Planet Earth in deep space, focused on Europe and Asia, sun shining on the horizon. 3D illustration – Elements of this image furnished by NASA.
by Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee
Earthrise tells the story of the first image captured of the Earth from space in 1968. Told solely by the Apollo 8 astronauts, the film recounts their experiences and memories and explores the beauty, awe, and grandeur of the Earth against the blackness of space. This iconic image had a powerful impact on the astronauts and the world, offering a perspective that transcended national, political, and religious boundaries. Told 50 years later, Earthrise compels us to remember this shift and to reflect on the Earth as a shared home.
CONTRIBUTOR BIOS AND CREDITS
DIRECTOR:
Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee is an Emmy nominated filmmaker and composer. His award-winning films have been featured on PBS, National Geographic, the New York Times, the New Yorker, and the Atlantic, exhibited at the Smithsonian, and screened at festivals worldwide. He is the executive editor of Emergence Magazine.
CREDITS:
Directed by Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee Produced & Written by Adam Loften & Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee Edited by Adam Loften Cinematography by Adam Loften & Andrew David Watson Original music by H. Scott Salinas
This is the Lord of Waves and Water, often defined as the fiery aspect of water. As such, in many ways this card represents a contradiction. Most often when it appears, it will indicate an actual person who has influence. However sometimes it can also indicate a moodshift or a change of mode.
Since the Suit of Cups is all about love and loving relationships, it’s easy to see how the Knight can be regarded as the lover of the cards. When representing a moodshift, the card can indicate the period where a man falls in love.
When it represents a person he will be a complex and highly emotional being – creative and visionary, sensitive (and sometimes over-sensitive), romantic and intense. He will give the impression of being open and caring, though this is often misleading; the Knight of Cups is often subject to intense insecurity, needing constant re-assurance and attention.
He is attracted and attractive to women, and enjoys basking in their company. He will often be very charming, with a silver tongue and a powerful personal agenda. He will rarely manage practical matters well, tending to place rather more importance on buying two dozen red roses, than paying the bills. At his worst, he can be inconstant, unfaithful and selfish.
At his best, he is loving, generous with his emotions, supportive and tender. He can be capable of high levels of spiritual development, strong in intuition and warmly responsive. When he’s on form he is terrific company, having a good sense of humour and a keen interest in other people. He’s often an exciting and stimulating life partner and lover – but only at his best!
Tropical astrology is based on the movement of the Sun and the Moon.
In a solar year, we have 12 lunar cycles, and this is how we get the 12 archetypes, or the 12 signs. The Earth’s revolution around the Sun gives us the seasons, and these seasons color the expression of the 12 lunar cycles or the 12 signs.
We have 4 seasons; a new season begins when we have a solstice or an equinox. In fact, the most important astrological events in a year are the 2 equinoxes and the 2 solstices.
This is when the Sun changes direction, when something about the dynamic of day/night, light/darkness changes.
September 23rd, or the Libra Equinox, is one of these important turning points.
In the Southern Hemisphere the daylight begins to increase, while in the Northern hemisphere, it’s the night that begins to increase.
No matter which side of the Equator you live on, the Equinox requires a perspective shift.
The Sun either starts going up, or down. The direction changes. What used to be the governing principle is no longer the governing principle. What used to be day, becomes night. What used to be black, becomes white.
Libra’s glyph is an abstraction of the sunset (Sun set, the set of the Sun, or the set of the Ego). Libra is sign number 7. If the first 6 signs, Aries to Virgo, ask us to find who we are – to discover ourselves, as unique individuals – with Libra we enter a completely different dimension.
Who we are no longer matters.
In Libra, we realize that who we are is just half of the story, and that to become Whole, we need to integrate the Other.
Who is this “Other”?
OTHER can be a partner, but really anything that goes beyond the sense of Self, anything that goes beyond our direct control.
Libra And The Air Signs – It’s All About People
Just like all the other Air signs, Libra is concerned withpeople.
Gemini is those people who are brought about by circumstances (our family members, co-workers, people we bump into on public transportation etc.).
Aquarius is people we choose because we have something in common, because we share some common interest or ideal.
With Aquarius, we don’t have to have everything in common… and that’s precisely why Aquarius is the most inclusive, tolerant, accepting of other people’s differences sign out there.
