Dear Friend and Reader:
Just a few brief comments on the government shutdown. Like most people, you may be having difficulty tracking this issue; to me it looks like a government shutdown for its own sake. But it’s one that makes most building takeovers that I’ve covered seem mature, since most students know enough to focus on a few demands that can actually be met by the administration.
One of the ways you know that this situation is drama for its own sake is that the first demand (defund the Affordable Care Act) was not going to happen. By the time the government was shut down and the creeps behind this protest figured that out, the demands started changing — the current one being the promise of discussion of slashing social programs.
All the Republican talk of “jobs, jobs, jobs” has led to their blocking hundreds of thousands of people from being able to go to work. All the talk about supporting small business has been belied by the thousands of businesses hurt or destroyed by the shutdown.
A few things are bugging me. One is that the original pretense, how bad the ACA allegedly is, is not an issue that warrants this kind of radical intervention. Not, particularly, since it’s the affirmed law of the land. Our extremely conservative Supreme Court already approved it, after Congress voted it into law and the president signed it into law. If a small minority wants to take matters into their own hands, that is one definition of tyranny — and thankfully it’s become obvious.
If a minority of politicians are declaring the ACA unconstitutional, and saying that it’s illegitimate despite being approved by every branch of government, they must be citizens of some other country. The reward they have got, if you believe a new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll published in the past 24 hours, is that the Republicans and the Tea Party have never been less favorably thought of, while popularity for Obamacare has never been higher.
That some politicians would take advantage of the disgraceful health-care situation, using it against people, even going so far as to try to convince women not to go for routine gyn exams, is authentically disgusting. Health insurance, at minimum, provides some thin safety net between a routine disease and going bankrupt. In no other advanced country besides the U.S. do people flirt with this fate — and it’s especially propbematic given the unemployment situation, when people have lost their jobs and their health coverage.
Another problem is the involvement of Dominionist religion in this crisis, and that seems to be significant. Personally I don’t have a good feeling about people who preach the end of the world, and they seem to be the ones calling the shots.
The Dominionist position is old hat: you accept our point of view or we will burn you at the stake. I don’t think these people have any proper role in government.
We also have what I will call a spiritual problem involving John Boehner, the speaker of the House of Representatives. He is not who he pretends to be, a dude from Ohio; to see what kind of entity he is one’s third eye needs to be open, and I don’t consider it safe to conduct this kind of inquiry because of the energies involved. In human form, he controls the flow of bills to the floor of the House of Representatives. This one entity has the power to choke off whether progress is possible; he can personally keep this going or let it resolve, and we have no reason whatsoever to trust him.
That this is essentially a spiritual problem means that we might find a spiritual solution. I think that Boehner must be a focal point. The meek integrity that is binding him to the physical plane appears to be weakening, but he still has some thrash and resistance left in him. Holding him in white light will help neutralize him, though he won’t like it as much as the synthetic UV rays his leathery, orange skin seems to devour in his tanning bed.
It’s true that our debt crisis is what has made us subject to this kind of blackmail and other forms of external control. It’s essential to see this for what it is — the debt itself is an intentional construction. At the end of the Clinton administration the U.S. was well on the way to paying down its debt and had eliminated the yearly federal budget deficit. Economically and in many other ways, things were going pretty well at the time.
Then came a stolen election; a false flag terrorist event; a series of tax cuts for the wealthiest few Americans; eliminating taxes on many of the largest corporations; a huge, unbudgeted, federally funded drug giveaway; a bloated national security state taking over nearly everything and occupying a billion square feet of office space; several very long, ongoing wars; and then a second 9/11, in financial form, allegedly requiring trillions in bank bailouts.
All these things have at least one common factor — they start under Cheney-Bush, and they got us into this position. And that is where we find ourselves — compromised, and in a sense, possessed.
The astrology lurking around is not all that encouraging. The federal shutdown has now been conflated with the debt ceiling issue. The debt ceiling is about the government’s ability to borrow money to make interest payments on funds that it’s already borrowed, and to meet some current obligations as well. Both could be resolved by simple, one-sentence acts of Congress.
