Author: Cynthia Hansen Zehm

Alacazem 2011.10.06

October 6 to 13, 2011     Visible Planets: Morning: Mars and Jupiter  Evening: Venus

October and Bracing for Winter

I arose this morning in darkness, well before sunrise, and it was raining – raining hard. Last night’s news sent out the season's first winter storm advisory for the San Juans with forecasts for snow and lows in the upper 20ºs – yikes! Mother Nature painting the landscape white; summer is definitely over.

Now the day is breaking and it’s grey outside. The grass in the yard is emerald green, the windows streaked with rain. Fire crackles in the woodstove and it’s warm and cozy inside. Winds blow and bend the tall blonde grass in the pasture where the horses are out of sight; they’ve taken cover in the pinon-juniper forest way ‘down yonder.’  Now, that’s a saying I’ve heard used on and off in Colorado since I was a kid. It’s a cowboy-country kind of slang that always makes me smile.

Weather changing, just like life. When it rains and storms, it seems like it will always be so. The human animal reacts to atmospheric conditions just like that, when it’s sunny and bright, it’s hard to imagine sleet and snow. The Sun is always there, and clouds will come and go. Like emotions and feelings, it’s all temporary – just like life. C’est la vie, here we are, moving into the second week in October and bracing for winter.

Just like that, just like life…

Alacazem 2011.09.29

September 29 to October 6, 2011   Visible Planets: Morning: Mars and Jupiter  Evening: Venus

“The Whirling Rainbow is the promise of peace among all Nations and all people. The Rainbow Race stresses equality and opposes the idea of a superior race that would control or conquer other races. The Rainbow Race brings peace through the understanding that all races are one. The unity of all colors, all creeds working together for the good of the whole, is the idea that is embodied in the Whirling Rainbow. When all pathways to wholeness are respected by all cultures, the prophecy of the Whirling Rainbow will be completed. - Jamie Sams, The Sacred Path Cards

For years I’ve been fascinated by Native American teachings. Perhaps it’s the Colorado territory I grew up in, so rich in stories of cowboys and Indians, playing in creek beds where red men roamed, finding arrowheads and riding horses across mesa tops, dreaming of buffalo and watching the sun set behind the peak-studded horizons of my youth. Or maybe it’s in my blood, where a genetic past-life memory lingers. According to my Grandfather, his forefathers came over on the Mayflower. And one of my Grandmother’s ancestors was the first recorded fatality in the Revolutionary War. Plenty of time to interbreed. Whatever the case, fantasy or reality, I hear the voice and feel the heart of the people who lived and loved these American lands long before the white man ever saw it.

Alacazem 2011.09.22

September 22 to 29, 2011

Visible Planets: Morning: Mars and Jupiter  Evening: Venus and Saturn

Autumn Equinox and the Libra New Moon of Peace and Grace

  The 2011 Autumnal Equinox takes place this week on Sept. 23^rd @ 3:04 am MDT and initiates the season of brilliant yellow, flaming orange, burning crimson, passionate peach and imperial purple. As the Sun exactly aligns with the Earth’s equator, we experience a day of balance and equilibrium, a day in which the hours of light and dark are equal. Here in the Northern Hemisphere, we are passing into the time of increasing darkness, as opposed to the Southern Hemisphere, where this day heralds the birth of spring and the season of increasing light.

The zodiac month of Libra begins at Autumn Equinox and is characterized astrologically by the energies of peace, harmony, beauty, equality and balance. The astrological symbol, or glyph, for Libra is the linear depiction of the western horizon and the setting sun – an omen of impending twilight and approaching darkness. As the 7^th sign of the Tropical Zodiac, it marks the halfway point in our Earth’s annual cycle around the Sun and a time of natural transition and metamorphosis. As leaves change color and landscapes transform, we also change. Cooler nights and shifting light stimulate yearnings to connect and bond, we instinctively look for partners and feel the desire to share and pair. 

