I Dunno

So many stories lately about folks forgetting things.   These are not normal times.  We are evolving very quickly.  So of course we’re going to forget what was going on yesterday, because today we aren’t the same person we were yesterday.  That’s the nature of Change.  Sure, if we could claim to be totally integrated with our Personal and Collective Unconsious, if we’d released all of our negative and positive Karma, then we might have some claim to a stable and coherent Identity.  But you can probably count on one hand the number of people you’ve met who’re more than 1% along on those scales – and maybe still have a few fingers left.  And even if we were the perfect incarnation of our Soul Chord, that doesn’t mean the Collective Unconscious is standing still, by any means.  The Change is all around you.

Go ahead and let yourself forget.  You’re going to need all the bandwidth you can muster to absorb all of the new information coming in.  If you need any of your old information, it’ll be there when you do need it.  Don’t even try to make sense of the Changes, we don’t have all the information yet.  If you’re wandering around like a Happy Idiot, you’re on the right track.

Never Underestimate the Bunnies

Fergot to mention in “DON’T PANIC” that we’re also in the last few weeks of the Mayan Calendar’s Sixth Night, and of course the Nights are when the Demons walk by in all their Summer Fashions.  With Venus retrograde in Scorpio, running from the Demons doesn’t work.  Gotta just stand there tillya realize that they’re just a bunch of Noise and Drama, hollow, no content.

And then there’s the Bunnies.  All summer I been negotiating with the Critters over who gets to eat the vegebles I’ve been planting.  The Bunnies were here before I started planting, and at that time we talked.  I made it clear I didn’t want them eating all my vegebles, and they were very clear that they were content eating mostly Grass.  They did, however, let on that they like Broccoli, and being grateful that they were willing to help keep the grass mowed, I promised them that I’d share some Broccoli as the season wore on.  I put up some little foot-high fences just to keep our boundaries clear.  There were a few puzzling incidents (like who bites through the stalk of my Gazania flowers and leaves the flowers on the ground but the plant otherwise undisturbed? Over and over again? – was that the slugs?), but mostly things were stable.

Till someone started mowing the Carrottops outa the growboxes.  Then the Spinach and Chard and Dill.  These were major intrusions, and Bambi’s Mom was a prime suspect, especially after somebody cut a four-foot-wide swath through the Corn, eating cob and all, leaving only a bit of stalk and some hoofy-looking footprints.  Eventually, more and more of the garden got covered with “Wildlife Netting,” a pretty fine, almost invisible plastic net.  A puzzling thing about this whole adventure was that it always seemed – except for the Corn and one other event with a netless growbox – it always felt like more of a message than an assault, because the damage to the veggies was always limited.  At times I wondered if I was being harassed good-naturedly by a Human neighbor – sometimes there were flowers put on top of beanpoles, and bootprints that weren’t mine.  Almost every night, something happened, and it was worse when it rained.

Then came the Broccoli campaign.  It started one night when a big Broccoli, behind one of the little fences and under the net, was absolutely ravaged.

With damage that severe, I’m thinking our Dear friends were the culprits, but how the devil do they get under the net?  Well, maybe they stuck their head in through a gap between sheets of net – that was possible.

But then a few days later, again behind a fence and under a net, in a place that would be much harder to get into, a Broccoli was “limbed” like a tree.  No Dear gonna get into this space, and it was hard to image how even a Bunny would.

Then another, and another.  Then three at once.

Then, behind the fence and under the net, one of my favorite Tiger Lilly stalks was cut in two!  I was sure it was a Human!  Till I looked more closely and noticed that the lower leaves had been eaten, and that the cut coulda been made by a sharp incisor.

Finally, Duh!!, it dawns on me – I promised the Bunnies I’d plant them some Broccoli, and I forgot!!

So now I’m thinning my Brocs every coupla days, and transplanting the thinnings out into a space that’s open to them, and they seem to be enjoying the offerings.  Not much in the way of nutrients in Grass, they probably need the extra vitabeans and minerals to get ready for the transition into Winter.  I’ve probably got enough thinnings to last a week or two, and they may not head up before Frost anyway, they were planted late, so maybe the Bunnies will get them all.  I’ve got Onion sets for the spaces where the Brocs were, they’ll make some nice early Spring Scallions.  Maybe the Bunnies will even enjoy some of them.

RJ Stewart, who’s devoted his life to understanding traditional Celtic knowledge, says that the Planet will only be “saved” by the collaboration of Humans, Critters, and Fairies.  I don’t see the Humans leading this effort, more likely following, if that.  Among the Critters, Bunnies seem kinda low in what we usually call “intelligence” or “consciousness,” focusing single-mindedly as they seem to on Food, and seeming to orient their lives around Fear.  Sure, they have a reputation for breeding like, well, rabbits, but what’s that worth?  We Humans have more respect – or empathy – for the Corvids and the Predators.  We don’t like to empathize with the Prey.

But these were very sophisticated and persistent negotiations – obviously over my head!  How do we make sense of that?

