Peak Oil

Here’s a fabulous article about the importance of oil and coal to the future of the Planet: http://www.raremetalblog.com/2010/08/media-rare-resources-key-in-power-battle-.html, and another example of how squabbling over how many SUVs each family gets to have has kept the USofA stuck in the 1950s for the last half-century.  Even if you’re bored shitless by the whole topic of Political Economy, there’s a bunch of meat in this article – about the old paradigm of competitiveness versus the new paradigm of collaboration, for instance.  Also saw a well-done movie on this subject recently, My Dinner with Schmucks.  In the heat of the noon hour, a man takes a siesta.

Pretty wild Full-Moon energy, eh?  Jupiter is still dancing with Uranus.  When Uranus is lit up, don’t even try to sleep when you aren’t sleepy, do something fun or creative or both instead.  That’ll restore you more than sleep, and catnaps will work much better than they usually do.  You’ll exhaust yourself trying to sleep when it ain’t the program of the day.  This energy stays prominent for a while (like a year or so), so it’s a good time to invest in a new hobby, or better yet, explore some new endeavor that you’ve always dreamed about doing, or never dared to dream about doing.

Ayn and Ronnie

Here’s a concise summary, courtesy of German newspaper Der Spiegel, of what Ayn Rand and Ronnie Reagan have done for the USofA.  Part I is at

http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,712496,00.html,

and part 2 at

http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,712496-2,00.html.

The bottom line:

The boom in stocks and real estate, the country’s wild borrowing spree and its excessive consumer spending have long masked the fact that the overwhelming majority of Americans derived almost no benefit from 30 years of economic growth.  In 1978, the average per capita income for men in the United States was $45,879 (about €35,570).  The same figure for 2007, adjusted for inflation, was $45,113 (€35,051).

And they don’t even tell us how it went for women.

Where did all the money go? All the enormous market gains and corporate earnings, the profits from the boom in the financial markets and the 110-percent increase in the gross national product in the last 30 years? It went to those who had always had more than enough already.

While 90 percent of Americans have seen only modest gains in their incomes since 1973, incomes have almost tripled for people at the upper end of the scale.  In 1979, one third of the profits the country produced went to the richest 1 percent of American society.  Today it’s almost 60 percent.  In 1950, the average corporate CEO earned 30 times as much as an ordinary worker.  Today it’s 300 times as much.  And today 1 percent of Americans own 37 percent of the total national wealth.

1978 was two years before Ronald Reagan came into office.  Next time you run into someone from the Tea Party telling you how wonderful all this is, throw them into the Bay where they belong.  Big government is not the cause of the decline of the American Empire.  It’s corporate Greed, which Ayn Rand’s Fascist ideas call “Freedom.”

Venus-Mars Initiation

For the last two years, we been rebuilding our relationships – the last Venus-Mars initiation (October 2009) was about “After a storm a boat landing stands in need of reconstruction” (Libra 16).  It should be obvious to most folks, based simply on the common connotations of Venus and Mars, that the Venus-Mars cycle is about our relationships, and most particularly about our Relationship.  And, sure, that also includes our relationshit, mostly our unfinished business with our parents and “past” lives, and of course past spouses and significant others.

That turns out to be all too relevant, since the imminent (August 20 at around noon PDT) Venus-Mars initiation will challenge our willingness to leave the past behind and accept our future.  Which is to say, it’s at the point of a T-Square to the Moon’s Nodes, which in turn is to say that it’s in a Fourth-Harmonic relationship (mastery through challenge) with the Moon’s South Node (in a word, “past lives”) and also with the Moon’s North Node (the doorway to our future).

There are two major generic impediments to leaving the past behind.  One, the unfinished emotional business “hooks” us, and keeps us frozen, and Two (which is really the same thing), our Identity is built upon the foundation of our personal history.  So letting go of our Karma (inertia) is always an “Ego Death,” which literally feels like we’re dying, because we are – that is, our I-dentity is changing, being reborn, which means it must first shed it’s old skin, and the old skin is attached.  It’s one thing to be flayed, but our old I-dentity also has deep roots that reach way down into our Being.  So letting go of our Karma is like being flayed while having a root canal.

Unless you shift your attitude.  If you recognize any serious emotional disturbance as an Ego Death, remember that it’s your future well-being that you’re resisting, and celebrate the pain as if it were Labor (which it is, and boys getta do it too), you can make the whole process fairly effortless.  Not that shifting your attitude is effortless – that’s the hardest part.  All pain is resistance, after all.  Consciousness is choosing a different Program, remember?  Pain is a signal to get Conscious.

