Illusion and a Poverty of Culture
Art: ALLA BARTOSHCHUK
Venus Retrograde Conjunct Pluto
I woke up today and the grief felt heavier. Less pointed, less focused, more all encompassing.
What is happening I thought? “Ride the waves, Damascena, Ride the waves” I whispered to myself.
It wasn’t until I got on my weekly sisterhood loom call that I heard the news. And all made sense.
On December 19th 2021, Just before the darkest night of the year, Venus stationed Retrograde Conjunct Pluto in Capricorn. Very close to Pluto’s USA return degree.
What is the symbolism of the Darkest Night, meeting with the Lord of the Underworld? Pluto a planet that often speaks to us about how we carry our personal power in the world? How our power is often forged in flames, meeting with The Feminine as she embarks on her metamorphosis phase?
Fire makes Flame, Flame makes ash. Endings make beginnings. Before beginnings - Grief- Nigredo.
Before we get totally activated, before we put a bullet point list together. Before making edits, or a doing a story rewrite, don’t we need to sit with our society’s fetish for youth, growth, security, & control? For stories that have beginnings but no endings? For our desire to have stasis in our laws, philosophies, and cultural cutouts? The demand that they be written in stone, FOR US? What is it that we bet all our chips on only expanding our rights? And failed to see how fragile everything is?
That’s the big lesson of the Metamorphic Goddess, Meeting with the Lord of the Underworld.
No escape, no constancy, only the reality of unending cycles of change.
Until we fully grieve, until we fully sit with the fact that security is an illusion. Sit with what this REALLY means. How big this is. That no government, and no God, is going to shield us from the reality of impermanence, we are going to continue to direct our energy and anger in the wrong places.
If we fail to go down to the place true power lies. The underworld. As long as we grip for the sides to avoid impact, we will fail. Because the power we think we have is mostly external, something granted to us by an outside authority. Delusion.
Venus/ Pluto = Collective Grief. Let’s sit together. Gather our medicine circles and descend. Forge ourselves in the flames of grief and rage about all that is happening in the collective, and rise with true power. More tender, more open hearted, more awake, more alive, more present, less anesthetized.
Fear isn’t knowledge. Feeling is.
* For those people who don’t know, we lost our Gorgeous, Sweet, Tender, Pisces Moon Boy, Tanner David, on June 5th 2022. Our family is in the midst of Deep Grief and the act of Profound Praise for the life of our son. My work and writing may be more sparse for the next few months as I tend to my soul. Not to worry. I’ll be back to a regular writing schedule soon.
