In many traditions, this last full week of November draws to a close the season of honoring loved ones who have died, and now ceremonial tradition turns toward the celebration of light that comes at the darkest time of year with Winter Solstice, next month.
The harvest has been brought in, and now is the time when we truly reap what we have sown. The seed of the new year, the forces for what’s next, begin to be loosed at this time, from the shell of the year now ending.
So it stands to reason that this is also the season for ceremonies of gratitude, for love and friendship, for health and abundance, for truth and goodness and beauty.
When we look in the sky this week, we find Jupiter and Saturn inching closer and closer to one another in the southwest, while the red warrior Mars stands alone, higher up among the stars of Pisces.
Venus stands at the doorway of dawn, our brilliant morning star, just east of Spica. Spica is the star of abundance in the constellation Virgo, which set in the West when the first harvest was coming in earlier in the season, and now begins to rise in the East, just as we cast off the old shell and prepare for the new.
With the goddess of love and beauty near the star of abundance, and the two of them poised at the gateway of dawn, it brings to mind the work of William Blake, from the 19th century, who painted scenes from the Old Testament, including the moment when God asks Job where was he when the foundations of the Earth were laid, and all the morning stars sang together?
William Blake was born over 260 years ago this week, and he wrote: “In the universe, there are things that are known, and things that are unknown, and in between, there are doors.”