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CYCLES OF BECOMING #10
"Dream Time" by Sharon Russell
BALSAMIC MOON PHASE
"Moon is moving into the Darkness "
The moon's light is nearly gone and will disappear by the end of this phase. The word Balsamic means “aged,” as you now are.
BALSAMIC MOON is horns to the right!
You are at the close of the Great Moon Cycle, the one that you began nearly 25 years ago at your New Moon. At the Balsamic phase, the moon is close now to her beloved, the Sun. From our earth-centered perspective, the moon is losing light rapidly. We do not see her at night. If you get up very early in the wee hours of the morning, you can see her in her slimmed-down crescent form just before the sun rises. BUT She is almost gone.
She is turning her light towards the Sun, towards Spirit. As the Moon turns her bright side toward the Sun, the Earth is left in darkness.
  
The fruit has fallen, and the fruit decays, but the seeds, ah, the seeds receive their nourishment, the essence of the fruit, from the flesh and blood of the fruit- the fruit protects the seed as it is growing deep within the woman.
If we compare this part of the journey to the stages in the growth of a tree, then Balsamic time occurs when the tree’s fruit has fallen to the ground. This phase of your cycle corresponds to Late Autumn. This is a phase of compost and decay, a rich potpourri of your soul’s experience and the most Yin or Feminine part of the wheel.
It is a time to go within, to rest, and to tell your story. You are returning home to the Great Mother. The last remnants of your old life drop away. What you are left with is your essential soul self.
Your seed is preparing to be pierced by the Holy Light of Spirit.... your gestating seed needs nourishment from the rotting fruit.......at the very END OF YOUR BALSAMIC AND THE VERY BEGINNING OF YOUR NEW MOON, you will be made whole and holy once again .... holy with new life......but you are not there yet...........
Your seed is preparing to be pierced by the Holy Light of Spirit.... your gestating seed needs nourishment from the rotting fruit.......it will become whole and holy once again at the very END OF YOUR BALSAMIC AND THE VERY BEGINNING OF YOUR NEW MOON .... holy with new life......but you are not there yet.
It is time to lay down your Basket of Soul. Let it rest in the garden.
(refer to Cycles of Becoming #9)
(or #5)
"Beautiful Dreamer" Collage by Dixie Gladstone
Beautiful dreamer,
I am walking with you
into the dark moon under your feet.
You have drawn me down
so low
and stripped me bare of
every.............
thing.........
except........
holy,
so holy,
my last drop of nectar
and the flesh of simple soul.
Will I ever
rise up to dream again?
Dixie G 2004 (I wrote this in my last Balsamic Moon Phase)
You are between worlds now.
Your Soul holds your inner light.....this is a body something like the one you have now, but it is made of Light instead of flesh and blood.
(MUSIC) "TEARS SHINING UNDER THE MOONLIGHT" by Metronomos
(composed by our Hildegard von Bingen... if you are IN your Balsamic Moon Phase right now, be sure to listen to the music, go slowly, practice going more slowly as you read my text, ...the video is also a treat....your heart will be made tender by what you hear and remember. Slowing down is of the utmost importance at Balsamic Phase - you slow in the outer world so that your Soul can have plenty of psychic space to do its work.)
"Compassion" by Sharon Russell
You may be forced to rest; some will get sick or injured, your body will need time to heal, and you will feel like you are dying, but you are BECOMING. Have compassion for yourself!
Let the Music (Tears Shining in the Moonlight written by Hildegard van Bingen- above) move all the way into your heart, which has been made tender by all that you have beheld in the past 25 years.
Since the fruit is the food for the seed, your past efforts will be fed or "distilled into an essence of your true self." That which is deep within you is invisibly being retained by your Soul's memory.
This can be a very creative time, a time pregnant with possibilities as you tell YOUR story in art, writing, teaching, music, poetry, or social work, whatever is of essential and timeless value to you and to the world around you.
"To live is to be slowly born."
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
The key to your immortality lies in this rich, very feminine, Balsamic time. Balsamic means “aged”. Even if you are young when you first go around this wheel, you will be aged, mature, and wise in some way here at Balsamic Moon Phase. If this is the phase you were born into as a child, you will know hardship or loss. If you have a child who is born Balsamic, teach them about healing ....or perhaps, they teach you. Be gentle with them. They, too, may be feeling like they are dying.