The spiritual function of Western Civilization (sounds oxymoronic, eh?) is to explore the limits of individual identity.  The Critters and the Plants operate, so we’ve repeatedly been told by those who seem to know, from group identity.  As long-time readers know, we believe individual identity is an illusion, we’re all really just cells in the larger Organism, Mother Gaia.  Bunnies may be Liver cells, Humans the Colon.  So I may not have been negotiating with Mr. Bunny Hisself, but with the Bunny Deva, the collective consciousness of All The Bunnies.  That field would be large, and tight with Mother Gaia, and would have the Presence I’ve been recognizing.

I’m sure I’ve told the story about sensing the presence of an intruder around my basement apartment late at night during the 80s while I was writing the print version of this newsletter, and throwing open the door to surprise the intruder only to find a bright Full Moon staring at me.  I would sense the “intruder” as Fear.  I recognized Mother Moon as Power.  Fear plus Breathing equals Excitement, but Fear plus Breathing also equals Power.  When I surprise Mr. Bunny at night and he runs away, I can feel the Fear, the same Fear I can feel when I toss a Spider – She Who Weaves The Net We All Walk On – out into the yard.  But if the energy we sense as Fear is Power Unrecognized, then that puts Mr. Bunny and his Deva on a whole nuther plane.

Mr. Bunny symbolizes Abundance and Pacifism.  Abundance means having enough to share, and Pacifism means not having to struggle for it.  As we finish up this Sixth Night – the Final Night – may all our Demons be Bunnies who cut flowers for our table!

DON’T PANIC

So begins one of the more profound six weeks in the history of the Species.  Exactly 24 hours from this writing (ie, midnight PDT 10/8), Venus stands still and turns retrograde, for 42 days.  (Just in case you missed it, “42” and “DON’T PANIC” are references to Douglas Adams’s Hitchhikers Guide.)  That mid-November date is quite significant, as we’ll see shortly.  But first, let’s have a peek at the New Moon that occurs 12 hours before that.

We can summarize this in two words: PAY ATTENTION.  Which is to say, in high astrologese, Mercury (observation) conjoins Saturn (focus) T-Square (mastery through challenge) to the Moon’s Nodes (where we been and where we’re going), with Pluto-Ceres on the North Node (how do we keep from going through all this twice?).  PAY ATTENTION is bolstered by the continuing blizzard of conjunctions that we’ve discussed at length for a long while now: Jupiter-Uranus on the cusp of Aries (rebirth times 10,000), Chiron-Neptune (you choose: limitations or Miracles), and Venus-Mars (the siesta thing).  The New Moon itself is at the midpoint of Libra, or “circular paths.”  It no longer works to be stuck inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues again – it’s time to choose otherwise, and fake it tillya make it.

Like most T-Squares, this one comes with Grace, or “clues” about how to maximize the Mastery and minimize the Challenge.  The Grace here is about the Sacred, Identity, and Miracle.  It always feels like a waste of effort to write about Identity, because since everyone is their Identity, there’s little likelihood that many of us will be joining Dr. Leary –

Timothy Leary’s dead / No no no no / he’s outside / looking in

as the Moody Blues were wont to put it.  But we can always hope that a few more monkeys will PAY ATTENTION, especially since Magic (Miracle) is afoot (Chiron-Neptune opposes Juno-Identity, which trines Ceres-Pluto-North Node).

Now, Venus goes retrograde every 18 months or so.  The first layer of meaning is a reconsideration of our Values.  That’s pretty deep already, especially with the Big Rebirth going on.  Since most of us define ourselves by our pet peeves, er Values, this might have an impact on the Identity thing.  But Venus is a very complex lady.  Skipping past all the Aphrodite/Athena business and going straight to the bottom line, Venus is about Power and Magic.  If you haven’t read Starhawk’s Truth or Dare, this’d be a great time to do it.  Apples and Roses , and everything they signify.  Five-pointed stars, pointing up or pointing down.

Venus retrogrades over the first half of Scorpio.  Remember in the 80s, when they used to say the way out is through?  Well, that hasn’t been true for a coupla decades, but it’s true again now, till early January, till Venus moves out of Scorpio.  It means we can’t outrun our demons, our only choice is to run towards them – while breathing – because that’s the only way to discover that we can run through them.  They’re paper tigers.  Happy Halloween.  The bars of your birdcage are only painted on a sheet of gossamer.  Scorpio gets a bad rap from the other eleven, because Scorpio is fearless, and that scares the krap out of everybody else.  It’s about getting to the bottom of things.  Go for it!

So then, what about this mid-November thing?  Well, Jupiter goes direct on the same day that Venus does, November 18.  Once Jupiter goes direct, our resistance to our Big Rebirth is doomed.  That process doesn’t culminate till the first few days of 2011, but after mid-November, the final stages of our Rebirth start flooding in.  Plus, on November 6-7, Chiron and Neptune both go direct, unleashing another flood of Miracles, if we allow it.

Then, a few days later, Mars conjoins Pallas.  Mars, the God of War, and Pallas, the Goddess of War.  That’ll be a brew.  Pallas, though, is also the Goddess of Wisdom (another side of Venus) – Mars shoots first and asks questions later, while Pallas asks questions first, and shoots only when necessary.  The confer at 19 of Sadge – “Pelicans menaced by the behavior and refuse of men seek safer areas for bringing up their young.”  As if there was anyplace safer left.  But at least it implies a retreat from confrontation, so we may not be pulling the War card when we pull our Get Out Of Depression card.