"There are times when people need stories more than they need nourishment, because the stories feed something deeper than the needs of the body."
Charles de Lindt
I believe we are living in such a time.
So, I’ve decided to take the Cosmic Storyteller blog in a different direction. While I’ll still include astrological updates and check-ins, I’m going to turn my energy to more diverse archetypal storytelling. I want to write about the Creative Imagination and how it speaks to us in the symbolic language of images and symbols (which is what astrology does). In time these symbols enter stories and myths, legends and fairy tales that then weave this symbolic language into guidance on how to live with courage and honor, passion and love, truth and loyalty. Stories about what shapes a conscious human being. Stories about life and death, love and hate, cruelty and kindness.
And I’ll be writing about old stories that have grown distorted and dark, and those are the stories we’ll have to face, acknowledge and let go of. Read about one below.
The stories you align with can shape you for good or ill. It always comes down to our free will. Our choices. I learned, as so many others have, about how I wanted to live my life from stories and music, dance and dreams. It’s very freeing, especially from a patriarchal mindset. It isn’t unrealistic, unless you let it be. It’s certainly more imaginative, and while it might lead you around in circles for awhile, I find that it gives greater meaning to my life when I see and acknowledge the archetypal energies at play in life. I’d like to share how to do that with you through these essays.
So let’s talk about stories.
Stories are foundational to our human experience. The stories we hear when we’re young shape our personal story and become our unconscious beliefs about our self, our world and our connection to Spirit. When a particular story calls to us, it speaks to our hearts and souls. It awakens something within us. As it works its magic on our imagination, it also shapes how we see ourselves and how we see the world. Then our job is to figure out how to fit the personal and cultural stories together.
When many people share a story, it becomes part of our collective story. And those stories are the ones which shape us to fit into our society. The big stories shape our beliefs and often, over time, become unconscious beliefs.
It’s just the way it is.
For thousands of years, we in the West have shared certain stories that have shaped our beliefs and our actions. Stories that have built and destroyed whole civilizations. Many of these story-beliefs have become unconscious beliefs that still drive our actions. Our modern ego really isn’t in charge a lot of the time.
From an astrological point of view, with the planet Pluto – the archetypal energy of evolution, of primal power, of death and rebirth – now beginning its transit through the sign of Aquarius, a sign of fixed ideas, we will have to look at these old beliefs that have shaped our collective consciousness. The sign of Aquarius is a fixed air sign, concerned with ideals, ideas, and inspiration. Aquarius symbolizes the ideals of freedom, equality, humanitarianism, community and individual authenticity. It also symbolizes our collective consciousness. And Pluto is going to rip through those old stories that are no longer valid, story-beliefs that shaped our culture and therefore our perspective on life. Pluto is telling us that we are going to need some new stories and new beliefs in the future. Stories that will sustain us in a vastly different world.
To move into the future – are we even going to have a future if we don’t start heeding and healing the Earth? – we need to look at these old, toxic, unconscious beliefs, such as The Protestant Work Ethic. Once we see where they came from, when we can name them, then we can more easily let them go.
Many of these stories that turned into ‘self-evident truths’ came out of our western religious traditions. Although many of us no longer affiliate ourselves with one of the Religions of the Book (Judaism, Christianity and Islam), our society has been shaped by them. And so they have affected, and still are affecting, all of us. As with so many religious beliefs, the need to control others, rather than control over self which is one of the teachings of spiritual leaders, seems to have emerged from these most masculine religions, as we see in what the Republican Christian right is now attempting to do.
On February 26, 2024’s Comedy Central show, while Jon Stewart was pointing out the right-wing Christian-themed laws these Republicans have been passing in the States, he brought up a clip of a Christian pastor preaching about the end times to his mega church. The clip was used for a laugh, but also as a glimpse into the underlying myth behind what’s going on.
The Christian right has quite a lot of influence in Washington. A secretive Christian group called The Family used to run a monthly prayer breakfast in D.C. where thousands of diplomats and politicians gathered. It was a place of power-brokering.
