Here Comes 2012

So let’s review where we are in the Big Picture.

We’re two years into the shift to a whole new paradigm (Chiron-Neptune), and that shift just got goosed (Vesta, opposing Chiron-Neptune at their Initiation, has come round to now cross them).  The anthem for this 65-year cycle is “Fresh Violets in an ancient pottery bowl.”

And we’re a half year from another big shift, when “the 60s become permanent” (Uranus-Pluto, which initiated a new cycle in the mid-60s, has now moved round to the point where the Energy has gestated, and will now come forth fullblown).  The coat of arm for this 85-year adventure is “A Ouija board.”

We’ve finished the 11-year cycle that began at 10am on 9/11/2001, wherein the Moon went Out of Bounds (we were emotionally more excitable than otherwise).  The next 11 years should be a little quieter on the Astral Plane, though we’re also just entering another 11-year cycle of enhanced Sunspot activity.  While the Sunspots are enhanced, it’s predicted to be a mild enhancement.  However, when the enhancement is mild, the variability is greater, so a milder cycle does not mean that meaner-than-usual Solar Flares won’t occur, so things could be a little less quiet on the Physical Plane.  Or Spheroid, if you prefer.

The last two Chiron-Neptune new-paradigm Initiations began with a serious recession or depression, as the most recent signalled the end of World War II, and the other heralded the end of the railroad-bond boom – in the 1870s, bonds for developing the transcontinental railroads played the same role as mortgage derivatives did in the 2000s.  February 2010’s Chiron-Neptune consummation was preceeded by two years worth of very close calls, as Chiron and Neptune came within kissing distance before they withdrew.  Consequently, there is no doubt in my mind that the 2008-2009 financial meltdown is the poster child for the paradigm that is now defunct.

So, what’s occurring in the “real” World now that this Initiation has been goosed?  Well, the Euro is continuing it’s slow-motion train-wreck.  The UK is about to stick its head in the sand financially to protect itself from the fallout.  The US Dollar looks good only when compared to other currencies.  The US Dollar is the worldwide standard for exchange – for instance, if France wants to buy Brazilian oil, they trade their Euros for Dollars, buy the oil from Brazil with Dollars, then Brazil sells the Dollars to obtain their own currency.  That status as the World’s “reserve currency” keeps the Dollar afloat when its real financial backing is no better than – or worse than – the Euro’s.  And it’s beginning to break down.  Russian-Chinese trade is already settled in Yuan and Rubles.  And now Japanese-Chinese trade will be settled in Yen and Yuan.  These may seem obscure, but in 30 years they will be seen as mileposts in the history books.

So what about the 60s “becoming permanent”?  The 60s was the coming of age of the Pluto in Leo generation.  To their Pluto-in-Cancer parents, nothing was more sacred than Security.  To their kids, nothing was more sacred than Freedom of Expression, Freedom to wear flowers in your hair.  We’re seeing that battle again now, as the IRS has plans to follow you anywhere and everywhere on the Planet, and as there appears to be the beginning of a serious response to the recent repeal of the Bill of Rights.  And on the one hand, Obama is drawing up plans to create a re-election-saving war, while on the other, North Korea is making overtures toward economic cooperation with South Korea.

Unfortunately, the end of the Moon-Out-of-Bounds cycle has not so far seen more reasonable reactions to events.  Rather, it appears that folks are simple shell-shocked by the decade of astral intensity, and just want it all to go away.  So no one even noticed when the Bill of Rights was repealed.

If you go looking for them, you can easily find the tsunami of new-paradigm processes welling up – the movement to keep money in local banks, the movement toward alternate currencies, the Occupy movements, the Green movements, the revival of home-grown food and locavores, the DIY movement and the mobile internet, the 3-D printers that will soon allow everyone to have their own machine shop.  Facebookers live as if they’ve never read 1984 or noticed the upwelling of cyber crime.  Whether “Arab Spring” and “American Fall” are inspired by the CIA or not, they’re nevertheless flashbacks to Woodstock.