Aquarius only cares about THAT THING that the group shares in common. The vision, the dream, the ideal. Whatever is not within the territory of the common ideal, is beyond Aquarius’ concern. It is Libra’s concern.
Libra is people we choose/choose us because we share something very important in common: our identity. Libra is the opposite of Aries. Aries=Ego=Who we are. Libra is the opposite of that.
It is everything we are not, but we could be; our polarity, the complementary expression of ourselves, the man/woman in the mirror.
When 2 people (in any type of one-on-one relationship) have this exchange at an identity level, wholeness is found.
This is a much more serious adjustment than that of Gemini or Aquarius, because it requires our full participation; this is quite a radical process. In the blink of a second, we are no longer who we used to be.
Libra Equinox – A Turning Point
The Libra ‘work’ is probably the most important work we will ever do in our lives. Of course, we still have Scorpio, Sagittarius and all the way to Pisces to learn from, to help us achieve our full potential.
But Libra is the “make or break” point. The ego either dies, or it doesn’t.
We either continue to live our life “like a virgin” or we take the plunge and step into the unknown – with the risk of losing (what we believe it is) our identity. The process requires curiosity and a genuine openness for the OTHER, for what makes them unique.
It’s interesting that Libra does not only rule our relationships but also conflicts and opponents. If you fight in court, that’s Libra energy in action too. Some of us struggle with relationships all our lives because being in a relationship feels like conflict, it feels like hard work.
Like any other archetypal integration, the “Libra stuff” can be hard work of course, but it doesn’t have to be.
If we do the “Libra stuff” in the “Libra way” i.e. leave the Ego at the front door, then there’s nothing more natural than finding wholeness within this continuous back-and-forth exchange process that is our one-on-one relationships.
Just like night follows day, just like summer follows winter, we too need the reflection of the opposite to find ourselves.
The Libra Equinox is that turning point. We are right here in the middle. We don’t know what’s on the other side. It’s a completely different world, governed by completely different principles.
Yet, this is an inevitable rite of passage and a journey that is totally worth exploring. We may not only find a sense of wholeness within ourselves, but also a sense of belonging to an even greater whole.
In philosophy of mind, qualia (/ˈkwɑːliə/ or /ˈkweɪliə/; singular form: quale) are defined as individual instances of subjective, conscious experience. The term qualia derives from the Latin neuter plural form (qualia) of the Latin adjective quālis (Latin pronunciation: [ˈkʷaːlɪs]) meaning “of what sort” or “of what kind” in a specific instance, such as “what it is like to taste a specific apple, this particular apple now”.
Examples of qualia include the perceived sensation of pain of a headache, the taste of wine, as well as the redness of an evening sky. As qualitative characters of sensation, qualia stand in contrast to “propositional attitudes“,[1] where the focus is on beliefs about experience rather than what it is directly like to be experiencing.
Philosopher and cognitive scientistDaniel Dennett once suggested that qualia was “an unfamiliar term for something that could not be more familiar to each of us: the ways things seem to us”.[2]
Much of the debate over their importance hinges on the definition of the term, and various philosophers emphasize or deny the existence of certain features of qualia. Consequently, the nature and existence of various definitions of qualia remain controversial. While some philosophers of mind like Daniel Dennett argue that qualia do not exist and are incompatible with neuroscience and naturalism,[3][4] some neurobiologists and neurologists like Gerald Edelman, Antonio Damasio and Rodolfo Llinás state that qualia exist and have causal efficacy.[5][6][7][8]
Poet and essayist Anne Carson — at the suggestion of her husband Robert Currie, whom she calls the “Randomizer” — enlivened a writing project by adding dancers to it. (Shutterstock)
Gemini, boost your creativity by considering quirky recommendations
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Aries author Steve Maraboli says, “The best way to love someone is not to change them, but instead, help them reveal the greatest version of themselves.” If that strategy appeals to you, the next eight weeks will be an excellent time to put it to maximum use. You’re entering a phase when you can have an especially beneficial effect on people you care for. You’ll be at peak power to help them unleash dormant potentials and access untapped resources.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): It’s a good time to ruminate about things you wish could be part of your life but aren’t. You will be wise to develop a more conscious relationship with wistful fantasies about impossible dreams. Here’s one reason why this is true: You might realize that some seemingly impossible dreams aren’t so impossible. To get in the mood for this fun exercise, meditate on a sample reverie: “I wish I could spend a whole day discovering new music to love. I wish I owned a horse and a boat and a vintage brown and orange striped bohemian cardigan sweater from the 1970s. I wish I knew the names of all the flowers. I wish I felt more at ease about revealing my hidden beauty. I wish I could figure out how to eliminate unnecessary stress from my life.”
