November Outlook: Passing Water in the Time of Monsters
Hold off for now on that year-end reflection—there’s miles to go before we sleep
November has already opened in dramatic fashion, presenting itself as the Month of the (regal but stern) Fire Queen, her dangerously beautiful daughter, and the settling of scores and evening-out of imbalances. With much fanfare and fervent activity, we find ourselves the better part of a week deep into what I can hardly believe is the penultimate month of 2019.
Actually, on the one hand, I can believe it — and so can you — because this year has just been a lot. It’s been full of stuff. I would characterize it as having been long. I look back and things I thought and wrote at the dawn of the year and am absolutely stunned by the distance between there and here. We’ve passed a lot of water, of all colors and consistencies, these last ten months.
Whatever we are, we are not bored. Nor will we be bored in November.
The outlook for the month ahead can conveniently and cleanly be seen as two parts — approximately two halves. These halves are very easy to explain and comprehend. The first is the culmination and wrap-up of everything we’ve come up through so far, and the second is when we confront some of the more difficult or confusing shadows and phantoms looming just in front of us.
The first half is well underway and we’ve got no time to waste. We’re specifically advised to take advantage of this brief flash in time before it’s gone. The trick here is not mysterious — those with power and ability and rank need to sacrifice of themselves in order to provide joy to and meet the material needs of the people around them. This is the very simple formula that produces the kind of conditions necessary for people to cooperate on large tasks, even risky ones.
The time — it cannot be emphasized enough — is unusually fortuitous and born of a special cyclical alignment between earth and heaven. Even as the world around us goes to sleep and the sky grows dark, these next couple weeks will be the moment in which the earth is permitted to host the creative work usually exclusive to heaven.
It will not last. While it does, give freely of yourself. Act in the interests of the whole, setting your personal agendas to the side — if only for a little while. They’ll still be there when the cycle moves on, if they were worth anything to begin with. Work on self-improvement for a little bit instead. The prescription is also very simple: if you see something admirable in someone else, imitate it, and if you see something abominable in yourself, try to snuff it out. It’s important to focus precisely thus — toward the good in others and the flaws within ourselves. Leave the flaws of others and our own best qualities for another time. They aren’t going anywhere either.
There’s a warning as well. If those with ability or standing should decline to sacrifice of themselves for the benefit of all, they will in this case quickly lose the power and resources they seek to hoard. Their influence will fall away immediately and they will be isolated, ripe for attack and with no one remaining willing to come to their aid.
Be sure that isn’t you. Don’t be an asshole.
As exciting and explosive and high stakes as all of that sounds, the really important stuff all comes in the second half of the month, because this is where we look squarely at what’s really going on. The larger story. As we’ve been dancing around for these past months, a very common theme has come up again and again, and does so again here: we are living through the dawn of a new age and the twilight of the old and we get the thrills (good and bad) of experiencing the middle. The interregnum. The time some call the age of monsters. Maybe it is so.
Times of growth are always filled with difficulty, and you know it as well as I do. Since we are, after all, living creatures, we have to either grow or die. Difficulty, it is, then. That’s all we face here, no more and no less. Don’t let anyone work you up into a panic convincing you otherwise. This is just like a birth or maybe even like a metamorphosis. Everything is in motion and nothing looks right now like it’s going to look in just a little while, when the dust clears and the process comes to fruition.
Right now, we’re like that blade of grass coming out of the seed underground and, seeking the way up to the open air, getting blocked by a rock. Not a rock that’s too big to go around, just a rock that’s big enough to block us for a minute. We’re going to go around the rock and find our way to the surface.
That’s all this is. There’s nothing to be afraid of.
Besides, believe it or not, we’ve got a lot of good forces on our side. There’s blessings from the universe and from the spiritual power brokers all landing in our favor. We’re plunging neck-deep into chaos frightful and dark, but we’ve got devilish fiery blood pumping through our brains, whispering to our hearts about the triumph we know is rightfully ours.
We can’t rush forward. It is too dark and murky. We shouldn’t try to go out all half cocked all alone, either.
But you know all this by now, we’ve been talking about it all year. We’ve been living it. This isn’t anything new and the way forward isn’t anything unknown. We’ve been carefully and deliberately cultivating the fields of our lives and our time throughout the cycle that’s unfolded so far this year. At the same pace and with the same presence of mind, we shall complete that harvest. We will find ourselves on the right side even of Authority — and then our schemes and agendas can come back out to play.
What an interesting year.