But Is It Food? Ceres Conjunct Pluto in Capricorn

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Dear Planet Waves Reader:

The first four discovered asteroids all changed signs recently, and are making interesting moves in their new homes. Ceres, the first discovered asteroid, is newly arrived in Capricorn, after a long retrograde that took her back over the Galactic Center in Sagittarius. She’s returned to Capricorn and on Tuesday is making a conjunction to Pluto.

Photo by Eric Francis.
Photo by Eric Francis.

Ceres and Pluto have an infamous relationship in mythology, owing to their claims on Persephone (pronounced per-seff-o-nee); she was the daughter of Ceres/Demeter, and the consort of Pluto/Hades. Ceres is the Earth Mother of mythology and astrology, with associations to both food and mother-daughter relationships. On the latter topic, she signifies the bonding between mothers and daughters that is often about moms who don’t let go of their female children and strive to run their lives. There are also stories of loss, apropos of Ceres losing her daughter to the lord of the underworld, where (during the winter, anyway) she is the queen.

Ceres is also about balance: the myth is an explanation of how the seasons work, which is a story of equilibrium. So you can apply Ceres themes to any aspect of life that depends on processes involving cyclical balance. One of them is food, one of the basic themes covered by Ceres. Combining this with Pluto and Capricorn, we get an image of the way that the corporate system tries to control everything we eat, and in the process offers us what is eatable but not really edible. In our society, one of the most out of balance issues is food, which includes the economics of food production and availability; the availability of products in different regions, and the distribution of knowledge.

Ceres conjunct Pluto has a get-serious feeling to it, and a touch of life-or-death struggle. In trying to reclaim food, we come up against what The New York Times described Sunday as “some of the most sophisticated, powerful corporate interests in the world.” Most of them have more on their minds than putting dinner on the table.

Monsanto, which has taken over the seed industry during the past 20 years with its genetically modified organisms, recently hired Xe Services, formerly Blackwater — a company that rents out mercenary armies. In the past, Monsanto has been involved in providing Agent Orange to the military, as well as many instances of contamination within the food supply process, and conducting fraudulent safety testing to cover up the dangers.

The corporate food machine has given us many things that are not really food: hybridized and genetically modified wheat that has a ridiculously high gluten content; a country that gets 40% of its calories from high fructose corn syrup, which clogs the arteries and causes diabetes; numerous products still containing trans fats; dairy products and meats laced with toxins, stimulants and antibiotics — all of it standard fare. If we’re wondering why the cancer rate is about 50%, we need to wonder no more.

Photo by Eric Francis.
Photo by Eric Francis.

At the same time, we are seeing a renewal of local farming. This is part of a wider movement oriented on ‘organic’ foods, many of which have the life processed out of them as much as ordinary foods. Check out this discussion of ‘organic’ supermarket eggs on Mercola.com.

It’s true that the designation ‘organic’ can be truly helpful with certain vegetables and other products, such as rice. It can make a difference in the toxicity of the food, and it can signify that it’s non-GMO, since that violates the standards for organic food.

Organic farming, done right, takes a whole different approach to the planet and how she produces food. Something in Europe called biodynamic farming is an even better example of working with the cycles of the Earth in order to get helpful results. Remember that in this game of eating actual food, it’s not just the label ‘organic’ that’s going to save us. It’s being aware of what we actually eat and where it comes from. Food that’s processed or fractioned (such as white flour or refined sugar) has many of the same problems whether it’s organic or not.

It is true that organic helps. It’s also true that megabusiness is taking over the concept of organic food faster than we realize. And there is the difficulty discerning what is what. Some of this is about labeling; some is about how food is distributed. One of the most significant challenges we face is genetically modified or GMO grains, which are often sold unlabeled on the open market. Mostly banned in Europe, Americans are constantly eating GMO wheat, corn, potatoes and many other foods. What I find interesting is how submissive most people are, acting as if it’s some kind of trivial fact, or the ‘thing of the future’ that we’re going to have to live with no matter what.

We don’t want Monsanto in this business — it’s the same company that had entire factories contaminated with PCBs, and that sent out everyday household products (such as Lysol) knowingly, and preventably, contaminated with dioxin for years.