But the Bottom Line is Change.  Not the kind of Change Obama insinuated that he might make in the benevolence of government, but the kind of Change that means everyone has to dance a little faster to avoid falling under the truck.  We spoke recently of gallons of Coffee, and the sort of hyperkinesis or anxiety that produces.  Well, one way to read that is Fear.  When Fear is on the Wind, our first reaction is to pin it on someone or some thing.  I’m scared by this, or by that.  That’s not a productive projection.  You’re picking up Fear because it’s in the air, and you’re sensitive enough to smell it.  When you blame it on some person or scenario in your life, all you do is increase your powerlessness to deal with the real issues.

At this time of Change, we all have to take total responsibility for our Fear.  Withdraw our projections.  Deal with our emotions as phenomena in our own personal space.  We are all Transformers, and our job is to transform the Fear.  That’s what we came here for.  Fear plus Breathing equals Excitement, remember?  Tapping is an obvious process to help when Fear overwhelms us.  Kegels are a great boon.  Kegels harvest the Energy in Fear and use it to slow down time, effectively putting us “in the zone,” where events occur in slow motion, and we can react to them in ways that appear magical to folks running normal-speed time outside of “the zone.”  Here’s part of another exercise from Starhawk’s The Earth Path…

“Imagine that, like a tree, you can extend roots into the Earth, from your feet and from the base of your spine.  With your eyes open, notice if what you see changes as you extend your roots down.

“If there is anything clouding your awareness or interfering with your ability to be present, take a deep breath and imagine letting it go down through your roots into the Earth, to become compost.

“Feel the Living Fire deep in the Heart of the Earth.  Breathe some of that Energy up through your roots, into the base of your spine and your belly, up your spine as if your spine were the flexible trunk of a Tree.  Feel it warm your heart and throat, and reach out through your arms and hands.  Let it move up through the top of your head and out like the branches and leaves of a Tree.  Let those branches come all the way down to touch the Earth, surrounding and protecting you.  Again, notice what changes…

“Looking straight ahead, bring your arms out to your sides and wiggle your fingers.  Slowly bring them in until you can just see the motion of your fingers with your peripheral vision.  Notice how wide your field of vision can be.”

The rest of the exercise (pp.53-54) is even better.

Cacoxinated Amethyst is purple-tinged Quartz interspersed with smaller brown crystals of Cacoxenite, an Iron Aluminum Phosphate.  Amethyst is the quintessential Crown-Chakra mineral, and the Iron in Cacoxenite is a quintessential Root-Chakra grounding mineral – for walking the Spiritual Path with Practical Feet.

Magnesium

“I feel as if I’ve drunk a gallon of high octane coffee these days…revving up towards a ‘flying off into space’ feeling.  

“I hear you say…’pour love into the sensation’….If I only could find the opening…I would….love and peace…”

Sounds like it’s not fully comfortable, eh?  The Canaries hereabouts are feeling some of that too.  Tapping might reduce some of the discomfort.  One of the Bach Flower Essences could be helpful – I been using Elm to help channel some of the excess Energy into productive activities.  I highly recommend these Calm Drops from Historical Remedies, though they’re quite subtle.  (Their Pick-Up Drops are indispensable for a reliable fast alertness hit when yer drowsy and need to be awake.)  And of course there’s Natural Vitality’s Natural Calm to balance Calcium and Magnesium, which Bryan deFlores first recommended to me as a way to help tune the body to a higher vibration.

But yes, finding the opening, always a challenge.  My First Teacher would have advised, “Well, what if you did know?”, which is to say, you really do know the answer intuitively, but your intellectual mind is rejecting the answer.  So you just ask yourself or your Guides, What if I did know… and then accept the first answer that pops into your mind.  If you catch a fleeting thought of No, that can’t be it, then you know you’re on the money.

Or, you could try the Lost Car Keys Trick, where you Ask for what you need, then put your full Attention on something utterly different, so yer “left brain” gets diverted to open a space for yer “right brain” to remind you.  Of course that’ll work with any of the PIAVAs (Pray, Intend, Ask, Visualize, Affirm), but the most important part is Changing the Subject so you can get outa yer own way – you wouldn’t be Asking if it wasn’t yer birthright, and you wouldn’t have to Ask if you already enjoy it and take it for granted.  So you know automatically that it’s a part of yerself that’s standing in yer way.  Changing the Subject, putting yer Attention fully off of What You Want and have Asked For, anesthetizes yer self-saboteur.

