HOW I LOST MY SANITY ~ Episode 8

I was on my way out of public service, nearly impossible to fire, and angrier and more defiant than ever. I pondered what progress I could actually achieve given my circumstances. What positive changes could happen before I was forced to abandon the quest part of my job? I decided to create artwork for the patient newspaper under the pseudonym, ‘M’. I believed it was my chance to reach any and all real thinkers.

It’s sobering to try to make any sense out of nonsense. I decided good sense would rule. I believed most people who took the time to read would get it. Too many had learned in the hardest ways that everything is normal until it’s not. If normal and abnormal are opposites of the same basic substance with black and white extremes, what shades of gray does normal end and abnormal begin? How do we know when we’re not normal or on our way to not normal?

Is it possible to be sane in an insane world? I proceed slowly toward a best possible outcome, despite persistent challenges, gigantic obstacles, and dogged resistance to change. Making artwork is my process of balancing my sanity with all insanity. I’ve modified writing and artwork from Summer of 2015 to help reflect current events in the here and now. There’s no time and place like the present to observe the past, see the present, and preview the future. My ideals and ideas are guided by my conscience, logic, practical thinking, undying faith, and open channels to good sense. Here is my contribution to the patient newspaper.

There’s way too much craziness around here. Everyone is angry, frustrated, and depressed most of the time. There are two types of captives here, full-time and part-time. Full-time are patients and are required by law to be here. Part-time are staff who are underpaid to work within a very limiting and confining structure. At the end of the day, they go home. An incredible amount of time and energy is spent silently suffering under bleak florescent lighting, bland colors, bad air flow, and rigid bureaucratic leadership. Who says misery doesn’t love company?

Complaining and blaming our problems and circumstances on the system and each other hasn’t worked, isn’t working, and isn’t going to work. How much of our craziness is choice? How much is out of our control? Using logic and psychology are important for preparing and maintaining our good health, clear thinking, real feelings, and free spirits.

Many of us are potentially generous and productive people. There’s lots of capability and talent among us. We could all be leading happier and more productive lives. Is it possible to re-stage, rewrite, and redirect your script while re-imagining your roles, directors, actors, and audiences for a different outcome? Can you envision being your own author and guide for your story?

What can we do? We can stop complaining. We can acknowledge that we’re here and now. We can accept (for the time being) what we’re unable or don’t want to change. We can make positive decisions and commitments to improving the quality of our daily experience. We can encourage one another to grow. We can cultivate our unique talents and abilities. We can do extra. We’re a team of uniquely diverse players. Our powerful opponents are bureaucracy, bad habits, time, and greed. Powerful adversaries prevent us from being real with ourselves and each other. We can all be winners by degree. It’s up to each and every.

The purpose of this creation is to transmute inhumanity into humanity based on good sense. It’s about becoming more aware of ourselves and what’s around us. We can change our mindsets and become healthier. We can all live more meaningful lives on a healthier planet and world. All lives and that planet are very much at risk at the moment.

GREENING OF THE PSYCHE

Psychic Pollution is Mother of All Pollution. Psychic Pollution occurs when negative ideologies, philosophies, and beliefs are planted, sprout, proliferate, flourish, and blossom into horrible social paradigms. Psychic Pollution is the result of creating, cultivating, and collecting, but not properly disposing of Psychic Garbage. Fear, ignorance, and apathy are contagious diseases that pollute our bodies, psyches, souls, and world. Our bad habits and horrible behaviors interfere with our good health and happiness and the good health and wellness of our world.

Too much hate is a path to more fear, terror, and misery for all. We must let go of fear, acknowledge our differences, face ourselves, exorcise our demons, and build bridges of humility, compassion, wisdom, and grace instead of walls of fear, anger, rage, and hatred.

The human race has become a race against bad shit happening. One example of how fear, ignorance, and apathy operate is when a person who has been elected to have the most power to change the world tells the world he is unable to sign an international climate treaty to sustain the world. He offers vengeance as a solution to violence without proposing a helpful and constructive vision which leaves people feeling hopeful about their future. Choosing Money over Morality and Religion over Spirituality has catapulted the human psyche into darkness. The Devil is hard at work attracting and feeding falsehoods to Fundamentalists and Extremists who desperately cling to Religion and Money while the rest of us lose Faith in Equity, Equality, Ethics, Virtue, and Grace.

“Wake up and smell the Psychic Garbage”

Most of us fear Cancer and Climate Change. Meanwhile, our air, lungs, water, blood, bodies, cities, towns, soils, souls, planet, and inner and outer worlds are in deadly peril. Even without constant human warfare, we consume massive amounts of highly toxic chemicals every day in our wars with insects, rodents, weeds, dirt, stains, odors, germs, bacteria, pathogens, and many other potential invisible enemies. The chemicals that heat and cool us, produce and power our transportation, process, color, flavor, and preserve our foods, provide us with even more useful and useless stuff, and enable us to communicate on a grand scale are poisoning us. How bright white, squeaky clean, and bacteria free must we be?

Fossil fuels are finite. Roads are overcrowded. As we analyze, rationalize, and compartmentalize our worst behaviors, our climate worsens. We eat, drink, breathe, wash, brush, and apply Cancer-causing chemicals to skin, digestive, circulatory, and respiratory systems, spirits, choices, actions, planet, and world. Where’s good sense?

Research has proven that thoughts and feelings cause chemical changes in our bodies and physical changes in our world around us. Doctors and psychologists link causes and cures of physical ailments with mental states. Our health and the health of our world is a direct result of the thoughts and feelings we embody, embrace, encourage, and enhance.

Private and public sources of energy, food, housing, health care, transportation, communications, raw materials, manufacturing, and religion must be responsible for maintaining and upgrading both our physical and social infrastructures for our people, planet, and world. Transmuting inhumanity’s selfish intentions through merging all with ALL is crucial to healing our world.

