July Full Moon: Activating Our Star Body & Dark Knowing.

“Everything in life possesses the power to transform, to become, to expand its inherent nature and grow as it were from within, which is Sakti.”

~Madhu Khanna, Yantra

Far from the endless confusion of contradictory messages and the paralysing channels of fear, there is another place, a place that arises from deep within the ground of our being, from our self-generated energy, connected and aligned to the natural cycles and flow of life. Strengthened by our relationship with the organic, natural world, this connection is in danger of becoming weaker in an increasingly artificial world- if we are not mindful of the more subtle dimensions of our existence. This deeper knowing is our “star body”, or astral body, a perception or awareness that connects us to the unseen or subtle realms of reality.

In a glut of words, theories, and concepts, how do we figure out what we truly need, or what to invest our faith in? Our tired minds cling desperately to some semblance of normality, trying to process the unprocessable, amongst the absurdity and insistence that there is a logic, a reason, a purpose which must be grasped even while it changes day by day.

These shadowy projections of a deeper reality, offer no real fulfilment, and for many the show has grown tiresome… for some unbearable.

Where do we go from here and what resources may we draw upon?   

Truth says Ernest Hemingway is elusive- “I know now that there is no one thing that is true – it is all true”. But when everything is true is it not also the case that nothing is true? Slowly we come to realise- as we stumble out from beneath the rubble of our left- brain dominant, and somewhat frazzled western minds- that truth is indeed highly subjective. The people to whom we have assigned the role of keepers of truth, our “experts” and governments, no longer reassure us and indeed seem to steer the world through oceans of myopic confusion… either mistakenly or deliberately.

Author of The Black Goddess and the Unseen Real, Peter Redgrove identifies spiritual intuition as our chief organ. In the mire of information and disinformation overload, clearer waters are to be found in the well spring of our inner knowing, a knowing beyond the conditioned mind and learned behaviour cultivated to fit into a model of society.

No one comes to his true selfhood by being what society wants him to be, nor by doing what it wants him to do.

Stephen Holler author of The Gnostic Jung

Getting back to the unseen real of the black goddesses- wisdom keeper Lilith exiled and demonised for a few thousand years is making a comeback; from out of the shadows, from the wild places, she is calling us to join her. Lilith teaches us to trust our intuition, to stand strong in our truth, to see behind the veils of illusion, and to place our own intuitive knowing above all else. This is not so easy… just as Lilith has been exiled for millennia, our intuitive wisdom, our “star body” has also been off line to varying degrees.

Lilith draws us closer to the invisible realms, out beyond the known world, beyond the chasm of other people’s beliefs, opinions, and assumptions; beyond fear, past the horizon line, so that we may merge with our “star body”, loosened from the shackles of a world that has become so compressed it’s hard to breathe. She shows us we can use this compression to aid our own rebirth… when snakes shed their skin, they rub themselves against a hard surface.  

At the time of the full moon, Black Moon Lilith (true) is in aspect with asteroid Ishtar. In Mesopotamian mythology, Ishtar is the hierodule, the most holy aspect of the bridal ritual (hieros gamos), a sacred ritual and key process in the mysteries of alchemy and rebirth.

Lilith is an aspect of the cosmic feminine who opens psychic awareness and connects the personal and transpersonal realms, she facilitates maturation of the self through a process of self-gnosis. She guides us to find the disenfranchised or unowned parts of ourselves so that we may bring them home. Her darkness in part lies in the recognition of how our unowned or unclaimed energy operates- or is used-  beneath the veil of consciousness… Lilith knows a thing or two about rabbit holes.

Redgrove writes,

“There is a persistent rumour that she herself [Lilith] is the Messiah, come to redeem the divided souls of women, by virtue of her ability to circuit the sky and traverse the depths of the abyss.”

The cosmic feminine is an immense liberating force, animating and flowing with all of life, it is shakti, immanent, transcendent, mysterious, invisible, and utterly embodied. It is not surprising that this force therefore has been shut down, demonised, punished, and deemed unacceptable in a world which has become increasingly dominated by those who like to be in control, or at least enjoy the illusion of being so.

There is a tremendous sense of need right now to break free from all kinds of mental slavery, and it is because of this that our intuitive power is coming back online. Our need to expand beyond intolerable limitations may in the end be the grit we need to produce our pearls.

To find a truth that we can live by, that we may call our own, one that is whole and sustaining we are being asked to step up, to reach down, and go through, to the core of our embodied reality and the “dark knowing” waiting to be revealed via our subliminal and intuitive senses. This is the subtle plane of existence, the astral field, and it is the astral part of ourselves, our “star body” that is waiting to be activated and perceived.

In the time of our greatest challenge we are also offered an opening into our spiritual destiny.

• Star Body is a term borrowed from Peter Redgrove’s, The Black Goddess and the Unseen Real.