By Judith Gayle | Political Waves
We’ve got storms, everywhere we look. We’ve got rain storms, wind storms, and fire storms.* We’ve got flooding and oil leaks and unseasonal temperature extremes. Southern California is a tinderbox, over a hundred thousand homes in jeopardy, while frack-happy Oklahoma has had over 140 earthquakes in these first months of 2014. We’ve got melting ice caps in the arctic (think polar bears) and a disintegrating Antarctic ice sheet (think penguins) with projections of both North American coasts under water by the next century.
We’ve got scientists and activists and even the occasional politico telling us that it’s too late to turn the environment back toward previous lush days of excess, but some, even Al Gore, say it’s not too late to help ourselves. If we will. Which looks like an uphill slog, not so much with the public — much of whom divide into two camps, either frustrated to the point of white-knuckled desperation or simply clueless — as with the politicians who seem determined to help the Koch brothers and their ilk squeeze a last few years of unimpeded profit into their burgeoning offshore accounts.
It’s staggering to think how lethargic some of us are in the face of this emergency, most assuredly to our food supply and lifestyles, but more importantly, to our very species. Those who allow their Judeo-Christian religious preference to influence their common sense would say humans are not just a species, but THE species, given dominion over the earth. Seems to me that a careful reading of scripture would make it clear that even in their own tradition, all that power bestowed in Genesis 1:28 was pre-apple, pre-fall.
I would argue that dominion hasn’t been all that easy since, if ever it was, making domination over natural resources more of a jack-boot exercise than a declarative command. And there’s something almost primordially dense about begging God to bring rain to end a crippling drought while making no attempt to moderate the behaviors that have created planetary warming. Might as well throw a bone or two, as this preview to an episode on religion in a Texas farm community from HBO’s VICE makes clear.
More remarkably, there is a very simple concept at work in this dilemma that seems to have avoided any kind of clarity. When things are going badly, when it’s apparent that the hole we’re shoveling out is becoming more precarious, making life more fragile by the moment, common sense tells us we need to stop digging. Stop indiscriminate drilling, stop exploiting tar sands and polluting with coal ash, stop using precious water resource for fracking, stop stop STOP!
Too plainspoken? Not enough pander to those who work for BP or hold stock in Exxon? This week presidential wannabe Marco Rubio positioned himself carefully on environment by saying he was all for technological advances but that he didn’t think they would affect tornadoes or hurricanes. Conservatives are loathe to accept any responsibility for the climate emergency we’re staring down, even when it drips with the influence of the oil lobby and its kin. Worse, the Kochs have put a good bit of pocket change into attacks on successful renewables like solar and wind, siccing ALEC on those states with net metering and green energy mandates in order to keep fossil fuels at the top of the slag heap.
I don’t want to get stuck on climate change, today, even though it is — by far — the most frightening topic on everyone’s lips. When headlines talk about points of no return and editorials include discussion of human extinction, it’s difficult not to be startled into a sense of anxiety, if not panic. But everything is a process, replete with unknown variables. Nobody knows what might happen to moderate what comes next. It would be better, in my opinion, if we spent more time working toward new paradigm solutions than fighting to keep the marching orders of a waning paradigm alive, or creating new resistance fronts, but we are still in the midst of our awakening: closer than ever before to real awareness, yet still too far from a functional breakthrough, with time apparently running short.
Barbara Hand Clow tells us that the energies of this new era will shake us loose from this frustrating impasse we’re suffering. She proposes that our authentic differences — the studies that tell us that some of us are wired for conservatism and aversion to risk, while others of us are more trusting of one another and the future, based on brain chemistry — will no longer apply as we take the leap. We are in the midst of the squares that serve as flagships for that change. She considers the purpose of the seven Pluto/Uranus squares “to concretize the cultural ideals of the 1960s to break down the last five thousand years of the patriarchy.”
