Poop with Purpose

Pluto in Capricorn x Mercury in Libra

There is something special about poop.

Spend a few minutes with four-year-olds and you will almost assuredly hear all about it. “That’s a poop flower.” “Here’s a poop ice cream cone.” “You are Mister Poop.” The word falls out of their mouths with a twinkling smile, and if you are especially lucky, they might even call you into the bathroom for a moment of real life fecal appreciation. Yesterday I got summoned to the toilet to behold a corn poop - the holy grail of poop - and of course it deserved a hearty round of applause.

In fact, this starchy beacon of joy inspired me to pull out our lift-the-flap book about all things poop for a bedtime story treat. And as the tiny hands next to me reached up to reveal fascinating facts about the value of excrement, I began to enter into a state of reverence. We know that plants love our poop, and it turns out that we have every reason to love it, too. Here’s what I learned:

Many animals (like us) use poop to send messages about their health, food, fertility, movement and mood. Other animals (like dung beetles and some birds) subsist on poop, lay their eggs in it, or build nests with it. Baby animals (like koalas, pandas, elephants and rhinos) eat their mother’s poop to build a healthy gut microbiome, and adult animals (like rabbits) eat their own poop because it contains precisely the nutrients they need in a form they can digest. There are even tiny bugs called aphids that let bigger bugs like ants eat their poop in exchange for protection.

So poop isn’t stinky trash, it is fragrant treasure. Poop is nutrition, communication, housing and protection. This goes for human poop, too - did you know that your poop goes to good use as fertilizer in our fields and bricks in our buildings? By this point we no longer call it poop, though, because who wants to eat poop pumpkins or live in a poop house. Instead we distance ourselves from our dung under the clever clinical guise of “biosolids.”

This all has me wondering: when did we become so ashamed of poop? We all do it. I was telling this to my son this morning. His teachers poop. His classmates poop. Spiderman poops. Everyone you have ever seen poops, and - if they are fortunate - they poop often. I’ve pooped twice so far today and I feel the same sense of relief in writing that as I did when doing it.

It feels like high time for you and me to step into a world where we can be proud of our poop. When we flush our feces with fear, we withhold its many blessings from the world around us. We also withhold these blessings from ourselves, because the nutrition we offer to the planet always comes back to us through the life-giving magic of the ecosystem. Poop makes the world go around, and things will surely change for the better when we start pooping with this noble purpose in mind.

I love to create images for these posts with AI, but Dall-E flat out refused to make me a drawing of sacred poop. Perhaps that says it all!

This is, of course, the perfect time for a celestial celebration of caca. Today is the last time that Pluto - the sacred overlord of number two - will grind to a halt in its Capricorn castle for the next 230 years. Pluto deftly draws our attention to the things we have decided we don’t want to see, hear, touch, taste or smell - the deep cracks in the foundation, the skeletons in the closet, the rotten stench at the back of the fridge.

In Capricorn, Pluto loves to highlight the disempowerment inherent in hierarchical structures. We see this bubbling to a boil in our shared space, where it has become glaringly apparent how our societal structures funnel resources from the many to the few in a way that ultimately serves no one. We can now (re)claim our ability to change this if we accept that we are more than mere unconscious cogs in a machine that marches forever forward with the momentum of the past. And if we are prepared to seize the opportunity for metamorphosis in this collective collapse, we can craft a new narrative for the future that puts us all in the driver’s seat.

On an individual level, we can do this when we welcome the parts of ourselves that we were taught to label as waste. These parts have been hiding in the shadows because they believe they are unworthy of our attention, and it is with the very power of attention that we can welcome them back to the fold. So consider this a chance to let yourself be all of the things that someone told you it’s not okay to be, knowing that - as we so readily tell our young ones - it is always okay to be yourself.

As we do this, we can look to the gracious genius of Mercury in Libra. Mercury supports our mental capacities, and Libra is a place where we can clarify, merge and harmonize perspectives. Last week’s Solar Eclipse fell right on top of Mercury, and I felt my own awareness flooded with so much information about how I relate to all things “other” in my life that I could barely articulate any perspective at all. And as discombobulating as this was, I now see how it set me free from the need to have a set way that I perceive the people, places and things in the world around me.

I know this will continue to serve me, because if the past few weeks have anything to say, the world is changing fast. This means that I don’t need to rush to form a judgment that will soon be outdated, and that includes how I choose to relate to my poop. So maybe I can stop sneaking into the bathroom to poop when nobody’s looking. And maybe I don’t need to pinch my nose or hurriedly flush my poop down the toilet. Maybe I can even marvel at my poop for the glorious creation that it is. I know for sure that I want anything that comes from me to be filled with love, and that includes my poop.

So as we move through the bowels of Our Universe these next few days, I encourage you to pause and give thanks to your poop. And if you’d like to do some personal poop alchemy with Pluto, the recording from today’s workshop on moving from Fear to Love is now available. It was a moment of profound transformation for all of the participants (including me), and we have emerged as fuller, clearer and more loving versions of ourselves.

Here are some of our words; I invite you to see yourself in our personal proclamations and to feel the power of what we wish for the world (and you):

• I am an open conduit for grace, beauty and truth, and I offer my gifts of empathy and understanding to the world.

• I am limitless potential in motion. I offer the fullest expression of my love to all beings.

• I am the golden thread that connects us all, and I offer my radiant hope to the world.

• I am fertile, and I offer love and motherhood.

• I am everything I need to be. I offer hope and truth.

• I am a leader for change; embodying strength, courage, justice and compassion. I offer love, peace and perspective to the world.

• I am here to BE. I offer my PRESENCE to the world.

• I am emerging, flowing, expanding. I offer compassion and creative co-conspiratorship. 

Love,

Patrick