Not that self-sabotage is inappropriate.  Yer self-saboteur is there for a very good reason, to protect you from harm.  You can sneak one past them once in a while, but if you want to make a life change, then you’ll have to sit yer self-saboteur down in the opposite chair and start some serious win-win negotiations – you need to fully understand their positive intention, so you can trade yer own willingness to consciously assist them in their mission for their assistance in creating what you want.  They’re obviously very powerful – look what they’ve held back from you all yer life!  But that’s all just for general-purpose PIAVAing, not likely something you’ll be needing just to discover the opening!

Now revving up is what Chakras do, and when they don’t rev at the same rate, that gets discomfortable.  You mention coffee (3rd-5th), flying off into space (7th), love (4th), sensation (2nd), and wanting to find (6th) the opening (1st) – that covers the gamut pretty well.  Gives us lots to play with, as you can try pouring love into one Chakra after the other, just to see if any makes a difference.

The “lost” or unfound Chakra is the opening (Root) – start there, by extending a cable to the center of Mother Earth, allowing Her to pour her love into you!  There’s also a sense of feeling more Power than you know what to do with, so it would be a good guess to pour love into your 8th Chakra or Power Rings (think Halo), and try as well extending a firehose to the Center of the Galaxy, to allow Him to pour his love into you!  Or, if you discover that this is exactly the issue, you can try shrinking the firehose to a garden hose.  Or better yet expanding the cable to Mom, to one of those that holds up the Golden Gate Bridge.  These days it may not behoove to limit the Galactic Energy stream, it may be better to increase our Grounding – and/or vice versa!

The gender-associations are ephemeral, don’t let them get stuck.

You could also approach it via the Meridians, and try sedating Triple Warmer, but that’s a whole nother chapter.

I mean, if the Galactic Center-Pluto-Winter Solstice folks are right (and it’s always Both/And, right?), then Mom and Dad are locked in the throes of conceiving Earth 2, so it’s not at all surprising that us relatively nanoscale entities on Mom’s skin are thrown all outa Balance!  It’s getting hotter and sweaty, with lotsa bouncing around, and we could get crushed – or, if She’s on top, we could easily get thrown off entirely!  Important to stay Grounded to Her, eh?  Remember when our Ancestors stayed in the Caves for generations?

Dolomite is Calcium-Magnesium-Carbonate.  The orange tint could come from Iron or Manganese “impurities,” as straight Dolomite is usually white.   Calcium and Magnesium are intricately involved with the Sodium-Potassium cycles in the body, and are critical not just for the Bones and Nerves, but for the operation of Muscles as well, particularly the Heart Muscle.  Carbonate balances the body’s pH, which balance is essential for health.  So is yer body asking for more Magnesium?  Could well be.  Chard and Spinach are the best sources, but then, it’s Winter in the Northern Half, so Pumpkin Seeds are the next-best choice.  Collards work, as do Flax, Mustard, Sunflower, and Sesame Seeds, plus Ginger, Quinoa, Buckwheat, Black and Pinto Beans, and Beets if yer root cellar is in order.  Or, any fresh or leafy Green Veggies you can import.  Too much Magnesium produces diarrhea.

Who among us gets enough Calcium?  It is possible to get too much, and George says 2500 mg (10 cups of Spinach or 13 oz of Cheese) every day is probably too much for most of us.  Spinach and Collards are best, with Yogurt, Cheese, Milk, Cabbage, Garlic, Sesame and Mustard Seeds, and Crimini Mushrooms good Winter substitutes.  Susun Weed, as is her wont, has a different take on Calcium that’s well worth Attention.  Got any Oatstraw around?  Or dried Nettles?  They make a great Tea, especially with a bit of dried Horsetail (some folks believe that the body is capable of coverting Silicon to Calcium).

