Classes were going well. Patients shared their ideas and the desire to make them real. Initially, I’d fabricate parts to be assembled by Jim, Juan, and Ethan. Making practical and useful objects was great for their self-esteem. Everyone was impressed. The director of the hospital suggested implementing a pilot project which required redesigning, fabricating, and installing a new office for her. We could use recycled materials. Dolores believed this was a perfect opportunity to shine and get brownie points for us. I’d also get approval to design and build a horticultural lab.
Everything was falling into place. Creative ideas germinated. One of the most valuable lessons I learned as an industrial designer was that you get more money for fashion. I eagerly recalled the ugly green frog vases I’d seen in ceramic workshops across the state. Why not use the same materials, resources, and labor to create Classic urns with unusual finishes?
Sheltered workshops survived by producing plain outdated designs. They could thrive with smart design and well-conceived manufacturing and marketing processes and plans. Ordinary wooden frames could be transformed into exotic frames with fashionable new moldings. Beautiful mirrors and other fashionable products could revitalize a dying industry.
I began to see my vocational class as a small business having a dozen workers with talents and abilities I could never afford in the real world. I had a captive audience with nothing better to do with their time, energies, and talents than work under my direction. I could arrange for them to make money and challenge them to be responsible for their behavior. It certainly seemed clinically sound to me. I fantasized we’d eventually be the design and marketing arm for the entire Underworld State Department of Mental Health. Win, win, win… or so it seemed.
We would design products for manufacture, arrange preferential buying plans with other state agencies, and create products for the mass market. I was directing a theatrical production, a sequel to the ‘Dirty Dozen’. ‘The Dirtiest Dozen’ ~ tales of how discards from hell became social heroes. I envisioned managing a manufacturing and marketing empire using mental asylums as the foundation and framework.
‘Crazy People’, one of my all-time favorite ‘crazy’ movies with Dudley Moore and Daryl Hannah was about how crazy ‘Truth’ in advertising is. The truth is that stability and success in mental illness treatment would open new doors to working with sheltered workshops everywhere and offer sustenance and nourishment for all.
My family was supportive, but believed I was bonkers the moment I decided to work with a bunch of nutcases and freaks for next to nothing. There wasn’t anyone else around to share my inspiration and ideas with. Many of my peers in rehab thought I was weird. Sharing anything with them would add to the already uncomfortable hospital gossip. My close friends were mostly supportive, but I needed help from a mastermind group. I’d just have to stay focused, moving forward one step at a time, every thought, idea, and action bringing me closer to my goals.
Over the next several weeks, both vocational groups came up with exciting new concepts. Betsy had an idea for a line of stuffed toys for children that were perfect items for sheltered sewing shops. She called them `Love Bugs’. There were insects like spiders and scorpions. You’d be terrified if they were crawling on you, but instead, they’re soft and cuddly.
David and Jim came up with a unique new idea for modular interconnecting building materials. Unlike Legos or Lincoln Logs, they were fabricated from discarded, recycled, and repurposed materials and processes. We created several prototypes of quarter scale furniture. Potential markets were opening in our minds and hearts, and we believed that they would soon manifest.
Jack and Virginia created a very timely and clever `Women’s Liberation Survival Kit’. It was a cloth bag made of a military style denim camouflage material, hand sewn, silk screened, and featuring a collection of pockets and compartments filled with supplies like tampons, packs of condoms, birth control dispensers, a small canister of pepper spray, a compressed air horn, female paraphernalia, cosmetics, and other assorted goodies.
I made appointments with buyers and merchandise managers from major retail department stores to get feedback and gain additional insight into our products and planning. A few buyers wanted to know when they could purchase our products. One merchandise manager expressed doubt about connecting expensive merchandise with mentally unstable people. He thought it might detract from their marketability. ‘Manufactured by forensic psychiatric workshops’ was not the best-selling point.
Our team felt that wasn’t an obstacle. Like Republicans, we’d suppress bad news and glamorize alternative facts and good news. Patients were inspired and excited about the opportunity. Positive behavioral changes were taking place. I felt motivated. Everyone was beginning to notice as we made ourselves ready to negotiate with hospital administration and sheltered workshops across the state. I couldn’t believe how well everything was moving forward. The great white whale was in my sights.
Stay tuned as my white whale becomes a white elephant and all of our efforts head south…
After six to eight working days, I’d met most of the patients. There were five men’s wards and one women’s ward. The wards traveled around the hospital escorted by SHTA’s. One, two, or three wards at a time would meet in the rehab department for recreational/religious services. Many patients found religion while incarcerated. Evangelists, fundamentalists, and self-styled ministers attended every service, along with agnostics, atheists, and heretics. I counted four Jewish patients in the mix. Jewish services were most ludicrous of all. Patients of every shape, size, color, and religious denomination wore yarmulkes (skullcaps) and pretended to chant pigeon Hebrew. For attending religious services, patients received extra rewards such as cigarettes, tea bags, and candy. They also hoped to earn a few brownie points with God and the Forensic Committee when they came up for evaluation.
The next several months were both enlightening and frustrating. It was obvious I needed more clinical training specific to a forensic population. I reached from the Rehab department to make allies on the treatment teams and in the cabinet. Unfortunately, protocol and position are guidelines in public service. If you go directly to someone outside of your department on your own initiative, it can be misconstrued as a breach of faith or as a failure on the part of your supervisor to control her staff. Employees generate truckloads of surplus paperwork and ask permission for everything in writing. Dolores was reprimanded. I felt dejected.
My initial impression of patients was that they were generally dull and apathetic, motivated by bribery or extortion. Cigarettes (nicotine), candy (sugar), tea bags (caffeine), and little packets of Sanka rewarded good behaviors. I believed they were ultimately harmful and destructive. Extortion was punishment for bad behaviors. Having no rewards, no activities, temporary isolation, or mandatory drug treatments is really `Pavlov 101′ in practice.
There were two types of patients. Nearly all had committed acts of violence. Some were there for psychiatric evaluation. Others were assigned for long term care by the court system because they were unfit to stand trial or too mentally and emotionally disturbed to be in a normal prison setting. There were several mass murderers and serial killers. You’d never know it as they appeared meek, apathetic, and ordinary. As they grew to trust me, they revealed hopes, dreams, fears, and tales of intrigue and horror.
I was steadily earning the trust and respect of the rehab staff. I’d read Dolores’s hands. Within a month, I was asked by other staff members to share my insights and observations about them. The rehab staff was caring and well meaning. I observed unhealthy doses of neurosis combined with fear, paranoia, and overdeveloped senses of responsibility, obligation, and guilt. Public service feels thankless and hopeless to many of the staff. I tried to be constructive, helpful, and leave everyone feeling hopeful.
I suggested to Dolores that she practice saying “NO”. I advised Zandor not to react negatively to criticism, even if it’s personal. I nagged Billy (Skinny) to lighten up and see reality as it is and not how he wants it to be. I encouraged Luscious Lips to let go of his guilt, cultivate good habits (like controlling his indulgences), and begin to schedule activities to look forward to in his life. I applauded Barbara’s ability to maintain clear boundaries and thanked her for her honesty with herself and everyone else. I cheered Maya’s energy and enthusiasm. I let her know I supported whatever she wanted for herself. I wanted Janice to clearly see and express herself creatively.
My reputation as a hand analyst spread quickly. Soon, I was in the hospital director’s office reading her hands. Dr. Helga presented a caring and friendly demeanor, but after examining her hands for a couple of minutes, I was positive it was an act. She had the stiffest hands and fingers I’d ever felt, inwardly curving pinkie fingers, and a clear simian line in her dominant hand. Knotty fingers and long index fingers were well suited for a detail-oriented directorship. Helga’s father had been a German SS or gestapo who ran a Nazi concentration camp during World War II. There was no place for emotion in Helga’s formative years. She was calculating, ambitious, and couldn’t tolerate disobedience. She ordered me to never discuss what I saw with anyone and told me in no uncertain terms to stay away from patient hands. I gained insight into the cabinet by reading several members directly and by carefully listening and observing body language at meetings and in casual exchanges without permission.
It took six months to learn the ropes while generating and accumulating huge masses of paperwork and proposals. I was ready to present my syllabus for prevocational classes to the cabinet when the hand of fate unexpectedly intervened. A quirky thing happened. Dolores accidentally caught Janice, the art therapist, in the art supply closet with her skirt up around her ears. She was dispensing her own personal form of emotional and physical therapy to one of the male patients. Janice was fired instantly.
Janice had self-destructed. I’d lucked out. There was no art therapist. I was the only staff member qualified to fill in until another was hired. I knew about art. I didn’t know the first thing about art therapy or forensic psychology. That didn’t seem to faze anybody. I was thrilled to put everything aside to be the new substitute art therapist. I’d finally get to meet patients. Nearly all the patients frequented the art room. It was a chance to play with art materials and express themselves creatively. They could sculpt with clay, draw and paint, make collages, write poetry, and play music. I’d examine their hands, astrology, and experiment with tarot on them. This was an important lesson in human nature and my nature that I’ll never forget.
The art room was small and private (14’X 14′). I was happy about that because in addition to having the potential for intimacy, I was required to inventory every pencil, crayon, scissor, and even staple. These were all considered potentially dangerous weapons. Everything in Rehab was either bolted down or fastened together with special screws and nuts that required special tools to unfasten. Every precaution was taken to protect us from patients and patients from each other and themselves.
One very crazy patient who seriously creeped me out was James. After James’s mother would visit him, staff would find him mutilating his genitals with a paperclip, staple, or whatever he could find that caused damage. James eventually died of AIDS after repeatedly letting other male patients have their way with him sexually. I stayed away from James’s hands, but I do remember ugly brown tobacco stains between the tips of his index and middle fingers from letting cigarettes burn to ash without taking a puff.
I was cautious around patients. I tried to be helpful. I spoke little except when spoken to. I’d sometimes sketch patients. They saw me drawing and sculpting and began asking for artistic advice. I happily provided tips and tricks. It took over six months to locate a new art therapist. During this time, I’d meet a dozen patients who would influence my destiny.
Stay tuned to meet the patients…
Author’s note: If you’ve read the first episode of ‘How I lost my Sanity’, you know my writing is a combo of fact and fiction. Using the same voice as my non-fiction writing may create some confusion. I break rules of grammar and syntax. A generous helping of political and social incorrectness sheds darkness on my protagonist. Made up names and characters from movies parody and give faces to characters in my story. If you have any thoughts, ideas, feelings, suggestions, advice, or whatever about my writing and story, feel free to comment.
“The lips of wisdom are closed, except to the ears of understanding.” Hermes
This is a tale of how I tempted fate and lost my sanity. You may think you know your dark side, or you may know someone who has been devoured by theirs, but until you’ve been seduced into madness, breached your sacred boundaries, and tasted the forbidden fruit; you won’t experience the boundless breadths and desperate depths of darkness in your psyche along with the stark realization that you can’t turn back.
