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This Crowd Will Not Disburse

Anandamayi Ma was once asked how someone would know whether to choose the renunciate life. Replied she, “Would one deliberate on whether to flee a massacre?”⁽¹⁾

We all know what she was talking about. Who among us, if they’ve been paying attention at all, would not view human existence in the twenty-teens as a massacre?

But this recognition is just the beginning.

Not everyone has the chart of a renunciate (and of those who make that claim, many seem to be motivated not so much by a spiritual quest as by a desire to escape.… click here to continue reading.

The Spy Who Loved Us

It’s enough to make a gal nostalgic. The CIA of my youth — murderer of the odd student radical, funder of death squads in Latin America – seems almost quaint by comparison to the NSA.

Jupiter (publication, knowledge) was transiting the US Mars-Neptune square (all-encompassing deceit) last week when Edward Snowden blew America’s mind by calling out the elephant in the middle of the room. Y’all are being massively data-mined, he pointed out, and not just by FaceBook – to which we have effectively given our enthusiastic assent¹ – but by our government.… click here to continue reading.

Pretend Politix

How appropriate it is that, just as Neptune (pretense) conjoins Chiron (wounds) for their last hit on America's Moon in Aquarius, it’s election time in the USA.

Negative Neptune manifests as addiction, self-delusion and the passive acceptance of unhealthy situations, which the shrinks have delicately termed enabling. I propose that we all take a pledge not to enable this November.

Specifically, I mean that we disabuse ourselves of the fantasy that the Democrats will or can save us from the Republicans. Generally, I mean that we stop pretending that the grotesque games played by the two major parties reflect anything real.

Tea Time

Have you noticed that every time you think the culture wars couldn’t possibly get any wackier, they get wackier?

Saturn, the planet that is supposed to keep us sane and grounded, is under stress. For the past two years it has been slapped around by Uranus and Pluto, and it's now opposed by Jupiter (exact on May 22nd and Aug 16th, 2010, and on March 28th, 2011). Jupiter represents our beliefs, and Saturn is our reality structures. The battle between them is particularly obvious in the USA, whose group soul is entering its Saturn Return (described in Soul-Sick Nation, chapter 12).

Earth Daze

The 40th anniversary of Earth Day this week falls under a Saturn-Uranus opposition.

One more milestone in the 2012 period, the exactitude on April 26th marks the fourth of five times that Saturn and Uranus reach that magic 180-degree angle in the sky. (Their first peak, this cycle, was 11/4/08 -- remember that day? -- and their last will be 7/26/10.) The transit is about accepted norms (Saturn) shattering (Uranus) like concrete blocks in an earthquake. All over the world stasis is being confronted by the necessity of change.

Monsters

As Saturn moves backwards down the ladder of early Libra, it is now returning to an exact conjunction with the Midheaven (top-dog status) in the Sibly chart of the USA. Saturn authorizes things: it names people and entities to positions of authority. In this placement it is submitting the country’s corporate and moral leadership to an exacting redefinition process, clarifying who bears the staff of state. At the same time, Pluto (corruption) is continuing its long, slow opposition to the collective Sun-Jupiter-Venus conjunction (ethics and values) . The square between them is showing us who really sits on the throne in this kingdom.

Show Biz Politics

The Pluto-in-Capricorn years are raking the body politic over the coals. All around us governing infrastructures are showing their cracks and fissures, only to crumble into littler and littler pieces as 2010 unfolds.It’s a good time to consider what we mean by politics. A lot of people say “I’m not interested in politics” in a way that makes you suspect they aren’t referring to the electoral system at all. The word feels like code. Does it really mean they don’t like to think about global warming? If this is the case, the response only can be: Who does?

June 2008
The Myth of the Classless Society

If you woke up suddenly out of stage-four sleep, with no idea in the world what time it was, which hand of the clock would you look at first? If you are like most of the denizens of Earth who have learned how to tell time the old-fashioned way,¹ your eyes would naturally seek out the short little hour hand.

In astrology, the transits that correspond to the hour hand of a clock are those of the mysterious outer planets.

March 2007
The Bastard Muses of American Culture

The Equinox this month is astrology's New Year's Day. It represents the Sun's entry into the first minute of the first degree of the first sign; and it bursts upon the scene like buds splitting open in the sunlight.

This is the chart we read to take the pulse of the whole zodiacal year. In the Northern hemisphere it signifies the first day of Spring, officially arriving this year on March 20th at 5:09 PDT.