Dear relatives,
How are you? As we enter the Solstice, I’ve been listening to “Quasheba, Quasheba,” a song by Our Native Daughters, a stunning group of four black female banjo players, Amythyst Kiah, Allison Russell, Leyla McCalla, and Rhiannon Giddens. While I listen, my heart is heavy with the reminder that every day, people are vanishing, plucked from their families, communities, and homes, just as they were at the onset of the founding of this country.
I have another poem to share today. First, let’s thread together about Juneteenth.
June 19, 2025, marks 160 years since the symbolic end of slavery in the United States. In 1865, two years after Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, federal troops arrived in Galveston, TX, to announce that all enslaved people would be freed.
Not long after slavery was abolished, state and local statutes found new ways to legalize segregation and a racial caste system known as the Black Codes and Jim Crow. These policies would last for another 100 years, ending in the late 1970s, and their impact further tethered white supremacy to the foundation of the nation.
This year, the moment of Juneteenth occurs on Thursday, Jupiter’s Day, bringing with it a magnification of the Jupiter-Neptune square. This relationship speaks to a big-picture vision, dream, or aspiration. It calls into question what we believe and where we put our faith. It can erode or fog. It can expand or evangelize. But, as every story has multiple entry points, it can also see through and into the spirit of something or someone.
As I was looking at the (untimed) chart for Juneteenth, I noticed that the transiting North Node in Pisces is conjoined with Juneteenth’s Chiron within a 3° orb. Furthermore, Juneteenth’s South Node in Aries is conjoined with transiting Chiron within a 2° orb. There is a thread here that illuminates the transition between Pisces and Aries, between mutable Water and cardinal Fire. The transition is familiar. We experience it at every seasonal shift, such as the Summer Solstice. This transit also connects the storyline of wounding and healing, past and future. It stretches the memory, moving into and back through time to the moment that attempted to end enslavement in this country. It also opens its mouth onto the shores of the current day and asks that we notice the patterns that have emerged since 1865.
The breath of Uranus is also wafting into the story, giving a final push before entering into the sign of Gemini on July 7th. Sitting at the final degrees of Taurus, it expresses an urgency for radical change. And, it is doing so in the place where the soil is fixed, that is, in the Earth sign of Taurus. There is a thread here that speaks to a necessity, a yearning that whatever is breaking through will endure, be stabilized, embodied, and grounded.
As the planet of change and upheaval moves into the last degrees of Gemini, there is an opportunity to breathe into the unfurling transformation that Uranus is nudging forth, to look deep into the eye of the storm and not look away from the chaos. When I think about this signature, a quote by Arundhati Roy comes to mind. As Roy writes, “Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”
And now, the poem:
Origins
This right here
is everything.
This dreaming-mind
in the shape of a heart.
This feeling-vision,
this light and prayer.
This eye and that,
a pair.This hand, left
and right,
front and back,
make a fist.Keep the story,
hold it tight.
This is a tool,
a way forward.This is a finger
pointing to place-time
scanning the sky,
to find the altars.Wandering and fixed,
call on constellations
to bring them
down and within.One by one,
spread them out
over the soil.
This is your blood.More than words
can comprehend.
This is freedom,
your divine rite.Sirius said,
we are people
of the stars.
We bring magic.Come from sky,
birthed in water.
Red clay bodies,
spirits sacred.
Thank you, thank you, for being here. Wishing you many blessings on this Juneteenth and Summer Solstice.
Until the next one,
Christian
p.s. Music is a storytelling technology that emerges from every culture. For as long as humans have been on this planet, we’ve found a way to carry on the resonance within and between Earth and Sky by making sounds through creative experimentation. Woven into the body of every newsletter, I share a song I’ve been listening to as an offering and ritual to express my gratitude.
p.s.s. I recently watched a retrospective on the work of mixed-media artist Danielle Scott and loved it!
Oooohhh this music is 🔥. Thank you for your words and musical taste 💕