I couldn’t remember what the alignment was to New Orleans’ natal chart. But I thought it involved Uranus and Pisces somehow. So I tracked down the New Orleans birth chart I used in 2005 and there it was:

Not an eclipse. But a catastrophic flooding event involving the Sun at 6 Virgo, an opposition to Uranus, and the sign of Pisces.

As a reminder, the Aug. 27 lunar eclipse is in Pisces, with the Sun and Moon just shy of 5 Virgo and 5 Pisces and both in a tight square to Uranus.

The Katrina chart is crazy because if you look closely you’ll see that transiting Uranus on Aug. 29, 2005 was conjunct New Orleans’ natal Pluto to the arc minute. Exact. An epochal flood and still-unmatched destruction to a major U.S. city by a “natural disaster”.

So I went looking for a birth chart for Nepal and wouldn’t you know? On May 28, 2008, Nepal’s Constituent Assembly formally dissolved the 240-year-old Nepalese monarchy and established the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal. Nepal actually has a rich history of astrology; the first king of Nepal, Prithvi Narayan Shah (“the Great Unifier”) was trained in astrology himself and was aided in his decades-long campaign to unify the disparate regions of the country by his court astrologer, Kulananda Dhakal.

Guess where the Sun is in the new Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal? 7 Gemini!

Which means the T-square in the eclipse chart hits almost exactly on the Sun (the self of the country):

Prayers for those suffering in Nepal and anywhere else in the world tonight. May all beings be happy and blessed.

T-square to Uranus from Eclipse Sun and Moon

The red triangle shows Uranus in Gemini as the focal point of a T-square from the eclipse Sun (which is also tightly conjunct Mercury) in Virgo and the eclipse Moon in Pisces.

Eclipses function as energetic portals that open up every six months to allow cosmic energy to flood into the Earth plane. So even your basic vanilla eclipse with no strong aspects to other planets is going to be felt in the collective consciousness. But this pattern — with the squares from the Sun and Moon less than 1° from exact and the square from Mercury to Uranus only about 1/4 degree from exact — is unusual.

T-squares take the energy of an opposition, in this case a supercharged opposition of the Sun and Moon with the Earth caught in the middle, and funnel it into a third planet. In this case, Uranus, the transformational outer planet of shock, surprise, and sudden destruction, but also the planet that brings liberation, innovation, sudden freedom from restrictions, and higher mental awareness.

If this were the only thing going on in the chart, we could expect some fairly massive amounts of shock, upset, and destruction — fires, floods, earthquakes, natural disasters, etc. — to manifest on the Earth plane this week.

[I was thinking that something in this chart reminded me of Hurricane Katrina, which happened with the Sun at 6 Virgo opposite Uranus at 8 Pisces. As I was looking up the time for Katrina making landfall on the Gulf Coast on August 29, 2005, I saw a news item that a glacier-dammed lake had burst open in Nepal on Wednesday morning (Nepal time), unleashing a catastrophic ‘inland tsunami’ that has left hundreds dead or missing. The images of this inland tsunami rushing down the mountain gorge are spellbinding and horrifying. But they capture the potential energy of this eclipse.]

This is not intended to make anyone feel fearful or anxious; most people will probably feel some heightened sense of emotion or perhaps nervous energy over the next couple days and then keep moving through life pretty much exactly as they were before.

But I think it’s definitely worth tuning into, as consciously as possible. First, because Uranus is a volatile, unpredictable archetype that has a way of moving people, places and situations almost instantaneously from one level of life to another level. In general, Uranus only tends to deal out its harshest energy when it’s trying to set us free but we are stubbornly hanging on to old habits, attachments, people, places, and situations that we have actually outgrown.

The more we can cultivate a willingness to be moved to a higher level of life or to step into a more authentic version of the self under this eclipse, the more likely we are to experience the ‘freedom’ side of Uranus.

I know several people who were feeling very stuck in their lives in New Orleans prior to Hurricane Katrina. They wanted to move on from their home, their business, or their social circle and experience a new life elsewhere but they couldn’t seem to make it happen. Katrina’s destruction of the Crescent City enabled all of those people to rapidly change their lives and to live into their heart’s desires in a way that would have seemed impossible before the storm hit.

I think that’s a good framework for viewing the Pisces lunar eclipse: be willing to embrace your desires and let go of whatever has been holding you back from living your best and most liberated life. With Uranus in Gemini, the sign of the personal mind, we may experience this energy as a moment (or several) of astoundingly clear insight into patterns that have bedeviled us for years: oh, this is what’s actually going on there. Now I can let go of that habit or that pattern of self-sabotage. We could experience this eclipse as the gift of clear vision: suddenly, we see where we really want to go in life, who we really long to be. And we realize that dream is actually possible if we simply start saying ‘yes’ to what we want more of and saying ‘no’ to what we don’t want any more of.

And: Trust your intuition and practice discernment, especially on Thursday and Friday. If you feel like you shouldn’t get in the car and drive across town, stay home. If someone problematic is insisting on talking to you, make excuses and put it off until the weekend.

If this T-square were the only major aspect pattern in the chart, it’d be a pretty compelling picture. But we also have a

Yod from Pluto and Neptune to the Eclipse Sun/Mercury

The yod pattern in the eclipse chart is the one I’ve outlined in purple dotted lines. The yod, or ‘finger of god’, is an elongated triangle made up of two planets in sextile (60°), with both planets quincunx (150°) a third planet. The yod is called the ‘finger of god’ because it functions as if there were a god’s finger pointing at the focal planet of the pattern.

In this chart, the sextile aspect happens between Neptune in Aries and Pluto in Aquarius, two more transformational outer planets, both of which have recently settled into new signs, elements, and modes. Neptune is now transiting the cardinal fire sign Aries after spending 14 years in the universal water of Pisces. And Pluto is now making himself at home in the universal air sign of Aquarius after spending 16 years in the universal earth of Capricorn.

Both planets are making a quincunx to the Sun and Mercury in Virgo. In a nutshell, I see this finger of god pattern as saying we must develop discernment, personal integrity and a mind of service (Sun/Mercury/Virgo) so that we can use our power of imagination to manifest our heart’s desires (Neptune in Aries) in a way that brings about a truly ideal society (Pluto in Aquarius).

It’s worth noting in this context that Mercury is almost totally debilitated in this chart. Even though he is in his rulership in Virgo (and governs both the Sun and Uranus in this chart), he is highly combust. This is a traditional astrology term that describes a planet being so close to the Sun as to be rendered virtually powerless and, therefore, unable to act according to his best nature.

As the chart ruler, Mercury’s condition in the chart tells us that thinking, or what passes for thinking these days — reciting what one has learned on the news or repeating what one was told in school, by peers or social media influencers — will get us nowhere.

Discernment, on the other hand, wisdom, honoring the messages of the body — these are how we move forward and act on the liberating energy unleashed beneath (and perhaps hidden behind) the chaos of this eclipse. It might be worth mentioning here that the Toltecs and other shamanic lineages teach that all viable knowledge comes through the body, not the thinking mind.

A Strange, and Perhaps Salutary, Energy Flow

The first few times I looked at this chart, I couldn’t get past how strong and direct these aspect patterns are: a super-strong T-square and a yod on top of it? Three of the four outer planets directly implicated in this eclipse, and involved in highly challenging aspect patterns?

But then I started tracing the energy flows and I thought, “Wow - maybe that yod is actually going to save us.”

Because if you think about it, an eclipse is an opposition. Full Moon. Polarization of the solar/rational and the lunar/emotional sides of life. All of that energy trying to flow into Uranus. Boom! Crash! Lightning flash!

That T-square takes all of that energy and focuses it on a single point, that point just happening to be the astrological archetype that most excels at blowing shit up. But look what happens if you trace the eclipse energy with the yod factored in. The energy starts at the Sun and Mercury, radiates through the Earth into the eclipse Moon, moves towards Uranus. But then Neptune and Pluto are cycling energy from the Sun and Mercury and processing it in a harmonious aspect between themselves before feeding it back into the system.

Which means that some of the energy that should be solely focused on Uranus is actually feeding back through the yod into the one harmonious aspect in all of these patterns: the sextile between Neptune and Pluto.

I don’t know how to describe it any better than that, but once I saw it, I felt like the yod is actually working as a stabilizer for this eclipse. I think it’s still going to be a wild ride, and there’s still a huge amount of freedom available to us on the other side of it. But somehow that yod seems to be keeping it from going totally ballistic.

Don’t Forget the Solar Eclipse

Last but not least, remember that tomorrow’s lunar eclipse, as crazy as it looks, is happening under the aegis of the August 8 total solar eclipse in Leo. This was a powerful and positive eclipse. I wrote a Substack note about it a couple of weeks ago:

All that said, the Sun is by far the strongest planet in this chart. The Sun is in his rulership in Leo, widely conjunct Jupiter and trine Saturn. This is a positive chart.

This eclipse belongs to the Saros Series 10 South, of which Bernadette Brady wrote:

“This Saros Series concerns itself with the breaking out of a very negative situation where no hope can be seen to a more positive space containing many options. A worry that may have been affecting a person will suddenly clear. The solution is shown by the Cosmos and needs to be taken up without too much delay.”1

In other words, things can get better in miraculous fashion, and quickly, under this energy. Part of accessing this potentiality is claiming it. Why not make a firm decision that a miracle is happening for you now, in whatever part of your life needs a miracle?

Once you make that decision, you need to honor it by treating it as if it has already happened on the causal plane of reality and act as if you are patiently waiting (maybe not Leo’s strong suit, but…) for it to manifest in 3D.

And be willing to let go of something you don’t want in your life anymore: the pain, the illness, the anxiety, the money problems, the relationship bullshit, the self-sabotage…

Solar eclipses are very powerful moments for letting go of old habits, thought loops, and behavior patterns that aren’t serving us. If you’re willing to tune in to your heart and listen, you can get a very clear message tonight and tomorrow on what you really need to let go of in order to fully commit to the life you desire.

Since then, I’ve talked to three different people from wildly varying backgrounds and walks of life (ranging in age from about 40 to 85) who have all experienced a seemingly miraculous release from restriction and have moved into “a more positive space containing many options”.

So, however chaotic and potentially upsetting the Pisces lunar eclipse may be, we should remember that the Universe wants us to be free and supports us in living our most fulfilling lives, and that tomorrow’s eclipse is happening under the larger umbrella of Saros 10 South.

