The Crown of Memory
CHAPTER 130
The Crown of Memory
The story for the full moon time:
February 24 – March 9
MOON DETAILS
Full Moon
5°23′ Virgo
Feb. 24, 2024
7:30 AM EST
REFLECTION DATES
Sep. 14 – 28, 2023
Sep. 29 – Oct. 13, 2023
12 MINUTE READ
The crown of memory is shaped like a horse. A seahorse specifically, folded inside your brain like a messy fitted sheet.
Scientists have tried to unfold it. They’ve formed magnetic fields 60,000 times as strong as the earth’s. They’ve wrapped the fields around people’s minds and studied the thing inside — the hippocampus.
They observed it, cupping the dentate gyrus, resembling the horns of a ram. Ammon’s horns, they whispered before naming it cornu ammonis after the ancient god Amun. Egyptian for “hidden one,” the invisible, the wind.
And they say this is where your memory starts, like some great receiver of past and present. Held in the hands of Amun himself.
☆
Neurons flicker as my eyes focus on the golden blooms, bundled in a vase, at the center of the room.
I remember seeing them for the first time three weeks ago. I was sleeping then, dreaming about being here now. Go to the goldenrod ceremony, the dream told me, and so, here I am, sitting in a circle of women.
Together, we close our eyes and lie down on the floor. A beating drum lulls us to rest, and in my mind, I’m standing at the entrance to a mansion.
I smile at the woman holding open the door, and I enter the house. The goldenrod is here too, rising from a vase in the foyer. I look around, take in the sound of someone cooking, and wonder — how am I here again?
The house isn’t real. It’s nowhere my earthly feet have ever stepped, but I’ve been here before.
Twenty-seven months ago, I was lying on a table in Chelsea, and I met you — I saw you — I said to the woman. Back then, we were on the front porch. The door to the house was closed, and she told me, You have plenty of time. You don’t have to go inside yet.
But now, I’m on the other side of the door, and she’s standing beside me, and it’s as if the needle of time has entered me, made a loop stitch, and is now re-entering at the same spot twenty-seven months later. It keeps on stitching. The vision continues in my mind, picking up where the last stitch left off, and this was the first time it happened.
October 30, 2019.
A vision from the past returned with a sequel.
And the sequel formed a new memory — of me, on the floor, listening to the drum as the goldenrod’s shadow danced across my face and candles burned.
And perhaps there was something about the smell of the room, the scent of the flowers, that triggered my subconscious recollection of the vision from years ago. Perhaps it inspired my mind to lift that vision from the storage bin of my cortex and send the information back to my hippocampus to start again.
Perhaps that’s where the sequel came from, from deep in my hippocampus formation, which — interestingly — sends information from one part of itself to the next in the shape of a loop.
Perhaps it’s as simple as that, I thought.
But then, I noticed something strange.
When Part I of the vision arrived in 2017, the south node of the moon was in the same place in the sky as where Mars was when I was born, and when Part II arrived in 2019, Mars was in the same place in the sky as where the south node was when I was born. (If these words don’t make sense, perhaps the following pictures will.)
On the right: July 12, 2017, Mars/south node conjunction
On the left: October 30, 2019, Mars/south node conjunction
Because of the nature of planetary movements, these two alignments are very rare. Mars only crosses my south node every 2 years, and the south node only crosses my Mars once every 18 – 20 years. But here they were, both happening at the exact moment of these visions — one leading directly into the next — like whatever was looping through my consciousness wasn’t just happening inside me and my brain. Rather, it was connected to some larger pattern, some great cosmic loop, reaching all the way out to the planet Mars and back into my body.
And I could have written this off as just a coincidence. A one-time synchronicity in the sky. Except, since then, it has happened over and over again.
Most recently, it happened on February 14, 2024.
That’s when I was sitting in another circle of women. A candle was burning at the center of the room, and in my mind’s eye, I stood before a closed door at the end of a long dark hallway. I opened the door and walked through to the other side. And I knew that door and I knew that hallway the same way I knew the mansion in 2019 because I’d been there before.
Eleven months earlier, I’d seen the long dark hallway, the door at the end, and I was terrified. I wasn’t ready to open it.
But now, here I was, without any conscious thought of that earlier vision, opening the door, and just like before, I wondered, How am I here again? Why now? And I saw:
On March 14, 2023, when I first saw the long dark hallway, the asteroid Pandora was in the exact same place where it was when I was born. And when the vision continued in February 2024, a new moon had just happened at the exact same spot. (Additionally, on that new moon, the asteroid Pandora was conjunct the destiny point for us all, playing such a significant role that I even named that moon’s chapter: “Pandora’s Hope.”)
On the right: March 14, 2023, Pandora/Pandora conjunction
On the left: February 9, 2024, New Moon/Pandora conjunction
This happens all the time — signs of some great weaving through time, through the cosmos, and through us, guiding us to remember.
This mystical memory is different (I think) than regular memory. Perhaps it uses similar biological structures. Perhaps it looks the same in the brain. But if I talk to a friend and in talking to them, remember the last conversation we had, I don’t perceive anything mystical about that remembrance. It just seems like regular memory at work.
Mystical memory, on the other hand, seems to conjure memories like a spell — sometimes creating sequels to visions and other times, sending me into some intense nostalgic stupor that makes me feel as though I’ve been cast back in time.
I’ll be standing in the present, fully aware of and engaged with everything that’s happening when suddenly, simultaneously, part of me is standing in a memory — feeling and smelling and seeing everything I felt at the moment the memory formed.
