop just above the clouds, a rising or setting sun behind her giving her a golden halo around her complete image (the sun was a little off to her right behind her, which allowed a fiery image of the sun to be seen and its radiance shimmering around the Goddess), a goblet of fiery red liquid held in her right hand, scales of justice/Libra held in her left-hand and her left foot crushing a sword on the ground.
As I beheld this vision the Goddess spoke to me and said “for all too long my scales have been unbalanced and now is the time for them to be righted once again” and “the high priestess of inspiration bids you to drink from my cup”. So I reached up to her right hand holding the goblet of fiery red liquid with my right hand and together touching hands we held the goblet and whereupon I drank from the goblet with both of us holding onto it. To my surprise the fiery liquid did not burn my mouth and at the moment of drinking the last drop of the fiery liquid the vision disappeared and I was back in the small construction trailer at the cannery where I was working.
A month later the canning season ended and I was laid off. I had been reading mythology and C. G. Jung and came across a Goddess known as Astraea and I thought the Goddess was her. She was the Star Maiden (the Starry One, Astraia or the Star Goddess) and linked with the Goddess of Justice. She also was said according to Greek mythology to Rule in the Golden Age for it is said that Kronos rules with Justice and she was the last immortal to leave earth in the Iron Age. The Erotic nature of the vision gave the Goddess a Venusian aspect, much like Eos.
But now the rest of the story needs to be told. First of all I considered the Star Maiden from the Jungian perspective as my anima even though it felt like more than just that. I realized the vision was not a personal vision per se rather it was both a personal and collective unconscious vision. The vision and the Goddess worked their magic on me over the following years. From the time I was laid off from the cannery until I returned to college I had six months of unemployment. During that time I read most of C.G. Jung’s books, Eliade’s three volumes of the History of Religions and very importantly Hamlet’s Mill by Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend. Hamlet’s Mill was a fascinating treatise and thesis using star lore and mythology to suggest that the age of Gemini was when the Myth of Ages began. It also had intriguing information about the Jupiter-Saturn conjunctions and relationship to the ages.
Upon my return to college for the third time at the UW Madison I decided to take courses in Women Studies in order to address my prejudices and further my self-development as I plan to work as a psychotherapist and the majority of my clients would be women. In the fall of 1981 I took a course in Women Studies titled “Cultural and Historical Perspectives on Women”. I had to read Drawing Down the Moon, When God Was a Woman and Spiral Dance.
Coincidentally, or should I say, a meaningful coincidence (synchronicity) happened where the Women Studies invited Starhawk (the author of the Spiral Dance) to lecture at the Great Hall at the UW Madison Memorial Union. After the lecture she performed a spiral dance, which I participated in. I was becoming a neopagan man and unconsciously the Star Maiden was working her magic. By 1985, I started to become involved with Circle Sanctuary and by 1987, I attended my first PSG. In 1988, I was accepted and began training as a Jungian analyst at the Chicago Jungian Institute.
During this time, the Mayan Harmonic Convergence happened in 1987 and there was a lot of talk about The Beginnings and Endings of Ages. I believe that Western civilization’s Myth of Ages began in the age of Gemini approximately 6000 BCE or so, which Hamlet’s Mill suggested. Relating this to my vision of the Star Maiden, I began looking for date for when the Myth of the Ages began. I believe it had to do with the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction in Libra. The reason for this is that the sign of Libra is associated with the scales and it is ruled by Venus (according to present astrology) and so embodies the sense of justice and eroticism of my vision. Particularly I wanted to find a Jupiter-Saturn triple conjunction in Libra if I could as it would be an auspicious starting point. However, I didn’t have the means to research this. In 1991 I dropped out of my Jungian training in good standing and pursued becoming a Neopagan priest.