The patriarchy footprint is easy enough to spot these days (let’s agree that patriarchy, in this instance, is the old codified behaviors that include opportunism, exploitation and manipulation in the halls of profit and power). There is, there should be, alarm that the inmates are running the asylum and any attempt to rescue leadership from the crazies is met with howls of constitutional betrayal and godless liberalism, although I know you know the right has a similar checklist (Benghazi, Benghazi, black guy, Benghazi). It’s clown car stuff, but it’s dangerous. To quote Esquire’s Charles P. Pierce:
There is far too much loose talk in respectable Republican circles about nullification, secession, and the crackpot theories of county government that used to be the exclusive ideological province of the Posse Comitatus movement. (There is also too much loose talk about impeachment, too, but that’s a whole ‘nother kettle of scrod.) Increasingly, there is no apparent fringe to conservative rhetoric, let alone any real limits. Somebody within that party has to step up and rein this lunacy in, or else embrace it publicly as the party’s basic philosophy, or else euphemisms may not be the only things that die in those (Nevada and Utah) deserts.
Seeking re-birth on the small screen, Karl Rove started a whisper campaign against Hillary Clinton, suggesting she suffered brain damage during that period when she was hospitalized after a fall two years ago. At the time, talking heads on the right insisted she was not actually ill but just in hiding, dodging questions about Benghazi. Unfazed by the notion that they can’t have that both ways, the Pubs are pleased to have called attention to Hil’s age and health, hoping it gives their 2016 candidate — perhaps Jeb Bush — an edge against Hillary’s popularity. For Jeb’s part, his wife has always been uncomfortable in the political spotlight and his daughter has a history of drug problems which neither want aired nationally. He’s an unlikely candidate but, amazingly, among the more rational at hand.
Paul Ryan’s latest budget proposal gives us a look at patriarchy as it was configured at the turn of the last century. This is the school of thought that suggests worthiness as the criterion for state-mandated assistance, on the off chance any is to be provided. Ryan and his contemporary Jeb Bush recently told a group that friendship, along with traditional marriage and family, was the answer to national poverty. It’s a moral question, you see.
To conservatives, poverty has its roots in deservedness — based on success as defined by the patriarchs, of course — which is nonsense, but has been used to manipulate issues of classism since time immemorial. Welfare reformers in the Gilded Age eventually realized that it was the dearth of good paying jobs that created the working poor, not aptitude or intent, and in 1907, a spokesperson for the New York Charity Organizing Society declared, “We may safely throw overboard, once and for all, the idea that the dependent poor are our moral inferiors, that there is any necessary connection between wealth and virtue, or between poverty and guilt.” Only some of us didn’t, and to this day, those same adherents are fighting against paying a living wage.
Larger inequities arise on the national scene as gifts from the political class, supposing an air of legitimacy that remains questionable. Responding to an overwhelming howl over data mining, the bi-partisan bill called the USA Freedom Act, introduced to both House and Senate and attempting to curb data collection by the NSA, looks good on its face but is truly inadequate to the enormity that is the NSA project. Give the devil his due: this is the first formalized action proposed to reign in this shadow government run amok. It corresponds to a growing unease with institutionalized spying on, not to mention lying to, citizens, who have largely decided that the traitorous Mr. Snowden is a hero after all.
According to Glenn Greenwald, whose new book put him front and center on the interview circuit this week, he is set to release more NSA details on precisely which citizens are being followed around with a bug up their bum (and I’ll bet my money on dissenters everywhere, dearhearts. Likely, you and me). This proposed Freedom Act is at least a solid chip off the block of plutocracy and the financial control at the heart of our endangered democracy, but it does little to change our reality. This will be a success only if it is used as a starting point to shake the power structure, not an end point where the conversation can go to die.
Crusty old Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid showed a bit of dissent of his own this week, going after Citizens United by backing the liberal cry for a constitutional amendment against unfettered political money in elections. Remember when we were truly scandalized by the thought of a million dollars spent on electioneering? (Yeah, I know — neither can I. It was the Bush years, I think. Time moves too fast and the needle has jumped off the graph too quickly. Some seven BILLION dollars went into the 2012 election. Think how many children that would have fed!)
