Acrux - Eco Shamanism Newsletter April 2024
Acrux
The star Acrux (brightest one at the bottom) in the Crux or Southern Cross constellation - photo credit: Naskies
Welcome - here is the April 2024 edition of the newsletter. It follows on from the March newsletter so if you want continuity and haven't read the March edition you can do so . Having said that it will still read as a newsletter in itself. There have been many more synchronicities . . . leading to a good deal of enlightenment.
If you have subscribed in the last month - welcome - and thank you to those of you who have donated cups of tea via the Ko-fi site - they help keep the ship afloat.
Event news . . . in date order . . . and more than normal
The next Shamanic Sunday online is this coming 7th April (10am to 12.30pm) - you can book a place on the website here.
Astrology, Synchronicity & Revelation - I will be giving a talk for Wyvern Questers & Dowsers in Wootton Bassett - Monday 15th April 7.15pm - £5 on the door. Details on the website - here.
New - god gatherings - Tuesday 16th April (6 - 8pm) - online - a new regular group to contemplate our notions of god. Bookings and more information here.
Some extra news (italics below) about the Jupiter Uranus conjunction in Taurus Workshop - Saturday 20th April online. A day workshop marking the conjunction of Jupiter and Uranus in Taurus following the Sun's arrival in the same constellation. We will look at the themes we are likely to experience on a personal and global level. And someone (you know who you are) reminded me that the comet Pons-Brooks makes its closest approach to the sun during the conjunction. This comet is only visible once every 71 or so years. Find out more about the workshop on the website here.
Horary Consultations - chart readings for important individual questions. These were on offer until Easter but I've decided to keep them at the same rate for a while longer.
Astrology Consultations - standard birth chart readings and in-depth astrology consultations are available on the website here.
The website has been updated with things being switched around and slightly modified - despite saying in the last newsletter that the website name would change this hasn't happened yet - I'm following a hunch that it's not quite the right time.
Following on from my intention to teach astrology as an online course in the autumn . . . this is beginning to gain some momentum. It will be based on a 'wider' perception of astrology than the normal approach and will be designed around learning how to explore your own personal astrology and the way in which, as a continuum, we are always at one with the cosmos - a theme in this newsletter. More details soon.
Cosmos singing - last Saturday I co-led a workshop on Grief and Song Writing called 'The Cosmos within Us'. My part was to engage the group with the cosmos and use it to help us formulate words to a song. We went out after sunset to work with the stars and planets as they appeared at dusk. It was truly magical to watch them appear and to create new perspectives on grief. I tell you of this now because I completely forgot to mention it in the last newsletter. However, there will be further events in May as the workshop was funded by the Wye Valley River Festival. The full festival is being held from 3rd to 12th May and I believe that a song from the workshop will be performed on the last weekend.
Acrux
Ten days or so ago I ran a Sacred Cosmology workshop and we looked at how religions / spiritual paths have their origins in astrology, or the observation of the stars and then we began to draw/colour in an astrology chart from scratch to help us learn how astrology 'fits together' the various components of the art. The more I explore the auspices of cosmology, religions and astrology the more I feel that transcendence and mysticism are my field of operation. Now I have run this first Sacred Cosmology workshop I hope to run it again as an introduction to the astrology course I plan to run starting in the autumn.
As I move through this exploration of cosmology my awareness is broadening, in a truly eco shamanic way. That is, my perception of how we currently 'read' astrology feels limited, to me at least, although this is not to decry its profound and liberating ability to help us 'understand' ourselves in relation to the cosmos. It is more that my perception is shifting, in such a way that I feel that the moniker 'eco shamanism' is transforming into 'eco mysticism' or maybe 'eco cosmology'.
A red kite looking distinctly like a cross - photo credit: Arturo de Frias Marques
The arrival of the cross . . . as a bird
In the last newsletter I spoke of meeting with a friend at a local holy spring and making an ash cross on our foreheads as a way of marking Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. The shape of the cross has become embedded in the further synchronicities I have been experiencing.