Ceres-Pluto in Capricorn is a call to revolution in what we eat and where we get it. It is an invitation to know the people who produce our food. Ridiculous as it seems, in many places (with love and attention, and hopefully a farmer’s market) it is possible. Whole products are better: that is, actual potatoes rather than frozen French fries, or actual ground beef from a butcher or supermarket meat counter rather than from a packing plant.

Local is indeed better: smaller-scale farming, using far less energy to transport the products, if you can get it. There are many communities where small-scale food production simply does not happen, though the number of family farms finally seems to be increasing many places for the first time in generations. A return to small-scale farming would indeed be a revolution, and one that will eventually prove itself to be inevitable as it ceases to be profitable to ship broccoli 2,000 miles.

Mostly though what we need is a revolution in our minds, involving the definition of what we consider food. There is something about learning from our grandparents here; there is something about creating the time and energy to incorporate more wholesome and aware food choices into our lives. It is amazing how little we know.

As I’ve written before, I have celiac. This means I cannot eat food containing or contaminated with wheat or several other grains (such as barley or rye). It also means that every time I eat out, I have a conversation with the server about how the food is prepared and what it contains. That, in turn, is like ongoing sociology research into what people in the food industry know about food.

At least five times, someone has said to me some version of, “Really? There’s wheat in pasta?”

Yours & truly,
Eric Francis

The table below lists the Pluto-Ceres conjunction on a 90-degree sort (cardinal cross).

Table below lists the position of Persephone on a 90-degree sort (fixed cross)

26 thoughts on “But Is It Food? Ceres Conjunct Pluto in Capricorn”

  1. Another retro question I have for you all,

    It seems it was in the late 50’s and 60s that all the processed food was born? TV dinners. And remember TANG and PDQ drink mixes. Tang was advertised as having something to do with Astronauts? It was fake orange juice. And pop tarts. Space food? And most of those kinds of foods were dehydrated and using the technology of the day and relating it to our new found ability to travel out to space and walk on the moon?

  2. Hey Fe,
    Thanks, I was hoping someone would pick up on that.

    Switching gears a bit, going back in reverse to my earlier comment about the very very large fruits and vegetables I find in the supermarkets. What got me to worrying about the size, I just remembered last night. It was actually an episode from Gilligan’s Island.

    My memory may be skewed, but a crate of seeds floated on shore and I think they were labelled radioactive or some such thing, but the cast planted a garden anyway and the fruits were HUGE. And they ate them and the properties associated with the fruits were also exponentially increased. So, MaryAnne ate a bunch of carrots and she saw a ship out on the horizon but it was too far away for anyone else to see. I dont remember the other one’s but I think Gilligan got really strong probably from the spinach or something, and I think Mrs. Howell got really smart from eating beets. I dont remember how it ended…does anyone know what vegetable is good for restoring memory? 🙂

  3. It also seems that we have in the Persephone myth a story about how captives often take on the agenda of the captor (the Patty Hearst syndrome).

    This could be an explaination regarding her change of character once secured in the underworld.

    Certainly a suggestion about what might be in store for a girl when taken from her mothers arms – does she like it or not? Up to the girl. Some might, some might pine for mom, not husband.

    In either case, eating the fruit – or drinking the koolaid – is a symbol of the change in circumstance whether that be judged for better or worse.

    This myth has always felt to me like a not-so-well-contrived composite. The “seasons” part being put there as a sort of after thought to a story that originally had much more to tell.

    I agree hy re: Eve – the uncompromised story is in Lilith.

  4. ::::slowly recovering from my annual fall sinus infectionand ear infection::::
    I have been absent due tro illness but this article is one I must comment on.

    First, growing the “trinity” (corn, beans and squash) is fine…unless you have poly cystic ovvarian syndrome (with the hyperinsulinemia and insulin resistance that comes with it). The corn and beans are waaaay too carby for hyperinsulinemic folks (like me) or PCOs folks. We cannot eat even complex carbs that much without our insulin spiking horrendously and adding fat layers on us. I have lost 97 lbs since May 14th because I stopped eating carby foods, period. I kid you not. I also stopped eating (and feeding my family) any processed foods and high fructose corn syrup laced foods. My teen girls dropped weight even though they were NOT dieting. The preservatives and HFCS were keeping their weight up (and we didn’t drink sodas at all before I changed).

