Equinox, Easter, & Ecliipses: The Sexual Resurrection of Time Cycles

Copy of letter sent to elist, for those who preer to browse only.

Inside Chi Flows Naturally:

1. Essay on tapping the hidden sexual forces in the Spring
Equinox and eclipses.

2. Equinox Event at my Asheville, N.C. home Tuesday March 21.
Email for directions (winn@healingdao.com).
5-6 pm Shake out winter with hot tea, hang out in our
Crystal Stone Circle.
6-7:30 pm: Qigong & Meditation as Equinox ceremony.
7:30 – 9 pm: Potluck dinner & creative play. May
continue later….
Can’t make it? Send your Energy Body, or host your own
local event!

3. Plan your summer retreat now. Visit http://www.HealingTaoRetreats.com
Choose from 30 low-cost, high-energy, great Tao retreats.
Get a free $45. DVD by registering early – only requires
a $100. deposit.

4. Still room in Fusion workshop March 25-26; China Dream
Trip is full.

Dear Lovers of Spring-is-here-at-last,

Religions around the world observe Holy Days in March and
April linked in some way to the spring or vernal equinox
when day and night are equal. The ancient Taoists celebrated
this as a moment of cosmic natural balance between the
forces of yin (dark) and yang (light). As I have described
in my articles on Taoist sexology, yin-yang describes a
sexual coupling of cosmic creative forces that we
microcosmically re-enact as female-male.

When these cosmic yin-yang forces are in equilibrium, in the
Tao tradition of inner alchemy a portal opens in which a
third force arises, the primordial or Original Breath as an
expression of the clear light of the Original Spirit. This
is a kind of neutral divine force that precedes and births
the tai chi movement of yin-yang. The purpose of inner
alchemy is to “resurrect” that clear light or non-dual
consciousness within an immortal spiritual body. Such an
immortal being functions to harmonize humanity between the
realms of Earth/form and Heaven/formless, which are engaged
in their own eternal sexual dance of creation into form, and
dissolution into the formless.

In most myths Spring is the time of victory of a god of
light (or life, rebirth, resurrection of form/body) over the
powers of darkness (death and dissolution into formless).
Many ancient cultures – preceding Christianity – describe
the descent of a goddess or god into the underworld for a
period of three days. This is such a popular theme among
religions that mythologists refer to it as “the harrowing of
Hell.”

Last year at this time I was teaching in italy, and
afterwards visited the site of Cybele near Naples.This was
an ancient oracle similar to Delphi in Greece. It was
located at the end of a long deep cave, and there was a very
strong earth energy there. Cybele is thought by some
scholars to have been the origin (about 250 b.c.) of later
Christian stories of Easter. Cybele was a Phrygian fertility
goddess, whose consort Attis was believed to have been born
via a virgin birth. He was said to have died for three days
and been resurrected each year during the period of the
vernal equinox.

The Christian Version of Easter vs. Pagans

The early Christians in Rome battled to assert their
dominance over this pagan tradition, and claimed that Cybele
was a counterfeit inspired by Satan centuries earlier,
preparing the way for Jesus to replace her as the real
savior. Other scholars point to the Norse fertility god
Oestre (root of Estrogen) and to similar stories about
Egyptian deities like Horus and Osiris as the origins of
Easter. If you visit Egypt, its obvious that the theme of
resurrection is sexual, as these Gods are commonly depicted
with an erect phallus. Apparently the ancients were not
prudish in their public works, unlike some modern sexually
suppressed societies.

The Christiian sects today all date their different
calculation of Jesus’ resurrection on Easter Sunday on any
date from March 22 to April 25th, based on a period
following the full moon after the Spring Equinox. The
Orthodox year-to-year sequence is so complicated that it
takes 5.7 million years to repeat.

The moral of this story? All the traditions rely on the
Nature’s Spring Equinox to derive their mythic-spiritual
power. But I still haven’t figured out how the Easter Bunny
and Easter Eggs got mixed together, since I know that my pet
rabbit doesn’t lay eggs. I guess its part of the general
religious confusion over sex, and its link to natural
yin-yang cycles….

How to Capture the Essence of an Eclipse

I always do a ceremony on each Equinox and Solstice, to
attune to and “capture” the yuan chi/clear light that floods
this polarized physical plane for about three days. If you
do this regularly, you will find yourself becoming very
sensitive to the shifts in energy during this period. Since
we’ve entered into the Red Fire Dog Year, the energies have
been especially intense on the inner psyche level -stronger
than any I’ve felt in any spring cycle.

This year’s Spring Equinox is framed between a set of
eclipses. There was a full moon eclipse the week before,
followed by a new moon eclipse the week after Equinox. In
the Greater Water & Fire (Sun-Moon) alchemical practice,
I’v developed a special meditation to capture the power of
eclipses. This is really just a variation on the inner
practice of coupling the essence of the sun & moon inside
the adept’s “true earth” inside the body along its core
channel or central axis.

Every eclipse is a similar alignment of outer the sun, moon,
and earth along some invisible axis that links us to the
galaxies and beyond. Eclipses create what I call a
“post-natal void” – time seems to stop, darkness deepens,
and an empty space opens in the collective psyche. The
emptying process is nature is one of its ways to open up a
creative space for something new to emerge. I this case, I
feel the eclipses serve to more powerfully extract the
creative potential of the Equinox.

So as the I Ching advised us in an earlier reading of the
Red Dog Fire Year, it behooves us to “have a direction to go
in”, to direct these creative energies into something
concrete. It reinforces the energy of spring as the time of
birthing new ideas, new feelings, new bodies, new ambitions,
new romances or new life into old relationships.

Desiging Your Equinox Ceremony

My qigong form of choice for all Equinoxes and Solstices is
the wuji gong, the primordial qigong/tai chi for
enlightenment ceremony. (see http://www.taich-enlightenment.com for
full description). It is a ceremony for entering into the
wuji, or Supreme Mystery that lies beyond all myths of a
Creator God/dess. Eclipses could be said to faint echoes of
that original dark mystery from which the Life Force and
thus all Creation emerged.

As I have described for other Solstice ceremonies, it is
useful to direct the equinoctial energy into your personal
process of manifestation. Think of what it is your heart
truly wants to grow, and then do your ceremony to the five
directions (north, south, east, west, and center). At the
end release your Yi, your creative intention, to the Life
Force, surrendering to its power to mirror back your need
and manifest it from the etheric field into earthly form.

There are very powerful collective processes of rebirthing
moving into higher octaves on planet Earth, so its very
important to stay grounded and practical in your spiritual
process.

To the eternal opening and closing of the Gates of the Tao,

Michael Winn