The beginning of the ecclesiastical year on the first of September is called the Indictio. It arrives as a Sacred sign of time fulfilled. The Gospel reading chosen for this day in the tradition is Luke 4:16-22, where Christ in the synagogue of Nazareth proclaims the acceptable year of the Lord. This is the image of the true Jubilee, the release of captives, the healing of blindness, the restoration of the oppressed.
It is a mystery that speaks to the entire fabric of time. And, today, the heavens also underline this proclamation: Saturn, lord of boundaries, turns retrograde from the first degree of Aries back into the last degree of Pisces. The one who rules the measure of years walks from the beginning to the end in a single motion, showing that the circle of time cannot move forward until the waters of dissolution have been faced. This Indictio combines Scripture, Tarot, and astrology into a single seal.
I. The Jubilee and the Spirit
The Jubilee described in Leviticus was the fiftieth year when debts were cancelled, slaves freed, and land returned to its ancestral holders. Trumpets sounded to mark a great release. The law of Israel thus placed within history a figure of cosmic restoration. In the synagogue Christ reads Isaiah 61 and claims that the Spirit of the Lord is upon him to proclaim this year. In that act the letter is fulfilled by the Spirit, the promise is made present. The Jubilee ceases to be an occasional social arrangement and becomes a cosmic restoration for all creation.
The poor are not only those without coins but those who hunger for meaning; the blind are not only those without eyes but those who see the surface and cannot behold the Logos; the captives are not only those in cells but those bound to the wheel of repetition. The acceptable year of the Lord is the announcement of freedom from the cycle, the release from bondage into the vision of Spirit. This is why the Orthodox Church reads the passage at the beginning of its year: the cycle of feasts is a spiral of restoration. Each September opens the Jubilee in miniature.
II. The Aeon and the New Time
In the Tarot the twentieth key is often called Judgement, but in the Thoth deck it is named the Aeon. The change of name reveals a change of vision. The old imagery of graves opening to a trumpet is transfigured into the birth of a new world. The card shows Nuit, the arch of heaven, Hadit as the point of light, and the child Horus as the centre. It proclaims that an era has ended and another has begun.
The Aeon is a cosmic Jubilee; it is the time when the old bonds are dissolved and the Spirit unveils a new order. To read Luke 4 beside the Aeon is to see the same gesture: the robed figure in the synagogue proclaims that the year acceptable has arrived; the card proclaims that the world itself has passed into a new age. The seal of the Aeon is the same as the trumpet of Jubilee. The Word is no longer a future promise but an embodied present. The poor, the blind, the captives, and the oppressed become archetypes of all souls awaiting release. The proclamation is that the old aeon of debt and blindness has ended, and the new aeon of Spirit has begun.
III. Saturn at the End of Pisces
The astrological sign of this moment is equally striking. Saturn retrogrades from the first degree of Aries back into the final degree of Pisces. This is the supreme anaretic step of the zodiac, the place of dissolution and hidden prisons.
In traditional astrology the twelfth house is called the house of the evil daimon, the place of enemies, exile, and confinement. When Saturn enters it in mutable water, the image is made of boundaries dissolving, structures melting into the sea, and hidden burdens surfacing. But Pisces is ruled by Jupiter, and Jupiter is now in Cancer, the cardinal water, which offers exaltation. The result is paradox: Saturn in the house of confinement, but under the rulership of a planet exalted in watery cardinality. The jailor stands in a prison whose key belongs to a benefic exalted in another sign of water.
The astrological figure therefore mirrors the Gospel and the Aeon. Time itself turns back to gather what was left behind. The lord of karma refuses to march forward until the debts have been released, the blind restored, the captives freed. The Indictio begins under a seal of paradox.
Fiat Lux.