    I now shop at the local CSA for more and more of the foods we eat and I make my own sauces, (BBQ sauce, ketchup, mustard, mayo, etc) because I know what is in them. I now either make my own bread (Ceres, there ya go) or buy it at the natural foods store (because the one I buy has no trans fats, no HFCS, no white wheat, no sugar (sweetened with honey or maple syrup) and no HFCS.

    The end result is, our whole family is eating healthier and desipet these past few weeks of seasonal illness among us (virus going around and allergies that went into secondary bacterial infections that didn’t respond to the usual home remedies) we are healthy.

    We also grew some food in our back yard this year, mostly lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes, green beans (they are low carb), zucchini, scallions, and snap peas. We grew some corn (for the kids to see how it grows) but our short growing season (we are 7000 feet up in the mountains) means they haven’t ripened yet.

    If we look at Eve, we can see that despite the patriarchal moves to villify her, she had the balls to eat the fruit of knowledge. SHE had the searching mind that bestowed on all humanity the knowledge of good and evil whereas Adam, like a sheep, followed “god” and was content to wallow in perpetual ignorance. To me, this equates Eve with Promethius who stole fire (which is a metaphor for knowledge just as light is and fruit is) and gave it to humans. Her gift is both our greatest asset and our most dangerous downfall depending on how we choose to use it. As J K Rowling wrote in Harry Potter “It is not our abilities that make us who we are; it is our CHOICES” (Dumbledore said it to Harry).

    Ok I am spent. Back to resting. My twin daughters turn 18 tomorrow and I have to rest up to celebrate their milestone (and my husband’s and mine for getting them there safely and able to think for themselves).

    They will vote for the first time on Nov. 2nd. I am excited for them!

  5. Thank you for the great article.

    The personal is political for sure, this week the local paper anounced backyard gardens in clallam county rose 65% this year and many more people have chickens within the city limits.

    My local Sequim WA citizens now have the (Sequim Local Grown Merchentile) where I can buy almost everything (except olive oil and coffee) I need and consume that is grown and produced within a 20 mile radius.
    This including a certified organic raw milk dairy, many organic vegi farms, organic meats, organic soaps, and gmo free organic grain crops that are milled here, and an in the works small scale humane organic/kosher slaughterhouse-as now local meat producers have to go to oregon to for organic fda approved slaughter facilities.

    As a small farmer/herbalist I get to also sell my organic herbal medicinals and botanicals there and it really makes me feel connected to the land and people to participate recipricoly as farmer and consumer.
    It has made a huge difference in how I feel physicaly and spiritualy about my community and feel we are a sort of model for how and that it can be done.
    We all models wherever we are and what ever level we are participating in the dance of now.
    A side effect of all this is that many cool programs have been implemented that include a healthy real food school lunch program with our local organics, a senior food program, and a food vegi/fruit gleaning program where a volunteer group will come to your farm and harvest what you can’t use to feed the hungry and help the food bank with real wholesome food, local classes in permaculture and biodynamic aproach to gardening/farming, canning classes and more have all spun off.

    It seems like it all happened really fast but it was people like long time Organic farmer Nash Hubbard and others that were and are so dedicated to educating the locals.
    I know I am sooo blessed to have this available in my town.
    My blessing would be that all people can have this in thier areas too.
    Victoria

  6. Fe: thank you for the interesting comparison. I was the one curious if there was any similarities/correlations between Persephone and Eve. My first take on in was that from the psychological point of view – Eve ate the fruit of (conscious) knowledge, whereas Persephone took a bite of – and gained access to – the sub/unconcscious.

    Another thing that interests me is the role Persephone herself played in this myth. From reading a bit it is pretty clear what Ceres/Demeter wants and what Pluto/Hades wants. They both want Persephone. But what is her preference/opinion/feeling about it? It can only be implied, because it is nowhere to be found in the text (please correct me if I’m wrong).