Black and white are metaphors for oppositions that fuel our awareness and allegories that guide us between our whitest whites and blackest blacks. Love and hate are extremes of the same basic substance. Like and dislike are varying degrees of gray between black and white. If insanity is black and sanity is white, where does happiness end and misery begin? When does pleasure stop and pain begin?
As a life-long student of craziness, I coveted the opportunity to serve criminally insane people. I might never get another chance. Back in college, I studied Industrial Design. I minored in bizarre psycho-ideologies and isms. As an active member of a twice weekly study group at a Gestalt psychology institute for two years, I whetted my appetite for more knowledge and understanding of human behavior. I finally had a real chance to explore authentic craziness incarnate.
Criminal minds fascinated me. I learned from my study of astrology that each of twelve sun signs has its own unique criminal style. Take this with a grain of salt, but here are a few gross generalizations. Gemini / Mercury rules con artists and pickpockets. Taurus / Venus commits sex crimes and breaches of trust from petty theft to grand larceny. Aries / Mars loves warfare and commit crimes of passion. Sagittarius / Jupiter wears white collars. Capricorn / Saturn rules master criminals. Aquarius / Uranus rules arsonists, terrorists, and unexpected bad shit happening. Pisces / Neptune rules drug dealers and users. Scorpio / Pluto rules seduction, rape, murder, and betrayal. Pluto lustily awaits you at your final destination.
Our outer planetary pictures provide a karmic backdrop for past and future generations of actors and actresses striving to learn their roles. Life is a play of plays. Unconscious creates drama. Subconscious directs plot. Consciousness is stage manager. Sun enlightens. Moon reflects. Mercury connects. Venus senses. Mars energizes. Jupiter expands. Saturn limits. Uranus disrupts, Neptune dissolves, and Pluto destroys. ‘God’ is Master Playwright.
Before proceeding with my vocational classes, I need to regress and provide background material for my year of preparation preceding my choice to teach classes. It may take a couple of posts, but I promise you’ll be glad I did.
I entered the hospital from my first day through guarded locked doors, metal detectors, a bag inspection station, faded institutional beige paint, and buzzing fluorescent lights like parasites that sucked my vital essences. Hospital staff appeared to be the dregs of humanity’s helpers. Most had physical handicaps like limping, scarring, splotching, or gazing in hopeless desperation with myopic eyes. I hoped it wasn’t contagious. I had easy access to patient records and treatment plans. I could attend treatment team meetings with psychologists, social workers, and psychiatrists. It felt too good to be true and it was.
Forensic hospital life is about rules, regulations, and self-defense. There are many more don’ts than do’s. Employees are sworn to secrecy, fingerprinted, and instilled with awkward feelings of mistrust. Orientation had been designed to help new staff members understand the organizational goals, policies, and procedures affecting job safety, security, performance, and delivery of care. We filled out a lot of questionnaires, surveys, and evaluations. We were briefed on the nature, structure, and policies of the facility. We learned about patient rights and privileges, rights and privileges of staff, and hospital policy.
The largest portion of hospital staff were security called SHTA’s. They accompanied patients to every activity. I attended life safety training with them: CPR, First-Aid, and Management of Violent Patient Behavior (MVPB). A violent person could `go off’ and all we could do was to defend ourselves. We weren’t permitted to be aggressive. We were taught Judo style moves by serious martial artists and laughed heartily as we fell, flipped each other on gym mats, and got to know each other. We were encouraged to nickname one another to help us connect. Based on obvious personal peculiarities our nicknames stuck. There was `Skinny’, `Luscious Lips’, `Gigolo’, and `Tortoise’. I was `Smiley’. Forever after, we addressed each other by our nicknames.
Fighting with patients was a scary idea. Despite my comprehensive training in self-defense, I envisioned myself grabbing the nearest chair and clobbering a violent patient over the head in a crisis. I’d be instantly fired and then indicted on criminal charges. Fortunately for everyone, most of the furniture was anchored to the floor or walls with specially designed hardware to prevent that kind of violence.
When I wasn’t watching over my shoulder for violent patients, I was cautioned to be on the lookout for ‘bacterial pathogens’ which cause disease. A lot of patients have hygiene problems and are unhealthy. Samplings are taken regularly from surfaces around the hospital in order to monitor disease. There were patients with AIDS. In 1986, that was scary! What if a patient with AIDS bit a staff member? We were briefed extensively on care and prevention. This job began to seem more than a little risky.
When I first met the patients, they appeared to be the most motley crew nature had ever assembled. They looked like R. Crumb characters. Many had deranged eyes. They were so whacky that I felt like laughing. Some had been given massive doses of thorazine. I couldn’t wait to find out who had done what. I’d heard there were a few notorious celebrities in the mix.
I was given a photo I.D. (I had to wear it at all times) and keys for areas I had access to within the hospital. Keys were given upon entering the hospital and deposited before leaving. Patients observed me with random glimpses, furtive glances, and glaring gazes. They saw me as one more ‘keeper of the keys’ who was attempting to figure them out, discipline, rehabilitate, or fix them. One thing for sure, I wasn’t one of them (yet).
I was directed to sit in on patient activities, assist rehab staff, and familiarize myself with patients. The first few days were uneventful. Important goals were getting the patients to brush their teeth, comb their hair, and to try not to be generally disgusting. Another important goal was to get them to stay awake and participate in activities such as art, music, education classes, and exercise. There were no interesting conversations yet.
The rehab staff consisted of nine members. As Director of Rehab, Dolores was beaten down by too many years in state service. Her sad name complemented her careworn face. A telltale twitch made me wonder whether she was smiling or frowning. Her unhealthy-looking teeth were yellowed from too many cigarettes and too much coffee. A deep raspy voice coughed her words. I was concerned she was ineffective. I was right. Dolores was caring but couldn’t say ‘no’ to anyone. She promised me full health benefits and then let me serve my half-time position by working two ten-hour days while the hospital’s needs would have been better served if my time were spread over three days.
Respiratory, pulmonary, and circulatory health problems could be seen in her bulbous whitish nails. Her square palms and short square fingers revealed a practical nature, while her dry, reddish, dishpan skin had weathered many storms that seemed to endlessly arrive from every direction. Despite our differences, Dolores and I liked each other.
My `other half’ was a furniture maker and restorer named Billy (Skinny). Billy was tall, thin, and bony. He looked like a scruffy middle-aged Abraham Lincoln. Billy was one of the hardest working, enthusiastic, and idealistic persons I’d ever met. Like me, he’d never had ‘a job’. An eccentric renegade from societal rules and regulations, Billy maintained a furniture restoration and refinishing business on the side. Like me, Billy had a hidden agenda. His was unselfish and equally unrealistic. He believed that he could actually rehabilitate lunatics and transform them into functioning members of society.
Billy’s ‘feeling hands’ had rectangular palms and long fingers. A hardness and stiffness ruled his fingers, and knotty joints enhanced his compulsive need to control his physical and mental life. His especially long middle fingers bent towards the top of his ring fingers. Billy had an overdeveloped sense of responsibility, obligation, and guilt. An oversensitive perfectionist, Billy spent endless hours thinking about the best thing to do next.
Billy and I tried to set mutual goals, but my hidden agenda clashed with his righteous cause. Billy wanted to turn patients into furniture restorers. I wanted to help, but I wanted private time with them. Billy committed to creating a sheltered wood working shop. I chose to offer design classes to higher functioning patients. I’d also help Billy set up a workshop that would serve the entire patient population.
The Rehab staff was a smorgasbord of affirmative action. Zandor was Estonian. He was a rehabilitation counselor and second in command. Zandor should have had Dolores’s job, but upper management didn’t want a person they couldn’t control in that position. Zandor’s ‘thinking hands’ correspond to his strong handshake, firm elastic skin, long straight fingers, square fingertips, and open and frank nails. Zandor had also been abused by too many years in state service, but it didn’t break him. He had grievances pending against the Public Employees Union for obvious discrimination against him. Despite unfavorable circumstances, Zandor always presented himself with pride, integrity, and dignity. We became comrades.
Bruce (Luscious Lips) arrived at the same time as Billy and me. His meaty practical hands had square palms and short square fingers that were soft and supple with dominant plump third phalanges. His head and lifelines were tied together at their beginnings. He was a Taurus and a huge procrastinator. Bruce was in charge of recreation. He’d served state social service agencies throughout his entire work experience. Sweet and mild mannered, his desire to make a real difference had dulled from too many years of compliance to authority, rules, and regulations. Bruce had gone as high as he could in institutional politics. He was caring and attentive with the patients but seemed depressed and resigned to mediocrity the rest of the time. The only times Bruce revealed real passion and genuine enthusiasm was when we talked about gourmet food or going fishing together.
Barbara was the schoolteacher on our team. Her goal was to help as many patients as possible reach high school equivalency. She was a large boned middle aged Afro-American woman and a very kind person. I don’t remember her hands except for her large broad nails and the sparse clear lines engraved in her palms. Barbara had spent many years in state service. She was one of a very few state employees who managed to maintain a sense of humor and a life outside of her work. She complained the least of any full-time staff member and always kept her cool. Once during English class, one of the male patients pulled out his huge erect penis and started jerking off. Barbara walked over, looked him straight in his eyes and without raising her voice calmly said, “please excuse yourself and go to the bathroom”. He did. I wished I could have read her report about the incident.
Bob was the librarian. He reminded me of a Spam and Velveeta Cheese on Wonder Bread sandwich. Bob was a real life Walter Mitty. He was helpful when asked, but most of the time, gazed into the distance under thick lens wire rimmed glasses. As I think of him, I can still feel his cool damp mashed potato hand shake that confirmed a total lack of will power, energy, and enthusiasm.
Andrew was art therapist when I arrived. His tenure was short. The only thing I recall about him is that he sent his estranged daughter a gross of condoms for her sixteenth birthday. He quipped in his southern drawl, “If she’s going to do it, might as well be safe.” The new art therapist was Janice. She was an unsuccessfully aging frustrated starving artist in need of a steady income. There was a frequent staff turnover for art therapists.
Maya was recreational therapist. She was young, very private, and a very athletic Afro-American woman. Maya managed sports activities and the patient newspaper, the Scene. All of the staff liked Maya. Patients loved her. Her powerful ‘intuitive hands‘ were well suited for sports like football, soccer, and wrestling. Everyone thought Maya was gay, but that was nobody’s business.
