It's been a weird few weeks in the cosmic realms. While transformational, it also continues to bring some doldrums because we have six planets retrograde now. Six! (see my blog for all the October moves in the skies)
Remember, we are not subject to planetary and starry influences, we are One with them. To know them is to know thyself. As above, so below.
On 7 September there was a massive blast on the sun, apparently the biggest in known memory, which rumbled our consciousness. I feel the blast served to flush out something from deep within us in cahoots with the retrograde planets on their deep dive into self. They’re prepping us to descend, find the grim gold, then turn to focus on running up that hill with it where it can shine in the light again.
The Upside Down
We're going another level to move out of feeling trapped and restricted by circumstances. We might’ve believed our options are limited with no clear path out whether around unfulfilling jobs, relationships, a significant amount of debt or another situation way out of alignment with our inner being.
We can get stuck in the same terrain of the shadowlands. While we must move through wounds and fears and this involves being forced to encounter them, we have to know when to pull ourselves up by the bootstraps and keep moving forward. We keep running up that hill or we stay in the Upside Down (a reference for fellow Stranger Things fans and Kate Bush lovers).
The planetary influences we are one with support us, even if they’ve got us descending that hill right now with all the retrogrades flushing out those cockroaches... October brings some good movement forward again. Perseverance! Movement is life There are many ways to be guided forward on the right path, and the Tree of Life and its connection to the tarot, planets and chakras, is one. The Tree of Life is an ancient mythological and spiritual map for how to live, connecting Heaven and Earth. It also has an opposite, the inverted Tree of Life, where the shadows or Upside Down world exists, its purpose to provide contrast so we can know what it is to experience truth. The Tree of Life is the I Am, the inverted one is the I Am Not. The path to unity lies in deepening connection to the true essence of self – the I Am - and our purpose in this life. We all have one - it is our golden thread we follow across lifetimes, leading to our destiny. This is ultimately the same - to realise self as One and create - but we have our nuanced paths. Our golden threads get tangled, frayed and faded if untended and unwoven as our soul intended. But the thread is still there, waiting. The light and shadow Trees of Life are speaking to me a lot, and as usual these epiphanies are super simple. They click into an embodied knowing. In this case, it’s that we must keep moving forward or running up the hill of the inverted Tree of Life where illusion lives, and back to the true Tree of Life. Our descent has its purpose but no need to stay there. Eventually we can use the contrast of opposites to create without suffering, and we’re now at that stage of it being cosmically more accessible. Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill has been revived massively as the anthem for a profound scene in Stranger Things, as Max bravely turns away the dark and runs up that hill back to light. It's dramatic but we know the essence of strength and focus it takes to rise when the shadow is very convincing in saying we're doomed. In looking more at Kate’s lyrics, she says – Let's exchange the experience And if I only could I'd make a deal with God And I'd get him to swap our places I'd be runnin' up that road Be runnin' up that hill With no problems With the Tree of Life and its shadow tree, we can see she is looking to exchange the experience of the Upside Down dark by swapping out to the truth of the Up Right light truth. But she’s saying she feels helpless to do so, as it’s ‘if I only could’ she would run back to light with no problems. What’s needed is gigantic fortitude and focus to make the journey back up the hill, as shown brilliantly in the scene with Max giving it everything she’s got to follow her heart back to her beloved friends. Rocks my world. Lilith knows rock bottom and how to run up again
In the inverted Tree of Life, Lilith is the demoness of the bottom point or sephira that corresponds to the upright Tree of Life's Malkuth, the point of Earthly existence referenced as 'Kingdom' and related to the soles of the feet and base chakra.
Malkuth is inseparably connected to the top Heaven point like the serpent eats its tail in the sacred Ouribos. The Heaven and Earth points can't be separated, ever. Lilith represents taking the deepest dive to the bottom of the shadowlands of Malkuth energy, then emerging again. It's also the essential story of Inanna's descent to the underworld and many other myths and stories. The point in consciousness evolution is NOW that Lilith and what she represents in that sense is complete in her journey, having made it to hell and back. I Am Lilith tells this story and how the ascent now is galatically-ordained. We all share the same basic pathway to getting back up that hill of self-realisation as explained by the major arcana of the tarot's Fool's Journey, which is connected to the Tree of Life. Our thread home!
I thank my friend Michelle for sharing more on the Tree of Life from her great knowledge, and for interesting discussions. We’re both reading Grand Master Choa Kok Sui’s The Spiritual Essence of Man – The Chakras and the Inverted Tree of Life.