    Interesting thing is that at the beginning she is portrayed as a naive and compliant girl, “an innocent maiden”. In the later part of the myth she is “the dread queen of the Underworld, whose very name it was forbidden to speak” or “the Iron Queen”[in Odysseus]. I’m curious about that shift – about her psychological process of becoming the Iron Queen (with “dread gaze” that “mercifully relinquished a subject [only] once”). What are her feelings? It seems like a pretty big change in her personality – or maybe it suggest a natural process of maturing? And what happens to the Iron Queen when she goes back to the surface and to her mother for part of the year (it’s hard to imagine that she can fit herself back into this parent-child relationship).

    My questions relate to the mother-daughter dynamic, that Eric mentioned in his article: “Ceres is the Earth Mother of mythology and astrology, with associations to both food and mother-daughter relationships. On the latter topic, she signifies the bonding between mothers and daughters that is often about moms who don’t let go of their female children and strive to run their lives.”

    All quotes are from the wikipedia page that Eric posted earlier: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persephone

  7. I signed up for a local CSA program this year and I LOVE it! For $21/week I get “enough organic produce to feed two people for a week” (it’s actually more like three people). This particular organization goes beyond organic. They apply the latest in organic soil science to balance soil minerals and enhance soil biological health, use biodynamic farming practices, and rural water only. It’s been wonderful.

  8. On the Gnostic Eve by wiki:

    Eve in Gnosticism

    Eve too has different roles within Gnosticism. For example she is often seen as the embodiment of the supreme feminine principle, called Barbelo (from Arb-Eloh), barbeloth, or barthenos. As such she is equated with the Light-Maiden of Sophia (Wisdom), creator of the word (Logos) of God, the “thygater tou photos” or simply the Virgin Maiden, “parthenos”. In other texts she is equated with Zoe (Life) [13]. Again, in conventional Christianity, this is a prefigurement of Mary, also sometimes called “the Second Eve”. In other Gnostic texts, such as The Hypostasis of the Archons (The Reality of the Rulers), the Pistis Sophia is equated with Eve’s daughter, Norea, the wife of Seth.

    As a result of such Gnostic beliefs, especially among Marcionites, women were considered equal to men, being revered as prophets, teachers, travelling evangelists, faith healers, priests and even bishops.

  9. Hey hypnotic:

    I place no judgement on the myth of Eve or of Persephone, I believe all myths began somewhere as one person or persons telling a story, most likely the same story, and that story got changed with time and the needs of the teller (in the case of the dark version of Eve, the Judeo-Christian power structure).

    That said, I firmly believe Eve, Persephone and Inanna “knew” death in their journeys and that makes them quite similar. By bringing together the Persephone-Inanna similarities to the story of Eve, this was a means to free Eve from Christian dogma that denigrates her. The banishment of Eve, I think, is a bullshit construct that has been used as a bogeyman to subjugate women. Eve got a bad rap. It was the company who re-fashioned her for their benefit that done her in.

  10. No, there is not a correlation between Persephone and Eve.

    Persephone ate the seed and she is the seed. It was her choice and she is queen. She is the growth of the fruith of the seed, its harvest and its dormant potential. Persephone is symbolic of the earth and its cyclical seasons and its relative bounty.

    Eve is a freaky bastardization of Persephone at its best correlation. The only similarity is that she ate the fruit, but not the seed. She did not become the queen, she was evicted, outcast. She had no relation to earth or a mother, No one to negotiate for her freedom. She was an adjunct and afterthought and the root of all humankind’s problems.

    Why did you get me started ERIC? I want TO SLEEP TONIGHT damn it~!!

    xo
    Persephone
    (I can never spell my name rite)

  11. Fe,
    You are absolutely brilliant. Humbled i am. Humbled and grateful.

    As a side-effect, any motivation i may have had remaining to get married is pretty much gone now. Geez Louise.

  12. Eve and Persephone are not alone. There is also Inanna, a Sumerian goddess who represented the woman’s journey to the underworld to be re-born.

    Here’s the wiki on Inanna and the Underworld

    Inanna’s reason for visiting the underworld is unclear. The reason she gives to the gatekeeper of the underworld is that she wants to attend her brother-in-law Gud-gal-ana’s funeral rites. Gugalana was the Bull of Heaven in The Epic of Gilgamesh, killed by Gilgamesh and Enkidu.

