Hades's Gauntlet

No sooner than I had completed my second presentation on the Astrology of 2024, a podcast that can be found here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/31Hc78nUIzStIMquTyVjJj?si=sGa57anPS6it1he-2_ZyNQ ...I had my own unique encounter with the “unseen one’’… Pluto. The date was January 5, 2024. Ironically, during the podcast I had been talking about the manner of operation the Lord of the Underworld uses to bring about transformation in our lives, specifically sharing a quote from a blog I wrote last year. Here is that quote:

“Think of Pluto as the grand eliminator, a cosmic hit-man of sorts, who removes what is no longer serving the greater cosmic agenda. He’s the shadowy figure, suddenly emerging from a dark alley and catching you by surprise. You gasp for air and your body begins to tremble from the encounter. But it’s the message he delivers that has the most impact. Pluto has a way with words. His powerful communications cut through the darkness revealing the hidden, purging the toxic, and intrusively bludgeoning and destroying what is no longer needed. Pluto is the lord of initiations, the type that are regenerative in nature, and deeply penetrating to the soul; whether it be the individual soul or the collective one. Pluto’s end game is transformation through the endless cycle of death and rebirth.”

The encounter involved a phone call none of us wish to receive.  My ninety-two-year-old father who lives alone in Florida, had newspapers piling up in the driveway and was not responding to knocks on the door by a neighbor who keeps us regularly informed. Fortunately, I have a cousin who lives locally and she was able to get to the house quickly. Of note, at the moment of this call Pluto was in Capricorn at the 29th degree. I will come back to this later.

Upon breaking into his home, the Emergency Team from the local Fire Department and my cousin found him on the floor in his bedroom in a very tenuous condition. I am told he opened his eyes briefly. The best guess by the medical assessment they made is that he had been on the ground for probably two days or more. He was immediately transported to the hospital. Little did I know in that moment the real journey that was about to unfold.

The first peculiarity to occur was when I attempted to board a flight from Cleveland to Florida on Saturday morning, January 6th. As you will soon learn, this was a trip that was overflowing with the unexpected. Just as they called us to begin boarding our flight, the process was interrupted with an additional announcement that the flight was going to have to be canceled due to the aircraft having a dead battery. The estimated repair time was 4-5 hours.

On the spot I decided I need not rush and decided to return home and try again on Sunday. Ironically, Sunday is named after the Sun, which in astrology is the significator of the Father, among other things. It is also associated with one’s IDENTITY. The Sun is the great giver of life.  All of this held no significance to me at the time but as you will soon realize this whole trip was saturated with symbolism. And so, my voyage to see my father began on this fateful Sunday morning…

Upon arriving in Daytona Beach my cousin picked me up at the airport and we went directly to the hospital. Once at the hospital, I received a medical update on my father’s condition. He was in a very dire state, severely dehydrated, elevated creatine levels in the kidney, and not able to say much. My visual assessment and sensory response to the situation was that this was likely not something from which he would recover. After lingering at his bedside for several hours, my cousin took me to my father’s home where I would stay all week while this medical emergency evolved.

It was quiet and somber as I entered the house. The energy from what had transpired there two days earlier lingered like a foggy morning blanketing a hidden valley. And it was amidst that fog a great revelation was about to unfold. After taking a quick survey of the house, including a very sparsely stocked refrigerator, I decided to make it an early night with the intention of rising early in the morning to dig a bit deeper into things.

I awakened on Monday morning and decided to drive my father’s car to a local diner for breakfast before getting the day started. Upon returning to the house, I began to attempt to locate bills, bank accounts, appointments that had been made etc. in order to begin getting a handle on the situation. I started at his desk. I immediately located his Last Will and Testament, naming me the executor as well as a Medical Power of Attorney, also naming me. What wasn’t there was a financial power of attorney which would prove challenging over the coming 49 days.

As I continued to rustle through files in the desk drawers, I saw a series of small notes that were haphazardly stuck between some file folders. There were four in total. Upon them and in my father’s handwriting, there were copious writings. After laying them out individually on the desktop, I began to read. What came next could best be described as a vortex opening up. The type of vortex I am describing is a mysterious cosmic force that is often experienced as a swirling center of energy that while in its grasp one feels like the world around them has dissolved and nothing else exists except that place and moment.