Alacazem 2011.09.15

September 15 to 22, 2011

Visible Planets: Morning: Mercury, Mars and Jupiter  Evening: Saturn

Mystical Musicians and Magnetic Magic

The last week of summer in southwestern Colorado is one of exquisite beauty and grace. The shift from hot days and warm evenings to cool, crisp mornings and chilly nights awakens instincts and stimulates desire. Pastoral lowlands transform from verdant greens to autumn blondes, rusty auburns and burnished golds. Up high, emerald aspen surrender to shades of vibrant yellow and crimson peach. It’s magnificent and poignant, a time to embrace Mother Nature’s magic and feel the powerful, metaphysical flow of seasonal change.  

In Telluride, this week translates simply as Blues & Brews. Headliners include legendary master musician and mystical maverick Willie Nelson – the man and voice responsible for more than one ecstatic night in the 1970’s Sheridan Bar- blues great Robert Cray and locals favorite Big Head Todd and the Monsters. The weather looks far from last year’s perfect, but, c’est la vie, it’s gotta be good, regardless. Whatever comes, it’s time to gather the tarps and umbrellas, endure the rain and hope for rainbows. One never knows…everything’s possible and anything can happen.

Alacazem 2011.09.08

Visible Planets: Morning: Mercury, Mars and Jupiter  Evening: Saturn

The Medicine & Magic of the Full Harvest Moon

Golden grasses, heavy with seed, bend and sway in the slanting sun. Fields are painted with swirling colors of autumn blonde, brown and green. Sweet peaches are on the table and crisp red apples hang in clusters on the trees. Tomatoes ripen on the vine, peppers are picked and pickles are pickled. Nights are noticeably cooler and the days, while still lusciously warm, are touched with the magical, transformational hand of Indian Summer.

As Autumn Equinox approaches, the Virgo lunar month gifts us with the fruition of the Harvest Moon, one of the most magnificently beautiful and bountiful full Moons of the year. It’s a time to take pause, to be thankful and grateful, count our blessings and say our prayers. Virgo is all about health and healing, daily practice and self-improvement. It’s about work and service, being helpful and assistful, cultivating humility and making our world a better place in which to live and thrive. The vestal Virgin, the goddess of the harvest, medicine women, healers and herbalists, dieticians and exercise gurus come together under the Virgo mantle. And when the Moon grows full under the Virgo sun, we feel the earthy, medicinal power of the Mother Earth in all her harvest glory, coupled with the transcendental power of spirit -  the divine cosmic will to which we must ultimately surrender.

Alacazem 2011.09.01

Labor Day Purple, Peach and the End-of-Summer Harvest

Visible Planets: Morning: Mercury, Mars and Jupiter  Evening: Saturn

The time has come to say good-bye to summer. Sad as it seems, and reluctant as I am to write these words, August has ended. It is now September. This coming Monday is Labor Day, the traditional end-of-summer holiday. This translates as Film Festival time in Telluride – historically the town’s first and arguably most prestigious festival of the year. Hollywood affecionados, movie buffs and critics, editors, actors, directors and producers gather in one of the most dramatically beautiful geographical corners of the world – stunning flora, iconic waterfalls, magnificent mountains, majestic wildlife and shimmering rainbows – all a backdrop for fairy tale perfect Victorian architecture and state-of-the-art cinema. For many years I watched the crowds and observed the magic. Welcome to TFF #38.

Alacazem 2011.08.25

August 25 to September 1, 2011   Visible Planets: Morning: Mars and Jupiter  Evening: Saturn

“This month’s New Moon shifts attention from the creative fires of Leo to the earthy pragmatism of Virgo. The last Full Moon urged us to follow our heart and soul; this New Moon calls us to use our head and hands.”       Stephanie Austin, The Mountain Astrologer, Aug/Sep Issue

The Virgo dilemma: Perfection is an ideal, rather than a reality. And practice is a means of manifesting dreams, visions and ideals. Is perfection thus an attainable goal via practice?

Virgo is all about work and service, health and healing. Its function is to make the self and the world we live in better – moment-by-moment, day by day - by living a life of attention, sacrifice and humility. Order and organization, efficiency and productivity are avenues of progress in the Virgo journey; integrity, right action, virtue and purity are companions on the trail.