Pole shift.
During the height of their golden age, before Lewis and Clark and before the russian fur traders found their paradise, the indigenous people of The Pacific Northwest dwelt in a veritable paradise. They had more salmon, trout, deer, elk, bear, seal, otter and berries than they could ever use. They were surrounded by great trees and the bear, fox, otter, beaver and seal provided them with pelts of fur and boots. Tribes like The Chinook, Haida, Nootka and Tlingit were blessed with a bounty so rich, that they had to hold ceremonies to give their excess wealth away. These ceremonies were called “Potlatch” and they resemble our own modern day version of Thanksgiving. The Potlatch was no casual affair as lots of preparation and planning went into the event and formal invitations were sent to everyone in the community. On the day of the Potlatch, there was great feasting amid the ceremony of the giveaway.
While the Potlatch was usually just a great excuse for a party, it served also served as a valuable, social ritual. It affirmed the abundance of the tribe, allowed tribe members an opportunity to give thanks and it helped to create an inherent balance and order in the tribe. The accumulation of goods was seen as selfish and the giveaway was a collective exercise in mental health for the giver and the receivers. But the Potlatch was just one manifestation of the wholeness of spirit exhibited by these tribes.
Since most of their needs as hunter-gatherers were taken care of in rather copious amounts, their struggle to survive was not as pronounced as it was with other tribes across the mountains and plains of Turtle Island. As a result The Haida, Chinook and the others had a very advanced culture that used the big trees for houses and hollowed out canoes. With less effort and time devoted to finding and preparing food, they had more time for activities that transcended the mere acts of survival. They became skilled artisans, capturing and detailing their complex relationship with nature, carving intricate totem poles and masks. Living so close to nature, they developed an animate relationship to it and their carvings reflect the humor and reverence with which they viewed their world.
This is what can occur when the basic needs of everyone are met and there is a cultural check and balance system that dissuades hoarding and gluttony. Once the cabins are built, the pelts cut and fitted and food is in the belly, we have the time and opportunity to focus on our creative imaginations, interact with the supra-normal forces in our environment and express the magic and timelessness through the expression of art.
I recently listed to Peter Joseph of Zeitgeist and Alex Jones go at and Jones had Joseph and The Zeitgeist model in his cross hairs. As you may have read earlier on this site, Joseph is a huge advocate of Jacque Fresco and The Venus Project. It’s Joseph’s contention that our attitudes and behaviors are all born out of an environmentally stimulated competition to survive and that if we replaced that need/drive we would not inhabit the same prison of disparity and lack that many of us live with, paycheck-to-paycheck. He sees the scientific model as the new religion, gauging The Earth’s load and living in accordance with it by using the technological model set forth by Fresco. It’s a resource based economy and the only people that can survive are ones that understand the technologies to tap the veins of the planet and have the social mindset in order to conform to such a society. Jones labeled Joseph a “fabian-socialist” along the lines of HG Wells and indeed, Joseph promotes a brand of a techno-socialism that has the allure of equality and the elusive promise of leisure that was dangled like a synthetic carrot in the initial stages of The Transistor Age, where the likes of DOW, Monsanto, GM and GE were serving up heaping portions of promise, replete with moving sidewalks, floating cars and TV phones (at least they got one right). Leisure, the province of the rich was oh-so-close and corporate america was going to be our saviors.
As Pluto is set to re-enter Capricorn just days after Thanksgiving, the promise of leisure is even closer, however the reality of not having any jobs, money or food to go along with that leisure makes it slightly stressful and takes some of the luster off of it. So the net effect of the melting economy as it will manifest through Pluto in Capricorn will be the struggle to survive for many until Barack and his merry band of change agents, many of the same winners, like Lawrence Summers and Robert Rubin that set this crash in motion during The Clinton presidency, come along with government jobs, government fixed wages, and the new age version of The WPA. So much for leisure–at least on the surface.
If you look back on the post on “Thrival” the challenge will be to not succumb the solutions and options of the dominant paradigm in order to survive. With Pluto opposing the all of The US’s planets in Cancer (Sun, Venus, Mercury and Jupiter) the polarity of Capricorn (corporate power) and Cancer (self-sufficiency) will be intense and I have no doubt that not everyone will go along with the program. Finding ways to create our own systems will no doubt be discouraged as many of the benefits of self-sufficiency and the individuals that will bond together in order to create synergistic systems of support will do so outside of the tax system, since barter, care share, urban farming and recycling technology does not generate income and thus no taxes. Here is where it will get very tricky.
At some point, all of this magic money that is flooding the computers of the feds, we’re talking zeros and ones, must be repaid and if you are not in a government job or some other job that actually exists and you are working outside the system to create a quality life, it will not be acceptable based on the severity of the debt. That’s where these empty labor camps ramped up by Halliburton in the past three years come into play–a modern, debtors prison.
But as I have mentioned before, there are aspects and more than just aspects, but new celestial phenomenon that will interpenetrate the heavy energies of Pluto In Capricorn.
Transiting Uranus In Pisces Trine The US Mercury In Cancer
Here we see the radical energy of Uranus in inspirational Pisces. While I believe we just witnessed an amazing projection of Uranus in Pisces in the campaign and marketing of Barack Obama as a Neptunian icon through a mass of cross platforms, cable networks, surging through fibers of light and wireless transmissions. Obama and company harnessed the power of Uranus in Pisces to full effect, casting Obama in a messianic aura. But when Uranus trines Mercury, and the power begins to pulse at 23 degrees in February of 2009, this signals a wake-up call, an alarm and the ability craft ingenious solutions to complex problems in the blink of an eye. Once this power is turned on, hearts and minds will be as well. The key of course will be testing ideas in reality. Will they be a byproduct of Piscean illusion? Moon pies in the sky? Some will be and some will be the thunder crack of genius roaring into our plane of reality.
Transiting Neptune In Aquarius Conjunct US Moon In Aquarius
This is a tricky aspect, because like the aforementioned Uranus/Pisce aspect, there is some really powerful qualities of illusion inherent in this conjunction. Saviors set up shops on street corners, the plan to free the world of it’s suffering in the guise of a one world government hatches from the high priests of the economy with powerful backing by spiritual leaders of the day. Look for the likes of Deepak Chopra, Marianne Williamson, Wayne Dyer, Jean Houston and Barbara Marx Hubbard to endorse the utopian model of one world, one people, one currency, one intention. Such solutions will most likely occur after the drama of some traumatic event and thus be more readily digestible for mass consumption. But that same power is available to all of us and while it can be delusional, it can also be extremely healing and deeply inspirational. Since it’s the moon getting the full force of Neptune’s in Aquarius’ waning powers, we’ll have the opportunity to recast the entire ideal of family. Here is where I see the potential of alternative communities coming to the fore and rather quickly, a seemingly spontaneous movement, but one that will be triggered by the early intensity of Pluto in Capricorn. Here is also where we have the opportunity to expand our emotional capacity exponentially and experience profound levels of healing, ranging from collective grief, to the pure and uninhibited expression of joy in our lives. It can be a hall of mirrors where truth and illusion are reflected and projected with equal intensity.
We started off with The Potlatch experience and how a culture can evolve when it moves beyond survival and we looked at how transforming the challenge of survival while creating alternative solutions might be inherent the tug-of-war between Pluto in Capricorn vs The US Cancer Stellium and the upcoming trines of Uranus and Neptune. These are the big sky, long term trends that await us. Then there’s the immediate and the otherworldly. . .