Nov 2008
The Lightning-Struck Tower
The cataclysmic Saturn-Uranus opposition gave us the perfect modern symbol of this ancient tarot card image, when the most reputable banks in the world (Saturn) collapsed (Uranus) like a house of cards at the Full Moon in September.
Americans were shocked – shocked! – to find that all those smart men1 at the highest echelons of the nation’s financial industry had been investing in junk mortgages. After all, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson had for years denied there was any problem. And as for Alan Greenspan –the savant of Wall Street, who was so revered during his long reign as head of the Fed that a wiggle of his eyebrow could send stock markets rallying or plummeting – he had spent his illustrious career urging de-regulation. But last month, all over the world ordinary people watched dumbfounded as Wall Street got snookered by “a pyramid scheme of its own devising”2, sending international financial markets scrambling to shore up their own economies however they could. It suddenly seemed not quite right that these high-rolling firms had profits that were private, but losses that were public. Could it possibly be that free-market capitalism had been a sham?
Peaking on election day in the USA, the transit’s job is to blow apart at the seams structures that are held together only by the stubbornness and shortsightedness of power elites. The free-fall of America’s housing market in early 2008, just after Pluto entered Capricorn (monetary systems) while opposing Mars (real estate) turned out to be the great “correction” that financial analysts are always talking about. It’s just that this one was a bit more extreme, sudden, and far-reaching than most people had in mind. 3
But astrologers expect explosive disruptions to accompany transits of the three transpersonal planets. Uranus, Neptune and Pluto don’t play by the rules (Saturn).
In addition to its impact on financial markets, the transit now peaking combines just the right ingredients for a shattering of the public’s complacency about the disaster of American healthcare. Uranus (revolution) is opposing Saturn in Virgo (health). Of all America’s looming social catastrophes, health care is king. The housing crisis and social security are huge, but health care dwarfs them all.4
The Virgo part of the transit suggests that, on a personal level, physical health issues will become a major focus, especially for the slew of baby boomers who are getting their 2nd Saturn Returns right now. An example of the transit on the collective level is San Francisco’s recent defiance (Uranus) of federal policy (Saturn) in initiating a program to guarantee free health care (Virgo) to its residents.
It was when Saturn (institutionalization) opposed Neptune (hospitals, mass networks) from 2005-07 that the health care crisis erupted into a new level of popular consciousness. Now that Saturn is in Virgo this generalized awareness will particularize the issue: everyone is going to have to take responsibility for her or his physical health at a new level. For some, this could mean developing an illness that forces them to heal it, in order to understand how karma works (Saturn).
Given the simultaneous transit of Pluto into Capricorn (multinational corporate hegemony), new and darker developments in healthcare are likely to rear their heads as well. As Barbara Ehrenreich has pointed out, with her tongue only partially in her cheek: “Since Americans… can’t outsource our illnesses – and there is so far no technology for transferring one’s cancer or atrial fibrillation to a starving African or Asian- – we can at least outsource our healthcare.” 5
Certainly the inverse is already occurring, as every patient in an American or European hospital will have noticed. First-World healthcare is experiencing a flood of in-sourcing: medical personnel from former colonies are leaving home en masse and coming here; as their countries of origin crumble into systems collapse brought on by the three post-millennial disasters: globalization, climate change and nonspecific multi-fronted war.
For some people, the Saturn-Uranus transit will be channeled into an urge to confront and reform their societies’ flawed systems (especially likely in the case of those born around 1965-6 6.)
One disquieting awareness that is expected to break through into public consciousness is that of the cosy links that exist between healthcare providers and the companies that make the meds those providers prescribe. The billions of dollars Big Pharma and its brothers in the insurance industry contribute to politicial campaigns have been well documented (cf Michael Moore’s documentary “Sicko,” which came out under the Saturn-Neptune opposition). Of the myriad forms of corruption that exist in a supposedly civilized society, one of the most unsavory has got to be the custom whereby immensely profitable drug companies7offer gifts and straight-up monetary kickbacks to MDs who apparently deem such perks far more attractive than their allegiance to the Hippocratic Oath.