And we should remember that Uranus always wants to set us free. To the extend we are willing and able to let go of whatever wants to move out of our space, our life, and our energy field, the Uranian process of liberation into our authentic life and self-expression doesn’t have to involve a lot of suffering.

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I had already built the bridge but I needed to finish laying in the rest of the pavers. So, it felt really good to get that done. But it was hot and I didn’t really sleep that well on a camping cot in the now-unfurnished off grid cabin.

So I’m going to go to bed. As I’m typing this (9:41 pm CDT on Wednesday), the Moon is three arc minutes away from the first-quarter point (Sun 27 Leo 08 and Moon 27 Scorpio 05).

Which puts us about four minutes away from being exactly in the middle of the Aug. 12 solar eclipse and the Aug. 27/28 lunar eclipse. Maybe that’s why people were driving so crazily on my trip back across Middle Tennessee this evening.

The Pisces lunar eclipse looks electric, with a very strong square to Uranus. I think I’m going to spend a little time tuning in to that for next week’s newsletter. May we all remember to stay grounded over the next week and also remember we don’t have to buy into anyone else’s chaos or upset.

Hope this finds you well. Thanks for being a subscriber!

DK

For more information on what constitutes an alien pattern, see The Alien Patterns in Astrology on my website; for a breakdown of the general pattern of social rejection and alienation that people born with these patterns all seem to share, see my recent Substack post, The Alien Pattern Framework.

Charts:

Frida Kahlo: Neptunian Power

Paul Cezanne: Neptunian Power

Jack Nicholson: Plutonian Instrument

Philip K. Dick: Uranian Instrument

Listen to Exactly Where I’m At on Apple Podcasts:

Listen to Exactly Where I’m At on Spotify:

(For more information on what constitutes an alien pattern, see The Alien Patterns in Astrology on my website; for a breakdown of the general pattern of social rejection and alienation that people born with these patterns all seem to share, see my recent Substack post, The Alien Pattern Framework.)

Power Alien Patterns

The Power Alien patterns are formed when the Sun is conjunct Saturn, Uranus, Neptune or Pluto within an orb of 15 degrees. Frida Kahlo, the Mexican queen of self-portraiture who incorporated bright colors, folk elements, surrealism and dream imagery into her work, was a Neptunian Power alien.

Kahlo’s natal Sun and Neptune are almost exactly 1° apart:

The post-Impressionist French painter Paul Cézanne was also a Neptunian Power.

Cézanne’s Sun and Neptune are in different signs but they are just shy of 11 degrees apart - well within the 15° limit.

All of the alien patterns can be seen as archetypal constructs that operate through the person who carries the pattern, with the aim of transforming the people the native comes into contact with, and, ultimately, the world itself.

Edwin Steinbrecher writes of the the Power aliens:

“They have the ability to extend or radiate their specialized energy field out into the physical plane, affecting and changing whatever or whomever it touches…They act as ‘doors’ to bring energy to the physical plane from other dimensions.”

The outer planetary energy within the Power aliens tends to act in a traditionally male, authority-type vibration, whether the body of the native is biologically male or female. I’m thinking of a female client with a Saturnian Power alien pattern in Leo. This woman was involved in several community groups in her town and would attend various protests and community actions. She once told me, “Oh yeah. There could be a crowd of 100 people and if there’s a reporter or TV crew there, they will walk straight up to me every time. Even if I’m just there as a normal participant, not the leader of the group.”

The Saturn Powers radiate authority, knowledge, and wisdom in the ways of the world. The Neptune Powers radiate a vibe of art, glamor, and magical qualities. They may not always possess the magic they radiate, but the effect they have on others and their ability to effortlessly attract attention is noticeable. (Andy Warhol and Bill Gates are both Neptunian Powers.)

Power aliens don’t all become famous, but they do tend to have an outsized effect on the people around them because of the focused and intense way the alien pattern comes through them. Power aliens are like projectors.

As is true with the Vessel patterns, the Power alien patterns tend to operate first on a one-to-one level. Meaning, when a Power alien person comes into contact with another human, the Power alien energy will start radiating through them and working to transform the other person. Saturn Powers embody a teacher energy, teaching others to develop competence, respect authority, and buckle down and do what is necessary to have integrity or achieve success.

But the Power alien people often seem to naturally gravitate towards careers and positions in which they can radiate out their specialized energy to wider groups of people.

As with the two other types of patterns, the Power alien pattern (a) works whether the holder of the pattern is consciously aware of it or not; and (b) causes serious problems for carriers of the pattern who refuse to become aware of it and work with it.

Vessel Alien Patterns

The Vessel alien patterns are formed when the Moon is conjunct Saturn, Uranus, Neptune or Pluto within an orb of 12 degrees.

Whereas the Power aliens radiate their energy out into the world, the Vessel aliens operate in a magnetic fashion, “drawing specialized energies out of themselves and those around them,” Steinbrecher writes.

“They also function as ‘doors’ to other spaces. They are able to receive or take through themselves specific energies from others and return these as heightened, more conscious energy forms.”

The Vessel patterns may be even more one-on-one focused than the Power alien patterns. I would even say that the Vessel pattern people attract to themselves, over and over (until they become conscious of what they’re doing and are able to integrate the alien pattern into their life’s work or daily activities), people who need the outer planetary ‘medicine’ they carry.

This can be highly taxing on the Vessel Pattern person. I’m thinking of a couple Saturnian Vessel clients who frequently complain about one person or another in their life: “I don’t want to be your dad! I want to be your friend, not your mom!”

Neptunian Vessel people tend to be magnets for energy vampires, narcissists, and addicts masquerading as mystics or saints — the people who move in and never leave until the well is completely dry. (This is true to some extent with all three types of Neptune alien patterns but is especially notable among the Vessels.)

Plutonian Vessels tend to activate the deep toxic shame and unconscious fears (often from early childhood, the ancestral line or past lives) in their intimate partners and those closest to them. This can lead to a disturbing tendency for these people to go through the first half of life being serially stalked or controlled (even to the extent of severe gaslighting and physical or sexual abuse) by intimate partners and targeted, smeared, or bullied by coworkers who feel a deep sense of fear or shame around the Plutonian Vessel but don’t know why they are feeling it.

Instrument Alien Patterns

The Instrument alien patterns are formed when Saturn, Uranus, Neptune or Pluto is in the 1st House of the natal chart or in the 12th House but conjunct the Ascendant by an orb of less than 10 degrees. (By the way, Steinbrecher uses Koch houses which often tend to give a bigger 1st House than other systems. I personally use Placidus houses most of the time but if I see one of the outer planets sitting just inside the 2nd House cusp, I’ll often recast the chart with Koch houses to double check.)

Jack Nicholson is a good example of an Instrument alien with the outer planet in the 12th House but conjunct the Ascendant:

The famous sci-fi author Philip K. Dick (the writer whose works were the basis for the movies Blade Runner and Total Recall) has Uranus in the 1st House:

Other famous Uranian Instrument writers who might embody some of the Uranian qualities of futurism, egalitarianism, radical truth-telling, shocking, revolutionary or progressive themes include: Charles Dickens, Truman Capote, Allen Ginsberg, Tennessee Williams, and H.P. Lovecraft.

Like the Powers and the Vessels, the Instruments also operate on a one-to-one basis with other humans. But the Instruments have an additional function: they serve as “broadcasters, amplifiers and receivers” of the archetypal energies of the outer planet that forms the Instrument pattern in their birth chart. Steinbrecher writes:

“Their abilities are intrinsic to their physical bodies. Nerve pathways and even bodily organs often are in atypical anatomical positions, enabling them, without injury, to act as specialized energy amplifiers, receivers, and broadcasters.”

All of the alien patterns are challenging, but the Instrument patterns definitely come with a special level of difficulty. Not only do these natives blast their friends, family members and relationship partners with the energy of the Instrument pattern, they also tend to raise the energy of the outer planet in the places where they live, work, and hang out.

Furthermore — and I do believe the severity of this is dependent on how conscious the native has become of the Instrument pattern he or she carries — Instrument aliens amplify both the positive and negative qualities of the outer planet. So, a Neptunian Instrument who is not very conscious of her alien pattern is going to amplify the negative Neptune qualities — such as energy vampirism, fantasy-based thinking, addiction, escapists tendencies, and the need for a savior — in the people she lives with or works alongside.

She will also activate altruism, compassion, love of beauty and harmony, and the desire to dance, paint, and meditate in the people around her. But it’s essential for Instrument people to learn to ‘see’ the effect they have on their local space because the cost to the Instrument pattern person for remaining ignorant of this effect can be very steep.

I’m thinking of a client from way back who had a Uranian Instrument pattern. She was stuck in a very traditional, Saturnian, constrictive business environment. She actually owned the business and it gave her a sense of security, but she was growing spiritually and her soul wanted a lot more adventure in life.

So she began (unconsciously) blowing up her own business. It started with a few lights burning out when she walked into a room. Then a few weeks later she touched a computer on the desk and fried it.

She finally got the message when she went to her building alone on the weekend to “just catch up on a few things” and actually blew out the power in the entire building!

I hope this gives you a sense of how the three main types of outer planet alien patterns operate. There’s more common ground among them than there are differences. In other words, all three types of Saturnian patterns are going to affect other people on the level of inner authority, integrity, and doing the right thing. All three types of Uranian patterns are going to affect people on the level of truth, equality, releasing old blocks and stagnant energy, and moving into more authentic and progressive ways of being.

But the differences are significant. And knowing how these three types of alien patterns function (radiating, magnetic, or receiving-and-broadcasting) can make a huge difference for both alien pattern people and for those who love them. Or those who just can’t get away from them.

I’d love to know your thoughts! Have you had any of these experiences? If you’ve had any similar experiences, or if you’ve experienced a Power, Vessel, or Instrument pattern in a way I didn’t mention but that might help others, please drop a comment below!

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As I was tuning in yesterday on what to write for this week’s post, I got the feeling someone needed to hear this. So here goes:

Healing the Inner Child Is Not a One-and-Done

It would be nice if we could just do an inner child rescue session or two and then never again collapse into the wounded child. But, based on my work with my own inner children and with dozens of clients over the last 15 years, that’s not how it tends to work.

Inner child work sounds kind of woo-woo, I know. (If it makes you feel less fruity, you can call it soul retrieval: inner child work is literally about retrieving parts of the soul that split off due to childhood trauma, and bringing them back into union with the bigger Self.)

