November 2016 – Joan Porte

The Tragedy Of Donald Trump

Yes, I know that is a loaded heading. While I can write a missive on the tragedy to our country, however, I want to step back and focus on the man.

He could, if he opened up to his chart destiny, be a great president. No, really! With his North Node in the 10th house, the house of government and authority, in the sign of Gemini he could be someone who listens to all viewpoints and appreciates divergent ideas. With his Sun energy on one side of the Node and Uranus on the other, he could be a brilliant future thinking leader.

However, nothing he has done to date shows that he has any desire to move out of his South Node or karmic pattern of being someone who is emotionally attached to being the one of knows (Sagittarius) how to protect himself and his “family.” With the ruler of his South Node retrograded along with Pluto in his house of self-worth, he is too afraid to give up the facade of Sagittarius – (there is nothing you can tell me that I don’t already know) to learn. That would require an element of emotional security that he has yet to exhibit.

His Leo rising and Mars on the ascendant makes his belligerence and desire to fight all enemies all too clear.

That is not to say he can’t awaken to his soul destiny. For all of our sakes, I am hoping that he gets a seasonal visit from the three ghosts so instrumental in Ebenezer Scrooge’s rebirth. It is the season of miracles after all. Isn’t it?

Happy Thanksgiving

It has been a tumultuous few weeks in America. Today, I am turning from politics to Thanksgiving. Unfortunately, politics will follow us into the holiday. The Sun will be in the ninth house – that of international affairs – closely conjunction the loyalty goddess, Juno, and the communicator, Mercury. Can you say “ready, set, fight?” Lilith, the rebel woman energy, is next to the Sun – so woman are going to want others to hear them. I hope someone removes all sharp knives and sturdy turkey legs from the tables.

With Uranus, the rebel, and Ceres, the nurturer, both in retrograde and in the second house of values, expect to have circular debates about who we are and what we are becoming. The retrogrades will assure that those will be very “holy” debates as they will have no beginning and no end.

If you are heading into dinner with family members on the other side of divide try to find some common aspects. Admire the table, gush over the turkey – then run to living room and immerse yourself in football until it is time to go home. You won’t change any minds and who needs indigestion on Thanksgiving?

Enjoy – and thank you for your support!

Shamanic Healing in the Time of Great National Pain

Today I have asked Meg Beeler to give us some advice on healing in the terrible aftermath of the election. She is a shamanic guide, founder of Earth Caretakers and author of Living in the Heart of the Universe: Expanding Your Relationship with Earth and the Cosmos. – See more at: http://www.megbeeler.com/path-of-vision-or-road-of-despair/#sthash.sA7Z2OUc.dpuf

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It’s not easy to maintain hope in our current climate.

Yet shifting from the road of despair to the path of vision works. I know this: When I put aside anxiety and focus on the world I want to live in, my heart opens. When I vision the world we are dreaming for our descendants, I calm down. When I drum every morning for Standing Rock and clear waters, I connect with the whole.

It is up to us—whether we be lightworkers, visionaries, dreamers, idealists, or simply determined humans—to create the world we want to live in.

That doesn’t mean ignoring the shadow side (looks like I’ll be talking more about this in upcoming blogs!) Yet if we do not have clear dreams—in our lives, our businesses, or countries—we flail.

We are the creators, weaving a piece of the whole web. We are, as we hear so often, the ones we are waiting for. So let’s step up to the plate!

“Our beliefs have the power to change the flow of events in the universe—literally to interrupt and redirect time, matter, and space, and the events that occur within them“ as Gregg Braden says.

Visioning from Your Essence

My imagination was seriously suppressed when I was a child. It became inaccessible to me as I grew up. So it was a challenge to learn to vision and dream.

When I learned to integrate the focus I’d learned in meditation, my nature connections, and shamanic worldview into visioning, doors opened.

I want to share this visioning practice with you. The spirit world and the ancestors are really calling to us to help shift the trajectories on the earth—to redirect events and feed the shifts of consciousness that are occurring.

Visioning from your essence is simple and profound. I’ve used it daily for maybe 15 years. I’ve done it alone and in groups, large and small. We incorporate it regularly into our monthly shamanic journey group.

You begin by finding some images for your essence. You might experience it as a tiny light at the center of your heart, a great glowing ball of light, or something else entirely.

By feeling your essence with all your senses, and getting friendly with how it looks, feels, sounds and smells, you ground your vision with images you can return to over and over.

Rattling while you do this, or listening to some repetitive percussion, helps you stay focused and concentrated.

The second step is to see you essence get bigger, so it fills your whole body and shines out from you. You can think of this as a way to experience your sacred power.

When you’ve got a strong, consistent sense of your essence, the third step is to visualize the world you want to create (keep rattling) from your essence.

For example, to vision a world with clean clear water, you let your essence show you what that looks and feels like. It’s a whole body sensation.

You stay with it. When your mind wanders or says “not possible,” you come back into your essence to revision and experience the clean, clear water. You see yourself taking it in, feeling it in your body.

The more you let your experience be somatic, the stronger it becomes.

You are creating new neural pathways.

You are retraining your doubting mind.

You are shifting your perception—from despair to divine perfection,

You are creating a vision of substance to sustain you when times are challenging.

If you’d like to try this with voice guidance, listen. About halfway through this interview with Future Primitive, I lead a visioning-from-essence journey to the Ogallala Aquifer under Standing Rock, and then up to the gathering of Water Protectors.

Visioning as a Path for Change-Making

I grew up in a progressive household and had my eyes opened by major political change movements. Went to many protests. Got discouraged. Trained in nonviolent protest. Explored Despair and Empowerment with Joanna Macy. Dropped out, returned, dropped out—my “glass half empty” perception focused me on what didn’t change, rather than what did.

