Religion of the Stars Constellation Chart
Religion of the Stars Liturgy is based upon the Spiritual Text contained in Course 7, Spiritual Astrology.
Meditating on the images and stories associated with each decanate represents a powerful source of insight into
the proper use of one's energies.
Spiritual Text for September 23rd – October 23rd:
“Not By One Alone May the Highest of All Be Reached, But By Two United Souls Who Are Exalted By the Sweet Reverberations of Holy Love.”
Libra: I BALANCE
Excerpt from Course 7, Spiritual Astrology
THE MARRIAGE IN HEAVEN
In The Judgment Day
Sacred literature from various lands makes us familiar with the idea of a day of judgment on which the kindlier deeds are weighed against those harsh to determine the rewards of the soul in the after-life. Almost every religion teaches that in proportion to man's adherence to its moral code shall his future be free from tribulation.
To picture in the sky this process of weighing the good against the evil, no more easily recognized symbol could be found than the Scales. But in addition to the purpose of their use, the Scales also present to view two dissimilar entities united by a common purpose; two spirits, as it were, represented by the circular pans, each dangling free to move in its independent orbit, yet both united by the beam to which they are attached. The Scales, therefore, is also a most fitting universal symbol of marriage. Those who so carefully traced the constellated glories in the sky to make this universal symbolism still more obvious and complete, would also seek to place the picture in such relation to the zodiac that the position of the Sun at the point so designated, should both indicate a union representing marriage and a balance of two nearly equal, but divergent forces.
The most familiar union, and the most familiar balance between contending forces are night and day. So common to our lives are they that they space and regulate the hours of our endeavor. We awaken and we sleep at their behest. Light becomes a symbol of life and activity, and darkness of sleep or death.
Those days in which the hours of darkness exceed the hours of light may well, therefore, be placed in one pan of the annual scales, and those in which the hours of light preponderate may fill the other. Thus day and night are weighed in Libra's Scales; and the Autumnal Equinox marks the point where summer and winter signs are married, one-half the zodiac balanced against the other.
The Sun thus moves out of the harvest sign where the grain was cut, into the place where it shall be valued. The Produce of the fruitful period of the year is weighed, and the wholesome kernels are separated from the chaff. Such estimating of its worth, either of crops from the field or those from the span of life, most fittingly takes place when the vital forces, as symbolized by the Sun, have succumbed to those of cold and darkness.
The Jewish people, retaining the old time significance of this period of the year—although their calendar in modern times has been permitted somewhat to go astray—still honor the passing of the Sun each year into the sign of the Scales. This custom dates back to Leviticus 24, where it is commanded "Speak unto the Children of Israel, saying, In the seventh month in the first day of the month, shall ye have a Sabbath, a memorial of blowing of trumpets, and holy convocation." The year, of course, began with the Vernal Equinox, and Rosh-ha-Shanah is thus held the first of Tishri, or Libra.
As the day is still religiously observed, a quotation from the Jewish Encyclopedia in reference to its significance will not be amiss:
"Rosh-ha-Shanah is the most important judgment day, in which all the inhabitants of the world pass for judgment before the creator as sheep pass for examination before the shepherd. Three books of accounts are opened on Rosh-ha-Shanah wherein the fate of the wicked, the righteous, and those of the intermediate class are recorded. The names of the righteous are immediately inscribed, and are sealed 'to live.' The middle class are allowed a respite of ten days till Yom Kippur to repent and become righteous; the wicked are blotted out of the book of the living.' "
One of the most important qualities of the human mind is the ability to weigh evidence and from a comparison of diverse factors to pass sound judgment. Every day of our lives we are called upon to make minor decisions, if of no greater importance than the amount and kind of food to be eaten, and on rare occasions to pass judgment which affects the fate of human lives.
In racial tradition, one man above all others stands out as the symbol of unusual wisdom. As wise as Solomon, has come to express the very essence of discrimination; and while this Jewish king exhibited the keenness of his mind on many another occasion, it was a certain decision he rendered which first proclaimed that the wisdom of God was in him. It related to two contending women who stood before him for judgment.
