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

When my son came home from college the summer after his freshman year, we were talking in the living room one evening about something in the news that upset me. I no longer remember what was happening, but whatever it was, it was bringing the underlying racism of the United States to the surface, and I was frustrated and angry.

Jerry looked at me and said, “Mom, I think you’re ready to read Howard Zinn’s The People’s History of the United States.

I’d never heard of Howard Zinn who, it turns out, was a famous history professor and anti-war activist. I’d never heard of his book either. The People’s History of the United States is one of the most widely read and translated US history books with three million copies in print.

All I knew was that I trusted my son’s expansive knowledge of history and philosophy and so, off to the library I went.

And oh my Goddess, what an education I received.

An education that got me asking questions I’d never asked myself before.

• Questions most Americans have never asked.
• Questions most people anywhere have never asked.
• Questions that have been waiting, waiting, waiting to be asked.
• Questions that simply will no longer be ignored.

As I turned the pages in The People’s History of the United States, I realized that everything my parents and teachers taught me about this supposed shining country of freedom is built on lies.

Everything I said for years in the Pledge of Allegiance….

Everything my ultra-conservative, flag-waving parents told me about our glorious founding fathers….

All of it a coverup.

A pretty story told to distract us from looking at the real story of how this country came to be so big, so rich, so powerful.

• The real story of how our ancestors drove the first peoples off their land
• The real story of colonizers distributing “gift” blankets embedded with Smallpox
• The real story of how the government gave or sold native confiscated land to Europeans arriving by the boatload
• The real story of how in a short period of time white settlers, claiming freedom of religion and freedom from oppression for themselves, reduced the native population from 18 to 3 million—the largest genocide in history
• The real story of millions of enslaved Africans dragged across the ocean to be worked to death to build a country that to this day doesn’t want to even talk about the real racial history of America.

It’s a hard book to read. Hard. But necessary.

The People’s History of the United States turned out to be excellent preparation for my own journey in the last two years looking at the brutal history of what was done to women labeled witches. It’s unbearable reading. But reading I had to do before I could embrace my own calling as a mystic witch.

Hard as this kind of reading is, I’m grateful.

Grateful to take the blinders off and see what patriarchy has really done to women, witches, Indigenous, Black people—all marginalized people.

Grateful even for quarantine and Covid, which stripped those blinders off everyone. No one could miss the inequity. If they were just willing to look.

Well, ready or not, the time to look at what we have created is at hand. For everyone. Not just Americans; everyone everywhere.

We are entering the time of Reckonings.

And the guy leading the parade is Pluto. The planet of transmutation. The harbinger of death and rebirth.

If you’ve followed any astrologers in the last few years, you know that Pluto is crashing across the US natal chart, arriving at the exact same spot it held on July 4, 1776, the birthday of the United States.

And even if you haven’t been following any astrologers, you still know this. You can feel it. In your body. Something is happening. Things are changing. Storms are brewing. Powers are shifting.

You can see it in the news. You can hear it in the howling storms. You can feel it in your gut.

This is a time for prayer. For holding hands. For supporting one another. For gathering in sacred community to do what must be done to birth a better way of living together. To birth what the words say in the preamble to the US Constitution but that we have not lived up to.

"to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility…and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity."

Pluto is calling us to account.

• Are we living a more perfect union?
• Have we established justice, tangible justice, for all?
• Have we created domestic tranquility? For everyone?
• How about passing the blessings of liberty on down to the next generation and the next and the next? Are we creating a world that will serve seven generations?

Or have we looked the other way as

• the loud overwhelm the quiet?
• the greedy few amass fortunes?
• marginalized peoples are ignored and taken advantage of?
• the land is plundered and wails with fire and flood?
• the powerful make sure no one else has a voice in government?

We took the first step on this journey into reckoning last Winter Solstice when we gathered with Rabbi Tirzah Firestone and elemental astrologer Emma Kupu Mitchell for a sacred prayer event called Abracadabra.

We opened our eyes and looked to the west to see what really happened in 2021. Then we turned in ritual to the east to welcome what could be in 2022 and discern the gifts that are ours to contribute to the collective.

We were over a hundred for that powerful prayerful experience. No one wanted it to end. And everyone asked when we could gather again.

The answer is Sunday, February 20, 2022, a date astrologers are describing as a day of Reckoning.

We will gather at 2pm Eastern, a time that works well for most of the globe. The event will be recorded and available on a password-protected resource page the next day.

Rabbi Tirzah, Emma, and I are heeding the call to gather once more in sacred community to hold hands and support one another in the necessary and holy work of Reckoning.

• We will acknowledge our ancestor’s roles and our own role in creating the world we have.
• We will listen to their voices of sorrow and strength.
• We will open our hands to receive their gifts and requests.
• And together, we will ask to be shown what each of us can do to help create the world that wants to be born.
• The world of a more perfect union.
• For all.

Reckonings is an unusual event filled with prayer, ritual, meditation, deep soul writing, and astrological insights. 

Follow the link for details and the opportunity to register.

When you register, click on the active link on your receipt for some questions to ponder to prepare. 

Reckonings! Pluto Returns 

to loving one another enough to say yes to creating a world that makes truth, justice, safety, beauty, and love visible--for all

Janet

PS: Free Your Voice just started. Last Tuesday, we freed our physical voices, this Tuesday, our truth voices. You are welcome to join us.
Free Your Voice

Also:

You can read and share all my Notes from the Field from the blog section on my website.

You can hear me read Notes from the Field on YouTube. It's great fun because I get to speak directly to you and show you whatever I'm talking about. Oh, and you get to meet Hyldemoer. I think she thinks it's her channel. (Maybe it is.)

You can subscribe and ring the bell to get a notification when the next Notes from the Field is ready.

You can also join my professional Facebook page.

website: janetconner.com

Facebook: janet conner prayer artist

YouTube: Janet Conner