Screening ourselves from our sun has become a way of life. Apparel, cosmetics, and pharmaceutical industries create new chemicals to protect us from the consequences of past, present, and future chemicals. Human healthcare industries boom as a human race continues to copulate, contract fresh viruses, develop cancers, discover new immune deficiencies, and encounter myriad environmental, food, and health challenges. Demand for doctors, nurses, hospitals, researchers, and health care professionals is skyrocketing. Mental health workers are crucial. Religious institutions are enjoying a revival as so many lost souls seek answers. Environmental opportunities are popping up everywhere. Greenwashing is popular. It’s on its way to its destiny and final resting place ~ KARMA.

Another growth industry is funerals. I’ve got an idea that can save humanity lots of time, space, and money. Here it is for free. Stack people vertically in tubes instead of burying them horizontally in plots. Holes can be drilled the length of a person or depth of an entire family, ready for the next family member at the next funeral. Ashes take up even less space… I plan to be with my favorite mycelium.

Too much war, many natural disasters, and out of control humans, transform funeral homes, casket making, incinerators, and graveyard real estate into prudent investments. When euthanasia laws change, I’ll be marketing my no mess “Dr. Death Do It Yourself Kit”. DIY with Dignity & Grace.

Physical pollution enables Clean Air and Water to be monetized and become commodities. Soon, we’ll all need air and water purifiers. Perhaps oxygen will be marketed over the counter like bottled water. There will be Oxygen Aroma Bars where people can purchase a “vintage breath of fresh air” from the peaks of Everest, rain forests of Borneo, or other exotic locations. Designer oxygen masks and lemon scented oxygen will become fashionable.

By examining our plant world, we can observe and understand the cycles of our human world. To cultivate a healthy harvest, it’s important to select quality concepts for planting. We must clear away destructive and unproductive thoughts by planting positive ideas and visions in our collective minds and psyches. Right attitudes and positive circumstances will enable new hope to sprout. A healthy society must have healthy values and a natural supportive environment to encourage strong root growth. We must conserve our soil and nourish our fragile seedlings wherever, whenever, however, and in whatever ways we can to preserve our harvest.

We must invest in our future by nurturing all relationships and conditions that fortify our world. Our gardens will bud and blossom as we achieve unity within ourselves and each other. We can enrich our yield by sharing our processes from seed planting through final harvest. Many varieties of herbs, vegetables, and fruits can thrive together in a garden. Many kinds of people can thrive in our world. Thinking of humanity as a flourishing garden ensures a bountiful crop of happiness, prosperity, peace of mind, and purity for ALL SOULS and the SOUL of ALL!

Stay tuned as my writing and artwork darken and my hopeful raves become hopeless rants.

HOW I LOST MY SANITY 6

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…

PISCES & PSYCHE

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.

SAGITTARIUS & PSYCHE

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

SCORPIO & HANDS

Scorpio is a fixed feeling type. Having a Scorpio Sun, Moon, houses, aspects, planets, or planetary placements doesn’t guarantee a Scorpio personality. Having Scorpio hands with long rectangular palms and long stiff fingers and large stiff thumbs does. The consistency of those hands is denser and skin less elastic than Cancer and Pisces. Head and life lines interlace at their start, embodying a tendency to fight change and procrastinate at beginnings and endings. ‘Letting go’ is a huge challenge, even when there’s no choice. Another big challenge is caring too much what others think.

No matter your archetype, long broad nails and straight pinky fingers represent more open and frank people. Dominant first and third phalanges on rounded and conical fingertips embody a healthy mix of intuition and practicality. Loop fingerprints symbolize adaptability and social ability. Developed knots on second joints need physical order. Developed first knots need mental order. Very large knots often belong to OCD people.

Vertical lines within a lifeline represent intimate relationships. Balls of the thumb with no lines within the lifeline are untrusting and untrustworthy, though they might not know it. They mistake desire and passion for love and end up becoming jealous and possessive. Scorpio can have many wonderful qualities, but Scorpio is also a tale of the tail of the Scorpion. Now is a good time to tell a tale of Scorpio with Sun, Moon, Mercury, and Venus currently transiting Scorpio. Mercury will be Retrograde in Scorpio on Halloween. It’s a great time to talk about the mythology of Scorpio and explore how the dark side of Scorpio is affecting our humanity and planet. The ball of thumb on the left in the picture above is simulated. It belonged to a child serial killer. Click here to read his story.

mark seltman

My Gemini sun and hands embody my Gemini behavior. Scorpio ascends in my natal chart, closely conjunct the asteroid Chiron (hand). Jupiter in Scorpio in my first house is a singleton in the bottom hemisphere of my natal chart. Pluto in Leo in my tenth house is closely conjunct Saturn in Leo which straddles my Leo midheaven. My Sun Uranus and Venus Node conjunctions are in Gemini in my 8th (Scorpio) house, joined by Vulcanus, Vertex, and a few asteroids. Scorpio rules my unconscious. As a metaphysical reader and counselor, I hear a lot of secrets. People tell me things they’ve never told anyone else because they believe I already know them. They think I can see more than I can. Of course, in the final analysis, it’s not what you see, but what you say and how you say it that matters.

When Saturn in Scorpio transited my ascendant in November of 2012, it squared my natal Saturn Pluto conjunction, compelled me to strengthen my foundation, build more stable structures, and construct my life with less distraction and more discipline and focus. Saturn forced me to set realistic goals and challenged me to let go of everything and everyone that wasn’t working for me. It wasn’t easy, but I did. Seeing clearly, listening carefully, and thinking critically, has enabled me to rise from the ashes.

Jupiter in Scorpio has been a blessing and a curse for me. My natal Jupiter is within minutes of opposing my very stubborn 7th house Mars in Taurus. It’s trine my very sensitive ninth house Mercury in Cancer. Looking for shortcuts and easy paths to success has been a challenge. Coming out of the shithouse smelling like a rose has been the easy part. William Blake said, “The path of excess leads to the palace of wisdom”. I know. 

Where’s Greta? EXPELIOSIS!