Horns to the right, before the morning light.
You have reached the completion of your 29-year Moon Cycle. In the last year and a half of this phase, the lunar light will vanish completely.
You must finish the circle to make it whole and gain its gifts of wisdom which the seed needs for its new life.
Your Inner Light may 'feel' black, or dark, during this time, but this is not the darkness of demons; it is the black velvet VOID OF THE DIVINE FEMININE that exists between the stars as the Great Cosmic Mother.
You are discovering the path to immortality at Balsamic Moon time. This wisdom-making time is necessary before the seed can be ready to accept the fire of spirit at the New Moon.
The outer world will surely challenge you; there will be some loss or sorrow that deeply affects your life.
We cannot pass over it – wisdom is to soul as the beauty of the flower was to spirit – the form IS important after all, but not the form of ego.
It is the form of the Soul, the way in which the Soul is able to hold the LIGHT, the wisdom that illuminates your soul and will be its path to immortality that is its ultimate product. This is what you will carry into your next great cycle or into your next lifetime.
This is your Sophia! Sophia means Wisdom, and the wisdom that you are building is Holy.....this is what you are distilling now at Balsamic time, your Holy essence. Sophia grows in you day by day as your light vanishes from the outer world and begins to grow and fill you from within.
Your Balsamic moon phase can feel like “Dream Time”.
This is a time to be inward and to Rest, Release, and Renew. The Great Mystery will dwell in you as a child.
Ancient wisdom will come into you.
Space needs to be created so you can distill the essence of your journey into its fullest wisdom.
Create a Sanctuary for yourself where you can be protected while you meditate, pray, space out, or sleep. Allow yourself this dreamy time. If you really do this, you will discover it doesn’t matter so much what you DID or DID NOT accomplish or create on this journey. It was the process itself and all the experiences, positive and negative, that were important and give meaning to your life now.
You will need time for HEALING. You may shed many tears toward the end of this phase.
You are a human being, in a body, for a purpose.
That purpose is to express Joy and Life in the attainment of wholeness.
You are a soul with a spirit-infused body. You hold as much spirit, as much light as you can infuse into your life at this time – that holy spirit is your WISDOM – the wisdom you are making at this balsamic ending-- and it is your birthright, one that you have earned by the passage of time and experience gained.
TRANSMUTATION AND CHANGE
 You are in a state of transmutation and the distillation of the last 25 years here at the end of your Great Moon Cycle. You will express your true soul self in the face of all of life’s disturbances and dualities as you live out your final or Balsamic Phase.
St. Walbergis with the Holy Essence.
You fill your bottle with the ESSENCE of what you have become. This bottle is the feminine container of your BALSAMIC SOUL. It contains all the memories that your soul can now claim as its own. These memories are the seeds of your new life. This essence is your immortality. You can never lose what is distilled into the Soul. You will carry your memories in the form of wisdom and knowledge from lifetime to lifetime. Indeed, we are in a place of miracles known in this Holy Essence of self-knowledge.
The soul can only hold what is of essential value to its true self. Anything left of the ego is discarded to make way for a new inner light to build within you during this time. Therefore, there will be losses and grief.
The difficulties at Balsamic stem from the areas inside ourselves self which still seek illumination. The difficulties at Balsamic also stem from the areas outside us which cause us pain, but we have no control over.
Our ego withdraws its function, and we develop a deeper faith in a power greater than ourselves.
We discover that this power is truly a companion to us, that it is a part of us that will carry us through this completion phase.
Like a fine wine or a beautiful perfume, you distill that which makes you what you are. It is what is left that becomes your essence. You are a unique individual. On your journey, you have had many experiences that your soul has needed in order that it can make meaning. As you make meaning, your soul distills its essence and becomes immortal. Your immortality lies in your seed, a "new vision" that grows within even as your old life fades from without. Your new vision will be built upon the wisdom you are building now.
"Mother of the World" Nicholas Roerich
During this WISDOM MAKING time, Sophia, the Wisdom aspect of the Divine Feminine, creates her essence, the miraculous distillation of wisdom, and illumination follows.