But working with the inner child is probably the single most powerful soul-healing modality I’ve encountered. And I’ve studied and practiced meditation, sound healing, somatic release, EFT and EMDR, hypnosis, breathwork, and quite a few others I’m forgetting at the moment.

(Once I started to think it was possible to actually heal my life, I attacked that possibility with fervor.)

I feel like inner child work is so powerful for several reasons:

1. The inner child is the part of the Self that has been most deeply wounded. If only because when we were children we lacked the physical stature and the mental reasoning capacity and the psychological armor that we have developed by the time we reach adulthood. We also lacked the ability to lie to ourselves that most adults possess in varying degrees of abundance. As children, we felt emotions (and physical pain) so immediately and so deeply; and we hadn’t developed boundaries that would keep toxic emotions out of our bodies. We can shake off mental, verbal, or emotional attacks as adults (at least we tell ourselves that we can) but as children those painful and often poisonous words and emotions penetrated right to the core of our being. Where they have remained, until we commit to doing the work of releasing them from our four-body system.

2. The inner child is always accessible. The inner child is simply us, at a younger age. That consciousness or energy of me when I was eight years old is still stored in my mind and in my emotions. I don’t have to do a past-life regression or spend years talking to a shrink to access the child within. He’s just there. He’s me.

3. The inner child serves as a reservoir for soul wounds in this lifetime. I may not be able to (and certainly don’t want to have to) remember all of the moments in childhood when my self-esteem was wounded or my will was broken or my needs were not met. But I don’t have to remember all of them. Because each painful wound moment that I do remember serves as a reservoir or collection point for all of the similar painful events I don’t recall. Maybe I don’t remember the first time my dad sneered at me and laughed in contempt at something I said. Maybe I don’t remember the first time my Mom spoke to me in a way that made me feel she wished I had never been born. But I can certainly recall an incident for both of those toxic-shame moments that contains the same wound energy. And by working with the wound I do remember (and that still hurts inside me), I can release the pain of the moments that I don’t recall.

4. The inner child serves as a connection point for transpersonal wounds, including the ancestral, past-life, and epigenetic levels of reality. I am a strong believer in the value of hypnotherapy and past-life regression. Working with competent practitioners, I’ve been able to tap into scenes from past lives and the lives of ancestors that enabled me to see clearly the origin of a seemingly intractable soul wound or self-sabotage pattern I’d carried throughout this lifetime. Did those events I recalled while under hypnosis actually happen? I don’t know for sure. But what I do know is that I felt the pain or contraction shown in those scenes in my body as I was “re-experiencing” them. What I know is that the combination of the physical experience of the wound, along with the imagery and story of how the wound was administered, enabled me to expel the stuck energy from my body. The natal horoscope shows that we each come into life predisposed to a certain flavor of woundedness; this same vein of wound energy also shows up in past-life regressions and in the lives of our ancestors. I’ve seen this phenomenon demonstrated hundreds of times while working with my clients over the years. And the amazing part of it is that if we can fully clear the inner child level of the wound, the ancestral and other-lifetime wounds almost always move into consciousness where we can access and clear them as well.

5. The inner child is innocent and lovable. Once we overcome the resistance to working with our inner children, healing happens much more quickly than if we were to try the same techniques on our adult selves.

On the Origins of Resistance to Healing the Inner Child

I want to hang on number five for a minute because I do find that many people are highly resistant to imagining themselves as children and then engaging in dialogue with the imagined or remembered younger self. In my experience, this resistance of (often, hatred or disgust towards) the inner child tends to be a psychological armor adopted by two types of people.

The first type grew up in a family of origin where the family members were super shut down emotionally. (Often, one of the parents in this type of family system was hyper-emotional; two common examples of this would be a dad who was violently angry or a mom who was aggressively ill or “unable to get out of bed” depressed. In these family systems, the other family members typically have to severely limit their range of emotional expression in deference to the dominant parent.)

The second type grew up in a situation where she was intensely shamed and/or blamed for things that were manifestly not her fault. (This is the textbook definition of toxic shame: shame that is implanted in a person who has done nothing wrong to deserve the shame.)

If you think about it, anyone who hates children, including hating themselves as a child, is in the grip of a serious psychological malaise. The great thing about this situation is that, if the self-hating adult can catch even a glimpse of herself as an innocent child, all of that resistance can vanish in an instant. These people often end up progressing very quickly on their healing journey if they can just get to the point of seeing that the contempt and revulsion they feel towards their younger self is actually what is causing all of their problems as an adult. In other words, that they are doing the same thing to their inner child that the parents or other family members had already done.

Why We Have to Keep Showing Up

If you think of all of the contempt that was heaped on you as a child, despite your innocence and naturally loving nature...

If you think of how many times you needed a sincere hug or a word of love or a kind smile and didn’t get any of those…

If you think of how many times you were yelled at or punished for making a mistake or for saying or doing something childish (not malicious, just childish)…

If you think of how many times you were shunned or outright abandoned by the people who were supposed to be caring for your body and soul…

How could you possibly think you could do one inner child session with a therapist or spend an hour once or twice in your lifetime trying to love up your child self and think that would suffice?

This is an almost universal experience with my clients who are brave enough to do the inner child work with me: after a few weeks or months, they come back to session with the same problems they had when we last met. I ask them how the inner child practice I gave them in our last session has been going. They say, “Oh, I totally forgot.”

I tell them that everything in the Matrix is set up to keep them from remembering how absolutely crucial it is that they do remember to validate, soothe, and give loving attention to the inner child.

How do I know this? Yeah. I’ve been working on healing my life by healing my inner child for more than 15 years now. And I can still go blank for weeks at a time.

Fortunately, children — including the inner children — are incredibly loving and forgiving by nature. Actually, I think that’s another reason the inner child framework is so valuable. It doesn’t take a one-to-one ratio of loving attention now vs. the abuse and abandonment of childhood to heal those old wounds. It’s amazing how quickly some wounds can heal because the child is so thirsty for loving attention, he just soaks it up like a sponge.

But we have to find ways of tricking ourselves into coming back to the wounded child, over and over, until the wound is finally healed. We know when it’s healed because all of the negative thought loops and painful, dark psychological states associated with (and engendered by) that wound just go away. Poof.

Those self-sabotage patterns we’ve struggled against our whole life, the one-up or one-down relationship cold wars, the addictive cravings, the negative self-talk. It all pretty much goes away the deeper we get into healing the wounded child within.

I use a whole bunch of different techniques with myself and with my clients to deal with different wound types. But I want to leave you with a quick exercise that is guaranteed to bring relief any time you use it.

Quick and Reliable Inner Child Healing Practice

Notice what’s bugging you. Say it out loud (or out loud in your mind): “I feel anxious. I keep replaying that conversation with Jim and I feel upset; my stomach hurts.”

Use your will and intent to ground yourself. Take a couple deep breaths and exhale slowly and completely. Notice if you’re feeling the energy of what you just named in your body. Tightness in the chest. Queasy tummy. Pain behind the eyes. Like an arrow is stuck in your heart…

Now ask yourself, “When did I feel like this as a child?”

Notice what shows up. Don’t judge the memory — that’s ego. Rather just accept and utilize whatever comes up.

Watch or feel or hear that memory and then freeze it and retrieve your child self. This means imagining that you can go back in time as your badass adult spiritual warrior self and pick up that child or remove all other people from that scene.

If your child is young enough and willing to be held, pick her up and put her on your lap. You can also invite your child to come and sit next to you on the couch or bed. (I often do this while I’m driving, so I imagine my little self sitting in the seat next to me.)

Now look at the child and tell him or her, “I’m so sorry you are feeling (“so sad, so alone, like Mommy doesn’t love you, like you ruined everything”). Whatever the emotional feeling attached to the scene, say it out loud as an “I’m so sorry you are ___” statement.

Keep looking at the child and feel your heart going out to him or her. Tell the child, “It’s not your fault. You didn’t do anything wrong. I know you’re feeling _______, but it’s not your fault.”

Keep looking at the child, feeling your heart connect to your child self’s heart. Tell the child, “I love you. I love you so much. I’m so sorry (“your parents can’t see how lovely and innocent you are”) but I love you and I’m going to do my best to heal this wound and help you feel good again.”

The suggestions in parentheses are just to guide you towards your own words. Obviously the words will change depending on the wound in question.

Inner Child Practice: TLDR Version

You can keep repeating this over and over, as long as you’re feeling the energy of the wound. “I understand that you are feeling ______. I’m so sorry that you’re feeling _____. It’s not your fault. You didn’t do anything wrong. I love you. I’m going to be with you and help you heal.”

Then keep showing up for that little nugget!

This week’s post finds me fumbling towards the creation of a new, small (but I hope) powerful body of work based on the alien patterns in astrology. There are several natal chart configurations that qualify as alien patterns, as defined by Edwin Steinbrecher in The Inner Guide Meditation. The most common of these are formed by a conjunction of the Sun, Moon or Ascendant with either Saturn, Uranus, Neptune or Pluto in the birth chart. (See this article on my website to discover if you have an alien pattern in your natal horoscope.)

Some people have one or more alien patterns in the birth chart; some don’t. After working with hundreds of alien pattern clients over the last 20 years, my informed opinion is that not having any alien patterns is a recipe for an easier life.

I guess life on Earth isn’t really ‘easy’ much of the time for anyone with a soul, but the presence of an alien pattern in one’s birth chart tends to cause a lot of problems. In this piece, I want to look at the general framework that people with alien patterns almost all seem to live within. Then I want to explore how developing awareness of the alien pattern energy is essential for healing the trauma these patterns tend to bring upon the native.

The general life framework for people with alien patterns in the birth chart

The alien patterns confer a certain flavor of giftedness on the child born with them. That sounds like a desirable thing, right? But this giftedness is often experienced as a curse by the native — chiefly because of the reaction they receive from their parents, family, teachers, and other adults in childhood. This negative imprint of rejection or fear of the native at an early age often continues through adulthood, as long as the native remains unconscious of the alien pattern and what it is actually doing.

I’m thinking of two clients with Pluto alien patterns who were capable of telekinesis as children. They could move objects in the house by thinking about the object moving: slide the vase of flowers from one side of the mantel to the other, close the door in the hallway that had been left open, that sort of thing.

I’ve had several alien pattern clients who saw dead relatives in the room. One woman remembers talking to her grandma as a child. Grandma had died shortly after the client was born, but as a young child she would see her standing next to her mother in the kitchen and would start talking with her.