Two years later in 1993 I visited the Jungian Chicago Institute and went to their bookstore. There I found an intriguing book called “Eclipse of the Sun; An investigation into Sun and Moon Myths” by Janet McCrickard. This book showed substantial and very good research that there was, at the edge of recorded history, a pagan belief system that had a Moon God and Sun Goddess in the Neolithic Old Europe and early Bronze Ages. Looking at Egyptian mythology I found that Osiris was an ancient Moon God of Lower Egypt and Isis was probably an ancient Sun Goddess (see ‘O Mother Sun; A New Cosmic view of the Cosmic Feminine’ pp 54 by Patricia Monaghan), in the same vein as Hathor. In addition, the Egyptians had an Earth God, Geb and a Sky Goddess, Nuit. I felt I had found the Goddess and God mythological paradigm of Old Europe and the Neolithic ploughed and planted land cult (agriculture).
I found that attributes given to the Earth God, Geb were synonymous with attributes given to the planet Saturn and the God Kronos. The same goes for the Sky Goddess, Nuit as her attributes as a Starry Goddess, or Starry One and her attributes were also be associated with mountains. The arch of the heavenly sky at night was seen as the holy mountain, Nuit, and she had Twin Peaks, one that faced Dawn and East and the other facing West and Sunset. In Western and Middle Eastern patriarchal myths, the Sky God is associated with the planet Jupiter. I notice the rewriting of the old Neolithic matrifocal myths where the genders of the deities were changed or reversed (see “In the Wake of the Goddess; women, culture and the Biblical Transformation of Pagan Myth” by Tikva Frymer-Kensky).
I began assuming that the Old Europe civilization and ancient Neolithic cult of the plowed land and planted land (agriculture) had a sacred marriage, a hieros gamos between the Earth God and Sky Goddess. This is revealed symbolically through the conjunctions of Jupiter-Saturn if you assume Jupiter to be the star of the Sky Goddess and Saturn the star of the Earth God. In 1994/95 I bought a computer program called Solar Fire and was able to run Jupiter Saturn conjunctions back 12,000 years. I was able to find an auspicious Jupiter- Saturn triple conjunction in Libra, tropically on March 13th 6,580 BCE. I found each Jupiter-Saturn conjunction occurs at about 20 years and if multiplied by 108 (conjunctions) it equals 2,160 years, which is commonly recognized as the approximate length of an age or 1/12 of the great cycle of the precession of the equinoxes. I found that 108 turns out to be a magical number in many ancient cultures. I also found that by counting back from March 13, 6580 BCE 108 conjunctions that the age of Taurus started on October 17, 4435 BCE, the age of Aries started on September 22, 2290 BCE, the age of Pisces started on October 18, 146 BC and the age of Aquarius May 28, 2000 A.D.
I found out that each Age equals a World, literally an Age of Man, which is a reference to the old Neolithic Earth God of the plowed land and planted seed cult. Each World has nine realms. It takes 12 Jupiter Saturn conjunctions to pass through all 12 signs, which equals 240 years. 240 years multiplied by nine will give you 2160 years or a World/Age. In this way you find out the number nine is magical as well as 108 in many ancient myths. The World Tree is a kenning/metaphor for a World/Age and has nine branches/realms, which are said to be the homes/territory of different Divine Tribes with perhaps a chief Deity.
In 1995 my spouse and I left the Oakwind coven to start a magical circle called The Circle of Freedom. The Circle of Freedom had a two-year cycle where in one year the Solar and Lunar Sabbats were celebrated by a Sun God and Moon Goddess and in the next year a Sun Goddess and Moon God to honor both martifocal and patriarchal Deities and tribes. The high priestess of Oakwind coven and her husband participated for two years in the Circle of Freedom and thought well of our magical circle and celebrations that they granted us our Gardnerian second-degree.
Then as part of my training and becoming an ordained priest in the Church of All Worlds I had to do what was called a clergy challenge ritual with my neopagan community. What I did was a ritual I called as the handfasting of the Younger Deities of the Age of Aquarius at our Freedom Festival in 1999. The ritual brought together the two great Divine tribes, one matrifocal and the other patriarchal in a four way group engagement of the patriarchal Sun God and Moon Goddess with the matrifocal Moon God and Sun Goddess. Then a peace marriage was performed by me as part of my ordination ritual, which was my first act as an ordained Church of All Worlds priest. This ritual is based on the ancient custom where two warring tribes create peace through marriage. The Younger Deities of the Age of Aquarius; Sun God and Moon Goddess and Moon God and Sun Goddess became married and formed a group marriage. This peace marriage is celebrated by the two-year cycle laid out by our Circle of Freedom rituals, which we have been doing now for 16 years as part of Sweetwood Temenos celebration of the Sabbats and its magic.