Your outer light dims. Your INNER LIGHT is growing during your Balsamic Phase.
Value it; value the darkness, because within it is YOUR ESSENTIAL SOUL creating its BODY OF LIGHT. This is your enlightenment, your wholeness, your spiritualization. But this is not the outer illumination that the Full Moon brought; it is the inner illumination of your Holy Soul.
The wisdom you are making at this balsamic ending is your birthright, one that you have earned by the passage of time and experience gained.
Your Balsamic phase lasts about 3 ½ years. During this time, remember that you are protecting a new life inside (you hold the seeds for new life within you) even as you distill the essence of the old.
The old life and all its experiences contain your soul power. This power will be distilled and transmitted into the seeds of your new life, the one that you are pregnant with inside.
If you are a child or a teenager during Balsamic Phase, you will feel aged, wise, or old in some way. Your age in years doesn't matter; it is your Soul that is experiencing the vision in the mirror.
You are a crone (or sage if you are a man) at this time of the cycle; even if you are very young, you will be very old.
You are growing wise.
You may not have much energy for the demands of outer life during this phase as it is a resting phase. However, our modern life doesn’t seem to always cooperate with this need for rest and quiet time. This can be a time of personal sacrifice and work which you seem to have no energy for, as you COMPLETE some aspect of your journey.
Probably you will not be aware of the WISDOM you are making. That is because in a 'dark of the moon time' much is happening within the unconscious and the actual soul body. At the same time as the new seeds are gestating inside you, your outer world form is dying....so this doesn't FEEL like wisdom.
Crone energy is rich and powerful because it can give back its wisdom and knowledge to others. The crone (the quintessential aspect of balsamic time) brings women many tests. The woman shows what she is made of. She is strong, and mature, and wise. Her experience, no matter what that has been, gives her these attributes.
On the great wheel, the Crone and the Infant are very close to each other.
As you own your 'aged' being, you are preparing your body, heart, and soul for the new life that you are destined to give birth to in your next Great Moon Cycle.
Whatever you do now, however much you can rest and heal, will be of value to you when you begin your New Moon Phase (or next lifetime.) 
In the darkness of the Balsamic, the light can be very bright, very bright indeed. This is your inner light, the flame of your essential Soul self, and it cannot die. At the end of your BALSAMIC, you are in a place of immortality, of life after life. You carry your wisdom with you – nothing in the world can take it away from you, not even DEATH! Your wisdom is your Soul’s body in its state of immortality.
As this phase progresses, the light of the Moon will be no more. There will be only darkness in the last year and a half of this phase.
In this maximum darkness, the light of your deep heart dwells. It is a place of unconditional love. Your heart will be open and rendered at this time. The heart reaches its larger aspect in the Full Moon, now it will be rendered and broken apart so that it may receive the honing of wisdom that is taking place.
As you open channels from your heart to your soul, you will be tapping into the forces of the universe. The crone has a power like no other.
It is time to tell your story as you bring your life to a state of increasing intensity and completion. As you remember what you did, you discover that your true essence can only be known by taking the journey. Existence and the gaining of experience come before we can create our Essence. Your Soul looks at what it has created, and from your experience, you distill an essence that will become part of the fabric of your immortal soul.
Nothing of value can be lost because your soul is eternal. No experience, large or small, is diminished by the Soul. YOUR EXPERIENCE has GREAT VALUE.
Your soul cannot take money, fame, or possessions with it when it dies, but it can take and infuse itself with Memory and Wisdom. This wisdom, your enlightenment, will become part of your new self and your new heart’s dream at New Moond Phase.
DOROTHY COMES HOME AT LAST
At last, Dorothy returns home to her family, to her Auntie Em, and Uncle Henry, to their farm in Kansas.
Dorothy runs toward home and meets her Auntie Em in the cornfields of Kansas. Her 'silver slippers' have completely fallen away. (You must read about the previous phase, Last Quarter Moon, to learn why her slippers are silver, not really red.)
"Paradise" Maurice Denis
Kansas is like Paradise to Dorothy at this time!
Do you remember this final scene in the television production where Dorothy rests in her bed?