A day before the last newsletter was dispatched I went for an unintentional walk. My plan was to walk to the village shop and then return but on the way there I caught sight of a red kite (the bird not an actual kite) soaring a little above me to the north. It was being mobbed by some crows. I lost sight of it, went to the shop and then returned home. On an impulse I decided to go for a walk instead of returning to whatever it was I was doing inside. I set off and came to the cross roads where a footpath crosses the lane. I couldn't decide which path to take but eventually took the field footpath on the left. After another crossing of a road and a climb up a steep field I became aware of the sound of a sparrowhawk to my right but didn't look for it because it sounded too far away. Shortly afterwards I heard an eerie sound up by what I call the Christian barn (a name I gave the barn when I was learning to be a shamanic practitioner) a couple of fields away - it was not a bird call I had heard before. As I peered in that direction I could see seagulls circling in a bit of a frenzy just beyond a distant hedge but was also aware that the eerie sound was not that of seagulls. In the same moment a sparrowhawk cut across my field of vision, parallel to the nearer hedge and flying on its side so that it looked like a cross. There was obviously some sort of alignment or augury going on so I hot-footed it towards the seagulls, leaving the footpath and going straight towards the fracas of seagulls. By the time I got there they had disappeared and I could see nothing to suggest why they might have been there. I hopped over the fence into the by-way / green lane next to the Christian barn and a rather fine beech tree feeling rather disappointed.
The Christian barn with the fine beech tree
Doubt
I began to doubt my inspiration. Then I turned and looking up saw a Red Kite approaching from the south. As I watched it approach I realised it was going to pass right over my head. It didn't. It stopped directly above me and, as birds of prey seem to levitate when they want to, became still and watched me from on high. A great cross of a bird directly above me. At this point I want to mention something called the 'mid heaven'. This is an astrological point in our birth chart that appears to represent our ambition, vocation or perhaps our life purpose and seems to 'crown' us. So this red kite felt like it was on my 'mid heaven', in a very literal sense. It seemed to hang there for ages and my neck was beginning to hurt . . . but then off it flew, disappearing behind the twigs of the fine beech and over the Christian barn. Considering I wasn't even intending to go for a walk this felt rather momentous.
More crosses
Since then the red kite has appeared virtually every time I go outside both here at home and when I am out and about. I was relating the above story to a friend about a week later as we sat in the sunshine outside my house. I commented that I wouldn't be surprised if a red kite suddenly appeared and within a second or two one appeared behind me and we both collapsed in wonder.
The church
Two weeks later and I decide to go to a Sunday church service in the same church I mentioned in the last newsletter. The reason being that I wanted to experience a church service and see what happens to me, if anything. The last time I consciously went to a Sunday service I was seven.
The experience can wait for another newsletter but the synchronicity can't. It so happened that the Sunday I went was Palm Sunday, the one before Easter Sunday, a fact of which I was completely oblivious having not observed the Christian calendar since I was seven. As part of the service we were each given a palm cross to take home with us. At home I decided that the most appropriate place for it was above the altar of my outdoor church - here it is attached to the fence.
The fixed stars in a rabbit hole
So there's been lots of crosses happening and the repeated appearance of red kites which seem to be trying to convey something to me. On Easter Sunday there is a veritable show of red kites when I go for an afternoon walk and the following day I add the new god gatherings group to the website. The next day I am led down a rabbit hole, which wasn't the plan for the day at all, and the rabbit hole is the one with all the fixed stars in it. A true wonderland and I feel like Alice. Fixed stars refer to those stars that don't appear to move . . . although they do but extremely slowly so when they are used in natal / birth charts they only move imperceptibly throughout one's life. I'm intrigued to find if any of them hit any planets or places within in my own natal chart.
The Southern Cross - Acrux
The Southern Cross - the star at the bottom of the cross is Acrux. Photo credit: R Sinnott & R Feinberg
Of course there is a fixed star called Acrux, part of the Crux (cross) constellation, aligned with my 'mid heaven' - the latin for cross is crux. I look up what Acrux means and see that it suggests an interest in astrology, spirituality, metaphysics and sacrifice. But of course . . . I'm blown away and have to double check to make sure I've read it correctly. I have. I'm even more intrigued now and find another fixed star, Schedir which is a star in the constellation of Cassiopiea, aligns with my Imum Coeli - the opposite position to the mid heaven. This too is associated with astrology, mysticism and writing. Aaaaand . . . the constellation of Cassiopiea is known as 'The Seated Queen'. Schedir is the star on her left breast. Now the next bit of information really does link our bodies with the stars - I happen to have the constellation of Cassiopeia as a series of moles on my stomach below my left breast - a heavenly tattoo . . .
