Teachers Of Light

Sedona and the Return of the World Soul at a time of Galactic Re-alignment

Nicholas R Mann

Copyright ©2009. Nicholas R. Mann. All Rights Reserved

Nicholas Mann is a geomancer and author. His work includes ‘The Sacred Geometry of Washington DC', ‘Sedona: Sacred Earth' and ‘The Isle of Avalon.' He is currently completing a book about the astronomy of Avebury, the largest stone circle in the world. He lives in Glastonbury UK. His website can be found at www.britishmysteries.co.uk.

It is time to return to the roots of our traditions and listen to the voice of the anima mundi - the soul of the world. As we have forgotten our complete dependence upon Life on Earth and prioritised only the human, we need this connection now like never before.

The world is a living organism that the ancients saw invested with spirit. This Earth Spirit inhabited the woods, the forests, the mountains, the springs, the creatures and the wind. The native and ancient peoples saw this spirit as the genius loci, as ‘daemonic' and as ‘medicine' forces, as nymphs, dryads, elementals, as giants and as angels - for the soul of the world also has a heavenly component, manifested for us in the Sun, the Moon, the planets and the stars. Every living thing plays its part in the anima mundi, including ourselves, the self-important humans.

Sedona is invested with a certain spirit of place - a particular genius loci. Sedona is a spiritual centre, an axis mundi - a world axis and world centre - and thus it is an emergence place, a gateway between the worlds, to and from the above and the below. It is a place to connect deeply with the heart and soul of the world, yet it is also a place to connect with the Sun and the forces of the cosmos. The Yavapai Apache emergence myth clearly states that the grandson of the First Woman in the present world (the fourth), went up into the heavens to bring the forces of the Sun, the cloud and the lightning, to the Earth. He accomplished this by returning from the sky, the place of his father and merging his body into his mother's place, the Earth. The place he did this was Sedona, and here, the plants that grow out of his body carry the different forms of medicine power: Sun, Earth, water and sky - the many powers of the anima mundi. You can read about this in my book Sedona: Sacred Earth written in honour of the traditions of the native people.

Returning to the present and the needs of the current time, humanity finds itself at a crucial turning point in a 26,000 year cycle. This is the moment, lasting about forty years centred on 2000 CE, when the midwinter sun is crossing the intersection of the ecliptic and the galactic equator.

To explain: from the Earth the Sun crosses the galaxy, the Milky Way, twice each day, once ascending and once descending. Its path, the ecliptic, has two points of intersection with the plane of the galaxy. These two points are eternally fixed in the constellations of Sagittarius and Gemini. The ascending crossing point, in Sagittarius (at the foot of Ophiuchus), lies on the galactic equator over an area of the galaxy that is also its centre. The descending crossing point, in Gemini, points away from the galactic core, toward the ‘galactic anti-centre.'

The Sun rises every morning about a degree earlier against the celestial sphere than it did the day before as the Earth moves around the Sun in the orbit of the year. We divide the celestial sphere according to the Zodiac. In spring, for example, we say the Sun is rising in Pisces, near to Aquarius, and at the winter solstice we say the Sun is rising in Sagittarius near to Scorpio. The Sun would always rise at the same time of year against the same stars in the celestial sphere were it not for a slow rotation of the axis of the Earth rather like the additional rotation of a spinning top or gyroscope. See the diagram. Every 72 years the sun appears to have moved about a degree forward, and thus there is a motion, known as the Precession of the Equinoxes, where the seasons move slowly forward against the backdrop of the stars. Thus it is the midwinter, or the winter solstice Sun, that is currently over the great fixed marking point of the heavens, the ascending crossing point of the ecliptic and the galactic equator.

Due to a remarkable synchronicity that cannot be explained by any known law of physics, the ascending crossing point in Sagittarius, as mentioned above, is also the centre of the galaxy. This places the Earth in a special relationship to the galaxy, one it could easily not have had, and it aligns a significant moment in the solar year, the winter solstice, with a similar moment in the ‘Great Year', the 26,000 year cycle of precession. The convention that measures precession according to the spring equinox Sun, currently moving from Pisces to Aquarius, is better replaced by one (such as that of the Maya) which measures it against the markers of the galaxy, and especially one where the galaxy is crossed each day by the ascending Sun. As it is now the winter solstice Sun that is closest to this crossing point over the galactic core, we need to be paying extremely close attention to what this means.

It is up to humanity to be aware of these cosmic cycles and align itself to them through spiritual centres such as Sedona, whose stones and medicine wheels have many midwinter solar alignments. In this manner we remember our full nature: that we are creatures of the Sun and stars as well as of the Earth. As I discovered when I had the good fortune to live in Sedona for a few years and now back studying the stone circles of my native land, spiritual tradition everywhere teaches that great forces pass through us that have their origins elsewhere. By remembering them we turn our mind away from its preoccupation with matter, with disputes and desires, and remain focused on the power and the stillness of the highest truths. We remember our soul nature; for the life of the soul is one with the soul of life on Earth. We align with the anima mundi, the soul of life, to our origins in the stars.

Now is a good time to become a pilgrim. To go to the sacred sites, to the places of emergence, the places of the axis mundi. It is a good time to go with open hearts into the wilderness, to honour the world soul and walk in prayerfulness. It is a good time to talk with the spirits about what humanity has done to the Earth and how you and I are trying to get back into balance with life.

It is a good time to remember the universal language of spirit, the language that comes from the roots of our traditions, where all branches merge into the single trunk of the Tree of Life. It is a good time to talk the language of the anima mundi, the heart and soul of the world, and to remember the sweetness of small things: the web woven by the spider, the lichen on a stone, the pattern on a feather, the smell of the juniper and the pine. I recommend making offerings of natural substances, such as cornmeal, and of music. As long as the offerings are in tune with the spirit of place and do not intrude on anyone or anything they will be accepted and will have an effect upon your life.

As we look for signs of hope, for signs of humanity turning to the good road of walking in balance with life, we might also recognise signs from the returning Earth Spirit. The Sun may appear in another light. The deep earth may reveal the passages of the feathered serpent, the body of the First Mother and her grandson. Already the greatest visible cycle known to the ancients, the moment when everything turns over, dies and is reborn, the winter solstice moment in the Great Year, is saying to us: get ready. This is the time of transformation. After every winter comes a spring, under the sloughing of an old skin is a new, and after the ending of every age, comes another. The transition will be painful, but the soul of the world is with us. Indeed, it never went away, only we went away from it.

The axis of rotation of the Earth revolves around a 26,000 year cycle known as precession. This changes the position of the celestial poles (the Pole Star) and the time of year when the sun rises against the backdrop of the stars. This diagram shows how the position of the sun slowly turns against the celestial sphere, rising at the equinoxes in one Zodiacal constellation for about 2160 years and then in another. This has been used as a convention to divide and mark out the Great Year or the ‘cycle of the ages.'

Currently the solstitial suns are aligned to the two great fixed marking points in the heavens: the intersection of the ecliptic and the galactic equator. As these two marking points are also aligned to the galactic centre, the sun at the summer solstice points away from it to the galactic ‘anticentre' and the sun at the winter solstice points toward it - an event taking place only once every 26,000 years. Native and ancient tradition saw this (rather than the Zodiacal signs) as signifying the aeonic moment, the time of death and rebirth in the cycle of the Great Year.

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