In this woman’s case, her mother became very angry with her and yelled, “Grandma’s dead. She’s not here! You can’t talk to her because she’s dead. Stop seeing her!” After enough anger and shame-dumping, the client shut down her awareness of Grandma and stopped acknowleding the dead woman’s presence until Grandma no longer bothered to make an appearance.

One of my Pluto alien clients who could move objects with her mind realized on her own accord that it was very disturbing to her parents. She wasn’t really consciously trying to move things; she would just think about them and they would move. But she felt ashamed of upsetting her parents and she “knew it was wrong” so she taught herself, at age 3 or 4, to stop doing it. She didn’t remember these experiences until we started exploring her Pluto alien pattern in session.

The other Pluto alien client grew up with pretty progressive parents. They were concerned but they weren’t terrified. They took my client to a psychologist and had him tested for psi abilities. The psychologist was amazed at what this kid could do and wanted to recommend him for enrollment in a (seemingly quasi-governmental or intelligence-adjacent) special program where kids with outstanding psi aptitude could be studied and trained in the use of their gifts. Luckily for my client (at least he and I both thought so), his parents said, “No thanks, we’ll handle it.”

He eventually outgrew the telekinesis. And, as is highly common with alien pattern people, he had pretty much forgotten that his parents told him he had telekinetic powers as a child — until it came up in the context of exploring his Pluto alien pattern. (I should add that many alien pattern people don’t remember such extreme giftedness — or any giftedness — and that many of them don’t remember much of their life before age 7.)

These examples are among the more striking “gifts” that my alien pattern clients have recalled during session, but they illustrate a phenomenon which seems common across all of my alien pattern clients:

Before age 7 (the time when Saturn, the archetype of structure and containment, squares its natal position in the chart), people born with an alien pattern in the natal chart exhibit some form of giftedness, which may be experienced as mere weirdness or abnormality by the parents and other adults.

By the time they reach prepubescence, the alien pattern child has almost always successfully shut down the “gift” and repressed its existence deep into the subconscious. There could be many reasons for this, but I believe a major cause of this shut it down and forget it ever existed pattern is the anger, fear, and shame that are directed at the alien pattern child by the parents and other adults. They know something is wrong with them, even if they don’t understand what they have done wrong (textbook definition of toxic shame). Now the child is desperate to fit in and appear ‘normal’.

After the initial Saturn squre at age 7, the alien pattern child almost always tries to find a way to fit in, blend in, or become invisible. This can take many forms. Some alien pattern kids will be model children, never causing any upset, always obedient and cheerful and compliant. Others might join a misfit group of kids at school or in the neighborhood, because they feel they won’t be singled out and judged by the other freaks. Still others will disappear into their own fantasy worlds, spend more time playing video games or reading books or doing solitary activities as a way of avoiding the social rejection that the alien patterns tend to generate.

So the alien pattern client is usually trying to find or create a social niche where he or she can avoid the repeated experience of feeling — and being treated as — frighteningly “other” or “alien”. (Steinbrecher called these patterns “alien patterns” not because he thought the people who were born with these patterns were extra-terrestrials, but because having one or more of the pattterns in one’s natal chart consistently resulted in the native experiencing a profound and enduring sense of alienation.)

Typically, right around age 21 (the third-quarter square in the 28.5-year Saturn cycle), the alien pattern within the native seems to ‘wake up’ and become active. This often precipitates, or is precipitated by, a major crisis in the native’s life: a serious injury or illness, the onset of heavy drug or alcohol use, an unplanned pregnancy, the death of a parent or a similar, shocking change in the family system, a religious epiphany….

This event or series of events is usually experienced as a major life crisis, though this doesn’t always seem to be the case. I think a lot of how alien pattern people experience this “wake-up” moment depends on other chart factors and on the level of support the native has in his or her life at this time.

From age 21 onward, the alien pattern people’s journey is largely about how to deal with this alienating gift-curse they sense within themselves. One of the reasons I find this framework so helpful as a consulting astrologer is that alien pattern people already know there is something very different and ‘dangerous’ about them. Showing them the framework and letting them know they are not alone in experiencing these things usually elicits a huge catharsis. Realizing that they can learn to work with the alien pattern energy to bring healing and transformation and discovering that they can also manage it so as not to feel constantly alienated or threatening to the people around them usually comes as an immense relief.

I think it’s really important for alien pattern people to recognize that the alien pattern is an energy that they carry within themselves; it is in them but it isn’t them, if that makes sense.

I prefer to think of the choice to carry an alien pattern as one that we made consciously as a soul before incarnation. This is reflective of my belief that taking complete responsibility for our lives and everything in them is one of the most powerful stances we can adopt as we go through life. This spiritual perspective or personal decision rescues us from playing the “blame and shame” game over and over and it stops us from either descending into perpetual cycles of victimhood or from becoming a vengeful user or abuser.

In the context of the alien patterns, it is also a very redemptive stance. It puts us in the position of being able to see that everything we have struggled with because of carrying that alien pattern in the birth chart is actually a result of our having had the courage and love necessary to incarnate with that pattern in our birth chart.

Because all of the outer planets involved in the alien patterns are transformational, so carrying an alien pattern through life is a gift to the world by the soul who incarnates with the pattern. How amazing to think that as souls, we were brave enough and loving enough to be willing to go through half a lifetime (or more) of feeling fucked up, alienated, and as if there was something deeply wrong with us — just so we could bring the empowering soul medicine of Pluto or the empathy and Christ-consciousness of Neptune or the inner authority teaching of Saturn or the radical, revivifying honesty of Uranus into a world that desperately needs that medicine.

Why becoming conscious of alien patterns is so powerful

For what it’s worth, becoming conscious of the alien pattern one carries doesn’t have to involve astrology, nor does the energetic construct need to be named as an ‘alien pattern’ for a person to come to terms with it.

I had gotten serious about walking my spiritual path several years before I discovered The Inner Guide Meditation. I remember distinctly trying to understand why I was having such a polarizing effect on some people in my life; during a meditation I heard the words in my mind, “You are a transformer.”

I instinctively knew this was true, although I didn’t know exactly what it meant or how to use the knowledge. But in reviewing the (strikingly similar) course that most of my intimate relationships had followed up to that point in my life, I saw that the people who were attracted to me often shared a similar disconnection from their feelings, along with an inability or unwillingness to understand how their feelings were affecting those around them.

I was born with a Moon-Saturn conjunction (Saturnian Vessel alien construct) and what I was unconsciously doing across the course of my life was acting as a transformer: pulling into myself these people’s fragmented and chaotic emotional (Moon - emotions) realities and transforming them by putting them together in a coherent way (Saturn - structure, authority) and then reflecting that more coherent potential reality back to them.

Discovering Steinbrecher’s work on alien patterns gave me the concepts and language to think about my own alien pattern gift/curse much more clearly. But I was already stumbling my way towards what I needed to do in order to transform my experience of the Saturnian Vessel pattern. I had started doing astrology readings by the time I was given Steinbrecher’s book: this enabled me to work with people who actually wanted the transfomer medicine on a conscious level, rather than girlfriends or bandmates or coworkers who were magnetically drawn to me because their soul desired the medicine but whose egos resisted the Saturn teachings that I couldn’t help but offer.

I just wanted to put that out there, because I do believe many people find the way to live harmoniously with their alien pattern without ever reading The Inner Guide Meditation or doing a reading with an astrologer or healer who understands the framework.

For me, hanging out my shingle as a practicing astrologer was one of the scariest things I ever did in life. It seemed so exceedingly weird to me at the time, I couldn’t believe I was actually doing it. But it radically transformed my life. Not in the least because it reconfigured my experience so that I was using the gift of the Saturnian Vessel to help people who actually wanted the medicine, rather than just unleashing it in my closest relationships.

My astrology clients were coming to me because they desired to devleop their inner authority, they wanted to learn how to master their emotions rather than being at the mercy of them, and they wanted to develop the personal congruency and coherence that existed as a life potential in their birth chart.

Incorporating my Saturn Vessel energy into my work has also been highly protective for me because the transformer medicine is now being shared in a container with strong boundaries. There’s the boundary of money/energy exchange and the boundary of time (we’re doing this for a certain duration) and the boundary of the sacred space that I set up for every session I do.

That’s a huge difference from being in a love relationship with someone who is being blasted by my alien pattern 24/7 and neither of us knows what is happening, or why.

I see the alien patterns as living energy constructs or archetypal beings that some people carry within themselves across a lifetime. These constructs are not us, although they seem like part of us until we develop the awareness and understanding to parse them out or to see them for what they are. They can’t be turned off. They can be damped down for a period of time (which is what most alien pattern people attempt to do between the ages of 7 and 21) but they are incredibly strong and the more you try to suppress them, the more they’re going to come out in painful and unexpected ways.

After 20 years of working with alien pattern people, I’ve come to believe that these energy constructs will keep working through the person who carries them regardless of how conscious or spiritually aware that person chooses to become. Many people with these patterns who lack the will or the awareness or the support system to learn how to work with the pattern end up becoming addicts, developing chronic mental illness, committing suicide, or simply existing on the margins of life.

Much of the work I do with alien pattern clients now is around helping the client integrate the pattern into their life and guiding them to take the steps that will empower them to heal the sense of alienation and the residual toxic shame and the inner child wounds they still carry from earlier in life: “You’re going to be giving this gift as long as you’re alive, so you may as well find a way to work with it so that you can have the life you desire.”

Protectors and others born without alien patterns in the horoscope

There’s an aura of sexiness about having an alien pattern in one’s chart: Look at me, I’m special. Maybe that feeling of specialness serves as a bit of compensation for the relationship challenges and self-esteem issues most of us alien pattern people have dealt with our entire lives.

But having an alien pattern makes life discernibly harder in many ways. Although it confers a specific and limited ‘giftedness’, it doesn’t make spiritual growth or developing one’s psychic abilities or personal power any easier. In fact, Steinbrecher (who studied thousands of charts of alien pattern people in coming up with his classification system) takes pains to point out that people who don’t carry any alien patterns can often progress much faster on the spiritual path than those who do.

Steinbrecher writes:

“Horoscopes without Alien constructs have the possibilities of the full range of human potential without the specialization of the Aliens. They don’t seem to have the resistance in meditation which the Aliens have to push through, and, as a result they tend to progress more rapidly with the meditation and with change than do the Aliens. They often strive towards being ‘far out’ or weird, in contrast to the Aliens who are always trying to ‘fit in’ and look like everyone else.”