    In this story, before leaving Inanna instructed her minister and servant Ninshubur to plead with the gods Enlil, Nanna, and Enki to save her if anything went wrong, because everyone that went to the Underworld never came back.

    Inanna dresses elaborately for the visit, with a turban, a wig, a lapis lazuli necklace, beads upon her breast, the ‘pala dress’ (the ladyship garment), mascara, pectoral, a golden ring on her hand, and she held a lapis lazuli measuring rod. These garments are each representations of powerful mes she possesses. Perhaps Inanna’s garments, unsuitable for a funeral, along with Inanna’s haughty behaviour, make Ereshkigal suspicious[15].

    Following Ereshkigal’s instructions, the gatekeeper tells Inanna she may enter the first gate of the underworld, but she must hand over her lapis lazuli measuring rod. She asks why, and is told ‘It is just the ways of the Underworld’. She obliges and passes through. Inanna passes through a total of seven gates, at each one removing a piece of clothing or jewelry she had been wearing at the start of her journey, thus stripping her of her power.

    When she arrives in front of her sister, she is naked. “After she had crouched down and had her clothes removed, they were carried away. Then she made her sister Erec-ki-gala rise from her throne, and instead she sat on her throne. The Anna, the seven judges, rendered their decision against her. They looked at her — it was the look of death. They spoke to her — it was the speech of anger. They shouted at her — it was the shout of heavy guilt. The afflicted woman was turned into a corpse. And the corpse was hung on a hook.”

    EreÅ¡kigal’s hate for Inanna could be referenced in a few other myths. EreÅ¡kigal is seen as an accidental ‘black sheep’ of sorts.[citation needed] She can not leave her kingdom of the Underworld to join the other ‘living’ gods, and they can not visit her in the Underworld, or else they can never return. Inanna symbolized erotic love and fertility, and contrasts with EreÅ¡kigal.

    Three days and three nights passed, and Ninshubur, following instructions, went to Enlil, Nanna, and Enki’s temples, and demanded they save Inanna. The first two gods refused, saying it was her own mess, but Enki was deeply troubled and agreed to help. He created two asexual figures named gala-tura and the kur-jara from the dirt under the fingernails of the gods. He instructed them to appease EreÅ¡kigal; and when asked what they wanted, they were to ask for Inanna’s corpse and sprinkle it with the food and water of life. However, when they come before Ereshkigal, she is in agony like a woman giving birth, and she offers them what they want, including life-giving rivers of water and fields of grain, if they can relieve her; nonetheless they take only the corpse.

    Things went as Enki said, and the gala-tura and the kur-jara were able to revive Inanna. Demons of EreÅ¡kigal’s followed (or accompanied) Inanna out of the underworld, and insisted that she wasn’t free to go until someone took her place. They first came upon Nincurba and asked to take her. Inanna refused, saying she had helped her as she had asked. They next came upon Cara, Inanna’s beautician, still in mourning. The demons said they would take him, but Inanna refused, for he had been there for her. They next came upon Lulal, also in mourning. The demons offered to take him, but Inanna refused.

    They next came upon Dumuzi, Inanna’s husband. He was sitting in nice clothing underneath a tree and enjoying himself, despite his wife supposedly still being missing in the underworld. Inanna, displeased, decrees that the demons shall take him – and herself uses the same “look of death” etc. that was previously used upon her by Ereshkigal. Dumuzi tried to escape his fate, but a fly told Inanna and the demons where he was. However, Dumuzi’s sister, out of love for him, begged to be allowed to take his place. It was then decreed that Dumuzi spent half the year in the underworld, and his sister take the other half.

    Inanna eventually regrets sending her husband to the underworld and begins to miss him. The fertility that she controls with her godly powers begins to fade when she misses her husband during the 6 months that he is in the underworld a year. This infertile time corresponds to the fall and winter months. When her husband’s sister is in the underworld and Dumuzi is with Inanna, everything is filled with love and with life; this time corresponds to Spring and Summer.

  13. ok, I will bite.

    Eric:

    Eve and Persephone are the same myth of birth and death encompassed as a whole and as embodied in the fruit.

