GRATIA EST PERPETUA
CHAPTER 126
GRATIA EST PERPETUA
The story for the full moon time:
December 26 – January 10
MOON DETAILS:
Full Moon
4°58′ Cancer
Dec. 26, 2023
7:33 PM EST
REFLECTION DATES:
Jul 17 – Jul 31, 2023
Mar 21 – May 4, Sep 29 – Oct 13, & Dec 8, 2023
* What connections do you see between then and now? Learn more in the story.
20 MINUTE READ
Do I dare tell you what I’ve seen? The images that flash across my mind when I close my eyes?
The bodies. The death. The ethereal throne room reeks of desecrated immortal flesh. Masters burned to bone. I shake, I shake. My body succumbs to sickness and for four days and four nights I cannot lie flat. I cannot rest my head on its side. I must stay seated. Upright. My head perfectly centered. I squish a pink pillow around the back of my neck, pull a silk mask over my eyes, and fall asleep.
For four days and four nights.
There’s absolutely nothing whispering between my body fighting the virus here on Earth and that other body — made of light, glowing, capable of traveling between realms — the material and the ethereal — but no longer feeling safe in the throne room, which seems to have been invaded, attacked.
I push the vision from my mind. I try not to touch it. I trust that it’ll make sense in time. Maybe everything is fine. Maybe, maybe —
☆
FIVE NIGHTS EARLIER
the evening of December 11, 2023
I’m sitting in the basement. Sitting on a black piano bench, watching my husband lean forward, his elbows resting on his knees. He’s telling me something he’s never told me before, telling me things I will not tell you now because they are not mine to tell, but I will share this — the last thing he said to me: I don’t know what it is, but there’s something there. There’s something about that land.
He was referencing a small triangle — mostly desert — held between two ancient seas.
He went there once, and when he did, something moved inside him. Something inspired devotion unlike anything he’d ever felt before and unlike anything he’s ever felt since.
I could barely believe what I was hearing. This man, my husband, the only person in the world with whom I’ve spoken every day for the last six years of my life was once — even if for just a moment in time — devout.
This devotion, he claimed, was stirred by something seemingly preternatural in that region of the earth.
My mind flashed to the words I wrote a friend earlier in the day: It’s amazing how much geography affects us, but of course it does.
And that’s when I let my own secret break from my lips: I’ve been seeing something terrible.
He listened closely as I spoke.
I don’t know what it means. But for years now, I’ve been seeing this ethereal throne room. It’s been a refuge of sorts. A place where I can always go. And about a year after it first appeared in my mind, I had a number of experiences — wild things, magical messages — they all made me think that there really is something about this land you speak of. I saw the throne room there. Shimmering through the invisible layers of the earth. Glowing above the physical temples that people have built. And maybe, there really is some sort of connection point there — between realms. But lately — I winced before speaking, as if saying the words would make them come true — whenever I’ve visited the throne room, it’s just been covered in corpses. I don’t know why, but maybe…maybe, it’s because of what’s happening here, on Earth. All of the death.
My husband shuddered, That doesn’t sound good.
No, it doesn’t.
☆
My throat starts to hurt. Congestion fills my ears, my nose. I cough. Pain spreads through my legs like when I was eight and could feel my bones growing beneath my skin.
Covid. Two red lines confirm my suspicion as I settle into bed and do what the last chapter of this story advised: “relax, rest, soften into the seconds and minutes as if they are made of golden threads, not pulling you forward but scooping you up, wrapping you inside them until you are so completely still at the center of it all that you yourself have become the gift.”
I become still. So still. And I wonder if maybe there is even some magic in this. In the stillness, the sickness, the physical circumstances forcing my head and body to remain upright. Even while sleeping.
Days pass.
I feel a flicker at my chest. An inner flame that had been dimmed is now reaching up and out, filling my body with energy, my mind with words: Grace, grace. Give yourself grace. Rest.
I envision green glyphs — a green circle with a dot at the center representing the sun and five green letters beside it. G-r-a-t-i. Short for Gratia. Latin for grace.
That’s what’s coming, I remind myself. Remembering that on December 26, the sun and the asteroid Gratia will converge in the sky.
The sun = the self.
Gratia = Grace. As in kindness, generosity.
Be kind to yourself.
I sigh, thinking, 2023 was hard.
Most days were filled with joy and magic and love and gratitude because who wouldn’t feel those things? With food on the table, a cat snuggled on the couch, a loving partner, and that view — the pond glistening in the distance, vibrant green wrapped around it. A gaggle of geese land in unison, cast shadows across the water and grass.
