Chiron Communiqué

By Steven McFadden

Santa Fe, NM - In early December, Jose’ and Lena Stevens presented a talk on the prominent trends they foresee for 2009. As a journalist, and as someone scheduled to give a talk on the 2009 astrological patterns the very next night, I paid close attention. As I listened to them speak, I was struck by how vividly their contemplative insights matched the signals broadcast by the major planetary patterns that characterize the coming years: the recent entry of Pluto into the sign of Capricorn until the year 2024, and the ongoing, dynamic opposition of Saturn and Uranus for next two years.

Virtually all professional astrologers appreciate the basic symbolism of these archetypal planetary movements and the profound death-rebirth, and restructuring processes that they herald for business, finance, government, and the general status quo of personal, household, community, national, and global systems. The themes Jose’ and Lena Stevens articulated in their talk are distinctly reflected in the sky above.

The themes are also embodied in the numbers. Over the course of the evening at the trends talk, I had a chance to visit briefly with Deirdre Morgan, the gifted numerologist at Santa Fe Soul. Just seeing Deirdre spontaneously inspired me to process a basic numerological equation: The numbers of the year 2009 add up to an 11 – a Master Number year.

Master Numbers (11, 22, 33, etc.) are especially vibrant and intense. When a Master Number characterizes a period of time, it’s understood that the general energy patterns of that period demand more of people, while also representing the potential to give more in return. I asked Deirdre about that. “Yes,” she confirmed. The numerological vibration of 2009 is a mirror, or equivalent, of what Jose and Lena grasped contemplatively, and what astrologers regard as the basic vibrational signature symbolized by the Saturn-Uranus opposition (2008-2010). As above, so below on our Earth: the opposition signals forceful encounters with reality and unavoidable demands; it also crackles with electric opportunities to go forward, creating new ways to live, to organize and to govern ourselves.

Calm and grounded, sober rather than sensational, Jose’ and Lena Stevens shared the stage for about two hours. As they spoke about 2009 they detailed and synthesized the insights they had gleaned from meditations and ceremonies they undertook a week before their public presentation.

Massive shift. Massive changes. No road map. But there are paths. This is what they said. They observed that North American culture and ways of life would experience high stress in the year ahead, perhaps more stress than the country has ever been through, citing the American Revolution, the Civil War and the Great Depression. “We have to change,” they said. “Everyone knows it, but no one yet knows what will replace it.”

Jose’ and Lena Stevens said that, as they perceive it, a healthy goal to embrace for the year ahead is acceptance — acceptance of major changes and new situations. We are well underway with an unavoidable process of re-defining our security, prosperity, consumption, power, and also corporate identity and function in the world. That’s reality, and there is value in swiftly and gracefully accepting it. Staying stuck in wishing that things would not change, being stubborn and resisting change, blaming others and refusing to forgive, will be problematic stances that function as obstacles to optimum adaptation.

They said that an effective way to work toward the goal of acceptance in the year ahead, is through observation. While there may be no road map for the changes, a mode of observation would tend to restrain impulsive or panicky behavior. By observing what is happening, and then responding carefully and pragmatically to new conditions, what needs to be done gets done.

The Stevenses also said they foresaw a markedly emotional year, a human intensity that would be mirrored in substantial earth change and climate events, with a predominant theme of water (too much water as in the case of heavy rains and floods, too little water as in the case of shortages or drought, or ice shifts as in the case of Earth’s Poles).

While most peiple already recognize the profound global and national shifts in general, Jose’ and Lena said we haven’t seen anything yet. Much more is to come. “This is not an ordinary recession,” they commented. “It will likely represent the most stress the country has ever been through.” They counseled listeners to avoid latching on to that nugget of prophecy, and to let it eat into their souls through worry, for the year ahead also brings great opportunity. They said they saw that in 2009 we reach a tipping point for spiritual awakening and for dynamic, positive sustainable initiatives. Critical mass approaching.

They posed a helpful, guiding question. If massive changes are coming about, then how do we – as individuals, communities, corporations, and nations — harness the energy and power of the changes to create a sustainable, just, and prosperous life?

Jose’ and Lena Stevens recorded their remarks on the trends of 2009, and have made the talk available on a CD through their website.

The very next night I joined Arielle Guttman and Leslie Nathanson of the Sophia Center of Santa Fe on stage at Body Café, where we presented our regular Star*Talk. When Arielle took her turn at the microphone, she characterized the year ahead and the Saturn-Uranus opposition (2008-2010) in classic mythological terms as the ‘Clash of the Titans with Olympus’– an epic encounter that marked an earlier Earth-shaking turn of the ages.

