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HOW I LOST MY SANITY ~ Episode 8

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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 7

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Expect the expected. Bad shit happened. Dolores was forced to resign. Too many personal problems got in the way of her being able to properly perform her duties. A spanking new supervisor synchronously arrived as Dolores departed. Aside from Do, Dorothy was farther from Dolores than Kansas is from OZ. Dorothy, a Jewish American Princess (JAP) of the mental illness world, looked a lot better than she was. In her mid-thirties, she was petite, pretty, and shapely. Her personality was hard, cold, and phony. She was instantly disliked by patients and staff but had no clue how anyone felt. Most of us smiled to her face, turned away, made weird faces, or stuck a finger down our throats… a sadly laughable situation.

I felt nauseous as I wondered if Dorothy’s sucrose smile and pasty complexion resulted from too much institutional food and florescent lighting. Dorothy was spiteful, contrary, and a stickler for rules and regulations. She was angry that she hadn’t made it to the top of the trash heap yet. She had also failed after many attempts at getting pregnant. ‘Thank god’, I mused. Dorothy might actually be a mother of an anti-Christ. As I got to know her, I began seeing her as a festering canker sore from hell. She sabotaged patient progress and undermined my success at promoting class participation. I hated her.

One day after work we drove away from the employee parking lot at the same time. I followed her onto the Styx River Parkway heading south on Purgatory’s east side. High speed traffic wove perilous webs of chaos betwixt lanes. I imagined myself as Mel Gibson’s Road Warrior and tailgated Dorothy within inches. I’d surely have rear ended her had she braked, but I was confident she’d stay cool.

Glancing nervously in her rear-view mirror, Dorothy wondered what I’d do next. I’d pull up beside her, smile, and drop back on her tail again. That was the beginning of the end of my time working at the hospital and of my letting go of undying idealism and optimism. I decided I wasn’t going to let anyone get away with anything. I felt protected by the Public Service Union. It’s not easy to get rid of anyone who doesn’t want to leave. You have to make a person so miserable that they choose to leave. I returned to work the following week.

Dorothy acted as though nothing had happened. She used the rules to attempt to force me to quit. She hit me hardest in my most vulnerable spot. My desire to work with high functioning patients had been my primary goal since I’d arrived. Dorothy insisted I must devote myself to serving the whole patient population. The Cabinet knew Dorothy was an asshole. They were deaf to my argument that the obvious lack of meaningful programming for the dozen highest functioning patients needed addressing. I’d built trust with this group and made considerable progress. My other argument was that my salary was less than two percent of what those twelve patients were costing the state yearly. What a fabulous investment!

I began flooding Dorothy with memos justifying my self-created career. I copied Zandor, rehab counselor, the cabinet, and the big wigs in Central Mental Health Care in Purgatory. My public relations strategy to save myself was poorly received. Aside from the fact that no one but me was willing to take responsibility, I was kicking the cabinet below the belt by confronting them.

Dorothy countered with an attack on my schedule. She insisted I work three days instead of two. She chose days when she knew I had other teaching jobs and personal business. I tried to compromise, but could clearly see my efforts and circumstances were becoming futile.

“Perhaps you are too creative for the rehab department”, Dorothy told me. “There’s no room for your pioneering spirit”. I was soon summoned to the hospital director’s office for a private conference. She wanted to discuss my dissatisfaction with Dorothy’s supervisory actions, a pretense to warn me that I had better keep hospital business within the hospital. I clenched my teeth and fists and readied myself for battle. The head of rehab for the entire underworld had told me that our hospital was not permitted by law to operate a sheltered workshop under the plan the cabinet had previously encouraged and approved. They’d scammed everyone to enhance next year’s budget.

For several months, Dorothy continued to be abusive and oblivious to my needs and the needs and concerns of staff and patients. She pulled rank on everyone as often as she could. Not only did we feel unappreciated, we were degraded and looked down upon. Every member of the rehab staff was eventually forced to resign. Though I was there the least, I held out the longest. Dorothy had been mandated to clean house. The hidden agenda was obvious. I wrote the following letter of resignation.

It saddens me to be writing this, but I’ve been given no choice. Dorothy was mandated to clean house and fulfill your hidden agenda. This may sound paranoid, but Dorothy has forced every dedicated staff member to leave. Everyone was aware of Dorothy’s physical handicaps and personal problems. We tried to empathize and made allowances for negative attitudes, but that’s no excuse for her complete lack of caring and support. Dorothy has been oblivious to the needs and concerns of her staff and the needs and concerns of patients.

It’s ironic to say that your staff felt underappreciated. They felt degraded and harassed as Dorothy relentlessly made counterproductive and unreasonable demands. She attempted to delegate her responsibilities to Zandor, who received a counseling memo when he objected to doing out of title work. Billy (the other half of my position) received a counseling memo for his generosity in rewarding the dedicated and hardworking maintenance staff a ‘THANK YOU! ‘ Plaque that he paid for himself. They graciously helped us set up the woodworking shop.

Enclosed is a copy of my latest correspondence with Dorothy. Her response was that I’m “too creative” for a rehab department that has “no room for my pioneering spirit”. She insisted I must change my schedule to a Monday or Friday, knowing these days conflict with my other work. She threatened to assign me tasks which clearly don’t use my obvious abilities to their advantage. I’m still waiting for a work evaluation that was due weeks ago.

I’m no longer concerned with the future of my career. I’m concerned about the future of the patients. They’ve been deprived of caring and capable staff members including Dolores, Bruce, Barbara, Billy, Maya, Carolyn, and Zandor. I plan to expose your cruel injustice and confirm your complicity in Dorothy’s horrible behavior and bad management practices.

I sent copies to Dorothy, the cabinet, and other department managers around the hospital. Cabinet members were hostile as they interrogated me behind closed doors. They were on the offensive and squirming in their seats as they attempted to put me on the defensive. They all agreed I was projecting my unresolved conflicts with my mother onto Dorothy. They suggested I seek psychiatric help for my problem. I said I was planning to write a (this) book about my experience and approach the media. They told me they’d find a way to ruin me.