Pluto, Roman god of sex, transformation, and death is ruler of Scorpio, lord of darkness, and master of the sexual orgasm. In ancient Greece, Hades was god of the underworld. Hades had the nastiest job because his brothers and sisters were having fun controlling living people. Hades was king of the leftovers and waste. In tarot, the High Priestess, Queen of Cups, and Death card are ruled by Scorpio. Voldemort, Darth Vader, the Mummy, and the Big Bad Wolf are modern versions. Religious extremism, politics, and big business are Pluto’s playgrounds. It’s not what you do, but what you can get away with that matters. Anger, fear, hatred, prejudice, and punishment excite and beckon Donaldemort’s Dementors who are determined to terrify and control the rest of us…  

My question is what responsibility do Mega-Haves have to help support have nots. Billionaires can use their free will to decide what they want to champion, but they must support a humanitarian cause. Who will repair infrastructure? Who will help harness natural energy? Who will promote sustainability? Who will manage communications, push mass transit and alternative transportation, intelligently design and manufacture new products and then plan for their corresponding distribution, consumption, and disposal?  Who will help us acquire healthcare and education for all? What’s the cost of a healthy planet?  How much to feel well? How much does thinking critically and living creatively cost? What’s the cost of having a healthy body and skin? What price for healthy circulatory and respiratory systems?  What about the costs of having a satisfying spiritual life?

REPUGLICANTS

The seduction turns Pluto on, but the betrayal gets him off. By encouraging terrorists, rewarding rapists, and worshipping religious fanatics, we’re all invited to spend an eternity in hell. The path of too many dark secrets leads to the palace of sociopathy. From first breath to final exit, Pluto impatiently awaits you with a kiss of death.

‘MY PRECIOUS’

Scorpions make manipulative bosses, mean spirited jailers, abusive parents, and jealous partners who hide their true feelings. It’s especially hard to deal with the shadowy unstable side of Pluto’s emotions. Executioners, undertakers, coroners, morticians, and garbage men, along with power hungry plutocrats, partisan politicians, and spiritually bankrupt religious fundamentalists and hypocrites have strong Scorpio in their symbolism. Your friendly neighbor, a model citizen, devoted husband, loving father, loyal friend, and faithful parishioner dies. His family finds pornography, secret love letters, sadistic and masochistic sexual supplies, illegal drugs, and concealed money. Alternative facts are opaque, while hindsight is transparent.

False tweets and fake facts create opacity and disguise secrets of greed, bigotry, hatred, and sexual perversion. Tyrants rationalize the most bizarre behaviors because they believe they can get away with them. And they do, if we let them. At this moment, many are getting away with philandering, sexism, insider trading, religious hypocrisy, and poisonous partisan politics. Our deepest darkest fears and terrors are propelling humanity towards mental, emotional, moral, and spiritual bankruptcy. Evil Priests feign love and compassion as they physically, mentally, and spiritually rape the innocent souls they were entrusted to protect. Fear, guilt, shame, and remorse safely guard their secrets.

“Money talks and bullshit walks”. Plutocrats control humanity’s destiny. Republican partisan politicians have become morally and spiritually bankrupt sadists, who derive pleasure from harming have-nots. Fearful poverty minded Democrats desperately scrape the bottom of the barrel as they ask us to sign their petitions, fill out their surveys, and pledge loyalty to too many urgent causes as they beg for a few shekels. I sign and give as much as I can to worthy causes, but it’s like applying a Band-Aid to a compound fracture or placing a drop of potable water in an ocean of poison. Humanity’s ideological, philosophical, and spiritual paradigms must shift as the human race has become a race against horrible bad shit happening.

Our planet and social cultures have been corrupted by a handful of greedy moguls who control our food, shelter, healthcare, energy, communications, transportation, raw materials, manufacturing, marketing, retailing, finance, religion, and politics. Plutocrats devalue democracy by placing greed over giving, by embracing religious fundamentalism over spirituality and true faith, and by choosing consumption, waste, and denial over truth, good sense, and planetary good health. 2,153 billionaires have great social responsibility. Humanity needs them (and everyone else) to embrace caring and meaningful causes.

“It’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt”. Many of life’s most painful lessons are a direct result of choosing money over values and religion over spirituality. It’s easy to rationalize the blackest behavior when your head rules your heart. “I never intended to hurt anyone”. “No one did anything they didn’t want to do”. “I may not have told the whole truth, but I didn’t lie”. “I’m sorry for my part”. Why must we lose what we’ve taken for granted to learn to value it? Scorpio holds the key to unlocking our secrets!

CAPRICORN & PSYCHE

The full moon in Cancer arrives with this year’s winter solstice. As humanity races recklessly toward bad shit happening, Saturn solemnly reveals our faulty foundations, unstable structures, and horrible habits. The time has come to balance our personal and collective heads and hearts. Every thought, choice, and action has consequences. It’s time to let go of fear and begin loving and nourishing each other and our planet.

Outer planets symbolize massive transformations in both personal and collective psyches as they change signs. While Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto transited Capricorn in the 20th Century, outdated paradigms and patterns of political institutions and social structures were shifted. Uranus in Capricorn revolutionized politics and business from 1989 to 1996. The Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall were ripped down. Germany was reunited on October 3, 1990. The political demarcation between East and West vanished. In 1991, the Soviet Union disintegrated into fifteen republics. The Americans with Disabilities Act prohibited discriminating against the disabled. Why have we regressed to Nationalism, Fear, and discrimination? Do we really need to build another wall that we’ll eventually tear down between the US and Mexico?

NASA successfully observed and recorded Uranus orbiting the outer limits of our solar system, thanks to our Voyager space probe. Nelson Mandela was released after 27 years behind bars and successfully galvanized Anti-Apartheid across the globe. Jean Bertrand Aristide, radical priest, became Haiti’s first freely elected president. Ten months after his election, the military seized control of government. After his USA asylum, Aristide returned to office in 1994, accompanied by 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. Why are we allowing genocide in Yemen, Syria, Sudan, Somalia, and so many other countries? Why are we supporting and promoting hatred around the world? Why are we wasting money on irrelevant outer space programs?

