In the Gardens of the Underworld

In the usual telling of the myth, Pluto/Hades rapes and abducts Persephone while she is picking flowers; thereafter, she must live for half of each year as Queen of the Underworld - Queen of the Dead, Queen of the Dark, Queen of the interminable Night.

The traditional story possibly reflects the patriarchal rape of Nature (where Persephone, like her mother Ceres/Demeter, represented Nature).

Rape/abduction of Persephone

But, what if there’s another version of the story, where Persephone is the curious explorer of the unknown, rather than a victim? Here, Pluto/Hades is unlike any male she’s encountered before; he’s from the Underworld - an unfamiliar realm (culture) that, due to its “otherness”, may be seen as exotic or as sinister, and makes most feel uncomfortable. Perhaps Persephone, still blessed with youthful curiosity, is attracted to this mysterious realm and its emissary (Pluto) because they are unlike her home realm.....because a strange new world potentially offers astounding insights. Rather than being abducted by Pluto, she elopes with him - journeys willingly to the Underworld, albeit without her family’s blessing. That story is mirrored in many modern stories - the everyday drama of a daughter or son who runs off with a (to the parents) “wrong” partner who shares none of the family’s values or aspirations.

So what might Persephone, a nature/fertility goddess, learn from journeying to the Underworld, and residing there long enough to absorb the wisdom of the local “culture”?

She’s initiated into the mysteries of death. Above ground, she sees life only from the instant a sprout first peeks above ground to the moment that a plant loses its leaves or shrivels to a gray husk. From the realm of Hades, she can see how death and decay (the end of one cycle) feed the birth of a new life cycle; she can watch how decomposition provides nutrients for future generations.

In her journey, she may also find that the Underworld is full of riches and teeming with life. Pluto symbolizes death, but also is linked to wealth - as seen in such words as “plutocracy”. The dragon’s gold always is hidden in an underground lair, in an alcove of the Underworld; the dangerous dragon, its gold and its subterranean cave all are Plutonian, aspects of the underground. Real gold, silver and diamonds must be mined - secret riches extracted, at great peril, from the Underworld’s treasure trove. To see all of Gaia’s treasures, one can’t remain exclusively above ground; one must dig down and into the subterranean layers.

And, as Queen of the Dark, perhaps she walked thru the secret, lush, fecund gardens of the Underworld - the Life Below that grows into or feeds the Life Above. 

Perhaps she heard whispered invitations to enter the cave and descend:

To know your Origins,

Go to the Underworld

Where an embedded seed first unfurls

Into the possibility of stem and leaf,

Where the tree’s green vibrancy

Roots deep in the dark of soil;

Where mycelia intertwine and merge,

Offering nectar thru their outstretched hands,

Carrying messages to the world forest.

Here pulses the underground web

That holds and feeds life.

Underground mycelial network

Underground, we find a living internet, the brain of the plant community where roots and mycelia connect and, like dendrite contacting dendrite or hand touching hand, pass messages and nutrients to each other and to the entire forest. Persephone marvels at this intricate, interconnected Garden of the Underworld.

And perhaps she willingly elects to live part-time in each realm - not as a compromise following brutalization, but because she is amazed by and in love with both.

And for those who doubt the beauty of the Underworld, here’s a photo from the Plutonian realms of Carlsbad Caverns (giant, open-to-the-public cave in southern New Mexico)

Pluto in the Palace of Forever

The great Pluto-Saturn conjunction was exact on Jan 12, 2020, but its effects are felt for months before and after this moment; this allows much time to contemplate these archetypes and their possible interactions from multiple perspectives.

Pluto (Hades) is associated with Death and transformation; he corresponds to Shiva in the Hindu creation myth. Here, Brahma is the Creator (or energies of creation), Vishnu is the Preserver (or energies of preservation) and Shiva is the Destroyer; destruction of the old/obsolete is necessary to make room for new creation. Old structures must be dismantled, dissolved, dis-integrated (fragment out of their original wholeness) into infinitesimal particles or basic units of neutral energy - which, in turn, re-assemble in new permutations (the beginnings of new structures, new creation). If the structure of a building, an institution, a belief system or an ego disintegrate.....that old building or old ego has “died”, creating space and contributing energies for the emergence of something new.

