A beautifully articulated account of the qualities (astrological and elemental) of soulful spirituality, with water as a central image, from 'Elemental Spirituality' by Brad Kochunas in The Mountain Astrologer, #136, Dec./Jan. 2008
I wish to offer for consideration the possibility of an underground stream of spirituality that has been poorly articulated and frequently overlooked. This approach, like water, moves downward toward the lowlands, the lonesome valley, the shaded glade, the dark wood, the shadowed path, the vale of tears. This is a perspective viewed through water and earth imagery that our spiritual traditions have often ignored. It carries more languid, meandering, sinking, and brooding images. In contrast to the spirited yang experience, there is a more pronounced soulful, yin quality to the shape of this perspective. Neptune, in its natural relationship to the sovereigns of earth and water (the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Saturn, and Pluto), reflects a harmony of purpose and a willingness to descend to the dark abyss. The relations suggest a more soulful spirituality reflecting attachment, humility, sensuousness, patience, realism, depth, and embodied life.
Often this path begins at a point of personal failure or catastrophe, when we no longer measure up to the fire and air values so infused in our Western culture, and we have given up the challenge of the spiritual climb. It has been characterized as the dark night of the soul in Christian mysticism and the night sea journey into myth....In this plunge away from our well-ordered, well-lit, and well-controlled lives, we are open to the world, made vulnerable, wounded, and inferior - no longer rising and floating but, rather, falling and sinking deeper into the solitude of our being and the flow of life.
.... we ignore the invisibles of repressed and forgotten water and earth at great peril....A true materialist loves the material world and is a disciple of earth and water, cherishing the things of the world, repairing not despairing, recognizing the sacredness of a living Cosmos. In this sense, then, it seems prudent to affirm a more soulful spirituality, one that walks in the vale, allowing us to see the necessity of tears and sorrow, to embrace the loam of mortality, and to esteem the treasures of darkness. When our spirituality no longer promises paradise but plants us firmly in the present, and our astrology no longer predicts the future but immerses us fully in the moment, then our lives, in tune now with the rhythms of soil and sea, may truly blossom.
For more on the challenges of Neptune, see also the poem Neptune has a Heart by Sulis (Sara Firman)Often this path begins at a point of personal failure or catastrophe, when we no longer measure up to the fire and air values so infused in our Western culture, and we have given up the challenge of the spiritual climb. It has been characterized as the dark night of the soul in Christian mysticism and the night sea journey into myth....In this plunge away from our well-ordered, well-lit, and well-controlled lives, we are open to the world, made vulnerable, wounded, and inferior - no longer rising and floating but, rather, falling and sinking deeper into the solitude of our being and the flow of life.
.... we ignore the invisibles of repressed and forgotten water and earth at great peril....A true materialist loves the material world and is a disciple of earth and water, cherishing the things of the world, repairing not despairing, recognizing the sacredness of a living Cosmos. In this sense, then, it seems prudent to affirm a more soulful spirituality, one that walks in the vale, allowing us to see the necessity of tears and sorrow, to embrace the loam of mortality, and to esteem the treasures of darkness. When our spirituality no longer promises paradise but plants us firmly in the present, and our astrology no longer predicts the future but immerses us fully in the moment, then our lives, in tune now with the rhythms of soil and sea, may truly blossom.
