Guadalupe and Sacredness of 12.12

There are spiritual teachings that tell us the Universe is created, sustained and dissolved on a single divine breath cycle. That creative, sustaining and dissolving power is mirrored in our own natural breath cycle of inhalation and exhalation, and the natural pauses in between. 

The soul is another natural phenomenon and expression of divine creativity. It also adheres to these natural processes of creation and dissolution, taking in, and letting go.  The cosmic play of our spiritual path unfolds like breathwork for the soul, inviting us to release, receive, and renew (and repeat).

Soul Making Requires Darkness and Light

Contrasting experiences will unfold in your soul, some feel light, other elements lead to a darker place within. Whatever is occurring in your own soul is what needs to happen at this time.

Allowing yourself to truly feel it and experience can help you access the most clarity and grace for resolution. Just as the flow of breath is natural and has its own rhythm, the process of healing resolution does not need to be rushed or forced. The soul can breathe in, taking in what is needed, and ‘spiritually exhale’ to release deeply at its own natural pace.

The Gemini Full Moon shines towards the end of each year. It is a reminder that nature knows how to disperse energies. Gemini is mutable air, the most relaxed expression of that element in its favoured state. Movement is natural for Gemini. The planetary ruler of the sign is Mercury, the ever-moving messenger between humanity and the spiritual dimensions. Gemini and Mercury relate to the nervous systems and the lungs, the flow of breath, the shoulders, arms and hands. Lungs and arms take in and let go. 

Whether it is a Gemini moon, or not, there will be times when you know you need to move stagnant energies, releasing and creating space to allow the soul to take in something new. There is a time to allow for processing, for playing things out, for letting what needs to arise, to do so, and then recede like a wave. Moving meditation with gentle arm movements can support this practice under the playful light of the full moon. Gemini is social. You may want to groove your grace in a group!  If you prefer to play solo for a soul session, then you can connect with supportive spiritual energies for your practice instead, perhaps connecting to the beauty of the divine feminine, so that you feel you are dancing with the breath of the earth flowing through your body.

Madonna of Guadalupe 12.12 

The feast day of the Madonna of Guadalupe falls on 12.12. The numerology of 12 is potent. It is the numerical code for stages and completion, rather like the cycles of breath. Think of 12 hours in a day, 12 months in a year, the 12 signs and houses of the zodiac. The 12 vibration allows us to make meaningful division to empower a meaningful journey towards understanding and experiencing of the whole. Compartmentalising can become fragmenting to the soul, yet we also need to be able to break tasks down – including the challenges of our soul journey – into pieces that we can manage.  The 12 frequency allows for big picture and daily details to become integrated. It supports fulfilment through step-by-step action, which prevents overwhelm and promotes fruition, allowing each one of us to take our (literal and symbolic) journey of a lifetime.

In Tarot, 12 is allocated to the Hanged Man in the Major Arcana. It’s a fascinating card. Some relate it to the Norse God Odin, suspended upside down, in deep trance in order to receive the wisdom of the Runes. There is that sacred masculine energy again – this time in the strength to sacrifice one thing (such as comfort) for another greater thing (such as wisdom). 

The 12 frequency has this sense of suspense and suspension at a soul level, similar to the Hanged Man card. It is both the journey and the promise of something truly worthwhile emerging from it. The 12 vibration is the spiritual communication that we are on our path and making progress, and that happens through embracing our process. 

In the Tarot, the Hanged Man card falls after card 11 in the Major Arcana, which is typically the Justice card, which can indicate soul reckoning with karmic seeds, and before card 13 in the Major Arcana, the Death card, which indicates final release. The Hanged Man, and the number 12, represent the powerful earthly soul journey through time and space which we experience as our human lifetime. It occurs after we plant the seed, and before we reach culmination and ending of a cycle, to begin again.

So what does that have to do with Our Lady of Guadalupe? This is a much beloved emanation of Mother Mary. I love Our Lady so much I wrote an entire course, Rosa Mystica, dedicated to her numerous emanations, expressed as mystical roses of many colours. Pink and green are the colours associated with the heart chakra. Our Lady of Guadalupe wears green robes and in our Mother Mary program, she is represented by the mystical pink rose. She is the heart chakra which is usually depicted as green in colour She is the growth and expansion of the green colour frequency. 

Pink represents unconditional love, but it is also an integration of white and red, and so includes the vibrational medicines of those colours. White relates to spiritual purity and soul cleansing. Red emanates the qualities of divine protection through attracting situations and opportunities that serve, and subjugating potentially negative or undermining forces. In short, Our Lady of Guadalupe, protects and empowers the heart and soul, so that our earthly journey through karma, sacrifice and spiritual liberation – represented by the 12 – is divinely guided and our sacred fruition of innate divine purpose is assured.

We must do our part, but Our Lady in this form particularly, reminds us that the divine will do whatever heavy lifting is required. Guadalupe’s chosen messenger was an indigenous Mexican man with little political power. She directed him to approach a powerful religious leader and tell him to build a shrine in her name. Seen in context (even seen in modern context) the task seemed frightening and impossible. Mother Mary demanded that he trust her as his mother, and if he took the steps, she would ensure the outcome. But he had to trust her in order to take the steps! 

“Grappling with trust issues and learning how to act with spiritual confidence is part of the journey to allowing Mother Mary into our hearts. She nurtures, but she is very strong and she expects us to honour our capabilities. The tricky bit is that often she recognises those capabilities in us before we do. Hence the need to trust her.”