Non-political federal budget officials say we hit the debt ceiling on Oct. 17, which is on the eve of a lunar eclipse, and just four days before Mercury stations retrograde. Depending on how you look at it, that combination of factors could represent a breakthrough or it could be a further descent into mire and chaos. We don’t know what would happen if the U.S. defaults on its obligations, since it has never done so.
As I’ve mentioned, the main U.S. chart, the Sibly chart, is under a lot of stress. That comes to a peak next April, when the grand cross including Mars retrograde in Libra, Jupiter in Cancer, Uranus in Aries and Pluto in Capricorn, is focused to the degree around the U.S. Sun.
Many have wondered how we are going to wrest our country back from these bizarre interests that have nothing to do with the general welfare of the American people, or even the business community. It is a pressing question; we will be asking it for a while.
There is a simple political analysis here: many Republicans who would vote to get us out of this mess are going along with the mob because they don’t want to be “primaried” — that is, knocked out of their Republican slot by a candidate further to the right. So they put their own self-interest above the collective interest. Their federal job is more important than everyone else’s federal job — or the stability of the world economy.
Here we see the problem with self-interest and why, once again, this is really a spiritual crisis rather than a political one.
Lovingly,
As mentioned, I’ve taken a week off from the horoscope. However, I’ve tried something I’ve considered for a long time — allowing the Oracle to choose interpretations from the vast database of prior horoscopes. The Oracle is a bit spooky responding to individual queries to individual questions; it works beautifully as a daily feature. So I thought I would try sign-by-sign. I made the queries myself on Thursday, asking for a weekly horoscope for each of the signs, one at a time. The returns are absolutely random, with about a 1 in 10,000 chance of any one entry being chosen. Some themes recur — the idea of ‘ethics’ shows up twice. There seems to be an emphasis on professional activities. I am curious how they work for you. Please let me know. — Eric Francis
The Oracle Horoscope, standing in for Weekly Horoscope 970, Oct. 11, 2013
Aries (March 20-April 19) — Reassurance has not come in quite the form you expected, but it has arrived and it’s here to stay. There is more news to come, in both personal and professional relationships, and the sometimes strange territory where they meet. It’s true that mixing personal involvement with work, or daring to allow a relationship to take on a purpose, are considered risky by many people, and often threaten to have sloppy results if things go wrong. The actual problem is people having no real sense of what others are thinking and feeling, and not bothering to ask. I suggest you take this opportunity to reveal yourself, and to make any long-overdue inquiries that could give you an excellent change of perspective.
Taurus (April 19-May 20) — Not everyone has to agree with you. Not even you have to agree with yourself all the time, but, sooner or later, you eventually work it out. What you may soon discover is just how prophetic you’ve been at predicting your own life, despite the mental and emotional challenges you’ve been through lately. On one level it may seem like you’ve been getting accurate images of your future. Looked at another way, you’ve been taking your visions and, by some mysterious process you may not understand, you’ve been making those images real. There’s a word for it: imagination.
Gemini (May 20-June 21) — About six weeks ago, around the Virgo New Moon, you learned something about yourself. I reckon you had a revelation that gave you permission to take a certain risk, and your thoughts quite likely pointed to why that risk was the logical step to take. I want to remind you of that thought process, and let you know that you stand in the spot where the choice or action is possible. This may involve a relationship, one which you are ready to approach directly and with a level head. And it, too, is ready to approach you. Remember, though, that the true meeting is within yourself.
Cancer (June 21-July 22) — I can see you writing in your notebook, or on a napkin, “Okay, this time I’m actually going nuts.” Well, okay, I hear you, but it’s not quite for sure. What’s happening is that a lot of internal energy is getting liberated (associated with Mars) at the same time a marvelously complicated situation is unfolding in your mental world. Conditions are such that the increased energy is amplifying your perception of what is happening, though the situation does warrant a close look. It is dangerous to be too invested in your own personal value system; that’s one message of this crisis. There are a lot of ways to accomplish the same goal, or meet the same need. One message of your current chart is to strive for diversity in your thinking, including what you learn from other cultures and people from other countries.