Steinbrecher also identifies a group of souls he calls Protectors. He defines these as people with no alien patterns in the natal chart but who are surrounded by alien pattern people:

“They seem to function in a protective way towards the Aliens, warning them when they get too ‘far out’ or scary for other people, and acting as ‘translators’ for them. They generally have not suffered the social rejection and alienation that the Aliens have experienced, and those people who have Alien patterns don’t frighten the Protectors or make them nervous as they do others.”

Thanks for reading. Do you remember any special, “weird” gifts you had as a child then lost as you got older? Leave a comment and help the rest of the alien weirdos to feel not so alienated!

I hope this gives a good general outline of how the alien patterns function in general from childhood to adulthood. I’ll be exploring more specific patterns in future posts.

Earlier this year Tatiana and I decided we needed to pull the plug on our off-grid farming experience/experiment. As I wrote back in May, living off the grid in a little cabin in the woods was an amazing experience that provided many benefits, some anticipated and some more unexpected.

But it was also very isolating. Although we love the people who owned the big farm where we lived and carved out our little herb farm, they were often the only people we would interact with in person during a normal week (other than perhaps the checkout clerk at Walmart or the guy behind the counter at the post office or gas station).

We started looking at places in Nashville and Franklin because we both have old friends who have relocated to Franklin in the last couple of years. But Nashville felt too crowded and too urban and Franklin is incredibly expensive and a little too bougie for our tastes; nice place to visit and hang out, not necessarily where we want to be living. One day we got the hit that we should check out Columbia, a little city about 45 minutes south of Nashville that also happens to be the place where we adopted our beloved dog whom we found on Craigslist when he was just a skinny puppy.

Columbia has a beautiful old downtown and what seems like a burgeoning art scene. It’s also the birthplace of James K. Polk, the 11th President of the United States, who died, presumably of cholera, 103 days after leaving office. (His wife, Sarah Childress Polk, earned the nickname “Sahara Sarah” for her policy as First Lady of banning “dancing, card games, and hard liquor at official receptions.” She is said to have worn black every day of the 40 years she lived after her husband’s early death.)

So we started visiting Columbia and looking at houses and, a couple months ago, we found a house we really love just a few minutes’ drive from the beautiful park where we first met our doggo six years ago.

Everything seemed to fall into place and now here we are launching into a new chapter of our lives together in Columbia. It all happened with remarkable grace, especially considering how problematic some of our living situations have been since the start of the COVID lockdowns.

We moved most of our furniture and stuff over here a couple of weeks ago but we are having to go back and forth to the farm to move some more stuff and, mostly, to finish up a couple of projects that I was unable to complete earlier this year due to work and weather (the vaunted “heat dome!” followed by weeks of rain and flooding).

We just got back this afternoon from a three-day trip to the farm. We were working in the oppressive heat and humidity by day, building a sidewalk/bridge for my 85-year-old neighbor on the farm and laying patio stones under a pop-up tent (to try to keep from going full heat-stroke!), and camping in the cabin by night.

So I’m feeling a little exhausted physically at the moment. But I’m really excited about this new chapter of life. After doing mostly construction work and farm labor for the last few years, I feel refreshed on a soul level and ready to get back to doing more astrology readings and healing work with clients as well as making music and writing. All of which can be done to some extent in an isolated, rural, off-grid situation, but might feel a little more sustainable in an environment with functioning internet, heat and air conditioning and the ability to turn on as many lights as I need to see clearly.

May Mercury direct bring you renewed clarity and the reminder that you can, every day, choose your future memories wisely. Thanks for tuning in! I’ll be back next week.

DK

At its core, Emoto’s hypothesis was clear and simple: water is a living, circulatory information system that is essential to life and responds to human intention.

As the book’s U.S. publisher, Simon & Schuster, summarized it:

“This book has the potential to profoundly transform your world view. Using high-speed photography, Dr. Masaru Emoto discovered that crystals formed in frozen water reveal changes when specific, concentrated thoughts are directed toward them. He found that water from clear springs and water that has been exposed to loving words shows brilliant, complex, and colorful snowflake patterns. In contrast, polluted water, or water exposed to negative thoughts, forms incomplete, asymmetrical patterns with dull colors. The implications of this research create a new awareness of how we can positively impact the earth and our personal health.”

What is a Plutonian Power alien pattern?

As a consulting astrologer, I’ve been working with the “alien patterns” framework discovered by Edwin Steinbrecher for more than 20 years now. I find this framework invaluable in helping clients who carry these patterns to understand and learn to live with the highly transformative effect they have on those around them, as well as the persistent sense of alienation most of them have carried since childhood.

There are several chart configurations that Steinbrecher labeled as alien patterns. The most common of these patterns comprise a conjunction of the Sun, Moon, or Ascendant with one of the four ‘modern traditional’ outer planets: Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, or Pluto.

Steinbrecher used an orb of 15° for the Sun-outer planet conjunctions, which he calls “power alien constructs.” Emoto’s Sun and Pluto are conjunct with an orb of less than 8°, so this gives him a Plutonian Power configuration.

In The Inner Guide Meditation, Steinbrecher describes the Plutonian Powers as “the masters of metamorphosis and irreversible change.”

Steinbrecher writes:

“They move people, things, and situations from one level of vibration to the next one above it, often using the acceleration of time or sexuality to accomplish this. They destroy the old and outmoded through silent, relentless, often invisible processes […] They have to do with the release and control of the ascending aspect of the kundalini energy (or serpent power) which sleeps at the base of the spine, the evolutionary energy in humankind. They are natural remodelers of the universe and have great powers and abilities relating to working with the masses because of their powerful charisma. They are natural sleuths and finders of lost things.” (emphasis added)

Did Masaru Emoto move people, things, and situations to the next level of vibration?

My recent piece, Science or Religion?, was written as a way to process the shock I felt when I read Emoto’s Wikipedia entry. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised to find Wikipedia labeling him a “pseudo-scientist” and basically accusing him of being a fraud and a grifter. The transformation of Wikipedia from the world’s first free and open-source online encyclopedia to a highly-curated, leftist propaganda outfit has been going on, quite successfully, for many years now.1

But I was shocked. Emoto’s research, if even remotely true, opens up a world of good to anyone who encounters it. We live in a world where water is life; we are largely made up of water. What if we could radically improve the health of our bodies and of the planet by training ourselves to speak well of the world and by practicing the vibration of gratitude?

Even if Emoto’s methods were idiosyncratic and didn’t take place inside a big university laboratory, doesn’t his life-affirming message deserve to be examined fairly?

Emoto’s Wikipedia entry is laced with the vibration of evil (that which sets itself against life). It is petty, vindictive, and dismissive of Emoto’s life, his work, and his findings without proposing any positive alternative. The ostensible reason for the authors’ contempt is that Emoto didn’t replicate his research in a big university laboratory setting or respond to the circus buffoon skeptic James Randi’s “Million Dollar Challenge.” But Emoto’s real sin was affirming that all life possesses consciousness and that our consciousness influences life directly. This flies directly in the face of the reductionist, machine-like ethos of the religion known as establishment “Science”.

But people resonated deeply with Emoto’s writing. And no wonder. Those of us who haven’t had the soul chased out of us by the modern education system and the MK Everywhere mass media programming know that life is conscious. We know that our words possess power. We know that cultivating a heart of gratitude puts us (and the world) in a better place than cultivating a mind of greed, apathy, or attack thoughts.

Steinbrecher’s assertion that Plutonian Powers “move people, things, and situations from one level of vibration to the next one above it” makes me think of the difference in vibration between Emoto’s writing in The Hidden Messages in Water and the tone of his Wikipedia entry.

Emoto: “In Japan, it is said that words of the soul reside in a spirit called kotodama or the spirit of words, and the act of speaking words has the power to change the world. We all know that words have an enormous influence on the way we think and feel, and that things generally go more smoothly when positive words are used.”

Wikipedia: “Masaru Emoto was a Japanese businessman, author and pseudoscientist who claimed that human consciousness could affect the molecular structure of water. His 2004 book The Hidden Messages in Water was a New York Times best seller. His ideas had evolved over the years, and his early work revolved around pseudoscientific hypotheses that water could react to positive thoughts and words and that polluted water could be cleaned through prayer and positive visualization.”

I’m going to posit that Emoto did pretty well with his Plutonian Power pattern. He was definitely a “sleuth and a finder of lost things” with his idea of using high-speed photography to capture water crystals at the instant of freezing, while receiving concentrated emotional energy. And the success of his book resonates with the Plutonian Power attribute of having “great powers and abilities relating to working with the masses because of their powerful charisma.”

His work may not have been accepted by mainstream Scientism but it resonated with millions of people around the world and, I would argue, helped to mainstream the beneficial effects of cultivating “an attitude of gratitude” — a simple but life-enhancing practice that many of us still engage in.

Astrology Considerations: Pluto, Not Neptune?

I admit when I was looking up Emoto’s chart, I was surprised to see that he had a Pluto alien pattern and not a Neptune pattern. (Neptune being associated with water, photography, and ethereal beauty.) But after looking at the effect he had on the world, his Plutonian Power pattern makes sense. It’s also interesting that the establishment reaction to his work is characterized by sarcasm, vengefulness, nihilism, rage, and stubborn blindness; all of which are shadow attributes of Pluto that Steinbrecher associated with the Pluto alien patterns.

Dwight Garner’s 2005 review of the The Hidden Messages in Water in the New York Times’ Sunday Book Review, starts off: “CRYSTAL LITE: Every so often a best seller comes along that, as Michael Korda put it in his book "Making the List," makes us "question our sanity, or at least that of the American reading public." One of those head-scratchers has got to be Masaru Emoto's spectacularly eccentric book "The Hidden Messages in Water," which argues that water has feelings, too --”

But Emoto’s Sun is in Cancer, the first of the water signs, and in the 7th House (the other, the shadow). His Sun is also tightly sextile his natal Neptune, giving him an unusually graceful outlet for the energies of the Plutonian Power pattern.

Emoto’s 9th House Neptune, in the last degree of Virgo, plays an interesting role in the chart. The 9th House governs both science and the publication of scholarly works; Neptune — both as the most elevated planet in the chart and in the last degree of the sign associated with healing, purification, and environmental concern — makes a lot of sense here.