The genius, power and grace of the spiritual dimensions is available to all willing hearts. If the form of Mother Mary does not resonate for you, there are many other divine forms that you can connect with. In Saraswati Healing Foundations, we connect with 54 different forms of divinity, for example, whilst recognising they are all forms of the one divine source. Tara as a goddess in her own right is celebrated in 21 forms in a Tibetan prayer that many locals learn as children. Spiritual teachings about Tara hold that she will assume any form that will suit the situation at hand. All forms of the divine are like sacred lamps shining the same source of light. Whether you like fairy lights or lighthouses or candles, the divine light will manifest in a form that enchants your heart. You just need to look for it. 

Many forms exist in order to provide every heart with the greatest chance of accessing spiritual light. It is my experience that love is not constrained by doctrine of any kind, and a heart desiring connection with Mother Mary will be warmly answered and supported, regardless of religion, culture, or upbringing.

We can honour this beautiful tenderness of the spiritual dimensions on this 12.12 feast celebrating the Divine Mother’s love and protection, whether she resonates for your heart in the form of Mother Mary, or Our Lady Isis, or Divine Mother Kali, or perhaps Kuan Yin, Christ or Freya, or all of these, or something else entirely. You can do so with a prayer, a simple offering of love from your heart, imagining it as golden light shining in all dimensions, and all directions for the benefit of all beings in need.

Capricorn Solstice

The Capricorn solstice falls around 22 December every year.Solstice marks the tipping point, into greater light in the North, and towards greater night in the Southern Hemisphere. Regardless of which direction the seasons are taking, the solstice shift is universal for humanity. 

Growth is not linear, and ascension or raising of one’s frequency is not actually about traversing a hierarchy of consciousness. Healing into spiritual awakening is an experience, an expression, which organically and spontaneously unfolds when our human self hears and heeds our innate guiding heart wisdom and soul intelligence. This is why the notion of being ‘above others’ as you mature spiritually is nothing more than an attempted ego-hijacking of your spirituality, turning it into an identity. Be wary of any claim to spirituality that is flavoured with even a hint of arrogance, dear ones. Protect your heart with the divine mother’s love, and you will remember the purity of your path, your personhood and your purpose.

The December solstice is a powerful time, heralding the forthcoming close of the year, and with the ending of a cycle, a time for reflection, perhaps also repair and rejuvenation, is upon us. Social activity can reach a peak during this time. It is important to balance this with the more natural urgings of the soul to nourish and nurture, in whatever ways resonate for you. Capricorn is earth energy and leadership. It can be masterful at setting boundaries and not taking any nonsense (though also, when the defences are lowered, capable of being extremely funny!).

The empty cup that I mentioned at the beginning of this blog is not about being eternally depleted. It is about being able to let go gracefully. To empty out is to discharge and dissolve, and sometimes the absence of caring patterns in our own responses to our needs is one of the stubborn sediments in the cup that we can begin to clear away with more conscious self-love.

Rose Wisdom

Our Rosa Mystica, or mystical rose, is one of the sacred names of Mother Mary. Roses are symbolically associated with the divine feminine, with the goddess Isis, and Our Lady Madonna Mother Mary, as well as Venus. 

Roses are extraordinary plants. The beauty of the blossom, and the perfume, and the divine symbolism of love in its numerous forms, as well as the strength of the thorns of protection, which expresses the unconditional divine love of the Cosmic Christ symbolised in Jesus’ crown of thorns at his crucifixion. The rose is an earthly communication of divinity. Suffering is also part of the divine journey, mysterious as it is. Without the break there is no need for repair or of healing. 

However we have to take care that we orient ourselves wisely towards suffering. If we obsess about it, we can deplete our energies. If we deny it, we lose our wisdom and our compassion. If we identify with it, we become victims of circumstance. If we pretend we can completely transcend it, we become victims of hubris (and take a page out of Icarus’ mythology teaching, it won’t end well because what goes up must come down!). The right attitude towards suffering has to be the one that resonates in our hearts – increases our compassion and our spiritual energy to do something meaningful with this gift of our lives. Without that tempered, thoughtful presence we can unintentionally desecrate the sacred. The Black Madonnas around the world, including the many forms of Mother Mary and the black skinned goddesses Kali and Tara are the forms of the divine feminine that resonate most with transforming suffering into soul healing. There is no avoidance, there is no getting stuck (well at least not for too long). There is just moving through it and learning. 

Destruction of the sacred, of divine presence can occur literally when sacred places or sacred beings – such as the soul – are forced to be something they are not. Bombardment however can also occur through the stress in us or our lives that rises to the point of overwhelm. Every bombardment, indeed every war, begins within. The internal will either be resolved or projected externally until it can be inwardly processed and released.

The soul teaches us how to heal disrespect of the sacred so we can foster growth, repairing and restoring reverence and sanctity of being, through healing.  It can take time however. Shock, sadness, despair, anger, a desire for revenge and so on are often part of what needs to be processed for healing to occur.

There is tremendous hope in the capacity of the sacred to survive and rise up again and again in human culture and experience. There is enough spirituality, sacredness, beauty, grace and divine mother-ness to support the repair. All is not lost. There is more resilience and grace than there is destruction or we quite simply wouldn’t exist. So there is spiritual strength to work from. The sacred space still stands and if we know how to look within to find it, we will realise this for ourselves. When we have the courage to confront something that is broken, especially if we are doing deep work and it feels as though our heart and soul is what has been broken, knowing that there is plenty which is intact and strong can support us in letting go gracefully and beginning the delicate work of repair.

At 12.12 and at any time you feel a desire to connect with the heart and heal your soul, to experience the sacred, or even to learn what that could be in a new way, you are feeling the pull of the divine feminine in your own soul. Listen! She is wise and she loves you without condition.

So much love always dear ones. It is my deep honour to share this space with you.

Our Community of the Sacred is a warm and wonderful group of humans devoted to healing and liberation of self and planet. 

Gratitude for art by Shiloh Sophia from Alana’s Mother Mary Oracle