Category Archives: Seduction

HOW I LOST MY SANITY ~ Episode 4

Posted on by

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 SANITY3

Posted on by

After six to eight working days, I’d met most of the patients. There were five men’s wards and one women’s ward. The wards traveled around the hospital escorted by SHTA’s. One, two, or three wards at a time would meet in the rehab department for recreational/religious services. Many patients found religion while incarcerated. Evangelists, fundamentalists, and self-styled ministers attended every service, along with agnostics, atheists, and heretics. I counted four Jewish patients in the mix. Jewish services were most ludicrous of all. Patients of every shape, size, color, and religious denomination wore yarmulkes (skullcaps) and pretended to chant pigeon Hebrew. For attending religious services, patients received extra rewards such as cigarettes, tea bags, and candy. They also hoped to earn a few brownie points with God and the Forensic Committee when they came up for evaluation.

The next several months were both enlightening and frustrating. It was obvious I needed more clinical training specific to a forensic population. I reached from the Rehab department to make allies on the treatment teams and in the cabinet. Unfortunately, protocol and position are guidelines in public service. If you go directly to someone outside of your department on your own initiative, it can be misconstrued as a breach of faith or as a failure on the part of your supervisor to control her staff. Employees generate truckloads of surplus paperwork and ask permission for everything in writing. Dolores was reprimanded. I felt dejected.

My initial impression of patients was that they were generally dull and apathetic, motivated by bribery or extortion. Cigarettes (nicotine), candy (sugar), tea bags (caffeine), and little packets of Sanka rewarded good behaviors. I believed they were ultimately harmful and destructive. Extortion was punishment for bad behaviors. Having no rewards, no activities, temporary isolation, or mandatory drug treatments is really `Pavlov 101′ in practice.

There were two types of patients. Nearly all had committed acts of violence. Some were there for psychiatric evaluation. Others were assigned for long term care by the court system because they were unfit to stand trial or too mentally and emotionally disturbed to be in a normal prison setting. There were several mass murderers and serial killers. You’d never know it as they appeared meek, apathetic, and ordinary. As they grew to trust me, they revealed hopes, dreams, fears, and tales of intrigue and horror.

I was steadily earning the trust and respect of the rehab staff. I’d read Dolores’s hands. Within a month, I was asked by other staff members to share my insights and observations about them. The rehab staff was caring and well meaning. I observed unhealthy doses of neurosis combined with fear, paranoia, and overdeveloped senses of responsibility, obligation, and guilt. Public service feels thankless and hopeless to many of the staff. I tried to be constructive, helpful, and leave everyone feeling hopeful.

I suggested to Dolores that she practice saying “NO”. I advised Zandor not to react negatively to criticism, even if it’s personal. I nagged Billy (Skinny) to lighten up and see reality as it is and not how he wants it to be. I encouraged Luscious Lips to let go of his guilt, cultivate good habits (like controlling his indulgences), and begin to schedule activities to look forward to in his life. I applauded Barbara’s ability to maintain clear boundaries and thanked her for her honesty with herself and everyone else. I cheered Maya’s energy and enthusiasm. I let her know I supported whatever she wanted for herself. I wanted Janice to clearly see and express herself creatively.

My reputation as a hand analyst spread quickly. Soon, I was in the hospital director’s office reading her hands. Dr. Helga presented a caring and friendly demeanor, but after examining her hands for a couple of minutes, I was positive it was an act. She had the stiffest hands and fingers I’d ever felt, inwardly curving pinkie fingers, and a clear simian line in her dominant hand. Knotty fingers and long index fingers were well suited for a detail-oriented directorship. Helga’s father had been a German SS or gestapo who ran a Nazi concentration camp during World War II. There was no place for emotion in Helga’s formative years. She was calculating, ambitious, and couldn’t tolerate disobedience. She ordered me to never discuss what I saw with anyone and told me in no uncertain terms to stay away from patient hands. I gained insight into the cabinet by reading several members directly and by carefully listening and observing body language at meetings and in casual exchanges without permission.

It took six months to learn the ropes while generating and accumulating huge masses of paperwork and proposals. I was ready to present my syllabus for prevocational classes to the cabinet when the hand of fate unexpectedly intervened. A quirky thing happened. Dolores accidentally caught Janice, the art therapist, in the art supply closet with her skirt up around her ears. She was dispensing her own personal form of emotional and physical therapy to one of the male patients. Janice was fired instantly.

Janice had self-destructed. I’d lucked out. There was no art therapist. I was the only staff member qualified to fill in until another was hired. I knew about art. I didn’t know the first thing about art therapy or forensic psychology. That didn’t seem to faze anybody. I was thrilled to put everything aside to be the new substitute art therapist. I’d finally get to meet patients. Nearly all the patients frequented the art room. It was a chance to play with art materials and express themselves creatively. They could sculpt with clay, draw and paint, make collages, write poetry, and play music. I’d examine their hands, astrology, and experiment with tarot on them. This was an important lesson in human nature and my nature that I’ll never forget.

The art room was small and private (14’X 14′). I was happy about that because in addition to having the potential for intimacy, I was required to inventory every pencil, crayon, scissor, and even staple. These were all considered potentially dangerous weapons. Everything in Rehab was either bolted down or fastened together with special screws and nuts that required special tools to unfasten. Every precaution was taken to protect us from patients and patients from each other and themselves.

One very crazy patient who seriously creeped me out was James. After James’s mother would visit him, staff would find him mutilating his genitals with a paperclip, staple, or whatever he could find that caused damage. James eventually died of AIDS after repeatedly letting other male patients have their way with him sexually. I stayed away from James’s hands, but I do remember ugly brown tobacco stains between the tips of his index and middle fingers from letting cigarettes burn to ash without taking a puff.

I was cautious around patients. I tried to be helpful. I spoke little except when spoken to. I’d sometimes sketch patients. They saw me drawing and sculpting and began asking for artistic advice. I happily provided tips and tricks. It took over six months to locate a new art therapist. During this time, I’d meet a dozen patients who would influence my destiny.

