Caroline Casey – Liberating the Citizen Trickster in You

Council 1: Story Craft
Becoming Trickster Medicine Storytellers

This is one Winter we need not be depressed, if we go deep enough to gather our jaunty, spirited woof. Our willingness to be agents of Citizen Trickster magnetizes help. There’s no need to journey alone, co-operators are standing by! Some are mythological. Some are ancestral, fictional, historic or in fairy tales.

Neptune in Pisces makes available all that has ever moved the human heart to goodness and kinship. We begin calling in the Medicine of Earth’s collective wisdom and setting in motion themes that we’ll carry with us throughout our journey.

In our first Trickster Council, we’ll:

• Convene our first Coyote Council of Cultural Influence and begin to create a resonant field of reciprocal blessing to support our dream projects, known and unknown
• Consider our lives as spiritual detective novels in which every quirky affinity is a clue to be honored
• Explore the Grail Legend, which begins, “The land is ill, due to the abuse of rank and privilege, and that people are living inauthentic lives.” Trickster Medicine is that which restores us to our authentic selves
• See that myths never end, they get put on “pause,” so we hit “play!”
• Explore “pragmatic mysticism” to tease from everything we’ve ever loved, studied, done, practical applications to make our own lives tangibly better
• Begin our experiment in creating a syncretized and customized Trickster, who will accompany us throughout our journey
• Invite in Scheherazade, quintessential Compassionate Trickster who, through her plucky eloquence, saves not only women and the land, but even the tyrant who has hardened his heart. She holds a Valentine’s bouquet of stories whereby humans can be healed by the earth in order to heal the earth
• Start our practice of diagnosing the “news” — to understand what mythic forces are in play and become savvy agents of influence. The liberating hyphen reveals to us… dia-gnosis! (dia means “everywhere,” gnosis is “wisdom.” So all dia-gnosis is part of healing because it magnetizes the specific wisdom needed)
• Commence rewriting the world by writing witty headlines that animate the soul — the desirable vision — for America and the world
• Big pertinent assignment: discerning the distinction between the Con Man and the Trickster. The former imprisons, the latter liberates

Council 2: Cultivating Reverent Irreverence & Compassion With Sizzle Liberating Democracy

Everything wants to be liberated from conditioned servitude into a way of life that enhances our vitality and serves the world. Reverent Irreverence encourages us to toss everything into the Winter Cauldron — every spiritual practice, every strategy, every opinion — with the criterion: “Is it equal, Mars and Venus? Humans and our flora fauna kin? Is the Trickster welcome? Can the truth be addressed without fear?” Yes?! We ladle it out. No? We throw it back in for another round of bubbling and brewing.

We’ll let go of repetitive patterns and self-sabotage and learn how to fully co-operate with our fellow humans, not only in our personal sphere but in our culture.

In our second Trickster shift, we’ll:

• Cook everything back to its originating impulse. What did this want to be, before it got hoodwinked? And offer ourselves as creative collaborators to that holy spark
• Welcome Coyote, who hurls lightning at the closed story loop, opening the circle of constraining habit into a liberating spiral of wild possibility
• Toss our addiction to having an enemy into the cauldron, along with our desire to punish, and ladle out a desire to liberate and heal!
• Learn how to navigate the Underworld when external support dissolves
• Reclaim the art of blessing, informed by the wisdom of Jupiter
• Gather our medicine stories to bless each person’s project that they undertake, and honor the crucial teaching of Ally Etiquette: teasing democracy into every fibre of our being
• Explore whether our manner of relating is an offering? Serves Liberation. Or an imposition, serves tyranny…? we’ll wonder and discern

Council 3: Breaking Old Spells
Taking New Vows With Saturn & Uranus Setting Free the Past by Becoming Disciplined Wild People

“Disciplined wild” is not really a contradiction. What we call wild nature is incredibly disciplined, much like wolves, which also embody inspiring models of leadership.