Since it takes a bi-partisan show of agreement to amend, this proposal will likely die on the vine, and pundits are accusing the Dems of taking a hint from Rove’s playbook, trying to change the zeitgeist by demonizing the Kochs and — oh shit, oh dear — big business itself (which makes me wonder how many folks out there besides the Pubs actually DO think the Kochs are upright citizens, simply minding their own business and exercising their political opinion to the tune of multi-millions in contributions. I would suggest not NEARLY so many as we think).
The glitches are beginning to show up, as obvious as a twitchy Stepford Wife in need of a tune-up. I had to snicker when I read that the Pentagon’s embrace of the climate change report had ruffled the feathers of FOX News followers. Not for the first time, military advisors have found that climate change is destabilizing the planet and creating national security risk. Elders on the right do not approve this kind of talk, even as they fully immerse themselves in all things military-industrial complex, and it can’t fail to shake their iron-clad loyalty to the wisdom of military leadership. The veil is thinning, the “known knowns” gone all wobbly. If we’re fighting among ourselves, it’s because we’re fighting within ourselves as well. The absolutes aren’t nearly so absolute anymore. Black and white have inevitably begun to shade to grey.
What we have refused to examine, festering deep within, must be dredged up and examined before that pent-up energy can begin to dissipate. Until all the information comes bubbling up, we cannot make a truly informed opinion. This is the kind of awareness that our journey in tandem with Chiron has brought us. This is that bite that we survive only if we are strong enough to endure the pain of allowing ourselves to be taught something we’ve long refused to know. This is the rattlesnake card in the Animal Totem deck: transmutation.
These kinds of disparities illuminate our shifting consensus, our entry into the middle ground, where we discover our internal complexity and conflict. I see it everywhere, this weakening of the belief systems formerly erected in concrete: examples of the kind of thinking that insists the military is ALWAYS right must question its embrace of the climate change issue, still trying to have it both ways must break the template of absolutism to let in new knowledge and understanding. And, although these internal conflicts add to the confusion, perhaps it clarifies this moment that Hand Clow calls a breakdown of the last five thousand years of patriarchy.
This wobble in surety helps “to concretize the cultural ideals of the 1960s,” as Clow anticipates. Awhile back, when Eric was speaking to this period as the antithesis of the Sixties — the conservative counterpart of that liberalization — I had difficulty seeing how that might work. Basically, I don’t believe we can turn back from our experience, unlearn lessons that have impacted our cellular consciousness and DNA. But adding up the impact of a dozen or more years attempting to turn back civil liberties for women and minorities, shatter community values and public commonwealth while promoting consumerism, materialism and militarism, it becomes obvious that our earlier idealism and communal consciousness have fractured along self-inflicted fault lines. We haven’t forgotten; we just can’t quite remember how to get back to the garden.
Perhaps when Mars turns direct this week, culminating the end of weeks of self-examination and discovery, we’ll get a foot up on our need to activate our political will. We might suddenly realize how late it is in the game. Perhaps we’ll look back and see how much clarity we’ve gained, how much compassion has grown in us, how much fear we’ve put behind on our journey. Maybe this is that moment when we clearly see that there’s no going back, no mourning for what was never lost if we continue to inhabit it, moment by moment — no wishing for what we already have if we insist it is not lost. Maybe Mars turns direct and we begin to step into our own power because we are unafraid to claim it, unwilling to ignore it any longer. We’re in process, moving along, even when it appears we’re stuck. And in anticipation of clarity, everything is possible.
*All of San Diego North County — San Marcos, Escondido, Carlsbad — was my home for decades. I know you join me in prayers and affirmations for a quick end to the current emergency and a coming together of community, local and national, to deal with what has become too normal an event.
Thanks Lizzy, I really appreciate that. There is an extended (over time) yod that “perfects” today, that you or anyone may recognize in hindsight, like I did. On Thursday the 15th Mercury in Gemini was exactly sextile Venus in Aries, and late on Sunday Mercury was quincunx Saturn in Scorpio, and now this evening Venus will quincunx Saturn. Right now Venus is at 19 Aries 10, Mercury at 20 Gemini 15 and Saturn at 19 Scorpio 20 retrograde, so it will stay within orb for a while. The emphasis will be on Saturn in his many forms and Scorpio, so easily recognized. Quincunxes (that make up 2 of the 3 aspects in a yod) require adjustment, and spread over time like this gives us some leeway to do it more gracefully.
be
Some say ‘dominion’ was mistranslated from a word closer to stewardship. Stewardship has a whole different flavor.