As conflicts of interest go, there is something about the prospect of our trusted healers being on the take that strikes one as particularly unethical. Flattered and fattened by the drugmakers with everything from free office equipment to multi-million-dollar research grants, America’s practitioners are prescribing an ever-increasing amount of pills and tablets that promise to allay a mind-boggling array of maladies.
Since Neptune (drugs) went into Aquarius (group sensibility) in 1998, every month seems to herald the introduction of a dire new condition, complete with a fashionable new acronym (e.g. CFS – “Chronic Fatigue Syndrome” – all but forgotten today, asso-last-century). In this sorry cycle, the telecommunications industry plays an essential part. Each new ailment is immediately detailed by guests on daytime talk shows, resulting in skyrocketing sales for a newly-minted miracle med. For those open to it, the revelation that this proliferation of pills does not seem, on the whole, to be healing anyone will number among the gifts of the Uranus-Saturn transit.
In the metaphysical view, the fact that every other ad on television these days seems to be for drugs – a remarkable surge from just a few years ago – reflects the existential state of the First World mind in these times. In Aquarius (group activity), Neptune, which also governs hypnosis and numbing, has ushered in a new era of legal escapism. The explosion of cell-phone use and texting, with their uncanny ability to make us go unconscious vis-à-vis our immediate surroundings, have contributed significantly to a new obliviousness about public space.
The concept of surviving everyday life through self-medication has crossed some kind of a threshold in the collective mind. Though some drugs are still considered déclassé (like alcohol; but selectively so. For example, when the homeless indulge, alcoholism retains its power to repel mainstream sensibilities) and subject to criminalization (like marijuana, arguably the least dangerous of any drug in wide use8), expensive pharmaceuticals are a boom industry. These drugs have entered into the realm of social acceptability.
Indeed, meds have become a standard component of pediatric healthcare. That it is now considered normal to medicate little kids for sketchily diagnosed psychological conditions marks a qualitative departure from notions of the inviolability of childhood that existed just a few years ago, when such a practice would have been seen not only as medically contraindicated but unwholesome to the point of perverse. What does it say about the scope of our societal problems that we must drug our innocents?
Juvenile addiction will be the next big epidemic about which Americans will be shocked – shocked! – to read exposés.
Virgo is about cleaning and straightening out messes, so there’s also a heightened awareness right now about the toxicity and trash generated by modern consumer society. This aspect of humanity’s stewardship of planet Earth was brilliantly expressed by the movie “Wall-EE.” Given that it was a mere animated film and thus not expected to arouse controversy, “Wall-EE” was able to get away with being profoundly radical without arousing a backlash.
On MotherSky blog:
Post-election commentary
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1 The canny title of the Enron documentary from a few years ago, “The Smartest Guys in the Room”, comes to mind.
2 The New Yorker, Oct 2008.
3 For a detailed discussion of the astrology behind the economic crisis, see November’s America in Transition, DayKeeperJournal
4 According to John Shoven of Stanford’s Institute for Economic Policy Research, total health care costs now consume 16 per cent of the economy and are headed towards 30 per cent. The built-in rise in spending on programs for the elderly will cost an unbelievable 25 per cent of workers’ payrolls over the next generation unless national policy is radically changed.
5 See This Land is Their Land: Reports From a Divided Nation, Metropolitan/Henry Holt 2008
6 See “Generation X Explodes”
7 Of all mass-consumed purchases in the USA, pharmaceuticals boast the widest gap between the pennies they cost to manufacture and the exorbitant prices they sell for.
8 At a cost of $35,000 per inmate per year, a full quarter of American prisoners are incarcerated for drugs. A significant proportion of these are non-violent offenders; and of these, a commonsense-defyingly huge percentage are in for either the possession of or petty dealing of marijuana.