Not a lot is known about Emoto’s early life. He worked for a Japanese newspaper, then started an alternative medicine sales company, but it wasn’t until 1999 that he started publishing his water crystal research. His big breakthrough with The Hidden Messages in Water didn’t come until age 61, when his progressed Sun had moved into a conjunction with natal Neptune (sextile natal Sun). As you can see in the chart below, the unexpected success of the book also coincided with progressed Jupiter conjunct Emoto’s natal North Node. I read this as Jupiter magnifying and expanding Emoto’s life’s work.

It’s also worth noting that transiting Jupiter was applying to conjunction with Emoto’s Midheaven (public self, legacy) as the book climbed the bestseller charts in late 2004. Jupiter would station retrograde conjunct the MC at the beginning of February 2005 and would remain in conjunction with the MC for the better part of nine months spanning the period of December 2004 through September 2005. Normally, a Jupiter/Midheaven transit would not — on its own — be sufficient to bring about a sudden onset of global fame. But transiting Jupiter conjunct progressed Sun and natal Neptune would be sufficient.

There’s a lot more I could unpack in Emoto’s natal chart. (His Jupiter/Pluto/Black Moon conjunction is fascinating; I’d love to hear my astrologer readers’ thoughts on that one.) But I hope this look at how Emoto’s life and work aligned with his Plutonian Power alien pattern to remodel the universe and at least put a dent in, if not completely destroy, the “old and outmoded” paradigm of nihilistic, reductionist, and atomistic science that can’t even acknowledge that water vibrates with consciousness and responds to human intention and emotion.

I had to take a writing break this week. Everything is good. I’ll be back on schedule next week. Hope this finds you well and thank you for being a subscriber!

DK

Link: Neuroscientist James R. Doty explains how manifestation works in the brain on The Mel Robbins Podcast (YouTube)

Mercury stationed retrograde on Monday in the 27th degree of Cancer. Most people who think about Mercury retrogrades — which happen three times a year and last a little over three weeks each time — probably think of them in terms of their chaotic effects on communication, commerce, schedules, and the like. Don’t sign a major contract during Mercury retrograde, plan on delays, double-check that email address before you hit ‘send’; that type of thing.

Those are valid cautions, because Mercury retrograde does bring interruptions and unexpected snags into the life areas ruled by the winged messenger.

But on a deeper level, Mercury retrograde periods function as a built-in pattern interrupt on the mental level of life. Their deeper purpose is to slow us down and force us to look within and look back in time so that we can understand where our thinking patterns got stuck in ways that aren’t working for us anymore.

As you probably know if you’ve read my astrology writing in the past, I’m a big fan of John Sandbach, the Australian astrologer and poet who created a suite of degree symbols for each degree of the zodiac. I still regularly consult Dane Rudhyar’s book on the Sabian Symbols created by Marc Edmund Jones and Elsie Wheeler in 1925. But I do find many of the Sabian symbols to be ‘heavy’ and even to carry a negative vibe. Something to do with the time, perhaps, or with the consciousness of Mr. Jones and Miss Wheeler.

Sandbach’s symbols acknowledge the reality that life is often difficult and painful, but they express a beautiful and, to my eyes, sacred longing for a better world that we can co-create with our thoughts, feelings, and actions.

The Omega symbol (the highest vibrational symbol in Sandbach’s system) for the degree of Mercury’s retrograde station on June 29 is:

Cancer 27. A book of strange and imaginative prophecies

“One of your greatest enemies is fear of the future. You need to allow your hopes and wishes for it to be a force that guides your present actions. You have an instinct for what could be and for the direction in which energies are headed. You are given this knowledge primarily so you may shift toward a more positive course, and also so you can prepare for outcomes.”

That’s a pretty sweet take, but Sandbach’s “oracle” for this degree is both trenchant and lovely. (I’m not sure if Sandbach wrote an oracle for every degree of the zodiac, but these poetic imaginings are often my favorite part of his degree symbol mythology.)

“The book told of things that were to come. It said that on a certain day
in a certain forest a yellow bird would alight on the top of a
particular tree. It said that in late fall a single rose would bloom in
a certain crone’s garden, and that a certain old man would remember a
particular day of his youth on a certain moonlit evening, whose day,
month and year were accurately specified.

“And it turned out that all these prophecies were true, for he had gone
to witness the fulfillment of each one, as he came to understand that
fate was nothing more than memories of the future.”

In other words, the vibrational essence of the degree that starts the Cancer Mercury Retrograde can be summed up as: “Why fear the future, when the power is within you to create positive memories of the future, that you can then live into as if fulfilling a prophecy?”

A couple of notes on this line of thinking:

First, one of our super-powers as human beings (one that goes largely unused, sad to say) is our innate ability to direct our imagination to create and energize scenes of us living our ideal life. I’ve written a ton about this in the last year (see my Basketball Cybernetics series for starters). This isn’t even ‘woo’ any more. Neuroscientists are now discovering and mapping the networks in the brain, such as the reticular activating system, that enable us to manifest more of the life we desire based on the imagery we hold in mind and our ability to focus on what we want.1

Second, the degree where Mercury stations retrograde is important. Just as the degree in which a business is started or a relationship is begun or a child is born is important. This is the essence of how — and why — astrology works: because each moment in time possesses a different quality than the moment that precedes or follows it.

As astrologers, we will probably never perfectly interpret the quality of any given moment. But astrology provides a tried-and-true system for interpreting moments in time. This enables us to look back at moments in the past and understand how we got from there to here; it also enables us to make broad predictions as to how a future moment in time is liable to manifest.

As John Frawley puts it in his chapter on “The Nature of Time” in The Real Astrology:

“What astrology does — that of which the whole craft of astrology consists — is to describe that actual individual nature of moments of time as they exist in particular places. The means by which astrology achieves this description is by reference to the relative positions of the planets. This is what astrology is, and this is all that astrology is: a means of describing the individual nature of moments of time.”

The interesting thing about Mercury retrogrades is that we often don’t see the benefit of them until after Mercury has stationed direct again (in this case, at 7 pm Eastern on July 23). Retrograde Mercury will typically accentuate the mental pattern or faulty perspective that needs to be corrected over the 24 days of the retrograde period, dragging our minds through the same negative thoughts or over the same painful episodes from the past (that were either caused by negative thoughts or were the ground out of which our current negative thought patterns arose). Retrograde Mercury does this in order to make us sick enough of the “stinking thinking” to be willing to do the work required to heal our minds.

This phenomenon of feeling stuck in the past or in negative thought loops probably won’t characterize the entire retrograde period for most people and it needn’t take up all of our mental space. But it is worth paying attention when these negative thought loops get activated because Mercury is trying to show us how to master our minds and thereby achieve the proficiency to use them to create the life we truly desire.

This sense of being stuck in the past may seem even more present in the current Mercury retro period because the retrograde starts (and ends) in the Moon’s sign of Cancer. Where Mercury symbolizes the rational mind, the Moon governs memory and the emotional habit patterns we developed in early childhood. (The more these early patterns are fearful or self-defeating, the more negative thoughts they will generate in the mind until we do the work to rescue the inner child from these stuck emotions.)

At the moment of the Mercury station on June 29, the Moon is in her detriment sign of Capricorn, albeit strengthened somewhat by being at the very end of her waxing phase in the current lunar cycle. (The Full Moon in Capricorn happens just about six hours after the Mercury station.)

This position of the Moon imparts a Saturnian flavor to the Mercury retrograde period; this can be challenging in the sense it can be easy to get stuck in the negative thought patterns or feel too depressed by them to be able to summon the energy to work with them. On the other hand, Saturn always rewards us for perseverance and for courage in facing our flaws and striving to conquer our fears. A Moon-in-Capricorn vibe can be useful over the next three weeks in that this Moon position emphasizes taking action, buckling down to do the work in front of us, and chalking to-do items off of our list.

Making a to-do list that includes clearing the old trauma and stuck emotions that are the breeding ground for negative thoughts and destructive mental patterns is a great way to work with the Saturnian/Moon influence that colors this Mercury retrograde. Then, when Mercury goes direct in late July we will have prepared the ground of our mind so that we can productively grow and nurture the positive thoughts that will create useful and desirable “memories of the future”.

Jupiter is also in the picture here, conjunct Mercury from the very last degree of Cancer. Even though Jupiter moves into Leo on July 1, the Jupiter-in-Cancer vibe will continue through the end of the Mercury retrograde (because that’s where Jupiter is positioned at the ‘seed moment’ of the event). Jupiter is exalted in Cancer. This can work positively in helping you to “allow your hopes and wishes for [the future] to be a force that guides your present actions.” But it’s important to persevere in this mental practice, because Jupiter tends to expand anything he touches; even though Jupiter is a benefic planet with some essential dignity in the chart, he can easily expand the Cancerian shadow — a maudlin tendency towards victimhood and wallowing in one’s misery or seemingly negative current circumstances — if we are not attentive.

So, patience and perseverance are counseled. Notice any persistent negative thought loops and bookmark them for further exploration, even if you feel too scatterbrained or confused to do anything about them now. Notice the flavor of any negative thoughts or memories from the past that keep popping up, especially those that don’t typically catch your conscious attention. Notice worry or anxiety thoughts that, even if ostensibly very different from one another, carry a similar energy signature. Notice thought patterns that seem to be taking up a lot more mental space than usual.

All of these symptoms are Mercury’s way of bringing your attention to mental habits and ways of thinking that are ripe for being weeded out of your mental garden and replaced with thoughts that accentuate your hopes and wishes for the future — and your belief that these hopes and dreams are in the process of coming true for you.

Some of the transits that seem likely to have spurred the events discussed in this post.

I developed a bad cough during my year working at the Franco-Japanese film company in Paris.

I think it started around Chrismas-time. It was a dry, rasping, hacking cough and it just wouldn’t get better.

I’d suffered from bronchitis a lot in my early 20s. Dr. Luis Simoes, author of Does Your Body Lie?, says of bronchitis:

Bronchitis and bronchiolitis result from an inflamed family environment, characterised by arguments and shouting. Sometimes, they reveal the feelings of those who do not want to yell but who experience an inner screaming feeling.

In French the expression used is “On s’engueule”, which means “we yell at each other”. However, the word gueule means muzzle. The muzzle is the area comprising the nose down to the beginning of the chest, and it includes the throat and jaws. This is the area affected by bronchitis. Bronchial problems remind us of territorial conflicts animals have, a territory which is linked to sex and females, but which, in humans, is more associated to issues pertaining to the home, work and family. In this particular case affecting the bronchi, tensions are more linked to the home territory, although some work issues are also covered: “Let me breathe!”