Splitting Off

I’m seeing signs of a qualitative shift in the Energies over the last week or so, and if as some claim the “real” astrological correlate of “2012” is the alignment of Pluto with the Galactic Center on the 2012 Winter Solstice, then certainly the 2011 Winter Solstice would be only a Hare’s Breath away from the same configuration.  My own ephemerides (an ephemiris, plural ephemerides, is a table of where the planets are when) don’t tell that tale, but evidently others’ do.  And if the Two-Earths hypothesis holds, then a qualitative shift toward Delicious should be accompanied by a qualitative shift toward Bummer, right?  If we have our eyes open, that is.  As you should know by now, I still like to differentiate Clarity from Denial, even though it’s dancing on the head of a pin.  I just think it’s important for walking the spiritual path with practical feet.  And Both/And.

So what do my ephemerides tell me?  That Vesta is crossing Chiron-Neptune.  Chiron-Neptune, remember, is that once-in-65-years event that happened in February 2010, following a several-year high-drama buildup, that we variously referred to as a rather large Change of Paradigm, and the Edge between Despair and Miracle.  Chiron represents a Healer that can only heal through a complete Change of Paradigm.  Kinda like the Multiple who has cancer in one personality and doesn’t in another – what Academia labels as pathology is what we label as Heuristic.  Just shows you the Limitation that Judgment produces, whether you label your Judgments as Scienterrific, “Moral,” Necessary, or Defensive.

And Neptune symbolizes our relationship with anything and everything that’s larger than ourself, which I usually shorten to our relationship to God, whomever She is.  Unknowable at the very least.  Hence a rather large Change of Paradigm,  a Healing that heals by changing our relationship to God.  Vesta, meanwhile, symbolizes that which we hold sacred.  Not scared, sacred.  I usually think of Vesta as that which we, individually, hold sacred.  Different for each of us, and obviously varying with time.  I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Hufolk have a drone orbiting Vesta as we speak.  Or that, when it’s done looking up Vesta’s skirt, it’ll zip off next year to gather carnal knowledge of Ceres, the Goddess of Sustainability.  It/We get to sustainability by 2015, which, again coincidentally, is the span – 2012-2015 – that Uranus and Pluto take to execute their dosado.

When the Chiron-Neptune event was exact, Vesta stood opposite them.  So now Vesta comes round to embrace them, and it’s not at all unreasonable to see Vesta as a trigger for Chiron-Neptune-related events, aside from the obvious connection between Larger Than Us, Healing, and the Sacred.  Just as, when Uranus and Pluto conjoined in the 60s, Chiron witnessed from the other side of the Sky.

To review, the last time Chiron and Neptune joined was the day that Emperor Hirohito surrendered on the deck of the USS Missouri – which initiated the most serious recession between the 1930s and the current one, as everyone shifted from making bombs to making diapers.  And the time before that, in the late 19th century, US banks collapsed over funding of the Western railroads, initiating what was until the 1930s called the Great Depression.  After 1930, the earlier episode was renamed the Long Depression, since it lasted 20-30 years.  Certainly redefinitions of the Dominant Paradigm.  You wouldn’t know it here at Mammonmas, but the painful Trance Formation we’re in now is the shift from Consumerism to Sustainability for Earth 2, and from (relative) Democracy to Fascism for Earth 1.

In The Earth Path, as is her wont, Starhawk summarizes nicely…

“One morning I was sitting on my back deck, meditating on the question of how to make change in the world.  The Forest was all around me and I was asking the question ‘Can you change a system from within?  Or from without?’

” ‘Systems don’t change from within,’ I heard the Forest say.  ‘Systems try to maintain themselves.’

“I figured that the Forest, being a complex system itself, ought to know.  But to say, ‘The Forest told me,’ is already to create a simplified frame.  It’s a frame I find useful: it’s a way of perceiving that’s comfortable for my human awareness and allows me to hear something I might otherwise miss.  But it is also a simplification of a larger framework, one that might perceive me and my mind and my question and the Forest around me and the moment that includes my long-term relationship with that particular spot as a Whole in which my mind and the Forest’s mind are not separate beings talking to each other but one process that together produced that insight.

“Magic is itself a framework.  Indeed, human beings cannot walk around, function, and continue to tie our shoes without putting some kind of simplified frame around the overwhelming Whole of the World.  Perhaps only enlightened buddhas can truly remove all frames from the World and exist in ultimate reality.