I have come to believe that the Tree of Life is a symbolic and metaphoric expression of the organic and dynamically chaotic system that is our universe/cosmos. I believe metaphorically and symbolically speaking the Tree of Life is but one tree in an infinite Sacred Grove that has an infinite past and is ever-growing and fruitful. Each tree is a universe/cosmos and a manifestation of two or more Divine Beings whose minds, bodies, souls and hearts are in erotic communion. I honor the Goddess and God as two great ways of being and their Divine community, which created all diversity in our universe/cosmos. I believe in the immanence of collective unconsciousness of the Divine lovers and their community whose love, wisdom and psychological wholeness manifested our universe/cosmos. I believe that the dynamic archetypical nature and wholeness of this Divine collective unconsciousness is immanent in our universe/cosmos. As such this Divine collective unconsciousness is Aquarian Pleroma, which is fractal and the 5th dimension of our universe/cosmos. The ancients use to express the immanence and fractal nature of the Divine collective unconsciousness in the magical formula of ‘as above so also below’, which the macrocosm and the microcosmic are United metaphorically by the rainbow bridge.
I feel through this macro-micro-cosmic fractal nature of the fifth dimension of our universe/cosmos that the archetypical and psychological wholeness of Humanity and Divinity create a meaningful coincidence or synchronicity, which becomes possible only because of this truth. In this manner my vision of Astraea, my anima as Goddess is a witness to this truth. Astraea was both my anima and the experience of the Goddess called Astraea.
Almost 37 years later now I reflect upon this vision and realize that the Goddess Astraea is the youthful and shamelessly erotic expression the Sky Goddess whose Greek name would be Themis. This youthfulness of Themis reflects the beginning of the Age of Aquarius. She stands for psychological wholeness and its dynamic balance and the reintegration of all the repressed and so forgotten psychological and behavioral qualities of the matrifocal folk by patriarchy. This reintegration is needed now to make humanity psychological whole and our planet as a whole into an enclosed garden, a place of wildness and tameness in harmony. This has become the story and inspiration given to me by my vision of Astraea/Themis. It has become a story of the Return of the Goddess for me (see Return of the Goddess published in 1982 and written by Edward C. Whitmont), which I herald.
Never Thirst
Iacchus
Astraea Vision by Iacchus 1980
In 1980 I was working for a cannery factory and my job was to watch the disposal of waste water from the factory which was pumped through an irrigation system. I was placed in a small construction trailer and I oversaw the pump and the irrigation system to make sure that everything was working correctly. The small construction trailer gave me a place that was warm and alone. I was about a half-mile away from the factory and so nobody checked in on me and I was left to my own devices. So I got to read a lot and when this vision occurred I was reading C.G. Jung’s book Psyche and Symbol.
I was in a place in the book where Jung was talking about active imagination so I decided to try it. The back story to this is I was learning about astrology from an astrologer who was fascinated by the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction. He thought that the conjunction acted as a Morning Star/Venus, the light barer that announces the dawning of a new age. I was fascinated by this idea as there was a Jupiter Saturn conjunction coming up on December 31, 1980. However, this Jupiter Saturn conjunction was a very auspicious conjunction in many ways. First of all, the two plants conjunct three times within 7 months through a dance of retrograde motion between the two planets. On December 31, 1980 the beginning of the conjunction started at 9° and 29 minutes, which is within 1° of my natal ascendant at 10° and 22 minutes of Libra. All three conjunctions of Jupiter Saturn in Libra created a waxing aspect to my ascendant. The planet Venus rules Libra and in my chart I have a nighttime Venus that is exalted in Pisces that rules my ascendant. However, I have an exalted Saturn placed in my natal chart at 12° and 3 minutes of tropical Libra and as you see I was approaching my Saturn return at this time.
So on Friday, October 31, 1980 I thought it would be auspicious to attempt my third try at Jungian active imagination. Unbeknownst to me both Jupiter and Saturn were in Libra tropically with Saturn conjoining my ascendant. Also the planet Venus had just moved into tropical Libra and was conjunct in both Saturn and Jupiter.
