The Predictive Letdown: Searching for the Divinatory Voice
Impressions from Psychedelic Culture & musings on Jupiter’s final crawl through Taurus
“You're on Earth. There's no cure for that.”
― Samuel Becket
“Me! Me! I have a question!”
A lady in the back of the auditorium was jumping up and down, touched by a spirit none of us could see or feel. It wasn’t enough to raise her hand. She shouted her question into the void. The moderator invited her to the mic, and she nearly tripped over the stairs getting there.
On the stage sat a respected indigenous Elder who had just finished speaking. The details of her speech are important, and I’ll give them the honor of their own story, on their own time. For now, what you need to know is that this Elder was sharing her thoughts on the psychedelic renaissance, how its unchecked hunger is depleting resources from cultures who’ve been working with plants for generations upon generations and that we need to slow this money train down. The Earth demands it.
What touched our frazzled person at the back of the room was the spirit of confusion. She too had corresponded with the Earth, through the flesh of a wise plant whose message was clear: please share me with everyone you know. And that’s what she did, inviting all her friends for tea. The plant told her to expand, and now she was being told to contract. The dissonance was too much to bear, resulting in this public meltdown.
“I just don’t know how to make sense of it.” And with that, her entire being just sort of — deflated.
As someone who reads symbols for a living, my first thought was, Fuck. That question again. That question being: Whose voice is coming through? Is it the divine or my anxiety? Fear? Blind optimism? Hunger? Sleep deprivation? Perimenopause? Unresolved childhood trauma masquerading as the voice of fate? It’s hard to tell.
The Elder paused before speaking — slowly, her words measured. “Yes, the plants will give you messages, but you can’t just run off and act on them. You need to step away and take some time to think.” To put it another way, the oracle speaks in riddles. You’d be a fool to think the answers come so easily.
“The Earth is telling us to slow down.”
Yes, one of my hyped up inner voices cheered. You can’t heed every voice. Obviously. Everyone knows that. And then my own embarrassing memories surfaced. Astrological predictions that missed the mark. Tarot readings where I was too confident in my interpretations. All the times I fixed my glance too far into the future, missing the person before me.
The Elder repeated her message, “The Earth is telling us to slow down.”
My inner voice applauded and scrawled AMEN in my notebook — as if I understood.
THE ASTROLOGY OF IT ALL
As Jupiter makes its way through the final terrain of Taurus, and we on Earth discard our lotto tickets, calculate our losses and winnings, it's easy to take notes and move on. Every moment holds the promise of a new astrological event — an eclipse, a great conjunction, a full moon bursting with potential.
I’m writing this as a reminder to myself to slow down, to remember that astrology is a geocentric practice. Earth is the planet who holds us, whose body provides the vantage point from which we view the cosmos, where we have the pleasure of forsaking the quest for singularity to lose ourselves in the chorus of existence.
This is my reminder not to get the memo and move on but to step back and think about it for a while longer — and continue thinking about it, long after the time’s passed.
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