Her Auntie Em (a great Mother to Dorothy) lovingly cares for her as Dorothy, in a daze, says, “Oh, you won’t believe where I’ve just been!” and she proceeds to tell the story of her journey to Oz and back.
Dorothy tells her story.
Some will listen and believe her story. Others will think she just imagined it. But now Dorothy knows a deeper truth about life. And she will hold this belief inside of herself, and so will you as you complete your Balsamic or Dark Moon Phase.
A Divine Child is within you, waiting to be born anew.
She is there, within the seed that you now hold. Rest in your HOME; be at one with the Goddess, your Auntie Em.
"Calling down the Moon" She is a fertility and renewal symbol....our ancestors knew that the Moon held Memory....the Moon was magical and mysterious to them because its cycles birthed new life! It is still magical and mysterious to me and to many of us.
As your Balsamic reaches its end, you will call down the moon. Your body is calling for a new life; a new spirit must enter into you so that you may move into your next phase, which will be your New Moon Phase.
Yes, soon you will be called down again, but not just yet. This will not occur until New Moon time, which you will reach about 3 and ½ years after you begin your Balsamic.
The Goddess as Mother is VERY close to us on this phase of our journey. She is mysterious and ineffable, but nevertheless, we can have a profound experience of her if we are willing and can open consciously to her presence.
She is most accessible to us at HOME or in our dark moon Balsamic time. This is the deepest, most feminine part of the MYSTERY. As we return home to her, to her domain of rich, dark potential, we begin to get a feeling, “Mother is at Home.”
Our Soul is very close to the Goddess at Balsamic time, and as we open to this awareness, we gain much in blessed depth, love, and authenticity.
There are many ways to know the Great Mother....she has many forms; which one holds the greatest meaning for you?
We can find COMFORT with her great love for us, but we must move consciously TOWARD her during this time in order to gain the full benefits of her loving bliss.
"Wisdom grows, Soul glows"
You may wish to get this book, FINDING OUR WAY THROUGH THE DARK BY Demetra George
one source is Amazon.com
You are not necessarily conscious of the wisdom growing inside you at this time. ..............It is happening in the DARK.
You may feel depressed. You may feel dark. You may lose hope. It will feel like you are dying....and you are....your past cycle is coming to an end.
"The Black Madonna" Eva Bednay 1927 Budapest
Balsamic Phase is a time of The Black Madonna
The image of Mother Mary with a BLACK MOON under her feet will have new meaning for you now.
A question came up for Sharon and I as we pondered this Great Cycle of the Moon:
“So why do we go on the journey instead of just staying at home with Great Mother and never leaving?” one may ask.
Spirit is a great light.
Spirit wishes to know itself. Spirit wishes to demonstrate itself, but in order to do so, it must have a Soul that will bring it into a body that may experience everyday life that brings many happenings that become part of our soul memory. It is the nature of the Soul to desire to know itself as the Great Spirit or Universal Oneness, that state of being that is referred to as Enlightenment.
Dorothy has come to know herself through this amazing journey of fear and courage, of heart and soul. She has matured. She now contains within herself all the wonders of the Emerald City. She knows the nature of her True Self at another level now.
She, and You. are more empowered. Your INNER Light shines stronger for everyone to see. You have manifested that light into your body and soul, and it is there to stay!
BALSAMIC MOON SUMMARY
LATE AUTUMN
Making Wisdom
Compost
Endings and Completions
Distill & Transform
Rest & Rejuvenate
Immortality of Your Soul’s Journey
The End is a New Beginning
Please DO address your questions to me at: dixiegladstone@yahoo.com.........women, we are in new territory with MOON PHASES...I expect some of you may be feeling confused as poor Dorothy was...I need to know what you are thinking, so go ahead and ASK,... PLEASE!
I welcome your comments those of you in your BALSAMIC PHASE esp. Do you have a story to tell me and to your sisters?
Wanting to know what MOON PHASE YOU ARE IN RIGHT NOW? send your 1.name, 2.birth date, (please write the month of your birth out, for instance... instead of a 10 you would write October) 3.birth time, 4.birth place to Me: dixiegladstone@yahoo.com...it's free from me!
with heartfelt love and appreciation to this divine creation ♥
Dixie Gladstone
Feminine Astrology
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