    The womb, which belongs to woman, is the actual and metaphorical fruit the beginning and the end as one.

  14. Eric,
    Thank you for the chart. The conjunction of Industria and Persephone in not recent news. They have been flying in formation longer than a Hollywood marriage. What is more current is the now-separating oppositions in Scorpio.

    Apophis, which moves around the zodiac faster than the Sun, is the only thing on your ephemeris that has potential (very, very small chance) to collide with Earth. There’s an extreme conjunction for you. As with most minor planets the myth is not the whole story. In spite of its Earth-orbit-crossing status and the Sun-eater myth i like to think of it as a validating witness.

    Siva is another way of saying “check your arms at the door” Shiva. Creator and destroyer at once. The long standing Taurus conjunction opposed to the short-lived Scorpio conjunction would seem to indicate that this blog is well-timed.

  15. Great article.

    Also Luna’s north node is only a couple of degrees away from Ceres/Pluto, closing in on a conjunction. The future of food is at stake and thus the future of humans. Capricorn is the sign of reality checks that don’t bounce. Lots of small farms within our cities is something that’s starting to happen all over Portland, the Left one. A diversity of small farms is more likely to persist long term than huge industrial operations that poison the land and deplete the soil by planting all the same thing, usually corn and then smothering it in “fertilizer” and pesticides. A bunch of small farms have a better chance of surviving a disaster that wipes out one kind of plant. Plants who grow together can also help one another survive better than adding poison to the soil.

    An old American Indian tradition called the 3 sisters is a really easy way, at least with the climate here in the northwest, to start learning about the interrelationship of plants. The 3 sisters are corn, beans and squash. Around summer solstice the corn is planted. When the corn is 4-5 inches tall the beans can be planted around the corn and pumpkins or other winter squash planted nearby. The beans are the fertilizer, and of course compost always helps. Beans fix nitrogen to the soil and that’s the key ingredient in the toxic fertilizers that kill parts of the Gulf of Mexico every year when the rains wash them down the Mississippi. Sure it makes it harder to harvest with gigantic machines, but with a whole bunch of small farms instead of a few monster gigantic ones you don’t need monster machines to harvest. If everyone does a little, no one has to do a lot.

    The beans also spiral up the corn stalks and help strengthen it against the wind. In the garden I planted earlier this year a rottweiler knocked over some of the corn plants and the beans helped pull them back up so that within a week you couldn’t tell anything had happened to them. The pumpkin vines repel pests and the gigantic leaves close to the ground shade the soil to prevent water evaporating in the late summer sun. Once the beans got big enough to spiral around the corn everything in the garden started growing faster. I planted too late to get much of a harvest (August) but the corn and squash had greener, more voluminous leaves than any other similar plants I’ve seen around town…all of them without beans and most planted so that the corn is “knee high by the 4th of July” which is about the time of the Cancer solstice in the north where I live.

    Cool thing about these plants is that they all produce abundant food on a small patch of land that can easily be preserved throughout the winter. I know, not everyone has a yard, but maybe you live in an apartment where you could collaborate with your neighbors to make a small farm on the roof. a 10X10 space is enough. You can even build something so that the pumpkins can climb and have more space to produce fruit. Between the corn and beans, or even the squash seeds and the squash guts and flesh you get a complete, gluten free vegan protein.

  16. First let’s start with two things — the myth, explicated by the Wikipedians. This is likely to have a Western academic bias, so let’s be on the lookout for that. However it covers the basics of the story in a reasonably balanced way.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persephone

    Second is the position of the asteroid Persephone, which I have included as a graphic at the end of the article, from the Serennu ephemeris by Tracy D.

    What you have here is called a 90-degree sort. I’ve listed Pesephone and then all the planets within a few degrees on the same cross, which in this case is the fixed cross. She is at the Taurus midpoint, and interestingly, exactly conjunct Industria, apropos of the concept of industrial food we’re discussing today.

    The vehicle by which she stays in Hades is food: she eats (is supposedly tricked into eating) a few pomegranate seeds. Thus she becomes the Queen of the Underworld.

