Take Me to the River

The rivers form the vascular system of the earth carrying nourishment to all creatures and providing a place for rituals and emotional release. Plutonian rites of fertility, birth, baptism, and death are often celebrated at the river's edge, and the vital waterways are known to wash away human sorrows and sins.

They start clear and pure in the mountains then flow through civilization acquiring the muck and waste of human activity until they arrive at the deltas, where the accumulation reaches its maximum and the grounds are most fertile. Then they flow into the sea, evaporate, and come back down in the repeating cycle.
It's interesting to note that the refuse comes to a fruitful end in the lowlands. There seem to be mechanisms that help humans process their crimes and guilt. These infractions are also universal and some acceptance of the fact is part of wisdom, acquiring and extending forgiveness when possible.

When Hurricane Katrina aroused the Mississippi River to flood New Orleans on August 29, 2005, Pluto was just turning direct in Sagittarius, exposing the racial and economic inequality in American society in a raw and painful moment, not to be forgotten. History surfaced all at once via the river with Neptune at 13 Aquarius. The river - where previous sorrows were submerged.

Just prior to that, on December 6, 2004, the great tsunami in Sumatra rolled in causing the earth's axis to shift and time to be altered a fraction. I was thinking perhaps this was a moment in which human dimension shifted as well. The ascendant of the chart was 22 Capricorn, governing time; Chiron, the Jupiterian, was conjunct. Neptune was at 15 Aquarius.

The washing away of burdens in these events could have prepared the world for the evolutionary step, a cumulative release of many watery emotional occurrences. Neptune in Aquarius remains married to Uranus in Pisces these days, due to the mutual reception, increasing the scope of emotional experience and collective engagement.

So given the current heightened state, some of my wild ideas have come zinging in.
The Moon and Neptune oversee waterways on earth and feelings in humans. Perhaps the fear of the black man has something to do with the darkness of night and the lunar world where imagination dominates and terror can emerge, having no clear identity. I even thought of the night world of American Negro musicians, where joy thrived until sunrise. Under cover of night, the poetic can penetrate uninterrupted. Of course, lynchings and such also occurred under this cover, adding to the natural fear of the subconscious world. White and black stand out in the night and all kinds of meetings were going on.

So now .... not only is the white man's lock on domination being opened, but I was thinking that maybe some incorporation of the lunar dimension is coming with the shift. The North Node of the Moon on election day is at 13 Aquarius, exactly where Neptune was when Katrina came. Maybe sorrows have broken through. There has been talk of a tsunami on Tuesday. And that could explain all the crying that's been going on, equally among men and women.

The Hand of Nature

Oh I tell you I've seen that old river come up.
When it begins to get in the houses,
we take and move everything up on the bank
across the railroad tracks.
Well, city folks come trotting up with their soup
kettles. They's always one saying to
another, "Do you suppose them peoples got little
enough sense to go back to them
shacks when the river goes down?" Yes, Lord,
we'll always go back to Shanty Town
till the river rises up one day and forgits to go down."

A TENNESSEE SQUATTER