Stay tuned to meet the patients…

Author’s note: If you’ve read the first episode of ‘How I lost my Sanity’, you know my writing is a combo of fact and fiction. Using the same voice as my non-fiction writing may create some confusion. I break rules of grammar and syntax. A generous helping of political and social incorrectness sheds darkness on my protagonist. Made up names and characters from movies parody and give faces to characters in my story. If you have any thoughts, ideas, feelings, suggestions, advice, or whatever about my writing and story, feel free to comment.

How I Lost my Sanity 2

Posted on by

“The lips of wisdom are closed, except to the ears of understanding.” Hermes

This is a tale of how I tempted fate and lost my sanity. You may think you know your dark side, or you may know someone who has been devoured by theirs, but until you’ve been seduced into madness, breached your sacred boundaries, and tasted the forbidden fruit; you won’t experience the boundless breadths and desperate depths of darkness in your psyche along with the stark realization that you can’t turn back.

Black and white are metaphors for oppositions that fuel our awareness and allegories that guide us between our whitest whites and blackest blacks. Love and hate are extremes of the same basic substance. Like and dislike are varying degrees of gray between black and white. If insanity is black and sanity is white, where does happiness end and misery begin? When does pleasure stop and pain begin?

As a life-long student of craziness, I coveted the opportunity to serve criminally insane people. I might never get another chance. Back in college, I studied Industrial Design. I minored in bizarre psycho-ideologies and isms. As an active member of a twice weekly study group at a Gestalt psychology institute for two years, I whetted my appetite for more knowledge and understanding of human behavior. I finally had a real chance to explore authentic craziness incarnate.

Criminal minds fascinated me. I learned from my study of astrology that each of twelve sun signs has its own unique criminal style. Take this with a grain of salt, but here are a few gross generalizations. Gemini / Mercury rules con artists and pickpockets. Taurus / Venus commits sex crimes and breaches of trust from petty theft to grand larceny. Aries / Mars loves warfare and commit crimes of passion. Sagittarius / Jupiter wears white collars. Capricorn / Saturn rules master criminals. Aquarius / Uranus rules arsonists, terrorists, and unexpected bad shit happening. Pisces / Neptune rules drug dealers and users. Scorpio / Pluto rules seduction, rape, murder, and betrayal. Pluto lustily awaits you at your final destination.

Our outer planetary pictures provide a karmic backdrop for past and future generations of actors and actresses striving to learn their roles. Life is a play of plays. Unconscious creates drama. Subconscious directs plot. Consciousness is stage manager. Sun enlightens. Moon reflects. Mercury connects. Venus senses. Mars energizes. Jupiter expands. Saturn limits. Uranus disrupts, Neptune dissolves, and Pluto destroys. ‘God’ is Master Playwright.

Before proceeding with my vocational classes, I need to regress and provide background material for my year of preparation preceding my choice to teach classes. It may take a couple of posts, but I promise you’ll be glad I did.

I entered the hospital from my first day through guarded locked doors, metal detectors, a bag inspection station, faded institutional beige paint, and buzzing fluorescent lights like parasites that sucked my vital essences. Hospital staff appeared to be the dregs of humanity’s helpers. Most had physical handicaps like limping, scarring, splotching, or gazing in hopeless desperation with myopic eyes. I hoped it wasn’t contagious. I had easy access to patient records and treatment plans. I could attend treatment team meetings with psychologists, social workers, and psychiatrists. It felt too good to be true and it was.

Forensic hospital life is about rules, regulations, and self-defense. There are many more don’ts than do’s. Employees are sworn to secrecy, fingerprinted, and instilled with awkward feelings of mistrust. Orientation had been designed to help new staff members understand the organizational goals, policies, and procedures affecting job safety, security, performance, and delivery of care. We filled out a lot of questionnaires, surveys, and evaluations. We were briefed on the nature, structure, and policies of the facility. We learned about patient rights and privileges, rights and privileges of staff, and hospital policy.

The largest portion of hospital staff were security called SHTA’s. They accompanied patients to every activity. I attended life safety training with them: CPR, First-Aid, and Management of Violent Patient Behavior (MVPB). A violent person could `go off’ and all we could do was to defend ourselves. We weren’t permitted to be aggressive. We were taught Judo style moves by serious martial artists and laughed heartily as we fell, flipped each other on gym mats, and got to know each other. We were encouraged to nickname one another to help us connect. Based on obvious personal peculiarities our nicknames stuck. There was `Skinny’, `Luscious Lips’, `Gigolo’, and `Tortoise’. I was `Smiley’. Forever after, we addressed each other by our nicknames.

Fighting with patients was a scary idea. Despite my comprehensive training in self-defense, I envisioned myself grabbing the nearest chair and clobbering a violent patient over the head in a crisis. I’d be instantly fired and then indicted on criminal charges. Fortunately for everyone, most of the furniture was anchored to the floor or walls with specially designed hardware to prevent that kind of violence.

When I wasn’t watching over my shoulder for violent patients, I was cautioned to be on the lookout for ‘bacterial pathogens’ which cause disease. A lot of patients have hygiene problems and are unhealthy. Samplings are taken regularly from surfaces around the hospital in order to monitor disease. There were patients with AIDS. In 1986, that was scary! What if a patient with AIDS bit a staff member? We were briefed extensively on care and prevention. This job began to seem more than a little risky.

When I first met the patients, they appeared to be the most motley crew nature had ever assembled. They looked like R. Crumb characters. Many had deranged eyes. They were so whacky that I felt like laughing. Some had been given massive doses of thorazine. I couldn’t wait to find out who had done what. I’d heard there were a few notorious celebrities in the mix.

I was given a photo I.D. (I had to wear it at all times) and keys for areas I had access to within the hospital. Keys were given upon entering the hospital and deposited before leaving. Patients observed me with random glimpses, furtive glances, and glaring gazes. They saw me as one more ‘keeper of the keys’ who was attempting to figure them out, discipline, rehabilitate, or fix them. One thing for sure, I wasn’t one of them (yet).

I was directed to sit in on patient activities, assist rehab staff, and familiarize myself with patients. The first few days were uneventful. Important goals were getting the patients to brush their teeth, comb their hair, and to try not to be generally disgusting. Another important goal was to get them to stay awake and participate in activities such as art, music, education classes, and exercise. There were no interesting conversations yet.

