Lately, I’ve been experiencing intense nostalgia about my time growing up in church.
My time at my very Black Pentecostal church on the south side of Chicago was the center of my social world. It was the venue of my spiritual initiation and the mirror where I could look in every direction and see a reflection of myself. We looked the same and had the same cultural framework. In a disjointed and imperfect unison, we strived for the same salvation that was just on the other side of water baptism (in Jesus’ name!) and speaking in tongues as evidence that we had been endowed with the Holy Ghost.
The church of my upbringing is often the setting of my dreams. As a symbol I associate it with feelings of safety, familiarity, and most of all, belonging. The innocence of shared sincere (and unquestioned) belief was a comfortable place where I didn’t have to consider the contradictions of my own experiences because they were made to fit neatly into the belief system I had inherited.
My church was home.
I’m a long way from that place now, physically and spiritually. But the longing to return pulls and tugs on my heartstrings at the sound of a Hammond-B3 organ behind a choir singing of the matchless grace of Jesus. “I heard the voice of Jesus say, ‘Come unto me, and pray’…” That’s the opening line of a song by the Edwin Hawkins Singers, from one of the many Gospel albums that formed the soundtrack of my youth. I listen to it to recreate that safe and uncomplicated sense that I belong.
Belief systems are like that, though. They aren’t intellectually wrought byproducts of logic. They are the places we are born or spaces we are adopted into. They become our reference points for distinguishing the familiar from the foreign. The new is molded to fit what we already believe to be true. Or, it is rejected because it threatens the binary nature of our existing truths.
It is only under the psychic duress of our subconscious, trauma, or extreme circumstances that our belief systems change. And it’s meant to be that way. Without that solid core of unshakeable truths that comprise a belief system we’d be tossed hither and thither without an anchor of meaning to keeps our self-image firm and our reality consistent.
We’ve collectively and unequally experienced an incredible amount of trauma and ongoing extreme circumstances since 2020. Yet it seems that our belief systems have been resistant to change. In fact, it seems like every new piece of information or experience that should make us question what we know to be true instead makes us hunker down and tighten our grip on our existing belief systems.
However, eclipse season fall 2023 exposed a weakness in our belief system. The impulse to impose what we already believed to be true about ourselves and the world was met with a data point that refused to take the shape of those beliefs. Then was the beginning of an ongoing genocidal campaign of violence, destruction, and starvation of Palestinians by the state of Israel and the US that has not relented but has escalated.
Now, as we have arrived at eclipse season 2024, the pressure is on to see how resilient our belief systems are. What will it take to make us change them? This is the work of eclipses in sidereal Pisces and Virgo, October 14, 2023 through September 21, 2025.
Spring 2024 Eclipse Dates
- March 25 – Full Moon + Lunar Eclipse at 10° Virgo
- April 8 – New Moon + Solar Eclipse at 25° Pisces
Content to View
- On Eclipses… Reorganizing Hierarchies of Trust (Instagram)
- Mercury Rx Spring 2024 (YouTube)
- Words Mean Things (Instagram)
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If you’d like to dig in to what the eclipses mean for you personally, book a 30-minute Divination For Liberation Sidereal Astrology Reading. Don’t forget to start redeeming your readings if you’ve purchased a package.
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