I’ve been spending a lot of time with astrology lately. I’m working on something substantial—but that’s not what this post is about.
Because of that work, I found myself meditating on the constellations this morning. Not the signs as symbols or charts, but the actual band of zodiac constellations—that great ring encircling us. I widened my awareness beyond the zodiac too, taking in the full 360° field of stars around me.
As I was holding that vision, something appeared.
Off my left shoulder.
Not dramatic. Not announced. Just… there.
He had the look of a door-to-door con man. Shabby suit. Too much confidence. A carpet bag at his side. The kind of salesman who speaks as if you’re already late to the conversation he owns.
He acted like he belonged in my space. Like I was the guest.
And he spoke directly into my thoughts.
“Oh, I see you’re looking at the ring.”
That was the first red flag. Not what he said, but how. He assumed access. Assumed intimacy. Assumed authority. He interrupted my thoughtstream as if it were communal property.
He talked slick and fast. No hesitation. No request. No pause to check whether he was welcome.
Then he subtly twisted my train of thought: co-opting my meditation about constellations, cycles, and stellar energies and redirected it toward his agenda.
Suddenly, he was holding a ring.
It looked like one of those modern frisbees with the large hole in the center. Black and grooved like a vinyl record. About two feet across. Light enough to hold with one hand, but solid like a steering wheel meant to be gripped.
And he planted an idea in my mind.
Not gently. Not creatively. Planted.
The suggestion was that this thing was the zodiac wheel I’d been contemplating.
I clocked it immediately: that thought did not originate with me.
But I could also see how easily someone might miss that distinction.
Then came the demonstration.
He showed me (again telepathically) how the ring now “should” be wrapped. Like a Christmas wreath, but instead of ribbon, he offered barbed wire. Pain. Control. Trauma. Restriction. Enslavement.
Here’s the important part:
He didn’t actually wrap it himself.
He held the ring in one hand and the barbed wire in his bag for this purpose, and projected the idea of the act to me.
Because he couldn’t do it himself.
He needed me.
Humans have creative capacity. He (they) did not.
Then he delivered the line:
“You remember, don’t you, how we always wrap the ring in pain and trauma.”
We.
Assumed association.
If I accepted that word, he was in.
Always.
As in: tradition. Inevitability. Don’t question this.
He spoke like a mentor. Like he was reminding me of a task I’d forgotten. Teaching me the “correct” way things are done. The way they’ve always been done.
Then he tried to hand me the ring.
That moment mattered.
I real-eyes-ed that accepting what he offered was the mechanism. The consent point. The spell.
And my entire physical and energetic body, and my very soul revolted.
Absolutely not. Fuck off.
I refused the ring.
I did not touch it.
I did not take it.
I did not agree.
And the moment I said no, everything clarified.
This wasn’t a zodiac wheel.
It was yet another Wheel of Samsara. Pre-programed, like a record, with whatever loop of pain and trauma his ugly game was selling. (I also find it interesting that the ring he offered looked much like the rings of Saturn)
My refusal was powerful. Had I absentmindedly just done what I was told, (much like humans do in the face of “authority”, or “experts”) he and his kind would have claimed that we wanted this, that we accepted some contract…
Then I saw him more clearly.
He was an insect.
Six feet tall. Literal insectoid form. Still wearing the suit. Still wearing the hat. The carpet bag was made of an old oriental rug, like the traveling con artists who moved through the American South after the Civil War. But now I saw his rot and inversion.
A parasite dressed as authority.
A manipulator dressed as tradition.
A confidence trick dressed as “the way things are.”
And suddenly, everything made sense.
He could talk.
He could suggest.
He could imply.
But he could not take any creative action himself. He depended on to carpet bagging con-artistry to tap into my creative power.
I learned a lot from that encounter.
And I think it’s time to acquire an astral pair of fence-wire cutters.
There’s barbed wire out there that humans have been tricked into installing.
And I’m cutting it down now, darlings.