“What follows is my own framework, an understanding of the values and principles that derive from a Goddess-centered view of the World.  But, of course, part of the essence of that view is respect for diversity, and for the spiritual authority inherent in each person.  Other Witches and Goddess thealogians (thea as in ‘Goddess’ instead of theos as in ‘God’) may frame values and issues very differently.

“Magic teaches us to be aware that we are viewing the World through a frame, warns us not to confuse it with the ultimate reality or mistake the map for the territory.  Moreover, part of our magical discipline is to make conscious choices about which frame we adopt.

“As soon as we start making choices, we have entered the realm of values.  The criteria we use for choosing one frame over another come from what we ultimately value most, what we consider sacred.  To consider something sacred is to say that it is profoundly important, that it has a value in and of itself that goes beyond our immediate comfort or convenience, that we don’t want to see it diminished or denigrated in any way.  The word ‘sacred’ comes from the same root as ‘sacrifice’ – because to choose any one value is to relinquish another.  If something is sacred to us, we are willing to sacrifice something to protect it, willing to take a stand or risk ourselves in its service.  We don’t idealize sacrifice, however.  Aligning ourselves with what is truly sacred means serving those things that also feed and renew us, that give us the greatest joy and pleasure, that evoke our deepest love.

“As Witches we have a huge responsibility, because we are polytheists.  We see many great powers and constellations of energies in the Universe that we call Goddesses and Gods, and we choose which we will worship or ally ourselves with.  We do also see the underlying unity and oneness of the Universe, but being a polytheist is a way of acknowledging that no one name or description or spiritual path can do justice to the immense Whole.  Gods and Goddesses and sacred texts and religions are all frames, descriptions, maps.  No one of them is the whole Landscape itself.

“But if we have no sacred text, no Ten Commandments, no Ultimate Authority, how do we know what to value?  If we don’t see the World as a simple battle of good and evil but a an interplay of forces and counterforces seeking a dynamic equilibrium, on what do we base our ethics?

“If we see the World as a dynamic Whole, then the first question we might ask when we face a choice is ‘How does this action or decision impact the Whole?’  That’s not a simple question to answer, because the Whole is beyond our complete knowledge, and acts have unexpected consequences.”

Scheelite is Calcium Tunstate, or Calcium Tungsten Oxide.  The “-ate” ending on a mineral means it’s an Oxide, the “-ide” ending means it’s just itself, like a Sulfate (SO4) versus a Sulfide (S).  Scheelite is about discernment, helping to see through deception and obfuscation to what’s important.  It advises us to focus on what’s being Born.  Not to deny our naturally-arising Grief about the Paradigm that’s dying – embrace and tap on that Grief in our Body, rather than dwelling on the Content of what we’re Grieving.  After that step, give the Content heartfelt thanks for carrying us this far, wish it well, and let it go.  Then bring your Attention to the New Paradigm, the one that’s Birthing.  You don’t want to know the Content of what this Is, because you don’t want to Limit it.  You can envision a Sunrise if you want, or a Childbirth.  You can focus on What You Want to see in the New Paradigm, just don’t get attached to any Specific Outcomes.  It’s a whole lot bigger than yer Ego, so yes, your Attention will definitely have an impact, but it won’t determine the Outcome, it will influence it.

What little we do know from astrology about the New Pair O’Dimes we can read from the Sabian Symbols of the conjunctions.  The Chiron-Neptune itself, in mid-February 2010, occurred at 27 Aquarius, “An ancient pottery bowl filled with fresh Violets.”  Returning to ancient values while embracing the cyclically ephemeral.  Violets, or Heart’s Ease, are edible, full of antioxidants, and antimicrobial.  Violet oil heals wounds.

Vesta-Neptune, December 16, 2011, was at 29 Aquarius, “A Butterfly emerging from a Chrysalis.”  Certainly appropriate.  Vesta-Uranus, February 12-13, 2012, at 1 of Pisces, “In a crowded marketplace, Farmers and middlemen display a great variety of produce.”  So we can expect a diversity of Choices ahead of us.  Avoid the temptation to rue Choice as difficult; celebrate it as liberating instead.  Just give any Choice that feels difficult over to the Goddess.  And if yer looking for any economic recovery, wait till after mid-February.

