-Art by Jan Ketchel
The crescent and the cross are potent opposing symbols of our time. I recently hung a “coexist” flag in my yard containing both the crescent and the cross. Suddenly, a neighbor put out a flag with just a cross!
The crescent is associated with Islam and the cross with Christianity, but these symbols are far more ancient than either of those religions.
The crescent is a phase of the moon herself where she displays her receptive womb from which issues all manifested life. The cross is the most ancient representation of the sun’s rays, the masculine generative principle that together with its feminine lunar counterpart symbolizes the yin/yang, body/spirit, feminine/masculine components of all life.
In our time, like the crescent and the cross, the feminine and masculine are deeply estranged. This estrangement is fairly well expressed by our golden sunray-haired President’s attitude toward all things feminine, from Mother Earth to the body of woman. He typifies the current yin/yang configuration of our planet. Yang—masculine consciousness—is dominant now, yet also highly suspicious of and afraid of yin. Symbolically the dominant cross seeks to keep the crescent contained and outside its borders.
Within the human personalities of men and women the crescent and the cross are clearly operative. For women, the crescent dominates in the binding of her nature to the moon cycle. The sun, her independent mental consciousness, often appears in her inner man figure, her animus of her dreams. For men, the mind/spirit/sun/cross dominates, with his emotional moon anima recessively active in the background of his psyche and his moods.
Both sexes are challenged at this time with contending with the same wave of yang/cross dominance, which is impacting all psyches. All mental, planned activity, issues from yang. In our current world configuration, yin, the body and its instinctual nature, is at the mercy of an overly dominant yang.
This dominant yang attitude is easily demonstrable in men who often override the needs of the body, or the earth, in favor of securing for themselves and their kin. For women this internal dominance of masculine energy may be evidenced in a pressured mental plan to meet needs or secure what one feels entitled to. Thus a woman might find herself at odds with her own feminine nature as her masculine self pressures her to do its bidding.
Both sexes might notice an activation of crescent/cross symbols in their dreams, as the unconscious uses these powerful ancient symbols to both guide conscious attitudes and compensate for them.
These living symbols of our time are showing us the energetic configuration we are currently dealing with, within ourselves and outwardly as expressed in mass movements. We are all feeling their impact in some way.
These extraordinary times beckon for crescent/cross reconciliation. I would encourage everyone to draw these living symbols, color them, find ways to express them that may safely lead them into a new harmony, for it is only in achieving harmony, within and without, that peace will come.
Amen,
Chuck