Now in this case, the Moon is involved.  The Moon always amps up the emotional heat, so that could make things harder cuz they’re more emotional, or easier cuz things get so theatrical that we can’t help but laugh at ourself (do resist the temptation to laugh at your counterparty, unless they laugh first).  But, and this is a gift, the Moon sits on the North Node (Future), not the South Node (past).  So our Future’s going to be pulling us forward, and we’ll be feeling our emotional attachment to our own Dreams and Desires more than our emotional attachment to our History.  Hooray!

And, like most T-Squares, this one comes with it’s own Grace Kit, in the form of Third and Sixth Harmonic relationships with Mercury and Pallas.  Third and Sixth Harmonic relationships are about Grace, Ease, Creativity, Fun.  Mercury represents the mind, awareness, communication – it’s always very useful when the mind is our friend, and it’s Stationary (strong), turning Retrograde.  Pallas represents Boundaries.  So Letting Go and Moving On will be greatly facilitated by talking about it, setting good Boundaries (which may be harder or softer), and generally staying alert and awake when difficulty arises.

So really, this is a fabulous configuration, and the only potentially difficult part should be recognizing emotional pain as the beginning of a positive release, and willingly letting go of our old skin.

Which brings us the the Venus-Mars Cycle itself.  It lasts about two years, and as we said, we’re just finishing a rebuilding phase.  The new Cycle begins at 14 degrees of Libra, “In the heat of the noon hour a man takes a siesta.”  We can read that alotta different ways!  It doesn’t sound too good for staying alert and awake.  But look at it this way.  It’s the Male Ego and testosterone that drives competitiveness and ambition.  If that urge falls asleep, that’ll be very good for the Planet.  The whole sign of Libra is about releasing individuality and embracing collaboration, and this Libra midpoint just describes an important step in that process.

So we can summarize by saying that the next two years of relationship business will be about embracing collaboration, which is probably the Planet’s greatest need right now.

And, it’s not optional.  We say this because Pluto is also Stationary (going Direct) at this time.  Stationary means strong, and Pluto is about the Big Wave, or the trend which is so strong that resistance is futile, the current in the River of history.  And, Pluto is the focus of a second T-Square, this one with Vesta-Saturn (focusing our Attention on what’s Sacred) and Jupiter-Uranus (that fantastically new and refreshing Soul Chord impulse we recently received).  When you’re resisting necessary Change, a Stationary Pluto feels like swimming in Jello.  When you’re excited about your future, a strong Pluto moves you forward in leaps and bounds.

The Age of Treason

Here’s a tell-it-like-it-is interview with Bill Black, one of the folks in charge of cleaning up the S&L debacle.  Skip to the 13-minute mark.

Venus, Mars, Saturn, and the Perseids

It’s already begun, but if you have clear skies, the Perseid Meteorite Show peaks Thursday night.  And at Sunset on Thursday, there’s a nice Venus-Mars-Saturn Show too.  Which brings us to the Venus-Mars, Venus-Saturn, and Mars-Saturn Cycles, all of which are initiating hereabouts.  These are important Cycles, as Saturn represents what occupies our Attention, Mars represents where we choose to invest our Energy, and Venus is associated with what Thrills us.  Big potential there in combining the three.

Venus crossed Saturn today (August 8, at half-past 10am PST).  Venus above all symbolizes our Values, and that which we regard as beautiful.  So focusing on (Saturn) our Values is a powerful energy.  The Venus-Saturn Cycle lasts about a year.  The outgoing Cycle began last October at 29 degrees of Virgo, “A seeker after occult knowledge reads an ancient scroll which illumines her mind.”  Anybody been doing that, more or less?  The incoming Cycle has for its anthem, “The transmutation of the fruits of past experiences into the seed-realizations of the forever-creative Spirit” (Libra 2).  Pretty cool, eh?    That energy will be running till the end of September 2011.

Mars crossed Saturn on July 31.  Mars-Saturn is a two-year Cycle, having to do with how and where we focus our energy.  The outgoing Cycle, since July 2008, was about “A man becoming aware of Nature Spirits and normally unseen spiritual agencies” (Virgo 6).  I can attest to this one.  The incoming Cycle is about “In a collection of perfect specimens of many biological forms, a butterfly displays the beauty of its wings, its body impaled by a dart” (Libra 1).  Hmmm.  Sounds like an opening for a much-needed ingress of feminine energy – our feminine energy will be busy transmuting Karma into Consciousness, while our masculine energy will be in the back room admiring its kill.  This Cycle lasts till mid-August of 2012.

The new Venus-Mars Cycle, which doesn’t begin till August 20 (noon PDT) but runs through April 2013, corroborates: “In the heat of the noon hour, a man takes a siesta” (Libra 14).  We’ll talk more about that new Cycle as we get closer to it – it’s a doozy.