Ah be – I’m so sorry – big big hugs to you my dear ((()))
jere, aword, Jude. . . so grateful for your existence. Thank you for being so supportive and understanding. Love to you and yours./be
Be, man, I’ve seen some shit lateley. Apologies for any hard times. In sharing sense, I was priviledged with the capacity to find my Brother’s rigored corpse on the ground October 12/13, in between eclipses. That shit hella sucked. Don’t ever want to do it again. I’ve felt the emotional tempest like a maniac lately, yet, I don’t think it’s anything I haven’t been subjected to before, just something that I have to learn to integrate, continue, and learn to mitigate, that I may be able to Love myself, as well as Everyone else.
..You’re beyond gorgeous, (hell, so am I 🙂 )
Not tryin’ to be too light, (just tryin’ to keep my own feet on the ground.)
..Thank you for allowing me to release that.
Thanks,
Jere
Be, prayers and thoughts and lots of love with you.
Awwwww, be … [[[[HUGGGGG]]]]
God bless you Jude; just got word my dear friend died from his cancer a little while ago. I needed that “any self-respecting terrorist” throwaway, and your “pink-haired biker-Mama” to level me out and bring me back home.
Are you sure that 5th house Uranus is just a trigger? Might it also be a release valve? Pssssssssss…….
be
Gender issues echoed across pundit television this morning, synchronic with Eric’s piece, Maria’s and even mine this weekend. A topic whose time has come.
Rape? One in five on college campuses. I have the solution: equip each college co-ed with one of those “help — I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” monitors on a cord around their neck. ‘Course that’s counting on the cops arriving in a timely manner and not tasing the victim … or putting a round in their seeing-eye dog … and frankly I don’t think we can count on anything rational when it comes to our militarized police force.
And listening to the hysteria in the voices of righty pundits going after Hillary Clinton TWO YEARS OUT, I realized that we’ve only just seen the tip of the iceberg in terms of old paradigm bias and prejudice with Obama in the White House — having a woman, a DEM woman, as president would bring out ALL the ooze and corruption in the soul of sexism. Is that our future? Is that how we finally sick up all this dark crap from America’s psyche?
Greenwald is a scratchy character, alright, be, and I think that he — like Snowden — is compelled to follow out this thread, based on the highest expression of what they hold dear; Greenwald for journalism, Snowden for patriotism. And I’m too much a hippy, still resonate with Daniel Ellsberg, to give government a pass … security be damned … for blindsiding the public on the NSA issues.
It shouldn’t be all that difficult, seems to me, especially with everybody so paranoid about shoe bombs and suspicious backpacks, to get the public to sign off on this kind of surveillance … so give us all the gory details. What might we learn that they want hidden? Any self-respecting terrorist who DOESN’T think he’s being targeted in every way possible is a fool — but any American who thinks he isn’t as well, is similarly deluded.
I was 39 when my 20-year marriage folded. I was 40 when I got my first tat, in celebration of, albeit reluctant, independence. I’m needle-shy, as well, so I did shots all through the experience (now illegal.) I went home to N. CA to have Sherry, a pink-haired, biker-Mama tat artist do it. She was the best, but … if you think GREENWALD is a scratchy character! Yikes! That all sounds terribly dangerous in the telling, but it was all just happily counter-culture. My chart is a bowl configuration, all top houses except for Uranus in the Fifth as trigger: I come by interesting little adventures both spontaneously and naturally, I guess.