I’m sure I experienced a lot of “inner screaming feelings” growing up in my family of origin. There was a lot of arguing and yelling and an undercurrent of tension in the air. I felt like I was constantly being surveilled and, in the small house I grew up in, I didn’t really have a totally safe territory of my own. I could escape up into the attic bedroom I shared with my younger brother or down into the basement and be out of sight but I was seldom out of earshot.

When I first started smoking, I was hooked almost instantly. Smoking (I figured this out fairly early on) was a way of setting up a smoke screen between me and other people. I smoked a lot during my 20s. “The smoker who takes in the smoke stimulates the bronchi,” Simoes writes. “It is his way of saying ‘I am marking my territory’. It is a male attitude.”

In the lead-up to coming down with this hot, hard cough — which persisted for several months — I’d taken a chance on moving to Paris to pursue my dreams of becoming a professional (famous) writer. Only a couple months after starting the project I’d fallen out with my screenwriting partner. I felt racked with guilt (and suppressed anger) about the break-up. I felt like I’d blown my big shot at success and, with no money and no place to live, I was stuck working a 9-to-5 job with the film company that was supposedly going to produce the movie.

In reality, this little company that specialized in Japanese anime import was never going to produce our movie. That became clear in the months I worked there. But I had put all my eggs in a very rickety basket and when the basket fell apart and the eggs smashed on the ground, it felt catastrophic.

As part of my compensation for working at the film company, the owner put me up in a corporate apartment she owned. The apartment was in a plain, ugly three-story modern building located across the courtyard from the company’s office in the 8th arrondissement. I don’t remember much about it except that it seemed like any generic “Suites”-style hotel. But with bright green carpet that reminded me of astro-turf.

The company had its headquarters off the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, on the same block as Hermès (the luxury fashion retailer), down the street from Chanel and Cartier, and just a few hundred meters from Place de la Concorde. The 8th arrondissement is one of the richest neighborhoods of Paris but for a broke twenty-something hobo, it was a dead-zone. I had to walk 30 minutes each way to a shop in the 9th arrondissement where I could afford to buy groceries; I remember more than once spending a Sunday morning walking at least an hour round-trip to get cigarettes because everything in that area except the museums and a couple expensive restaurants was shut down until Monday morning.

So, yeah, my childhood trauma of being the weirdo, the alien, the sensitive — the one who felt betrayed but didn’t have the ability to speak up and yell and protect his psychic territory — all that was activated.

This cough didn’t feel like bronchitis, but it was painful enough and persistent enough that I finally decided to go see a doctor. I don’t remember how I found this French doctor, but I took a couple hours off work one day and took the subway out towards the eastern suburbs to her office.

It was a small private practice. A quiet place. I think I was the only patient at the hour of my appointment. The doctor showed me into her clean and kind of quaint examining room, asked me some questions about myself, and set about examining my chest and lungs.

After a couple of minutes, she left the office and told me she’d be back.

When she returned, she told me, “There is nothing wrong with your lungs. Or with your bronches. You are smoking too much; of course you know that. But it will get better with time.”

“But doc,” I said. I’ve had this cough for three months now. It hasn’t gotten better.”

“You are still smoking, no?”

“Yes,” I argued. “But I’ve had bronchitis a bunch of times and I never quit smoking and it always got better after I took some antibiotics.”

“I am not going to give you antibiotic, because your body does not need them,” the doctor said. “I prescribe you rest and try to smoke not so much and also you have too much stress in your actual situation. Your cough, it come from an excess of nervosité. You must find a way to be living a more calm and happy life day by day, and then you will see the coughing will disappear.”

I kept arguing with her. I was sure this was medical malpractice (so sure, in fact, that when I got off work that night I spent a couple hours researching how often French doctors were wrong in their diagnoses). I felt like if she’d just give me some medicine, I could put this cough behind me and keep soldiering on in my depressing, almost pointless life-work situation on the Rue Saint-Honoré.

After a few minutes of this, the good doctor became impatient with my refusal to accept her prognosis.

“Perhaps you are allergic to France,” she said.

“What?” I said.

“I say, ‘You should go back to your own country. Perhaps you are allergic to being here and that is why you cannot lose this cough.’”

Man, I was freaking pissed. What a joke!

I stormed out of her office, replaying the end of our conversation over and over in my mind. I bought a couple packs of Gauloises at a tabac near the Metro station and took the subway back to Place de la Concorde, ruminating on what a terrible doctor this woman was and imagining her bustling gleefully around her little office, celebrating my impending death from bronchial pneumonia. I was just an innocent abroad, bearing the brunt of this doctor’s hatred of America and Americans.

I was too shell-shocked by the experience of having a French doctor tell me I should “go back to my own country” to spend any more money getting a second opinion. I decided I just had to live with the cough. Maybe it would get better some day, maybe it wouldn’t.

And do you know what? That cough persisted throughout the rest of my time in France. But a few days after landing back on American soil, I noticed it was gone.

I’ve since sent numerous apologies and imaginary bouquets of flowers to Madame le médecin over the psychic hotline. I trashed her doctoring skills for years to friends before it hit me one day that she had been absolutely correct in her diagnosis.

My problem wasn’t physical. It was emotional and psychological. I was so dug in to the idea that I had to remain in France and somehow make a success of myself in order to not have to slink home with my tail between my legs, having proven right my family and friends who had told me going to Paris to write a screenplay with a guy I met while hitch-hiking around Europe was a stupid way to go.

But what the good doctor saw was that I was suffering from grief and suppressed emotion.

I wonder if I would have taken her advice to heart if she’d been able to deliver it with a little more nuance. But, to her credit, she actually diagnosed my situation correctly and told me what I needed to hear, rather than just placating me with a prescription for antibiotics. I needed to get the hell out of there and go back home and she saw that.

Within a year of arriving back in the States, all sorts of good things were happening for me. The Internet had gone mainstream and suddenly jobs for writers abounded.

When I finished grad school in 1996, I was making $8.25/hour doing temp jobs as a typist or “administrative assistant.” By 1997, I was making $25/hour as a technical writer.

Matt Brady and I started a band with our college buddy Lupo, recorded a great album, toured the Southeast, and developed a die-hard following in Atlanta.

I moved to the South, where half my family line is from, and have — aside for a few years when I moved back to Detroit to tie up some loose ends on a soul level — lived down here happily ever after.

None of that would have happened had I stayed in Paris. So, next time your doctor (or healer? mentor?) refuses to throw drugs at your condition but suggests you may need an emotional sea-change or a psychological rebirth, don’t tune her out. She just might be giving it to you straight.

P.S. I wrote briefly about this incident a few months ago. Not sure why I felt the need to revisit it, other than the fact it relates directly to last week’s post. Hermès is, of course, the Greek name of Mercury, the astrological planet that governs commerce, communication, the mind, and speech. Mercury is stationing retrograde in Cancer on June 29, so maybe I’m getting a head start at looking back and revisiting what was ultimately a very Mercurial lesson.

I had a strong tendency towards hypochondria from a young age. The French doctor’s assertion that my cough was not a physical issue but was, rather, caused by a psychological imbalance — one that manifested in an abundance of negative thinking and could only be truly cured by putting myself into a better life situation that enabled my mind, and by extension my body, to relax — wasn’t a prognosis I could accept at the time.

But within a few years I had started to see the truth she was pointing me towards. Most of the respiratory illness that I frequently experienced in my 20s and 30s problems wasn’t caused by physical weakness or by other people’s ‘germs’. (Sometimes we get ‘sick’ because the body needs to detox, but that’s a story for another day.) I got sick and stayed sick because of unhealed trauma and the resultant negative emotions that trapped in my body. And because of negative thinking (which is always going to be exacerbated by unhealed trauma and repressed emotional content).

In my 20s and into my 30s, whenever I felt sick or got hurt I would immediately experience a series of “catastrophizing” thought loops: I’m really sick; this is getting worse; what if I have cancer?; this isn’t fair; it isn’t getting any better…

Two or three years after moving back to the USA, I started reading Castaneda’s Don Juan books and studying the Toltec way. I was also reading a lot of Buddhist literature and practicing meditation and mindfulness. And reading Wayne Dyer and other New Age teachers who insisted that thoughts were things and that what we think becomes our reality.

I remember Wayne Dyer was the special guest on the PBS fundraising special one year. I watched the whole thing at my mom’s house when she was away on vacation. (She had a TV and I didn’t so it seemed like a bit of synchronicity that I could hang out at her house and watch Wayne for several hours.) Dyer said that after learning to work with his thoughts he never got sick any more. I remember thinking, “I want that.” But it didn’t really feel possible.

It took me a decade or more to really integrate these ideas, but I eventually found that I could work with my inner child to heal the old trauma, that I could express the old, stuck emotion from my body, and that I could become mindful of the thoughts that were passing through my mind. I found that — with practice — I could revoke my consent to thoughts of sickness and impending disaster, I could pull myself out of obsessive rumination on the past, and I could choose to accentuate thoughts of goodness, peace, usefulness, and creativity.

For my astrology-savvy readers:

I did go back and look at my transits and progressions for the first few months of 1997, the time when I was suffering from the seemingly unending cough and feeling trapped at the film company. Two transits jumped out at me: Mars in his detriment conjunct my Jupiter-Uranus-South Node in Libra and opposing my Chiron-North Node in Aries; and Saturn in his fall conjunct my Chiron/North Node and opposite Mars and my Libra stellium.

Mars in Libra was moving slowly through the early degrees of Libra starting around New Year’s 1997; Mars stationed retrograde just inside my 3rd House on February 9. Third house rules the respiratory system, so a stationary Mars on my 3rd House cusp, plus Mars-Saturn on my Nodes, seems plenty strong enough to bring on the symptoms I was experiencing. Mars stationed direct on April 28 and I think I was back in the States (and cough-free) before the end of May.

The other thing I noticed was Uranus making the first of three conjunctions to my natal Mercury in early February of 1997, with Jupiter applying to a conjunction with a tight orb. Mercury governs the respiratory system but also the mind, so it looks to me as if that Jupiter-Uranus-Venus stellium on my natal Mercury was determined to set me free from old mental patterns! I’d love to know your thoughts in the comments.