I was a card-carrying member of a band of misfits in search of a fit. On the whole, I liked the rehab staff and felt like I was becoming part of a team. I looked forward to our working together and began to imagine that we might actually make a real difference…
Cancer is a Cardinal Water sign that is governed by our Moon which influences our Oceans and Tides. Cancer rules Motherhood, Family, Food, Feelings, Home, and our Personal and Collective Unconscious. The birth of the USA is embodied by the Summer Solstice. When the Declaration of Independence was signed in Cancer on July 4, 1776, our Sun, Mercury, Venus, and Jupiter were in the sign of Cancer. That’s a lot of Cancer.
There’s some controversy among astrologers as to the correct time of signing the Declaration. Aquarius or Sagittarius is rising. I believe it’s Sagittarius because the placement of planets in that natal chart indicates leadership and sticks our noses in everyone else’s business. Let’s look at how the 20th Century transits of Pluto and Uranus through the constellation of Cancer influenced Personal and Collective Psyche.
Pluto, archetype of sex, death, and transformation transited the sign of Cancer from 1913 to 1938. Plutocrats, partisan politicians, nationalism, and isolationism transformed world ideologies. World War I turned into World War II. In 1913, President Wilson pressed a button in the White House that blew up the Gamboa Dike at the Isthmus of Panama that created a canal between oceans that transformed travel by sea. Wilson legislated the Carter-Owen Bill that established a Federal Reserve System that transformed the stranglehold on the nation’s currency and credit system by banks.
NBC became the first Nationwide Broadcasting Company. Daylight Saving Time transformed clocks and schedules. Transcontinental telephone service transformed international communications. World infrastructures and atomic energy transformed planetary energy sources and usages. Wall Street prospered from war while soldiers earning $16 per month died in the trenches. No child was left behind. President Wilson established a lottery style draft promoting patriotism. Congress passed the Espionage Act fining draft dodgers $10,000 and imposing a twenty-year jail sentence.
Pluto in Cancer catalyzed Kleptocracy (government by people who use their power to steal their country’s resources) and Kakistocracy (state or society governed by its least suitable or competent citizens). “Like all good illusionists, the kleptocrats know how to distract us from looking at their misdeeds and the kakistocrats know how to distract us from their ineptitude. They do it by talking to us about ideology and attacking those of their rivals. While we watch and play our part in these ideological circuses, they steal. Or tinker with government policies they don’t really understand. And we pay the price.”
“Do your bit” encouraged citizens to buy Liberty Bonds. Wheatless-meatless days were promoted. The end of 1919 marked the end of the Influenza pandemic that caused half a million deaths and a quarter of the nation’s population to be sick. Prohibition banned liquor for all citizens. Black markets and bootlegging industries flourished. Black leader Marcus Garvey organized ‘The Empire of Africa’ with 500,000 followers. Garvey led the largest mass exodus of Blacks with the least sense of brotherhood in US history. Pluto passing through Capricorn opposite Cancer is furnishing the wisdom necessary to not make the same mistakes. Hindsight has few surprises and many possible benefits.
In 1929, doubt, fear, and panic upset our stock market as we faced our darkest hour. Foundations and structures of home and family were crumbling. Pluto in Cancer birthed many people who spent their lives taking care of family. Their overdeveloped senses of responsibility, guilt, and obligation motivated their children to become dropouts and runaways. Neither extreme has worked.
Uranus, planet of sudden and unexpected changes, invention, rebellion, and revolution transited the sign of Cancer from 1949 to 1955. Mothers stopped staying at home and went to work. Women began wearing the “bikini”, a fashionable French bathing suit. ‘I Love Lucy’, a comic show about a housewife and her Cuban bandleader husband became the most popular show on TV. Ranch houses and basement playrooms became popular. Subconscious mind was explored in psychology. Born between 1949 and 1955? Your psyche may be shipwrecked somewhere in time and space in opposition between rational awareness and fearful confusion.
We should think twice before we elect (appoint) another Cancer President. Four USA Presidents were born under the sign of Cancer. George W Bush (7/6/1946) has an egocentric character to match his Leo rising. George Bush demonstrated some of the worst qualities of Cancer and Leo in his behavior, intentions, and actions. Check out the similarities between the three other Cancer Presidents.
Like George Bush and Al Gore, John Quincy Adams finished second in popular vote behind General Andrew Jackson. There was no majority. The choice was put before the House of Representatives. House Speaker, Henry Clay, swung the election to Adams. When Adams appointed Clay as Secretary of State, Jackson followers cried, “Corrupt bargain”.
W.H. Littleton proclaimed, “Of all the men whom it was ever my lot to accost and to waste civilities upon, he (Adams) was the most doggedly and systematically repulsive. With a vinegar aspect, cotton in his leathern ears, and hatred in his heart, he sat like a bulldog among spaniels.”
President Calvin Coolidge shared his birthday 7/4 with the USA Declaration of Independence. Coolidge was famous for “holding his tongue”, earning him the title, “Silent Cal”. Two of his favorite sayings were: “If you don’t say anything, you won’t be called on to repeat it.” and “The business of America is business.” William Allen White said of him, “He was an economic fatalist with a God given inertia. He knew nothing and refused to learn”.
The 38th President, Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr. didn’t know he was adopted until he was seventeen. Betty performed all the domestic chores. Gerry never lifted a finger around the house. As Speaker for the other house, Ford passionately pleaded for escalation of the war in Vietnam. He urged “unleashing devastating air and sea power”. He failed to impeach liberal Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas as a favor to his buddy Richard Nixon. Ford granted Nixon a “full complete and absolute pardon” for all crimes relating to Watergate. Ford blamed democrats for the disastrous rate of inflation and warned that electing more would “jeopardize world peace”. He admitted to not reading books, but did find time to watch football on TV. Good thing there was no Twitter!
Congressman Robert Drinan said, “I cannot dislike him personally — he’s cordial and gracious, but he’s consistently wrong and consistency is a virtue of small minds. He’s never proposed a constructive solution to anything”.
Lyndon Johnson quipped, Ford “played too much football with his helmet off” ~ “Jerry’s the only man I ever knew who can’t walk and chew gum at the same time”.
Reverend Duncan Littlefair proclaimed, “Ford isn’t a bad man, but he’s dumb—dumb. He shouldn’t be dumb either. He went to school just like everybody else”.
“The important thing is that men should have a purpose in life…
it should be something useful, something good”
The Dalai Lama (Cancer) is “The Reborn Soul of Buddha” who fled Tibet in 1959 to live as a “simple monk” in a remote corner of Northern India. Unable to return home, he chose to promote world peace and love. Like Orpheus, singer, priest, healer, poet, and musician in Greek myth, the Dalai Lama must charm Pluto into letting him enter into the domain of death to mine the matrix of collective unconscious and restore humanity. Death warned Orpheus that he’d lose Eurydice forever if he looked back. In a moment of doubt, Orpheus looked back and lost Eurydice forever. If hindsight is 2020, we must be fully conscious in 2024 of the consequences of our choices and corresponding votes.
“The lips of wisdom are closed, except to the ears of understanding.”
Alchemy is not transforming lead into gold. Hermes turned Saturn (Lead) into Sun (Gold) by building stable structures on solid foundations, being disciplined, and focusing on his metaphysical quest to prepare mentally, emotionally, and spiritually to connect to any and all others at any and all times. Alchemy is a set of magical formulas, tools, and esoteric instruction for becoming healthier, happier, and more fulfilled in life. Alchemy is the mastery of mental forces by transmuting one mental vibration into another. Our Sun passing through Gemini ~ May 21st to June 21st is a perfect time to share our selves on a soul level with anyone and everyone who is able!
Every thought is made up of individual cells; physically, mentally, and spiritually connected to all other cells on all other planes at the same time. Our brains are our cell communication hardware while our minds transmit and receive messages. Relationships between cells cause energy and matter to vibrate on different planes of reality at different times and places. Combining physical, mental, and spiritual planes, enables us to connect any with any and every being at any and every time and place. We can achieve wholeness by letting go of fear, taking a leap of faith, making connections, tuning our links, and creating nourishing environments.
“While ALL is in “The ALL”, it is equally true that “The ALL” is in ALL. “To him who truly understands this truth hath come great knowledge”. The inner nature of “The ALL” is unknowable and indefinable. That’s why humanity needs anthropomorphic gods and institutionalized religion. Spirit is the essence that embodies “ALL”. Spirituality requires the recognition, realization, and manifestation of Great Spirit within and without.
Hermes Seven Laws
“Law of Polarity”: “Everything is dual; everything has poles; everything has its pair of opposites; like and unlike are the same; opposites are identical in nature but different in degree; extremes meet; all truths are but half-truths; all paradoxes may be reconciled.”
“The Secret” is only a secret to the uninitiated. The ‘Laws of Attraction’ work best when you know what you desire, and your intentions are clear. Polarity is spiritual magnetism.
Anyone can turn negative thinking into positive circumstances by letting go of fear, having clear intent, choosing a worthy quest, and doing the work. See how the ‘Law of Polarity’ transformed trash into treasure!
Opposites are extremes of the same basic substance with varying degrees between. Where does heat end and cold begin? Where does darkness leave off and light begin? What about positive and negative, hard and soft, sharp and dull, noisy and quiet, high and low? The same principle operates on a mental plane. Love and hate are simply degrees of the same thing. In the middle are shades of like and dislike. Vibrations of hate can be transmuted into vibrations of love through the art of polarization, a phase of alchemy known and practiced by ancient and modern masters.
Hermes other Six ‘Secrets’
Correspondence, Mentalism, Vibration, Rhythm, Cause, Effect, and Gender are Hermes other six Laws. Practicing metaphysical principles enabled Hermes and enables anyone to explore, examine, and explain the unexplained, and to execute any and all thoughts, ideas, and visions.
Having inner and outer wisdom has helped critical thinkers throughout history to unlock mysteries using Hermetic thought and principles. Hermetic masters possess knowledge of transcendental astronomy called astrology, transcendental chemistry called alchemy, and transcendental psychology called mystic psychology. Confucius, Galileo, Plato, Pythagoras, Aristotle, Nostradamus, Leonardo Da Vinci, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and Joseph Campbell were all Grand Masters of Hermetic thought and principles.
Astrology is a symbolic system that compares and contrasts our heavens with affairs of man on earth. Astrology unlocks ancient and modern mysteries using Hermes second principle of correspondence “As Above, So Below, as below, so above”.
An infinite variety of characters, plots, and archetypal tales are mirrored in lots of dysfunctional humans, unable to see the forests from the trees. Too many lost souls are Idolizing gold-plated Calves on brass-plated pedestals and Worshiping Sacred Cows on the Altars of Nonsense. The human race has become a race against self-created bad shit happening. Our planet’s sixth extinction is nearing more quickly than we think.