Saturn in opposition to Uranus unfolds five times, marking a span of time when the forces of change and revolution directly confront forces representing the status quo. Uranus mandates change and innovation. Saturn tends to resist it. When these planetary Titans are in opposition, the clash is on.

In celestial collaboration with the long sojourn of Pluto through Capricorn (2008-2024), the Saturn-Uranus opposition symbolizes a foundational shift in consciousness over the globe, evolving most of us inexorably from ideological debates and risky, unsustainable economic behaviors, into a time characterized by an unavoidable need to respond to Earthly realities via pragmatism, restraint, and discipline. The imminent questions revolve not around whose God, cosmology, or philosophy is right, but rather what works? What puts shoes on your feet, a coat on your back, and a glass of clean water on your table?

When my turn to speak came at Star*Talk, I noted a dozen likely things for 2009, but spoke most passionately about our food and farms. These matters, I feel, will become of central importance in the years ahead. It’s not just the big planets traveling through the Earth signs of Virgo and Capricorn that brought me to this realization, but also my lifelong, professional interest in matters agrarian: our land and our food. I am just now completing work on my third book on this topic – The Call of the Land: An Agrarian Primer for the 21st Century.

What I have become acutely aware of through researching and writing The Call of the Land, as well as through noting the relevant planetary patterns, is that our farms and food are in the ongoing thrall of a blitzkrieg of mutations, a pattern of change likely to accelerate soon.

Because agrarian matters are foundational, they influence everything else in our world. Impending matters of finance, transport, petrochemical supply, climate stability, food availability and human health, necessitate — right now — that families, neighborhoods, municipalities, and nations take a clear, visionary look at matters agrarian, and engage in swift, sustainable action.

We have commenced a transition the likes of which few people are prepared for, but to which we all can respond with a wisdom that will reverberate into the future to serve at least the next seven generations of our children. There are a host of positive steps that families, communities, farmers, and corporations are taking, and can take more swiftly and vigorously to establish a wholesome and enduring foundation for our land, our farms, and our food. Those positive steps and models are what I have endeavored to illuminate with the new book.

Immediate, wide-ranging change is a theme I hear when I listen to the call of the land. This call is apparent also in the quiet of mystic contemplation as Jose and Lena Stevens expressed, as in the steady simplicity of the numbers, and as in the timeless, gleaming elegance of the stars and planets. From the transformative turbulence that 2009 promises, opportunities to engage the future with wisdom, can and will emerge. These are the trends unfolding.

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by Steven McFadden

Grandfather Leon Secatero, 65
Headman, Canoncito Band of Navajo,
widely respected native elder,
a founder of Spiritual Elders of Mother Earth
died on Sunday, September 28, 2008.

Services were held each day, concluding Thursday, October 2, 2008 at To’hajiilee-Canoncito, NM.

I remember Grandfather Leon as a true spiritual elder — calm, wise, full of understanding and insight. When I interviewed him in 2007 about his journey among the Wind Walkers, he related a part of the story in this manner:

Leon saw the Wind Walkers take corn pollen in their mouths to bless their words before they spoke to him.

“What I was shown was the way we should be, how we must be to influence the future, and also to influence all the plants, the animals, the waters, the air and the fire. It’s important. I came to a knowing that the only way you can have the power, is through the color and the light of positive thought and energy. Put all your concentration on this, not other things. Put your concentration on the positive. That’s how it’s done.”

The full story, Journey Among the Wind Walkers
http://www.chiron-communications.com/communique11-1.html

I was recently interviewed on “Home & Family Finance Radio,” a weekly one-hour program that offers information and advice on consumer finance issues.

Host Paul Berry led the discussion on food, farming and the future. As co-author of “Farms of Tomorrow,” and author of the forthcoming book “The Call of the Land: An Agrarian Primer for the 21st Century,” I welcomed the opportunity to speak on these themes to a wide audience.

You may listen to a recording of the interview at this link.

by Steven McFadden

I have recently initiated a new blog: The Call of the Land – An Agrarian Primer for the 21st Century.

If you have an interest in food and matters agrarian, I invite you visit the blog, which I will develop steadily in the years ahead. I set out my reasons for doing so in one of my initial posts.

Amplifying the Call

Our land, farms and food require immediate attention from everyone who recognizes what is so rapidly unfolding. Prices rising, supplies dwindling, crops mutating, population growing. An agrarian revolution is essential to our survival.

Agriculture is the foundation of our civilization. We must have it. Everything else depends on our meeting the primary needs of clean food and clean water. This state of affairs is a blessed necessity, for it interweaves our human souls with the soul of the earth. It is also a key to a successful future, for agriculture can serve as a basis for the wholesome renewal of our overall relationship with the earth.