Johnny Carson retired after 30 years (Saturn return) of the TONITE show. Representatives from over 100 countries met in Rio de Janeiro in June of 1992 to discuss how to preserve the earth. Good intentions were no longer enough. The USA and UN brokered a prickly cease-fire to end ethnic cleansing. Why have we chosen leaders who ignore humanitarian and environmental values and instead worship greed? Why have we abandoned our good health and the good health of our planet?

Expect the unexpected. 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 New York City restaurants. Women began smoking cigars. The Brady Bill for gun control was signed into law thirteen years after Brady was shot and paralyzed. Why are more semi-automatic weapons than ever being sold to crazy people and then being used in mass shootings in schools, religious institutions, and shopping malls, etc.?

When Neptune transited Capricorn from 1984-1998, lines between chemical industries and moral responsibilities dissolved. A gas leak at a Union Carbide plant in India killed over 3,000 people. British scientists pinpointed a hole in the earth’s ozone layer. Two years later in 1987, after seeing the hand writing on the wall, fifty-three nations signed a treaty pledging to reduce the number of CFCs in the atmosphere. The most serious nuclear accident in history occurred at Chernobyl, killing thirty-one people instantly. Later, 40,000 were diagnosed with cancer from too much exposure to radiation. The Exxon Valdez shipwreck was the worst oil spill in history. It contaminated hundreds of miles of Alaska shoreline and killed many thousands of creatures. Why are we still choosing to promote fossil fuels and environmental pollution over clean energy and sustainability?

Monsanto, creator of Agent Orange, PCB, DDT, and Dioxins, launched “Round-up Ready” GMO soybeans, approved by the FDA in 1994. “Frankenfood” was born.  Environmental activists fought back while FDA folly was parodied by late night pundits on TV. Mad Cow disease mysteriously appeared in the UK in 1996. The 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 named and blamed for bizarre bad weather conditions in 1997 and 1998. Why are we ignoring science and climate change? Why haven’t we banned ‘Roundup’, knowing that it’s a carcinogen?

Neptune transformed our illusion of fatherhood. Convicted pussy grabber Bill Cosby was the most popular father in 1984. What a hypocrite he turned out to be. While Saturn transited Scorpio, Bill was clearly not practicing what he was preaching. Sadly, he had no awareness of his karma until Saturn returned to Scorpio in 2014. Racial bigots Archie Bunker and Homer Simpson were wildly popular fathers. ‘Married with Children’ warped our visions of fatherhood. Disney produced a powerful father and son story, ‘The Lion King’. Murphy Brown revealed a powerful animus to a national anima, hopefully teaching women not to give away their power. Why are we electing and appointing pussy grabbers and rapists to leadership roles in public office?

Ivan Boesky preached virtuosity and honesty while practicing insider trading. Frenzies of 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. Why are we gifting billionaires with our hard earned taxes?

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. Congress failed to control its spending, and rather than assume the massive mandatory cuts specified, it was scrapped in 1990. Reagan deficits soared to two trillion dollars (2X 1981). Black Monday suffered a stock market mini-crash with sudden steeply dropping stock prices. Texaco filed the largest bankruptcy in history. Why are our deficits greater than ever and our middle class and have-nots poorer and more desperate than ever?

History repeats itself. Power corrupts. The top 1% is above the law and beyond scrutiny. The 99% are well aware of the greed of the 1%.  Deceptive business practices, dark conspiracies, devious plutocrats and capitalists are dark manifestations of Pluto. Partisan politics, greed, hypocrisy, and selfishness must be replaced by healthy values, ethics, morality, and spirituality.

Nostradamus predicted the time of Pluto in Capricorn would destabilize major financial structures and burst the bubbles created by the illusion of social security. How can we reform broken social systems when greed owns our Congress and Senate? What happens when the Federal Reserve Bank (Capricorn) destabilizes? How do we prepare for fluctuating interest rates and inflation?

We need to recreate and refurbish our infrastructure and find revolutionary ways to manage our energy and environment. Fossil fuels must be utilized to create sustainable products and not be squandered. Recycling and reuse must be implemented on a massive scale to become practical and cost effective. Cyber-Terrorism is capable of reaching into any computer, cell phone, or electronic device. The list of necessities to be transformed is endless and eternal. We must build bridges, not walls.

The Declaration of Independence was signed July 4 1776. Among astrologers, there’s a dispute whether Gemini or Sagittarius is rising. No matter what, the USA Sun, Jupiter, Venus, and Mercury are still in Cancer. As Pluto opposes those archetypes, we’ll try harder to control everyone and everything and be challenged for economic power and status as world leader. We’re smart-assed short-sighted little children who take what’s most valuable for granted.

NYC’s charter was signed January 1 1898 at 12:01 am. Pluto reached the degree of NYC’s Sun in Capricorn in 2013 and catalyzed chaos around physical and financial infrastructures, public transportation, and political corruption. Worldwide challenges have included hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis, earthquakes, droughts, wildfires, and unnatural anomalies due to environmental abuse. Capricorn rises in the USSR for a constitution that promises political and economic upheaval. Pluto teaches us where responsibility begins and accountability ends. Bottom lines do not justify the means. What gives Donaldemort and his Dementors the right to take us for granted, squander our planet’s natural resources, ignore science, and abuse our respiratory and circulatory systems, bodies, minds, and spirits? How can we allow them to deny responsibility and not expect serious karmic consequences? Why can’t we see the handwriting on our walls? We must wean ourselves from hate, fear, and terror, and choose loving leaders.

CAPRICORN and the 20th CENTURY PSYCHE

Saturn arrived in Capricorn today (December 19, 2017) with a new moon in Capricorn. As humanity races recklessly toward bad shit happening, Saturn will sober and reveal our faulty foundations, unstable structures, and horrible habits. Every thought, choice, and action has consequences. The time has come to let go of fear and start loving.