I feel it all. Every day. A little bit of everything. Like my insides are made of the same dark viscous as a 1980s mood ring. The colors of passion, serenity, stress, worry, everything strut upon my surface, and all days are like this. A rainbow of feeling. Bright bright bright. But today, with this sickness, the color is just — whatever’s underneath. The still viscous. Struggling to reflect anything back. But then, a flash — of frustration, desire, color.
Life returns to my cheeks. My face no longer red just beneath my nose. The flicker, that flame — my flame. Telling me again what I felt the evening of December 8: 2023 was hard.
I was bedridden for a month in March with shooting pains following a less than ideal gynecological experience. My father-in-law broke his hip. Then his leg. With each break, we watched his memory leave his body, permanently retreating to that ethereal realm where (I hope, I believe) it will always live. And sometimes, I miss New York. I miss my friends. I miss the baristas who always remembered my name. I miss the thrum of possibility bouncing off the city streets. Plus, there were about ten other heartbreaking things that for privacy reasons, I won’t detail here, but all of this is to say that while my daily experience of 2023 was mainly a delight, when I zoom out and reflect on all of the things that happened, I feel the weight of just how hard it’s been.
On the evening of December 8, I collapsed under this weight.
Literally, physically. My knees hit the floor by the foot of the bed as tears filled the palms of my hands.
I pulled out my sketchbook and just started sketching. Wild messy black line sketches. Words scribbled in the corners and and all around the edges as words became messages and images became visions, and by the time I reached the last page, I could see just how much we need each other. All of us.
There’s no degree of self-soothing or evolution of consciousness that leads to an existence where you completely cease to depend on other people.
This being human is about togetherness. We come into this life not just to learn and grow but mostly, to love each other. To break down the walls between our bodies in order to experience the oneness of our being. To realize that apart, we are splintered souls, but together, we are everything.
I close my sketchbook. Its black binding slips from my hand as I place it on the table by my bed and look to my left. I stretch my hand across the place where my husband usually sleeps but tonight, he isn’t there. He’s traveling for business, and I am alone. Alone. In Ohio.
But I know I’m not alone alone. I never am. There is always that light, the glowing ethereal realm. And tonight, I decided, I will go there to fall asleep. I will close my eyes and visit the throne room and feel all the love that for the last three years of my life, I have always felt there. I will fall asleep bathing in it.
I turn off the light and close my eyes, and in my mind, I go straight to my ethereal chambers. Some offshoot from the throne room that has always been a part of my experience of this liminal space, this room of my own, perhaps even of my own making.
I crawl into my ethereal bed. Its red velvet linens soft upon my body, but when I turn my head, I shriek.
Hollow eyes stare back at me from the skeletal remains of a heavenly being I know and love. I rush to the throne room, and my stomach turns as I encounter body after body. Death has consumed the entire place.
He’s dead. They’re all dead.
My mind shoots back to my physical body, my bed in Ohio. I tell myself it isn’t real. It couldn’t be real. I must be imagining things. Perhaps my earlier sorrow has permeated even this place and now my mind is playing tricks on me.
Yes, yes, that must be it.
But then, I see it again. And again. I get sick, and still, I see it.
Even now as I type, it’s like the doors to the sanctuary have been barricaded. Like something terrible is happening there, and I don’t know what it means, but I also sense something else.
A flicker.
Like the flame at my chest. Not yet restored, but still there. I sense something new is about to be born in this space. Like breath and life and glory are about to arrive and fill the entire place with something new. The bodies — hollowed and empty — will soon be resurrected. The walls will be painted a different shade. The linens cleaned and replaced. The throne room itself…reconfigured. Into what? I don’t yet know.
It’s coming. It’s coming.
I stop pulling on the barricades, trying to get back to what was. I retreat. I let things die and fall away. I wait it out. However long it takes. I trust.
I stop worrying about what will be, and I take a moment to reflect on everything that’s happened this year. I decide to look at 2023 not from the weight of all the hardship. Not from the joy and gratitude of daily gifts. But from this, this story. What happened this year? What does it mean? What was The Magic Guide saying?
I turn back the pages of the book. Flipping past twenty-one chapters until I find myself in January 2023. I read the first words:
“What does it mean to be carried by magic? It means that magic is carrying you and you are carrying it.”
And smiling, I am swept away.
