Forecast and Faery Finder for 04-21-09

04-21-09

Forecast and Faery Finder by Janice Scott-Reeder and the Bitwit

According to Llewellyn’s Spell-a-Day Almanac, today’s color is Black and the incense is Geranium.

FORECASTS:

Deck: Navigators Tarot of the Mystic Sea.
Today’s Tarot Card is the Arch Priestess: dissolution. New ideas allow you to start over today. Observe the past without regret. Old loves, hates, and ways of motivation fall to the wayside. Delve into your memories and see what the wizard is doing behind the curtain.

Astrological Source: Llewellyn’s 2007 Daily Planetary Guide.
Astrologically, what we want to do and what we must do tears us apart today. Our head and hearts are in opposition to each other. Come evening, it is a good time to call someone and tell them how you feel. For the rest of the week, romance, nostalgia and seeing things through rose colored glasses is the norm. It will be an emotional overnight period. Planting and fishing are favored today.

Deck: Healing with the Fairies.
The Faeries say you are ready for a vacation even if it is only a mental one.


Today’s Cat Comfort card is Catnip. “You could do with a pick-me-up. Try something you really like today.”

Deck: The Fairies’ Oracle by Brian Froud & Jessica MacBeth
Today’s Faery Finder is on the lookout for Mikle a Muckle. He is a grid of a good family and grigs are a merry lot. He wants you to be happy, to express your inner child. Mikle wants you to focus on the present moment as it is the only moment you really have the one in which your power is rooted. Then, have fun!

Today’s Lo Shu Number is 9 and the element is Fire. The Tiger finds conflict but the Dragon and Snake have ease. This is not an auspicious day for anything.

Today’s Message from the Universe is: “The Universal law of justice and freedom rules in everyone, for everyone and through everyone. Being in harmony with the will of my Soul, neither a person now a situation can prevent me from attaining my highest good. I trust God’s infinite wisdom.
Everything is now working out perfectly now.” Annie Marquier creating a world of peace one thought at a time.
These messages are helping so many people that I am setting each day’s card up in a psionics generator so you can tap into the energy during the day. Just think of a rainbow and the energy will come to you.

