Astrological Time For Hope and Courage

Photo by Bryan Goff on Unsplash

For me, beyond family and work, this difficult time is a moment to practice herbalism for mine and all's happiness. This is my weapon in chaos, its how i will re-order my universe and bring meaning to crisis, it's how I become invisibly invincible. This practice is my own private war-footing in this cycle of pestilence, economic crash, depression, climate change and tightening of surveillance. It is how i survive these wars of division, the walls that divide us. Historically, times of pestilence and plague cycles in the narrative have never been times of coming together (versus say the shared spirit of living through WW2) - a virus pits us against one another, the enemy is a friend, neighbor, relative. A virus may be an existential threat from outside in our environment - one that could potentially unite us as a species on this planet - but when the threat is carried in a fellow worker's cough or child's sneeze, they are the enemy. That's the real war. The mind one. The courage to not give in to being divided.

Things change. Things can change. That thinking helps me leave my possibilities open. 

As we head down the long slow path of Saturn's time (before we shift into a new aeon of Aquarius and a move to Air - to ether, internet, virtual, non-material, ariel and spacebound) it feels heavy. Saturn is weighty, solid. In Pluto, Saturn tightens its autocratic archonic grip, from surveillance tracking to border control. Soon in Jupiter at the end of this year (late Dec 2020) we'll shift into the water carrier's more heavenly ethereal winds. As we move into air, the waves will be information, the networks and nodes of the sky. Until that next peak, we ride out the slow low drum of Saturn.

As we ride, I choose a botanical magic response - to compliment my Resilience training. I will colonise my mind and body not with apps and news channels but instead with: Rue, Wormwood, High John the Conqueror, Master of the Wood and Blue Cohosh.

Rue uplifts me and heals everything. Wormwood banishes evil and deflects negativity. High John gives me strength, humour, endurance and confidence - I carry a lighter heart when i get stuck in the tar-baby. Dragon's Blood brings peace and uncrossing. Blue Cohosh washes away bad vibes. 

With my new plant allies I shield myself and my loved ones and also feel in good spirit, capable, cope-able, uplifted and potent. Resilience Coaching taught me that there are often at least two parts to a story: 1) there's what happens, 2) then there's what happens next. I choose to write the second part of my story and climb up and out with active hope and courage. 

Astrological time, divine time works at at different speed to ours. It's often non-linear, it repeats its long enduring cycles, it counts in centuries and millennia rather than hours, weeks and days. COVID-time feels like Saturn time. It's dark, deep, relentless, gloomy and slow. But Saturn time has purpose, space for things to fall apart only to come together again anew, better. Time they say is a healer. Could this be our collective healing time? Grieving for things once imagined, futures imagined - now perhaps in danger of being lost to a sea of plague and stockmarket crashes. It was never our future anyway, it was only ever imagined. So time perhaps to let go of holding onto imaginary fictions of what was to come. And time instead to plough all our hope and courage into that very present that defines our collective future - as a species, as a planet, beyond the stars. 

Time to colonise our own thoughts of what time is and how to be with it.