I found my “I don’t get mad, I get even” button and pinned it next to my “Since I gave up hope, I feel much better” button on the lapel of my jacket. I couldn’t believe I’d let down the patients who I’d so eagerly promised to help and champion. Gene’s prophecy had come true. I’d disappear and never see anyone again. I had strengthened everyone’s fear and distrust of everyone’s everything all the time.

Stay tuned as I begin to unravel…

HOW I LOST MY SANITY 6

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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…

HOW I LOST MY SANITY ~ Episode 4

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There were only two patients in the art room. One was warily tucked in a corner, the other was a pretty twenty something African-American woman quietly cutting colored paper with a child’s scissors. I gently mused out loud. “You look healthy and normal. Why are you here?”

“My psychiatrist tells me it’s because I feel no remorse for what I did.”

“What did you do?”

“I killed my roommate”. I chopped her up in the bathtub and flushed as much of her as I could down the toilet. The rest of her I put in black plastic garbage bags that I tossed in a dumpster.”

“Did you think you would get away with that?”

“I didn’t think at all. I got the idea from TV.”

“And you don’t feel badly about what you did?”

“The girl is dead. There’s nothing I can do about that!” “I guess I’m sorry for her family”.

Mary grew up in a verbally abusive emotionally constipated family with no privacy. When Mary left home, she applied for a single room at college and was forced to have a roommate. Enduring a year, Mary reapplied, and lost the room to her roommate. Completely losing control of her mind and heart while stuck in a state of rage, Mary eliminated her problem.

Many strange stories unfolded over the next several months in the art room. Every day promised new adventure. I was glad I’d survived the bog of bureaucratic bullshit. I was yearning to examine everyone’s hands, but decided to wait. I anticipated astonishing tales of intrigue and amazing artworks. Many patients had artistic talent. There were two professional artists in the group. I supported everyone’s creativity and acquired special materials and supplies above and beyond my call of duty.

The first patient I bonded with was a refined and cultivated woman in her mid to late fifties. Bizarre circumstances led to Betsy’s hapless and senseless captivity. She lived on Treasure Island, a wealthy seaside community. Betsy managed an art gallery and was gossip columnist for a local newspaper. She loved to garden and was a member of a local gardening club.

A lawyer of considerable power purchased the land adjoining Betsy’s and neglected it. Weeds and branches drooped and draped sloppily onto Betsy’s property. Her neighbor‘s obvious dislike of landscaping and disdain for his neighbors annoyed the hell out of Betsy. One very vexing afternoon, she verbally threatened to chop off everything extending onto her domain. Grabbing her ax, she angrily severed every limb over her property line. While quietly recuperating on her porch, Betsy became alarmed and frightened when police in plain clothes marched aggressively through the gate of her yard.

Betsy grabbed her ax, attempting to chase them away. The next thing she knew, Betsy was sedated in a psychiatric hospital for further evaluation. Her neighbor had pulled strings and managed to have her temporarily committed. Then her serious problems began. Because Betsy was so agitated, Thorazine was prescribed, mandated, and administered. Betsy had a bad reaction to Thorazine. She was rushed to a local hospital. Her spleen had to be removed.

Betsy was no criminal. Nor was she crazy. She had great character references. Her son, a successful architect, pleaded fervently for her release, but no one appeared able to help her. A series of unfortunate events had led to her getting caught up in ‘The System’. Betsy’s attitude remained positive and optimistic while her mental and physical health deteriorated. She lost three productive years of her life. The lawyer tried to acquire Betsy’s property while she was locked up, but her son successfully blocked him.

Everyone admired Betsy. I was self-appointed president of her fan club. She could draw, paint, sculpt, and write better than anyone. She won several patient art awards. She was a positive role model. As editor and illustrator for the patient newspaper, The Scene. Betsy also created signage for hospital activities and events. I got special permissions for her creative seamstress work and purchased (my $) supplies like needles, threads, and unique fabrics.

Betsy designed stuffed insects. She called them ‘love bugs’. Sewing and sowing the seeds of success in my mind, Betsy inspired me to imagine a patient run cottage industry within the confines of hospital life that would serve other sheltered workshops in social and medical worlds. We could be a source for products, design, and marketing.

I got braver each day as I investigated patients’ lives. I couldn’t divulge my appetite for wanting to know more, but I did look as closely as I could at their records, hands, and gestures. I printed crude hands using newsprint paper with poster paint. I assumed madness would be revealed in aberrations of hand morphology and topography. There were many unusual hands. I saw a lot of frustration, anger, and fear, along with an uncanny clarity or lack of clarity in thinking. Many souls saw only one solution to their problem, never considering the consequences. Invoking hindsight enables most folk to harness our strengths, mindsets, attitudes, and actions, and embrace whatever challenges we encounter on the path to becoming healthier and happier.

Repressed rage, confused minds, and constipated emotions rule mental illness. I’d never have predicted from the hands that I read, that most of these people would be committed to mental institutions. Many patients lacked peripheral lines. They were less neurotic than the wounded healers with highly developed superegos and many more peripheral lines who were paid to care for them.

I only saw one club (murderer’s) thumb in the patient population. I expected to see many more Mr. Hydes, motivated by passion, lacking impulse control, and having a propensity for violence. I didn’t. Other hands were soft and supple. Sometimes their bones felt detached. There was zero energy, enthusiasm, or desire to think clearly or do anything meaningful. I observed one psychotic person’s skin as appearing splotchy purplish red. I imagined the color combo was repressed rage. Many hands were stiff in the joints, preventing the lost souls trapped in limbo between their inside and outside from escaping. I examined schizophrenic hands with two sets of head or heart lines in dominant hands that were ambiguous, ambivalent, suffering, struggling, and striving to know themselves and others.