So we call in the wolves.

We all take vows, as young people, an assessment of “reality” and what we must do to survive. And they are necessary and useful. For a time. But then they go blub blub blub — into the unconscious, where they are no longer useful vows but binding spells. (We will also address, and rummage through ancestral vows and spells we may have taken on.)

When we gather in this manner, we can toss into the Underworld River all outworn vows and ladle out new more useful vows. Whatever we do for ourselves grants us the spiritual muscle tone to do that same thing in the world. Humans are sorely in need of breaking old spells and taking new vows.

In our third Trickster shift, we’ll:

• Begin “insourcing” everything we’ve been outsourcing and de-conditioning ourselves to become agents of principles — rather than subjects of laws — via The Gurdjieffian Levels of Consciousness teaching
• Liberate our discernment to quicken our strategic savvy
• See how to become directors of our own movie
• Explore the wonderful world of “complicity” and see, without shame or blame, how we are complicitous in whatever is going on
• Inhale our complicitous creative chi from the undesirable, and exhale into the desirable
• Suck the “g” out of “kingdom”: exhale it everywhere — leaving us with “kindom.” The Kindom of Heaven is at hand!

Council 4: Dedicated Acts of Beauty Invite Power Into the World
The Dance of Venus & Mars

The world is being destroyed by uninitiated Mars. Mars without Venus equals a hyper-yang death frenzy. Throughout mythological history ‘tis Venus who initiates Mars. Where there is war, let there be Art. Venus magnetizes and invites in the desirable then hands it to Mars to animate. (And Venus and Mars are not the same as masculine and feminine, for they both dance within us all in unique customized ways).

Venus says: “If all war is a failure of Imagination and Beauty, then all peace is a triumph of Imagination and Beauty.”

In this Trickster shift, we’ll:

• Welcome Inanna, whose 2500-year-old Sumerian myth contains the orbital cycle of Venus and teaches us that those who survive the journey to the Underworld earn the opportunity to be cultural Trickster Redeemers
• Discover navigational tips on what gets us through the Underworld when conventional external support dissolves. What must we die to, lest we die from?
• Practice loving disharmony back into harmony greater than existed before
• Invoke Venusian energy to magnetize what we desire

Council 5: The Liberating Magic of Language

This council is dedicated to the magic of language and the art of critique and blessing. We’ll explore spicy satire and compassion with sizzle. Let us be surprising and thus liberating. Linguistic precision guides the vision, and hums our mythological DNA.

For example, we’ll experiment with replacing the word “trauma” with the phrase “my dangerous, beautiful assignment.” Our assignment is to make the Medicine from that poison. We’ll explore the liberating effect of replacing “got to” with “get to.” (“Got to” is out-sourced Saturn, authority turned into obligation, which of course creates resistance, while “Get to” engages our autonomous enthusiasm at the generous opportunity before us.”)

In this Trickster shift, we’ll:

• Liberate our truth-telling response and clothe it in metaphor
• Harness the power of Uranus and Mercury for new turns of phrase that open new horizons of possibility
• Access Neptunian qualities to reanimate the Aesclepion, Chiron’s healing cultural centers of antiquity, dedicated to dreaming, healing and theatre
• Recognize that mythic figures animate the intrinsic intelligence in Nature and honor them in a different way

Council 6: Becoming Artists of Atmosphere and Public Dreams
The Neptunian Realms of Influence

In this module, we learn to move the images in our mind in order to manifest external reality. We dive into the Qabalistic teachings on visualization and ways to metabolize the poison of the world.

We’ll cultivate Utopian Imagination (enough with the dystopian, we’ve got that part down). We’ll see how to create the atmosphere where the desirable can take place and practice Reversal Magic — sacred teachings of the Bunny Planet (see Rosemary Wells’ children’s books).

We’ll also consider metaphor as the incarnational garb whereby power enters the world and mythic figures are metaphoric animations of intrinsic intelligence in Nature.