Food and farms are in the ongoing thrall of a blitzkrieg of mutations, both negative and positive. Because agrarian matters are of such fundamental importance, impending matters of finance, transport, petrochemical supply, climate stability, environmental health, water supply, food availability and composition, necessitate—right now—a clear, visionary look at matters agrarian.

Our current approach is, bluntly, unsustainable, and the harsh consequences are now plain. As a matter of survival – while food prices rise and supplies dwindle — we must find wise ways to evolve. That evolution must take place swiftly, and it will require the involvement of almost all of us. A few farmers struggling the vortex of change cannot alone take care of us all. That has become an inescapable fact for anyone who follows agrarian news.

Just four months ago a major UN environment report (UNEP) concluded that our Earth is reaching the point of no return. The speed at which mankind is using and abusing the Earth’s resources is putting humanity’s survival at risk, the team of scientists said. They collectively issued an “urgent call for action.”

Meanwhile, geologists are now debating whether they should add a new epoch to the geological time scale. They call it the Anthropocene – the epoch when, for the first time in Earth’s history, humans have become a predominant geophysical force.

Perhaps the major factor of this “force” is modern industrial agriculture. On a massive scale it is poisoning and eroding the soil, draining water supplies, polluting the environment, and radically altering the genetic character of our planetary vegetation and livestock, as well as our diets and our perhaps our destiny.

While there may be no single remedy for the many challenges we face, there are many possible positive paths. With diligence we can construct a map for some of those paths, showing how a sustainable agrarian foundation can serve our brilliant yet fragile high-tech culture both nationally and globally.

For me a core ethical necessity in regard to our land and food is to strive in all endeavors to enhance the health and the regenerative capacity of the Earth. To support our farms so that, rather than being major sources of pollution, they are instead oases of environmental health, radiating this vitality out widely, and producing an abundance of clean food.

I intend this blog to amplify the call that is arising from our land. As Jack London put it in his classic novel, “The Call of the Wild,” we face a moment of truth.

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Talk radio show host Bob Keeton recntly interviewed me for one hour on his Living Successfully satellite show. He felt the program was interesting, entertaining, and informative, and so he has made it available as a CD which listeners can purchase from his web site. To learn more or to order, follow this link to his Living Successfully radio show web site, and search under the Native American category. – Steven McFadden

With audio maestro Bob Keeton, I have begun to create a digital audio version of the true story, Odyssey of the 8th Fire. If you would like to listen to or to download this theatrical audio production, click here.

We are delivering this important story in audio format so that it may be brought before the people as a lively educational program offering direct, practical information and guidance about living on the earth together – all colors and faiths – in a sustainable and respectful manner.

Based in the teachings native to our land, the prophetic adventure tale of Odyssey brings what has been foreseen and foretold into the present in a dynamic format for consideration at a pivotal time in history.

Odyssey of the 8th Fire is an epic, nonfiction saga, a physical and spiritual travelogue of North America: its places, its history, its ancient and contemporary wisdom keepers, and the road immediately ahead for us all.

We would welcome your support to help us complete this audio project. – S.M.

What in the World’s Going On?
A look ahead with astrology for 2008 – 2012

with Steven McFadden and Merrylin LeBlanc.

The radio show will be broadcast Saturday, Jan. 12, 2008 at 6 a.m. MST To find where and how the show is broadcast so you can access it, see the Living Successfully web site.

The Santa Fe Astrology Forum presented five astrologers and a priestess from the Mayan tradition to a standing-room only crowd at Santa Fe Soul in late December, 2007. Two of those astrologers come to share even more with you about the years ahead, between now and 2012, on the popular radio show, Living Successfully.

Steven McFadden is a journalist, a speaker, counselor, healer and astrologer. Among his seven books are, Legend of the Rainbow Warriors, Profiles in Wisdom, Farms of Tomorrow and the epic saga of North America, Odyssey of the 8th Fire. He also served as National Coordinator for the annual Earth Day Celebration in 1993 and as director of the Wisdom Conservancy at Merriam Hill Education Center in New Hampshire.

He draws several revealing references to the characters and plot of the Hollywood blockbuster film “The Golden Compass,” and our individual and collective paths ahead in the year 2008.

Merrylin LeBlanc is an astrologer who hosts a weekly program called “Moonwise” on KSFR radio in Santa Fe. Her specialty involves watching the moon’s movements and effects on life here on Earth. Merrylin shares a personal insight about voting that says it is time to choose for ourselves without consideration of who might win or even the “lesser of evils” mentality. Authenticity seems to be called for more than ever in this coming year.

Rebroadcasts: Saturday at 4 pm and Sunday at 8 am (Eastern).

To order a copy of the original, live panel discussion on the years 2008-2012 by the members of the Santa Fe Astrology Forum, follow this link:

http://www.livingsuccessfully.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=11&products_id=522

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