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Poet, essayist, and translator Anne Carson calls her husband Robert Currie the “Randomizer.” His role in her life as a creative artist is to make quirky recommendations that help her avoid being too predictable. He sends her off in directions she wouldn’t have imagined by herself. Here’s an example: At one point in her career, Carson confessed she was bored with her writing. The Randomizer suggested, “Let’s put dancers into it.” In response, she repurposed the sonnets she had been working on into a live theatrical performance featuring many dancers. I think you would benefit from having a Randomizer in your life during the coming weeks. Know anyone who could serve? If not, look for one. Or be your own Randomizer.
CANCER (June 21-July 22): If you so desired, you could travel to Munich, Germany and eat beer-flavored ice cream. Or you could go to Rehoboth, Delaware and get bacon-flavored ice cream. If you were in Taiwan, you could enjoy pineapple shrimp ice cream, and if you were in London, you could sample haggis-flavored ice cream, made from sheep innards. But my advice right now is to stick with old reliables like chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry ice cream — which are still delicious even if they’re not exotic. What’s my reasoning? In general, the astrological aspects suggest that during the coming weeks, you’re most likely to thrive on trustworthy standbys and experiences you know and trust.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Celebrated novelist Jane Austen (1775–1817) wrote, “Sometimes I have kept my feelings to myself, because I could find no language to describe them in.” People who aren’t as articulate as Austen experience that problem even more often than she did. But the good news, Leo, is that in the coming weeks, you’ll be extra skillful at expressing your feelings and thoughts—even those that in the past have been difficult to put into words. I invite you to take maximum advantage of this grace period. Communicate with hearty poise and gleeful abandon.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): “When you know what’s important, it’s a lot easier to ignore what’s not,” writes author and life coach Marie Forleo. Let’s make her thought the basis of your work and play in the coming weeks. Get vibrantly clear on what is of supreme value to you, which influences bring out the best in you, and which people make it easy for you to be yourself. Then compose a second list of trivial situations that are of minor interest, influences that make you feel numb, and people who don’t fully appreciate you. Next, Virgo, formulate long-term plans to phase out the things in the second list as you increasingly emphasize your involvement in the pleasures named in the first list.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Happy Birthday sometime soon, Libra! As gifts, I have collected six useful mini-oracles for you to meditate on during the rest of 2021. They’re all authored by Libran aphorist Yahia Lababidi. 1. Hope is more patient than despair and so outlasts it. 2. Miracles are proud creatures; they will not reveal themselves to those who do not believe. 3. A good listener is one who helps us overhear ourselves. 4. One definition of success might be refining our appetites, while deepening our hunger. 5. With enigmatic clarity, life gives us a different answer each time we ask her the same question. 6. Temptation: seeds we are forbidden to water, that are showered with rain.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Pioneering psychologist Carl Jung wrote, “I must also have a dark side if I am to be whole.” But it’s important to add that some dark sides tend to be destructive and demoralizing, while other dark sides are fertile and interesting. Most of us have a share of each. My reading of the planetary omens suggests that you Scorpios now have extra power to upgrade your relationship with the fertile and interesting aspects of your dark side. I hope you will take advantage! You have a ripe opportunity to deepen and expand your wholeness.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Sagittarian poet Rainer Maria Rilke was a complicated person with many mysterious emotions and convoluted thoughts. And yet, he once wrote that life occasionally brought him “boundless simplicity and joy.” I find it amazing he could ever welcome such a state. Kudos to him! How about you, dear Sagittarius? Are you capable of recognizing when boundless simplicity and joy are hovering in your vicinity, ready for you to seize them? If so, be extra alert in the next two weeks. I expect there’ll be a visitation or two. Maybe even three or four.