The rehab staff consisted of nine members. As Director of Rehab, Dolores was beaten down by too many years in state service. Her sad name complemented her careworn face. A telltale twitch made me wonder whether she was smiling or frowning. Her unhealthy-looking teeth were yellowed from too many cigarettes and too much coffee. A deep raspy voice coughed her words. I was concerned she was ineffective. I was right. Dolores was caring but couldn’t say ‘no’ to anyone. She promised me full health benefits and then let me serve my half-time position by working two ten-hour days while the hospital’s needs would have been better served if my time were spread over three days.

Respiratory, pulmonary, and circulatory health problems could be seen in her bulbous whitish nails. Her square palms and short square fingers revealed a practical nature, while her dry, reddish, dishpan skin had weathered many storms that seemed to endlessly arrive from every direction. Despite our differences, Dolores and I liked each other.

My `other half’ was a furniture maker and restorer named Billy (Skinny). Billy was tall, thin, and bony. He looked like a scruffy middle-aged Abraham Lincoln. Billy was one of the hardest working, enthusiastic, and idealistic persons I’d ever met. Like me, he’d never had ‘a job’. An eccentric renegade from societal rules and regulations, Billy maintained a furniture restoration and refinishing business on the side. Like me, Billy had a hidden agenda. His was unselfish and equally unrealistic. He believed that he could actually rehabilitate lunatics and transform them into functioning members of society.

Billy’s ‘feeling hands’ had rectangular palms and long fingers. A hardness and stiffness ruled his fingers, and knotty joints enhanced his compulsive need to control his physical and mental life. His especially long middle fingers bent towards the top of his ring fingers. Billy had an overdeveloped sense of responsibility, obligation, and guilt. An oversensitive perfectionist, Billy spent endless hours thinking about the best thing to do next.

Billy and I tried to set mutual goals, but my hidden agenda clashed with his righteous cause. Billy wanted to turn patients into furniture restorers. I wanted to help, but I wanted private time with them. Billy committed to creating a sheltered wood working shop. I chose to offer design classes to higher functioning patients. I’d also help Billy set up a workshop that would serve the entire patient population.

The Rehab staff was a smorgasbord of affirmative action. Zandor was Estonian. He was a rehabilitation counselor and second in command. Zandor should have had Dolores’s job, but upper management didn’t want a person they couldn’t control in that position. Zandor’s ‘thinking hands’ correspond to his strong handshake, firm elastic skin, long straight fingers, square fingertips, and open and frank nails. Zandor had also been abused by too many years in state service, but it didn’t break him. He had grievances pending against the Public Employees Union for obvious discrimination against him. Despite unfavorable circumstances, Zandor always presented himself with pride, integrity, and dignity. We became comrades.

Bruce (Luscious Lips) arrived at the same time as Billy and me. His meaty practical hands had square palms and short square fingers that were soft and supple with dominant plump third phalanges. His head and lifelines were tied together at their beginnings. He was a Taurus and a huge procrastinator. Bruce was in charge of recreation. He’d served state social service agencies throughout his entire work experience. Sweet and mild mannered, his desire to make a real difference had dulled from too many years of compliance to authority, rules, and regulations. Bruce had gone as high as he could in institutional politics. He was caring and attentive with the patients but seemed depressed and resigned to mediocrity the rest of the time. The only times Bruce revealed real passion and genuine enthusiasm was when we talked about gourmet food or going fishing together.

Barbara was the schoolteacher on our team. Her goal was to help as many patients as possible reach high school equivalency. She was a large boned middle aged Afro-American woman and a very kind person. I don’t remember her hands except for her large broad nails and the sparse clear lines engraved in her palms. Barbara had spent many years in state service. She was one of a very few state employees who managed to maintain a sense of humor and a life outside of her work. She complained the least of any full-time staff member and always kept her cool. Once during English class, one of the male patients pulled out his huge erect penis and started jerking off. Barbara walked over, looked him straight in his eyes and without raising her voice calmly said, “please excuse yourself and go to the bathroom”. He did. I wished I could have read her report about the incident.

Bob was the librarian. He reminded me of a Spam and Velveeta Cheese on Wonder Bread sandwich. Bob was a real life Walter Mitty. He was helpful when asked, but most of the time, gazed into the distance under thick lens wire rimmed glasses. As I think of him, I can still feel his cool damp mashed potato hand shake that confirmed a total lack of will power, energy, and enthusiasm.

Andrew was art therapist when I arrived. His tenure was short. The only thing I recall about him is that he sent his estranged daughter a gross of condoms for her sixteenth birthday. He quipped in his southern drawl, “If she’s going to do it, might as well be safe.” The new art therapist was Janice. She was an unsuccessfully aging frustrated starving artist in need of a steady income. There was a frequent staff turnover for art therapists.

Maya was recreational therapist. She was young, very private, and a very athletic Afro-American woman. Maya managed sports activities and the patient newspaper, the Scene. All of the staff liked Maya. Patients loved her. Her powerful ‘intuitive hands‘ were well suited for sports like football, soccer, and wrestling. Everyone thought Maya was gay, but that was nobody’s business.

I was a card-carrying member of a band of misfits in search of a fit. On the whole, I liked the rehab staff and felt like I was becoming part of a team. I looked forward to our working together and began to imagine that we might actually make a real difference…

AQUARIUS & PSYCHE

Posted on by

Aquarius & Psyche

Save

Personal & Collective Psyche transform as Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto change Sun signs and personal relationships. Uranus transits each of twelve signs for seven years. It takes eighty-four years for Uranus to pass through twelve signs.

Uranus surprises, revises, and revolutionizes. Uranus entered Aquarius twice in the 20th Century. 1912 to 1919 brought sudden unexpected political and social upheaval, provocative philosophical & spiritual ideologies, loss of faith in humanity, and lack of trust in ourselves.