I would also add that Glenn Greenwald’s “triggered” (by the Full Moon) Neptune is part of a grand water trine with natal Jupiter in Cancer and Chiron in Pisces, so his actions aren’t totally (if at all!) unconscious. Furthermore he has a natal yod between Pallas the strategist sextile Ceres the earth mother and at the apex, dedicated Vesta in Scorpio, only 3 degrees away from said Neptune. Transiting south node (release) now conjuncts Greenwald’s Pallas, affecting his timing strategy, while the transiting north node (way forward) trines his Ceres (we are the world) and sextiles his Vesta (transforming Scorpio burn off). He, like we, all play our part in history’s drama.
be
Jude,
Faeries, wow! I credit (blame) a 1st house Saturn for staying tattoo-free, not so much for “traditional” reasons but an absolute fear (Saturn) of needles. As for the MSNBC void in your part of the country, I fear (again Saturn) we in River City will also lose access to that network once the Time-Warner cable sellout takes effect.
Likely, it is also my personal Saturn which has made it difficult for me to give my (conscious) blessing to Snowden’s actions, but my unconscious, or less clearly defined consciousness dances to the music his breakthrough act provides. Glenn Greenwald (born 3/6/67, NY, NY) has natal Neptune one degree away from where transiting Saturn stationed retrograde in March and the full moon degree of last Wednesday, and all three are sextile the U.S. Sibly Neptune at 22+ Virgo. As it happens, Greenwald’s natal Uranus is also at 22+ Virgo.
Combining these Virgo placements (Greenwald’s Uranus and U.S.’s Neptune) with the Scorpio Full Moon (+ Greenwald’s Neptune and trans. Saturn’s station rx) forms a yod with transiting (and also the Scorpio FM degree) of Eris at 22+ Aries, creating a (slow but transiting) yod, with trans. Eris at the apex point.
Yod apex points describe what needs adjustment due to the dual quincunxes (in this case from Virgo and Scorpio planets). So with the transiting Full Moon in Scorpio acting as the trigger for Greenwald’s natal sextile between Neptune and Uranus (as well as the U.S. Neptune), I’m trying to imagine just what Eris making an adjustment might look/sound/read like. Discordance is her name AND her game but she might be under pressure via Greenwald’s psyche to filter out some of that agitation she’s so famous for. On Chris Hayes’ show I saw a kinder, gentler Greenwald – less defensive if you can believe that.
Now I’m anxious to see if the next few days/weeks reveal something from his book or from new articles that will portray Snowden in a different light or maybe some new information less (or more!) provocative. With Uranus and Neptune energies channeled through a human being whose natal Pisces Sun has recently been transited by Chiron and Borasisi, it might hurt or heal and/or be real or unreal; whatever the gods of the universe deem is required at this juncture.
be
I’m heartsick about Harmony Grove, Gary — used to go out there a lot, such a remarkable spiritual vibration and history. A special kind of vortex, like stepping back in time. I’d take my kids when they were little, and they’d whisper and titter about trying to spot the spectral “white lady” that was occasionally seen roaming the hills. A great loss, indeed. There are so few of these dedicated spaces left.
And I’m delighted Questhaven was spared, I used to go out there when Flower Newhouse still held court, and later for retreats, weddings, the annual blessing of the animals. Thanks for keeping me updated, even if the news brings a tear. Glad … GLAD … you are safe and sound. Well — BBQ?? — safe, anyway : )
Interesting dilemma regarding Snowden and Obama, be — we don’t get MSNBC here in the Patch [too liberal, I presume] so I didn’t see the conversation with Hayes, but I think it’s ridiculous that we’d have to choose between disloyalty and loyalty because Obama finds it expedient to hold a hard line. Loyalty to the Prez doesn’t mean unquestioning loyalty to his every position. I find that line of reasoning rather shocking. If I had to meet that criterion, I couldn’t profess absolute agreement and approval for any president in my lifetime.
One dear friend, one sig-other and my son all have Totem tattoos. My son wears the rattler — I tried to tell him that was a tough focal point for the 3D ride but to no avail. My friend the wolf and former sig-other, the otter, have an easier trip this time around. One must take these things into account, which is why I find fangs, claws and skulls a bit much. Me, I have a couple of spectacular faeries … they tickle, but don’t bite.
