The Turning Point

-The Age Returns– Motto of Lorenzo da Medici

-Time is a circle; everything recurs–Friedrich Nietzsche

-What Goes Around Comes Around–Motto of the Hell’s Angels

I began my book THE MAGIC CIRCLE with the three quotations above.

Esoteric poets–from TS Eliot to the great Sufi master, Jalal al-Din Rumi–have written about the “Still Point of the Turning World”–the ancient Turning Point, each year, that is is relived by all of us around the world: tonight, Summer Solstice, when the sun seems to pause in the sky and the days begin to grow shorter. In ancient Greece, this is the night when the sun god Apollo departed to begin his long journey to the southern hemisphere. Apollo’s job was to provide solar energy, warmth, growth and beneficence in the first part of the year. His darker brother, Dionysus, stepped in to rule the great center of the Delphic Oracle over the next six months of progressively waning light. Dionysus prepares us for the future, he teaches us to genuflect–to “bend the knee”–to stay flexible like a surfer or a skier, regardless what may come–to ride the tidal wave of change.

Here is a letter from a reader that I received a few months ago, in April of this year:

I just finished reading THE MAGIC CIRCLE. Seems you’re a bit of a prophetess. Found this passage on page 296 of the Ballantine paperback…

“From the beginning, the image of this age has been rather like that of a deluge. Not a flood such as Noah experienced in Genesis, where the earth was drowned in waters from the heavens as punishment for mankind’s sins. Instead, this will be a time of unexpected, volatile upheaval in the fabric of the entire social order. The liquid the water-bearer pours out is seen as a gigantic tidal wave of liberation: the waters of the earth will rise, gushing wellsprings of freedom unleashed against all bond of tyranny – at least for those seeking such liberation. It seems no accident, therefore, that Uranus, the planetary ruler of this coming age, was discovered at the dawn of the French Revolution. According to the ancients, our coming age will be ushered in by unchecked waters gushing forth. Those who build dams to hold it back, who construct walls to resist change, who are repressive, inflexible, unaccepting – those who wish to turn back the clocks to return to a golden era that never existed – will themselves be destroyed by this tidal wave of transformation. Only those who learn to dance atop the waters will survive.”

Midsummer Night’s Dream: Saint John the Baptist

The end of the ancient Solstice celebration was the night of June 23-24 — Midsummer Night, also St John the Baptist’s feast day in the Church calendar (and one of two major Freemason dates of interest.)The Greek god Dionysus was a wild figure who ate locusts and honey, drank wine, and bathed in mountain streams. On Midsummer Eve, throughout the ancient Greece world, fires were lit by torches in high places to mark the departure of the sun. And on this night, Dionysus got women drunk and set them running about on mountaintops, reveling with young shepherd boys. As late as Shakespeare’s day, this was the celebrated night when the “poet, the lover and the madman”–not to mention the drunkard–got lost in the same forest filled with hallucination and imagination. The ancient message: This night is the turning point, when we can let our hair down, step into the current, go with the flow.

HAPPY SOLSTICE! MERRY MIDSUMMER TO ALL!

New Books have arrived at last! Contests and giveaways will begin with my July 4th Newsletter!