1912 ~ “The Unsinkable Titanic” sunk on its maiden voyage… karmic lesson in Hubris

1913 ~ Tornadoes & Floods devastated Middle America. 3,000 dead + $100,000,000 in damages… a painful and expensive lesson in preparedness

1914 ~ World War I ~ Greed, Hatred, Fear, and Terror levied a heavy toll on humanity

1915 ~ Jan. 25… Sun, Uranus, Mercury, Jupiter, and Lunar North Node, energized by Uranus and powered by Aquarius. Alexander Graham Bell began international mass communications through the first transcontinental phone call made Jan 25th, 1915. A powerful concept’s time had come. The Dark Side: German submarine torpedoed the British Ocean Liner Lusitania

1916 ~ What kind of wall would have prevented Pancho Villa, Mexican revolutionary, from invading the USA? President Wilson retaliated by sending 6,000 troops into Mexico.

Official Gazette of London published the names of 80 United States firms suspected of trading with Germany. Prescott Bush (banker) was on the list.

1917 ~ USA declared war on Germany. Hitler’s enemies became our allies. Hatred & Bigotry was bountiful, catalyzing the worst race riot in American history in Illinois.

Congress amended laws that prohibited beer, wine, and liquor from being profitable

1918 ~ Spanish Flu was the worst pandemic since the Bubonic Plague that wiped out one quarter of Europe’s population in the 14th century. Daylight Savings Time was born.

1919 ~ Prohibition was ratified as the 18th amendment to our constitution. Congress failed to ratify the Treaty of Versailles. President Wilson disagreed and went on public tour to fight the decision. He died trying.

Uranus transited Aquarius again in 1996. The final leg of his journey marked the fall of the World Trade Centers. Had we chosen faith, love, and brotherhood over fear, selfishness, and convenience, we’d be building bridges instead of walls!

Neptune was in Aquarius from Nov 27, 1998, to Apr 4, 2011. Neptune eroticized and romanticized male vanity and virility. ‘Getting it up’ got popular when Pfizer introduced Viagra in 1998.

The stock market created a new form of gambling addiction called “internet day trading” where the present is more profitable than the future. DVDs were the fastest growing consumer electronics product in history. Bribes and drugs tarnished the Olympic Games. Innocence and civil liberties were transformed as our ideals, illusions, and delusions about private and social security and stability dissolved. What we think and how we feel about our past, present, and future is what matters most in the eternal here and now.

Neptune impelled illusion & fantasy to find reality when body piercing & tattoos became popular. President Clinton’s first political act of 1996 was to sign a welfare reform bill that made life harder for poor people. The downtrodden were deceived, divided, and demoralized by the powers that be. Madeline Albright became the first female Secretary of State. Ellen DeGeneres was the first gay star on an ABC sitcom. Taiwan’s first democratic election was held. Four major plane crashes happened.

Neptune rules vision, illusion, delusion, and confusion. In 1998, Neptune in Aquarius represented a House of Representatives who impeached Bill Clinton for giving “perjurious false and misleading” testimony in front of a grand jury. Bill’s Hands, Sun, Mercury, Saturn, and Pluto are ruled by LEO. Rest assured, Hillary mercilessly spanked Bill’s sorry butt after he got caught being careless and cocky. In Leo of 2005, the IRA announced an end to its armed campaign and committed to complete decommissioning of all its weapons. Catholic and Protestant believers, practitioners, and clergymen voted for peace in Ireland.

Outer planets rule the electronic (Uranus) ether (Neptune). The US government and twenty state attorney generals charged Microsoft with anti-trust practices for dominating the Internet access market. Bill Gates has a Scorpio Sun, Venus, and Saturn, with Leo hands. Bill fantasizes about being god, but has much to hide and too many secrets not to be humble. Bill is a god in the underworld.

Andrew Carnegie said, “He who dies rich, dies disgraced.” Imagine having enough power to make gigantic differences for all of humanity and our planet and not do anything of value? What’s the ethical, moral, and spiritual responsibility for knowing the difference? Many people give more time and money to charity than Bill Gates compared to their available time & money.

Neptune entered Pisces in 2012. 1/10 of 1% afflicted and infected the other 99.9% with physical, mental, emotional, ideological, psychological, philosophical, and spiritual pathogens and disease. Our illusions, delusions, and deceptions of becoming old, poor, sick, disabled, and/or unable to afford bad shit happening were dissolving. Individual and collective hatred, fear, and terror prevent us from transmuting our inequities into equities. We must learn to see clearly and take full responsibility for our behavior, values, thinking, feelings, health, relationships, creativity, philosophy, purpose, hopes, desires, fears, and spirituality.

Whether

Look / See ~ Listen / Hear

Haves rule. Neptune in Pisces symbolizes billions of individuals around the world seeking security, stability, and spiritual answers. Neptune is also revealing despair, fear, and terror. Historians will describe the 21st Century as an era of false prophets and false profits. Indentured folks are at the bottom of the barrel scraping for pennies. Plutocrats skim the cream as they bribe and extort the partisan help who permit them to deplete, pollute, and poison our planet, manage our healthcare, regulate our welfare, gamble with our social security, control our pensions, and manage our pretensions. The middle and lower classes are pawns, collateral damage, in a crooked game of chess. If freedom and slavery are white and black, what shades of gray are you?

Pluto enters Aquarius on March 23, 2023, and leaves in 2044. Pluto will expose our dirty little secret agendas and realign humanity’s ideals, hopes, and dreams. Pluto could also hammer the last rusty nail in the impatiently awaiting coffin of humanity’s sanity. It’s up to us…

The human race has become a race against bad shit happening. Never have so few been permitted to influence, manipulate, and control so many.

“The lips of wisdom are closed, except to the ears of understanding.”

Hermes

“All is in THE ALL” “THE ALL is in All”

To him who truly understands this truth hath come great knowledge.

Hermes was the father of the ‘Cell Phone’. Everything is made of cells. Hermes taught that the brain is our hardware whose function is to connect inner with outer cells and fine tune our links.

In ancient Egypt, Hermes was the mystic teacher of Abraham. Hermes reputedly lived to be 350 years old in the flesh as a real person. @ 75, I’m ready to upgrade my operating system from Peter Pan (adolescence) to Hermes (adulthood). Joanna, my ‘Wendy’ (‘Artemis’), calls me “a piece of work in progress”. She says I’m still in my first childhood. Joanna has an Aries Sun with Taurus rising. I call her “RamBull”. Our friends remind us that “We deserve each other!”