The Brahma-Vishnu-Shiva energies correspond to fixed signs in astrology:

Brahma (creative force) - Leo

Vishnu (preservation) - Taurus

Shiva (death force) - Scorpio

I ask where Aquarius (the 4th fixed sign) might fit. Astrologers associate Aquarius with innovation - seeing new possibilities and permutations that have not yet emerged. So, I speculate that Aquarius intervenes between Death and re-Creation. If we’ve dismantled the old because it’s obsolete (no longer serves our needs), then we don’t want to create a clone of what was recently destroyed; we don’t want the next cycle to be a repetition of the prior one. So, when structures have decomposed into their most fundamental components, we need a force that ensures that they will not self-aggregate into something similar to the old. That force must “stir the pot”, redistribute the particles, encourage the fundamentals to combine in permutations never experienced before; then, the new (Brahma) creation will seem totally new, unexpected, even shocking.....what humans call “an innovation, a break through”.

Scientifically, we can see Shiva in the black hole (which sucks in and de-composes old energies) and Brahma in the white hole (which births re-composed forms from recycled old energies). Physicist Nassim Haramein calls this a “Black/white Whole”, postulating that both black and white holes operate simultaneously at the center of a galaxy, with destruction and creation interacting cooperatively as part of a cycle, similar to in the Hindu myth.  In this black/white Whole, there may be a force of re-structuring and re-combining, reflected in the fixed sign Aquarius.

That’s Pluto....Destroyer of Worlds, clearing the land (sometimes thru “scorched earth” methods) so that we can build the new. Now, on to Saturn:

Saturn is Structure: 

This may be the structure we’ve worked hard to create and, in pride, work hard to preserve; thus Saturn also is linked to historical preservation, honoring ancestral wisdom (a repeatedly validated structure of knowledge and belief). “Structure” can refer to something tangible or intangible, collective or personal. Thus, we have architecture (structure of a tangible building), bones (the structure/armature/framework around which the body is built) and the semi-tangible structure of social institutions.  

Or, we can talk about the (intangible, more abstract) structure of a belief system, of consciousness or of the ego. Here we can imagine the belief system or ego as a complex, 3D (height, width, depth) structure where numerous ideas, observations, memories etc... interconnect in an ever more complex webwork to eventually form a geometry; this initially fluid geometry eventually hardens into a crystallized structure. It can no longer change shape easily; it’s impervious to influence from new ideas/observations (which might create new interconnections with pre-existing points, and thus change the overall geometry), but its solidity is continuously reinforced by the energies (ideas, memories etc) already included in it, integral to its assembly and current integrity. This structure seems impervious, will not self-transform on its own. Transformation must come thru external forces - the hammer that smashes it into shards, the extreme volcanic heat that melts it into an unrecognizable shape. 

We humans often identify with our beliefs, incorporate them into our sense of identity or ego, into our mundane sense of “I Am”; likewise, any challenge to our belief structures (whether by an individual or thru cosmically orchestrated collective events) feels like a threat to our existence, and we react defensively. As Jupiter (belief systems) moves into conjunction with Saturn and Pluto in mid-January, we may feel a Plutonic disintegration of old beliefs; if we identified with those beliefs (making them part of our ego structure), then we may feel personally threatened, in fear of personal annihilation. Facing fear and death of the self, we feel uncomfortable; if the fear’s too strong to successfully deny or repress, we “let off emotional steam” by projecting onto others. We may (thru the lens of our projections) see worldwide annihilation, a Mad Max post-apocalyptic dystopia as our only future; external annihilation is a mirror of actual or feared ego annihilation. Worse, thru defensive aggressiveness or paralyzed hopelessness, we may create an external reality that matches our inner fears.

We want the familiar (thus comfortable) palace to endure forever, but even the most stubborn steel eventually disintegrates into rust and shards, or falls prostrate during a seismic shift. We build and preserve Saturnian structures, but Saturnian Time prevails; the venerated “wise old one” ages more, and dies.

Now we go to....

Saturn is Time:

This is Father Time, with white beard and cane, who relentlessly pushes forward the hands on a cosmic clock. This is also wisdom and the earned authority that comes only after years of absorbing knowledge and the lessons of life experience; this is initiation leading to graduation, maturation leading to maturity, ultimately the aging into old age (where wisdom stands at the brink of death).  

In Greek, Saturn’s name is Cronos, reflected in such words as chronology or anachronism. Cronos (Saturn) is Lord of Linear Time, which the Greeks contrasted with another form of time called “kairos”. Kairos refers to mythic time, cyclic time, time with a consciousness and aliveness, the one moment that seems to last forever and hold the universe (despite only lasting a second), the eternal now and simultaneous time that connects all; in the realm of Kairos, there is no death and no birth, as birth and death continuously co-mingle. Kairos tunes into feelings and meaning, is paradoxically both subjective and universal, holds eternity in an instant....