Outer planets symbolize massive transformations in personal and collective psyches as they change signs. Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto transited Capricorn in the 20th Century. Outdated paradigms and patterns of political institutions and social structures were shifted forever. Uranus in Capricorn revolutionized politics and business from 1989 to 1996. The Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall were ripped down. Germany was reunited on October 3, 1990. The political demarcation between East and West vanished. In 1991, the Soviet Union disintegrated into fifteen republics. The Americans with Disabilities Act prohibited discriminating against the disabled.

NASA successfully observed and recorded Uranus at the outer limits of our solar system, thanks to our Voyager space probe. Nelson Mandela was released after 27 years behind bars and successfully galvanized Anti-Apartheid across the globe. Jean Bertrand Aristide, radical priest, became Haiti’s first freely elected president. Ten months after his election, the military seized control of government. After his USA asylum, Aristide returned to office in 1994, accompanied by 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.

Good intentions were no longer enough. USA and UN brokered a prickly cease-fire to end ethnic cleansing. Representatives from over 100 countries met in Rio de Janeiro in June of 1992 to discuss how to preserve the earth. Johnny Carson retired after 30 years (Saturn return) of the TONITE show.

Expect the unexpected. 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. The Brady Bill for gun control was signed into law thirteen years after Brady was shot and paralyzed. Smoking was banned in New York City restaurants. Women began smoking cigars.

When Neptune transited Capricorn from 1984-1998, lines between chemical industries and moral responsibilities dissolved. A gas leak at a Union Carbide plant in India killed over 3,000 people. British scientists pinpointed a hole in the earth’s ozone layer. Two years later in 1987, after seeing the hand writing on the wall, fifty-three nations signed a treaty pledging to reduce the number of CFCs in the atmosphere. The most serious nuclear accident in history occurred at Chernobyl, killing thirty-one people instantly. Later, 40,000 were diagnosed with cancer from too much exposure to radiation. The Exxon Valdez shipwreck was the worst oil spill in history. It contaminated hundreds of miles of Alaska shoreline and killed many thousands of creatures.

Monsanto, creator of Agent Orange, PCB, DDT, and Dioxins, launched “Round-up Ready” GMO soybeans, approved by the FDA in 1994. “Frankenfood” was born.  Environmental activists fought back while FDA folly was parodied by late night pundits on TV. Mad Cow disease mysteriously appeared in the UK in 1996. The 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 named and blamed for bizarre bad weather conditions in 1997 and 1998.

Neptune transformed our illusion of fatherhood. Bill Cosby was the most popular father in 1984. What a hypocrite he turned out to be. While Saturn transited Scorpio, Bill was not practicing what he was preaching. Sadly, he had no knowledge of his karma until Saturn returned to Scorpio in 2014. Racial bigots Archie Bunker and Homer Simpson were wildly popular fathers. ‘Married with Children’ warped our visions of fatherhood. Disney produced a powerful father and son story, ‘The Lion King’. Murphy Brown revealed a powerful animus to a national anima, hopefully teaching women not to give away their power.

Ivan Boesky preached virtuosity and honesty while practicing insider trading. Frenzies of 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.

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. Congress failed to control its spending, and rather than assume the massive mandatory cuts specified, it was scrapped in 1990. Reagan deficits soared to two trillion dollars (2X 1981). Black Monday suffered a stock market mini-crash with sudden steeply dropping stock prices. Texaco filed the largest bankruptcy in history.

History repeats itself. Power corrupts. The top 1% is above the law and beyond scrutiny. The 99% are well aware of the 1%.  Deceptive business practices, dark plots, devious fundamentalism, and crafty capitalism are dark manifestations of Pluto. Partisan politics, greed, hypocrisy, and selfishness will eventually be replaced by true values, ethics, and spirituality.

Nostradamus predicted the time of Pluto in Capricorn would destabilize major financial structures and burst bubbles created by an illusion of social security. How do we reform broken social systems when Plutocrats own both Congress and Senate? What happens when the Federal Reserve Bank (Capricorn) upheaves and destabilizes? How do we prepare for fluctuating interest rates and inflation?

 

We must recreate and refurbish our infrastructure and find revolutionary ways to manage our energy and environment. Fossil fuels must be utilized to create lasting products and not be squandered. Recycling and reuse must be implemented on a massive scale to be practical and cost effective. Cyber-Terrorism is capable of reaching into any computer, cell phone, or electronic device. The list of necessities to be transformed is endless and eternal.

 

 

 

The Declaration of Independence was signed July 4 1776. Among astrologers, there’s a dispute whether Gemini or Sagittarius is rising. No matter what, the USA Sun, Jupiter, Venus, and Mercury are still in Cancer. As Pluto opposes those archetypes, we’ll try harder to control everyone and everything and be challenged for economic power and status as world leader. We’re like a bunch of smart-assed short-sighted little children who take too much for granted.

 

NYC’s charter was signed January 1 1898 at 12:01 am. Pluto reached the degree of NYC’s Sun in Capricorn in 2013 and catalyzed chaos around physical and financial infrastructures, public transportation, and political corruption. Worldwide challenges have included hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis, earthquakes, droughts, wildfires, and unnatural anomalies due to environmental abuse. Capricorn rises in the USSR for a constitution that promises political and economic upheaval. Pluto teaches us where responsibility begins and accountability ends. Bottom lines do not justify the means.

Donaldemort and his Dementors are selfish and mean spirited because they don’t have a clue how to love. Our leaders substitute greed and hate for love because they can get away with it. What gives them or anyone the right to take us for granted,  squander our planet’s natural resources, and abuse our respiratory and circulatory systems, bodies, minds, and spirits. How can they deny responsibility and not expect serious karmic consequences? Why aren’t we seeing the handwriting on our walls? We must wean ourselves from hate, fear, and terror, and choose love and loving leaders.

Sagittarius and the Collective Psyche in the 20th Century

Outer planets powerfully influence our personal psyche. They symbolize massive transformations in our collective psyche as they change sign. When Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto transited Sagittarius in the 20th Century, paradigms of politics, commerce, and religion shifted forever.