Being an empath, it wasn’t easy to be in big angry crowds. I noticed that most “protestors”—people who care enough to stand up for what they believe—fueled themselves with rage and frustration. That’s true on both sides of the divide, as we’ve seen in this US election.

I didn’t want to fuel my work with anger. I care passionately, but I’m non-violent. I kept looking for alternatives.

The meditation pillow approach was personally calming but too far removed from activism for me. As I learned more about how our perception creates our “reality”—from indigenous wisdom keepers, lightworkers, spirit helpers, and quantum physicists— visioning became part of my shamanic and spiritual practice. It became central to my toolkit for change making because it helps me see, know, and create images of substance to sustain my passion and my activism.

It’s a lot more powerful to learn the various aspects of visioning in groups: the energy fields we create together augment and expand our individual visions. We do this together through ceremony, circles, and a journey group.

When I founded Earth Caretakers almost 20 years ago, it was to encourage and build ways for us to dream a new dream.We’re still at it. I’m always available to talk with you about your own visioning process and help you sort out the next steps on your path.

I Was As Blind As the Pundits

During the deliberations of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, a woman asked Benjamin Franklin,

“Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?”

With no hesitation , Franklin responded, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

Even though I know that Pluto brings up churning turmoil buried deep inside and I have been preaching for five years that it will bring deep change to government. Even though in this blog I wrote about how Pluto brought us President Obama, but we can’t always expect it to work in our favor. Even though, I had my financial advisor move as much money as possible out of the stock market because I had a sneaky suspicion that something horrible would happen. Even though I blogged about how neither Hillary nor Trump were following their North Nodes and neither had great charts for Presidents so there was no clear cut astrological “winner,” I was like so many others and thought it could never happen here. Despite her chart – she had to win because he was so vile. We are America, after all.

We are America. WE would never support an ignorant, racist, homophobic fool who knows nothing about our Constitution. We are America. IT CAN’T HAPPEN HERE. We are America. She will win by 315 votes I said to myself because “love trumps hate” – we are America. Pluto was nice to us once, maybe the change will be getting a female president and the rage is that of all the woman who never got a chance. Pluto won’t be that bad to America – it can’t – those things don’t happen here.

I saw all of the political pundits talk about her firewall and said to myself – sure, they are right because this is America. We are America dammit – not a third world dictatorship – not a banana republic. It can’t happen here! We would never vote in a man so disgusting – a man who mocks the disabled, who assaults women and who knows nothing about governing. We are America – the land of George Washington and apple pie and expanding freedoms. It can’t happen here.

I just would not allow myself to see what was in front of me – written in the stars. That Pluto brings change born of submerged rage and doesn’t care where it lands even if it cuts into the heart of the country where “it” can never happen.

Then it happened.

So what now? Well, dear Pluto will remain in Capricorn until 2023 and American really isn’t in a full Pluto return until 2021. (When American was “born” in 1776 Pluto was last in Capricorn, in the second house, ironically the house of values. It won’t go back to the exact location it was then until 2021.) Will we become a country of hate, a dictatorship, a land where we persecute immigrants, gays and non-Christians? Will we forevermore think nothing of having someone as our leader who is a bully? In other words, will we so destroy our value system that future generations mark this day as the beginning of the end of the American experiment?

Is this nation destined to have been born during one revolutionary time of Pluto in Capricorn only to die during the next?

Or will we have a new “revolution.” Forced to see the face of hate every day sitting in our most revered house will we fight back? What will we do when they start to destroy the hard fought rights of gays and lesbians? What will we do when they destroy woman’s reproductive rights or toss 20 million people off health care? Will we play video games and drink our lattes or will we take the streets if necessary?

You won’t find these answers in Pluto. It is just an element of change. Whether this is just a sad blip in our history and we once again right ourselves depends on us. What kind of America exists when Pluto leaves Capricorn in 2023 depends on how willing we are to remember who we were when it was last in that sign.

Pluto uncovered and elevated the rot. It is up to us to decide if we shall let it remain exalted or destroy it and continue on the path of progress.

The First American Presidential Election –

The first election held in America was on January 7. 1789. Only white male property owners voted and there were only 15 electoral votes at stake. There were quite a few candidates hoping to be the first President, John Adams, John Jay, Robert Hanson Harrison, John Rutledge, Samuel Huntington, John Milton, James Armstrong, Benjamin Lincoln, Edward Telfair and, of course, George Washington.

Moving through the 10^th house, which controls government, was Pluto, the change agent and the Sun. Sun energy is always energizing and displays our inner spark so I am sure there was a tremendous felling of excitement that this new experiment was voting for a leader!

However, the Jupiter and Uranus retrogrades in the fourth house, that of home and roots and who we are at our core, shows that there was a good deal of both nervous energy and trepidation. Perhaps there was fear around our chances of success. We know that there was a great deal of dissention regarding the type of government we should have. The stark lines political “factions” so dreaded by President Washington were already there and the battle between Federalist and Anti-Federalist was just years away from explosion.

P.S. We didn’t start voting in November until 1845. Before that states called elections within a 34 day window before the first Wednesday in December. However, this caused problems because the earlier voting states often influenced the outcome of the elections of those with later polling dates. When the law passed in 1845 making one day the official Election Day, they needed one that did not interfere with farming since we were mostly an agrarian society. Spring, summer and early fall were busy times in the fields. Tuesday was a good day because it often took a full day for people to get to polling sites. They could not travel on Sunday because of church and most towns designated Wednesday as market day so Tuesday worked well.