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Baltasar Gracián was not a 21st-century New Age self-help teacher. He was a 17th-century Jesuit philosopher born under the sign of serious, diligent Capricorn. I hope you will be extra receptive to his advice in the coming weeks. He wrote, “Know your key qualities, your outstanding gifts. Cultivate them. Redouble their use.” Among the key qualities he gave as examples were disciplined discernment and resilient courage. I bring his thoughts to your attention because the coming weeks will be a rousing time to heed his counsel. It’s time for you to identify and celebrate and give abundant expression to your key qualities.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): After studying the genes that create feathers in birds, scientists found that humans have all the necessary genes to grow feathers. (I read about it in National Geographic magazine.) So why don’t we grow feathers, then? Well, it’s complicated. Basically, the feather-making genes are not fully activated. Who knows? Maybe someday, there’ll be technology that enables us to switch on those genes and sprout plumage. I bet my Aquarian friend Jessie, whose body has 30 tattoos and 17 piercings, would take advantage. In the coming weeks, it might be fun for you to imagine having bird-like qualities. You’re entering a high-flying phase—a time for ascension, expansion, soaring, and seeing the big picture from lofty vantage points.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Are there sensual and erotic acts you’ve never tried and are curious about? Are there experimental approaches on the frontier of your desires that would be intriguing to consider? Might there be lusty experiences you’ve barely imagined or don’t know about—but that could be fun to play with? According to my analysis of the astrological omens, the coming weeks will be a favorable time to explore such possibilities. Be safe and prudent, of course. Don’t be irresponsible or careless. But also be willing to expand your notions of your sexuality.
Homework: It’s time for Brag Therapy. Send me your proud and shiny boasts. Newsletter: FreeWillAstrology.com.
Like the Vernal Equinox, this celebration occurs at a point of pivot. With days and nights of equal lengths, there is a particular stillness which encourages contemplation of the summer now dying, and the long night ahead. Whilst we give deep thanks for the harvest resting in our store-houses, we are starkly aware of what lies before us.
Mabon roughly translates to “Bright Blessings”, erected almost like a shield against the encroaching darkness. Another of the titles belonging to this festival is that of “Harvest of the Wine” – this because grapes are traditionally gathered and trodden at this time of year.
No wonder you invest a lot of effort into the heartfelt thanksgivings you offer to your gods, beseeching Their blessing and nourishment through the cold months ahead. No wonder you lay out a representation of your harvest as an acknowledgement of Their bounty. No wonder you watch the skies anxiously, assiduously check over your food stores, determinedly push yourself on to find that last berry on the coldest day.
Our Autumnal follows this theme of celebration and thanksgiving. But we also see it as a time of challenge, where we turn to meet the darkness, and assess what we have achieved in the year behind us – gathering our personal harvest, if you will. We see this day as a “call to arms” of sorts. Evil moves easily in darkness, but therein reside the miracles of the darker Goddesses too. Not all the denizens of the dark are to be feared – though all are to be respected.
The seerwork from this ceremony is regarded as an “instruction manual” to get us through to Lights, and often contains some profound warnings and observations. We weigh our own contribution since last we came to the Autumnal, attempting to gauge what we have contributed. This is important for us, for it prepares us for another festival later in the year where we assess the overall function of the entire group throughout the year and, hopefully, discover that we have given more than we took.
There is a point in the ceremony where each of us is given time to silently call upon the High Powers for a personal symbol which encapsulates the contribution we can each make over the next few months. None of us speak of this symbol until we reach the Vernal in the following year. At that point we do our best to make sense of how each of us was able to enact what we saw or felt.
Our altar shares many similarities to a Christian Harvest Festival display. It literally groans with food, grains, nuts, fruit and berries. There is always a fresh baked loaf, along with sprays of golden Autumn leaves, and we tend to tuck in enthusiastically literally as soon as the circle is closed. Reports from this ceremony tend to be somewhat muffled, due to the many full mouths. The altar is also scattered with ornaments which reflect the light of the many candles carefully placed amid the bounty.
For me, the Autumnal is a contradictory ceremony in many ways. It is, on the one hand, a joyous and noisy triumphal celebration of bounty and growth; but it is also a sad goodbye to warmth and light. I am sharply aware that there may well be trials ahead…..but my skin is still warmed by a sun at its zenith.