To understand why Republicans are now overtly (they’ve been quietly planning this for decades) talking about making the U.S. a white Christian nation, we have to see that it is the result of an even bigger story – the Christian story of the End Times.
We find ourselves in a world - wide crisis. No question. Not only are we faced with climate change, fleeing refugees, horrific wars, invasive pollution, political unrest and our dying environment, we also have been through the greatest societal and technological changes in the past 100 years than at any other time in history. It’s only been a little over 100 years (1920) that women have had the right to vote in the United States. Look at how the world has changed since then.
This rapid change gives rise to a lot of fear. The tasks seem enormous, so where do you look for guidance. Many people turn to their churches, looking for someone to lead them and keep them safe. The Christian right is comparing these chaotic times to the Biblical End Times. While many of us see the chaos and worry about what it means, others see it through the lens of this Christian story of The End Times. This has happened before: during the Roman Empire (which most probably was the real source of it), in Europe during times of plague and invasions. But this time, with our modern ‘world-view’, we aren’t seeing that a large number of people still believe this story about the second coming of Jesus. In fact, our modern world-view is exactly the ‘evil’ that they think they have to fight.
This changing of the Age Christian mythology has been percolating in the western collective unconscious for over 2000 years. So even if you’ve never consciously heard of it, your unconscious knows it – and so did your ancestors. It’s in your DNA under the heading fear.
This is the mythic story that the world-wide alliance of White Christian nationalists are living in. Or using to gain power. Putin, Orban, Trump, right-wing Christians and all the other petty tyrants. Wanting to make our world align once more with ‘christian values’ because of the evils of our modern free society. Even though these so called Christians aren’t living those values themselves in many instances.
It is the myth of The End Times. And you can find it at the end of the Christian Bible. It’s called the Book of Revelations. You’ve all heard of it through the image of the 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse – plague/COVID, war/Ukraine, famine/world-wide and death/Gaza. The truth is, it is the Christians, and their allies, who usually are the ones causing these 4 horsemen to ride.
While this book of the Bible is very different from the other books, it has stood as a visionary image of the future for over 2000 years.
“The apocalyptic hopes of the Book of Revelation were a well-established belief among Jews (remember, early Christians were often Jewish), who held that the coming of the kingdom of God would not be brought about by a gradual transformation but by a sudden intervention, when God would end the present age and establish his kingdom in the world made new. This conception of coming events is associated with the belief that prior to this future time, the struggle between the forces of good and evil will become more intense. As the evil powers grow stronger, they will inflict persecution and in some instances even death upon those who follow a course of righteousness. The struggle will eventually reach a climax, at which time God will intervene, destroy the forces of evil, and set up a new order in which the righteous will live for all time to come. The appearance of the Messiah will coincide with the coming of these events.”
The Book of Revelation basically calls out 7 Christian communities which aren’t following the rules and admonishes them to get their act together because a great evil is coming. It foresees great devastation for the Earth and for those forces who have persecuted Christians. Christ comes again in glory and then sends the 4 horsemen to ride out into the world. There is a war in heaven and then all the evil folk suffer and the ‘good’ christians get to live in paradise. This story has been told and retold for about 2000 years.
Right-wing Christians believe events in our world indicate the Second Coming of Jesus is at hand. I’ve met some of them, and they sincerely believe it. President Reagan’s Secretary of the Interior, James Watts, so outrageously controversial about getting rid of established environmental laws, was a religious fundamentalist, whose view of preserving our natural resources for future generations was based on the End Times story. This was our government official. Watts said:
"I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns."
So we can’t be surprised that during this time of collective crisis, Christians and their surrogates in government are trying to take over and create god’s kingdom here on Earth. The far right has their own astrologers, such as Steve Bannon, who are also hoping to establish a new world order, ruled by white christian men.