The active imagination began with me doing deep breathing and relaxing with my eyes closed and opening my mind to whatever came out of the darkness. As I focused on the darkness a spark of light far off in the distant appeared so it seemed. So I focused on that spark of light and it started to draw near. Slowly I could make out an image of a human. As the vision moved closer I can make out that the human was a woman. The vision was now becoming clearer as it approached and at first this woman seemed to be standing on clouds with the sun either setting or rising at a distance behind her.
The vision kept drawing near and her image became clear, the woman was standing on top of a mountain with its peak barely breaking through the clouds. She seemed to be of similar age to me at that time, which I was 28 years old. So she seemed to be about 28 to 30 years old. She was very lovely and shapely. She was wearing a clear, see-through chiffon robe, which left nothing to the imagination but rather enhanced it. She had long black hair and green eyes. The sun setting or rising behind her gave her a golden halo. Her skin was tan, clear and smooth with a golden sheen. As I beheld her, her chiffon robe parted magically and I fully beheld her lovely full breasts with beautiful red areola and aroused nipples. Her pubic hair formed a nice neat triangle with a nice pink cleft in the middle of her pubic triangle, which revealed her labia. She intended to be very sexually attractive, erotic and revealing to me, which got my undivided attention.
At that moment of my complete undivided attention the Goddess revealed or should I say the vision revealed: her left foot standing upon a sword, which her foot had crushed and broke in half, her left hand held the scales (of Libra) and her right hand a goblet filled with fiery and flaming red liquid. As I now beheld the complete vision: a very sexually mature, erotic and attractive Goddess standing naked on a mountaintop just above the clouds, a rising or setting sun behind her giving her a golden halo around her complete image (the sun was a little off to her right behind her, which allowed a fiery image of the sun to be seen and its radiance shimmering around the Goddess), a goblet of fiery red liquid held in her right hand, scales of justice/Libra held in her left-hand and her left foot crushing a sword on the ground.
As I beheld this vision the Goddess spoke to me and said “for all too long my scales have been unbalanced and now is the time for them to be righted once again” and “the high priestess of inspiration bids you to drink from my cup”. So I reached up to her right hand holding the goblet of fiery red liquid with my right hand and together touching hands we held the goblet and whereupon I drank from the goblet with both of us holding onto it. To my surprise the fiery liquid did not burn my mouth and at the moment of drinking the last drop of the fiery liquid the vision disappeared and I was back in the small construction trailer at the cannery where I was working.
A month later the canning season ended and I was laid off. I had been reading mythology and C. G. Jung and came across a Goddess known as Astraea and I thought the Goddess was her. She was the Star Maiden (the Starry One, Astraia or the Star Goddess) and linked with the Goddess of Justice. She also was said according to Greek mythology to Rule in the Golden Age for it is said that Kronos rules with Justice and she was the last immortal to leave earth in the Iron Age. The Erotic nature of the vision gave the Goddess a Venusian aspect, much like Eos.
But now the rest of the story needs to be told. First of all I considered the Star Maiden from the Jungian perspective as my anima even though it felt like more than just that. I realized the vision was not a personal vision per se rather it was both a personal and collective unconscious vision. The vision and the Goddess worked their magic on me over the following years. From the time I was laid off from the cannery until I returned to college I had six months of unemployment. During that time I read most of C.G. Jung’s books, Eliade’s three volumes of the History of Religions and very importantly Hamlet’s Mill by Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend. Hamlet’s Mill was a fascinating treatise and thesis using star lore and mythology to suggest that the age of Gemini was when the Myth of Ages began. It also had intriguing information about the Jupiter-Saturn conjunctions and relationship to the ages.
Upon my return to college for the third time at the UW Madison I decided to take courses in Women Studies in order to address my prejudices and further my self-development as I plan to work as a psychotherapist and the majority of my clients would be women. In the fall of 1981 I took a course in Women Studies titled “Cultural and Historical Perspectives on Women”. I had to read Drawing Down the Moon, When God Was a Woman and Spiral Dance.
