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The Goodwill Festival
Subtle Meanings of the Full Moon in Sagittarius

A man has to have his tunes when he travels, don’t you know? The strains of The Who’s Goin' Mobile set the perfect accompaniment for the day’s journey back down the mountains to the family home. As the road stretched out before me and disappeared into a faint ribbon way off in the distance, I enjoyed the beauty of the mountain scenery and my mind was transported away from recent cares and into the realms of philosophy, letters I needed to write and what I was to have for lunch. “Play the tape machine. Make the toast and tea when I’m mobile.”, the song retorted. Ah, yes! Tea is a good idea, I thought. As I pulled off the highway to get my refreshment, I was given to musing over the tremendous variety of people I had met with over my trip thus far and the diversity of cultures I had encountered. All along the way I had been given so many words and symbols by people – some close, some virtually unknown – pertinent to my life and situation at the moment – answers I had been seeking or clues that would eventually direct me to the answers I was after. Like each turn in the road that was carrying me onward, every new vista has given me a fresh perspective, whether from people or from nature.

As I resumed my journey, tea in hand, I was soon taken by the symbolism of the road and how it corresponds with the Path of human evolution. Here I was by myself in the middle of nowhere, following this path of asphalt, like some continuous stream of thought. Each exit offered a new perspective, for periodically we have to exit the main stream to refresh our thinking. Sometimes we want to explore an off-road and then find ourselves lost for a time (Sometimes a man needs to explore things in his own way and in his own time.). But we eventually get back on track. Nature offers up everything to us on the road of life – good weather and bad, majestic beauty and road-kill – like the detritus of all the outmoded ideas we leave behind in life.

We travel with people on the road for a time. Sometimes we pass them. Sometimes we get passed ourselves. Sometimes we share a few moments on the byways of life, and sometimes we have traveling companions. I have experienced so much in my short trip here. Travel does indeed broaden one’s thinking. But in all this – I guess I would call it a recurring theme – I have heard so many stories from people that have reminded me of the great goodness that gets drawn from people in the face of adversity, of the wonderful resilience of the human spirit, of the sacrifices made for the love of another, of the strength that love can bring to a person, of the simple pleasures of shared time together and the comradery that brings with it and of the wonders that an open, spirited heart can bring to person when interacting with another’s. The open road, an adventurous spirit, music to move the Soul, good companionship and a good cup of tea – it doesn’t get much better than that!

This shall be my final letter from overseas for the time being. I guess you could call it my last “letter from America”, if you are familiar with the late Alistair Cooke. We enter now into the last of the full moon festivals for the high spiritual point of the year – the Festival of Goodwill – the Gemini full moon. This will be a very auspicious festival, coinciding as it does with the Venus conjunction 5 days later. In fact, the primary planetary dynamics of the two events are practically identical, so I will not go too much into interpretation of the planetary aspects for this festival. The reader is directed to my Venus article for those explanations. We could probably say that this Goodwill Festival will usher in these next 8 and 120 year cycles of Venus and set the tone for them. But quite aside from that, this will be a most powerful festival, and the tone set for the expansion of human culture and interaction will reach far into the future. The reasons for my saying that will become clearer as this article goes on.

Resolution of Duality

This full moon of Gemini will occur at 2:21 PM AEST on the 3rd of June 2004. I laid the groundwork for understanding the dynamics of it in my previous article, which is one reason why that was such a long one. We need to investigate Gemini a little more deeply here, though. Gemini is one of the most important signs for humanity, and it is the first of the distinctly human signs both in terms of its symbolism and in its effects in the world. It is ruled by Venus esoterically, which relates it to humanity in a very intimate manner, as discussed in that Venus article.

But, above and beyond that, it is the sign that brings all kinds of dualities in nature and human thinking into relation and eventual union and, little as we may realize it, that is exactly what a human being is and does. As humans, we are a paradox – a conundrum and the answer to it – for we are both Spirit and its antithesis joined together, the evolving unit (persona) and that which has already evolved and achieved liberation, the eternal human Spirit. We embody all the lower kingdoms of nature in some way and yet we are all sparks of the great Heart of God, and we are thus everlasting and all-wise in our higher essence. Our lives are a constant struggle between those two poles and in that struggle we redeem the lower kingdoms and ourselves as well as aid the great Forces of evolution in the One Work. Irony, paradox, conflicting forces and polarity are the lot of the human being in the lower life. Union, beauty, perfected expression and common ground are the Life of the human being in Spirit, along with so much more.

Gemini and the Earth

In orthodox astrology, Gemini rules brothers and sisters, commerce, short journeys, short literary works (letters and the like), broadcasts and broadcasters, pairs, the lungs and the arms, the oxygenation of the blood, mentality and the lower, concrete mind, libraries, journalism, the metal mercury, perceptive powers, debates, the press, post offices, Eastern Canada, Tripoli (Libya), schools and speech, transport and highways, monkeys, the stock market, nervous energy and the nerves, brotherhood and Central America. It rules the synthetic expression of the persona of the US. The orthodox ruler of Gemini is Mercury in its lower expressions. Of interest, though, is the Hierarchical ruler, which is the Earth itself.

It is strange that we do not consider the earth in orthodox astrology since it is the planet of most importance to us. But it is indeed figured in esoteric horoscopes, and its position is always opposite the Sun in any chart. Thus it stands as a counterpoint to the essential psyche, which the Sun represents, of any chart. We may therefore get a sort of inkling as to why the Earth rules the hierarchy of lives that Gemini represents. From the preceding points, then, we begin to see the dualistic nature of Gemini and why it can seem almost a schizophrenic sign at times (it does rule certain aspects of mental illness). But, more than that, we see that Gemini rules over the very psyche of Earth humanity itself, of the potential for unity that communion with others can bring and of the ultimate merging of the higher and lower aspects of ourselves, which is ever its highest expression and ultimate aim for us.

In part two of this article, Malvin expands his analysis of the subtle meanings of the Goodwill Festival and explores the esoteric and spiritual effects of the planetary configurations on the condition of the world under the current trying conditions.

Read part two of The Goodwill Festival