“As Above, So Below” Hermes

SCORPIO & PSYCHE

Posted on by

Save

Share

Personal and Collective Psyches transform as outer planets change zodiacal sign. It takes roughly twenty years for Pluto to change sign. Pluto nearly doubled speed in Scorpio on his relentless quest for power and control of everyone and everything from 1984~1995. Pluto, Uranus, and Neptune passed through Scorpio in the 20th Century.

The eighth house of Scorpio and Pluto rule secrets, sexuality, death, and other people’s money in astrology. Greed and hubris defrocked televangelist Jim Bakker. Dismissed as minister of the Assemblies of God denomination in 1989, Bakker was convicted in federal court on 24 counts of fraud and conspiracy. By diverting millions of dollars to their greedy and grandiose lifestyle, Jimmy and his wife, Tammy, duped their naive followers out of 158 million dollars. Sex scandals busted Senator Gary Hart.

Jimmy’s back, angrily preaching Trumpism, Covid Cures, and End Times!

Homosexuals exited closets in masses in the late 70’s ~ 80’s to become a focus of daily conversation. HIV prevention and condoms were promoted on national TV to stop the spread of AIDS. Faith healing was popular, but it didn’t heal AIDS.

Scorpio can be healthy and evolved or perverted by secret sexual fantasies, lust for money, hunger for power, and fear of loss of control. As Pluto transited Scorpio, unholy alliances with the Devil encouraged predatory preachers and poisonous politicians to physically and spiritually rape the innocent souls that they were entrusted to protect. While seduction turns Pluto on, betrayal gets him off!

Religion is bankrupt without morality and blind without spirituality. When Jupiter entered Scorpio in October 2017, greedy bigoted misogynists grabbed unsuspecting pussies while repressing women’s freedom of choice and reproductive rights. Have-nots were discouraged by haves from voting. Horrible sexual and business behaviors were excused and rewarded. The human race was a race against bad shit happening.

Christian hypocrites, poisonous partisan politicians, and insane ideologues had plenty to hate and preach about. ‘CHRISTIANS’ who can steer hurricanes and miraculously cure pandemics, don’t have a clue how not to hate Blacks, Mexicans, Muslims, and all other Immigrants. Corrupt bigots promise good sense and deliver nonsense!

1980 put the first professional actor in the White House after the lowest voter turnout in history. Reagan had previously been spokesperson for ’20 Mule Team Borax’ and former host of ‘Death Valley Days’. He played his roles well, though he never helped the poor. ‘Reaganomics’ didn’t ‘Trickle Down’. When Oliver North exposed the Iran Contra scandal, Reagan performed his role, managing covertly and quietly while remaining relatively unscathed by political scandal.

Significant violence was caused as Police bombed the headquarters of the black radical group MOVE. Terrorists from the Palestine Liberation Front seized the Italian cruise ship Achille Laura. Terrorists bombed Pan Am flight 103, killing 259 passengers and 11 innocent bystanders in Scotland.

Neptune regenerates and degenerates. Neptune (Pisces) passed through Scorpio from 1957 to 1970. Regenerative sit-ins and peaceful demonstrations juxtaposed degenerative race riots, terrorist bombings, and hijackings. Spiritual transformation was scarce. Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by `her own bodyguards’. Racial tensions rose as Bernard Goetz, subway vigilante, became a folk hero after shooting four young black men in NYC. Goetz accused them of robbing him. They claimed they didn’t provoke him. A white washed justice system favored Goetz.

Neptune rules dreams, illusions, and delusions. Escapism, political unrest, and the assassinations of John Kennedy, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr. drove tens of thousands of desperate draftees and others into exile, rather than serve in Vietnam. Haves always had numerous acceptable excuses (like bone spurs) for not serving, while confused and fearful havenots consumed illicit drugs, indulged in pornography, and incited violence. Promiscuous sex was normal. Oral sex and contraceptives became popular.

Uranus (Aquarius) transited Scorpio from 1975 to 1982. The end of the Vietnam War for America was the beginning of terror for Cambodia. A senate committee revealed ‘assassination’ was a viable option in US foreign policy.

Irreverent political humor nourished hungry audiences as poisonous partisan politicians preached neo-Christianity, sparking a revival of satire and parody. Saturday Night Live flourished. Uranus (sudden change) blossomed in Taurus (values) as it opposed Scorpio (death and transformation). Irreversible transformations in personal and collective psyche, philosophy, and purpose will manifest in November 2020 if hindsight is truly 2020.

Our Founding Fathers saw us as their children. They wanted what was best for our future (despite their personal prejudices and programming). Our Constitution is still encouraging us to say what’s on our minds and share what’s in our hearts via our first amendment rights! We all need to feel appreciated, be celebrated, and given a helping hand in one way or another. Our democracy must never be taken for granted!

Scorpio symbolizes powerful females, sex, and death. Persephone, Helen of Troy, and the Queen of Cups are powerful Scorpio archetypes. The Episcopal Church ordained its first woman in 1974. Barbara Walters was the First Lady News anchor on ABC TV in 1976. Scorpio rules reproductive systems and functions. MIT scientists created the first synthetic gene in 1976. The first test tube baby was conceived outside of the womb in 1978. The first Death sentence in ten years was carried out when convicted murderer Gary Gilmore went before a firing squad in 1977.

Scorpio rules garbage. Would you believe I used to be the Guru of Garbage? The notorious Garbage Barge ferried 3,100 tons of toxic waste 6,000 miles before returning to be incinerated. Fidel Castro’s “Freedom Flotilla” embarrassed the USA when we realized that Castro had unloaded his mentally ill, underworld criminals, and other misfits on us. Over 1,000 “No Nukes” protesters were arrested on Wall Street on the 50th anniversary of the 1929 stock market crash. What will happen in nine years on the 100th anniversary?

Uranus in Scorpio conjured an instant cult classic in 1975. The ‘Rocky Horror Picture Show’ encouraged the ideology that ‘anything goes’. Punk Rock was unconventional, rebellious, and nihilistic. Ultrasound was an alternative to x-ray radiation. Palimony suits became popular. IBM reintroduced personal PCs and transformed communications. Performance art was popular for all creative artists. Personal gender identity needed to become accepted or face a future of dire consequences rooted in fear and hatred. It’s still a partisan problem for everyone.

