2023 the year we learn to listen to life

Week 18--in which the dragon in our natal charts makes a Beltane eclipse appearance

Friends, soul writers, mystics, witches, and lovers of prayer,

I had big plans for today’s Notes from the Field. Big news to share. The Field is bursting with new life, just as spring always promises. But that’s not what I’m writing about today.

Everything changed on Friday.

Friday was Beltane, the celebration of Spring. Not on May 1, as our patriarchal calendars want it to be, but on May 5, when the natural calendar knows it’s Spring. The natural calendar that flows in communion with the seasons of the sun and the wisdom of the moon.

And so, I celebrated the arrival of Spring on Friday.

• Beltane Friday. But it wasn’t a regular Beltane.
• It was a full moon Beltane.
• A Friday full moon Beltane.
• A lunar eclipse Friday full moon Beltane.
• A last lunar eclipse in Scorpio Friday full moon Beltane. The next time there is an eclipse in Scorpio, it will be 2031.

Whew.

The astrology matters. It matters to everyone. But it REALLY matters to me. When the moon does things in Scorpio or Scorpio’s cross-zodiac twin sister, Taurus, I feel it. My whole body reacts. I feel zapped. I didn’t understand why until I began to hang out with shamanic astrologer Emma Kupu in Hawaii and Star Sister Marcia Wade in Atlanta.

They took one look at my natal chart and explained why things that happen in Scorpio and Taurus affect me so intensely.

Scorpio is my ascendant. My birth dawn. My first house. My identity. My self. And sitting right there in the middle of Scorpio, the sign of mystery and mysticism, are just two things: my South Node and Chiron.

Your South Node is your multi-lifetime past.

The past you came here to unwind, to heal, to release, to complete.

And for many of us that can be quite the challenge because the past is so familiar, so easy to repeat. (After all, we’ve been repeating it for lifetimes.) Sitting right next my South Node, my past, is Chiron, my wound. These two, sitting side-by-side, tell quite the story:

I carry lifetimes of the wounded sacred feminine and came here to unwind it, to heal it, to staunch the suffering.

When I look across my chart, I see my North Node, the future I came here to create, is in Taurus. All by herself. There’s nothing else in Taurus. No planets, no asteroids. Just my North Node. These two sisters, Scorpio and Taurus, are in constant conversation. The future that longs to heal the past. The past that longs to inform the future. Together, they create an integrated whole. In me. If I listen.

A particularly interesting aspect of these Nodes is that astrologers see them as a dragon.

Your South Node is the dragon’s tail and the North Node is the dragon’s head.

Look at your chart and superimpose the image of a dragon over it and see what you see! It’s quite the revelation.

Dragon matters. Dragon’s story will unfold over the next few weeks in these Notes from the Field. It is Dragon who is leading the way into the prayer intensives asking to be created, not just this year but all the way to 2026.

I’ve never been given such a long view into the future. Usually I can see two, at most three, intensives ahead. I’m always feeling and listening my way. And invariably, I’m flabbergasted at how elegant everything turns out.

But this year is different. Very different. Maybe the Queen of Magicians feels I’m ready. I can’t say quite why, but I’m being shown a much longer, wider, and wilder view of the intensives to come.

I can’t say it frightens me. It would have, not long ago. But once I said yes to prayer artist—which did frighten me, and then yes to witch, I discovered that wherever prayer artist and witch want to go is way more delicious than anything I could come up with on my own. And, here’s the really amazing piece, so many of you want to come and play in these waters, too.

I don’t think you can have more fun—creative, delicious, feral, alchemical fun—than following the trails of prayer artist and mystic witch.

That is, once you scrape off all the lies patriarchy has told to try to bury these precious, magical ways of walking in the world.

So on Friday, in preparation for a Beltane lunar eclipse in my Scorpio, I planned to take the day off. To sleep late. To soul write outside for hours. To play with my friends in The A.R.T. of Becoming a Witch but let them lead the meditation. My “job” was just to show up and play.

To get my eclipse day started, I read the Chandra in Inside Degrees by Ellias Lonsdale, the mystical oracle for each of the 360 degrees of the zodiac. The full moon was at 14 degrees, 58 arc minutes in Scorpio. So I read the Chandra for Scorpio 15. Because you always round to the next full number.

The Chandra is weird. A woman with a gold tooth.

But I know to read the Chandra slowly, not trying to intellectually understand, but to simply let the words wash over me. And so, I read it. And reread it. And read it again. And began to feel some magic. The Chandra is rather long, so here are just a few highlights. See if you felt any of this energy on Friday—and beyond. Because it’s an eclipse, the energy continues for six months. It’s a biggie.

• an extraordinary gift, utterly redemptive
• if you should outlast your dread demons, and you shall, you will find, in a very different direction, that there are equally powerful hope angels
• you wish and yearn for everyone to go free and this wishing has deep, uncanny power
• you have been nourishing for a very long time two counteractive worlds: the one dark and heavy with foreboding; the other swept clean by the magical will to bring the world around right
• seeing the way clear, knowing it can be done

So much to ponder here.

• What is your extraordinary gift? Are you using it to the full? To help others?
• Are your dread demons still barking at your heels, or are you on the path of hope?
• Do you sense that your life has the potential to help others become free?
• What uncanny powers do you feel coursing through you?
• Do you feel the two worlds?
• What are you doing to help bring the world around right?
• Do you see a clear future? Do you believe a better world is possible?

It was and is a profound eclipse. I felt it and feel it still. And so I give you the Chandra and a few questions to ponder.

My own Dragon Witch news can wait.

to finding the dragon in our natal charts

Janet

PS: It's not an accident that this is week 18, the Moon in Tarot!

The Return of the Witches
The A.R.T. of Becoming a Witch

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