I’ll be drawn into memories from my life — like I’m walking through my old neighborhood in Chicago or New York — but other times, the memories don’t even seem to be mine. Or maybe, they are mine — buried deep in my DNA or in some other intangible part of me.
For example, one day, when living in New York, I had the intense longing to be in the mountains of Virginia. I googled movies filmed there and decided to watch one, knowing that seeing the mountains on the screen was the closest I could get. When the movie ended, I cried and cried and cried. Something had been cracked open inside me, and I was wailing. Inexplicably wailing.
Afterwards, I mentioned the movie to my mom because I thought she might like it too. When I told her where it was filmed, she told me (for the first time in my life) that my ancestors used to live there — not nearby, not fifty miles away, but that exact land. For a period in time, it was theirs. They owned it before eventually donating it to form the city where the movie was filmed.
To this day, I’ve never physically been to that city or faced that particular curve of the Blue Ridge Mountains, but I can’t help but think that a part of me remembers living there, that when the woman at the end of the movie said, “It's a true comfort to know that I will die here on the high rock...and I will fear my passing not at all, for the view from here...is so very fine,” that a part of me remembers that view.
And this is mystical memory. A term I’ve decided should exist, and so, I’m writing about it here.
☆
Mystical memory refers to the strange way our memory seems to work, not just to recall events that help us communicate and survive, but also to help us remember who we truly are.
To help us remember that we are connected to something greater than ourselves and that despite all our poking and prodding and inventing, we are simply scratching at the surface of this incredible life.
For our memory is a messenger, time is weaving in mysterious ways, and all circumstances are caught in the web of the very thing we are remembering.
I see this in all the ways I’ve mentioned here, and I see it every time I sit to write this story.
Take this chapter, for example:
I’m writing this now for the two week period following the Virgo full moon on February 24, 2024.
This full moon is part of a 30 day moon cycle that started with the new moon on February 9, and it’s part of a five month moon cycle that started with the Virgo new moon on September 14, 2023.
As the 30 day moon cycle was starting on February 9, a bunch of articles were being published about the American president’s memory. This made me wonder where Mnemosyne, an asteroid named after the goddess of memory, was in the sky. When I looked her up, I saw that this full moon (happening now) would be conjunct Mnemosyne, and I saw the title for this chapter in my mind: “The Crown of Memory.”
Eleven days passed.
I sat down to write, and I found myself remembering the goldenrod ceremony from 2019. I started writing all about it, and then I realized that I couldn’t remember when the Virgo new moon had been (a.k.a. I couldn’t recall when the longer moon cycle had started). I had to look it up, and when I did, I almost couldn’t believe what I saw.
The name for the Virgo new moon chapter in September was “The Golden Rod of Hope” (with a little goldenrod illustration), and here I was, writing all about goldenrod for the Virgo full moon!
Somehow, whether through some creative act of my subconscious or some instance of mystical memory (and maybe these are the same), the two Virgo chapters were weaving together, just as the moon cycles were weaving together, and just as everything is weaving together, forming the great big mysterious web of which you and your memory are a part, and sometimes, if you’re paying attention, you are lucky enough to witness the lines intersecting, the threads glimmering, your memory reaching towards something much bigger than yourself, asking you to remember.
☆
This Virgo full moon time is a continuation of the Harvest Season that started at the end of September 2023 and into October. Reflect back.
What started then? How is the needle of time connecting you to what happened then? What do you remember (despite all logic or even the dates listed above)? Pay attention. Because maybe you’re remembering exactly what you’re meant to remember. Maybe, your memory is a message arriving for you now.
For on this full moon, you are remembering.
And re-remembering.
And re-writing your memories with every recall.
You are doing this for yourself and for the web of which you are a part.
The full moon is conjunct Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory, while the sun (in Pisces) is conjunct the asteroid Amun, named after the same Egyptian god who inspired cornu ammonis, a.k.a. the hippocampus, the great receiver of memory in your brain.
And as the sun and Amun conjunct Mercury and Saturn, your memory becomes your great teacher.
The asteroid Hekate, named after the goddess of witchcraft and magic, shimmies next to the moon and reminds you that there is magic here, in your mind.
A great river of memory moves through your body and wraps itself around your head until you’re wearing it — like a crown.
For this is the moment the body’s knowledge becomes the conscious mind’s wisdom. This is the moment YOU REMEMBER.
Yin and yang swirl together. Earth and water merge. Venus and Mars conjunct. And everything that seems to live in opposition is suddenly balanced inside you. Your mind makes room for paradox and all the unexplainable wondrous things of this world, and you UNITE.
You unite with the parts of yourself that run deeper than matter, that burn brighter than stars, and that propel you — like a great racing light — to OPEN YOUR EYES AND SEE.
You see!
You see.
And as one of my favorite people often likes to say, “once you see something, you can’t unsee it.”
You can’t unsee it.
You can’t unsee it.
Godspeed.
☆
To be continued…
LONG STORY SHORT
During the Virgo full moon time, from February 24 to March 9, your mind is working in magical, wondrous ways to propel you to remember who you truly are. Let your mind go where it goes. Let yourself fall into your memories. Let your memory teach you who you are and what you’re here to do. This moon time connects back to the Harvest Season of September and October 2023. In many ways, this time is like a sequel to what happened then. What did happen? Reflect. Remember, remember, remember. YOU ALREADY KNOW. Godspeed.
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