The only guarantee in life is Death. Scorpio rules Insurance. Taxes and Insurance reside in the eighth house. If we have something of value (2nd house) to protect, we must pay to play (8th house). Insurance guarantees that a party be paid for a specific loss. The insured can worry less about the costs and consequences of bad shit happening to family, health, home, car, property, or whatever is valuable and insurable. Insurance is legalized gambling. The insured shoots craps and always loses, even when they win. Your insurance agent is your bookie. Your insurer is the casino. The house is favored due to predetermined statistics, permutations, combinations, and probabilities. Expensive risks are wedded to high stakes. You can understand your odds by examining actuarial tables. See your prospects by observing your premiums.

Insuring is sometimes confused with ensuring or assuring. Life is not ensured or assured. Spraying crops with herbicides, pesticides, and fungicides ensures fewer weeds, bugs, and fungi. It assures (by degree) that we eat, drink, breathe, and apply toxic chemicals to our lungs, guts, hair, skin, mouths, nails, toes, and genitals. Investing Social Security in the Stock Market does not insure, ensure, or assure the market won’t collapse. Employees of Enron believed their pensions insured, ensured, and assured a secure retirement, but they didn’t. Conserving energy ensures we consume less energy, generate surplus energy, create less pollution, and endanger fewer natural resources. Drilling for oil in wilderness does not insure we’ll have enough oil. It does ensure and assure we’ll have other environmental, social, political, and planetary challenges. Vengeance as a remedy for violence assures more vengeance and violence.

Everyone dies. Life insurance protects the living. What’s the premium for a graceful and painless final exit? What are the last years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, and seconds of your life worth? Read  Final Exit by Derek Humphrey. Die with dignity. When it’s your time, having a logical, practical, painless, and peaceful alternative to a future of dependency, lack of awareness, loss of love, pain, poverty, or bad health in old age is a good idea.

Saturn and Pluto in Scorpio inspired this self-portrait.

Our 2nd Amendment arms anyone who is eligible, ready, and willing to participate and permits open season on perceived tyranny for many of too many reasons. Our laws enable us to own and use weapons of mass destruction. Blending politics, religion, and profit with Second Amendment rights is a horrible idea and will surely backfire on the NRA.

Gun laws are useless when angry desperate haters with semi-automatic weapons are driven to violence. Boundaries between sanity and insanity are blurred by bigotry, hate, and fear. A pacifist public must protect family and possessions from the poisonous hordes of deluded gun owners with a bible in one hand and an AK47 in the other.

ELECTION WEEK FORECAST

It’s time to evict Masta-Don and his Repuglican’t Kakistocracy. Nov. 3 2020 will be a new beginning or the ending of good health on physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual planes. Partisan politics and religious hypocrisy are characterized by selfish ideas and senseless actions. Human chaos is catalyzing global destruction. As we destroy our planet, our individual and collective psyches are becoming immune compromised.

Retrograde Mercury in Scorpio

Posted on by

November 11, 2019. A rare astronomical event will occur today. Retrograde Mercury, at 18 degrees of Scorpio, will visually transit across the face of the Sun in Scorpio. Here’s a description of the physical event, via The Old Farmer’s Almanac. Tomorrow will feature a full moon in Taurus.

Though Mercury will only appear as a tiny image in a telescope, the metaphysical implications can be profound.  Brilliant flashes of insight could illuminate poisonous paradigms and expose dishonest secrets.

Death, decay, and degradation are Pluto’s mission, while Mercury enjoys many fun and interesting projects on multiple planes of consciousness. Mercury is the Roman god of communication, mischief, and wisdom. Mercury was also responsible for being a liaison to Pluto for his siblings. Death is a powerful opponent. The seduction turns Pluto on, but the betrayal gets him off!  Pluto tempts innocence with perversions clothed in trust, guilt, shame, and dark secrets.

The human race has become a race against bad shit happening. We’re sick and our Mother is sick because we’ve damaged, depleted, and polluted her body, clogged her respiratory and circulatory systems, and abused her spirit. It’s miraculous that she still loves and allows us to continue to be selfish, petty, and wasteful.

Black and White are opposite extremes of physical and metaphysical laws that manifest by degree in varying shades of grey. We preach Love and practice Hate, poles of like and dislike. We’re hypocrites, living in an insane world. Everything is ass backwards. Revealing our secrets is like cleaning septic tanks with our tooth brushes. As Hermes (Mercury) said, “The lips of wisdom are closed, except to the ears of understanding.”  

Today is Veteran’s Day. It’s a special day to honor those soldiers who have fought for our country. Our culture was built on the backs of Veterans. This is a good day to think about what we’re willing to give our lives for. It’s also a good day for critical thinking in general and forgiving!

Imagine a President who chooses good will toward all. Imagine leaders who exercise the authority and responsibility to love and nourish our planet and all of its inhabitants. Imagine media having a mission to raise human consciousness through honesty and integrity. Imagine a world where religion is guided by spirituality. Imagine the potential for good health and happiness for all.

It’s easy to see how easy it is to choose hate, fear, and intimidation when there’s a steady diet of it coming from morally and spiritually bankrupt religious fundamentalists and partisan politicians. Mercury is giving us the opportunity today to see our truths through the veils of lies and deception. When will we wake up and smell the garbage? Why must we lose what we value to value what we had?

SCORPIO & HANDS

Posted on by

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!

SCORPIO & PSYCHE

Posted on by

Save

Share

When outer planets change zodiacal sign, personal and collective psyches transform forever. Pluto, Uranus, and Neptune’s journey through 20th Century Scorpio changed our views of Sex, Secrets, Violence, Money, and Death. Pluto takes twenty years to change sign. Pluto was home in Scorpio from 1984 to 1995. It doubled its speed and potency in quest of full power.

Astrology’s eighth house rules secrets, sexuality, death, and other money. Sex scandals ousted Senator Gary Hart, while greed and hubris infected televangelist Jim Bakker, dismissed as minister of the Assemblies of God denomination. Tried, in 1989, he was convicted in federal court on 24 counts of fraud and conspiracy. Bakker diverted millions of dollars to pay for his and Tammy’s grandiose lifestyle. Bakker was convicted of fraud for duping his followers out of 158 million dollars.

