October 2020: Calling In Help From All Corners
Dear Friends,
I wonder how this chaotic election season and gnarly, epic astrology is treating you? I am leaning into all of my resources at this time: beauty, nature, taking political action in community, praying the rosary (alone, in the dark of early morning and under the night sky, and with others, via Zoom), good sleep hygiene, tarot and journaling, and asking for help when I need it (not easy, but indispensable).
During the many years I lived at the Monastery, I took part in the Hungry Ghost Ceremony—a moving liturgical mash-up of Japanese Obon and Halloween. But I never really felt a connection with my ancestors. Earlier this year, I created an ancestors altar, inspired by an assignment for an online course I was taking. Now seems like a good time to call on all the help we can, from all corners.
Halfway between the fall equinox and the winter solstice, the Celtic pagan Sabbat of Samhain (pronounced SOW-en) is a time when the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead is especially permeable. This year, Samhain and Halloween fall on October’s second full moon, in Taurus. I’m in the process of reflecting on how I want to use these powerful energies—to name and honor my dead, to call in their wisdom and medicine, and to call them to account for healing that still needs to happen. If you have plans for Samhain, or the Day of the Dead, or however you observe this time, I’d love to hear about it.
As we enter this darkening-into-winter, I wish you warmth, resilience, nourishment and inspiration. May we all notice beauty and grace in small and unexpected places, get positively obsessed with something that ignites our passion or curiosity, rest more, and practice asking for the care and support we need.
In love and solidarity,
shea in the catskills
What’s Inspiring Me Now
- Amir Arta—here’s to all of us discovering how we express and give joy
- This Project NIA video about Defunding Police and the discussion guide that goes with it
- Humpback whales bubble net feeding
- Mona Eltahawy’s book The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls. “Feminism should terrify the patriarchy.” Actually.
- A Message From the Future II: The Years of Repair, a short video that scares and inspires me at the same time. Dreaming and imagining the future is an important part of the work of creating a just, sustainable and loving world. (See my Tarot Card of the Month, below)
- My SURJ comrades and the hundreds of people in the SURJ network who come together several times a week to take action for a better world.
- The Great Mother—in all of her countless names, faces and forms
What’s inspiring you now? I would love to hear about it and include it in my next newsletter…
Card of the Month: XII The Hanged One
Traditional depictions of this card, usually called The Hanged Man, show the Norse god Odin hanging upside-down from Yggdrasil, the World Tree. Yearning for deep wisdom, Odin hung himself by his ankle for nine days. His surrender complete, the secret of the Runes—an ancient written alphabet—was revealed to him.
In this version, we see the only Home any of us has ever known. From the surface of the Moon—that ancient, mythic luminary, symbol of eternity within constant change—Earth appears suspended like a swirling blue marble in the dark immensity of empty space. Only ever visible in part, we can never actually see the whole of it. Zoom in anywhere, and you’ll find infinite dramas unfolding: babies being born, fires and floods, joy and grief, tyrants and revolutionaries, boredom and agony, passion and ecstasy, old age, sickness and death. This depiction is an image of the great mystery and beauty and seeming paradox of life—its wholeness and perfection, as well as its shadow and fragility.
The Hanged One invites such dramatic shifts in perspective. Often, we can’t see what’s actually going on until our life is upended in some way. 2020 is delivering a dramatic collective upending. Things that most of us took for granted—hugs, gathering with friends and loved ones, sitting in a movie theater—are not safe. Social viruses that came with this country’s founding are in full, violent view and are also being challenged and resisted by the largest uprising in my lifetime, led by the Movement for Black Lives.
It’s becoming harder to deny the reality that life on Earth is gravely imperiled by human activity. The mass extinction of plants and animals caused by a single species (us!), the disappearance of an Indigenous language from the face of the Earth every two weeks, half the planet’s topsoil lost in the last 150 years, the global rise of white nationalism and authoritarianism.
How do we hold this view of our only Home, suspended in empty space, alongside the view from our unique and specific place? What does the world look like from where each of us actually is? What disease of the heart, soul and spirit has led us to this precipice and reckoning? What will we do with this moment? Where will a new direction come from?