By contrast, Cronos is clock-time, precisely measured, with minutes parading forward in lock-step linear perfection. Cronos time or linear time, like our notion of space, creates SEPARATION between things. To be born to Cronos is to be born into a world governed by separation – from each other and from Source; it’s a world where reductionistic measurement trumps heart-centered “feeling into everything”.  In linear time, death is at the end of a passage that connects to nothing else; it is the “dead end”. 

Linear Time, by definition, is a structure. Minute is stacked on minute sequentially, like brick atop brick, from beginning to end. The blueprint comes with strict rules for how linear time is structured.  The line, built of discrete moments (like bricks) is straight and continuous, from a specified origin point to a termination point; maturation (progress along the line) and death (the end point) are part of linear time. Saturnian time is a grim reaper and dooms Saturnian structures to death.

When Pluto (resurrection thru death) meets Saturn (death thru the process of linear time), two aspects of death meet each other. And we ask - Is Pluto disintegrating and transforming our old concepts of time, bringing death to Linear “clock” Time (as the only way we understand Time) in order to birth an understanding of Time from new perspectives? Perhaps to initiate us into Kairos Time? 

We hear of old timelines dissolving or fusing with emergent new timelines; we hear of people “experiencing” events from the deep past or future while meditating and simultaneously in a body resting in present time. Such experiences transcend ordinary time; will they become more accessible and frequent, as Pluto erodes the rigid architecture of Linear Time?

The Living Grail, a Wise Tulip and the path to compassionate cooperation

Today is a lunar eclipse, with moon in Cancer; the lunar north node is also in Cancer, reminding us of where we could and should evolve further. Astrologically, Cancer is the Mother archetype and thus linked to nurturing and compassion.  The emphasis on Capricorn (sun, lunar south node) and Cancer (moon, lunar north node) invites us to travel the path of compassionate wisdom on both the institutional and personal levels - to “listen to the heart”, to value compassion in the structuring of our institutions and in the structuring of our individual consciousness.

Compassion often seems lacking in the human world. Animals (even predators) generally treat each other with compassion. They comfort other members of the pack or pride; when not motivated by hunger, a lion lets the gazelle herd graze freely - viewing other animals with a “live and let live” tolerance; tolerance and allowing of “what’s not like me” is a form of kindness. Humans talk a lot, but often fail to communicate; true communication requires tolerance and resonance with what unifies - comm-union. Humans seemingly could learn a lot from animals.

Here’s a little poem about communion, inspired by a bear:

Bear

We hear the heartbeat of earth

Thru our soles,

Walk and breathe with her rhythms.

We rub our backs against a tree,

Scratching an itch

As our blood synchronizes

With the pulsing flow in its woody spine.

Animal, tree and earth communing

In the goodness of life.

So, what next for our disoriented, disconnected species? What might be some stepping stones on the road to compassion?

It’s more than just “stepping in their shoes, Bro”.

At first, it’s “imagine how they feel” - a kind of remote viewing that keeps the other’s pain at a distance, but still trains the imagination. If we can imagine, then we can pull their Beingness close to our field and, like a scientist, examine every detail of what they see, hear and feel.  Thru imagination, we begin to understand what/how they are, at a conceptual level. “Brother, do you feel my pain?”....No, but I have a theoretical idea of what you’re going thru; this phase is a mental process.

Then we get a little closer, decrease some of the distance between “me” and “thee”.  We note areas of similarity - similar experiences, similar interests, similar desires.  Those areas of similarity, or apparent overlap, create a limited kinship. Here we have relationship thru resonance: “You are my brother, my kin, because we’re similar, because parts of me mirror parts of you.” Sometimes the mirror is dirty, cracked or distorted (like those fun-house mirrors), but we are probing for points of likeness, thus of easy connectivity. Tuning into the areas of similarity allows for diplomacy - for civil discussion of differences, while standing in neutral “common ground”. In astrology, this dynamic corresponds to the Libra archetype.

Next comes merging and fusion, the expansion of the “I Am” beyond my individual self and personal attachments. “What am I?”; whatever words follow the “I am.....” become part of my identity. If I say “I am beautiful”, then “beauty” becomes part of my identity structure (at least for a while). If I say “I am unhealthy”, then sickness becomes part of my identity; thru absorbing  the energies of sickness into my “me-ness”, I’ve cast a spell on myself and may suffer more dis-ease. The “I Am” can contract or expand, exclude or include. If I viscerally know that I am connected in interdependence with Nature, that atoms from that tree may be swept by the air into my lungs and become part of my flesh tomorrow, then my “I Am” may expand to include nature in my definition of “what is me”.

