Next week We will be entering the month of Chesvan, the eighth month of the yearly cycle of the ancient middle eastern calendar. This month is outstanding simply because it is the only month of the Hebrew calendar that has no holidays! It has been known as the Mar-Chesvan, mar meaning bitter, the bitter month because the flood of Noah's time, that destroyed most of the world, began on the 17th of Chesvan. In the ancient European calendar round this time was extra special, so special that the new year began in the first week of November. This is when the beautiful starry constellation of the seven sisters, the Pleiades, culminates at the overhead zenith sky point precisely at midnight. This group of stars has many connections to the ancestors for cultural groups all over the globe. Many cultures celebrate the festivals of the ancestors and their saints, and renew their yearly cycle at this time. In the Hebrew calendar the great importance of this month was kind of tucked away, for safe keeping although an echo of it's exalted destiny is found in tradition. The First Beit HaMikdash, the new Temple of Solomon was sanctified and inaugurated during this month. This is a foreshadowing of the "sweetening" of this month that has played a part in bringing the initiatory temple mysteries into a renewed epoch and a Tikun Olam/healing of the world. The number eight, 8th month, itself having the value of days that the human in the Hebrew tradition is brought into the covenant and given a name, becoming an initiate in a temple mystery tradition that holds the deepest and most fecund possibilities for humanity in a physical creation. This does involve a blood covenant which holds the life force of a lineage of peoples being dedicated to realizing a world living and envisioning the great dance by aligning to the sacred Source. The dance of an Earth filled with the beauty and diversity of many different kinds of peoples living in harmony. The holiness of the eight is echoed in the Christian tradition of the octagonal(eight-sided)baptismal through which the people came into their church. In the ancient shamanic tribal traditions including those of ancient Israel we have the animals; the Eagle, Scorpion and Spider(arachnids-eightleggeds)and serpents. These animals have powers over death by their nature of stealthy predation and venomous potential. They simply therefore can conquer death and this is a theme for this "bitter" month. The name of one of the angels of death, samael, contains the word sam which can mean potion- vemom or medicine, death and healing. We come into a healing place only by moving through the deepest places where the elemental forces that sustain the creation reside. And so very important but very low-profile events have taken place in this month in order for a sweetening of the world embroiled in a struggle for the good vision to flood the surface. We find the prophecy of this good flood, of the waters of Love/Ahavah in the Sepher HaZohar on the parsha terumah as well as in the Qumran(dead sea)scroll on the birth of "Noah", sometimes called the "Wondorous Child" scroll. In the end of this writing it says that the waters will flood the world, leading translators to thinking it was about the ancient Noah. Actually it was a prophecy for our times when the waters of Love will flood the world, as spoken of in Zohar.
The deepest of these elemental forces is that of the fixed power of Water, the most profound place where the floods come that renew the world. This is why the ancient flood of Noah began in this "bitter" month. Therefore we may suppose that the reneweing of this creation by the flood of the waters of love is connected to this same time in the yearly cycle of Shanah/year, transformation and change. The "bitter" month is to be "sweetened" and this sweetening is happening now.
This very time now in 5767/2006 we have the beginning of at least three new planetary cycles, that of the Sun/Shemesh, the planet Meadim/Mars and Nogah/venus. All of these celestial bodies(and the heavens they conceal) joining together at the beginning of this month of Chesvan this very year. We may pray, hope and think of how the positive vision of a renewed humanity is already flooding the hearts and minds and souls of the world. Like the secret nature of this month we may not see this good news in the media and in the loud voices of the world. But those people in the ancient temple/school of initiation in all of it's various forms, sure may feel this now. In this month of the renewal of the healing waters we also are singing the very deep Torah portions of Noach, and Lech Lecha and Chayei Sarah. Chayei Sarah is the only Torah Parsha with the name of a woman in the title. This is the portion of the Shekinah, the great Mother. This writers own occupation with the neshamah/soul of the mother Earth is connected to my being born into this wheeling world in the week that this portion was sung. I came into my own first "initiations" of birth and naming and becoming a son of the mitzvah, at this time in the yearly cycle. This is a good month to come into the wheel for people on the path of initiation. Many passionate folks on the journey of initiation have the power of the "fixed" zodiacal signs somewhere in their own natal/birth charts. The coming into the wheel of the Year/shanah-change at this time has helped lead me to this path of the temple mysteries of initiation and renewal from the "deep" places of Kabbalah and the dance of the tribal shamans. For the Shaman, the web of the eight-legged and eight-eyed creatures is the network of stars and planets and souls that connect everything together. Kabbalistic traditions are therefore often linked to very complex interconnections of numbers and letters and spheres. The ancient hebrew letters themselves have from ancient times been attributed to the patterns from a spiders web.
At this time, communications is part of the key to a renewed world. And so a great electro-magnetic web, a shimmering reflection of the web "spun" by the great "Webmaster" brings these words to your eyes. May the "sweetened" waters of this awesome creation find all the places they are needed
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