Cassiopiea constellation - Schedir (sometimes Schedar) is the lowest star in the configuration with 'a' for 'alpha' next to it. Photo credit: Sadalsuud
Now I want to remind you of the Ash Wednesday ceremony I and my friend did on 14th February. In the last newsletter I wrote "I don't experience any particular revelation at the time. This is often the case when performing rituals and something I learned to accept during my time training in shamanism. It is enough to mark the occasion with ritual and intent, honouring the vision in my Shamanic Sunday journey and a nod to the Christian observance." I then go on to write of Lent being a time of sacrifice, in fact I write it as a title -
Sacrifice
which is one of the qualities of Acrux, the star on my mid heaven. What have I sacrificed? Well those of you who have been reading the newsletter over the last few years know that I have ended a lot of the work I was doing - the practitioner training course I ran, the disbanding of the Eco Shamanism team, all the workshops, courses and other events. Essentially sacrificing the container of Eco Shamanism . . . which resulted in a void in my life . . . and then the heavens opened, like the spring burst of celandines and the stars rained down. When you make a sacrifice you give something up . . . in order for something else to happen, or fill the void. The word sacrifice as a noun also refers to Christ's offering of himself in the Crucifixion - the cross, or a cross, Acrux.
The Celandine Constellation - in my garden - no crosses but lots of star flowers. Squint your eyes and you will see a night sky dense with stars.
A kite in a chart
Now, I look up my birth chart to see if there is the pattern of a kite, the sort of kite you take flying rather than the bird type - it's a shape recognised in astrological circles. And the kite shape is there with Acrux and my mid heaven at the top of the kite. On 14th February 2024, at the time I and my friend daubed ash crosses on our foreheads as our Lent ritual, Jupiter - planet of expansion - was sat directly on top of the fixed star of Schedir in my IC (Imum Coeli) - the very base of the natal chart relating to our roots and foundations and the very beginning of life and also the tail of the kite. Jupiter has certainly highlighted my early childhood experience of church. It seems that making an ash cross on your forehead can mirror a complete alignment with the constellations above.
Thank you for reading . . . any comments do get in touch . . . Mandy
2024 update
What's happening this year - anything in blue and underlined is a weblink.
Shamanic Sundays - 7th April - 10am-12.30pm - ONLINE
Astrology, Synchronicity & Revelation - talk for Wyvern Dowsers - 15th April 7.30pm
god gatherings - 16th April - 6 - 8pm - ONLINE
Jupiter Uranus in Taurus Workshop - 20th April - 10am-4.30pm - ONLINE
Horary consultations - casting charts for specific questions
Astrology Sessions - birth chart and in-depth readings
Shamanic Counselling over six sessions
Learn the Shamans Journey in a day
Shamanic Journeys
Eco Shamanic Practitioners List - click here.
Books, that matter, made with paper
The Sun, Moon and Clock book is about the cycles of the sun, moon and clock to which our bodies are accustomed. It is designed to help bring humans back into balance with our Earth, to see the natural rhythms of our immediate world as it is turned by the sun, moon and clock. The paperback version is £15 (includes P&P) - the eBook is £5.99 on the website or on Amazon as a Kindle for £6.99.
Birdfolk, on the other hand, is a chapbook of poems about, and for, the birds. The perspective changes, from bird to human and back again and will hopefully surprise and delight you in equal measure. It is only available as a limited edition (100) and signed chapbook - £12.99 (includes P&P).
Both books are available under the Books drop down menu on the website and if you'd like to avoid the automated money system you can buy them using bank transfer by sending me an email.
If you have any questions feel free to message or email below. If you know someone who might be interested in any of the above please forward this newsletter to them. If you've got this far and like what you've read please buy me a cup of tea by clicking on the cup. Thank you!
