The cycle of the year unfolds in successive stages that are easily measured by the rhythms of the Earth, Sun, and Moon through the cosmos, and in the sequence of festival days in the various cultures around the world. Monday brings the last New Moon of the Spring in the northern hemisphere, followed by the planet Venus reaching its greatest elongation, or distance, from the Sun next Sunday.
The Full Moon in May, which happened two weeks ago, marked a significant celebration in Buddhist tradition, and this week of May’s New Moon will always include the feast of Ascension in the Christian Calendar.
Considered in their cosmic, rather than religious or cultural contexts, the days dedicated to festivals and feasts, to saints and significant historic figures, also reveal a successive unfolding of consciousness through time. The deeds of individuals aligned to specific dates are as though inscribed into the cosmic spaces, and can be read, or made use of, when they are illuminated by the rhythmic return of Sun and Moon and planets. Each degree of the zodiac is like a garden bed where the seeds of high human deeds are planted, for germinating when we water them with loving care and attention.
So let’s consider May 30th, Friday this week. It’s one day after Ascension in 2025 and marks the date that Joan of Arc was burned at the stake for heresy, in 1431, when she was 19 years old. Joan stands in long, historic line of goddesses and remarkable individuals who are referred to as “virgins.” What is it about this point in the cycle of the year that belongs to this as-yet unconsummated experience of the human being?
The year is unfolding in successive stages, like a breathing process, and just now we are in the long outbreath, which will culminate at summer solstice, a little less that one month from now. And here we find Joan of Arc, with an affirmation that there is nothing to fear, for this we are born, each of us, with destiny forces intact. Joan’s feast day here at the end of May seems to say, “keep on, human being, with courage and determination, all will be right, and right will be realized.”
About 20 years after her execution, Joan of Arc’s mother rallied to her defense, and the process began whereby, nearly 500 years later, she was canonized by the Church. And there she stands, a herald of this point in the cycle of seasons, as the Moon grows through its crescents in the evening sky, while Venus sweeps far and wide of the Sun at dawn. For me it brings to mind the words of Austrian poet Rilke who wrote: I feel it now: there's a power in me to grasp and give shape to my world.
The Moon is exactly New at 11 pm Monday, May 26th and will be visible in the evening sky starting as early as Thursday, Ascension Day. Venus is brilliant in the morning sky, and will be at greatest distance West of the Sun in the morning sky on Sunday, May 1st looking east an hour and a half before sunrise.
