The Thirteenth Fairy or Breaking the Solo Rulership of Male Patriarchy

From an astrological standpoint, this moment in time holds an incredible amount of potential. Everything is culminating, the tensions that are brought on by Saturn and Pluto’s conjunction in the sign of Capricorn are coming to a climax and are flanked by the Sun, Mercury and Ceres. It means that old concepts are falling, structures and hierarchies that no longer serve humanity are tumbling over. We see it everywhere in the news, it is truly happening.

Additionally, the process is fueled by “the dragon”, a lunar eclipse on January 10, 2020. Our ancestors believed that there was an invisible dragon circling the sky, which only became visible during an eclipse when it cast its shadow over either the Moon or the Sun. The moment of decreasing light or increasing darkness and cold must have felt like Judgment Day to our forefathers. The dragon was believed to appear as a shadow and eat the Sun or the Moon bite by bite, until there was only cold, and darkness left. People greatly feared the eclipses throughout the ages. They were dreaded and seen as draconic encounters with destiny.   In folklore, it often marked the moment when angry fairies appeared on the scene to claim their rights. Doesn’t this sound just like the current Weinstein trials, where hurt and angry women claim back their rights?  

 I dare say that this issue has taken its beginning way back in prehistoric times, when we as a society began to live by a calendar that favored the Sun over the Moon, the male over the female. Over time, the lunar quality became a mystery. It was demonized and projected onto the image of evil dragons, fairies and even the devil. So, rather than to acknowledge the presence of the lunar and feminine cycle, the society began to bend to a male dominion, to solar heroes. The astrological community agrees: This is the time for the angry thirteenth fairy to make her entrance and reclaim her right to be seen and heard. She stands for everything lunar: the nurturing, the caring and sharing, the collaboration, the participation and the same rights for all.

This is an excerpt from my book “The True Hero’s Journey in Fairy Tales and Stone Circles”, where I write in-depth about the old Grimm tale “Sleeping Beauty”:

In “Sleeping Beauty,” or “Briar Rose,” as this famous story is also called, the king only had twelve golden plates and therefore only invited twelve fairies to his daughter’s christening feast. (Christianity already favored the new calendar and the number twelve). The twelve golden plates are the symbols for twelve solar months per year, when the length of a month is dictated by the Sun.

The thirteenth fairy comes nevertheless (the lunar months are a cosmic fact, they cannot simply be ignored), makes her prophesy, and the king then tries to hide all spinning wheels in his kingdom. Everybody in the kingdom is therefore ordered to forget about the cosmic spinning and weaving of the Sun and Moon cycles. They now must live by the king’s man-made law of only accepting the Sun and twelve months in a calendar.

Well, it takes no evil fairy making a spell to see that this had to end in disaster. There can be no earthly law over the cosmic order, not even a king’s laws. Eventually, the princess finds out. She finds a spinning wheel, pricks her finger, and falls into a deep sleep. The spinning wheel she finds symbolizes an observatory circle with spokes that divide the sky into sections like that of the Aubrey Circle with its stone pillars. It is a symbol that must have been easily understood by the Neolithic listener. The princess inevitably got into contact with the cosmic cycles as they naturally occur, since the lunar rhythm inside of her body was becoming very noticeable in puberty with the menstruation cycle setting in.

But the solo rulership of male patriarchy is strong. The king’s laws and the entire organization of his court are set to blend out all that has to do with thirteen, the lunar quality. Inevitably, it drifts into the oblivion, into the shadow, and goes forgotten over time. So now, as the princess meets the spinning wheel and the natural cosmic order, she cannot just cry out: “Look what I found!” It is a taboo that is broken, which most likely will get the death penalty in such a king’s realm. So rather than acknowledge the fact that the lunar principle has been suppressed and ignored for years, the entire kingdom goes to sleep. Over time, there will be no more words for the lunar quality. It will become mysterious and demonic as it secretly moves the fluids of the Earth. The image of the evil dragon sitting inside of mountains and seas is not far. So, rather than to acknowledge the presence of the thirteenth fairy, the lunar and feminine cycle, the society bends to the king’s new rule of twelve and wanders into the deep sleep of oblivion. The princess could not become a rebel on her own and shake things up in her father’s kingdom, because she is not familiar yet with the lunar quality. She grew up with this taboo, in a society which guarded the lunar as a secret until it was nearly forgotten. When she first felt its presence, it was a sting, a shock, an overwhelming moment of alignment with the cosmos. Maybe it also felt like the coming home into the embrace of the mother, the slumber must have been sweet and comforting.

Eventually, the princess got found because the cosmic wheels do turn, whether one decides to live by them or not. Every so often, the chance presents itself to be resurrected. Luckily, there are always people like the young prince who recognize the lunar quality when they see it. They are in alignment with the cosmic cycles and see the signs of beauty in nature such as the roses growing around the castle. A young prince capable of recognizing the lunar quality will be naturally living by a calendar which considers both lunar and solar cycles. He will not believe in dancing solo. He knows that true love, happiness, and abundance stem from an equal collaboration of the masculine with the feminine, and it is a sacred marriage. The princess will only want to wake up to a prince that acknowledges her lunar, feminine quality. It is her destiny, as predicted by the fairies. It is her destiny to bring back the awareness for the lunar cycles in her father’s kingdom’s calendar. 

As I later found, this is the basic issue of the wonder tales, whether they spell it out directly or indirectly. It seemed to be the Neolithic elders’ (the creators of the tales) main concern to demonstrate the function of the balanced soli-lunar calendar and to keep it active in people’s minds by means of stories, stories that showed the consequences of what happens if the lunar goes forgotten.