I am writing this on August 5th, which in the Catholic church calendar is the day before the Feast of the Transfiguration. This seems like a good day to write about the connections between the symbolism of the astrological year and the Church’s calendar of feast days.
During the two years that I took off from practicing astrology I became very involved with the worship cycle of the Catholic church. Now that I am back to astrology, integrating its symbolism in with the symbolism and calendar of the Church is of great interest to me. I have both the astrology calendar and the Church calendar wired into my system by now, and the links between them are important.
I am currently working with the symbolism of the World Chart and the solar cycle of the year, with the cardinal ingresses and the cross points at 15 degrees of the fixed signs. There should be connections between that eight point cycle and the Church calendar, along with Christmas and Easter – and sure enough, there are.
Starting with Christmas, the birth of Jesus in an old barn and cradled in a feeding trough, it is universally recognized that it is timed around the Winter Solstice, the time of the yearly rebirth of the Sun. This is the New Sun phase.
The date of Easter is calculated to be the Sunday after the first Full Moon after the Spring Equinox, so it is calculated off of the Solar cycle – this seems to point to a combined Solar and Lunar cycle calendar intersecting here. This is first or waxing Quarter Sun phase.
The Summer Solstice is the longest day of the year, what you could call the Full Sun phase. This coincides with the Feast of the Birth of John the Baptist. Recall the saying of John about Jesus, he must increase and I must decrease – John’s birth is at the peak of the Sun’s fullness when it starts to decrease, and the birth of Jesus happens when the Sun starts to increase.
That leaves one remaining Cardinal Ingress holiday, the Libra Ingress in September. September is the month of the Feast of the Birth of Mary – this would be the end of the sign Virgo and the beginning of Libra, and Virgo is the symbolism with the Virgin carrying the sheaves of grain from the harvest. It fits.
Looking at the cross-quarters we have some definite correlations.
First and most obvious, the Sun reaches 15 degrees of Leo, right in the middle of the Sign where it rules, right around August 6. This coincides with the Feast of the Transfiguration, where Jesus ascends to a mountain-top with Peter, James and John, and is seen completely transfigured with blinding light – the revealing of Jesus as the Sun, King and Lord of all creation. The symbolic connection is pretty obvious.
On February 6, right around when the Sun reaches 15 Fixed in Aquarius, we have the Feast of Candlemas, also called the Feast of the Purification of Mary. This corresponds to the incident described in Luke 2:21-40, where Mary, after the obligatory time of isolation after the birth, presents the first-born infant Jesus in the Temple to be blessed. This feast is as much about Mary as it is about Jesus.
For the other two cross quarters I do not find any single feast correlating, but I think we have some general symbolism that is appropriate.
In early May we have 15 degrees in the fixed sign Taurus, the very fertile earth sign where Venus rules and the Moon is exalted. May is always the month of Mary. and in May is the Feast of the Queenship of Mary. Both parishes I attended held an outdoor festival that day where a statue of Mary is crowned with a wreath of May Flowers.
Oh Mary, we crown thee with blossoms today,
Queen of the Angels, Queen of the May.
Also in May is May Day, celebration of Spring, and of Maypole dancing. To me there is an obvious connection between that and Mary’s Queenship, and I think it was a great loss to the Church to lose that connection.
That leaves one more cross-quarter holiday in early November, near the time the Sun reaches 15 Scorpio. This is very close to the dates of All Saints Day on November 1st, and the day before, All Hallows Eve or Hallow’een on October 31. That last phase of the Waning Sun, what you could call the Balsamic Sun, is dedicated to the world of the Dead – and this is when the Sun heads towards its own death and rebirth at the Winter Solstice.
So to sum up, here is the whole cycle.
* Winter Solstice, New Sun – Christmas.
* 15 Aquarius, waxing Sun – Candlemas, Purification of Mary.
* Spring Equinox – Easter.
* mid Taurus – month of May, Queenship of Mary, May Day, Maypole.
* Summer Solstice – birth of John the Baptist. (“I must decrease and he must increase”)
* 15 Leo, center of Sun’s sign – the Transfiguration
* Autumnal Equinox – birth of Mary.
* mid Scorpio – All Saints Day, All Hallows Eve or Hallow’een.
I think the correlations of the astrological and church calendars are well worth meditating on.
The images on this page are from Judgefloro, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons. They are the two sides of a very popular Catholic devotional sacramental known as the Miraculous Medal.
Note that the caption around the medal is in French, and reads, “O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.” Related to the Church calendar, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, which refers to Mary (and not Jesus) being “conceived without sin”, falls in December, nine months before the Feast of Her birth.