Leo (July 22-Aug. 23) — If the astonishing run of luck, activity and inspiration the past few weeks has eased off, all that’s happened has indeed left you a different person. I would propose you figured out the importance of being grounded and building your dreams on solid foundations. Yet in truth, nothing has left the neighborhood or passed you by. Its form has changed, and in many respects, it’s become more accessible to thought (as inspiration sometimes is not). Also, you are starting to ask the important financial questions about the idea, and they do indeed have answers. Remember, if something doesn’t have a solution, it may not be a problem.
Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22) — Close partners seem to be of two minds — or perhaps two bodies, in that people who usually vehemently disagree seem to be singing from the same book of hymns. It may be that the passing of yesterday’s lunar eclipse has released the tension in the air like a good thunderstorm, or that people went so far into polarized directions on their opinions that they have finally started to meet on the other side of the house. Everything that seemed so incredibly important yesterday can now fade happily into memory. So don’t focus so much on the details that you miss the surreal nature of the moment, when the cat lays down with the mouse. Resist fits of jealousy as well — these people all love you.
Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23) — Not all problems can be solved by money. Money can be very useful, but it is utterly useless without ideas to back it up. Isn’t it amazing that virtually any crisis, difficulty, struggle or puzzle can be solved with a single thought? In case you are trying to work something like this out (and people may be depending upon you to do so) here is the formula that will work for any difficulty this month. Consider your problem, any problem, and imagine that a mom and a small child (about five years old) are working on solving it together. There are some suggestions the mom has, and others that the child has, but between them they see the whole situation, and poof, the solution appears.
Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22) — People treat you fairly but that’s partly because you stand up for yourself. It’s also because you’ve long ago figured out that this elusive little thing in the world called ‘ethics’ is alive and well in your mind. You live in a world where there is actual right and wrong. This week may present you with an ethical dilemma that comes in various shades of gray. At the time it may not seem like there is a correct answer or solution. You may in the end have to make a decision that’s based on your intuition or do what feels right. You can trust yourself. With you the chances are that if it feels right it is.
Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 22) — When seeking money, remember your ethics. When working for advancement in your career, remember your ethics. I say these things knowing we live in a world where the concept of ethics seems outmoded and even useless. I assure you, it’s not. Whatever the current trend in thought, no matter how popular, useful and effective it may be to forego questions of authenticity, or matters of right and wrong, there is such a thing as karma. We are all subject to it. I don’t think you’re an unethical person; rather, I see a spell of astrology where the ends might seem to justify the means. They do not. How you go about something, from the specific methods you use, to the motivation that drives you, is every bit as meaningful as what you accomplish. Indeed, the two are so closely related as to be the same thing: if you notice you’re being driven by some form of ambition, you might want to check your goal and make sure that it’s really something you want. For an extended phase of your life, you are being granted a mantle of power. You have an aura of authority, and that connotes responsibility. I suggest you live like your telephone is tapped and like you’re being followed around by a television crew. Live as if you are actually accountable for your actions. You are. You are also accountable for the constructive, creative and sincere deeds to your credit, but on that particular theme, I suggest you let others do the talking.
Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20) — A variety of unusual factors are conspiring to push your professional life ahead by light years. These are recent developments and they’re impossible to miss. You may at times feel like you’re losing control of the process, but that’s part of what happens at times of big change, and part of how you know you’re actually there. Within the experience, you have a lot of room to make several very specific decisions about what you want to be doing and how. You may need to negotiate with certain people a little bit — but you’re in the perfect position to do so.
Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19) — Things seem to be going well. But how well is well enough? Usually we have no idea how good life is until we express our wealth, personal gifts or success in some tangible way. Misers are miserable simply because they withhold themselves. The prevailing logic of the world says that to give something is to give it up. I would propose that in this case, to give what you have is to keep it. And it gets better yet. The accompanying discovery is that you have far more than you ever imagined. Take this on the most private level (rather than business or social) and you’re more likely to see what I mean. Your instincts are telling you that you need to express an emotional reality of some kind, and express it from the deepest and most generous place within you. It may feel like a tremendous personal risk. More good will come of it than you think.
Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20) — Apply creativity to everything you touch, thought you think and person you know. That’s how to access the miracle no matter what situation you find yourself in. Living is an art; loving is a science; emotion is a craft in which we sail the waters of feeling and passion. You can afford to take absolutely any chance you want as long as you keep your mind in the most alert state available. This may seem like a great responsibility but the alternative is far too dull to seriously consider.