Uranus transited Sagittarius from 1981-1988. Political gender was shaken up. Sandra D. O’Connor was the first Woman elected to the Supreme Court. Geraldine Ferraro was the first woman nominated by the Democratic Party for Vice President. Benazir Bhutto was the first female prime minister of a Muslim country in Pakistan’s first free election since 1977.

Uranus can represent sudden and unexpected upheaval and disaster. The space shuttle Challenger exploded on takeoff while millions watched in horror on their TVs. While Greenpeace protested France’s nuclear testing, their flagship Rainbow Warrior was bombed. Ronald Reagan created “Star Wars”, an absurd and overly expensive national defense idea. George Bush Sr. was the first sitting Vice President elected as president since 1836. IBM introduced personal PCs. AT&T’s monopoly was broken by the Department of Justice.

Sagittarius rules publishing and religion. Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini sentenced Salman Rushdie to death after he published his popular novel The Satanic Verses. Rushdie’s tales of good and evil fueled riots in India and book burnings in England. His huge success fueled Islamic hatred.

 

Neptune transited Sagittarius from 1970 to 1984. The idealism of the 60’s was replaced by pessimism and a marked lack of trust in national institutions. The war in Vietnam united a mass of skeptical protestors ready for confrontation. The Arab oil embargo of 1973 created a major energy crisis, teaching US not to take energy for granted, and conveniently catalyzing the opening of the controversial Alaska pipeline.

 

Neptune rules false prophets, delusion, deception, and victimization. Neptune is also visionary, imaginative, and magical. Richard Nixon was the first US President in history to announce his resignation. New York was the first city in US history to be bailed out of bankruptcy by the federal government. 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. Televangelist Jerry Falwell founded the Moral Majority in 1979.

Neptune rules chemicals and drugs. The first test-tube baby was conceived out of the womb. Genetic engineering created new horrors for theologians and religious extremists. Environmentalists protested industries creating “Acid Rain”. The ‘Three Mile Island’ fiasco derailed several major nuclear energy projects. The World Health Organization announced an end to smallpox. Crack cocaine became popular. A deadly epidemic was officially named AIDS.

Pluto transited Sagittarius from 1995 to 2008. Pluto with Zeus is recipe for upheaval and transformation in politics, big business, and religion. Political extremism, corporate greed, religious fundamentalism, and terrorism began to flourish and thrive across the globe. Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by a right-wing law student. The Middle East peace process was disrupted. Great Britain finally let go of Hong Kong. President Clinton resumed diplomatic relations with communist Vietnam. Hundreds of thousands of Black Men flocked to Washington to march for freedom. It was the first time in 40 years that Republicans controlled congress. Y2K was not end time.

Sex scandals rocked the Catholic Church.  The House of Representatives impeached and later acquitted Bill Clinton for lying about his sexploits. 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. The Oklahoma City bombing established large-scale terrorism by Americans on our soil. After 9/11, governmental power transformed, giving leaders the ability to supersede human rights and civil liberties. A large political machine preempted war without world consent. Lairs of corporate foxes ruled the hen house while packs of political wolves managed the sheep.

Saturn returned to Sagittarius on December 23, 2014, after nearly thirty years through eleven other signs. Astrologers predicted Saturn would wield powerful influence for three years as it transited Sagittarius on its way to Capricorn. Saturn rules responsibility, structure, discipline, focus, time, big business, and bureaucracy. Energy, transportation, communications, food, housing, healthcare, law, politics, and religion were changed by Saturn’s transit through Sagittarius.

Sagittarius rules transportation. We’re a long way from the Model T, only a speck in time ago. Sagittarians love prestige and luxury cars as racing is to Aries and showing off is to Leo. The gods of cars must shift the paradigm of profit before people. Automotive industries must be more spiritual in their visions and truthful in their actions. By perpetuating an illusion that overly powerful gas guzzling vehicles are expensive, glamorous and sexy, car makers and profiteers promote a delusion that it’s OK to deplete our natural resources and pollute our planet. How long did we let cigarette companies get away with pretending unhealthy products were heallthy. Do we really need hundreds of horses galloping under our hoods? Transportation needs to be designed for present and future good health. We will profit from higher social and environmental consciousness. As the globe warms and fuel prices skyrocket, fuel efficient, non-polluting, practical, and economical transportation needs to happen or we will drive ourselves to extinction.

We drive whenever and wherever in the comfort of our cars. Real and hidden costs are usurious as we guzzle gas, fight oil wars, deplete finite natural resources, and pollute our Mother Earth. Carbon monoxide and dioxide hover everywhere. Toxic smoke and smog poison arteries while they proliferate and coagulate like cholesterol on its way to a coronary. Too many old, tired, depressed, angry, drugged, and drunken drivers are turning roads into varicose veins connecting festering sores we call cities. We must shift our travel paradigm and steer ourselves far from death and destruction, instead being hopeful and helpful in our intent and actions. Our fate is in our hands.

Greed and prejudice are unhealthy symptoms of powerful partisan political philosophies and pervasive extremist religious ideologies. A global world family and economy must see the forest from the trees in ways that are healthy and sustainable for all. Our values will become healthier when Uranus enters Taurus on May 14, 2018. I’m praying for a reincarnation of nobility, dignity, integrity, ethics, and virtue.

Pisces and Hands

You don’t need a Pisces Sun or Pisces planetary relationships or placements in your natal horoscope to be Piscean. Pure types have dominant top phalanges on long narrow fingers, smooth joints, conical tips, and loop prints, especially on index fingers. All feeling types have long rectangular palms and long fingers. Pisceans have medium set mildly flexible shapely thumbs, sensitive looking fingers, a combination of round and conical fingertips, long narrow nails, and their head and life lines interwoven at their beginnings. Pinkies with tiny bottom and middle phalanges and no knots symbolize not having any need for physical order or material wealth. Feeling types with inwardly curving pinkie fingers hate emotional confrontation. In my experience, Pisceans tend to have more hand and finger flexibility, more peripheral shallow lines, and less deeply etched basic heart, head, life, and fate lines than Scorpio and Cancer types.