  17. Eric, does Persephone ever speak up (in mythology and astrology)? Or is she just a passive bystander watching Ceres and Pluto duke it out? What is her role?

    many thanks,
    klara

  18. Hi Eric,

    I am writing because I think my chart and the current transits might be interesting for you to see. I am having the most literal venus retrograde, ever, and what you’ve been writing about Ceres has really hit home. On October 17th, a cyst on my ovary ruptured and caused internal bleeding that made me lose over 2 liters of blood. I’m on the mend after surgery- but some of the interesting things that have happened because of this are: hearing from a lot of old friends, my mom and stepdad coming to visit me from out of town for the first time in years, taking time off of work during the busiest period- and during a stressful time with my female boss, and my partner (who is a married man) being my primary caregiver and meeting my parents, cooking my meals, etc. That’s just the surface sketch. I looked at my chart, and Ceres now is transiting my third house and is  square my natal Ceres, which is in the first house. I also have pluto square pluto right now and my saturn return just started. Also venus retrograde is smack on top of natal ceres. Your astrological and political coverage has always been one minute ahead– your recent articles on the Chilean miners and Ceres especially resonate with me now.

    The cyst itself formed as part of a whole body imbalance called Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS). I recommend you read a little about it if you haven’t heard of it- it is quickly becoming, if not already, the most common gynecological disorder. It is related to insulin resistance AKA how our bodies process food. It is also, I’m sure, related to environmental exposure to petrochemicals. It’s the food I eat that creates the hormones that regulate my fertility. Plastic food can short circuit our body systems and there’s a lot of plastic food masquerading as real food out there. Speaking of fertility in these scientific terms feels especially 21st century. As a result of the surgery and losing all of this blood, I was prescribed a diet of “red meat and leafy greens.”

    This is just a quick sketch of how Ceres, Venus, Pluto and Saturn are playing out in my world. Your subscriber articles have helped me see this time as the back door opportunity it is. Thank you.

    Sincerely,
    Nicole

  19. yes, imagine much conventional produce is grown large through conventionally icky means. though strangely a local organic farm where i live is turning out the biggest, prettiest veggies you could imagine. are they dirt cheap? no. but they do seem to be testament to what can be grown on a small-scale farm with careful attention to ethical soil maintenance/management and diligent care.

    and that detroit meal was a real eye-opener. wow.

  20. Something I noticed lately. The produce at the grocery stores — its HUGE, onions the size of my head and green beans the length of my arm. I could snack on one pear for 3 days. (ok, I’m exaggerating, just a bit). There just seems something not natural about them.

    But then I go to the local grown organic produce at the Natural Foods Co-op and the fruits are well they look normal, nice and small with beautiful color and flavor.

    Its freaky…

  21. Hi Eric

    This is a GREAT article, one of my biggest fights. I will use the information you have presented here to help educate others as it will supplement my existing presentations.

    I recently shared a meal prepared for me by African Americans living in low income areas of Detroit, Michigan. This was a very special meal where they wanted to impress and share their culture. The main course was a frozen, meat lasagna, served with frozen ‘texas toast’, chicken wings, macaroni with cheese, and hot sauce. Nothing fresh, nothing prepared, just heat it up right out of the package. Then to top of the meal were servings of white granulated sugar to not sprinkle, but dump on top of the lasagna!

    This is my first article after subscribing to your service and I am very excited about receiving such articles, wisdom, insight and guidance. Thank you,

    Sincerely, Anthony

  22. To Mistah Blue and Crew:

    Mmm mmm mmm, delicious!! Love the sensuality of the pics, rich colors-divine!
    Love the food for thought! Standing ovation, and brav-oh!! This discussion could not have come at a better time!
    As always, when I can make the time-one of the best parts of my day

    Love and Light and all that’s right to you and yours!

    Namaste

    sophie

  23. Hey Eric,

    I love this article on food. Something on my mind a lot lately. It might be worth mentioning that biodynamic isn’t just in Europe; it’s actually huge in this country, and there’s a big biodynamic farm only about an hour away. I go there sometimes. The same philosophy behind biodynamics is also behind the Waldorf teaching I’m involved with… check out the farm school’s community at this link, if you feel like it. http://www.hawthornevalleyfarm.org/

    Jenny

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