The note that jumped out at me like a dagger emerging from the aforementioned fog was… “I am NOT Randy’s biological father”… and yes NOT, was in capital letters.   After revisiting this note several times, I continued to read the others. What I was reading now was a story of my birth that was completely different than what I had believed my whole life. Needless to say, I sat in stunned silence for a long time trying to grasp what I had just found. In that whirling moment the full force of the earth’s gravity was now pulling me into a mix of anger, disbelief, sadness, and panic… all at the same time. One of my thoughts while captured in this wrinkle in the matrix was to stand up, go pack my bags, walk out the front door, and never come back.

Remarkably, the personal journey I have been on since 2011 had actually prepared me for this piercing nanosecond. Leaning quickly into the spiritually based work I do as a Shaman and Astrologer I pivoted to a feeling of empathy and compassion and resolved I would stay and provide whatever comfort and assistance I could. This became a process though, as I slipped back frequently into those initial gut-wrenching feelings throughout the week as more information was revealed. I resolved not to discuss this with my father, or who I had thought was my father. Instead, I would go to the hospital and continue to be of support, then call my mother later that day and certainly she could clear this all up for me. She is 90 years old. My parents divorced when I was three years old.

When it came time to make that call, a deep breath was in order. My mother answered the phone and I began by explaining what had occurred and that I was in Florida trying to help out. Then I decided to go for broke and inquire about what I had found. I began by saying that while searching for financial and legal documents in my father’s desk that I had come across a series of interesting notes. I further suggested that I would like to read them to her and get her reaction and feedback. There was a brief pause… then she replied, “sure honey”.

Slowly and methodically, I read the notes to my mother. My tone was flat, not wishing to show any emotion in an attempt to portray a neutral stance. As I concluded reading the last note, there was a deafening silence. The kind that seemed to reverberate through all of time and space. Finally, my mother broke the silence… “well… uhh, it was Spring 1959, and uhh, I went to Florida with my girlfriend Jan”, “and uhh, well I met this guy in a band that was playing there”, “and uhh, well… I got pregnant.”

In an instant I was now back in a vortex. In a matter of two days everything I had believed for all of my life had been upended. She continued…

“Anyway… uhh, well I went back home to Indiana after and I met your father, and uhh… he took me for an abortion” And… uhh, well I got pregnant again, and we both agreed you were his, and uhh…”

At this point I decided to jump in. I began to pepper my mother with a series of questions. They were roughly what follows which I must admit now it seems I was channeling my best version of a trial attorney…

“How do you know that abortion succeeded?”

“What was this guy’s name?”

“What did he look like?”

“What instrument did he play?”

“When were you in Florida?”

“When did you return to Indiana?”

“When did you meet my father?”

“When did you get married?”

To my mother’s credit she answered my questions fairly honestly. The problem that quickly emerged was the timeline didn’t add up. The sinking feeling that came upon me in this moment was one of despondency and angst. Pluto had come knocking and I was about to take a trip to the underworld. The call ended rather abruptly and I simply declared I’d get back to her soon. What was about to transpire that night would change everything.

At approximately 3 am on Wednesday, January 10th I was jolted out of my sleep with a message echoing through my mind… “check your 23 and Me”.  I had been an early participant in the DNA testing done by 23 and Me when it first became available. Probably not unlike many people I was quite enthralled by it for several weeks, reading and re-reading the results. After that, my interest waned and I truthfully had not looked at it since. So, after loading the app on my phone, resetting a password, I opened up my information. What struck me immediately was that I didn’t recall the mix of ancestral DNA I was reviewing. I was equally British and Irish, French and German, and Italian. I had not remembered it this way. In fact, my whole life it was suggested that we were predominantly British and Irish, like 80-90%. Then I saw a button I had not seen in the past, it was entitled “DNA Relatives”. Pressing this button was akin to opening some otherworldly portal that once opened, my life would never be the same.