Pisces is a personification for spiritual growth. As the astrological home of Neptune (Poseidon, King Triton), ruler of the seas. Pisces embodies emotion, instinct, personal feelings, and the collective unconscious. Neptune can be a calming or destructive force in nature. The King of the Sea rules substances like prescription and recreational drugs, nicotine, alcohol, caffeine, or anything that alters consciousness, produces illusions, and feeds delusions. Pisces mundane correspondence is religion. Spirituality is its esoteric match. Spirituality without religion is fine. Religion without spirituality is blind.

Pisces is the most sensitive, least acquisitive, and most introverted of all types. She’s often misunderstood because she communicates through a lens of feeling. Less sensitive, more practical Pisces have strong earth, air, fire, and deep clear basic lines, large thumbs, stiff joints, square fingertips, developed knots, broad nails, and arch and whorl fingerprints. When head and heart are balanced, Pisces can be extremely powerful. George Washington was a Pisces. Former CEOs of Citigroup, IBM, Merck, DuPont, and Bank One were Piscean. One intriguing Pisces CEO is Michael Dell of Dell Computer. Like Ariel, daughter of King Triton, ruler of the Seas and the unconscious, Michael imagines whatever he wants as he swims into collective unconscious. He intuitively knows what the public needs and hones in on that. He must keep a watchful eye on Ursula (octopus conglomerate) who lusts for control of his empire.

Pisces is well suited to teaching, human resources, and helping professions. Many are at home in visual arts and music. Hand qualities will vary depending on their natural talents and abilities, decisions, and actions. Piscean strengths include compassion, humility, and faith. Not known for mental or emotional decisiveness, Pisces are private, spiritual, and hard to be intimate with. Their trust must be earned. Impressionable and easily influenced, some Pisces attempt to escape reality when circumstances get too hard. Many become substance abusers like Johnny Cash, Jerry Lewis, and Liza Minelli.My father was Pisces, along with my brother and daughter. I’ll love and cherish them unconditionally for eternity.

Pisces is intimately connected to the collective unconscious and mundane events. Uranus was the only outer planet to pass through Pisces in the twentieth century from 1919 to 1928. Uranus completed its eighty-four year cycle through the zodiac in 2003 and began its path through Pisces, crossing into Aries at the end of 2011. Let’s observe the cultural similarities as Uranus passed through Pisces in the 20th and 21st Centuries.

When World War I ended in 1919, discrimination, immigration, and consumerism grew.  Uranus left the sign of Aquarius and moved into Pisces. A new kind of rebellion began. Over four million steel workers and miners walked off the job to protest too many work hours with “inhumane pay”. Three Presidents held office during Uranus’s first transit through Pisces (Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover). The 30th President, “Silent Cal” Coolidge (born on the 4th of July) said, “The business of America is business”. He told us, “Biological laws tell us that certain divergent people will not mix or blend”, speaking of the “inferior races” of Asia. While focusing on and promoting ‘government business partnerships’, they all put material wealth and unobstructed corporate power in the forefront of the nation’s political, social, and cultural fabric. Government was in bed with big business. On its recent return through Pisces, George W. Bush gave our healthcare Industry to the pharmaceutical and insurance industries, energy to big oil companies, and security for airports and seaports in the hands of private enterprise. He even tried to bequeath our Social Security to the Stock Market.

When Uranus transited into Pisces, traditional thrift and austerity gave way to neo-consumerism and buying on credit. Two out of three Americans had electricity, refrigerators, and washing machines. Spending on recreation tripled. Henry Ford announced cars in Green and Maroon as well as black. Mass produced foods: Rice Krispies, Lender’s Bagels, Mounds Bars, Betty Crocker, and Peter Pan Peanut Butter influenced mass taste. Consumerism and credit created the illusion of an easier more convenient life. Movie houses, chain stores, and radio advertising proliferated. By the end of Uranus’s transit through Pisces, movie attendance had outstripped church attendance. Consumer magazines like Modern Romance challenged moral codes. Many critics believed consumerism was driving Americans into a soulless existence of materiality and conformity. Sinclair Lewis, author of ‘Babbitt’, highlighted the delusion of Uranus in Pisces. He blamed mass production and consumption for “having created a bloodless, loveless, and standardized world”.

The Ku Klux Klan had a resurgence that targeted African Americans, blacks, immigrants, Catholics, and Jews. The Klan marched on Washington DC In 1925 with over 40,000 hooded members. New immigration laws reduced the stream of immigrants to a trickle when congress decided to reduce the flow of immigrants based on quotas of 150,000 new immigrants a year.

Uranus in Pisces symbolizes a conflict between science and religion. Modern science clashed with Intelligent Design and Creationism as Uranus transited Pisces in both centuries. Tennessee legislators voted that it was 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 was too intelligent to descend from a lower order of animals. One high school biology teacher named John Scopes taught the theory of evolution. As the defendant in the infamous “Scopes Monkey Trial” legal battle, John Scopes lost.

Culture clashed with school curriculum, obscenity, censorship, race, and sexuality in theater and literature. The German Bauhaus School of Architecture, with its less is more design philosophy, influenced architecture and products around the globe. When I graduated from Carnegie Mellon in 1969 as an industrial designer, ‘intelligent design’ was about making and saving money for manufacturers. No one cared about waste, except for disposal and financial cost. Truly ‘Intelligent design’ is when designers create useful products, choose sustainable resources, determine how much energy will be used in production, know what pollutants are generated, what remedies are available, and how the product will ultimately be disposed of, reused, or recycled.

Common sense is not good sense. The human race has become a race against bad shit happening. Donald Trump has taught us that it’s not what you do, but what you get away with that really matters. Why do we continue to nourish a perverse society with a morbid sense of reality and humor? We can be a lot healthier and happier by taking better care of our planet, ourselves, and each other.

Here are some similarities between the past two transits of Uranus in Pisces:

1919 – The worst baseball scandal (Black Sox) in history occurred when a grand jury brought indictments against eight players from the Chicago White Sox. Accused of throwing the 1919 World Series, they were eventually found not guilty.