He’s back, preaching end times!

Homosexuals exited their closets in masses in the late 70’s ~ early 80’s to be everyday conversation. HIV prevention and condoms were promoted on national TV to stop the spread of AIDS.

Scorpio can be healthy and evolved like a Phoenix who rises from the ashes. Scorpio can also be perverted by secret sexual control fantasies. As Pluto passed through Scorpio, untimely demises flourished and blossomed. Too many had too many horrible hypocritical secrets. Souls sold to the Devil while pleasuring themselves by corrupting innocence. A seduction turns Scorpio on, but the betrayal is what gets him off! By making an unholy alliance with the Devil, he catalyzes predatory preachers who rape the innocent souls they were entrusted to protect ~ a crime punishable in HELL.

When Jupiter entered Scorpio on October 10, 2017, greedy misogynists grabbed many pussies, repressed many women from exercising their reproductive rights, and prevented many have nots from voting, while condoned lying and rewarding the worst of sexual and business behaviors. A human race became a race against bad shit happening.

Faith healing was no help for AIDS. Fundamentalist religious fanatics, poisonous partisan politicians, and insane ideologues had plenty to hate and preach about. Imagine the hubris of ‘CHRISTIAN’ leaders who believe they can steer hurricanes to punish non-believers. Who call non-Christians ‘Termites’? Who deride immigrants, Islams, Muslims, or coloreds… clueless idiots who promise nonsense!

1980 put the first professional actor in the White House after the lowest voter turnout ever. ‘Reaganomics’ didn’t ‘Trickle Down’. Reagan years were ’20 Mule Team Borax’ and ‘Death Valley Days’ years. When Oliver North exposed the Iran Contra scandal, he and Reagan played their roles well, managing to walk quietly away and return unscathed by political scandal.

Other significant violence was manifesting. Police bombed the headquarters of the black radical group called MOVE. Terrorists from Palestine Liberation Front seized the Italian cruise ship Achille Laura. Terrorists bombed Pan Am flight 103, killing 259 passengers and 11 villagers in Scotland.

Neptune regenerates or degenerates. Neptune (Pisces) transited Scorpio from 1957 to 1970, generating sit-ins and peaceful demonstrations and degenerating to race riots, terrorist bombings, and hijackings. New opportunities for spiritual transformation and growth benefited few. Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by `two of her own bodyguards’. Racial tensions rose as Bernard Goetz, the subway vigilante, became a folk hero after he shot four young black men in NYC. He claimed they were robbing him. They claimed they didn’t provoke him. White justice favored Goetz.

Neptune rules dreams, illusion, and delusion. In an era of escapism, political unrest catalyzed the assassinations of John Kennedy, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr. Tens of thousands went into exile rather than serve in the Vietnam War. Privileged few had ‘bone despurment’. Confused and fearful people consume illicit drugs while others devour pornography and violence. Oral sex and contraceptives were popular. Indiscriminate sex was normal.

Uranus (Aquarius) transited Scorpio from 1975 to 1982. The end of the Vietnam War for America was the beginning of terror for Cambodia. A senate committee admitted ‘ASSASSINATION’ was modus operandi in U.S. foreign policy.

WHERE’S GRETA?

Irreverent political humor nourished hungry audiences. Saturday Night Live flourished and blossomed as poisonous partisan politics sparked a revival of satire and parody. Uranus transits Taurus (values) as it opposes (death and transformation) Scorpio and catalyzes irreversible changes in our personal and collective psyches, philosophies, and purpose. We’ll never ever take what we value or have failed to value for granted again!

HAVES need to learn they can no longer afford not to give back to ‘have-nots’ in some significant way rather than take them for granted. Have-nots need to be appreciated for any and all good things. Our Founding Fathers saw us as children, truly wanting what’s best for all (despite personal prejudices and programming). Thanks to them, we say what’s on our minds and share what’s in our hearts via first amendment rights!

Scorpio symbolizes power, women, sex, and death. Persephone and Helen of Troy are two. Episcopal Church ordained its first woman in 1974. Barbara Walters was First Lady News anchor on ABC TV in 1976. Scorpio rules reproductive functions. MIT scientists created the first synthetic gene in 1976. The first test tube baby was conceived outside of the womb in 1978. The first Death sentence in ten years was carried out when convicted murderer Gary Gilmore went before a firing squad in 1977.

Scorpio rules garbage. No one wanted our notorious Garbage Barge that ferried 3,100 tons of toxic waste 6,000 miles before returning to NIMBY, to be incinerated for all to breathe. Speaking of refuse, Fidel Castro’s “Freedom Flotilla” highly embarrassed US officials when we realized that Castro had unloaded his underworld criminals, mentally ill, and other misfits on us. Over 1,000 “No Nukes” protesters were arrested on Wall Street on the 50th anniversary of the 1929 stock market crash. Who will be protesting on its 100th anniversary?

In 1975, the ‘Rocky Horror Picture Show’ became an instant cult classic. Its message was ‘anything goes’ (as long as you’re not hurting anyone). Punk Rock was rebellious, unconventional, and nihilistic. Uranus in Scorpio brought us Ultrasound, which became an alternative to x-ray radiation. Palimony suits became popular. IBM introduced personal PCs and transformed communications. Performance art became popular and an exciting venue for all creative artists. Personal gender identity needed to be accepted or face the dire consequence of fear and hatred.

Only guarantees in life are Death, Taxes, and Insurance. Insurance is 8th house. It implies we have something of value (2nd house) to protect. We pay to play. You can purchase Insurance, a contract that guarantees one party pays another party against a specified loss. When premiums are paid, we worry less about costs and consequences of bad shit happening to family, health, home, car, property, or whatever we value that’s insurable.

Insurance is premeditated gambling. The insured shoots craps and always loses, even when they win. Your insurance agent is your bookie. Your insurer is the casino. The house is always favored financially due to statistics, permutations, combinations, and probabilities. High risks are wedded to high stakes. You can generalize your prospects by examining actuarial tables and know your odds by observing your premiums.