Betsy and I loved the symbolism of the Tarot. We consulted the cards many times with many questions. We rarely heard what we wanted to hear, but always heard what we already knew. I collected birth names, dates, times, and places from patients, but didn’t explain why.

Most artwork and poetry in The Scene came from the art room. The patient newspaper was a venue for creative expression for patients and staff. It offered hospital news and provided space for patients to express their concerns and share their creativity. It was an important venue because it provided an outlet for frustration, anger, and depression. Everyone spent too much time complaining and blaming their problems on ‘The System’ and each other.

I decided to become a spiritual ambassador and good sense maker. The real enemies were our bad habits, bureaucracy, and time. We were a team whether we chose ‘to be or not to be’.

One notorious patient infected my psyche with doubt. He was a young black man in his early thirties. Fred had been mentally, emotionally, and physically malnourished via many abusive foster parents. A gentle kindness lie beneath the surface of Fred’s deeply scarred face. Fred was violent, but it wasn’t knife fights and gang warfare that got him locked up. It was Fred’s unrequited love. Fred was obsessed with a teenage girl. Allegedly, she was ‘taken away from him’ by an `abusive maniac’. Fred created realistic ‘WANTED DEAD or ALIVE’ posters of his maniac. He posted them all over town, offering a phony ten thousand dollar reward for him. Fred had no clue he was creating evidence that would lead him directly to the loony bin.

Fred’s large feminine hands, rectangular palms, long slender knotty fingers, and conical fingertips embody the quintessential ‘feeling’ type: great for empathy, appreciating art, research, organizing, paying attention to detail, and mostly for caring. Fred’s long head line sloped into the heel of his hand, revealing a vivid imagination and rich fantasy life. Fred could copy anything perfectly. He could have been a master forger, but that particular crime would never have occurred to him. I cheered Fred’s abilities and encouraged him to draw from real life. I also convinced his treatment team and security on his ward to let him have pencils and paper and allow him to draw under supervision.

Fred had a private sketch book. He produced forty or fifty sketches and drawings in the first month and showed no one. I asked to see them. Reluctantly, he showed them to me. I was blown away. The political parody above was his first. That’s Ronald Reagan and its meaning is self-explanatory. What stunned me most were caricatures of staff sexually abusing patients. Patients were pleasuring staff in the sickest possible ways. Were security, therapists, and patients actually having bizarre sex acts using objects of pleasure and pain or was Fred’s vision an artistic fabrication of his unique psyche?

How could Fred have witnessed what he was portraying? He had a graphic imagination. Maybe his friends were telling him their stories and he was interpreting them. Fred let me photocopy a few drawings. I wondered about the veracity of Fred’s artwork and shared it with Dolores. She showed it to the cabinet. Betraying Fred’s trust was my greatest blunder and regret. Fred fought fiercely as his drawings and supplies were confiscated. It wrenched my heart to watch him being reduced to a drug induced stupor, artistic genius, never to create (during my tenure) again. I was responsible and couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Mary 2 was a highly functioning, extremely troubled patient. Mary believed she was Satan’s child, a bad seed. Mary was three when she first unsuccessfully attempted to poison her little sister. Then she failed to drown her in the bathtub. She tied her to a tree in a lightning storm, hoping she’d be electrocuted. Finally, Mary’s dysfunctional fundamentalist Catholic parents enrolled her in a devout Catholic school. They hoped that would save her. Mary predictably became more twisted. At sixteen, Mary set a nun on fire and carved her charring body to a bloody pulp with a broken glass bottle. She told everyone, “The Devil made me do it”.

Mary produced dark artwork. I coveted and appropriated her drawings every chance I got. While under suicide watch in a maximum-security psychiatric hospital, Mary etched `666′ in the skin of her arms and legs with whatever sharp objects she could find. She also scratched ‘666’ on furniture.

I don’t frequently see hands that frighten me. Mary’s hands were scary. The creepy hand above with very stiff fingers that curl inwardly belong to Susan Atkins’ (Charles Manson’s protege’). They’re similar to Mary’s. Mary’s skin was hard, dry, coarse, and reddish. She chewed on her nails relentlessly, leaving her nail beds red, raw, and sore. Mary transformed self-critical into self-hatred. I wished I could help her let go of irrational terror. Mary’s soul was hard-boiled from the hellish reality of growing up with hypocritical parents, along with fundamentalist codes, irrational doctrines, punitive rules, and restrictive regulations.

Mary had a huge crush on me. She was the first to arrive at the art room and last to leave. I felt nauseous when I was alone with her. I was repulsed, but always smiled and acted nice. Mary generously offered to give me a quickie blow-job under my desk. I remembered Fred’s drawings and how easy it would be to become one of his vignettes. I thought about all of the Ministers and Priests, religious shepherds, who physically and spiritually rape the innocent lambs they are entrusted to protect. Does terror, shame, guilt, and disgrace trigger erotic fantasy? Is fear of being caught a turn on? Can the Devil sow the seeds of evil in a psyche?

Mary was hovering over me and monopolizing my attention. I was abrupt and impatient with her. Dark rings appeared around her darkening eyes. Mary felt rejected. Satan was hard at work, preparing her for evil acts that night on her ward. It was a full moon. Stealing the ‘six’ and ‘nine’ balls from the pool table, Mary loaded them in a black wool sock, then beat a new patient to death while she slept. The poor woman was there for shoplifting, a few days of observation, and psychiatric evaluation. Mary said she didn’t like the way the woman looked at her. She’d certainly think twice before shoplifting again had she survived. I felt guilty and responsible. I should have said something. Staff should have been more vigilant. Mental institutions aren’t called lunatic asylums for nothing.

It’s not what you do, but what you get away with that matters. Gene was undeniably the most incredible artist in the hospital. He’d been a successful commercial artist and advertising executive. Scuttlebutt was that he created the TV ads that everyone loves to remember.