Hermes was Greek god of wisdom, wealth, trade, luck, fertility, language, animal husbandry, thieves, travelers, sleep, and providing safe passage to death. Mercury was Hermes’ Roman version, messenger of gods and ruler of Gemini. Thoth, in ancient Egypt, was a lunar god and patron of science, literature, wisdom, and invention. Loki was the Norse god of mischief. In Tarot, Hermes, a Magician at a crossroads has crucial decisions to make and critical actions to take. Merlin, Gondolf, Harry Potter, and Dumbledore are modern Hermes. Having metaphysical tools and mystical knowledge enabled Hemes and enables ALL of us to choose our thoughts, feelings, what to do, and who to be.
Hermes was reputedly a real person who lived for 350 years in the flesh in ancient Egypt. Refusing to age, Hermes misspent much of his adolescence as a trickster and petty thief. He was ‘Puck’ in ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’. He’s Peter Pan, a Gemini, who never grows old.
A 76 year old Hermes, I’m no longer adolescent. Peter needs and depends on Wendy. My Wendy is Joanna, Aries with Taurus rising. She strongly disagrees with my assessment. I call her ‘Rambull’. I’m a Gemini with Scorpio rising. She calls me ‘a piece of work in progress’. Being born twelve years apart makes us ‘the bores’ at Chinese New Year’s parties. I’m a Pig on a Mountain. She’s a Pig in a Monastery.
Wendy is a Virgo type, a practical and responsible friend who darns Peter’s socks, sews his shadow back on, and patiently awaits his return as he flies away to Neverland whenever he chooses. Wendy brings an awareness that balances Peter’s ambiguous and ambivalent thoughts and feelings with clarity and good sense.
Michael Jackson actually lived in Neverland. Priscilla and Liz were his Wendys. Johnny Depp is Peter Pan who played Edward Scissorhands, Alice in Wonderland, Pirates of the Carribean, Charlie in the Chocolate Factory, and many other child centered characters. Hermes & Aphrodite gave birth to Hermaphrodite. David Bowie has flourished and blossomed in musical creativity, originality, and androgynous performance art.
Know thyself. Common sense without good sense is nonsense. Cultivate clear vision. Make wise choices. Nourish real relationships. Choose right uses of will power. Act decisively. Maintain positive attitudes. Balance courage, strength, wisdom, and grace with critical thinking, real feelings, and right actions. Having solid faith creates strong structures on sound foundations. We can change our destiny and the destiny of our planet on a cellular level by raising our vibration, polarity, and rhythm.
Personal and Collective Psyche transforms as outer planets change signs and geometric relationships. Uranus was the only outer planet to pass through Pisces (1919–1928) in the 20th Century. Uranus’s eighty-four-year cycle was completed when he returned to Pisces from 2003–2011. Uranus (destroyer) in Pisces and Neptune (visionary) in Aquarius are masters of illusion and delusion. Pluto in Capricorn transforms religious, social, economic, and cultural paradigms. Uranus moved into Taurus in 2019. An unstable economy rattled collective psyche as it destabilized markets through fluctuating interest rates and sudden unpredictable changes.
Comparing and contrasting Ideologies from 1919 and 2003 are both alarming and enlightening. If hindsight is 2020, it’s 2023. What has happened and not happened?
1919 WORLD SERIES SCANDAL
1919~ Worst baseball scandal (Black Sox) in history occurred when a grand jury brought indictments against eight players from the White Sox who were accused of throwing the 1919 World Series. They were eventually found not guilty.
2003~ Complicit use of illicit steroids was the biggest scandal in modern baseball.
Bottle of bonded medicinal whiskey
“For Medical Purposes Only”
1919~ Eighteenth Amendment prohibited the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors, which encouraged distilling, brewing, and bootlegging.
2003~ George W. Bush prohibited Medicare from negotiating drug prices. Black markets for pharmaceutical and illicit drugs from India, Canada, and Mexico thrived. Cannabis became medicinal.
1921~ Formal investigations into the Teapot Dome oil scandals were initiated.
2003~ USA invaded Iraq under false pretenses to secure oil resources.
1924~ Worst tornado in US history obliterated 35 towns in Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, Indiana, and Illinois.
2005~ Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.
Gaia needs us to turn bad intentions and habits into healthy strategies and actions.
1919 ~ World War I ended; consumerism, immigration, discrimination, extremism, and fundamentalism began and grew. Uranus in Pisces, Neptune in Leo, and Pluto in Cancer combined to impel four million steel workers and miners to walk off their job to protest “too many work hours” and “inhumane pay”.
2003~ Increased wage inequality between workers at the top, middle, and bottom resulted in less wages and compensation for workers. Despite increased productivity, real wages and compensation continue to stagnate. Haves have. Have nots have not.
Four conservative Republican Presidents (Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, and George W Bush) held office with Uranus in Pisces. “Silent Cal” Coolidge, 30th President (b. 7 / 4 1872) exclaimed, “Biological laws tell us that certain divergent people will not mix or blend (Inferior Races of Asia).” Coolidge preached, “The business of America is business”.
Government and business were in bed together. Illicit affairs wielded temporary and absolute power over tightly woven webs of political, social, and cultural fabric. Plutocrats seduced, then betrayed us for profit. One embodiment of our addiction and dependence on credit and corporations is ‘Citizens United’, who has our permission to make decisions about us for us. Winning through Intimidation works, but Hubris has Karmic Consequences!
Mission accomplished?
George W Bush began his ‘War on Terror’ when Uranus entered Pisces in 2003. By wrecking Iraqi culture and disabling their energy infrastructure, we pilfered and profited from Iraq’s resources. Dick Cheney’s Halliburton bought, sold, and traded Iraq as a proud sponsor of and powerful benefactor from the war in Iraq.
Security for airports and seaports was put in the hands of chosen special interest contractors. Public Health Care was sacrificed on the altars of Health Insurance Czars and Pharmaceutical CEO’s. Social Security, based in faith, truth, and justice, was nearly privatized. Abuse of power, greed, fear, apathy, loss of faith, and control are threats to our good health and the well-being of our constitution, democracy, and planet.
In 1929, loss of faith in our government and economy infected our psyche, catalyzing a devastating stock market crash! In 2008, President George W Bush demonstrated how to create out-of-control federal, domestic, and military spending by giving government bailouts to financial and auto industries and funding nebulous federal mandates like educational reforms that transformed substantial surpluses into huge deficits. Paradoxically, Democrats dominated the Senate and the House from 2007~ 09 during the banking and housing financial scandals.
Before the great Stock Market Crash, Uranus in Pisces transmuted traditional ideologies from thrift and austerity to mass consumerism, addiction, and unobstructed credit. Two out of three Americans had electricity, refrigerators, and washing machines. Henry Ford created green and maroon as well as black cars. Spending on recreation tripled. Mass tastes stimulated and cultivated markets for Rice Krispies, Lender’s Bagels, Mounds Bars, Betty Crocker, Peter Pan Peanut Butter, and many other super marketable products.
Credit and consumerism created the illusion of an easy and convenient life. Uranus in Pisces inspired movie audiences to out attend church audiences. Movie houses, chain stores, and radio advertising proliferated. ‘Modern Romance Magazine’ challenged moral codes. Critics believed consumerism was driving Americans into a soulless existence. Writer Sinclair Lewis highlighted humanity’s illusions and delusions while blaming mass production and consumption for “having created a bloodless, loveless, and standardized world”. “He who dies rich, dies disgraced” Andrew Carnegie.
In 1925, the KKK released 40,000 hooded members to invade Washington DC. Their resurgence targeted African Americans, Immigrants, Catholics, and Jews. New laws reduced the stream of migrants to a trickle while congress hindered immigrants based on quotas of 150,000 new immigrants yearly. The KKK endorsed Donald Trump for President in Nov of 2016. We did nothing but talk, blame, and continue scraping for pennies at the bottom of the barrel. Money talks. Bullshit walks. We need to build more and better bridges, not walls.
Creationism ignored modern science. The opposition between Uranus (science) and Neptune (religion) was clouded by Pisces. Tennessee legislators voted it unlawful for any teacher in a state supported school, “to teach any theory that denies the story of man’s creation as taught in the bible”. Man descending from apes was unacceptable. John Scopes, high school biology teacher, fought for Darwin’s ‘theory of evolution’. Science and truth lost to politics and religion in the “Scopes Monkey Trial”. Denial of Science is even worse now.
I need another yacht…
No rich child left behind. Poor folk are workers, soldiers, and followers. How many yachts and jets do our saviors and persecutors need before they’ll help humanity?
The German Bauhaus School of Architecture’s ‘less is more’ design philosophy influenced architecture and product design on a global scale. Religious culture manipulated school curriculum to cleanse obscenity, promote censorship, and discriminate against race and sexuality in literature and theater. In 1984, Intelligent Design became Creationism. ‘Intelligent Design’ was once about saving materials and money for manufacturers. As an industrial designer, waste was not a problem for me, because clean-up and disposal were someone else’s problem, usually disposed of thoughtlessly, hastily, and carelessly. I depleted more than my share of our planet’s natural resources for ego and fashion. It’s easy to rationalize and compartmentalize choices and actions and ignore consequences. I retired from polluting the planet and became the ‘Guru of Garbage’. Landfills are overflowing with award winning design! Few people realize how much ability each and every one of us has to affect and infect our future with Chronic Spiritual Cancer, which is caused by Humanity’s Lack of Foresight, Consumption, Waste, Greed, Ignorance, Hate, and Fear.
‘Intelligent design’ is not ‘smart design’. Smart designers create useful products and services using sustainable resources, efficient energy production, and fewer pollutants. More waste is recycled or reused in constructive projects that enhance nature and humanity. We must shift our paradigms from lying, denying, and hiding truth, to seeing, understanding, accepting, and embracing reality. Hate can be transformed into love by letting go of fear. The handwriting is on the wall and the time is now!
Common sense is not good sense. Denying science is not ‘intelligent Design’. We interpret fake news and decipher deceptive politics. All news taken in context and by degree is ideologically corrupt, philosophically bankrupt, and spiritually blind on one level or another. ‘It’s not what you do, but what you get away with that matters’.
PRACTICING WHAT THEY’RE PREACHING?
Real darkness is not funny. Pundits parody greed, prejudice, hate, and hypocrisy. Emperors think they know what’s best for the rest of us as they weave naked warps of ‘no love’ with gilded wefts of ‘tough love’. Where are our healthy role models? Being healthier, happier, more loving, and tolerant of ourselves, each other, and world is a mission and mandate that makes good sense. We must choose leaders who have courage, strength, wisdom, and grace to do what’s best for everyone and everything!
Much has happened since 1919. More than a Century has passed. Neptune returned to Pisces April 4, 2011 and will remain until April 1, 2025. Neptune blurs boundaries, distorts vision, creates illusion, and promotes delusion. Pisces embodies physical, mental, and emotional endings that can catalyze new beginnings. The dusk of denial is the dawn of truth. Bad behavior has become pandemic. Healthy behavior is the cure.
