Note, the discussion thread on the presumptive Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin is continuing below. Here is the link. Last year I published an article on the chart for the election of 2008, looking in detail at its astrology. Here is that article, called My America.
TONIGHT is the burning of the Man ritual at Burning Man in Black Rock City, Nevada. In many ways this festival has set the tone of counterculture for the past two decades, it being the central meeting point for many of the most creative people in the world. Burning Man is the perfect blend of Bohema and Babylon, and the festival’s reputation for edgy, saucy fun veils its most potent contribution to culture, art.
 |
|
The Man got checked out by one of the Man crew just before the first people climbed aboard.
|
Black Rock City emerges out of the landscape of an ancient plateau left by the extinct Lake Lahontan. It is a living work of creative community. For its weeklong existence each year, it becomes the third largest city in Nevada.
At this writing, final preparations are being made for the burning of the Man ritual and it won’t be long before a sizable crowd has gathered. What has for a week been a Bedouhin tribal outpost with deisel generators, an airport and satellite hookups, is about to transform into a Fire Bowl celebration. This happens when the central icon of the festival, a wood statue of a man about 60 feet high, is torched.
As dusk falls over the desert, fire spinners dance and provide an opening act. These are often young men and women clad in just shorts or bikini bottoms, the movement of whose hips accents the spinning balls of flame. As night subsumes the landscape they turn to silhouettes. Black Rock Rangers patrol the crowd.
As the Man is lit the crowd transforms into that of a Western football game, alive and cheering in the energy of transformation, creation and libido, converging on the embers as the huge statue finally collapses.
Tonight’s fire ritual is just hours past the Virgo New Moon and as such is a de facto honoring of the Goddess in her many forms and ways of expression. Tonight, her name is Vesta.
