Rebirth Equinox: We Are the Resurrection

"We are the Resurrection.

We are the Rising Sun.

Ride the Wing'd Serpent's Tongue.

We are the Only One."

This anthem echoed through my dreamspace the other night, as I continue to channel the Piscean muses, fervently working on multiple songs. The theme of those lyrics could not have been more fitting to the sacred day and week currently vibrating through us: the Spring Equinox.

The dying-year god goes by many names. In Egypt, depicted as the Green Man, we see Osiris reborn. To the Phoenicians of ancient Lebanon and Syria he was Adonis. He can also be traced to Babylon, where his name was Tammuz, and his Sumerian predecessor was Dumuzi. The Phrygians of central Turkey called him Attis. According to tradition, Attis died of self-inflicted wounds at the vernal equinox and possibly was resurrected three days later. At his own wedding, Attis was forced to castrate himself by a pine tree and died from loss of blood. (Pine is the oldest tree on the planet, and universally symbolizes immortality.) His blood fertilized the earth, and where it fell, violets blossomed.

The myth of sacrifice and death necessary to bring new sustenance, new plant life, is universally represented in the dying-resurrecting god mythology. We see the same symbolism in the Tarot card of the Hanged Man, represented by the shamanic spirit of the Bat in the Animal-Wise Tarot deck. The shaman's death opens up a new vision. The blood spilled by the dying god fertilizes the seeds of new perception and the empowered creativity of spring. The Bat and Hanged Man sleep upside down, providing us fresh insight achieved through tackling the darkness of our inner fears.

Today, in Chichen Itza, a sacred Mayan ceremonial center in the Yucatan, an incredibly profound event is occurring, an event merging sky with earth, sun and stone, an event of rebirth. On the stairway of the Castillo, a pattern of light and shadow appears on the west balustrade of the north stairway. Just hours before sunset, this magnificent play of perfectly symmetrical alternating patterns of shadow and light resemble a serpent's skin. The bottom portion of the pyramid is flanked with a monumental serpent's head, while the number of light and shadow sections equates to 13, the number of day-pulses in the Mayan calendar. Besides the unfathomable mathematical genius it would take to figure out how to construct a temple with this phenomenon, the symbology is appropriate to the incredible skin-shedding shifts occurring at this year's Vernal Equinox.

The theme of balance is demonstrated by the equal periods of light and darkness during the equinox (the word equinox means "equal night" ). Also, Friday's Full Moon signals a need to discover the Spiritual Warrior within, merging the Aries and Libra archetypes. To fight for justice (Aries,) we must pursue a path of righteousness, balancing the scales, harmonizing the polarities (Libra). This is the true ideal of politics and of spiritual peace.

Indeed, the long winter of our ignorance, apathy, and complacence must end with the call of Aries to be a light-bringer, spontaneously pioneering the truth and fighting the injustices of the world, reborn out of the complacent womb of Pisces, and activated to improve the world. When we look at human history, indigenous, goddess, ethnic, and spiritual traditions have experienced an almost ceaseless barrage of persecution from the patriarchal, power-hungry governments and colonizers of the world. This will not be tolerated any longer.

In the sky on this vernal equinox, we see an explosive, Cardinal Grand Cross which forces us to make powerful, transformative changes. Mars opposes Pluto and these two planets are squaring our Full Moon this Friday - with the Sun in the warrior activist Aries and the Moon in the peacemaker diplomat Libra.

In our own news, Barack Obama gave an incredibly potent speech about race in America, while over the last two weeks, we have seen an absolutely atrocious situation of protest and violence reach epic proportions in Lhasa, Tibet, where over 100 monks protesting China's tyrannical occupation have been murdered. False accusations about the Dalai Lama have been spread and all independent journalists have been forced to leave Tibet so that no real news can come out. Meanwhile, The Longest Walk, a walk for Native American solidarity, which first occurred thirty years ago, is now traveling across the country again in a Northern and Southern route, uniting people of all traditions (and including a group of Japanese Buddhists, interestingly enough.)

It is important for us to honor the individuals and entire cultures who have sacrificed themselves, like the Hanged Man, to bring Spiritual Sustenance to this Planet.

These current events are very near and dear to me. I am currently in Arizona and planning to meet up with the Longest Walk as they traverse thru Eastern Arizona and New Mexico. Another divinely ordained synchronicity. I also worked and studied with Tibetan refugees in Dharamsala, India and learned from my students of the struggles of Tibetan people to simply pray the way they wish.

Tibetan philosophy and Buddhist practice have profoundly shifted my perception and accelerated my path of awakening as a Child of Light in service to sentient beings. I would like to invite you to send prayers of compassion and healing and the end of suffering to the thousand-armed bodhisattva of compassion, Avalokiteswara, who is honored as Kuan Yin in China. His mantra is Om Mani Padme Hum. We can also pray to Green Tara, the divine mother and reliever of all sufferings: Om Tara Tuttare Ture Svaha. And lastly, the Medicine Buddha, whom Tibetan doctors pray to at the beginning of each day, serves to heal all of our wounds. He is a rich blue, lapis lazuli in color and holds a bowl of medicinal nectar and a medicinal flower in his hands. Teyatha Om Bekanze Bekanze Maha Bekanze Radza Samudgate Svaha.

For those interested in more information on the Tibetan struggle and Tibetan Buddhism, as well as the Longest Walk, please see the movies and links below.

• http://www.thelongestwalk.org

• http://www.atc.org.au

• Dreaming Lhasa

• Tibet: Cry of the Snow Lion

• Windhorse

• Kundun

We are not race, ethnicity, gender, age....

We are stardust before this, and we are luminous beyond label.

Photo by Ignatius244, courtesy of Creative Commons license.