If hindsight is 2020, how come attitudes didn’t change. Why must we lose what we value to value what we had? History repeats in its desperate and disparate attempt to teach us to stop learning in hard ways. Neptune in Pisces embodies infinite shades of gray from the Brightest Spiritual White to the Blackest Death. Must we die to be reborn?
In 2008, Pluto entered Capricorn. With help from Uranus in Pisces and Neptune in Aquarius, Pluto began transforming traditional ideologies and beliefs. Humanity needs to focus attention on harnessing and directing sustainable energy, cultivating values over money, refining communications, upgrading infrastructure, improving public and private transportation, providing healthcare for all, encouraging honest relationships, choosing healthy philosophies, practicing bi-partisan politics, having clear purpose, deciding our personal and collective destinies, encouraging creativity, and being more spiritual. Practicing Courage, Strength, Wisdom, and Grace will lead to the Palace of Good Health and Happiness.
2011. Uranus in Aries, Neptune in Pisces, and Pluto in Capricorn, symbolizes greed, wealth, power, and the illusion and delusion of Self Importance. Huge footprints do not mean huge hearts. The pathology of power fosters denial of truth. A sense of futility and apathy nourishes the disillusion of the free will of 99%. Fear and terror poisoned the Kool-Aid and too many naive and unsuspecting folk are mindlessly guzzling it.
EXPELIOSIS!
WARNING!!!
Unhealthy for 99% +
Nonsense trumps good sense. Money trumps values. Religion trumps spirituality. Climate denial trumps science. Health insurance companies trump healthcare. HMO’s, pharmaceutical companies, and medical profiteers trump everyone. Plutocrats trump politicians. Politicians trump circumstances that require habitual filling of partisan vacancies and attention to profits. Privatized prisons trump poor black prisoners. Prison hatcheries trump frantic followers who foster fundamentalist ideologies and favor fanatical behaviors. The human race has become a race against bad shit happening too predictably and often.
Absolute power corrupts! Choose your cause. Make your decisions. Take your actions. When you’re lucky, give back as much as you can. Make real differences! Hubris has taken down every demagogue in history. Karma manifests when outer and inner worlds collide and divide! If 2020 was the best year for ‘Hindsight’, what’s our responsibility now?
Get your LOCK HIM UP ex-Presidential Medal while supplies last!
How can humanity become mentally and emotionally stable? We can send electric cars into space, but can we transform mass transportation, build better bridges, create well planned tunnels, and less walls? What are the best ways to renew our topsoil, clean our water, freshen our air, and make the smartest uses of our energy resources?
Conceive the inconceivable. Healthy intent, well thought out plans, and right use of free will creates huge possibilities and probabilities. As we help ourselves, we help others. Can we plan what to do next to love and protect our personal and planetary health and well-being?
Love, truth, and justice come with moral obligations and ethical responsibilities. Physical and spiritual wealth is best spent planning and laying strong foundations for whole, healthy, and natural structures. Humanity needs guidance and governance from caring and nurturing leaders and managers who love their families, friends, others, and especially Gaia who sustains and nourishes all life.
Zodiacal sign changes and geometric relationships between outer planets catalyze massive personal and collective transformations of psyche. Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto transited Capricorn in the 20th Century. Paradigms for political institutions and social structures shifted. Uranus in Capricorn revolutionized world relations, politics, religion, and business from 1989 to 1996. The Iron Curtain and Berlin Wall were ripped down. Germany was reunited on Libra 3, 1990. Sociopolitical demarcations between East and West vanished. The Soviet Union disintegrated into fifteen republics in 1991. The Americans with Disabilities Act prohibited discriminating against disabled people. We applied rules, regulations, reforms, and reformations, but continued the trumped-up patriotism, pious philosophies, partisan social discrimination, and fabricated fears.
With Neptune in Capricorn in 1985, NASA’s Voyager space probe recorded Uranus orbiting the outer limits of our solar system. In 2018 with Saturn (government) and Pluto (Power Elite) in Capricorn, Uranus (sudden changes in values and money) in Taurus, and Neptune (vision, illusion, and delusion) in Pisces, Donald Trump announced a 6th branch of our military services that organized, trained, and equipped space forces to protect the USA and allied interests in space and provide space capabilities to the joint force.
Politics in outer space is a waste of time and money. One better idea is to distribute available funds wisely in the here and now. Choose healthy ideas, plans, and actions for all living things. It’s time to address the fundamental conflicts, issues, and beliefs in our society such as ‘Money vs Values’, ‘Money & Morality’, and ‘Haves vs Have~nots’. Religion is losing its purpose for humanity as spirituality becomes more scarce.
Nelson Mandela was released after 27 years behind bars. Anti-Apartheid movements galvanized across the globe in 1990. Jean Bertrand Aristide, penniless radical priest, became Haiti’s first freely elected president. Ten months later, armed rebels seized control of his government and ousted him for ‘meddling in army affairs’. After Asylum in the USA, Aristide returned to office in 1994 with 20,000 American troops. Operation Desert Storm liberated Kuwait from Iraqi invaders. Bosnia declared independence from Yugoslavia, resulting in a religious civil war that pitted Serbs and Croats against Muslims. Genocide in Yemen, Syria, Sudan, and Somalia promoted fear, prejudice, and hatred across the globe! OY!
Johnny Carson retired after 30 years of hosting the ‘Tonite Show’ in May 1992. Representatives from over 100 countries met in Rio de Janeiro /June to figure out how to save the earth. It became obvious to all that common sense needed good sense because too many of us are out of our conscious minds and hearts!
My faces on original art & signature
November 1993, thirteen years after Brady was shot and paralyzed, the Brady Bill for gun control was finally signed into law. Republican leaders continued worshipping greed, coveting power, ignoring human values, abusing planetary well-being, and abandoning the future of our world. Too many lethal weapons of mass destruction are still being sold to too many psychotic males who will eventually use them for mass shootings in malls, schools, and churches.
In October 1995, the USA and UN brokered a prickly cease-fire to end ethnic cleansing. PLO leader Yassar Arafat shook hands with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin to end hatred. The Irish Republican Army agreed to lay down its arms in exchange for a role in Northern Ireland’s political future. Smoking was banned in restaurants in New York City. More women began smoking cigars.
Neptune began its journey through Capricorn in 1984. Clear lines between chemical industries and moral responsibilities dissolved. A gas leak from a Union Carbide plant in India killed over 3,000 people. British scientists pinpointed a hole in the earth’s ozone layer. In 1987, having seen the dark handwriting on the walls, fifty-three nations signed a treaty pledging to reduce the number of CFCs in our atmosphere. November 1996, 55 parties signed the Paris Accord, agreeing to save the climate. 194 countries, including the European Union, have agreed to work on climate change. Businessmen, Politicians, and Priests have to agree to agree to their degree of greed!
Expect the unexpected. Suspect the unsuspected. Correct the uncorrected.
Forever toxic! The most Neptune accident in history occurred at Chernobyl in April 1986. Thirty-one people were killed instantly. 40,000 were later diagnosed with Cancer from too much exposure to nuclear radiation. In March 1989, the Exxon Valdez shipwreck became the worst oil spill in history, contaminating hundreds of miles of Alaska shoreline, and killing tens of thousands of innocent creatures. It’s time to correct and deselect fossil fuels and environmental degradation. Select clean energy, sustainability, nature, and nurture.
Ignore science? Everyone knows ‘Roundup’ is carcinogenic. Monsanto, creator of Agent Orange, PCBs, DDTs, and Dioxins, launched “Round-up Ready” GMO soybeans in 1994, approved by the FDA. ‘Frankenfood’ was born. Environmental activists fought while FDA folly was parodied on late night TV. Mad Cow disease appeared in the UK in 1996. A slim line between science fiction and reality was crossed when the first sheep was cloned in Scotland in 1997. The FDA approved a drug called AZT, designed to treat AIDS. El Nino was blamed for bizarre weather conditions 1997~1998.
Neptune transformed illusions of fatherhood. Bill Cosby was most popular father in 1984. Bill wasn’t practicing what he was preaching. He had zero awareness of how Karma would reward him when Saturn would return to Scorpio in 2014. Bill was ridiculed by hordes of ex-fans when ‘me too’ appeared on his doorstep. With Saturn in Capricorn in 2018, Bill was thrown into state prison for drugging and sexually assaulting a variety of women.
Racial bigots, Archie Bunker, and Homer Simpson were popular patriarchal parodies. ‘Married with Children’ flaunted twisted fantasies of fatherhood. Disney studios produced the ultimate LEO father and son story, ‘Lion King’. Murphy Brown revealed her Animus to a Collective Psyche’s repressed and vulnerable Anima. She encouraged all females not to give away their power. Sadly, we’re still choosing to appoint rapists and elect pussy grabbers to leadership roles in public office, commerce, and society.
Ivan Boesky preached virtuosity and honesty while practicing insider trading. Frenzied mergers, acquisitions, and takeovers began in 1980, destabilizing financial institutions. General Electric purchased media giants NBC and RCA. Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) collapsed. Regulators from 69 countries seized assets and charged officers who hid substantial losses from investors. Congress closed the House of Representatives Bank in the wake of scandal.
On Jan 6, 2021, Sun and Mercury conjunct Pluto in Capricorn, Donald Trump incited an insurrection on our Capitol that catalyzed the Jan 6 committee and the beginning of the end for CHUMPENOMICS!
Neptune dissolves political and financial structures. Mikhail Gorbachev reformed controls to keep the Soviet Union together. Growing concerns over growing federal deficit catalyzed the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act in 1974 to balance the budget and stabilize the deficit. Congress failed to control its spending rather than assume the massive mandatory cuts specified.
It was transformed in 1990 to the Budget Enforcement Act. As Reagan deficits soared to two trillion dollars (2X 1981), Reagan taxed Social Security to gather more from the poor and middle class. Black Monday crashed the stock market with unexpected steeply dropping stock prices. Texaco filed the largest bankruptcy in history. National deficits grew greater as the middle class grew smaller and poorer. Haves have. Have-nots have not! Time for HAVES to share generously, practically, and reasonably with all!
Pluto corrupts. Money without morality is bankrupt. Religion without Spirituality is blind. The top 1/10th of 1% are above the law and beyond scrutiny. The other 99.9% are clueless what to do with laws or themselves. Covetous capitalists, deceptive business practices, devious plans, and dark conspiracies dwell in Pluto’s domain. Partisan politics, greed, and hypocrisy must be confronted and transmuted into healthy behaviors, values, thinking, feelings, use of will power, relationships, creativity, philosophy, purpose, dreams, fears, and spirituality.