Gene was unique. A celebrity on his ward, he had the only private room, outfitted with his own furniture, library, audio tape collection, state of art stereo system, Bose headphones, and grizzly bear rug.

No one messed with Gene. Dark satanic auras shrouded Gene. Angry facial expressions and aggressive body language told a tale of uncontrollable rage from a horrible childhood. Gene was hostile. Everything about him screamed, “Stay away from me!” In a jealous fury and fit of rage, Gene slit his girlfriend’s throat from ear to ear. She survived, didn’t press charges, and forgave him. Gene couldn’t forgive himself. He told me had to stay because he’d do it again.

Gene could have been free had he wanted to be and behaved accordingly. I tried to make good sense to Gene and convince him to become an active member of the real world again. Gene wanted to stay. With little interest in worldly freedom, he was free to love his literature, music, art, and still be king of the roost. I actually felt a little jealous of his inner freedom.

Gene was charismatic in a dark and dangerous way. He was the patient Dolores caught in the art supply closet with Janice. That untimely final exit for Janice turned out to be wonderful therapy for Gene. We frequently had philosophical discussions and co-created artworks that I still cherish. This life size pastel Gene drew of me in the art-room subtly captures a very private part of me.

Benny was Gene’s buddy. Benny was uncooperative. A strong fit black man in his early thirties, Benny’s phobia of homosexuality impelled the former transit policeman to assault a bar full of gay men one night with a semi-automatic weapon. While freebasing crack, Benny brutally slaughtered eight gay men.

Benny came up bi-yearly for forensic review. He believed he’d be set free one day, but was always rejected. One psychologist told me that a ‘secret agenda’ was to never ever let him go or know. It was in everyone’s best interest to humor Benny. Otherwise, he’d lose hope, become violent, and need to be permanently medicated.

There was never a dull day in the art room. One handsome young patient, recently admitted, had cut his mother’s heart out, artfully prepared, and hungrily ate it with her favorite knife and fork on her favorite plate while drinking her favorite wine and reclining in her favorite chair.

Another man was found combing his mother’s hair on her mantel, weeks after he had cut her head off. The entire hospital was full of lunatics and addicts who committed violent acts under the influences of bad circumstances, rage, or drugs. Schizophrenics, sociopaths, psychotics, and pathological liars flourished and blossomed. One sociopath from England had a Rolls Royce delivered to the hospital entrance based on conversations he had with a dealer from a pay phone in the hall of his ward. If only I could put everyone’s amazing talents to good use…

Jesus Jefferson was the angriest patient in the hospital. Rejected countless times by forensic committees, Jesus had nothing left to lose. Everyone steered clear of him. Jesus had thrown his girlfriend, her 3 year old child, and dog from a 17th story window. They died instantly as they hit the ground. Jesus had zero remorse and never spoke of the incident. He clearly needed to be locked up, but what of his other innate talents and abilities. I envisioned Jesus as a capable production manager in a patient run manufacturing business. I shared my idea with two staff psychologists and they agreed with me. Unfortunately, Jesus was too unpredictable and angry to be given any real opportunity to take real responsibility.

Names have meaning. Many people who end up in loony bins are named after biblical figures. Jesus, Mary, Faith, Angel, Grace, and Hope haunt wards at mental institutions everywhere. Whatever their parents had hoped, wanted, or expected… something else weird and perverted happened. My parody below represents my interpretation of present-day archetypal names.

MAGA = TRUMP vs chump

HOW I LOST MY SANITY

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I spent two years working part time, two days a week designing vocational rehabilitation programs at a forensic psychiatric hospital. I wanted to get to know that population. A year had passed when I got my first big break to finally delve into the clients. Rehab was responsible for holiday activities and Halloween was about to happen. “Wouldn’t it be fun if you were our fortune teller this year?” Dolores (my boss) inquired. I named myself “M”, ‘palmist’, dressed in satin robes with sun, moon, pentacles (five-pointed star), and a hand-crafted silver hand hung round my neck.

Caricature by Chris Wynter

Within moments of examining each a patient’s hands, I pinpointed their behavioral issues, current obstacles, and major life challenges. Most reacted, “Hey, you’re for real!” or “You really know me!”. I carefully tailored my words to their ability to understand. Most competent readers know that it’s not what you see, but what you say and how you say it that matters. Inadvertently, Dolores had set me up as a confidant. You never know what you’ll hear or what you’ll say when a person you’re talking to believes you already know their secrets and future. Word of my abilities spread quickly. I soon gained many new recruits who became regulars.

Mohamed was ‘a lifer’. He’d been given enough Thorazine to sedate a small army. As a giant sized middle-aged black man, he looked like a dark blend of Muhammad Ali and Bob Marley. As one of the most popular patients in the hospital, Mohamed had been a Hell’s Angel, cocaine addict, and cold-blooded murderer. He found `religion’ during solitary confinement. I began receiving Plain Truth magazine shortly after I met him. He had placed me on their mailing list. I learned about contraband from Mohamed. Patients with money got marijuana, alcohol, extra cigarettes, Sanka, and a myriad of other illegal stuff smuggled through security.

One not to notice occurrence was the way large quantities of office and recreational supplies would arrive and vanish quickly. I began hoarding yellow pads, pens, and pencils, hiding them in my desk before they disappeared. Staff were getting away with whatever they could. Even office machines vanished. When I asked a friend in a nearby hospital what was happening, she replied that it was “par for the course”.

Many people who work for government agencies have a chronic poverty consciousness that makes them feel inferior, underappreciated, and entitled to get away with whatever they can. Most workers in helping professions give too much and don’t ask enough for themselves.

Nothing was as it appeared. One security staff member who habitually acted friendly with patients, said to me in confidence, “I’d shoot every one of them in the head at night while they slept if I could get away with it”. I pretended he was joking but was really shocked and awed. Watching patients pretending to be what and how they believed staff wanted them to be was a spectator sport. When backs were turned, patients would give staff their middle finger or spontaneously contort their faces. Staff often behaved similarly to patients and each other.