Blessedly, the first name to appear on this list was one of my daughters who unbeknownst to me had also taken the test. That all seemed in order. Listed next were two cousins from my mother’s side of the family who I had grown up with. They had a DNA relationship ranging between 11.6 to 12.5%. What came next jumped off the screen of my phone like a lightning bolt. There was a female listed who shared a DNA relationship with me of 15.4%. Remarkably, her last name matched the last name of the man my mom indicated impregnated her in the spring of 1959. The vortex reopened for a third time in as many days. How could this be?

Over the ensuing 72 hours a feverish search began that led me to find not only the identity of my biological father, his name, date of birth and death, marriages, as well as other children he had. In the interest of protecting his privacy, as well as others who are included as part of this story, I will not reveal any names. Suffice it to say my biological father was a very successful jazz musician who had a very long and accomplished career. He played throughout the United States for many years and at one point even took the stage at the Kennedy Center. From all accounts he was a man of the road.

As findings began to present themselves, seemingly like the “parade of brooms” scene from The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, I began to feel like Mickey waving a wand and having information march into my awareness with ease until things were overflowing. Among those discoveries was a revelation that I had a half-brother who was born sometime the year after my birth and that my biological father married his mother six months after my birth. My assumption is my biological father never knew I even existed.

This disclosure came through the uncovering of an obituary for this half-brother’s mother. Ironically, she was from the State I now live in, Ohio. In that obituary, which named my biological father as her husband (who she divorced in 1967), there was a son listed who carried my biological father’s name, but listed as a junior. What came next was the key that unlocked the mystery. That son had a daughter whose name matched the name showing on my 23 and Me DNA Relatives list (15.4%). This was why she had a higher DNA relationship to me than my known cousins, she was my half-brother’s daughter. She was my half-niece! At this point I truly was the sorcerer’s apprentice drowning in a sea of divulgences.

Let’s circle back to the beginning of this blog where I mentioned this being an encounter with Plutonian energies. Pluto in astrology is a significator of bringing things out of the shadows. This energy is one of abduction where we are taken to places we may not want to go and shown things we may not want to see. Pluto deals in aliases, secrets, bafflement, and the deep subconscious. He is a great concealer. It is through this divine hidden force that we can also be healed. However, we must first pass through his gauntlet of execution, where more often than not something is obliterated so that a reincarnation of sorts can occur. In his highest vibrational state, Pluto acts as a spiritual and mental regenerator.

At the moment I found the above-mentioned mind-numbing notes, Pluto was at the 29th degree of Capricorn. This is known as the anaretic degree. It is the degree in which something ends so something new can begin. It is the place of karmic completion. Stunningly (though as an astrologer I would say, perfectly) at the time I found these notes, transiting Pluto was almost in an exact conjunction with Ceres in my birth chart (within 47 minutes). Ceres is an asteroid which in astrology among other things is directly correlated with the mother figure. When a transiting planet is conjunct a natal astrological body it can be viewed as a sort of spot light being shined on it. And adding to this dramatically clear moment in my birth chart, Pluto was transiting my third natal house, the house of siblings! 

There is so much more to share astrologically which I intend to do in part two of this blog. But for now, I want to say a few words about why I have chosen to write about such a personal experience. Pluto is making his final grand entrance into Aquarius. This is the sign of the collective. The place where enlightenment comes about suddenly and humanity is the beneficiary. It is a place of cooperation as well as revolution. In telling this story it is indeed therapeutic to me but my hope is that it is also therapeutic to someone who may read it. We are entering a time where we are being called upon to transcend all of the barriers and constructs of Capricornian restrictions and recognize the powerful souls we truly are.

I was dragged through Hade’s Gauntlet from January 5th through February 26th (the day after my own birthday) when the man I had believed was my father passed peacefully in a long-term care facility bed in Daytona Beach, Florida. It was at that moment I came to a deeper understanding of the need to not identity too heavily with our earthly lineage but rather to recognize as Pierre Teilhard de Chardin said “we are spiritual beings having a human experience”. That is our true identity, and in the end is the most important one.