There’s also an interesting addition to this End Time story. As I wrote in my book Wisdom’s Daughters:
“Besides a literal belief in the events described in the Book of Revelation, these fundamentalists believe in a doctrine called dispensationalism, formulated by two 19th Century American preachers. This doctrine states that Israel must exist as a nation to play a key role in bringing about the end of the present age, the ‘rapture’ of the chosen ones and the second coming of Christ.
Bill Moyers, in a January 30, 20059 article, describes the essence of their beliefs. “Once Israel has occupied the rest of its "biblical lands," (isn’t this happening today?) legions of the Antichrist will attack it, triggering a final showdown in the valley of Armageddon. As the Jews who have not been converted are burned, the messiah will return for the rapture. True believers will be lifted out of their clothes and transported to Heaven, where, seated next to the right hand of God, they will watch their political and religious opponents suffer plagues of boils, sores, locusts and frogs during the several years of tribulation that follow.”
Mr. Moyers has reported that these Christian fundamentalists “are sincere, serious and polite as they tell you they feel called to help bring the rapture on as fulfillment of biblical prophecy. That's why they have declared solidarity with Israel and the Jewish settlements and backed up their support with money and volunteers. It's why the invasion of Iraq for them was a warm-up act, predicted in the Book of Revelation where four angels "which are bound in the great river Euphrates will be released to slay the third part of man." A war with Islam in the Middle East is not something to be feared but welcomed -- an essential conflagration on the road to redemption.”
So we have these christian fundamentalists who fanatically believe in this mythic story (or like Trump are using it to gain power). The power of this story itself drives them in their quest to establish god’s kingdom on Earth. Unfortunately, they are the very ones keeping us from creating it. If we put all the money we spend on the military, and on corporate welfare to work in the world, we would have that paradise. We have the means, we just don’t have the Will.
So if stories have power, what story will the rest of us gather around and believe in? Because our communal story is what will win the day.
There are alternative narratives, from other traditional stories about the changing of the Ages.
For those of us who are looking forward to an Aquarius Age of equality, of social responsibility, of communal well being and group action, of a conscious humanity, we look forward to being free from the patriarchal system we were brought up in. If we can evolve into more self- aware human beings, we can change the way we live on this planet. Maybe life doesn’t have to be about producing things to sell, or about accumulating more ‘stuff’. Maybe the center of life doesn’t revolve around work – or the economy. Maybe our creativity and group action will change how, in the future, we live our daily lives.
Our technology has given us the ability to carry whole libraries of information, music, art and possibilities in our pockets. We can talk and see each other across untold distances – like magic. Technology is helping us solve problems, but it is also creating social problems. So we need to understand its place in our society – another Pluto in Aquarius task. Technology is a tool, and people will have to ween themselves off these initial technological addictions we’ve developed. We need a more balanced society, where technology helps us be more human. That vision will lead us toward magical times ahead.
Not only astrologers and New Agers are looking forward to a new Age, but also Native American traditions say we’re about to enter the 5th world of a conscious humanity, and the Mayan Calendar indicated a new beginning on a 26,000 year galactic scale. Ancient Greece and India have the tradition of the Ages of mankind. What we do know about these changing Ages is that they always arrive in chaos so something new can be born. We today are the ones who will help with the birth.
The Christian End Time story can give rise to fanaticism, for not everyone is called to be one of the 'righteous remnant’, those who are chosen to live in the New Jerusalem with God as their constant companion. In other Changing of the Age stories, everyone goes through the change together. To avert disaster, people have to take responsibility for saving the world. In the Christian version, if you are not one of the saved, you will die painfully and burn in hell for eternity.
As we hear this type of rhetoric coming out of Trump and his christian followers, we need to understand that they think it’s their duty to condemn the rest of us. While they are lost in their delusion of the End Times (since early Christianity, christians have waited for this to occur), the rest of us need to take them seriously and step up with a new story to counteract their old, and seriously misunderstood, story.
Until next time.
Merry meet and merry part. And merry meet again.
Read Delores Cannon if you want the new story!