Sometimes it was `Show Time’. An organization whose job it was to inspect state hospital social service programs was called `XYZ’. The ‘powers that be’ at the top of the mental health food chain got plenty of notice from XYZ. Inspectors showed up to lots of hustle, bustle, and productivity. We ran smoothly, like ‘Timex’ when observers were around. Everyone was active and cooperative, and everything was orderly and `spic and span’. In truth, we were scuzzy, and programming ran unpredictably… you know, the kinds of things inspectors need to see.

The state allots monies for capital improvements and program development each year. Unspent monies are removed from the following year’s budget. A $100,000.00 surplus needed to be spent quickly. A scam that affected me was the creation of a woodworking and refinishing shop. The cabinet approved purchasing expensive woodworking equipment for the Rehab Dept. They failed to inform us that the patients would ‘never’ be permitted to use the tools as they were ‘much too dangerous’.

I questioned Billy (other half of my position) about who was going to operate the equipment. He told me that he and I would initially do the machining, but eventually certain patients would be trusted. I disagreed. None of our conjecture mattered, because when the fiscal year was over, the cabinet scrapped the shop. Now they could ask for more money next year. You’ll appreciate this picture of me and Billy at the annual Xmas party. Even Santa was a lunatic!

I figured if everyone else was getting away with things, so could I. `Gigolo’ worked maximum security at the secure entrance. When no one was around, he’d wave me past the bag check and metal detector. Even the director of the hospital was scanned and checked daily. I took advantage of his trust by waiting outside the hospital entrance until no one was in the foyer. I became ‘Smiley’, who always entered the security area with a big smile on my face. Gigolo would wave me through. In my briefcase was a camera, tape recorder, and extra tapes. I began recording patient songs and stories. I could and so I did.

Virginia was abandoned by her mother at birth. Fished out of a garbage can, Virginia grew up in orphanages. She had a grade school education and never developed work skills. Virginia ventured out into the world on her own. She became pregnant as an adolescent and a magnet for one co-dependent abusive spouse after the other. Virginia prayed her children weren’t forsaken by God, but they were. They were homeless and starving. She loved them too much to watch them starve to death. So, she killed them. What else could she do?

Virginia’s haunting voice expresses the agony of her soul. I saw her as a cross between Billie Holiday and Nina Simone. I found her tunes and lyrics profoundly poetic and deeply disturbing. She asked me to share one of my choosing.

“CRIES OF PAIN, CRIES OF JOY

SCREAMS OF TORMENT WITHIN

SILENTLY WHISPERING INNER FEAR

A WALL OF PRETENSE TO HIDE

BITTER REALITY WITH NO REMORSE

CHANGING MOODS, ALWAYS DENY

TRUTH IN A WORLD OF UNENDING STRIFE

REACHING OUT THE LAYER OF LIFE

DREAMING OF THE EVERYDAY CHARADE

MOVING FACES IN A MASQUERADE

REVEALING THE UNRELENTING SOUL

OF A TIRED AND LONELY BEING

HIDDEN QUALITIES SOARING BENEATH

THE EXTERNAL EXISTENCE ABOVE

COULD THE ENERGY EXIST TO FIGHT

THE SHADOWY SILHOUETTE OF I?”

“Have you ever seen a hand that frightened you?”

I often hear that question. It was a sweltering day. A chill entered my soul as I touched Manuel’s hot sweaty palms. His huge reddish balls of thumb were full (like they’d been stuffed with extra-large eggs) and smooth with no lines. The image on the left is simulated. The ball of thumb on the right is mine. Many significant relationship lines lie within my lifeline. I love lots of people. Manuel had no lines. Manuel had a mega-dose of desire, lust, and passion; nourished by fear, anger, and hatred. Unfortunately, Manuel had zero ability to have intimacy with other human beings. He allegedly kidnapped eight little boys, took them to rooftops, raped, murdered, cut their penises off, and carved crosses in the bases of their skulls.

Manuel pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. He was committed to a maximum-security forensic hospital for the criminally insane. When I met Manuel, he had been dying of kidney disease. He’d been on dialysis machines for five years. His kidneys were shot. There would be no donor for a child serial killer. Manuel’s time was running out. He wanted to tell his story and asked me to record it. Before accepting Manuel’s word, I examined his hospital records and psychiatric treatment plans. Dozens of articles about the murders were recorded on microfilm in the news section of the public library.

Although the evidence was circumstantial, Manuel fit the profile. The media had generated a public frenzy. Hundreds of detectives and policemen were on the case. The first suspect had to be disguised as a policeman in order to not be lynched by the public.” It took over two hundred police, some wearing riot gear, to prevent over 1000 angry people from storming the xxx police station in the mistaken belief that a suspect in the mutilation murders of four young boys was inside the building.”

Manuel’s ball of thumb is the star of his story. Manuel came to the USA from Puerto Rico at age thirteen with his father and brother. He had great aspirations, but says he got hooked on drugs (marijuana) and headed downhill after that. Manuel said to me, “Drug addiction was in my genes. From the first time I tasted drugs, I never stopped”. A huge round ball of thumb symbolizes sensuality, compulsion, and indulgence. A paradox is that a large ball of thumb can also symbolize a huge appreciation of nature, children, art, music, and all things beautiful, along with abundant generosity and warmth. Manuel’s low set thumb and very stiff fingers and life and head line closely tied together at their start symbolizes that Manuel’s patterns and habits were deeply embedded.

Many thieves and pick pockets have inwardly curving pinkies. Hooked on heroine, Manuel resorted to stealing drugs to support his habit. He hung out with prostitutes and criminals. Meanwhile, his mother died of brain cancer, his sister died of cirrhosis of the liver, his half-brother died of a drug overdose, and his other brother was locked up for murdering their crazy father. Manuel’s tale would make an extremely dark TV sitcom.