COMMENTARIES BY JANICE SCOTT-REEDER

I think my first Lunaria came up. It’s either that or a weed. It really rained today.
Let me take you back in time to when I was young, a young woman even. I know some of you who are younger than me are going to think this is just another science fiction story or at least really good fantasy I am writing, but it was how things were when this was a great country and everyone in the world wanted to come here and a part of the American experience and life.
When you got be 16, pretty much the legal age to work with parental permission, you found yourself a job after school so you could save up enough money usually to go to the prom and maybe get that car you would be learning how to work on because you couldn’t afford a mechanic. It was normally a job at the fast food restaurant or the grocery store where you bagged groceries and restocked shelves. If you were lucky, like me, to be blessed with both looks and typing skills, you got to be a cashier and interact with the customers. Your parents would shop at the A and P even though they liked the Quick Check better because their daughter was working there and even tolerate the fast food special on Sunday instead of a homemade brunch because their son was manning a mop in the Royal Castle. The manager would come out and say hello to your parents and give them a report on your work ethic. You learned to be on time, get your job done and mange your money. You even learned the government was going to take part of your paycheck. You were a semi-adult with a brand new status in school. Other kids envied you and worked even harder because you worked and kept up with your studies and had MONEY. If you fell behind at school, your job was gone. That was the deal. You knew there were no exception. Most of the time you had to present your report card to your parents and your manager! You could actually fail in school and surprise: it didn’t scar you for life. You worked harder. And believe it or not, teachers were required to tell your parents you were failing so they could make certain you never left the house until your grades improved.
Then if you got good grades, you would get into college and you would qualify for a scholarship if your parents couldn‘t pay for it. Sometimes you only got a partial scholarship but that didn‘t mean you kicked back and enjoy the college experience. No, that wasn‘t free money. In my case you worked your tail off in a library or enhancing science drawings for a dollar an hour to pay back the scholarship. Scholarships were based on need and grades, not being a green spotted leaf hopper to meet a quota.
If you didn’t get into college, you pretty much knew you would be in a blue collar job for the rest of your life and that wasn’t a bad thing. You knew there was a job and after you saved for a few years or went into the military to get one of those GI loans, you would have enough money for a down payment on a house. You got a thirty year mortgage, with a fixed interest rate and you knew exactly what your payments were because they were laid out in the little book and you made a budget because you knew exactly how much you were going to bring home every week. As the payments stayed the same and as the salary went up, you could afford better things. So you fixed the house up and bought a better car and took vacations. You knew your employer was saving money for your retirement out of your paycheck and you knew how much you would get back from the government for all those years of paying taxes. You knew your house would be paid for and you were going to have a nice retirement at 65, enjoy the grandkids, take a few trips and finally have enough time to talk to your partner and enjoy the fruits of your labor.
I know at this point a lot of authors are going to say and then it all went wrong and they are going to point to two convenient targets: the down turn of religion and women’s lib. They are more or less afraid to mention the latter since women make up at least half the work force and they want to keep their readers. If we just beat those kiddies a little more in grade school, it will all go back to what it was, print “in god we trust on money” and require the pledge of allegiance to be said. Oh and make women be stay at home moms and pop out every fetus they accidentally get saddled with….I am not trying to sell you a membership in the local church, temple or whatever. I have nothing to sell you so what I see may be a little different.
There’s a slight problem with all of those reasons. The pledge was a new thing when I started school and that was back in the DAY. So it really had no influence over the previous generation that produced me. Women actually worked at menial jobs back then when the kids went back to school, but they were home by three when you got out of school just to make certain you did your homework and there was no microwave or fast food. There were TV dinners but - gasp - they took 45 minutes in the oven to cook. Someone had to get your food ready for dinner. Oh, school started at 8 every morning and ended at 3, five days a week with holidays off and you knew exactly when your next school year started so your parents could plan that summer vacation from the beginning of the school year or sometimes two years in advance.
Have you figured out what went wrong? Two simple elements: trust and consistency disappeared. You trusted your employer to save for your retirement, to give you a job if your worked your rear off and there would be advancement even if you just a middle ability worker. Heck, even after college most kids returned to the place they had that summer job as a manager and looked forward to someday running the place or maybe owning it if they saved enough to buy it. The bank wasn’t going to raise your house payment every six months because of skyrocketing property taxes or insurance. Your interest rate was never going to change because when you borrowed that money you agreed to pay it back at 3% interest and that bank made its budget out based on getting that 3% not 5, 8 or 32%. It lived within its means and you learned to live within yours. Otherwise, everyone looking at you with pity because you were obviously defective, tried to help you out and sometime you had to start over. There was no credit score. You were either reliable or not. You weren’t penalized for getting sick, just for bad judgment and not learning from your mistakes. The insurance company didn’t automatically raise your car insurance rates when Johnny turned 16 based solely on the fact he was 16, they waited until you said he was going to get the car keys after he got a license. They knew your parents were responsible for your actions and would pay for them and so did your parents. The didn’t want to lose what they had spent twenty years working for and you weren’t going to lose it for them because you had learned responsibility watching them, your manager at the A and P and the people around you. You knew with absolute certainty that if you worker, planned and saved you would have a good life and so would your children.