“ Expecto Patronum”
Donaldemort, a gluttonous grifter, science denier, and squanderer of natural resources rules Dementors who grift our pocketbooks, poison our principles, and pollute our planet’s body, respiratory, and circulatory systems. They punish and abuse us physically, and try to incapacitate and imprison our minds & psyches.
Nostradamus predicted Pluto in Capricorn would destabilize major financial structures. Bubbles created by illusions like social security and financial stability would burst. Congress would become infected with jealousy, lies, and greed!
Have we prepared for erratic interest rates and inflation? Can we reform our broken social systems? What happens in 2025 when the Federal Reserve Bank, founded Dec. 23, 1913 (Capricorn) destabilizes as transiting Neptune in Aries squares our Fed’s natal Sun Pluto opposition? Can we figure out what that means or might or could mean ahead of time?
If Hindsight truly is 2020, looking backward to 12/23/2022 finds Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus and Pluto transiting through Capricorn. It’s time to reveal faulty foundations, shaky structures, and horrible habits. Sun, Moon, Mercury, and Venus conjunct Pluto in Capricorn then pass him. It’s time to balance personal and collective heads and hearts. Every thought, choice, and action has consequences. The human race has become a race against bad shit happening.
Forward to 1/6/2023. Full moon in Cancer. Time to let go of fear and hatred and transmute our thoughts, choices, and actions for ourselves, others, and our planet. It’s a perfect time to choose supportive, caring, and nurturing foundations and structures for natural and human systems and cultures.
We must reuse, recycle, and recreate our world by revolutionizing our infrastructure and energy needs and nourishing ourselves and our environment. Fossil fuels can be useful as sustainable products and not squandered on herds of racehorses under our hoods.
Recycling, Reusing, and Reducing need to be reinforced on a massive scale to become practical and cost effective. We need to build bridges instead of walls, repair highways, and design and implement healthy solutions to cost effective public transportation systems that offer comfort, accessibility, and affordability for all.
The Declaration of Independence was signed July 4, 1776. Some astrologers dispute whether Gemini or Sagittarius is rising. Regardless, natal Sun, Jupiter, Venus, and Mercury are in Cancer. Transiting Pluto in Capricorn has returned to his natal position to transform our human and planetary mythology into a new reality for everyone and everything. If Gemini is rising, it’s not a great time for too many smug short-sighted children to take what’s valuable for granted. As Pluto in Capricorn reaches into our cell phones, computers, e-devices, minds, hearts, and souls, he influences more than elections. Pluto can help our nation heal or he can cause a loss of status as a positive role model for the world!
God rules. Laws enforce. Reputation regulates!
Must we lose what we value to learn to truly value it?
New York City’s charter was signed on January 1 1898 at 12:01 am. On Xmas 2013, transiting Pluto, Sun, and Mercury in Capricorn were conjunct New York City’s natal Sun. Physical, financial, and social infrastructures, transportation, and politics were transformed. Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced sweeping new gun control. Newtown marked one year since the Sandy Hook shootings. The July 13 verdict of Trayvon Martin sparked heated discussion about race relations and garnered strong reactions from people across the country. A Metro-North train derailed, killing 4. Anthony Weiner’s weiner was caught in another sexting scandal. New York City Public Advocate Bill De Blasio defeated former MTA chairman Joe Lhota in a race for mayor with a landslide win on Nov. 5. Bill De Blasio championed the middle class, raising salaries for city workers, supporting minimum wage, implementing universal pre-K, and making affordable housing available.
Worldwide challenges included ice and snow storms, hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis, earthquakes, droughts, wildfires, and other unnatural anomalies created by human environmental abuse. Capricorn rises in the USSR constitution. Saturn and Pluto promise political and economic upheaval. Putin embodies Pluto in his quest to destroy, conquer, and rape the Ukrainian spirit. In the final analysis, Pluto teaches where responsibility begins and accountability ends. The seduction turns Pluto on, but the betrayal gets him off! Bottom lines don’t justify the means.
Best thing ve can do for no longer useful idiots is not be one of ‘em!
Collective psyche overrules personal psyche. Fate or Destiny? Nature or Nurture? Whatever your astrological symbolism says about you, a tsunami, tornado, hurricane, earthquake, flood, drought, pandemic, war, or banana peel can transform your psyche.
Twelve basic character types are featured in astrology. Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn. Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto symbolize family, friends, and enemies and embodies a collective consciousness that includes beliefs, behaviors, and interpersonal relationships. Humanity’s patterns correspond to conditions and positions of inner and outer planets that embody ideologies and circumstances that seed and catalyze outer and inner change. We can choose to see, know, and be our behavior, values, thinking, feelings, will, health, relationships, creativity, philosophy, purpose, dreams and fears, and spirituality.
A Moment in Time & Space
Astrology has endless permutations and combinations of details. Each and every detail means something, but until you’ve decided on basic character type and context, details are superficial. The meaning of any detail can change because of the question asked and the balance of elements, planets, signs, houses, and aspects. Adding stars, asteroids, and man-made points to a natal chart can make accurate interpretation impossible.
In my metaphysical practice, I examine every detail within the context of the whole picture and every other detail at the same time. Comparing and contrasting symbolic details and combinations of details is vital for observing, examining, and analyzing human behavior. One danger in interpreting isolated details out of context is in substituting one form of predetermination for another by reducing individuality to cookbook formulas. That’s what most readers do. It’s the primary reason I don’t make predictions. Free-will rules. We get to choose what we think and how we feel no matter what is happening. Canned readings may be a good place to start, but they’re no substitute for time and experience. Other people’s ideologies, opinions, and generalizations should not be taken literally or too seriously.
I’m writing this on 12/2/2022. Sun, Mercury, and Venus are comfortable in Sagittarius. A frustrated Mars is battling a lot of misinformation and dealing with too much Gemini bullshit. Mars is trying to communicate with siblings, but instead, he’s creating tension for everyone. Mars rules energy, sports, and military under Saturn’s decisions, missions, and guidance. Saturn in Aquarius is trying to choose healthy ideologies, values, and thinking.
Uranus transited Aries during the Stock Market Crash of 1929 and passed through Taurus 1935~1942. That period symbolized a destabilization of foundations, structures, economies, institutions, and values. Focusing on values forced many people to question materialism. The USA went off the gold standard. President Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act. Labor organized, forming unions that went on strike and engaged in sit-downs across the nation. There was strength in solidarity. Roosevelt defended the Four Essential Freedoms: Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Religion, Freedom from Want, and Freedom from Fear. Having Real Faith might have prevented the human race from racing so randomly, recklessly, and desperately against and toward bad shit happening.
Neptune & Jupiter are happiest in Sagittarius & Pisces. Friendship thrives where and when imagination, vision, and spirit are openly shared. Jupiter is naturally generous. He also attracts excess and greed. Jupiter can make you believe anything. His voice is designed to persuade. Neptune can be a martyr, savior, or saint. He can also be a liar, crook, or master criminal. Together, Jupiter and Neptune can heal the widening gap between haves and havenots. Neptune must shed the veil of illusion and delusion while Jupiter takes the reigns of confusion, collusion, and irresolution, and redirects us to clarity, inclusion, and resolution. Haves must share wealth with havenots for the betterment of mankind and for our world. Pluto in Capricorn will expose secrets that need to be seen. Pluto can transform business in ways that bring humans together instead of irreconcilably dividing them through partisan Politics, Business, and Religion. How can we transform fear into courage and hate into love? Is it possible to truly balance our outer circumstances with our inner worlds?
Uranus transited Sagittarius from 1981-1988. Politics became more accessible to females. Sandra D. O’Connor became the first Woman elected to the Supreme Court. Geraldine Ferraro was the first woman nominated by the Democratic Party for Vice President. Benazir Bhutto became the first Muslim female prime minister in Pakistan’s first free election since 1977.
Uranus brings sudden and unexpected upheaval and disaster. The space shuttle Challenger exploded on takeoff in 1986, while millions watched in horror on their TV screens. Ronald Reagan created “Star Wars”, an absurd and overly expensive national defense idea. Greenpeace’s flagship, Rainbow Warrior, was bombed while protesting France’s nuclear testing. George Bush Sr. was the first sitting Vice President elected as president since 1836. IBM introduced personal PCs. AT&T’s communication monopoly ended via a powerful combo of Anti-Trust Laws & the Department of Justice in 1974.
In 2018, Donald Trump announced a sixth branch of our military services that organizes, trains, and equips space forces in order to protect US. and allied interests in space and to provide space capabilities to the joint force. Saturn and Pluto in Capricorn, Uranus in Taurus, and Neptune in Pisces represent fundamental conflicts and issues like ‘money vs values’ and ‘religion vs spirituality’. We must find and embrace healthy resolutions and actions for all mankind and for our planet.
Neptune transited Sagittarius from 1970 to 1984. The idealism of the 60’s turned to pessimism with a marked lack of trust in national institutions. The war in Vietnam united masses of skeptical angry protesters, who were ready for confrontation. The Arab oil embargo created a major energy crisis in 1973 to finally ‘teach’ the USA not to take energy for granted. We keep forgetting to remember to observe the handwriting on our walls!
Gas is expensive, but it’s a drop in the bucket compared to the economic and social consequences of unbridled public and personal abuses of precious natural resources. Raising prices is essential to increasing profits. Fossil fuel profiteers have prevented energy independence by controlling and manipulating natural resources that no private individuals should own. Controversial pipelines are endangering our environment with long range consequences for our bodies, souls, and body and soul of our planet!
SALMAN RUSHDIE
Sagittarius rules publishing and religion. In 1989, Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini sentenced Salman Rushdie to death after publishing The Satanic Verses. Rushdie’s tales of good and evil incited riots in India and book burnings in England. His literary success fueled an ocean of fear and stirred teeming cauldrons of Islamic hatred! After 23 years of threats, on August 12, 2022, a man stabbed novelist Salman Rushdie multiple times as he was about to give a public lecture at the Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, New York.
Religion without Spirituality
Donald Trump attracted and motivated masses of Evangelicals, Holocaust deniers, White supremacists, Jewish, Christian, and Islamic religious fundamentalists who embraced the dark force. Having a bible in one hand and an AK in the other is not about GOD! It’s no surprise that Trump was inaugurated on Jan 20, 2017 while Uranus was in Aries.
Sun, Mercury, and Venus in Sagittarius opposing Gemini and Mars is a good time to shift our values and philosophies from profit over people to social justice and equality for all. It makes good sense to care for and nurture everyone and everything.
