Silent Change

Everything changes so completely at this time of year.  One week, I stand on the walkway in front of our house and see green trees all around me, and the next week, the yard has become gold with dropped leaves.  When did it happen?  There was no particular moment of shift.   The change was both dramatic and imperceptible.

 This is not uncommon.  We are living through a time of extreme changes, but it’s hard to say when one phase ends and the next begins.  We just passed the fourth exact square of Uranus and Pluto, the middle of a four-year shift, but it won’t be till sometime in the future that we’ll be able to look back and see exactly what happened during this time.

 As November begins, Mercury is retrograde, so it’s a time of reflection, of taking stock, of checking to see what damage has been done.  For the Republican party, there’s been plenty, and so there’s a general shifting of allegiances as the more moderate politicians disassociate themselves from the lunatic fringe.   

For the government (and by extension, the Democrats) there are also embarrassments.  For one thing, the spying program is getting a lot of publicity, and it’s definitely not used to this.  All countries spy on each other’s citizens, and by tacit agreement, nobody says anything about it.  There are always groups of people who know what’s really going on, while the rest of us just sit around reading thrillers and watching spy films and feeling very little affected by the real thing.

 Many surveillance programs were put in place with the Patriot Act, a bill that garnered a great deal of liberal outrage when it was signed by George Bush.  Basically, it said that the government doesn’t need any excuse (or a warrant)  to read your emails or listen to your phone conversations, because, after all, you might be a terrorist.  And if you have nothing to hide, what are you so upset about?

 

Now it’s ironic that the Act is biting a Democratic administration on the butt.  But since it is, maybe all the conservatives who rallied for it in the first place will take steps to revise it. 

And these revelations about surveillance – and the answering outrage – fit in well with the astrological picture, since this is a time when the sun, Mercury, Saturn and the north node are all in Scorpio, the sign of secrecy.  Scorpio rules not only the process of hiding things, but also the inevitable point when they are revealed.  It’s the sign of death and rebirth, dedicated to shape-shifting.  Nothing ever really dies, although many things are buried.  Now is the time when some of these things return.  And if you had a lot of zombies stopping at your door last night and asking for candy, you saw this in action.

The drone program, too, has been largely undercover.  Sleek planes zoom out of a blue sky and kill people in a chillingly surgical way.  Better than bombing cities and slaughtering hundreds, right?  And also easier to ignore, until a couple of Pakistani children testify to Congress about watching their grandmother murdered before their eyes.

 Halloween always happens with the sun in Scorpio, the sign which takes everyone closer to that breath-catching portal between the worlds.  But this year, there are stronger Scorpio influences, with Saturn and the north node – both karmic pointers – in this sign.  And so we are all using this time of stasis, when Mercury is retrograde, to go deeper, to learn the things that we aren’t sure we want to know. 

 Scorpio is associated with deep, moist places – caves, cellars, deep wells, and the unconscious.  Often the things that emerge from these places are moldy, and they smell like anger, fear, paranoia, anxiety, and obsession.   With the intense concentration of Scorpio elements, a lot of very old stuff is being dug up right now, released to the healing influence of fresh air.   Often there’s good stuff underneath the crust   – courage, desire, self-preservation.  How to reclaim it? 

 This process is ongoing at this moment in our history.  There are still a lot of truths to uncover, and many of them will emerge during the second half of the Uranus/Pluto square – from now until 2015 – as the world slowly takes a different shape.   Later on, we’ll ask, “How did we not know that?  How is it possible that we couldn’t see it?”  But we can only see what we are ready to see.  And when we finally learn to see into the shadows, we’ll know how to live in the light. 

 

Meanwhile, change walks among us on silent feet.  The ones who are screaming loudest are not the ones who are directing it these days. 

 

So don't be afraid of what's been hidden.  When you brush off the dirt and mold, sometimes you find old lessons about surviving together on this planet.   Learn what you can.  And if you live in Winchester, Virginia, vote for my brilliant brother, Larry L. Yates, for delegate.  He's been a truth-teller and a change agent all his life.