2003 – The illicit use of steroids became the biggest scandal in modern baseball.

1919 – The eighteenth amendment prohibited the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors, which encouraged home brewing and bootlegging.

2003 – George W. Bush prohibited Medicare from negotiating drug prices. A black market for drugs from India and Canada began to thrive.

1921 – First formal investigations of the Teapot Dome oil scandals were initiated.

2003 – USA invaded Iraq under false pretenses in order to secure oil resources.

1924 – The 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.

Much has happened since 1919. Not much has ideologically changed.

Neptune takes 164 years to completely cycle through our zodiac. Neptune returned to its home base in Pisces on April 4, 2011 and will remain in Pisces until April 1, 2025. It’s hard to predict what Neptune will symbolize in Pisces because Neptune dissolves the illusion of reality. Many astrologers say that Neptune in Pisces symbolizes the dawn of a new age of spiritual enlightenment. This may be true, but it appears we may have to get there the hard way. Our culture must first lose what we value in order to appreciate it.

Pluto transited into Capricorn in 2008. Uranus transited into Aries in 2011. These three outer planets together symbolize a total transformation of business, energy, politics, and religion. I don’t feel comfortable making predictions about Neptune because it’s so nebulous and fickle, but we can already see in six short years how the illusion of power resulting from extreme wealth has nourished a delusion and disillusion of the 99%.

Neptune rules HMO’s, hospitals, and pharmaceutical industries that value profits over people. Prisons have been privatized for profit and packed with predominantly black petty criminals. Religion has abandoned spirituality, becoming more fundamentalist, fanatical, and violent. Even bacteria and viruses have become a lethal threat to the fabric of humanity. The USA has a president who is certifiably insane and cabinet members whose mandates are contrary to the purpose of their positions. Before Uranus leaves Aries in 2018, we could see a religious war, designed to stimulate our economy, fought by the have nots, and created to pack the burgeoning pockets of the haves.

The Greening of Our Psyche

Humanity needs to open its eyes, minds, and psyches and realize that our physical problems and challenges are symptoms of ideological, philosophical, and spiritual disease. The human race has become a race against bad shit happening.

‘Psychic Pollution’ is the mother of all pollution. It’s the most insidious, contagious, and pandemic of all contaminations, infecting the immune systems of our souls and the spirit of our planet. We must wake up and smell the ‘Psychic Garbage’. Our negative ideas and beliefs are catalyzing the fear and terror that is endangering our good health and the good health of our world. Terror and wrath boil and bubble in a cauldron of trouble. Our personal health and the health of our planet is a consequence of our thinking and feelings. We need to observe our thoughts objectively and realize that all physical manifestation is a result of our thinking. We can close landfills, but what can we do with malignant mind-fills and toxic emotional-spills?

It’s time to look in the mirror. Walls divide, boundaries detach, censorship destroys, and lies deceive. How many gilded towers, glitzy gambling casinos, graven images, beauty queens, shark tanks, and celebrity idols do we need?  Must we prostrate ourselves before an over-clothed self-appointed emperor on a polished brass pedestal? Being financially wealthy and spiritually bankrupt is a strain of spiritual cancer. Preaching love and faith and practicing hatred and fear is not a good idea. Vengeance is not a solution to violence. Enough minds focusing on toxic thought creates self-fulfilling prophecies.

Fortunately, truth disinfects. Hindsight catalyzes foresight. Our present and future is in our hands. Our mother is immune deficient. She suffers from tumor’s we call towns and cities, varicose veins we call roads and highways, cancerous lungs we call air and sky, and polluted arteries we call streams and rivers that are turning our reservoirs, lakes, and oceans into toxic waste sites. Why must everything be bright white, squeaky clean and lemon fresh? We consume massive amounts of highly toxic chemicals every day in our wars with insects, rodents, weeds, dirt, stains, odors, germs, bacteria, pathogens, viruses and other potential and invisible enemies. We’re marinating in the chemicals that heat and cool us; power transportation; provide us with products; color, flavor, and preserve our foods; and enable us to communicate on a grand scale. We eat, drink, breathe, wash, brush, and apply risky chemicals to our scalps, armpits, toes, and crotches.

What has happened to good sense? Why are we debating climate change? Must we always lose to learn to value? Why is pollution profitable? Fossil fuels are finite. Hundreds of horses gallop under the hoods of gas guzzling vehicles that can go twice as fast as our highest speed limits. Screening ourselves from the sun has become a way of life. We will all need air and water purifiers. Oxygen will be marketed over the counter like bottled water. We’ll be able to purchase “a breath of fresh air” at oxygen bars. Designer oxygen masks and lemon scented oxygen will become fashionable. Pharmaceutical, apparel, and cosmetics industries will create new chemicals and products to protect us from their past, present, and future chemicals and products.

In ancient Egypt, Hermes explained that anyone can connect with anyone at any time. As father of the cell-phone, Hermes taught that everything is made up of cells and our brains are the hardware. Our job is to put our minds where we want them to be and then tune our links. Hermes said, “The All is in all and all is in The All”. We create value out of thin air.

By observing our plant world, we can better understand the life cycles of our human world. In order to cultivate a healthy world it is essential to select healthful concepts for planting.  We must clear away destructive and unproductive thoughts and plant positive ideas in our minds. Healthy attitudes and circumstances will enable new hope to sprout. A healthy society must have healthy nutrients and a natural, supportive environment in which to create strong roots. It’s our responsibility to show the world by example that we truly care. We need to pull the weeds of greed and prune the branches of waste in order to serve mankind wherever and in whatever ways we can. We must nurture relationships and conditions that fortify our world. In time, our gardens will bud and blossom. We can fertilize our crop by promoting diversity and achieving unity with other nations that will enrich our garden and prepare us to bear fruit. Many varieties of fruits and vegetables can thrive together in a garden. Many types of people can thrive together in our world. Thinking of humanity as a flourishing garden ensures a bountiful harvest for the soul, an abundance of good health, happiness, prosperity, and peace of mind.