Neptune rules false prophets, illusion, delusion, deception, and victimization. Richard Nixon was the first President to announce his resignation while Neptune was in Scorpio in 1974. New York was the first city to be bailed out of bankruptcy by the federal government in 1975. Neptune can also be imaginary and visionary. A religious paradigm shifted when the Catholic Church elected its first non-Italian pope in four centuries. Mother Theresa accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in the name of the poor. In 1979, Televangelist Jerry Falwell founded the ‘Moral Majority’. It became an ‘Immoral Majority’ sometime prior to January 20th of 2001. Pluto in Sag brought Donald Trump to politics. A natal Mercury (11th house) square Neptune (2nd house) aspect can be interpreted as pretending to be your friend to get your money. Inwardly curved pinkie fingers confirm Donald lies. He doesn’t realize the difference. Don grifted us until Jan 6 2021 when Pluto in Capricorn, Neptune in Pisces, and Uranus in Taurus raised mass conscience, no longer permitting Don to piss on humanity.
Authors Note: Not everyone with curved pinkies is a liar. Many learned to behave in ways that worked in early childhood and are still trying to be themselves. Old habits die hard.
Neptune rules chemicals and drugs. The first test-tube baby was conceived without a womb when Neptune was in Leo in 1978. Genetic engineering generated new horrors for theologians, religious fundamentalists, and ideological extremists. Environmental activists protested industries creating “Acid Rain”. ‘Three Mile Island’ fiasco derailed several major nuclear energy projects in 1979. The World Health Organization announced an end to smallpox. Crack cocaine became popular. A deadly sexual epidemic was officially named AIDS in 1981. Fear of an eventual pandemic spread. Covid 19 was official on Mar 11 2020. Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and Pluto were in Capricorn. Aggression and gun control dominated personal and collective psyche. A dark side of Uranus in Taurus & Neptune in Pisces is a constant flow of blame and denial from extremist ideologies that catalyzed an insurrection on Jan 6 2021.
Pluto transited Sagittarius from 1995 to 2008. Political extremism, corporate greed, religious fanaticism, white supremacy, Second amendment rights, fundamentalism, and terrorism germinated quickly in fertile soil, transforming politics, business, and religion. Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by a right-wing law student. Pluto was in Sag and Sun was in Scorpio. The Middle East peace process was disrupted. President Clinton resumed diplomatic relations with communist Vietnam. In July 1997, Great Britain let go of Hong Kong. Hundreds of thousands of Black Men flocked to Washington to march for freedom. It was the first time in 40 years Republicans controlled congress. Y2K was not end time. People woke up, brushed their teeth, and went to work.
Sex scandals rocked the Catholic Church in 1995. The House of Representatives impeached and later acquitted Bill Clinton for lying about his sex life. Two students killed themselves after murdering twelve students and a teacher at Columbine High School in Littleton Colorado. The Unabomber was caught and sentenced to life in prison. Oklahoma City bombing established large-scale American terrorism on our soil. On 9/11, government power transformed, giving leaders permission to supersede human rights and civil liberties. Political machines preempted war without world consent. In 2022, lairs of corporate foxes tended hen houses while packs of political wolves herded sheep. Sacred cows gave birth to golden calves.
Saturn began his journey through Sagittarius on December 23, 2014. Pluto was visiting his siblings in eleven other homes for twenty-eight years prior to that. Astrologers predicted Saturn would wield a sobering influence on society as he transited Sagittarius to Capricorn. Saturn’s natural process is accepting responsibility, laying foundations, building structures, and being methodical, disciplined, and focused. Saturn rules bureaucracy, business, energy, transportation, education, communications, food, housing, healthcare, law, politics, and religion. Father Time asks us to remember, to be here now, and to plan as far into the future as possible.
Sagittarius rules transportation. He loves prestige, luxury, power, and status. He leaves racing for Aries and showing off for Leo. The Lords of the automobile industry must shift their paradigms of profit before people to people first. Transportation must be designed from a more spiritual perspective. Guzzling fossil fuels is unsustainable. Do we really need hundreds of horses galloping under our hoods?
Perpetuating illusions that overly expensive gas guzzling cars are glamorous, maintains delusions that it’s OK to deplete our planet’s natural resources and poison everyone and everything. Car companies pretend their products are healthy! We must rethink what healthy transportation will be for our future. Raising mass consciousness will profit humanity and our planet. We can no longer get away with substituting money for values and religion for spirituality.
Whether our planet warms, cools, floods, quakes, droughts, burns, or is blown by giant winds, fossil fuel prices still remain artificially repressed. Legislation and energy umbilical cords prevent sustainable energy minded competitors from building sound structures on solid foundations. Fuel efficient, non-polluting, practical, and economical mass transit is essential to creating a healthy world and economy. We must cut our energy demands and costs while thinking globally and acting locally. Transportation must reform and transform.
We go wherever and whenever we want in the comfort and safety of our cars. Our hidden costs are insidious, usurious, and deceitful as we guzzle gas, fight oil wars, deplete and squander finite resources, and poison Mom’s body, circulatory, and respiratory systems.
Too much carbon dioxide, monoxide, and toxic gases hover in space and time by degree. Smoke, smog, chemical, and human waste poison our oceans, reservoirs, rivers, streams, and faucets. A pandemic of pestilential pollution binds to the walls of our veins and coagulates in our arteries like cholesterol on its way to a coronary. Highways and roads are like varicose veins feeding bloated glands that nourish cancerous sores we call cities. It’s time to shift our usurious paradigms and steer ourselves clear from death and destruction toward a hopeful future characterized by clear intent, healthy values, critical thinking, honest feelings, right use of will, good physical health, honest relationships, freedom to explore and understand our fears, creativity, philosophy, purpose, dreams, and spirituality.
Greed and avarice are symptoms of poisonous partisan political philosophies, flawed fundamentalist faiths, extremist social ideologies, and too many desperate people. As we wander through barren deserts and toxic wastelands, too many unhealthy psyches with too many guns and second amendment rights are worshipping sacred cows and praying to golden calves. Why are we trading money for values and substituting religion for spirituality?
Why must we lose what we value to value what we had? Jupiter transited Sagittarius this year, shamelessly flaunting greed in capitalism and revealing present and future costs of climate change. Choosing healthy values and accepting full responsibility for being healthy and happy is Spiritual Alchemy! Our fate is unknown; however, our destiny is in our hands.
Uranus transits Taurus May 14, 2018 ~ Nov 7, 2025. Time for rebirth, to make sense, to accept responsibility, and to choose courage, strength, grace, and wisdom. Combining truth with nobility, dignity, integrity, ethics, and virtue will heal everyone and everything. How can we see the forest from the trees? Can we all become healthier in more sustainable ways? “The lips of wisdom are closed, except to the ears of understanding”. Hermes
Personal and Collective Psyches transform as outer planets change zodiacal sign. It takes roughly twenty years for Pluto to change sign. Pluto nearly doubled speed in Scorpio on his relentless quest for power and control of everyone and everything from 1984~1995. Pluto, Uranus, and Neptune passed through Scorpio in the 20th Century.
The eighth house of Scorpio and Pluto rule secrets, sexuality, death, and other people’s money in astrology. Greed and hubris defrocked televangelist Jim Bakker. Dismissed as minister of the Assemblies of God denomination in 1989, Bakker was convicted in federal court on 24 counts of fraud and conspiracy. By diverting millions of dollars to their greedy and grandiose lifestyle, Jimmy and his wife, Tammy, duped their naive followers out of 158 million dollars. Sex scandals busted Senator Gary Hart.
Jimmy’s back, angrily preaching Trumpism, Covid Cures, and End Times!
Homosexuals exited closets in masses in the late 70’s ~ 80’s to become a focus of daily conversation. HIV prevention and condoms were promoted on national TV to stop the spread of AIDS. Faith healing was popular, but it didn’t heal AIDS.
Scorpio can be healthy and evolved or perverted by secret sexual fantasies, lust for money, hunger for power, and fear of loss of control. As Pluto transited Scorpio, unholy alliances with the Devil encouraged predatory preachers and poisonous politicians to physically and spiritually rape the innocent souls that they were entrusted to protect. While seduction turns Pluto on, betrayal gets him off!
Religion is bankrupt without morality and blind without spirituality. When Jupiter entered Scorpio in October 2017, greedy bigoted misogynists grabbed unsuspecting pussies while repressing women’s freedom of choice and reproductive rights. Have-nots were discouraged by haves from voting. Horrible sexual and business behaviors were excused and rewarded. The human race was a race against bad shit happening.
Christian hypocrites, poisonous partisan politicians, and insane ideologues had plenty to hate and preach about. ‘CHRISTIANS’ who can steer hurricanes and miraculously cure pandemics, don’t have a clue how not to hate Blacks, Mexicans, Muslims, and all other Immigrants. Corrupt bigots promise good sense and deliver nonsense!
1980 put the first professional actor in the White House after the lowest voter turnout in history. Reagan had previously been spokesperson for ’20 Mule Team Borax’ and former host of ‘Death Valley Days’. He played his roles well, though he never helped the poor. ‘Reaganomics’ didn’t ‘Trickle Down’. When Oliver North exposed the Iran Contra scandal, Reagan performed his role, managing covertly and quietly while remaining relatively unscathed by political scandal.
Significant violence was caused as Police bombed the headquarters of the black radical group MOVE. Terrorists from the Palestine Liberation Front seized the Italian cruise ship Achille Laura. Terrorists bombed Pan Am flight 103, killing 259 passengers and 11 innocent bystanders in Scotland.
Neptune regenerates and degenerates. Neptune (Pisces) passed through Scorpio from 1957 to 1970. Regenerative sit-ins and peaceful demonstrations juxtaposed degenerative race riots, terrorist bombings, and hijackings. Spiritual transformation was scarce. Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by `her own bodyguards’. Racial tensions rose as Bernard Goetz, subway vigilante, became a folk hero after shooting four young black men in NYC. Goetz accused them of robbing him. They claimed they didn’t provoke him. A white washed justice system favored Goetz.
Neptune rules dreams, illusions, and delusions. Escapism, political unrest, and the assassinations of John Kennedy, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr. drove tens of thousands of desperate draftees and others into exile, rather than serve in Vietnam. Haves always had numerous acceptable excuses (like bone spurs) for not serving, while confused and fearful havenots consumed illicit drugs, indulged in pornography, and incited violence. Promiscuous sex was normal. Oral sex and contraceptives became popular.
Uranus (Aquarius) transited Scorpio from 1975 to 1982. The end of the Vietnam War for America was the beginning of terror for Cambodia. A senate committee revealed ‘assassination’ was a viable option in US foreign policy.
Irreverent political humor nourished hungry audiences as poisonous partisan politicians preached neo-Christianity, sparking a revival of satire and parody. Saturday Night Live flourished. Uranus (sudden change) blossomed in Taurus (values) as it opposed Scorpio (death and transformation). Irreversible transformations in personal and collective psyche, philosophy, and purpose will manifest in November 2020 if hindsight is truly 2020.