The energy around the 2026 World Cup is pretty amazing. From the U.S. Men’s National Team opening the group stage with the team’s biggest-ever win at any World Cup — a 4-1 thrashing of Paraguay in which the U.S. actually played attractive, attacking football worthy of the scoreline — to the Scottish “Tartan Army” taking over Boston in celebration of the team’s first World Cup appearance in 28 years, to Leo Messi bagging a hat trick in Argentina’s opening game, and to scores of Europeans driving through middle America and finding out that regular Americans are kind, curious, and generous…

…It has been a great start to the first World Cup on U.S. soil since the one in 1994.

I know it’s fashionable to hate America these days, but I love this land. I love the people. I am aware of a lot of bad shit that has been done to innocent people around the world by our government, intelligence agencies, NGOs, and the rest of the military-industrial complex over at least the last century.

I’m aware of a whole lot of bad shit that is still being done to the people in this country by the government, military-industrial complex, Big Pharma, Big Tech, Big Ag and the medical industry — to name a few.

We need to keep bringing awareness to these abuses of power and end them. For ourselves, for our fellow men and women, for the children. For future generations.

And yet I bristle when I hear people blaming Americans or blaming “capitalism”1 and saying we need to burn it all down, scrap the Constitution, and embrace socialism or communism.

Two stories about how I learned to love my country:

Eastern Europe After the Fall of the Iron Curtain

Shortly after finishing a three-month journalism internship in Washington, D.C., I was drinking at the Tune Inn bar on Capitol Hill with my girlfriend and a couple other friends. The Tune Inn was this hole-in-the-wall country bar on Pennsylvania Avenue where my friend the Colonel bartended. It was usually pretty chill but on this particular night some patrons started getting rowdy and spraying ketchup and mustard around the bar.

My girlfriend was wearing a white dress and it ended up covered in red and yellow streaks. It was late and I was already pretty drunk. I was sitting in the booth, stunned, just trying to make sense of what was happening.

“Are you going to do something about this?” she asked.

“Oh,” I said. I guess I was.

I wiggled my way out of the booth and got in the face of one of the condiment-sprayers.

“Hey!” I shouted at the guy. “That is not cool. You and your buddy need to fucking calm down.”

My friend Ray Weiner, who was bartending that night, heard the commotion and came out from behind the bar, pushing his way through the crowd of drunks and yelling in my direction.

I turned to look at Ray and the other condiment-sprayer hit me just as I turned around. I never saw the punch. Complete blindside. I think he had a ring on because he split my eyebrow open.

I ended up in the emergency room getting stitches. I was feeling no pain and started chatting with the young doctor who was stitching me up. He asked what I did and I said I’d just completed a journalism internship and had been working as a reporter at a newspaper out in the suburbs.

He told me he was going to Romania in the summer as part of a team of doctors who were going to do free surgeries on Romanian orphans in Bucharest who had been born with cleft palates.

I said that was really cool and I should meet up with them in Romania and write a magazine article about their mission.

He gave me a business card for the organization sponsoring the humanitarian mission and told me who to talk to if I really thought I could do it.

I’m sure he thought I was just drunk and high on adrenaline. Both of which assumptions were almost undoubtedly true.

But I ended up going to Europe and hitchhiking to Romania and even ended up publishing a magazine article about the experience.

Along the way I spent some time in Bratislava, the capital city of Slovakia. I knew a girl who had gone to the same journalism internship who was from Slovakia and ended up staying with her friend Yuri for several weeks before and after my trip to Bucharest to document the Operation Smile doctors.

Even though the Iron Curtain had fallen and the Eastern European countries that had been under Soviet rule for decades were stumbling towards Western-style democracy, things were still super grim there. When the Soviets took over after the end of World War II, they demolished huge swathes of the old architecture in cities like Bratislava and Bucharest, replacing centuries of beautiful architecture with identical concrete high-rises that looked a lot like postwar U.S. government public housing projects, but on a massive scale.

I remember going to the grocery store in Slovakia with Yuri for the first time.

“What are we going to buy?” I asked.

“Whatever they have,” he said.

We ate fish head soup one week because that was the only thing we could get. We used the phone book as toilet paper for another week because the stores didn’t have any toilet paper.

You could always get hrianka, a salted garlic bread, from street vendors for a pittance, and we never ran out of slivovice (plum brandy) or cigarettes, but it was easy to see why all the young people were so slender there.

But the most depressing thing was the architecture. I became convinced, after seeing the same phenomenon in Bucharest — the destruction of most of the classical architecture and the mind-numbing profusion of identical, hideously-ugly concrete high-rises — that one of the reasons Soviet communism was able to hold on for so long across so much of Eastern Europe was that the people were too depressed to organize and fight back.

If you’ve ever lived in a suburban hellscape of seedy strip malls and run-down fast food franchises, or spent time in one of the nearly empty downtowns in a city like Detroit or Atlanta in the 1990s, imagine that depressing scenario multiplied by a factor of ten. We need beauty in order to thrive, and the Soviets took away the beauty and replaced it with a uniform gray ugliness that made just walking outside in the morning feel like you were going to your own funeral.

When I hear Americans talking about socialism or communism and how much better off we’d be without capitalism, I think, “You’ve never been to a communist country.”

Paris, After the Free Money Dried Up

In 1993 I was awarded a scholarship as a Goodwill Ambassador by the Rotary Foundation. They paid for me to live in Paris and study at the Sorbonne for a year. What a gift. That was a great experience in my life. I loved Paris; I made a lot of friends, drank a lot of wine, played a lot of guitar on the Pont des Arts, saw a lot of art, and walked for miles each week just digging the architecture and the many beautiful public gardens.

A couple years later, a friend I’d met during my “let’s hitchhike to Romania” phase invited me to meet him in Paris and work on a screenplay.

He was a talented writer who had produced his own feature film and seemed to have some backing from a Franco-Japanese company that wanted to expand into producing original art films.

A couple months after we got together and started working on the screenplay, we had a pretty bitter falling-out. My friend split and I ended up living in an apartment owned by the company and working in their Paris office.

The owner of the company was a Japanese woman named Futaba. She was about five feet tall and a total psychopath. Just a rager. Everyone who worked there either hated her guts or was terrified of her. Everyone, that is, except Harris, the eccentric Greek producer who had signed my friend to a production contract.

“That’s just the way she talks, dear,” Harris would tell me. “She doesn’t speak French well. She doesn’t speak English. No one can understand her. So she has to yell.”

Harris was definitely living in his own alternate universe, one that included a lot of intoxicants and a big dollop of magical thinking. He was a super sweet guy with the soul of a sensitive poet. Even though he tried to convince me that I was really gay and set me up on a date at a fondue restaurant with his friend, a Swiss producer named Jean-Paul.

“Listen, my friend,” Harris told me. “All you have to do is go out to dinner with Jean-Paul. You don’t have to have sex with him. Just go, be cute. He has lots of money. We need him to sign an agreement with Futaba so we can keep the company going.”

“I’m not gay, Harris!”

“I know, baby. I know you think that. But just go to dinner with Jean-Paul. I know him from the YMCA in New York. Long time ago. We had some good times there. He is a good man. Hey, you never know. Maybe you will find him very charming.”

“I’m not going to have sex with Jean-Paul, man.”

“OK, baby! Don’t get upset. You don’t have to have sex with him. Just go to dinner. Smile. You have a beautiful smile. We see what happens.”

I went to dinner with Jean-Paul. It was really awkward. He told me stories about the YMCA in the 70s that were full of way too much information about gay sex but he didn’t try anything. Harris was disappointed, but he figured it was just a matter of time.

Maybe he thought if I could just become gay, I could get away from the tyranny of Futaba. Harris knew I was incredibly depressed and he knew I made just enough money working at the film company to pay my rent and buy food and beer and cigarettes. I was stuck.

But so was Harris. And so was Jacques, the old editor whom Futaba berated, in a really nasty fashion, on a daily basis. So were my French friends from my Sorbonne year who were still living on the dole in their little one-room chambre de bonne apartments, hoping a job would some day open up in their career fields.

Eventually, after nine months of working at this company, I managed to cobble together enough dough to buy a one-way ticket back home. One of the few perks of working at the film company was the fact I could let myself into the office on the weekends when everyone else had gone home and make long distance calls back to the states.

I happened to call Matt Brady one Saturday night and told him about my situation. He had just moved to Atlanta and was in a band with his brother Jim.

“We’re looking for a singer, Dee. You should come home and try out.”

I told him I was broke and I didn’t know how to leave this company. It was a bad situation with Futaba. She had me convinced that she’d saved me from ruin and that I owed her for keeping me on the payroll even though I lacked any real discernible skills.

“Just tell her you’ve got to go home and see your mother for a couple weeks. No one can say no to that,” Matt said. “Get a one-way ticket. You don’t owe her anything. We’ll get you hooked up with some work and a place to stay once you get here.”

A few weeks later, I did it.

I had never been so happy to see America. A couple years earlier, at the end of my Sorbonne year, I’d seriously considered dropping out of school and staying in France. But a year of actually living and working like a French person had made me acutely aware of just how much freedom, mobility, and opportunity we have in America.

I still love France. But there’s a caste system in the socialist countries of Europe that is hard to explain to someone who’s never experienced it but is very, very real. What I saw, living and working in Paris: If you’re not lucky enough to be born into the upper crust of society, you don’t have a lot of options for what you’re going to do with your life. We take it for granted here that we can reinvent ourselves. We can move to another state, get a job that’ll pay the bills until we can find the opportunity we’re looking for.

We can start our own business from scratch. There’s no guarantee we’ll succeed, but the obstacles — social, governmental, and financial — are minimal. As the U.S. has leaned more and more into socialism over the last few decades, those opportunities may not be as vibrant as they used to be, but they still exist in a way that they don’t in the more heavily socialist countries of Western Europe.

My return to the States from that year of working in France changed my outlook permanently. I decided that I was fortunate to be born in a country with so much abundance and opportunity and where I had the freedom to go for it and to endeavor to live my best life.

I still feel that way. It feels good to see Americans seeing themselves through the eyes of Europeans who are blown away by how much freedom and opportunity and kindness and beauty there is here.

We have a lot of work to do, collectively, if we want to really heal our nation and our people as the U.S. emerges from its first Pluto return and (I hope) embarks on a path of rebirth and renewal. But we’ll be much better suited for accomplishing that healing if we love what is good about our country and focus on making it better. Not by passing more laws or throwing away the freedom we were blessed to enjoy by being born here. But by withdrawing our consent from evil programs and politicians and by withdrawing our attention from the stream of lies and bad news churned out by the corporate media and the entertainment-industrial complex.