Kinda Ironic

Of course these Scienterrific types don’t mean the same thing we do when they talk about “Earth’s twin,” but their timing is definitely worth a giggle…

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2011/05dec_firstplanet/

You prolly don’t remember what was hidden on Orion’s Belt in Men in Black (if not, you should oughta watch the movie again; it’s pretty prophetic), but the kernel of the idea was that size doesn’t matter – at least, not in the way we think of size in cubits.  Well, distance doesn’t matter either.

“The Royal Nymph was unable to answer my question, to my regret.  But she felt I could find out more from the Dwarfs.  I was to climb the steep slope again, and there on the path find a crippled Oak Tree.  I would see the entrance to the Underworld underneath the Oak.  I thanked her and climbed all the way back up.  I readily found the Oak on the spot she had described and also saw the small archway.  Kneeling below the Oak I followed the subterranean path in my consciousness. 

“Soon the tunnel ended in a huge hall, so large that my eyes could not see the far wall.  This sacred hill was completely hollow.  The walls of the cave-like structures were covered with rough rubies.  The dark red coloring gave me a sensation of being quite literally enclosed in the womb of the Earth.  There was a huge crowd of miners in the hall.  From the entrance I was taken straight through the crowd to a place where the King and Queen of the Dwarfs were sitting on an elevated throne.  But when I came close to the throne I found to my surprise that the Queen had vanished from sight.  I could sense her presence but I perceived her as absent.

“At the throne I felt an immense sadness emanating from the King.  When I looked deeply into his sorrowful eyes I completely forgot why I had come.  I asked him why he was so sad.  He indicated that the Queen of the Dwarfs had been ‘ill’ ever since the People on the Earth had banished the Goddess from their world.  The illness was manifest in the fact that the Queen of the Dwarfs could only be ‘present in her absence’ down below, analogous to the Goddess in the upper world.  This allusion to the vanished landscape temple of the Goddess reminded me why I was here in the first place.”

Marko Pogacnik, Nature Spirits & Elemental Beings: Working with the Intelligence in Nature, p.97.

Ruby is of the Heart.

Oy Vey

Total Eclipse of the Heart, er, Moon…

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2011/02dec_lunareclipse/

Europe…

http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/KWN_DailyWeb/Entries/2011/12/2_Nigel_Farage_-_Major_Banks_Teetering_on_the_Edge_of_Collapse.html

U.S….

http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/11/29/hank-paulsons-inside-jobs/

And an honest assessment of the state of the Empire…

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/12/03/no-way-us-vote-against-banks.aspx?e_cid=20111203_DNL_art_2

And we won’t even talk about the environment/climate/population bomb.  But here’s an interesting exercise, from Hank Wesselman’s Visionseeker (p.270), for helping to midwife Earth 2…

“The primary problem is not the illness, but rather the distortions caused by the loss of personal power or soul part that allowed the illness to invade the body and manifest itself.  Morrnah Simeona told me that when the energy body receives an infusion of healing power from the aumakua or from the helping spirits working with the kahuna shaman, the ku must then be clearly told to use this power to erase the distortions and replace them with light.  This will allow the pattern of the energy body to flow normally once again.  And since the ku uses the energy body as a psychic-energetic blueprint to make the necessary repairs, the restoration of the energy pattern will allow for the renovation of the physical body to its former undistorted state.”

The aumakua is more or less the soul self, and the ku is more or less the Unconscious.  Since Intention can trump “Fact” (“facts” are always relative to the Worldview through which they’re seen; remember it’s always both/and – in “fact,” both/and is an excellent exercise for expanding our Worldview or Birdcage!), it doesn’t really matter to what degree we are each able to contact our aumakua, any helping spirits, or even our ku.  Every little bit helps.  So whenever we Intend a Soul Retrieval to restore our health to its native perfection, we can just add “And the same for the Planet!”  Simple as pie, eh?  No?  Well, what if you did know how to do it, intuitively?!?!

Wavellite is an Aluminum Phosphate.  The crystal grows a zillion tiny fingers in all direction as it grows, so when unbroken a Wavellite crystal looks like a lumpy ball, and when broken, it looks like these lovely radiating sprays.  It promotes just what we been talking about – restoration of the body to its original perfect template.  It also helps us discern Truth from Propaganda.