Judith
A quick update The Harmony Grove Spiritualist Community was destroyed just one week shy of their 118th birthday celebration a big loss! It looks as though most if these nine fires are arson related
Thank you Judith for the thoughts and prayers for all of us here in your old North County stomping grounds. The Carlsbad fire started just a few blocks from me and fortunately moved west while burning homes of people I am acquainted with. The San Marcos fire just a mile to the east moved south towards the Questhaven retreat but has subsided overnight Camp Pendleton to the north has three fires still blazing as the horizon remains dark and the sky is orange at night as well as the moon. The heat and smoke has been intense but has reduced significantly.
All forces are indeed gathering together and this has been handled much better than the last
However, I don’t believe that the federal and state financial resources will be able to handle the more prevalent disasters nationally due to more extreme weather/water conditions and tough choices on where to contain will have to be made in the future.
Now with all the smoke on my taste buds I think I will take advantage and BBQ!
Did you see the Seth Meyers bit where he pleads to (a big picture of) Earth for forgiveness of men essentially being boys? Boy oh boy, it was the ultimate playboy to loyal girl friend routine (or kid to softy mom), finding himself in a real jam and needing a place to hide out until the next boyish bout of self-centeredness grabs him by the nutz. It was funny only because it was Seth and his total awareness of the crimes of man against planet.
But, there IS this dilemma of having to choose between loyalty to President Obama and appreciation of Edward Snowden’s act of courage, which MSNBC’s Chris Hayes clarified in his conversation with Glenn Greenwald last night (boy, now there’s a birth chart I’d love to see). So as much as we want to truth to come out, we hesitate to admire Snowden as a hero of the people and a modern Robin Hood. The astrology DOES point to more from Snowden via Greenwald though, with the present stationing direct of Mars in Libra linking back to 2012’s solar eclipse 2 years ago. Even Harry Reid’s dropping in of the Koch name might be a result of that eclipse featuring the hidden Sun (and Moon) at 0+ Gemini square totally fuzzed up Neptune at 3+ Pisces and sextile strategist Pallas at 0+ Aries. A steady drip of data exposure (including names of the bad guys) to the public acts as a vaccine (fortifying natural defenses) for when the shocking plague of deceit descends full force. I love your rattlesnake card in the Animal Totem deck Jude!
Maybe our “earlier idealism and communal consciousness” has had 50 years to incubate and now that fracturing we witness is the breaking shell of resistance to that 60’s consciousness. Idealism meets reality and some things must give, painful though it may be. We the “mothers” must stand firm against the boys-being-boys again, until they grow up and learn that in order to be treated like adults they must become responsible for their actions (or inactions). From what I gather, our cells and DNA are changing in preparation for the new world a’comin. I assume that would be all of Us leaving the carbon base behind and moving toward the crystalline; bringing back original DNA purposely deleted by those who would rule the world. This in turn allows us to follow a path, not easily discerned in our present state, back to the garden.
I think you’re right Judith; come Fall (when Sun enters Virgo), Mars and Saturn will trine Chiron and sextile Mercury who will oppose Chiron (much like a full moon does), and something unexpected will give way. Mars+ Saturn in Scorpio sextile Mercury in Virgo will form a quincunx with Uranus in Aries at the fulcrum point. The south node (release) of the Moon will conjunct Uranus (not exact until January) and the north node (forward moving) in Libra will sit at 19+ Libra for 2 1/2 months – right up to the November elections. You love Sabian Symbols, how about this one:
A RABBI PERFORMING HIS DUTIES. Keynote: The ability to draw on the power of an ancestral tradition in order to serve and inspire one’s fellow men. “The energies of the collective Unconscious are channeled through well-defined, age-old forms and formulas.” Could this include voting in the U.S. elections?
The path is there, we just have to have faith and trust our inner knowing that we are on it.
be
This topic of how we’ve turned ourselves inside out and upside down stuck with me during dreamtime, and will preoccupy me for awhile, I think. Jill Abramson’s firing brings wage equality and feminism back to the front page. Comedy King Louis C.K. has put education back on the kitchen table, showing the warts of the one-size-fits-all Common Core educational system that we can track back to the likes of Arne Duncan, Bill Gates and … tellingly … the Bush brothers, Jeb and Neil. And our fire-breathing, disruptive universities of 50 years past have turned into homes for academic stagnation, promoting corporate servitude. I suspect the list will keep me busy for days.