The year of the body--Week 32

in which we dance under the Lion's Gate portal and a few things change around here!

Friends, soul writers, mystics, and lovers of prayer

If you are reading this on Sunday, August 8, you are reading under the conjunction of an ancient portal called “The Lion’s Gate” at 15⁰ Leo at the exact same time as a Leo Dark Moon arrives at 16⁰ 14’ of Leo.

This is rare. And quite powerful. Astrologers speak of it as an epic power portal.

So when I wondered what to write about today, it felt like the perfect day to talk about aligning our conscious awareness with all the radical possibility and joy being opened by this portal.

And to talk about all this joy and possibility happening in the body.

This is the year of the body.

When I started these newsletters in January, I began to number each week. I didn’t have any idea how that would work as the year progressed, but it felt right. After a couple of months, I couldn’t miss how the number of the week somehow told a story that matched what was happening in the world.

This is the first time I’ve tracked 52 weeks and I’m going to continue until the end of December to see what this puzzle reveals.

A place I often start is to look at the number of the week itself. And today is packed full of sacred numeric wisdom.

It’s the 32^nd week of the year. 3 + 2 = 5.

Five is change, big holy sacred radical change. So it’s a 5 week in a 5 year. Can’t miss that synchronicity.

Some kind of important change is afoot. Change that will happen in our bodies to heal our bodies.

The 5 in Tarot is the Hierophant, the principle of learning and teaching.

So it’s a great time to explore a big idea, read a book that challenges you to see what you have been unwilling to see. I’ve done this all week. I’ve been reading intense books on the tendrils of the evils of slavery that persist in the body.

Just two of them are My Grandmother’s Hands by Resmaa Menakem and The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander. Next up for me is The Body is Not an Apology by Sonya Renee Taylor.

In addition to it being a 5 week in a 5 year, today is August 8.

Eight is the infinity symbol conveying the spiritual truth of “as above, so below.” Eight is also the Justice card in Tarot, a card that calls us to take action to change the way the law is used now—to abuse and punish—to create a world where the law is used to protect. That would be a radical change.

And if you double the 8, then you’re at 16, the Tower card in the Tarot, the tower of patriarchy crashing to the ground.

The 16 card may seem scary at first glance, but it is time for the old order tower to fall. Patriarchy, going back to the beginning of religion, has manufactured religious and political laws to justify stealing land from people without power to sell to a class with power. And created religious and political laws to justify slavery, concentration camps, colonialization, and hundreds of other horrors—all to generate profit.

It can feel pretty hopeless.

What can I, one person, do to change such long-standing systemic abuse? How can I, one person, change the patriarchal mindset of power, hierarchy, and privilege.

Well, in this year of the body, it seems to me that a powerful place to start is with my own body. And today, the 8-8 mega portal, is a good day to begin.

I can:

• cherish my body and the bodies of everyone I love
• treat my body with love and respect
• nourish my body with joy-filled food and luscious water
• sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, all I want, all I need
• remind myself that my body is holy—all bodies are holy
• dance around the kitchen
• listen to music that literally moves me
• anoint my body with love
• look a picture of ancestors and tell them I honor their bodies and what their bodies went through
• caress myself with gentle love
• wear something I feel good in
• allow myself the pleasure of living in this holy body
• speak words of love to my image in the mirror
• take a long hot sensuous bath
• praise my body, not just for how she looks, but all she does
• compliment everyone I see, letting them know how beautiful they are
• touch the body of Mother Earth with love
• give myself a gift—flowers perhaps, a book, new shoes….something fun

Do all those sound small to you?

They’re not. In fact, I think they are the essential precursors to taking big action to change our patriarchal world.

Because bodies, especially women’s bodies and bodies of people of color or in any way labeled “other,” have been denigrated for thousands of years.

It is a radical and powerful thing to love your body. And to cherish and love other bodies, be they human or animal or plant.

Patriarchy will fall when we start living with joy in our beautiful human bodies.

The church may have told you that your body is evil, or a source of temptation, or any number of other lies. They were all lies. Your body is holy.

Tell someone their body is holy. But first, tell yourself.

Happy Lion’s Gate!

to living in joy, knowing my body is holy

Janet

PS: An all new Writing Down Your Soul intensive is coming in September. So today would be a great day to give yourself the gift of all the goodies I created to support your soul writing.

Click on the link below and put it in your email to get:

• How to enter the theta brain wave state video
• Where and when you can experience theta video
• How to recognize the Voice video
• fresh update of the 30-day Guide to Writing Down Your Soul PDF
• Two of my prayers as a prayer artist

Janet Conner Writing Down Your Soul