Angels and Demons

Hopefully you are all safe and well and learning how to cope with isolation. Aren’t we fortunate to have visual access to loved ones online? We had a Zoom cocktail hour last week that lifted my spirits (no pun intended) for three days. I find myself busier than ever with emails, phone and Skype calls and thinking of old friends I haven’t seen in years. Paradoxically, this time-out may actually bring us closer together.

I keep stressing the point that the stellium of planets in Capricorn in the 2^nd house of the USA birth chart has been asking America to examine its values. This pandemic is a perfect testing ground. So many of our citizens are putting their lives on the line to care for sick patients, to collect our garbage, keep food on store shelves, deliver our packages. These angels received a huge round of applause in New York City last Friday, where streets were empty, but apartment windows were open and quarantined residents were clapping and cheering in unison.

On the other hand, far too many are using this crisis to feather our nests. I saw a video of a woman in Florida, loading pallets of paper products into a truck after cleaning out a Dollar Store. She declared her intent to jack up the price and sell them on eBay, as well as street corners, all the while swearing at a protesting customer. Another incident involved an infected shopper systematically coughing on all the produce in a grocery store. $35,000 worth of food had to be thrown out.

Worst of all, our government, which has sworn an oath to protect us, has forged a relief package with juicy give-aways to our richest corporations, while complaining about helping the poor. This bill which passed last Friday includes a $500 billion slush fund which our president wants to oversee and distribute to airlines, cruise lines that don’t even pay taxes to the U.S. and hotels. There’s even a $170 billion gift to real-estate developers. Take a guess on which prominent real estate developer is profiteering.

This isn’t a time to expand, this is a time to withdraw and reflect. We have multiple crises that we created out of our mistakes. We are on the wrong path and it is leading to possible annihilation. We need this time to break the habit of living our lives based on economic values, and dream of a better way to live together. We need to think seriously about what isn’t working and stretch our imagination into the unknown for creative solutions; reflect on Bhutan that replaced the GNP with GNH – Gross National Happiness.

Saturn entered Aquarius the day after the Spring Equinox, around the time we awakened to the seriousness of this pandemic. If we listen to the lessons from the heavens, Saturn is asking us to turn our attention to our collective relationship to one another, to everyone. Hopefully, during the 2000 or so years ahead, humanity will come to peace with itself and learn how to function in a paradigm of cooperation, rather than competition for wealth. This is the next step in our spiritual evolution.

I’ve heard talk about world peace my whole life and yet we keep rushing to war, almost always over resources. For a century now we’ve been squabbling over oil. Fortunes have been made. But this is a Midas myth. Remember that King Midas simply couldn’t collect enough gold. He begged the gods for more and received the gift of “The Golden Touch.” Everything he touched turned to gold! Imagine that – all the gold you could possibly devote your life to accumulating. But when he shared his joy with his beloved daughter, she turned to gold under his caress. King Midas, in his grief, came to see that nothing was more valuable than his precious daughter and he had lost her because of blind greed.

And so in our rush to seize all the oil buried beneath the surface of the Earth – our Home – we have been destroying the very thing that keeps us alive; the Sentient Being whose nurturing consciousness makes our lives possible – Mother Earth. The heavens have given us a gift in the guise of a crisis which forces us in upon ourselves so we may reassess our course, dig deep in our hearts and guts for what matters, what is truly of value so that when we re-emerge from this confinement, we do not just return to our old habit of chasing after gold. The big question is whether we have the courage to make some serious changes once this pandemic has passed.

I subscribe to Truthout online and I highly recommend it for honest journalism as well as original, perceptive Op-Ed pieces written by some terrific writers. I saw a headline a few days ago that suggested this pandemic is a prelude to one that is on the horizon – our climate crisis. I instantly saw that potential. We think a shortage of wipes and toilet paper is a big deal, being confined to our comfortable homes with endless entertainment. What will happen when there is no food!

We needed this crisis to wake us up in time to prevent an even worse one. In the middle of January’s conjunction of Saturn and Pluto was Ceres – goddess of the harvest, the grains, the very food that keeps us alive. Her myth is apropos of these times as well. This adoring mother had a daughter, Persephone, who meant more to her than anything. Pluto abducted Persephone and took her into the Underworld to reign with him is his kingdom of darkness. Ceres was bereft and as a result she abandoned the crops. There was no harvest. She wandered the Earth weeping and longing for her daughter. Finally, when she could no longer bear the pain, she went to Zeus and begged him to intercede with his brother Pluto. Zeus worked out a deal that Persephone could return to her mother, emerge above ground and into the light, for half the year.

This myth, of course, provides an explanation of our seasons, but there is so much more here about our Unconscious. The Goddess is longing for her daughter. Think of us all as her children. She mourns us even as we assault her. At the moment we are only half lost to the darkness, but light is giving way to greater dark around our world right now – not just the loss and death of loved ones, the anxiety of survival, but in the loss of freedom, in the yawning gap that is growing between the haves and have-nots, the powerful and the disenfranchised.

These two myths – both involving daughters – reveal some truths. When we pursue and grasp and grow our greed, we destroy what is truly of value, and when we have lost it, we are bereft. If we don’t make some changes, we will become embodiments of grief, like Ceres and Midas. We have been  feeding the Midas myth far too long. We call it the American Dream, a powerful dream that ignited hope around the world. Poor people suffering oppression, poverty, painful struggle seized a vision of a better world. America! Where they could be free to live life on their own terms, worship as they pleased, make a new start, out from under the thumb of overlords. Gradually, however, democracy shrank down to capitalism. We became focused on chasing after money and although 99 % of us will never have that golden touch, unconsciously we are all chasing the dream of those who do. We work for them, sometimes two or three jobs, just to survive. Our lives are about making money and then paying it back for the privilege of having food and shelter and expensive toys.

We need to remember what this dream was all about, identify where it went wrong and make a course correction. And we better do it fast. The universe has given us this gift of time. What do we value? And what is the impact of that? Does it serve, or threaten, the common good?

We are getting a good look at humanity right now, in all its glory and warts. Our angels and demons are on full display. The temptation, of course, is to judge. “These people are good and those others are bad.” But the truth is, this is what it means to be human. We have the capacity for heroism as well as cowardice, for generosity as well as greed, for caring as well as indifference, or worse – hatred. Where our free will lies is in the choices we make. We can choose to swing the needle toward the light and when we feel the darkness, get to the bottom of it and let it go.