Coincidentally, or should I say, a meaningful coincidence (synchronicity) happened where the Women Studies invited Starhawk (the author of the Spiral Dance) to lecture at the Great Hall at the UW Madison Memorial Union. After the lecture she performed a spiral dance, which I participated in. I was becoming a neopagan man and unconsciously the Star Maiden was working her magic. By 1985, I started to become involved with Circle Sanctuary and by 1987, I attended my first PSG. In 1988, I was accepted and began training as a Jungian analyst at the Chicago Jungian Institute.
During this time, the Mayan Harmonic Convergence happened in 1987 and there was a lot of talk about The Beginnings and Endings of Ages. I believe that Western civilization’s Myth of Ages began in the age of Gemini approximately 6000 BCE or so, which Hamlet’s Mill suggested. Relating this to my vision of the Star Maiden, I began looking for date for when the Myth of the Ages began. I believe it had to do with the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction in Libra. The reason for this is that the sign of Libra is associated with the scales and it is ruled by Venus (according to present astrology) and so embodies the sense of justice and eroticism of my vision. Particularly I wanted to find a Jupiter-Saturn triple conjunction in Libra if I could as it would be an auspicious starting point. However, I didn’t have the means to research this. In 1991 I dropped out of my Jungian training in good standing and pursued becoming a Neopagan priest.
Two years later in 1993 I visited the Jungian Chicago Institute and went to their bookstore. There I found an intriguing book called “Eclipse of the Sun; An investigation into Sun and Moon Myths” by Janet McCrickard. This book showed substantial and very good research that there was, at the edge of recorded history, a pagan belief system that had a Moon God and Sun Goddess in the Neolithic Old Europe and early Bronze Ages. Looking at Egyptian mythology I found that Osiris was an ancient Moon God of Lower Egypt and Isis was probably an ancient Sun Goddess (see ‘O Mother Sun; A New Cosmic view of the Cosmic Feminine’ pp 54 by Patricia Monaghan), in the same vein as Hathor. In addition, the Egyptians had an Earth God, Geb and a Sky Goddess, Nuit. I felt I had found the Goddess and God mythological paradigm of Old Europe and the Neolithic ploughed and planted land cult (agriculture).
I found that attributes given to the Earth God, Geb were synonymous with attributes given to the planet Saturn and the God Kronos. The same goes for the Sky Goddess, Nuit as her attributes as a Starry Goddess, or Starry One and her attributes were also be associated with mountains. The arch of the heavenly sky at night was seen as the holy mountain, Nuit, and she had Twin Peaks, one that faced Dawn and East and the other facing West and Sunset. In Western and Middle Eastern patriarchal myths, the Sky God is associated with the planet Jupiter. I notice the rewriting of the old Neolithic matrifocal myths where the genders of the deities were changed or reversed (see “In the Wake of the Goddess; women, culture and the Biblical Transformation of Pagan Myth” by Tikva Frymer-Kensky).
I began assuming that the Old Europe civilization and ancient Neolithic cult of the plowed land and planted land (agriculture) had a sacred marriage, a hieros gamos between the Earth God and Sky Goddess. This is revealed symbolically through the conjunctions of Jupiter-Saturn if you assume Jupiter to be the star of the Sky Goddess and Saturn the star of the Earth God. In 1994/95 I bought a computer program called Solar Fire and was able to run Jupiter Saturn conjunctions back 12,000 years. I was able to find an auspicious Jupiter- Saturn triple conjunction in Libra, tropically on March 13th 6,580 BCE. I found each Jupiter-Saturn conjunction occurs at about 20 years and if multiplied by 108 (conjunctions) it equals 2,160 years, which is commonly recognized as the approximate length of an age or 1/12 of the great cycle of the precession of the equinoxes. I found that 108 turns out to be a magical number in many ancient cultures. I also found that by counting back from March 13, 6580 BCE 108 conjunctions that the age of Taurus started on October 17, 4435 BCE, the age of Aries started on September 22, 2290 BCE, the age of Pisces started on October 18, 146 BC and the age of Aquarius May 28, 2000 A.D.