Manuel dealt heroine to support his habit. When he turned sixteen, he was arrested for drug dealing. In “Purgatory’s tombs”, Manuel began banging his head against the wall. He was sent to a minimum-security outpatient mental hospital to detox and six months later he believed his habit was broken. Manuel discovered he had talents in arts and cooking. He tried living with a woman at seventeen, but he couldn’t stay out of trouble. While in and out of prisons and mental hospitals, Manuel managed to get his common-law wife pregnant three times; two daughters and a son. One daughter had to be on dialysis for failed kidneys.

Manuel spent five years in a state penitentiary while his family survived on welfare. The prison system tried to rehabilitate Manuel by teaching him several different trades. He had the best of intentions but was unable stay out of trouble. Next, he found religion and went to live in a church. Becoming fundamentalist and fanatical, Manuel began preaching from the bible to his family, friends, and strangers on the street. He claimed he tried to stay away from drugs, but even a drag from a cigarette or sip of beer would rekindle his addiction.

A combination of drugs and religion led to grandiosity. “I was greater than God. I really believed I was Jesus Christ”. Manuel took medication for his hallucinations. On drugs, he could temporarily cope. If he forgot, he’d become mentally and physically ill. Manuel began taking speed and cocaine again. His delusions and hallucinations became more grandiose. One forensic psychiatrist described Manuel as a “walking time bomb”, a violent psychopath destined for evil and a forensic lifestyle.

Several authorized and unauthorized exits from QRS, a low security mental hospital, coincided with the mutilation deaths of young boys. Manuel was seen preaching on the streets near the scene of one crime. He was connected to other murder locations because of relatives who lived nearby. Manuel denied killing the boys. A court appointed defense attorney talked him into copping a plea of insanity. Manuel claimed he didn’t know anything about the legal system and just followed his lawyer’s advice.

“I was sold down the river. Everyone needed a murderer, and I was him”. Manuel was declared criminally insane. There were no more mutilations of children after he was put away. I secretly believed Manuel committed those crimes. I also felt compassion for him. He was born on the short end of a very hard thorny stick in both the nature and nurture departments.

I was repulsed by him, but I also realized that Manuel might have been a very different person had he had real love and nourishment in his childhood. Manuel could have had a healthier and happier life with the right nurture.

I read almost every hand in the hospital, but never shared anyone’s secrets with anyone else. Rehab staff considered me harmless. They were more neurotic than the patients. Many had overdeveloped superegos. Most of them did what they knew they could get away with. Most patients had huge ids with no superego. They did what they thought they had to do, never contemplating the consequences of what they did. They saw only one solution to a problem. Patients generally had fewer peripheral lines in their palms than staff who were more confused.

I published an appeal to patients interested in participating in something creative and fun.

I was `M’, the fortune teller at our Halloween celebration. Mark is my name. I came here as a vocational instructor. Many of you know me as part-time art therapist. I’m actually an industrial designer. I design products for manufacturing companies and teach design at local colleges. I sometimes offer workshops to help creative people and inventors manifest their creations.

One year ago (this week), I began working here. I hoped I could motivate many of you to nourish your natural talents and abilities. I planned to offer guidance and support on projects of your creation. I assumed you’d be inspired by an opportunity to work on your own projects. Over the past year, I‘ve heard many reasons why you can’t or don’t want to be involved.

You’ve become so used to circumstances being hard that you can’t imagine anything else. Disappointment is too painful. You’re afraid to be enthusiastic. You’re afraid to trust anyone. Your self-esteem is too low. You’re not worthy or capable, but I assure you, you are.

I’m appealing to anyone who feels inspired or curious about their potentials and is willing to make a commitment to a weekly schedule to work under my direction. You must be accepted to participate in my class. A brief interview with Mr. Cartozian, the Rehab Counselor, will be required. His approval, along with the support of your treatment team will determine your eligibility. If you want my help, you’ve got it.

I promise to dedicate myself to helping class members make their projects a reality. Any project you choose is fine as long as it’s possible. Twelve students will participate in classes. There will be two work / study groups with six students each. Each will meet twice per week; one session on Tuesday and one session on Wednesday.

Here’s my vision: We’re motivated about our projects and willing to do whatever it takes to make them happen. We’re sharing in healthy constructive ways and learning a lot from everyone’s projects. We’re learning to draw and make things in our workshop. Many projects are happening; works of art, music, writing, and producing practical items like furniture, magazine racks, floral planters, and boxes of all shapes and sizes. If you can envision yourself in my class, please speak with me directly in the Rehab Department on a Tuesday or a Wednesday over the next several weeks.

I began preparing for my vocational classes. Some of my favorite patients were ready to sign up. Others I’d tried to interest remained apathetic. I published an appeal for my ‘vocational classes’ in the ‘Scene’, the patient newspaper. The response was better than I expected. It’s what happened as a result of my choices and actions that drove me out of my mind.

Stay tuned.

ARIES & PSYCHE

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Personal and collective psyche transform as Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto transit our zodiac. Uranus was the only outer planet to transit Aries in the 20th Century (1927–1935). Uranus in Aries brought fierce individualism, pioneering spirit, abundant energy, and limitless financial resources to facilitate bringing concepts to fruition. Uranus inspired our collective psyche through revolutionary technological changes. Here are some images and events inspired and symbolized by Uranus’s path through Aries.

