shamanic times

I subscribe to the Weekly World News. It provides no end of amusement, and I tend to agree with Tommy Lee Jones’s character in Men In Black that it’s the most reliable newspaper in the world. With it’s in depth articles on such things as the stairway to heaven collapsing, and its steady coverage on Elvis sightings, it keeps me well updated on the common bizarreness of planet earth. I consider it a kind of “Shamanic Times”. This week, with the demotion of Pluto as a planet, the news can’t be much weirder. I’m waiting to see what the Weekly World News will make of it.

Pluto is the God of the Underworld, of all that lies below the surface. All the qualities of the god have also been ascribed to the now demoted planet. In Astrology, the energies of Pluto are transforming, as Pluto is the energy of the subconscious, which is the dirt and ground our actions take root in. Pluto is also associated with renewal and rebirth. It represents endings and new beginnings, as well as spiritual growth and rebirth. The shadow side of Pluto is an obsessive desire for power and control and general destructiveness. Pluto packs a punch, depending where it lies in your astrological chart. My friend Reya, a creative astrologer, shook up some of my old patterns by fiddling with the placement of Pluto in my chart. Does what she did still hold now that Pluto is no longer a planet?

What can it possibly mean that Pluto is getting the boot as a planet? What will this do to our astrological view of the world, a view which runs deep and feeds our mytho-poetic souls? How will this affect our destiny? Several months back the Catholic Church decided that Limbo was closed. More and more people had become uncomfortable with the idea/fact that in Catholic reality if a baby dies and is unbaptized, it goes to Limbo. So, instead of negotiating with God (maybe something us pagans are more comfortable with?) to relax the rules and let all the babies in Limbo out, the guys in charge of the Catholic Church pronounced that Limbo no longer exists. It’s just gone. This boggles this witch’s mind. I'm no Catholic, but since I first heard about this, I've been keenly aware of just how many times I and others invoke Limbo. The first week it was gone, at least three clients talked about being or feeling in Limbo. They were startled when I informed them Limbo was gone. Can both Pluto and Limbo really be erased from the collective consciousness? What does this do to our everyday reality? There’s now no Limbo and Pluto is not a planet. What’s next? Enquiring minds want to know.