An Urgent Call of the Land

Molly Hall About.com
An Urgent Call of the Land
Sunday August 29, 2010


A series of serendipities led me to the work of astrologer/agrarian Steven McFadden, with his powerful message, "The land is calling loudly, urgently. Time to respond." He's written three books on farming, the latest is The Call of the Land. Link: http://thecalloftheland.wordpress.com/ And in a late July radio interview, http://www.talkshoe.com/talkshoe/web/audioPop.jsp?episodeId=378935&cmd=apop, he talked about the summer's intense astrology, "the industrial oil catastrophe" in the Gulf, and the need to listen for "What is the Land asking of me?"

This deep Earth affinity comes naturally to McFadden -- he's a quadruple Capricorn (Sun, Jupiter, Mercury and Mars) with Saturn in Virgo and North Node in Taurus. He told me, "So the earthy agrarian response to the Call of the Land is built into my DNA."

As an antidote to hopelessness, he advises slowing down, and listening. To ask, '"What is the call of the Gulf?'" as it relates to you as an individual?" You can't be an engineer and go down and cap it, but he says look for your own message through this deep listening.

I can't help but think of the over 50% unemployment rate for young people (18 to 24) in the US, and wondering what kind of paths could open here. Link: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/08/27/99763/bad-statistics-for-summer-employment.html McFadden talks about the millennial agrarians, and I've written on the Greenhorns, http://astrology.about.com/b/2009/03/02/the-greenhorns.htm, a trend of twenty-somethings reinvigorating the farming life. It's not like the olden days, though, since there are many "high-tech, sustainable practices," as McFadden puts it, that marry natural ways with innovation.

The demand for organic food keeps rising (about 18% each year in the US), as we see what industrial and factory models do to the food supply. There's room for ingenuity here, and entrepreneurship, during the Pluto in Capricorn transition to 2023-- http://astrology.about.com/od/plutoincapricornto2023/qt/PlutoCap.htm,-- what McFadden calls the "absolute, complete overhaul of primal systems through which we live our lives."

I've mentioned how I live on an organic farm, but I actually found McFadden's work through an article called, The Steep Uphill Climb to 2012: Messages from the Mayan Milleu. http://astrology.about.com/od/2012/a/MayanElder.htm The longer version is found at his site, http://www.chiron-communications.com/communique%207-10.html, Chiron Communications. He's also written a book called Native Knowings -- Wisdom Keys for 2012 and Beyond, which is on my reading list. True to the Capricorn way, he's created a body of work to be explored, and that takes time. In the meantime, I wanted to share these messages and links with all of you, since hearing the Call of the Land has become such an urgent matter.