We move now into a period of reflectiveness and mystery. The ceremonies ahead until, again, we reach the brightness of Lights, have a certain echoing and distant quality. They are “serious”…though the Winter Solstice does have a particular glitter that comes as a welcome nod to light in the darkest days.
Also bittersweet here is the fact that both the God and the Goddess are close by our sides. We walk with them, one on either side, into the most demanding time of the year. And with Their blessing we shall emerge, joyous, with the snowdrops.
Here are Graham’s thoughts:
The Autumnal Equinox marks the mid-point of the sun as it moves across the horizon from Summer Solstice to Winter Solstice. This means that the festival usually falls around the 20th to the 22nd of September. Astrologically, this happens when the Sun enters Libra.
This day is also known as Harvest Home and would have roughly marked the end of the grain or cereal harvest. The actual date would have varied from year to year with the climate and the crop. Today’s traditional Christian harvest festivals provide a good template for the celebration – collect in all the harvest and food, arrange it nicely and bless it. The harvest aspects are overlaid with a real sense of gathering in, and making ready for the Autumnal storms. It’s a good time to go around the house or farm-stead, make repairs, and carry out maintenance.
Much as Lammas had ritual and tradition around the cutting of the first sheaf, so the Autumnal Equinox has similar symbols with regard to the cutting of the final sheaf. At this time of year, corn-dollies would be made. This is vitally important, because they represent the spirit of the corn. Essentially, the dollies are keeping this spirit alive until ploughing and sowing when the whole process will start again. They are the spiritual equivalent of saving the seed to plant next year. As a way to motivate everyone to bring the harvest in before the Winter set in, a great deal of importance would have been placed on being the first farm in an area to bring in the harvest, so this kind of symbolism has become attached to the Autumnal Equinox.
Whereas some festivals appear to be mainly God or Goddess based, the Autumnal is more balanced. The Queen of the Corn is symbolised in a corn dolly, but the spirit can also be seen as a male figure at the same time, in British folklore called John Barleycorn. The traditional folk-songs describe how John Barleycorn must be cut down, and often list the ways he is mistreated – beaten, ground, cooked and eaten. This actually illustrates the process of cutting the corn, then winnowing, grinding, and baking it into bread. Whereas some festivals appear to be mainly God or Goddess based, the Autumnal is more balanced, featuring both in equal measure.
Like the Vernal, the Autumnal a contradictory day. It is both a still point, where day and night hang in balance, and a dynamic day of forward motion. At this time of year the sunset or sunrise is moving at its fastest across the horizon while day and night are of equal length. This is also the middle of the waning year – after this point, the nights become longer than the days. So there is a real sense that the dark half of the year is accelerating.
As well as the end of the corn harvest, this time of year is heavily associated with the harvest of fruits and berries. The very practical activities of making pickles, jams, chutneys and other preserves have a direct parallel in terms of the energies of this day. This is a time for gathering in the energy, making it real, manifesting results. And, when that has been done, it is a day for storing up that bounty and preserving it so that it can last into the months ahead.
The colours and symbols we use at Autumnal are in some ways similar to Lammas. Corn is important, so corn yellow is one colour. But to differentiate it from the earlier festival we also use dark russet browns, reds and greens – the really classic Autumnal colours. And, together with corn arrangements, more berries and leaves come into our flowers at this time of year. Another important symbol is the cornucopia. There are many ways this can be represented, from an actual horn of plenty , to a picture or even an edible one. I’ve seen a recipe using bread dough in strips to make a cornucopia that you fill with fruit as an edible table centre-piece.
One of our favourite dishes to cook on this day is named Free Crumble. We are lucky enough to get apples from friends with trees. (Most people with apple trees have more fruit than they know what to do with at this time of year.) We cook this into a crumble with blackberries and elderberries, both of which are widely available by foraging in the UK.(Elderberries can give you a tummy upset if you eat a lot without cooking them, but in a crumble they’re fine). Another idea, to provide an echo back to the Vernal, is to cook lamb on this day. Spring born animals will be properly grown and matured and won’t have to be flown in from New Zealand.
So, this is a festival of balance combined with movement. It marks the time when nights are longer than the days, and ushers in autumn. A time to gather in your resources and give thanks for the bounty of the Goddess.