Although described in mental language, this process occurs outside usual mental processing - occurs thru the emotions, thru the visceral feelings that become “knowings”, is irrational. When we “irrationally” merge with another human, we literally feel their pain and their essence; this is no longer conceptual, but a “felt knowing”....an awareness received thru the heart and gut. We move from abstract sympathy to experiential “feeling with” - compassion.  The “I Am” can expand infinitely - to include 2 people, 3 people, a whole city, a world of people, a planet of diverse beings, even an entire solar system or galaxy in the definition of “Who I Am”.  At a certain point, the “I Am” expands enough to allow compassion for all humanity. Such compassion can bring overwhelming, viscerally painful despair for the suffering of millions, which then leads to a protective contraction of the “I Am” and necessary rest from overwhelm. But even just one such expansion of the “I Am” can catalyze a radical restructuring of the ego and what it values.

Merging galaxies - 2 become 1

As a preview of a humanity living thru compassion:

In a world where everyone lived in compassion, there’d be no need for Laws (No one would be murdering, raping, etc.). We’d only need trivial non-intuitive rules to maintain order - such as “which side of the street to drive on”.

The Divine Feminine (of the Cancer archetype) evokes images of the holy grail, the grail of divine receptivity and divine generosity. Not surprisingly, some flowers (progenitors of the seed and fruit, and often associated with the feminine) are grail-shaped: Tulips, poppies, any flower whose petals curl to form a bowl-like container.

A Living Grail

This bowl of petals - 

A chalice, a singing bowl

Humming with the wind,

Collecting tones like dew,

Holding offerings of sound and scent

In its nectar-moist grail.

Bees hear the tune and bring

Gifts of pollen, orange fertility,

To the tulip’s embrace.

Hand of bee touches hand of plant 

In reverent reciprocity.

Generosity requires receptivity. Those who give without receiving....run dry, become bitter and shriveled; one must nurture the self, if one is to nurture others. The flower pulls nourishment up its stem from the soil; its leaves and petals welcome and absorb riches from the air and sun; the stamen, like an antenna, reaches up to receive and offer fertilizing particles of solar gold. It welcomes in the expected (the water, the soil minerals, the solar light) and the unexpected - the breeze carrying a new fragrance, the beak of an unfamiliar hummingbird, the unknown magic. And from the alchemy of familiar and unfamiliar, all received in open embrace, it grows into the miraculous grail offering gifts of beauty for the eyes, pollen to the bees and oxygen to the air.

How are we like the grail or the tulip? Images of the human energy field show a tube torus that can extend far beyond the physical body (expanding as our definition of our “I Am” expands).  We simultaneously pull in and emit energy (receive and give) from our crown and feet; the incoming and outgoing energies swirl around us in counter-rotating currents.....in a spherical, or bowl-like configuration. Perhaps each of us is also a living grail.

Our Years Are Numbered

Yes, when we look at the world, society seems on the verge of mass psychosis. Mankind seems more polarized than ever, more easily triggered into warring against the enemy Other. Meanwhile, the world burns - literally and devastatingly, at rapid speed, in Austalia (following upon the Amazon and California fires), and at slower speed thru global warming. In such a context, it’s easy to see dystopian future timelines - either of mass extinction (including humans) or of a soulless (de-souled) Transhumanism where future generations live as sentient machines in a virtual reality detached from Nature and Spirit.

But are there happier possibilities, at least for us at the individual level? Many in the metaphysical community refer to 2020 as a turning point; in late December, I saw the word “RESET” (all in capital letters) scroll across the page while I was gazing at a mandala in “open eyed” meditation....and the Pluto/Saturn conjunction does point to a “resetting”, a rebirth thru death of the obsolete, a potential resurrection that’s more difficult if we resist (rather than surrender to) Pluto’s demand for deep (alchemical) transformation.

On December 31, 2019, I got the following message about 2020:

“It’s so much about The Vision. Think of your association of 2020 (or 20/20) with “perfect vision”.....the year of clear vision, when we see clearly (no more blurring) what we want to build with those Master Architect (22/4) energies. Clear 20/20 vision of who we each really are, of who we are as a species and planet, and of where we are going. With “perfect or perfecting vision”, everything in this realm becomes crystal clear.....but our vision also expands so that we see more clearly in higher dimensions. Multi-dimensional clair-voyance.....and clair-voyaging as our soul’s True North begins to radiate with crystal clarity and we no longer “get lost” in navigating thru/towards (our soul purpose, our journeying thru/to a given realm).

