As we come to the end of the calendar year, the zodiac is approaching its vertical axis, the mid-heaven, or the skies’ highest point. The twelve houses take us through the creation cycle. The 9th House completes the third quadrant, where we encounter the other. Pulled beyond our inner sphere, we are dazzled by something outside ourselves.
Sagittarius is the last fire sign where the embers glow long after the flame goes out. It is symbolized by the centaur, a mythical creature with a human torso on top of a horse’s body. He’s an archer too and points his bow and arrow to the sky.
Sagittarius is ruled by the God of the Gods, Rome’s Jupiter or Zeus to the Greeks. It’s the largest planet in our solar system and offers expansion, confidence, optimism. This is the spiritual journey and how we forge a belief system. Following Scorpio’s troubled waters, we are granted a higher perspective if we can endure the crisis of faith which comes with this house as well. Like the pearl of great price, we are refined, tested, and brought to our best by the grating sands of life. Sagittarius is our higher mind and intuition, the opposition to the third houses left-brain rational thinking. The Mystical Law is “All thought precedes form on some level.
The sun entered Sagittarius on November 22, and the new moon occurs at 2:42 am ET on December 4. Aligned with the new moon is a total solar eclipse, the final eclipse of the year. Eclipses are high octane lunations and powerful catalysts for change. Tonight’s eclipse occurs in the south node, a point where the moon’s path crosses the ecliptic. While the north node represents our destiny, the south is our fate or karmic debt – what we need to release. An eclipse in Sagittarius reveals something hidden for Sagittarius is the sign of truth.
There are levels of truth for, as Richard Rohr says, “God confronts, converts, and consoles us, in that order.” First, we have personal truth, which dominates most people’s lives. Personal truth is based on ego and individual circumstances. There’s nothing wrong with this, but it’s limited and exclusionary. Next is relative truth, where one’s belief may differ from another’s, but both can still be true. The final level is Universal Mystical Truth, which governs us all. Impersonal yet intimate, it affects everyone equally whether we believe it or not. We are living in a second level of truth; polarized by opposing information. It is clear, from a mystical level, that the way forward is not to dig deep into ones own position but to consider the validity of the others.
Spirituality is much like great art and music. Less about religion and more about being alive, it unites and transcends us. The 9th House is Inspiritus, in-spirit, inspiration. The arrow we send to the sky is faith.
I was a teenage runaway. I was a toddler runaway too and wheeled myself out the back door and down the steps the first time my mother put me in a walker. When I was 5 or 6, I took off for the Grand Union one evening and hung out in the cake aisle until someone discovered me. There was a reason I kept leaving.
My father was an alcoholic with a rage disorder; he couldn’t control himself. He put my baby sister outside one Christmas Eve because she cried when he tried to play her Fisher Price Xylophone. We watched as he chopped it up with an ax in the snow next to her. I finally ran away for nearly good at 16. I’d been sneaking out at night for years anyway seeking something I could feel but couldn’t name. This was my first spiritual journey, my 9th House. God was calling me through a Walkman.
I was a Jersey Girl, so Bruce Springsteen was as close to God as most of us got then and maybe since. I loved his lyrics rich with bible references. Mary was the girl in every song, and the Holy Ghost with the Most was not far behind. These weren’t songs, they were anthems. The ‘E’ in Wild, Innocent and E Street Shuffle was Exultant. It saved my life.
St. Augustine said we would not be searching if we had not already been found. I wasn’t out for fun but salvation, to find something more trustworthy than suffering. Bruce sang, “Meet me out on the streets,” and so did God. So I ran and sang and downright worshipped.
This faith journey comes with Hanukkah’s holy lights, the sun and the son’s birth, Winter Solstice and Jesus Christ. We all walk a blessed path, but we have to stop and notice. Stop and notice. Break out of the house late at night.
“What is most important is not to make life longer,
but to take your soul out of time, as every sublime act does.
Only then does your life become fulfilled.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
“There’s a light on yonder mountain
Bruce Springsteen
And it’s calling me to shine
There’s a girl over by the water fountain
And she’s asking to be mine
And Jesus is standing in the doorway
In a buckskin jacket, boots, and spurs so fine.”
“If I Was The Priest”
References
“If I Were a Priest” Bruce Springsteen.
Alamy Images, Purchased Photo Bruce Springsteen.