The problems we have today did not start at the bottom, with every Tom, Dick and Harry suddenly deciding to screw off and get something for nothing. They started at the top when you could no longer trust the company you worked for to have a job for you. You couldn’t trust the government not to tax you out of your home when you turned 65 or the year after you buy it. You couldn’t trust your insurance company to pay your claims but you certainly could trust them to be in bed with your government and bank and make it mandatory for you to have insurance. You certainly couldn’t trust your bank because their new goal was to take your house and sell it after they had made the loan price over and over again in interest and you were in danger of -gasp - actually paying your loan off and owning the piece of property. It didn’t start with religion going to the wayside. Oh yes, it went to the wayside but wasn’t that when you stopped trusting your church to help you as they were way more interested in a bigger building with more stained glass, thousands of bodies and plate full of donations. It wasn’t when women demanded equal rights because they had figured out that the government, banks, insurance companies and church certainly weren’t going to help them if anything happened to the bread winner. No, they were going to swoop in like vultures and pick their financial bones. This didn’t start with me and you, this started with the people, the good Christian people, we elected to look out for our best interests and instead sat around figuring how to get richer at our expense and how to get more and more power, that intoxicating drug when you know that poor piece of squirming humanity is at your total mercy. Judges no longer make decisions on the law but on what plays best on TV and how they feel that day. You are no longer rewarded for what you do but penalized for what you might do. You need a lawyer before you sign a receipt for anything because you can’t read the legalese and you know the guy handing you the pen is lying to you. You suddenly discovered you weren’t electing your representatives, you were electing paid drone for the big businesses that were so big you didn’t even know their names. Had you even heard of AIG before collapse? It 6 PM, do you know who your bank is today?
George coined a new phrase to describe today working class: Zombie Workers. You are already dead, you just aren’t certain if they are going to keep the body, sell you to another company or toss you out the door to be buried in refuse heap of the unemployed. And the guys holding the strings are the Zombie Banks: already dead and still eating all your money. Folks, the change has to come from the top down in this county. We, as individuals, can’t effect it from the bottom up any more. The problem is way too big. We have new leadership that knows that and also knows that one man can’t do it. It takes teams of the brightest and the best that still remember what the words social responsibility mean. Here’s a hint. It doesn’t mean socialism. We need to understand you can’t undo 30 years of down sliding and moral corruption that started at the top with lies, greed and power madness, in 3 months. It is going to take a lot of work, some real justice and a lot of money to replace what has been taken from us and we all need to do our part. What was taken from us is TRUST and that is really hard to restore. It no longer matters what your religion, color, sex or lack there of is. What will matter, if we are to come out of this, is what you are on the inside. Are you honorable? Do you honor your commitments? Are you willing to work for what you want? Are you willing to help the guy next door? Do you even know the guy next door? When you agree to something, will you keep your word? Will you stop lying and manipulating anyone in a lesser position so you have the advantage? Will you stop making fun of, looking down on and deriding those who aren’t as capable, smart, rich or good looking as you think you are just to make yourself feel better for a moment? Are you willing to embrace a new sense of honor, responsibility and reliability that recognizes only one ideal and one creed: being a good person that respects your fellow people. Because if you aren’t, prepare for more of the same and it getting a lot worse. Respect isn’t something that comes with a position, a spot on TV, a BMW, an I-phone or a designer outfit. It is something you earn by being a good person. When that isn’t the requirement and respect is forced, everything tumbles into chaos because then people come to the conclusion that respect is not earned, it is stolen by being the worst to get to top and that power will equal respect. And then my friends, as the Marie Antoinette learned, the revolution begins. That tears down everything and you will spend centuries rebuilding to just get to where you are today. Revolutions tend to replace the current evil with a lesser evil not a good.
So, today, take the time to stop and send an email to one person and just say, “If you need help, I will do my best to help you.” It might be some canned food, a shoulder to cry on or watching the kids while they are on a job interview, but I guarantee, the reward will feel better than a 50 dollar bill and it will start the ball rolling. Instead of calling zoning, offer to mow your neighbor’s yard, help fix their car or prop up that fence. Leave a bag of dog or cat food for a friend who having hard times and has a pet. Do something to restore the faith in humanity being humane. You can do it. My parents did it. I’ve done it. It doesn’t even hurt.