I found out that each Age equals a World, literally an Age of Man, which is a reference to the old Neolithic Earth God of the plowed land and planted seed cult. Each World has nine realms. It takes 12 Jupiter Saturn conjunctions to pass through all 12 signs, which equals 240 years. 240 years multiplied by nine will give you 2160 years or a World/Age. In this way you find out the number nine is magical as well as 108 in many ancient myths. The World Tree is a kenning/metaphor for a World/Age and has nine branches/realms, which are said to be the homes/territory of different Divine Tribes with perhaps a chief Deity.
In 1995 my spouse and I left the Oakwind coven to start a magical circle called The Circle of Freedom. The Circle of Freedom had a two-year cycle where in one year the Solar and Lunar Sabbats were celebrated by a Sun God and Moon Goddess and in the next year a Sun Goddess and Moon God to honor both martifocal and patriarchal Deities and tribes. The high priestess of Oakwind coven and her husband participated for two years in the Circle of Freedom and thought well of our magical circle and celebrations that they granted us our Gardnerian second-degree.
Then as part of my training and becoming an ordained priest in the Church of All Worlds I had to do what was called a clergy challenge ritual with my neopagan community. What I did was a ritual I called as the handfasting of the Younger Deities of the Age of Aquarius at our Freedom Festival in 1999. The ritual brought together the two great Divine tribes, one matrifocal and the other patriarchal in a four way group engagement of the patriarchal Sun God and Moon Goddess with the matrifocal Moon God and Sun Goddess. Then a peace marriage was performed by me as part of my ordination ritual, which was my first act as an ordained Church of All Worlds priest. This ritual is based on the ancient custom where two warring tribes create peace through marriage. The Younger Deities of the Age of Aquarius; Sun God and Moon Goddess and Moon God and Sun Goddess became married and formed a group marriage. This peace marriage is celebrated by the two-year cycle laid out by our Circle of Freedom rituals, which we have been doing now for 16 years as part of Sweetwood Temenos celebration of the Sabbats and its magic.
I have come to believe that the Tree of Life is a symbolic and metaphoric expression of the organic and dynamically chaotic system that is our universe/cosmos. I believe metaphorically and symbolically speaking the Tree of Life is but one tree in an infinite Sacred Grove that has an infinite past and is ever-growing and fruitful. Each tree is a universe/cosmos and a manifestation of two or more Divine Beings whose minds, bodies, souls and hearts are in erotic communion. I honor the Goddess and God as two great ways of being and their Divine community, which created all diversity in our universe/cosmos. I believe in the immanence of collective unconsciousness of the Divine lovers and their community whose love, wisdom and psychological wholeness manifested our universe/cosmos. I believe that the dynamic archetypical nature and wholeness of this Divine collective unconsciousness is immanent in our universe/cosmos. As such this Divine collective unconsciousness is Aquarian Pleroma, which is fractal and the 5th dimension of our universe/cosmos. The ancients use to express the immanence and fractal nature of the Divine collective unconsciousness in the magical formula of ‘as above so also below’, which the macrocosm and the microcosmic are United metaphorically by the rainbow bridge.
I feel through this macro-micro-cosmic fractal nature of the fifth dimension of our universe/cosmos that the archetypical and psychological wholeness of Humanity and Divinity create a meaningful coincidence or synchronicity, which becomes possible only because of this truth. In this manner my vision of Astraea, my anima as Goddess is a witness to this truth. Astraea was both my anima and the experience of the Goddess called Astraea.
Almost 37 years later now I reflect upon this vision and realize that the Goddess Astraea is the youthful and shamelessly erotic expression the Sky Goddess whose Greek name would be Themis. This youthfulness of Themis reflects the beginning of the Age of Aquarius. She stands for psychological wholeness and its dynamic balance and the reintegration of all the repressed and so forgotten psychological and behavioral qualities of the matrifocal folk by patriarchy. This reintegration is needed now to make humanity psychological whole and our planet as a whole into an enclosed garden, a place of wildness and tameness in harmony. This has become the story and inspiration given to me by my vision of Astraea/Themis. It has become a story of the Return of the Goddess for me (see Return of the Goddess published in 1982 and written by Edward C. Whitmont), which I herald.
Never Thirst
Iacchus