Physics and astronomy created the “Big Bang”

theory of an ever-expanding universe

NEUTRON was discovered

King Kullen was the first Supermarket in Queens, NY

Wonder Bread and Homogenized Milk

were manufactured and mass-marketed

First Laundromat opened in Fort Worth Texas

Flashbulb was invented

3M Company introduced transparent Scotch Tape

Nylon fiber was invented

First plastics recycled in Britain

Bell Laboratories developed stereophonic sound

A German ophthalmologist pioneered the first contact lens

First drive-in movie theater opened in New Jersey

Model A replaced the Model T Ford

First air-conditioned office building in USA ~ San Antonio Texas

Jet engine patented

Charles Lindbergh made first solo flight from New York to Paris

America was captive when Lindbergh’s 20-month-old son was kidnapped

Mao Tse-Tung developed guerrilla warfare tactics that conquered China

Leon Trotsky was expelled from the communist party

Federal government entered field of

hydroelectric power with Boulder Dam

First all talking motion picture, ‘The Jazz Singer’, starring Al Jolson

Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences was born

The stock market crashed, forcing people to

re-examine their values and institutions

Uranus completed its eighty-four year cycle in the spring of 2011, turbulently returning to Aries to crumble regimes, topple demagogues, ignite cities, and fuel an Arab Spring that would spread across the Mid-East. Devastating earthquakes in Japan forever changed how governments look at nuclear power policies. We’ll forever be dealing with the fallout and consequences. Protesters in Spain set the stage for Occupy Movements in New York and London. Osama Bin Laden was killed. His demise appeared on Twitter before it was officially announced by the Whitehouse. WikiLeaks raised our awareness of government secrets, conspiracies, and everything we should never take for granted!

Irrational interpretations of our second amendment have been adopted by extremist and fundamentalist ideologues. Armies of angry, confused, and frustrated folk with semi-automatic weapons of mass destruction are only a banana peel away from becoming nutcases with guns. The NRA, evangelicals, corrupt politicians, and partisan politics have laid the groundwork for another Civil War as Uranus leaves Aries. The Devil tempts and seduces his disciples to betray our minds, hearts, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, and planet. Too many emperors are beasts and frogs, clothed in lies and alternative facts that must be seen through a lens of good sense. A catastrophic choice can take many years and many hard lessons before healthy change is implemented.

“Hasta la vista baby”

Uranus’s unpredictability, along with the blood, guts, and gore of war are a scary combo. Neptune in Pisces and Pluto in Capricorn can be noble and highly spiritual, or poisoned by passion, devoured by lust, and consumed by greed, hatred, fear, and terror. We must shift our broken philosophical and spiritual paradigms or be doomed to an eternity of mass post-traumatic stress disorder (MPTSD). The “Big Bang” is a tale of neutrons, plastics recycling, supermarkets, laundromats, homogenized milk, Wonder Bread, Scotch Tape, and the Model T. Why has the human race become a race against bad shit happening? Must we always lose what we have to value what we had?

SAGITTARIUS & PSYCHE

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Outer planets transform personal and collective psyche and catalyze corresponding outer worldly changes as they transit the signs of our zodiac. Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto revolutionized, reformed, and transformed 20th Century Sagittarius. Psycho-social paradigms of politics, commerce, and religion shifted radically and dramatically.

Uranus transited Sagittarius from 1981-1988. Politics became 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 female prime minister of a Muslim country 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 Anti-Trust and Department of Justice in 1974.  

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!

Neptune transited Sagittarius from 1970 to 1984. The idealism of the 60’s transformed to pessimism with a marked lack of trust in national institutions. The war in Vietnam united masses of skeptical angry protestors, ready for confrontation. The Arab oil embargo created a major energy crisis in 1973 that ‘taught’ US not to take energy for granted. We believe gas is expensive, and yet ownership of energy sources, uses, and abuses drive western gas prices artificially lower than they should be.  Raising gas prices is essential to increasing profits and catalyzing openings of controversial pipelines that endanger our environment; however, no matter how expensive fossil fuels become; they’re cheap compared to the costs of long range consequences of their misuse for our world and souls!

Neptune rules false prophets, delusion, deception, and victimization. Richard Nixon was the first President to announce his resignation in 1974. New York was the first city to be bailed out of bankruptcy by the federal government in 1975. 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’, which became the ‘Immoral Majority’ sometime prior to January 20th 2001.

Neptune can be imaginary, illusionary, and visionary. Neptune rules chemicals and drugs. The first test-tube baby was conceived out of a womb in Leo in 1978. Genetic engineering generated new horrors for theologians, religious fundamentalists, and ideological extremists. Environmental activists protested industries that created “Acid Rain”. The ‘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 eventual pandemic spread.

My parody of original

Pluto transited Sagittarius from 1995 to 2008, transforming politics, big business, and religion. Political extremism, corporate greed, religious fanaticism, white supremacy, 2nd amendment rights, fundamentalism, and strategic terrorism flourished and thrived in fertile soil. 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 Republicans controlled congress. Y2K was not end time.

Author’s Note: The NYT Millennium issue queried various metaphysical prognosticators with good reputations what will happen when 1999 becomes 2000. They published half a dozen predictions. Mine was that on January 2nd, we wake up, brush our teeth, and go to work!

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. 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. Lairs of corporate foxes tended the hen houses while packs of political wolves herded the sheep. Sacred cows birthed golden calves.

Saturn began its journey through Sagittarius on December 23, 2014, after twenty-eight years of visiting eleven other signs and houses. Astrologers predicted Saturn would wield a sobering influence on society as it transited from Sagittarius to Capricorn. Saturn’s process is about embracing responsibility and choosing structure, discipline, and focus. Saturn rules bureaucracy, big business, and established institutions including transportation, communications, food, housing, healthcare, law, politics, and religion. Father Time asks us to be here and now.  

Sagittarius rules transportation. Sagittarians love prestige and luxury and choose power and status. They leave racing to Aries and showing off to Leo. The lords of cars must shift the paradigm of profit before people. Industry must become more spiritual in its outlook and truthful in its actions. Guzzling fossil fuels is unsustainable. Do we truly need hundreds of horses galloping under our hoods?

Perpetuating an illusion that overly expensive powerful gas guzzling cars are glamorous, maintains a delusion that it’s OK to deplete our planet’s natural resources and poison our environment. Car companies pretend their products are healthy! One responsibility of transportation is rethinking the future of transportation, like creating led light, clean energy, inexpensive communications, and global good health. Raising mass consciousness is profitable for humanity and our planet.

