The Spring Equinox is an annual cosmological event when the day and the night are of equal length. The words Balance and Transition sum up the Equinox. The Spring Equinox will shift the poles and the days will thereafter begin to be longer than the nights. This night’s ritual will be a healing voyage into the art of balance.

“The Equinox promises to reveal
the hidden unity
In the meeting of opposites
The Equinox is the night
of the Androgynous deity
who brings a state of balance.”

POLAR OPPOSITES IN OUR INNER WORLDS

Contacting the balance of our inner woman and man with the assistance of the alchemical healing formulas of Tantra will be the occupation of this evening’s ritual Tantric Hatha Yog practice.
But, what is balance and how can we find it? To answer this, we need to become aware of the characteristics of the opposites existing within us. By identifying the character of our own unique dualities, we build a magnetic connection between them – this is a secret of Tantric Magic and healing.

In our human world we see the opposites starkly in the forces of day and night and in the dualities of gender. Opposites however, are not always clear cut things. Female and Male divisions are often socially constructed and culturally relative.

For gender stereotypes
can impose a place of constraint
on the androgyny of the Soul.

Relinquishing the cultural and ancestral imprints that we carry and attach to gender becomes a way to inner balance on the path of Tantra. The ritual path of Union and Transition is a rite of passage with the shift of nature at the point of balance before the active day forces take precedence over the forces of the night. Honouring that which is passing, in order to welcome fully that which is to come.

THE ANDROGYNOUS DEITY OF THE EQUINOX

The Equinoctial night and day of balance belongs to the sacred hermaphrodite known as Ardhanarishvar. Ardha implies ‘halves’ and Narishwar implies ‘the sacred union of opposites’. The perfect balance of opposites is implicated in the form of the half woman/man deity. We have a being that embodies androgyny on both physical and psychic levels. In Ardhanareshvar we find the mystical balance of the things that are usually exclusive to each other.

The solidity & softness of body
is a merging of opposites
in a physical sense.

The receptive creative mind and feeling faculty balanced with the agility to move within established mental constructs could be said to bring the opposites together on the psychic level of our being. The Equinoctial work with Ardhnarishvar is about becoming aware of our own particular expression of halves. A self-confronting work that can reveal our imbalanced tendencies and our desires for unity. Ardhanareshvar ultimately represents an embodied healing energy of balancing and unifying the disparate parts within ourselves.

THE RITUAL

We will meet at mystical twilight for an age old Yogic ritual of finding the place where dark and light intersect… in the union of spirit and body. We will work with what Tantra calls the Ardha Mudras. These are the inner and outer practices that make us aware of halves, and how wholeness is the merging of things that seem opposite in nature. We will be addressing our notions of woman and man and dark and light. Looking into and taking back the projections invested upon these halves of the whole.