Amazing Grace

Thanks for your long and heartfelt comment, Grace!  And yours too, Anon!  Sorry I’ve been too busy lately (I’m moving) to respond directly, but I wanted to take a quick stab at some of your questions, Grace, even though you probably intended them to be rhetorical.  Can’t pass up a possible teachable moment.  For instance,

“How is it we can see into the past influences on our future through astrology?  How is it we can see into the future by using our psychic abilities?  How is it that we can heal with the energy in our hands and how is it that we are all connected?”

If you look into the basic principles underlying the esoteric traditions in most religious traditions, there are two that stand out as fundamental.  It’s important to distinguish the esoteric or mystical traditions from the traditions intended for mass consumption.  The latter are always political traditions, not philosophical traditions.  The two mystical traditions that stand out are,

We are all One,

and

All there is, is Now.

If one takes the trouble to rebuild all of one’s worldview using these two principles as the basic assumptions, then the World changes a lot.

Another big jump in our own consciousness involves releasing our addiction to Cause and Effect, aka The Great God Causan Defect.  Scienterrific worldviews notwithstanding, Cause and Effect is not the only principle operating in the Universe.  For instance, at a certain age, children are shamed out of their ability to do “Magical Thinking.”  Or at least, that’s the intention.  Some of us use Magical Thinking as our basic modus operandi, and when that’s the case, sure, we learn how to parrot back “proper thinking,” we just learn to keep our own superior native process to ourself.  Carl Jung postulated that astrology and similar processes worked not at all by Cause and Effect, but by a principle he called Association.  When the Moon is in the seventh house is associated with certain other phenomena, it doesn’t cause them.

“Are we preprogrammed to some degree by the alignment of the stars and perhaps even more?”

Yes and no.  Lord knows humans (and other critters of all stripes) are infinitely Programmable creatures.  The Hindu meaning of Karma is just this – inertia.  The notion of Karma as retribution is a projection of the political arm of Western religion.  The power of Ritual derives from the same process – repetition.  An Archetype is just a big, complex program, one that runs on a scale larger than a single creature.  Like War, or Domination.  Consciousness is nothing more than the ability and power to change the Program at will.  Consciousness is relative.  We all run many Programs “without thinking,” ranging from breathing, to brushing our teeth, to anything and everything we react to emotionally.  And we all have some degree of Consciousness – we can choose to hold our breath, to not brush our teeth, or to examine our emotional reactions.  The notion that only humans have Consciousness is pure Ego.  Everyone has Consciousness, including the Universes.

“I wonder if I was born with a destiny as honorable as this young man?”

Of course you was.  We all were.  We just need to be careful with that concept of Honor.  The Age of Heroes was the Age of Aries.  We’re entering the Age of Aquarius, which is the Age of Collaboration.  We still carry around a lot of programming from the Age of Aries, and it would  behoove us all to choose to examine our emotions when that programming arises.

Down to the tiniest thought that manifests almost as quickly as one thinks it.  Does it work that way for everyone and they are not conscious of their ability to manifest?

Complex, even paradoxical.  Everybody’s the same, but everybody’s different.  Contradiction is a property of the observing mind’s limitations, not a property of the observed Universe.  (As are Free Will and Programming, by the way – if All there is, is Now, then anything time-dependent becomes mass hallucination.)  Also, remember that it’s always Both/And, never Either/Or, though bear in mind that never and always are political words.  Political is the adjective form of Power, and Power is a synonym for Ego.  The realization that it’s always Both/And, never Either/Or just happens to be a useful manipulation, and utility is a useful guide to what to keep and what to toss.

Some folks are more sensitive to the manifestation process.  Some folks seem to be running Programs that are so far from Consciousness (ability to change Programs) that they seem irredeemable.  Goethe said those who can be redeemed are those who are always striving.  Many seem stuck in Victim.  On the other hand, we used to observe while playing card games that a string of Bad Luck didn’t change until you complained about it.  And any given Perennial Victim could be Monkey #101, and could shift in a Flash if we persist with our work as Monkeys #1-100.  Just a matter of putting together enough repetitions to create a new Archetype.  I once asked a group, How long must one do the Ghost Dance till one gives up and accepts things as they are? And the answer that came back was, As long as it takes.

“Focusing too much on what I dislike and not enough on what I appreciate and/or desire.”

Yes, always a temptation for our Victim Archetypes.  There is a strong Archetype that we are defined by our Righteous Indignation.  Where I’m moving to, the neighboring village is named Wauna.  I’ve so wanted a Wauna mailing address, but I’m thinking, no, that’s probably not a good idea.  That’s where I’ve been, stuck in Wanna.  I wanna move to Getta.  Having is quite different from Wanting.   I think that warm feeling that we get when we imagine already having what we want, is the place where the energy is most friendly to receiving.