Later, I saw the image of a fractalized snowflake as representing some of the energies of clarity and illumination. A snowflake is crystalline - water molecules structured into crystalline form. Because it’s unadulterated by other energies, crystal is a pure conduit for incoming energies; it can hold those energies in their pristine form. As a geometric structure, it can also reflect those energies or radiate what it holds in a specific direction (determined by the geometry. If the geometry is complex, this light can be reflected in more directions. Fractalization means that the same geometry repeats infinite times, down to the infinitesimal; thus the light can be beamed in infinite directions. The geometrically complex, fractalized crystal becomes like a tiny sun, radiating its pristine energies into everything (even, perhaps especially, the darkest cracks that particularly need illumination).  Many fractalized snowflakes means.....many points that radiate, many mini-suns that illuminate/reveal what was hidden and that emanate pristine energies of “what could be” on an untarnished (healed, polished clear) earth.

During a mediation on Jan 1st, I saw the image of an overcast, homogeneously dim-white sky (like the cloud cover before it snows). Then a dark crack appeared in the homogeneous whiteness, which grew dark tributaries that branched off into even smaller tributaries. The cracks and tributaries widened, at first showing only a menacing blackness beyond; as the cracks widened further, I began to see stars twinkling in that blackness. Asking what the image meant, I received this message:

You’ve spoken of veils - the fog in your mind, heart and soul that obscures the path ahead or the path to recognizing your gifts; the fog or clouds of dim half-light that have cocooned your planet for eons. Now there are tears in those veils and clouds, rips as the old, confining matrix starts to shred. Here you can see beyond the clouds to the fathomless universe. At first, the cracks in the veil may look ominous and dark, like tentacles of blackness. But as they widen, you see the shimmering stars in the blackness and recognize that the “blackness” isn’t sinister at all. It’s the dark of the vibrant void - which is conscious, alive, tingling with infinite possibilities eager to join together into new creations. As the veils and clouds shred apart, the “space between” once dense clouds becomes an entry, a portal, for elements of the **entirely new** to enter your consciousness, for manifestation in your reality. This is also a gift of 2020 vision - to see into the womb of all possibilities (the void), the dark cave of creation. Your challenge is to surrender old habits of fear, habitual (unconscious) beliefs - and welcome in, embrace these new possibilities so that this can become the year of **unforeseeable** changes. 

I saw an image of the Fool card of the traditional tarot deck and heard “Take a leap of faith into Hope and Trust”. The Fool is the Innocent, who hasn’t yet begun his journey (at this new point, at the origin of the new spiral). He can leap with the boldness of unadulterated faith, because he’s not yet experienced the struggles associated with later points in the journey; he is free, free from memories and thus free of expectations. Later in the journey, after suffering betrayal and loss and pain, our hero might become jaded, too cynical for any “leap of faith”; expecting past struggles to recur, he might easily get caught in a loop of re-creating a future that mirrors a dark past, and not break free of “old patterns” or “karma”. He would become a prisoner of expectations based in his past. 

But that journey suggests that evolution is merely circular, a path where one ends where one has begun and, despite much journeying, no progress has occurred. The destination is the Origin point; one has spent a lot of energy merely “running in place”, or frantically running on a hamster wheel that goes nowhere. This is the circle of eternal re-occurance, the wheel of karma where the same patterns/problems (simultaneously exasperating , but also boring due to their repetition) repeat over and over, ad nauseum.

But, what if the evolutionary journey is not a flat-disc circle.....but a spiral? Then, we don’t end where we’ve begun; we begin anew at a higher octave, where resemblances to the old may be apparent or invisible due to their subtlety. Then, we can no longer predict that future experiences will involve anything familiar - can’t predict loss and pain (Or, if struggle occurs, how it will be felt and experienced, what the subjective reality will be). So, if we recognize that we are starting anew from a different level of the spiral, our past beliefs/projections about “what will happen” are obsolete....no longer useful navigation tools. We’re in the realm of the unknown, navigating by intuition....navigating most easily and effectively if we’re freed from ancient memories, beliefs and expectations.

Making this relevant to astrology: Currently Neptune (in Pisces) is sextile sun and Mercury (in Capricorn).....asking us to dissolve old identity structures and old thought patterns, so that we (with Neptunian innocence) can surrender into the potential for magic.

A New Earth can not be seen, understood or built from an Old Earth mindset; a new Vision must be rooted in true hope, and arise out of receptivity to (indeed, welcoming) the new.....that which lies beyond even the expansive confines of our imagination.