☆
THE LIGHT BODY REVOLUTION
the magical story of 2023
The story started simply enough — with little, loving winks from some mysterious, invisible partner extending its hand, asking us to dance.
Then, A FLOOD OF LIGHT, pouring down like water from the sky, initiating a trail of light, asking us to follow.
We did. We did. We followed the light all the way to some major commitment. A commitment we made to ourselves — perhaps also to another person. It deepened in January and February and simmered throughout the year until it reached a boiling point — some grand culmination/expression of this commitment in August.
But before August came, before we allowed the commitment to fully express itself, we were rocked by the very land on which we stood. The earth was changing.
Scientists probed the earth’s core and discovered a hidden layer there — the innermost inner core. Perhaps this was contributing to the other thing they found — that the metallic ball at the center of our planet recently came to a halt, but this year, it began picking up speed again.
We were spun round and round. From the inside out. And the outside in.
Breaking down walls in our minds and walls in our hearts until we were synching more perfectly with the heart of the world — beating in the shape of a horn torus, expanding to hold everything and collapsing back to the center, moving in and out, in and out, with every pulse.
We are shapeshifters. We realized. All of us. The whole world. Nothing is constant. Everything is changing. Perhaps even God himself…herself...themself…itself — that ever-changing face.
We made space in our hearts and minds to fit all of the various shapes and states of things, to allow truth to not be static but to evolve. Scientists came to this same conclusion, theorizing that perhaps this is how truth is. Perhaps the foundational laws of nature themselves change. Perhaps what was true in one era is not necessarily true in the next, but for a time, it was true. It was true.
And so we found ourselves standing at the threshold between worlds. Between what was and what will be. Between the ethereal and the material. Between —
A BRIGHT GOLDEN BODY OF LIGHT DESCENDED TO EARTH.
It danced and danced, spinning round and round, like the core of the earth, like the sun itself.
And then, it fell asleep. Its golden light — as bright as the sun — seeped deep into the earth.
And in the desert, a capsule descended from out in space. Scientists opened it and found a sample of particles and dust from the asteroid Bennu. They’d been waiting years for this. And when they took a closer look, they found the building blocks for life itself. They theorized that perhaps this is how life began. Perhaps it fell from the sky, coating the earth in the riches needed for life to form and thrive. Perhaps the thing that’s beating inside all of us really did come from all the way out there.
Weeks passed, and the golden body of light from out beyond the earth slept and slept, and then, on October 9, it awoke. And all the golden light that had seeped into the earth began bursting through the surface.
And in the arctic, scientists found something unexpected. It seemed to have risen from deep inside the earth — from the very core that had been drawing our attention all year — and now, it had reached the surface — offering the ancient power of the sun itself and perhaps promising a future where atoms are not split but fused to provide limitless clean energy.
Promising — maybe, maybe — a future where we are not split in two but merged together.
And with that, in November, we found ourselves thrust across the threshold we’d been straddling.
We stumbled into the unknown territory of our collective future, and as we arrived, we became like the atoms of the sun itself. No longer able to maintain multiple positions. No longer able to split our experience between the here and there, for now, we must be fully unified. Like two black holes merging or two neutron stars colliding, the two realms — the ethereal and the material — began collapsing into each other because what was above was no longer just out there — above us — but it had arrived. On Earth. Two bodies became one, and as this happened —
I put the story down. The collapse…
I started seeing all of the death during the collapse…
The ethereal throne room with its dark wooden furniture, its fibers of red and gold, its windowless rooms. I’d never noticed before, but there was never any sunlight. Never a view outside. Save for that one time — when a hole opened at the center of the floor, revealing clouds below — but that time…the room was different. Brighter. A completely different space.
As I pondered all of this, an email arrived in my inbox. It mentioned something I’d never heard of, something called The Interior Castle. I immediately thought of the throne room, my ethereal chambers, and this interior experience I’ve had of something quite castle-like. Curious, I read all about the castle. I learned that a 16th century nun (Teresa of Ávila) envisioned the human soul as a castle with seven mansions. Each mansion represented a different stage in our union with God, and as I read the description of the mansions, I trembled in recognition. I wondered, What are the odds that this email arrived just as I was pondering my own interior castle?
I returned to The Magic Guide and these words from the penultimate chapter of 2023: “I think this is what we all get — this is what we all have — a room of our own to soften into, a mind through which we can see and experience the world and all its magic.”
