Guns and Butter
Neither the right nor the left wants to talk about Afghanistan.
The staunchest supporters of Obama’s military policies right now are Republicans, and they sure don’t want to come out in favor of this president at this moment. Meanwhile, three-fourths of Congressional Democrats oppose the war, and they’re trying just as adamantly to avoid coming out against him.
Brothers Under the Skin
Friday’s New Moon (9/18) is no standard-issue New Moon. Up in the sky right now four planets are gathering together in opposition to Uranus.
This grouping gooses up the ongoing Saturn-Uranus opposition, signature of America’s red-hot culture wars. The opposition reaches exactitude five times, and the hit today — Sept 15th — is the most critical of the five. The world body is quivering with the tension between two energetic poles: that of a white-knuckled holding on to the past (Saturn) and an explosive, liberating leap into the future (Uranus).
Trigger Transits
Things are starting to cook.
Over the next few weeks we’ll have a series of short-range transits that will serve as triggers for the dramatic long-range ones that have been the subject of so much astrological buzz: the transits of 2010-15. These are the years singled out by many ancient traditions as the make-or-break threshold for humanity.
September 2009
The Secret of the Opposition
Their first exact opposition coincided with one of those heightened historical moments like the day JFK was shot or the day the twin towers exploded; a date our future selves will remember as a “Where-were-you-when…” event. It was November 4th 2008, the day Obama was elected. Where were you that night the world whooped with relief and danced in the streets
Higher Ground: World-Altering Transits in the Years Ahead
Upon the inauguration of America’s new president, millions of people felt something extraordinary happen; something that went beyond a mere political victory party. It felt to many as if a flood of inspiration was unleashed —- not just in the USA, but, remarkably, all over the world – whose power astrologers chalk up not to a man winning an election, but to the epochal transits upon us. The fact that Americans selected their candidate on the very day of the opposition between Saturn (the past) and Uranus (the future) is only one piece of the story.
Sick as a Dog
The healthcare reform brouhaha that now engulfs the USA is a cosmic in-joke. It is pointing our attention to the fact that the country itself is deathly ill.
In Soul-Sick Nation I make the case that the USA is one sick puppy. If we’re seeking an understanding of why the national discourse is so surreally off-track right now, I propose that we will find it more useful to see the nation as a living entity struggling to heal, rather than to condemn it and cast moral judgments upon it.
Mob Rule
Astrologically, it wasn’t hard to see that health care was going to be the issue of the year. Consider the makeup of the Super Conjunction of 2009: Neptune (universality), Chiron (healing) and Jupiter (reform) in Aquarius (medicine). All the ingredients were there. This was the set-up long before this summer’s astonishing partisan antics enflamed the debate like a mad doctor setting his patient alight.
Bad Dads
The phrase “doom and gloom” is in heavy use these days. As in “I’m so glad to see this front page story about rescued puppies instead of all the usual ‘doom and gloom’ stuff.” But there’s a false equation between the lines here, and we need to be wary of it.
August 2009
The Other Side of Letting Go
What begins when the Moon is New comes to a head when it is Full.
This is the core idea of the lunar cycle, and it is a very primal one. Transit-trackers have used it to interpret the sky’s messages since the beginning of time. When the New and Full Moons in question are eclipses, the cycle reaches deeper and further in its significance; but it does not depart from this basic formula.
Idiot Box
With its every frantic pop, bleat and bang, television proclaims itself to be the wellspring of all things shiny and new. But in reality it’s the primary tool of the old paradigm.
At this point in history the video screen has replaced institutionalizedreligion as the single most powerful hypnotic in the world. In the USA it serves as an efficient delivery system for the interests of a crumblingstatus quo, disseminating values that represent the very worst of the era now in its last gasp.