Our Founding Fathers saw us as their children. They wanted what was best for our future (despite their personal prejudices and programming). Our Constitution is still encouraging us to say what’s on our minds and share what’s in our hearts via our first amendment rights! We all need to feel appreciated, be celebrated, and given a helping hand in one way or another. Our democracy must never be taken for granted!
Scorpio symbolizes powerful females, sex, and death. Persephone, Helen of Troy, and the Queen of Cups are powerful Scorpio archetypes. The Episcopal Church ordained its first woman in 1974. Barbara Walters was the First Lady News anchor on ABC TV in 1976. Scorpio rules reproductive systems and functions. MIT scientists created the first synthetic gene in 1976. The first test tube baby was conceived outside of the womb in 1978. The first Death sentence in ten years was carried out when convicted murderer Gary Gilmore went before a firing squad in 1977.
Scorpio rules garbage. Would you believe I used to be the Guru of Garbage? The notorious Garbage Barge ferried 3,100 tons of toxic waste 6,000 miles before returning to be incinerated. Fidel Castro’s “Freedom Flotilla” embarrassed the USA when we realized that Castro had unloaded his mentally ill, underworld criminals, and other misfits on us. Over 1,000 “No Nukes” protesters were arrested on Wall Street on the 50th anniversary of the 1929 stock market crash. What will happen in nine years on the 100th anniversary?
Uranus in Scorpio conjured an instant cult classic in 1975. The ‘Rocky Horror Picture Show’ encouraged the ideology that ‘anything goes’. Punk Rock was unconventional, rebellious, and nihilistic. Ultrasound was an alternative to x-ray radiation. Palimony suits became popular. IBM reintroduced personal PCs and transformed communications. Performance art was popular for all creative artists. Personal gender identity needed to become accepted or face a future of dire consequences rooted in fear and hatred. It’s still a partisan problem for everyone.
The only guarantee in life is Death. Scorpio rules Insurance. Taxes and Insurance reside in the eighth house. If we have something of value (2nd house) to protect, we must pay to play (8th house). Insurance guarantees that a party be paid for a specific loss. The insured can worry less about the costs and consequences of bad shit happening to family, health, home, car, property, or whatever is valuable and insurable. Insurance is legalized gambling. The insured shoots craps and always loses, even when they win. Your insurance agent is your bookie. Your insurer is the casino. The house is favored due to predetermined statistics, permutations, combinations, and probabilities. Expensive risks are wedded to high stakes. You can understand your odds by examining actuarial tables. See your prospects by observing your premiums.
Insuring is sometimes confused with ensuring or assuring. Life is not ensured or assured. Spraying crops with herbicides, pesticides, and fungicides ensures fewer weeds, bugs, and fungi. It assures (by degree) that we eat, drink, breathe, and apply toxic chemicals to our lungs, guts, hair, skin, mouths, nails, toes, and genitals. Investing Social Security in the Stock Market does not insure, ensure, or assure the market won’t collapse. Employees of Enron believed their pensions insured, ensured, and assured a secure retirement, but they didn’t. Conserving energy ensures we consume less energy, generate surplus energy, create less pollution, and endanger fewer natural resources. Drilling for oil in wilderness does not insure we’ll have enough oil. It does ensure and assure we’ll have other environmental, social, political, and planetary challenges. Vengeance as a remedy for violence assures more vengeance and violence.
Everyone dies. Life insurance protects the living. What’s the premium for a graceful and painless final exit? What are the last years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, and seconds of your life worth? Read Final Exit by Derek Humphrey. Die with dignity. When it’s your time, having a logical, practical, painless, and peaceful alternative to a future of dependency, lack of awareness, loss of love, pain, poverty, or bad health in old age is a good idea.
Saturn and Pluto in Scorpio inspired this self-portrait.
Our 2nd Amendment arms anyone who is eligible, ready, and willing to participate and permits open season on perceived tyranny for many of too many reasons. Our laws enable us to own and use weapons of mass destruction. Blending politics, religion, and profit with Second Amendment rights is a horrible idea and will surely backfire on the NRA.
Gun laws are useless when angry desperate haters with semi-automatic weapons are driven to violence. Boundaries between sanity and insanity are blurred by bigotry, hate, and fear. A pacifist public must protect family and possessions from the poisonous hordes of deluded gun owners with a bible in one hand and an AK47 in the other.
ELECTION WEEK FORECAST
It’s time to evict Masta-Don and his Repuglican’t Kakistocracy. Nov. 3 2020 will be a new beginning or the ending of good health on physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual planes. Partisan politics and religious hypocrisy are characterized by selfish ideas and senseless actions. Human chaos is catalyzing global destruction. As we destroy our planet, our individual and collective psyches are becoming immune compromised.
Outer planets symbolize transformations in personal and collective psyche as they pass through the twelve signs of our Zodiac. As Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto transited Virgo in the 20th Century, preconceived ideas and paradigms were shifted.
Born between 1962 and 1968? Uranus and Pluto in Virgo symbolize your need to analyze, rationalize, organize, and compartmentalize your decisions and actions. You’ll be more free, healthier, and happier when you combine your need for practicality and purpose with your highly developed sense of responsibility and do the work.
Neptune entered Virgo in 1929. Neptune’s dark and nebulous side manifested when Wall Street crashed, catalyzing the great depression. Neptune left Virgo in 1943. Submerged in confusion from the Second World War, propaganda and deception poisoned the rationality of Germany. Millions had been exterminated in the name of racial purity.
Humanitarians and labor unions were born. Plutocratic institutions tried (and are still trying) to crush them. New concepts in medicine such as psychosomatic illness were practiced. Neurotics, terrified of reality, dropped out and ran from responsibility. “We Want Beer” marches were held in cities across the country to protest prohibition, which was repealed. The time has come for Cannabis to be legalized.
As Donald Trump has taught us, it’s not what you do, but what you get away with that matters. Fake news, fake politicians, and real plutocrats are poisoning us. Transiting Neptune in Pisces is opposing Virgo as Saturn and Pluto in Capricorn and Uranus in Taurus are transiting our Zodiac. It’s no surprise we’re experiencing negative karma as we ignore history and abuse our physical, psychological, and spiritual climates.
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was the top money making movie of 1938. Walt Disney animated a castle, woodland settings, a wicked Queen, a huntsman, a handsome prince, and seven devoted dwarfs. The Prince and Princess lived happily-ever-after.
Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind was the best-selling book of 1936 and the highest grossing film of all time. “African-Americans have protested against it from the start, even if white America didn’t want to hear it.” “When HBO Max announced… that it was temporarily removing “Gone With the Wind” from its streaming service, it seemed as if another Confederate monument was coming down.”(NY Times)
Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times was released. Silk stockings became nylon stockings. DuPont was unable to satisfy the demand for nylon. Gasoline rationing was put into effect in 1942. A new mold discovered on cantaloupe yielded ten times as much penicillin as previous sources and reduced shortages. Born 1929 ~ 1943? The Neptune in Virgo generation was destined to “serve or suffer”.
When Pluto entered Virgo in 1957, we realized how easily we were enslaved to scientific and technological trends. Awareness of dangers of chemical pollutants affecting our environment entered mass consciousness. Environmental special interest groups formed. Geneva nuclear test ban talks reconvened. Official school prayers became unconstitutional. People born 1957 ~ 1971 were thirsty for bottled water and hungry for health foods. Organic growing and eating transformed into huge businesses.
As Pluto left Virgo in 1971, Daniel Ellsberg, former Deputy Secretary of Defense, leaked the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times. Ellsberg was indicted for espionage and conspiracy. The Times published government documents about the Vietnam War that revealed that the American public had been consistently lied to. Anti-war demonstrators protested in Washington where two thousand Vietnam veterans rallied. Many threw their combat medals on the steps of the capitol. The 26th amendment giving eighteen year olds the right to vote became law. If hindsight is 2020, we’d better claim our right to vote because the lying is worse than ever.
Uranus transited Virgo from 1962 to 1968. As natural and organic foods entered mass consciousness, the “Good Health” revolution began. Rachel Carson’s bestselling book Silent Spring highlighted ecology and inspired concern for widespread chronic damage caused by pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, and other hazards of technological progress. Holistic healers began appearing. Cigarette companies were forced to print health warnings on packaging and advertising.
There are more Virgo doctors, nurses, and social workers than other signs. Healthcare is a major mundane correspondence for Virgo. Good health is our birthright. Corrupt politicians, priests, partisan governments, acquisitive plutocrats, and greedy purveyors of health insurance have negatively transformed our healthcare system by extorting those who are unable to afford insurance or advocate for themselves. Pharmaceutical drug lords care more for profit than people. Healthcare providers and partisan politicians are paving golden paths to their own prosperity. Greedy money managers and powerful plutocrats prosper while doctors are forced to ignore root causes, treat symptoms, and prescribe medications. Saturn was in Virgo from 9/2007 – 10/2009. Seeds for structural healthcare change were sown as the Affordable Care Act was born. Balancing physical, mental, emotional, and psychological health is primarily a spiritual challenge.
President Johnson signed the civil rights act on July 2 1964, integrating all public accommodations and prohibiting job discrimination. Civil rights were turbulent. Voter registration drives and segregation protests increased. Several thousand black and white supporters were arrested. A black church in Birmingham Alabama was bombed, killing four girls. Two blacks died in riots following that bombing. Martin Luther King had a dream, but legislating equality doesn’t eliminate prejudice.
Reconstructionism had been imposed. Malcolm X was assassinated while speaking in NYC in 1965. Thurgood Marshall was the first black Supreme Court justice in 1967. Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis while supporting a sanitation worker’s strike in 1968. Riots in 125 cities after his death resulted in 46 more deaths. In 2020, ‘Black Lives Matter’. Peaceful demonstrators should not be protesting about things that matter to them in danger and fear for their lives!
Senator Robert Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles after becoming the Democratic front-runner for the presidential nomination. Anti-Vietnam war rallies were held in major cities and universities across the country.
Bob Dylan became a superstar while singing about the hypocrisy of American values and culture. The worst earthquake in modern history leveled Anchorage Alaska. Jonas Salk discovered the polio vaccine and inoculated the masses. The first televised presidential debates were broadcast. The first transatlantic TV broadcast was made via Telstar, AT&T’s privately owned satellite. Russians crash landed the first spacecraft on the moon. Pop Art had its first exhibition. Rock & Roll became popular. The Beatles skyrocketed to musical fame and fortune. As we seek remedies for symptoms like Donald Trump and Covid 19, the human race races toward bad shit happening!
Common sense without good sense is nonsense. Money without values is worthless. Religion without Spirituality is blind. We must reexamine history and make healthier choices for a healthier future. Greedy liars, bigoted hypocrites, and fanatical leaders promote hate and fear. We must transform ourselves by clearly seeing their and our own secret desires, needs, and truths. We’ve strayed too far from our humanity and Constitution.