If this time makes nothing else clear, we can know this for sure: the overculture is a death cult. Capitalism, patriarchy and white supremacy are killing us. And the rate of that killing is not random. We are reaping the harvest of seeds planted 400 years ago in the theft of land, labor and life force, and of institutions created and maintained to benefit white, land-owning men.
Looking squarely at the facts, it’s understandable to swing between burning up all of one’s energy trying to “fix” what’s wrong—with us, others, or the world—or else being paralyzed by the immensity of our collective situation. For me, The Hanged One points to the possibility of a place to enter outside of those extremes, apart from all binaries, straight into the heart of what feels impossible to reconcile. This is at once a deeply personal matter, and at the same time, a matter of collective survival. The Hanged One points to the necessity and wisdom of “both/and.”
Odin was willing to give up his life to learn the secret of the Runes. The word “sacrifice” means “to make sacred” by offering wholeheartedly. What are we willing to sacrifice? And for whom? Or what? How do we offer it willingly, with all of our heart?
I’ve been struck by the number of people I’ve spoken with recently who’ve said, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me! I’m just so exhausted/can’t function/feel so out of control.” Nothing is wrong with you. The way we live now is not conducive to life. Astrologer Dayna Lynn Nuckolis (@PeoplesOracle) says, “We pathologize our lives as symptomatic of personal psychological failings rather than as the consequence of cultural and systemic oppression.”
And the overculture would have us believe that there is no alternative to the way we live now. That the destruction of the planet is inevitable because there is no alternative to capitalism. I think it’s important to appreciate that within the overculture, popular media is sustained by unending stories of violence and chaos. And while violence and chaos are real, so are the countless stories of movements all over the world for justice and collective liberation.
The extent to which mainstream media outlets simply do not cover the work of the Movement for Black Lives, global feminist movements, Indigenous movements for justice, movements for tenants rights—it’s almost as if someone doesn’t want us to know that another world is possible.
The way we live now doesn’t give us a chance to take the time and space to imagine how the world could be different, or even that it could be different. That’s why I feel moved to share with you a recent post by abolitionist Mariame Kaba that invites us to step away from the overculture’s narrative and into one of our own imagining:
Anxiety is off the charts for so many. I’ve been thinking a lot about November 4 (not because anything will be immediately and radically different) but because so much focus has been, is being centered on 11/3. For most of us, there will be a day after.
I’m wondering if some of you might want to engage in a little project with me. Over the next two weeks, make a post-November 3 communal vision board. It can be a written reflection, it can be visual art, it can be music/song. Articulate a communal vision of a post November 3 world. Perhaps this is an activity you can engage with your family, friends, roommates, work colleagues. Visioning and dreaming are important.
Send them to me by October 31 and on November 3rd, I’ll share your vision boards throughout the day on social media. I’ll also make all of the submissions accessible to everyone so you can share them too (if you’d like).
The thing about this vision board is that instead of focusing on your personal goal and intentions, set communal goals. What would you like to see us all focus on in the coming weeks, months and years? What should our intentions be?
I’m going to make a vision board and will share it with you all so at the very least there will be one to share on November 3. I hope others of you will join in too! Feel free to share with others.
Everyone can send their communal vision boards to me by October 31. Watch this video for inspiration and dreaming.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this, and I’m so curious and excited to see what we might imagine together. I am especially interested to see vision boards created by young people, and by intergenerational groups.
If we never stop and imagine the world we’re fighting for, it will never happen. While the overculture capitalizes on our fear and anxiety, life is calling out for our attention and care. We can start with ourselves—our own hearts and the way they’ve been caged and numbed by white supremacy, patriarchy and capitalism. The more skilled we become with ourselves, the more we feel called to offer that attention and care outwardly in our unique and indispensable way. We take care of what we love. We are willing to make sacrifices—to offer what is sacred to Life with our whole hearts—when we are connected to each other by a common vision.
Find out more about my tarot work.
Card of the Month pulled from the The Spacious Tarot.