Insuring is often confused with ensuring or assuring. Life is not ensured or assured. Spraying crops with pesticides ensures fewer bugs, weeds, and funguses. It assures we eat, drink, breathe, and apply some degree of toxic chemicals to our lungs, guts, hair, skin, mouths, nails, toes, genitals, or whatever. Investing Social Security in the Stock Market doesn’t insure, ensure, or assure the market won’t collapse. Employees of Enron believed pensions ensured and assured a secure retirement. They didn’t. Conserving energy ensures we will have more energy and waste fewer natural resources. Drilling for oil in wilderness does not insure we will have enough oil. It does ensure and assure we will have environmental, social, political, and planetary health problems. Offering vengeance as a solution to violence assures more violence.

Everyone dies. Life insurance protects the living. What’s the premium for a graceful and painless final exit? How much $$$ are the last years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, and seconds of your life worth? Learn more about Dying with Dignity by reading Final Exit by Derek Humphrey. When your time comes, having a logical, practical, painless, and peaceful alternative to facing a future of dependency, lack of awareness of love, pain, or poverty in old age is a good idea. Or not…

“Dr. Death” (Jack Kevorkian) inspired me to create a ‘Dr. Death Do It Yourself Kit’. When I decide to end the insanity of trying to be a sane person in an insane world and can no longer maintain my good health, I plan to leave this planet as peacefully and painlessly as possible and leave others with as small a mess as possible to clean up. An oxygen mask and a tank of helium will expedite an independent, painless, peaceful, and non-messy final exit.

Mixing politics, religion, and profit with our 2nd amendment rights will surely backfire on the NRA. Laws enable us to own and use weapons. Laws become regretfully inadequate when desperate angry have-nots with guns become fearful and hysterical enough to use them. Boundaries between sanity and insanity blur. Haves will have to protect their royalty, families, and possessions from the ravenous masses of gun owners scraping for pennies at the bottom of the barrel.

Our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual futures and the future of our planet and world are threatened with chaos and destruction. Our Constitution armed whoever is ready, willing, and able to protect our families, ideologies, and beliefs and has permitted us to exercise our rights to declare open season on tyranny, greed, and the extinction of Tyrantosaurus Hex and his merry band of Repuglicans.

EPISODE 300 ~ WE’RE BOTH VIRGIN GODDESSES?

Posted on by

EPISODE 300: WE’RE BOTH VIRGIN GODDESSES?

The gals sit down with character analyst, palm reader, tarot interpreter and good vibe king, MARK SELTMAN! Mark takes a look at Corinne and Krystyna’s palms and birth charts, and sees right into their souls. After his completely spot-on character breakdowns, Mark gives the gals some tarot readings about their love lives. 

I was contacted recently by a producer for a weekly podcast called “Guys We Fucked”. The two ladies above were looking for a ‘psychic’ to shed insight into their relationships and sex lives in order to celebrate their 300th episode. I assured the producer that I was not a psychic, but she had done her homework and they had all already decided that they wanted me, regardless of what I called myself.

I called a couple of friends to get their take on the opportunity. My more conservative friend was skeptical, feeling that it would be a circus and that I would end up being embarrassed and regretting my participation. My less conservative friend encouraged me to go for it and reminded me that I really had nothing to lose. I decided to say ‘yes’ and then just have fun with it. I was glad I did. It aired yesterday. I’ve already had emails from listeners and fans around the country, letting me know that they really enjoyed the show and wondering how they could proceed to hire me to interpret and help shed insight into their own intimate relationships.

Here’s the link to the podcast ~ 57 minutes

ME TOO

Posted on by

I was the hand reader at Harvey Weinstein’s and Georgina Chapman’s wedding celebration. It felt ironic to watch an old stale bagel (Pluto) with a fresh young pastry (Persephone). Harvey produced an unforgettable extravaganza, gilded with flowers, dazzling with fireworks, and flooded with incredible food, fantastic entertainment, and myriad ‘ME TOO’ movie stars. I had to sign a non-disclosure agreement saying I’d never say anything about anyone to anyone. I’ve read many famous people over many years, but none that day. I wish I’d strolled around and spoken with guests instead of parking my butt at a café’ table. Celebrities often avoid me when I’m seated because it’s not private enough and they fear I might see what they don’t want anyone to see. For quickie readings, celebrities are best captured on the hoof where I can charm and disarm them before grabbing their hands. Many missed opportunities strolled by me that day as I read the hands of friends and families who lined up for miles to hear the good things I had to say about them. Every person walked away with something of value.

Harvey is a Pisces with Taurus hands. Broad square palms, short plump fingers, and large pink fleshy balls of thumb reveal an acquisitive pleasure loving nature. I’ll bet the widely spread freedom loving thumb in Harvey’s dominant hand is stiff. His date of birth (3/19/52) puts natal Mars in Scorpio square Pluto in Leo. One interpretation of this combo is ‘Sexual Predator’. Harvey’s time of birth is unknown. When he was arrested on May 25, 2018, transiting Jupiter (philanderer) in Scorpio was conjunct Harvey’s natal Mars square Pluto. Transiting Pluto (loss) was square Harvey’s natal Jupiter. Pluto is final resting place for secrets, deceptions, and betrayals.

Harvey isn’t looking too good these days. His greedy pussy grabbing era began to end as his hands got caught in the honey pot. I wonder how many ME TOO’s he’s grabbed. Only Pluto knows for sure. Many favorite actors and actresses passed by me that day. I wanted to reach out and grab their hands. Most stars are hyper-aware of being observed, watched, and temporarily held captive.

 

 

As an entertainer, my mission is to be caring, constructive, and leave people feeling hopeful. Each person is the most important person in the world for five-minutes. Once you understand the basic gestalt of a person, there’s always something that stands out in a person’s hands. Small anomalies in the morphology and topography of hands embody huge changes in a life. I can instantly know what a person needs to hear in the moment because I know how to look and can choose what to say. When I’m holding a person’s hands in mine and looking into their eyes, I try to be as frank, direct, and compassionate as possible. Reading many people has taught me that it’s not what you see, but what you say and how you say it that matters in the final analysis. No one escapes human frailty no matter how famous, wealthy, or what they say.

 Click photos to view my favorite moments with Martha Stewart and Star Jones