Eve of Destruction

The majority of Wiccans and Wicca-adjacent neo-Pagans celebrated Samhain – the Feast of the Dead, summer’s end and the beginning of winter, the Celtic New Year – on Halloween. A lesser number of us will celebrate it on the true cross-quarter day; the exact midpoint between autumn equinox and winter solstice. This year, here in the States, Samhain falls on Wednesday 6 November. The preceding night, Tuesday 5 November, is Samhain Eve.

This year, here in the States, it’s also Election Night.

Folks like me can’t help but take this synchronicity as a portent of perilous times ahead. Traditionally, while they are joyous occasions, cross-quarter days are also dangerous, and the eves of cross-quarters especially so. Marking the seasonal transitions of the year, the four occult stations of the sun are gates, doorways, portals Mother Earth spins through on her journey around our star. It’s a wild ride no matter which threshold we’re crossing, but Samhain Eve is extra.

On Samhain Eve, we’re flung out of the old year and into the new, tossed from the half-year blessed by summer’s Big Sun to the half palely lit by the Little Sun of winter, hurled from bountiful autumn into the season of cold, want, and scarcity where the dark holds sway. If we privileged few enjoy such fortunate circumstances that we’re oblivious to the ravages of winter, simply turning up our thermostats when temperatures drop, turning on more lights as nights grow longer, and stocking our larders with produce grown in another hemisphere entirely, Samhain Eve may signal the end of our unmindful complacency. Should a certain pumpkin-headed putz slip through the electoral cracks between democracy and fascism while the borders between worlds are blurred – if the narcissistic psychopath outright wins on Samhain Eve, I’m saying – it’ll be a bitter cruel winter from here on out, whatever the season.

We don’t need to read the whole 900 page Project 2025 initiative to get a sense of that possible future. We just need to look back on the Third Reich, and then look forward; take a gander at North Korea, draw the obvious parallels between the Taliban and the far-Right’s vision of a Christian Evangelical American State, recall how Pumpkin-Head’s cronies literally sat at the feet of Viktor Orbán to learn from the master how to overthrow a democracy, and remember that our pumpkin-hued ex-prez will do absolutely anything to gain the approval of his surrogate dad Vlad.

As many have done. Looked ahead, I mean, to worst-case what’s in store. That’s why pundits, campaign managers, and pollsters are obsessively analyzing the data. Like wise women ritually throwing the bones or reading a goat’s entrails, today’s seers have been madly casting modern day omens, convinced that if they observe the proper procedures and protocols, their scientific systems of divination must gift them with prophetic foresight.

Media networks and news outlets are also soliciting astrologers’ election predictions and broadcasting them in prime time. With rare exceptions, the astrologer gambit is just a ploy to get more eyeballs on programs or ears tuned to podcasts. It’s a rare host gives the insights of their more esoterically-oriented guests as much credence as they give Nate Silver’s.

Yet, both sets of diviners have done their research. The pollsters query the most representative samples of the general electorate they can get hold of, and every other demographically-specific electorate they can think of. When they crunch their numbers, it’s with AI-assisted, algorithmic accuracy that has, to the best of their ability, been adjusted to correct for the polling errors of the past.

Also skilled mathematicians, astrologers make countless calculations based on the former and current positions of assorted celestial bodies, factor in patterns these bodies made/will make while progressing to and out of their past, present, and future locations, and identify the aspects (relationships) between these bodies. They draw various charts displaying the data – for the major players, individual states, Election Day, the USA, you name it – and, after countless more calculations, interpret the results to determine which candidate the cosmos favors.

For me, pollsters and astrologers are on a par. Sometimes they get it right. Sometimes they get it wrong.

Their intentions are pure, but I doubt the pollsters are polling truly representative samples of the voting populace. I won’t answer the phone if I don’t recognize the number, and I belong to the generation most likely to pick up. Young people flat never answer mystery calls, yet they’ve registered in record numbers. Plus, pollsters over-correct for past errors, skewing their own results and adding to the fear and tension of those looking to them for answers.

I’m a tad more sympathetic to the astrologers’ predictive efforts … probably because “Astrologer”is one of many Jill of All Trades, Mistress of None entries on my CV. I just don’t think pinpoint prediction is astrology’s forte. A mathematical-linguistic art, what astrology is good for is painting and discussing the big picture.

Ergo…

America was born 4 July 1776; she’s 248 years-old. Pluto – an icy chunk of rock that somehow got caught in our sun’s gravitational pull despite its incredibly remote location at the outermost rim of our solar system – takes 248 years (±) to complete a single orbit. Yep. Pluto has finally finished its circuit and is back where it was on America’s birthday. And that puts the US of A bang in the middle of her Pluto Return.

Astrologically, Pluto is the planet of Death, Sex, and Rebirth, the essential primal trinity. It’s associated with power and power plays, secrecy and the occult. It’s the planet of passion, the shadow self and the phoenix, hidden truths and hidden lies, the unconscious – it’s what your DNA knows. Pluto is destruction, creation, and profound transformation. Named for the Roman God of the Underworld, Pluto is also very much Persephone, Hekate, Kali, the Mór-Ríoghain, Meng Po, and Hel. A Goddess of Desire and a Crone.

Quick digression: Yes, I know. Astronomers demoted Pluto from “planet” to “dwarf planet” status in 2006. Astrologers have yet to concede the point and continue to accord Pluto all due honor and respect.

From our Earth-based perspective, far-away Pluto moves so slowly and spends such extensive periods in retrograde (when it appears to be moving backwards), its return isn’t a one-day celebration (like your solar return, aka your birthday) or even a year-long rite of passage (like your 29^th-year Saturn Return). For the last 120+ years, Pluto has been creeping closer and closer to the place in the heavens it occupied the day the founding dads approved the final wording of the Declaration of Independence and wrote the date at the top of the document. Once Pluto came to the edges of the celestial spot’s “orb of influence” (when it was near enough to its July 1776 locale), the Pluto-vibes became palpable. Having zeroed in on its old haunts, Pluto began scouring the hot-spot like a slo-mo scrub brush, continually splashing Plutonian energies all over the country.

Slightly longer digression: I realize I sound like I’m giving Pluto agency, that I believe it’s actually doing something to affect us. An unfortunate side effect of speaking in Astrolog-ese. For me, it’s not cause and effect. It’s more of an as above, so below situation. The patterns of the stars don’t dictate reality; what happens here on Earth doesn’t write the music of the spheres. They are in sync, reflections of each other.

Eventually, Pluto will figure it’s job done, scorched earth achieved, let the rebirth begin. It’ll start creeping away again and, assuming it leaves America still standing, won’t zap us with this level of crazy for another 248 years, give or take.

Meanwhile, we’re stuck in metamorphosis mode, experiencing a kind of national cellular disintegration as the United States dissolves into chaotic mush. The diviners can’t tell us what shape the mush will take inside its Election Night cocoon or how long before the new USA fully emerges. Whether our broken electoral system, our click-bait pandering disinformation outlets, and the long-term game plans of a slave-longing, never-admit-defeat Confederacy will succeed in putting an authoritarian dictator in the White House, or the semi-cohesive efforts of disparate individuals who favor a socially-responsible government will send a Black-Asian woman to the Oval Office, neither the polls nor the charts can reveal.

All the omens tell us sure and certain is that whatever the outcome, it will be a first. And America will never be the same.

Light the fires. Bring new rain. Let the gates open. Guard them with love. Welcome your ancestors to your homes, and may they soothe your hearts and bring you comfort on this remarkably scary Samhain Eve.

Blessed Be.