PARATHEATRICAL RESEARCH

"Temple of the Sun and the Moon"
RITUAL ACTIONS FOR SPIRIT AND SOUL
© 1999-2007 Antero Alli

 

The terms soul and spirit are commonly confused to mean the same thing. In this article, I suggest that soul represents "that which lives" and spirit, "that which we are becoming". I am also suggesting that the astrological Sun sign and its House placement symbolizes processes innate to 'spirit' and the astrological Moon sign, processes innate to 'soul.' The astrological Moon and Sun are symbolic representations, not formulas. The Moon is not the soul; the Moon represents the reality of soul (which may be beyond description). The Sun is not the spirit but a symbol for its direct experience. If your Sun sign refers to who you are becoming, it also symbolizes your personal process of self-realization, that specific dynamic for becoming fully yourself. If the Moon sign symbolizes what is living in you, it also represents the genetic history of your ancestors who have lived before you and whose influence informs your current experience, as history influences us, whether you are conscious of it or not.

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Self-Realisation and the Icarus Mythos

Another way the Sun sign is taken for granted is in an assumption of expertise mistakenly ascribed to the Sun sign itself. Being a Taurus Sun doesn't automatically qualify you as the most stable and loyal person in the room, unless you are a self-realizing Taurus. Being a Leo doesn't guarantee that you're a charismatic artist unless you are totally committed to your self-realization. Being a Libra does not mean that the cosmos owes you a meaningful relationship unless you are up for the hard work of self-realization through intimacy. Most likely, we are born into a certain Sun sign not because we are an expert in that archetype but because of a deeper need to experience that essence in order to evolve.

Self-realization is not for everybody. It's true that everybody is a star in potential but not everybody is willing and able to manifest that reality. There are certain incumbent pressures, sudden explosions, and solar flares that all fledgling stars must face. Self-realization demands a certain willingness to be yourself no matter what. Strong egos are not only filled with contradictions. It also takes courage to embrace them--not merely try and figure them out--as part of the larger changing whole that we are. The Sun sign mirrors the heat-giving, light-bearing properties of the star at the center of our solar system. To realize your shining destiny as an individual, you must be willing to put up with a lot of heat, light, and self-exposure.

The dark side of the Sun shows itself when any predominantly self-centered personality, society, or zeitgeist (yes, eras have their own egos) over-identifies with its spirit at the cost of losing its soul. When the Sun sign is over-emphasized, it radiates too much light, too much heat, and too much self-exposure; today's star is tomorrow's black hole. The myth of Icarus tells of a naive young man who waxed wings to his arms and flew off to the sun. In his enthusiasm for this star's fiery brilliance, Icarus flew so close that his wings melted and down he plummeted to the swarming seas below. The sea represents the soul's realm and the Moon's tidal pull. The Icarus mythos is set amid the inseparable alchemy of the Sun and the Moon; the fiery light of the spirit above and the cool, dark depth of the oceanic soul below.

 

Chilling Out in the Shadow of the Moon

Another symptom of excess Sun, or too much spirit and not enough soul, can be observed in the psychological addiction to understanding. An over-heated faculty for understanding obsesses with achieving mental clarity and maintaining it at all costs. The resulting Sun-burnt psyche grows too bright for its own good, too hot to chill out, and too over-exposed to enjoy a sense of humor about itself. The psyche as a whole also needs downtime for sleep, rest, and reflection (lunar traits) to turn down the heat. Through the living biology of our bodies we are linked with all things biological, all things alive. This does not occur due to any system of understanding or through the courtesy of some advanced mind, but as an undeniable fact which shouts out that, as long as we are alive, the body is the only part of our totality that is always in present time.

The mind wanders and the memory diverts attention to the past but the body is in present time, always, for as long as it is alive. This simple truth accounts for our kinship and connection with everything that exists in present time and with everything that exists, period. The direct knowledge and acknowledgement of this living fact gives us more clues about the innate meaning of the Moon in our charts and the life of the soul it symbolizes.

This complex web of biological intelligence that the Moon represents is free from any obligation to be understood on intellectual and spirit-based terms; it speaks its own tongue. Its language of dream logos refers to our connectivity with all life but also with the realities of impermanence and constant flux. The Moon, and the soul it refers to, symbolizes what we have inherited from our ancestral DNA, the genetic code connecting us with natural life; the DNA within us is isomorphic to the DNA wherever life exists. If planet Earth had a common language with which it kept in touch with all its creations, it might be DNA. The genetic rivers of maternal hormones coursing through every pregnant woman demonstrates a living example of the archetypal Moon incarnate; the ups and downs, the swells and cresting waves, the ebb and flow of the genetic tides within and around us.

 

Deep Subjectivity and Boundless Lunacy

When we become over-identified with the the Moon and what it represents, we can suffer a certain disorientation of the senses and other pathologies of the Moon, lunacies of the soul. In any hyper-emotional, or extreme lunar state, we lose perspective. Logistical details like linear time (appointments) and space (accident-prone behavior) become a hit and miss endeavor. Sometimes we suffer a dissolution of personal boundaries and spill ourselves blindly into the personal business and emotions of others, often with zero knowledge of their effects.

When the Moon is over-emphasized, we lose touch with the consequences of our actions, as if the laws of cause and effect did not apply. If an over-extended Sun mistakenly believes its own illusion of objectivity, lunar hallucinations demonstrate the deepening submersion in our own subjectivity and delusion. We can use astrology to apply all this information about soul and spirit by pinpointing the placement of our natal Moon and Sun. Generally speaking, you go to where the Sun shines for light, heat, and self-exposure, and you go where the Moon dwells to cool off, turn down the lights, and connect with more nurturing life sources. What is rarely realized is how accountable we may be for maintaining the often precarious balance between spirit and soul, as well as the lifelong courtship of their ongoing mystical marriage.

Like soul and spirit, Moon and Sun are always married within us as long as we are alive and, perhaps thereafter. Whether or not that marriage is strong may have much to do with how well these two aspects of our totality are communicating and understanding each other's needs. Astrology can be an effective tool to unveil this kind of understanding, given that it is applied to the realization of the living facts that these symbols merely refer to; in other words, understanding isn't everything unless you are totally spirit/Sun identified.

 

Ritual Actions for the Sun and the Moon

The use of the Sun and Moon sign for instigating and maintaining our own psychic weather --the atmospheres, the warm sunny days, the brooding moody twilights -- can become a valuable alchemical barometer for reading our psychic and emotional needs. By distinguishing the solar and lunar properties in your life, it may be possible to use your personal birthchart to fine-tune what you have begun to experience already without astrology. To ritualize this alchemy of Sun and Moon, of spirit and soul, is to discover ways to serve the expression of their innate purposes through ritual actions.

RITUAL ACTIONS; any movements, gestures, actions, tones, songs or characters that somehow give expression to the innate purpose of whatever source we are serving or connecting with.

 

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