As our planet warms, cools, floods, quakes, droughts, burns, and is blown by giant winds, fossil fuel prices remain artificially repressed, while legislation prevents sustainably minded competitors from building sound structures on solid foundations. We must cut our energy umbilical cords and think globally while acting locally. Fuel efficient, non-polluting, practical, and economical mass transportation is essential to creating a healthy world and economy. Energy, Transportation, and Communications must be transformed concurrently.

We go wherever and whenever we want in the comfort and safety of our cars. Hidden costs are usurious, insidious and deceitful. We guzzle gas, fight oil wars, deplete, squander, and waste finite resources, and poison our mother’s body, circulatory, and respiratory systems. Too much carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and other toxic waste hover everywhere in space and time and by degree. Smoke, smog, and other human waste poison our oceans, reservoirs, rivers, streams, and tributaries. Pestilential pollution sticks to the walls of our veins and coagulates in our arteries like cholesterol on its way to a coronary. Our highways and roads are like varicose veins feeding bloated glands that nourish the cancerous sores we call cities. We must shift our usurious false paradigms, and steer ourselves from death and destruction toward a hopeful future characterized by clear intent, healthy values, critical thinking, honest feelings, right use of willpower, good physical health, honest relationships, and freedom to explore our creativity, philosophy, purpose, dreams, fears, and spirituality.  

.

The human race has become a race against bad shit happening. Why do we wander across barren deserts and toxic wastelands? Greed and avarice are symptoms of poisonous partisan political philosophies, flawed fundamentalist religious doctrines, extremist social ideologies, and too many erratic personalities. Too many unhealthy psyches are running around with too many guns and second amendment rights. Why do we aimlessly worship sacred cows and hopelessly pray to golden calves? Trading money for values and substituting religion for spirituality has never worked. Lies are fueling humanity’s race toward bad shit happening. Loving is one answer, but beware loving too much or your frightened neighbors will nail you to a cross and make a martyr out of you.     

Hermes teaches us that our destiny is in our hands. “The lips of wisdom are closed, except to the ears of understanding”. Jupiter transited Sagittarius this past year, unveiling the greed of capitalism and revealing the real present and future costs of climate change. Why must we lose what we value to value what we had? We must choose healthy values and accept full responsibility for being our healthiest selves while creating a healthier world for all.

Why don’t we see the forest from the trees? How can we be healthier in more sustainable ways? Uranus transits Taurus May 14, 2018 ~ Nov 7, 2025. I pray for a rebirth of practical good sense, accepting responsibility, choosing courage, strength, grace, and wisdom, and embracing truth, nobility, dignity, integrity, ethics, and virtue.

Aries and the Collective Psyche

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Uranus was the only outer planet to transit Aries in the 20th Century (1927 – 35). Aries and Uranus brought fierce individualism, a pioneering spirit, abundant energy, and limitless financial resources to bring concepts to fruition. Uranus invigorated our collective psyche through revolutionary technological changes. Here are some highlights from our Uranus in Aries revolution eighty four years ago.

Physics and astronomy created the “Big Bang” theory of an ever-expanding universe

The Neutron was discovered

King Kullen became the first Supermarket in Queens, NY

Wonder Bread and Homogenized Milk were manufactured and mass-marketed

First Laundromat opened in Fort Worth Texas

The flashbulb was invented

3M Company introduced transparent Scotch Tape

Nylon fiber was invented

First plastics were synthesized in Britain

Bell Laboratories developed stereophonic sound

German ophthalmologist pioneered the first contact lens

First drive-in movie theatre opened in New Jersey

Model A replaced the Model T Ford

First air-conditioned office building in the USA opened ~ San Antonio Texas

Jet engine patented

Charles Lindbergh made the first solo flight from New York to Paris

America was captivated when Lindbergh’s 20-month-old son was kidnapped

Mao Tse-Tung developed guerrilla warfare tactics that conquered China

Leon Trotsky was expelled from the communist party

Federal government entered the field of hydroelectric power with Boulder Dam

First all talking motion picture, ‘The Jazz Singer’, starring Al Jolson

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was born

The stock market crashed, forcing people to re-examine their values and institutions

Uranus completed its eighty-four year cycle in the spring of 2011 as it turbulently returned to Aries to crumble regimes, topple demagogues, ignite cities, and fuel the Arab Spring that spread across the Mid-East. Devastating earthquakes in Japan forever changed how governments look at nuclear power policies. The world is still dealing with the fallout and consequences. Protestors in Spain set the stage for Occupy Movements in New York and London. Osama Bin Laden was killed. His timely demise appeared on Twitter before it was officially announced by the Whitehouse. WikiLeaks raised public consciousness of government secrets and conspiracies.

We’ve come full circle in seven years with neo-demagogues and ‘alternative facts’. Apparently, we need more tough love before we choose good sense and take action. On the eve of our self-destruction, NRA has enabled the masses, carelessly creating an Army of angry, confused, and frustrated people with semi-automatic weapons of mass destruction. How we interpret our second amendment may be our doing or undoing.

As Uranus transits the last degrees of Aries, it sheds ‘Revolutionary’ new light on an old way of seeing. Hot off the presses today ~ 3/16/2018 ~ positive manifestation

New Mercedes Headlight is ‘Revolutionary’

Our personal and collective psyche transforms as our outer planets travel from one sign to the next. Uranus and Mars is an explosive combo. Mars is the blood, guts, and gore of War. Psyches devoured by passion, lust, and hatred are a recipe and a prescription for MPTSD (mass post-traumatic stress disorder). The “Big Bang” theory has come a long way since the first Neutron, Supermarkets, Laundromats, Homogenized Milk, Wonder Bread, Scotch Tape, Plastics, and the Model T…“Hasta la vista baby”

Sagittarius and the Collective Psyche in the 20th Century

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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

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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.