With the Moon’s south node on the fixed star Algol in tropical Taurus the time comes to redress the Medusa myth and shed the Gorgon of her terrible stigma……

…..the shedding of skins is a power of the serpent, a renewal and symbolic rebirth in which all that is outlived that has clothed our being is jetisoned from the vital body that lives within. The south node carries this process forward as an in-forming essential function of soul growth. Only that which allows us full expression of our true nature, the natural expression of our vital incarnate life-force, can serve us on this path – ancestral roots can flourish through us when the detritus of the past is shed and we are free to follow the primal intelligence of our spiritual energy in its lightning path of realisation. The nodes show us where this force is directed, the south node where the old skin of previous existances prior to and within this lifetime can be ejected, and the north node where the soul will find its most powerful and empowering expression in this life that will take us beyond the limitations of incarnation and help us to grow into our journey – it is a revolutionary path that, regardless the amount of attention we give to it, will directly impact the very stuff of our lives and, in this, we are all equal.

If there is freedom in this it is of a kind that connects us with the un-formed, the unbounded potential that is available to us all – it is the gift of our direct connection with ‘great mystery’. Following the souls trajectory is both a reclamation and remembering process, and bring us back to the motherlode of all Life, fulfilled, renewed and poised to elect a return on the next stage of our journey, should we choose such a path. It is an ecology of the soul in which the sponsorship of the ancestors plays a vital grounding role, and the degree to which we are able and willing to work with the south nodal end of the process in no short measure affects the degree to which their sponsorship becomes truly effective in our life. The unshed burdens of the past we carry are no less a hindrence to their vitality than they are to ours…..

…..in our times we have come face to face with the consequences of carrying these burdens forward while both disregarding them and adding to them, very much two sides of the same coin. The effect, as well as the root cause of this accumulative process, can be symbolised in the stigmatisation of the primal feminine, the Great Mother. She, whose raw cthonic power has in many myths been portrayed as the threatening dragon or evil serpent, has suffered a collective dissociation that has arisen through a prolonged rejection of the solar hero’s own shadow. The dragon is slain rather than re-integrated, let alone understood, as a result. Not only has She become the object of this rejection, its own antithetical qualities having become projected onto her body, image and archetype, and in the process the solar hero himself has become cut off from Her. We find this reflected back to us in the Medusa myth and Algol is the star associated with her. In the ancient tale of Perseus and Medusa a much deeper root is submerged and hidden, its symbols and their meanings distorted and inverted to favour the Hero and, in the process, serve the partial truth behind his actions. In severing the Medusas head with its writhing hydra like hair of serpents He not only claims Her power for the solar born goddess Athena, thus symbolically shedding himself of the responsibility of facing his own denied relationship with the innate power of the Great Mother in favour of her solarised reflection, he consigns her power itself to the shadow role – Athena carries the Medusas head as a defence against infringement of the sacred laws she presides over. These are primarily the ‘civilised’ laws of a world in which the anthropomorphised divinity is seen as carrying the ethical and moral responsibility of ‘governence’, starkly opposing the ‘uncivilised’ primal, natural, and ultimately all encompassing laws of Nature, most deeply embodied in the Great Mother. She became the Gorgon whose powers were to be overcome and cut off at the root…..we live within the aftermath of this divine archetypal schism.

…..resisting the reality of our past, not being able to look it in the face, will turn our own lives to stone and bring everything to a grinding halt…..

…..but, the reality of the hero’s act is that it is paradoxically a crude attempt to reclaim and re-integrate Her power. It fails because it does not honour Her, the now darkened aspect of the Great Mother, but instead, by objectifying it, cutting it off from the vital body that feeds it, that gives it reality and life force, He makes it ‘other’, a blatant if unconscious act of dissociation rather than integration. Dismembering an archetype however does not kill it off; it remains active in fragmented and diverse forms and continues, alive within all that lives. The hero’s acts, his very quest and attempt at self-fulfilment is, by its own nature, framed with denial, but, this is not beyond the scope of healing, even so late in the day for us. If, as the underlying resonance of the myth suggests and the south node empowers us to do, we face up to the stigmatised wounds, shed our prejudices and the old conditioning around them, and can come to a place within ourselves where we can accept Her and once more allow Her to integrate within Life, then a miraculous thing occurs – we discover that She is the bringer of Life, alive within the vital body of Life, and She has ever been thus, ever present with us, infact, the hero is rebirthed out of Her very substance, transfigured and sponsored with a renewed and meaningful purpose, one that allows the soul to find its own truth, vigour and joy in life….both collectively, for each of us and our home planet this augurs a time of great redemptive value – this is Her time.