In this Trickster shift, we’ll:

• Play with the possibility that the Divine wants to be liberated from past confines of human imagination
• Delve into the Qabalistic teachings on Neptune, dreams, visualization — practices whereby to efficiently move the images in our mind
• Practice “metaphoric agility”
• Let all natural facts be social strategy metaphors
• Explore how to become the person that we would have so loved to have met when we were 12
• See that suffering is not a credential, it’s an assignment. If we ever went through a time of feeling we didn’t have a voice, it’s not to occasion melancholy, but a clue as to our Medicine assignment: being a voice for that which has no voice!

Council 7: Blessing Poker – I See Your Blessing & Raise You One Embodying Our Customized Trickster

The Power of Fierce Blessing, Jupiter proffers, what is the one way of relating to the world that is guaranteed replenishing and never depleting? Blessing! The art of blessing redeems everything in our lives and serves to gets us through the times when we must travel through the Underworld. Blessing does not mean letting go of critique, which is its necessary partner. We simply graduate beyond the dualism to see the intrinsic beauty in all things.

In this Trickster shift, we’ll:

• Gather blessings from all cultures that we may be agents of reciprocal blessing: “May it go well for you!” “And for you!”
• Learn to critique and bless
• Further practice the art of dia-gnosing and blessing. The latter conjures the wisdom the former needs to heal
• Embody our customized Trickster with all necessary skills
• Bless each participant’s deepest heart’s desire, that our inner dedication may magnetize outward opportunity
• Celebrate our graduation in which our customized Trickster with all necessary skills steps into our body
• Bless the world!

Post Cataclysmic Election Town Hall
Audio Talk With Caroline Casey

The race is on, that dynamic beauty and sane reverence may supplant the dominance of dunder-headed-despotic dementors of doom, and that adorable and ingenious life may bloom in profusion once again on the other side of this bottleneck towards which we are all racing… Gathering our wits and animating the Astro*Mytho*Politico*Navigational*Guiding Story for now through November, into the wild Winter Solstice. Recorded at Open Secret in San Rafael, California, on November 15, 2016.

Astro*Mytho*Politico*Mystery Theatre: Celebration of the Winter Solstice at a Time of Dire Beauty
Caroline Casey’s 2016 Winter Solstice Address

Conjuring the Trickster Redeemer (within us all)! Tales of Triumphing Over Tyranny — Birth of Citizen Trickster in all our hearts. “The longest night… the wheel is turning… what will we give to the night?” Come cahoot, as humans have done for 20,000 years, at this Time of Dire Beauty, to lay the old year to rest. Let’s gather with our team of sane reverent beings to toss the demons of the old year into the cauldron and ladle out defiant joy, and Jetino — “the powerful magic that comes in dangerous times.” Trickster as keeper of democracy — In Trickster We Trust! Recorded at Busboys and Poets in Washington, DC, December 20, 2016.

Liberating Tales of Shamanism & Priestesses
Audio Dialogue With Caroline Casey and Max Dashu

Caroline Casey converses with one of her favorite humans, Max Dashu, who embodies the scholarship to which she has been dedicated for over 40 years, the suppressed archives of women’s power. Tales of Shamanism, Priestesses, the war on reverence — that began so long ago, and now is at another height. Until now! May we all be the antidote to the poison in the world, by embracing our “weird” — our destiny unfurling before us whereby to cultivate, animate and contribute our unique gifts to the community — at this Time of Dire Beauty. That we may all be the balm!

Max Dashu is an American feminist historian, author and artist who has focused her life’s work on uncovering women’s suppressed histories, which has meant delving into the gendered history of the witch hunts. Her areas of expertise include female iconography, mother-right cultures and the origins of patriarchy. She is the founder of the Suppressed Histories Archives, and the author of the book, Witches and Pagans: Women in European Folk Religion, part of a multivolume series about women in European folk religion and the witch hunts.