Without doubt this is the most famous trial in the whole of human history.
To understand its celestial significance it must be recalled that the sign of the harvest, Virgo, pictures an unmarried woman, and that she stands in the sky immediately before the Scales where judgment must be passed. Where the Sun passes from Virgo into the sign of the Scales, as previously indicated, is where the wheat is separated from the chaff and the value of the harvest ascertained.
Thus were there brought before Solomon two unmarried women, each of whom, nevertheless, had had a child. Yet as in threshing there is both sound wheat and worthless chaff, so was the harvest, or child, of one woman alive, and the child of the other woman dead.
According to the story related to Solomon, the two women lived together in one house which certainly must have been the case if both were phases of Virgo—and a child was born to each, the difference in the children's ages being but a matter of three days. Through the carelessness of one woman, the life of her child was crushed out in the darkness. This also is significant; for it is at this point that the Sun each year dies through the increasing weight of night.
One woman claimed it was the other woman's child who died, and that the other woman arose at midnight and finding her child dead, had stealthily removed the living child from the first woman's bosom, and replaced it with the child that had died. But when the light came in the morning, the woman who had remained asleep, finding the child in her arms dead, also perceived that it was not her own, but the child of her companion in the house.
This story and this accusation the other woman stoutly denied; and both women loudly proclaimed the living harvest as her own. Thus stood they before King Solomon, each disputing the right of the other to the infant.
Summer and winter are divided, one from the other, not only at Libra, but also at Aries; an invisible line, called a colure, cutting the sky between the Vernal Equinox and the Equinox of Fall. The first of Aries marks the place where days and nights are equal in the spring, and the Scales marks where they are equal in the fall. And the sword held in the hand of Perseus has its tip almost on the line right across the sky from the judgment seat.
This militant sword of Aries often is used as the symbol of cutting asunder of the celestial circle in spring, just as the cross as frequently is used to signify the waning strength of the Sun in fall; and, after all, even as summer and winter are but inversions of the relation of night to day, so also in its form does a sword present the inversion of a cross.
Solomon, therefore, called for a sword to be brought to him and commanded, after the manner in which the equinoctial colure divides the zodiac at the point marked by the Scales, that the living child should be divided in two, one half to be given to one woman and the other half to the other.
To this procedure one woman readily agreed, but the other would not consent. Virgo, in human anatomy, rules the bowels, and the Bible states: "Then spake the woman whose the living child was unto the king, for her bowels yearned upon her son, and she said, O my lord, give her the living child, and in no wise slay it."
When she had said this, Solomon at once perceived that she was the real mother of the child, and the child was not slain, but awarded to her.
Libra is the home sign of Venus, the planet of love; and in his wisdom, Solomon weighed the love of the women who came before him, and, convinced that love seeks to preserve the object of its affection and not destroy, passed judgment accordingly. A life was not sacrificed, but delivered to its rightful owner.
It was this same doctrine that love lies at the foundation of life, here and hereafter, and that the harvest of years must eventually be judged on the basis of kindness and compassion, that in later days was set forth by the Nazarene as the commandment to his followers to love one another.
Turning now from the teaching in reference to judgment, it should be noted that in the marriage of summer and winter the forces are not exactly equal; for each year there are seven more days of preponderating light than of preponderating darkness. Evil certainly is present in the world, but if the celestial correspondence holds true, it is not of equal strength with the good. Like summer and winter, they may be closely balanced in power, but if we could look dose enough we should find that in the long run the good has a little advantage, and that consequently the world does make spiritual progress.
And followed far enough, this doctrine set forth in the starry symbolism of the Scales, where the Sun may be found each year from September 23 to October 23, reveals the use of evil, as well as signifying the paramount importance of love in human life.
The Key-phrase of this section of the sky is, I Balance. Those then born find a harmonious partnership especially important; and because in such a marriage spiritual qualities are engendered it gives this text:
Not By One Alone May the Highest of All Be Reached, But By Two United Souls Who Are Exalted By the Sweet Reverberations of Holy Love.