When In Doubt, Choose To Live!

From a DC Pagan ListServ that I'm on:

From: Maureen [mailto:info@visionaryactivism.com]
Subject: Caroline Casey : The Pluto Report - Micro Virgo Missive #7

Micro Virgo Missive

Presents:

Pluto Responds -

The Pluto Report

The god of the Underworld, was amused by being called "Dead as a planet."

"Of course I'm dead, I'm the god of the dead."

And used to being dissed, exiled, albeit at tremendous cost to cultures that
do so.

Of course human dementors would like to stick their fingers in their ears,
and say, "no, no, no, we deny the invisible. We deny the dead, the invisible, the principle of power, the abuse of power known as plutocracy, now rampant." Death is cheap, not valued, marketed wholesale, so that even the god of death is appalled. And if it's invisible - we'll ignore it, which is the essence of the ridiculous concept and reality of waste and garbage. (Pluto loves compost, decay in service to new life.)

Let's remember the astrologer's witty quip that "there is absolutely no astrological evidence that science is anything but a primitive medieval superstition."

And also, the Groucho Marxist quip we like to use whenever possible, even when it doesn't really fit: "I've had a lovely evening. This wasn't it. But I've had a lovely evening." (One can fill in the blank of "evening," with so many other options, "democracy," for instance.)

From the sacred text of Terry Pratchett's profound and funny* novel 'Thief of Time,' (*akin to the genius of reggae music which lies in its rhythmic art : the darker the lyrics - the jauntier the tune) even death recoils at humans undervaluing its enormity, the ending of so many unique experiments and miraculous stories.

In contemplating humans up to no good in messing with time and death, the heroine says, about humans planning unspeakable harm to creation : "they wouldn't be that stu.". But then she stopped. "Of course someone would be that stupid. Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it, saying 'End-of-the World Switch.

PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH,' the paint wouldn't even have time to dry."

It is the Katrina anniversary.

As the Irish say, "God created the potato blight, but the British created
the famine."

Well humans and their irreverent waste and burning of fossil fuels (more
dissing the dead) create cataclysmic climate change, which creates the
mega-storms, but then humans really created the ongoing disaster in New
Orleans, due to callous indifference.

Any country with a modicum of soul would pull all its resources from war (Iraq etc. and the ridiculous crusade to conquer more oil) and devote everything to alleviating the misery of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, spiraling on out to consider the true art of life - creative, compassionate, ingenious response in recognition of our kinship in this one large pulsing dream.

Martin Prechtel reminds us, "for want of grief - we go to war." We have allowed our grief to be kidnapped and taken hostage by plutocrats. Until now.

No Scorpio (dedicated to the Underworld) city more honored the dead than New Orleans.

And no Scorpio city currently less honors the dead than Washington D.C., as embodied in the obscene jocularity of a Donald Rumsfeld, as the corporate press corps rolls over and pees in the air as a token of its subservience. And whenever the public gets close to sniffing out the hidden truths, the dementors pull out a bit of distracting pornography - "Look over there, Jon Benet's killer. Oops, no." When we know there are people right in front of us, to whom we have surrendered our Saturn, our leadership, who are guilty of the murder of countless little girls (and boys and men and animals and oceans.)

Let's vow to be undistractable, aided by Neptune stationing at the unmasking degree.

("An ominous silence falls as the last man is unmasked at a masquerade
ball.")

Here we go, heading into this season of revelation, with so much on the line, let us vow to be agents of revelation.

Pluto and the Mythic News.

February 26, 1993 - as a beautiful snow storm swirled outside, I pondered the Mythic News, how the gods were trying to help us out by staging things in such a succinct symbolic manner that even the most dunder-headed humans would notice, and heed.

I noted that Pluto was stationing (apparent motion stops, the god beams down it's literalized symbolism) that day, and that this god embodies the principle that whatever is suppressed becomes volatile and toxic due to its disrespectful suppression. One hour after the exact station, the news reported the 1st attempt to blow up the World Trade Towers from the Underworld parking garage. Whoowee.So literal.

I told this story at a speech at Herbfest Iowa in late August of 2001, saying, well Pluto's now stationing again. Let's see what we've all learned.

Pluto does station often in late August - early September. Last year, on September 1st, 2005, Pluto squared the U.S. Neptune, (where Neptune was when this country was born - representing) the soul of this country. And it was on that day that a British paper published the most apt cartoon, of the Statue of Liberty floating dead, face down in New Orleans, while disinterested troops with guns gazed dispassionately from an overhead bridge.

Well Pluto is stationing NOW, exactly on Labor Day, September 4th at 7:20PM ET.

So team of dedicated democracy-philes, sane and reverent people, let's work with it.

Pluto says, "planet, schplanet," in the words of ally Steve Bhaerman, "Sure it works in practice, but does it work in theory?"

The instructions of now, encourage us to be active agents of Pluto, composting death in every imaginative, visualizing, practical manner that synchronicity affords us, to suck the "g" out of "kingdom," and exhale the energetic chi into the animating of the resulting "kindom."

Pluto would like us to collaborate in every way, sucking the energy out of any death-dealing up to no good irreverent violent plot, so that it is fully revealed, rendered harmless and collapses like a souffle'.

As Vipassana meditation suggests, inhale the world's grimy plutocracy, and exhale radiant beauty, now, forever, every day, together, for a few minutes, and especially this strange Labor Day weekend. Inhale death-dealing tyranny, exhale creative democracy.

And Terry Pratchett adds: "When in doubt - choose to live!"

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Addendum: This Virgo season assigns us the task of cultivating Mercury as Hermes, the power of language, wedded to intention and ritual.

Marie Laveau, the great Voodoo Queen of New Orleans was a Virgo, a great Medicine Woman and a collaborator with Pluto.

When faced with against all odds tyranny, it is said that first she'd scrub her steps, then clean her house, set her altars, do her conjure dance, and then go kick butt and set the world to rights. As ally Michael Ventura wrote, "She did not create social movements, but a woman of her substance understood what was at stake. She saw a role to be played and played it to the hilt, helping to coalesce a scattered and oppressed people into a culture. It was a moment of cultural ecstasy." And may it be so for each one of us.

Marie is the Southern Bureau Chief of Coyote Network News, and is particularly available to guide us through the upcoming Lunar Eclipse, when the earth's shadow is projected onto the Moon - more revelation - in two weeks on September 7th.

The ensuing Solar Eclipse, pre-Equinox, of September 22nd, takes place at 29+ Virgo whose image is "An emergency call, a woman calmly cleaning the house in the midst of an earthquake." That would be Marie, and the Marie in us.

P.S. Terry Pratchett adds "Time was a resource. You could learn to let it move fast or slow, so that a monk could walk easily through a crowd and yet be moving so fast that no one could see him. Or he could stand still for a few seconds, and watch the Sun and Moon chase one another across a flickering sky. He could meditate for a day in a minute." We can do a lot in
a little.