Maybe, this is my room. Maybe, my room is changing. And perhaps, yours is changing too. Perhaps it has already changed.
Then, I saw the date — written in a chapter from March: December 8, 2023.
That was the day. The day I first saw the desecrated throne room, the corpses, the death.
I had no memory of having predicted the significance of this date months earlier. I had forgotten all about it until now. But there it was — the story of how, in March, I was strangely, intuitively guided to December 8, 2023:
It started with two eagles. I saw them — one bald, one golden — sitting in a tree. I couldn’t believe my eyes. These two eagles. Like two sides of the same coin. Like the trunk itself was a threshold, and they were perched on either side, as if representing two worlds — before and after.
I saw them on December 8, 2022. But when I went to look at the astrology for that day, I accidentally entered 2023 instead. That’s when I saw that December 8, 2023, was going to be very important.
A song played in my head: Amphitrite, what does it mean? What does it mean? And as I looked at the December date, I realized: It means “three times around.”
Over the course of 2023, Saturn crossed the same specific point in the sky three times. The first time was on March 21. The second was on September 29, and the third and final time was on December 8.
Reflect back. What happened for you around these three dates? It wasn’t necessarily on the exact day but close.
When I first observed these dates in March, I wrote: “Something very magical is happening with the crossing of this point over the course of 2023.”
And so, instead of being scared, I started to get very curious about what I was seeing. The bodies. The death. The barricaded door. Perhaps this isn’t expulsion. Perhaps this isn’t terrible. Perhaps this is — the word flashed in my mind — revolution.
☆
On December 26, 2023, a Cancer full moon rises beside the asteroid Tyche.
Tyche was named after the Greek goddess of chance. Her name means “luck,” and she is the Wheel of Fortune itself, spinning on the whims of fate.
On the other side of the earth, the sun is aligned with the asteroid Gratia. Filling us with grace.
We are ending 2023 and entering 2024 (the full moon time goes through January 10) on the wings of luck and grace.
Regardless of how the wheel spins, may we trust in the grace of it, for GRATIA EST PERPETUA.
That is the phrase I was given as the title for this chapter. It appeared in my mind before I even started writing, and it means: Grace is everlasting.
For not everything that looks bad is bad, and even the most tragic moments are lined with grace.
To better understand what might show up for you during this time, reflect back on your experiences from July 17 to July 31. Not only was this the Cancer new moon time, but it was also when the great body of light descended. It was when we found ourselves suddenly straddling an invisible threshold and searching for solid ground as the whole world began to change shape.
Connected to this change, in 2023, an Aries eclipse cycle started, pushing us to align more closely with our own personal destiny. Reflect back on all of the “reflection dates” listed above (on mobile) and to the bottom left (on desktop). As you reflect, ask yourself: What did this year teach me about my destiny? What have I learned about who I am (or really, who I will become) in this new world?
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☆
I close my eyes, and for the first time in days, I am lying flat on my back.
I still can’t turn my head, but at least I’m no longer sitting. The sickness is slowly but surely leaving my body, and here, in my mind’s eye, I see large white doors. Two of them. A golden circle spreads across the point where the two doors meet, concealing two recessed handles.
I reach my hands towards them, and the doors fly open. Bright white light comes rushing out, and as my eyes adjust, I see gleaming white marble floors.
I’m standing in an enormous room. Its ceiling held by pillars. It’s completely empty save for long wooden tables off to the side, covered in food.
White curtains billow in the distance, calling me towards them.
I follow the breeze through the curtains, up a staircase, and out onto a Juliet balcony. I can feel how this new space is still mostly empty, as if under the spell of some magical construction that is slowly building out sections and adding details I can’t yet see because they have yet to be created, but already, I can tell where I am.
The air is still and sweet. The sun is bright. I feel its warmth on my skin as I rest my hands on the curved stone railing. Unfurling before me, a sea of white frozen crystals and liquid droplets undulates beneath a bright blue sky.
I am standing in a castle in the clouds.
☆
To be continued…
LONG STORY SHORT
During this Cancer full moon time (December 26 to January 10), we are flying on luck and grace. We are slowly settling into this changing world and seeing through the eyes of our newly embodied selves, our newest expression here on Earth. Take time to reflect back on where you’ve been to better understand where you are and how you got here. Look at the reflection dates above and notice what evolved for you between the March, September, and December dates. What do you see? How did it prepare you for what’s to come? It’s coming. It’s coming. A new beginning. A whole new start. A castle in the clouds.
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