the sorrows: returning to mother in the apocalypse
migraine, the conflagrations, and ishi, "the last of the yahi"
hey friends. as i write to you, southern california is engulfed in flames.
the day the conflagation started, i was leveled with migraine, that splitting pain behind one's eye sockets and an aura that takes one elsewhere, interior.
i used to get migraines all the time as a kid, sensitive shellfish that i am. but now as they return as an adult, i can finally connect my natal mars in cancer with the splitting, debilitating headaches. a pain no one could fathom.
mars in cancer is the pain of the wound that won't quite heal, the wound that was never attended to in the first place. and that pain is almost never recognized, never acknowledged or tended to in the way it needs to be.
this pain is raw. tender. vulnerable.
searing.
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this moment calls to mind ishi, "the last of the yahi," a californian indian whose tribe had been victim to the gold rush massacres. when white prospectors poured into california in after 1849, they just murdered any indians they found. they saved the ears, because the government paid a bounty for every indian killed.
saturn, uranus, and pluto were all in aries at california’s founding.
so the people hid. of course. in the woods, in the mountains. but they starved. there's not enough food up there. so ishi and his people survived by sneaking food from ranchers' storehouses and pantries. until finally, one day, ishi was caught.
he said he was the last one left of his people.
walking out of the woods, ishi was in complete poverty, alone, starving.
he was made a living museum exhibit by alfred kroeber, ursula k. le guin's father, who founded the anthropology department at berkeley. ishi spent his final years as a prisoner in the museum, unable to live a free life.
after his death, kroeber displayed ishi's brain in a jar, against his wishes for a whole burial. kroeber had a hall named after him on campus, until 2021, when the saturn-uranus square brought demands for historical and social justice that led to the building’s renaming.
when ishi emerged from the treeline, mars was debilitated, like he is today. mars was in taurus then, conjunct saturn and direct but within the degrees of a pre-retrograde shadow.
i can’t imagine his hunger, his fear. his anguish. his grief. his sorrow.
the scorched earth policies, the extraction and murder and rape and genocide of the land and of the people, they are all connected. this fire, that extinction, this civilization.
you know the us constitution has mars in cancer?
and of course, the shock doctrine is coming next. just watch.
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with natal mars in cancer, i am acquainted with sorrow and anguish.
i was called to attend to our sorrowful mother at her national shrine, the grotto, in portland for the month centered around mars' retrograde station, a time of particular sorrow in my own life.
during that time, i became introduced to the servite order, the friar servants of mary, who steward the grotto. as a marian shrine, there's a daily recitation of the rosary prior to mass. but on fridays, the rosary prayed is the servite rosary: rather than five groupings of ten beads, the servite rosary has seven groupings of seven beads, to represent the seven sorrows of mary.
the chapel of mary within the grotto complex features beautiful murals of each of mary's sorrows, and when we would recite the servite rosary together, we would stand and face each image. i was profoundly moved by this practice.
earlier this week, before the sparks caught and grew into these infernal tempests, i felt called to pray the servite rosary, to pray with the sorrows of our mother.
and so when my rosary circle met on monday, i asked if they were up for a session on sorrow. the circle was game, and so tomorrow we are praying the seven sorrows of mother mary (friday at noon pacific).
now, i want to be clear, that everyone is welcome in these prayer circles. i've shared a bit in the past about this process of religious awakening that i'm undergoing, but the key i want to impart is that i'm just following what feels good. i have no attachment to any doctrine or belief system. i just want to pray, and to be with people in ways that feel good.
for new folks: i am queer, i am indigenous, i am an astrologer, there is no grift or attempt at conversion here. i am well aware of the harms of the church. as i wrote when discussing la conquistadora, i want to live in these contradictions. i want to become the eternal nuance.
i want to return continually to mother and ask her these questions. i want to ask her to help me make sense of all of this pain and joy and suffering and love, of everything that is possible to experience in this incarnate form.
Mother is Mother, whether you call her Mary or Guadalupe or Artemis or Nokomis.
and mother is the Moon, who created all of us.
if we ever do land on mars and develop a new martial astrology, there will not be a separate line in the martial ephemeris for "earth" and "earth's moon." you know that, right? it will just be earth.
the astrological moon is the earth.
home. womb. creatrix. life support system.
Mother.
we must return to Mother. we must return to the earth and to ourselves. we must re-embed ourselves within the circle of life.
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the prayer community is called MOTHER OF FEATHERS. we pray the rosary on mondays at 5pm pacific. while venus is in pisces and aries and back again, we'll also pray the servite rosary on fridays at noon pacific, starting tomorrow.
you can come with or without your own rosary; you can bring tactile things to count, like beans or beads, or simply let the prayers wash over you and through you.
we'll be praying for the lands, waters, plants, animals, humans, and spirit relations of tongva lands in southern california.
donation links to the red cross and the pasadena humane society.
take care of each other.
until next time,
alex
ps. short round-up:
incredibly relevant, gray crawford recently interviewed rosie finn on her new book, “persephone’s revolution: pluto’s path to the end of empire” (youtube).
and maeg keane and kira ryberg have finally released their much-anticipated workshop and guide to the fifth and eleventh houses, called finding fulfillment. we cannot remain in sorrows, we must grieve in order to receive more joy and love and pleasure in the future <3