Today’s Audio on New Moon and Egypt: http://planetwaves.fm/current_sky/February_2_Eric_Francis_Audio.mp3
Dear Friend and Reader:
Wednesday evening (Thursday in European and Australian time zones) the Aquarius New Moon lights up the planet waves. This is a vibrant event, concentrating seven planets and points in Aquarius, happening right as the Sun passes over the midpoint of that sign. This lunation is taking place right in the midst of the Egyptian situation, which we are studying carefully. The situation is likely to move fast right around the New Moon and we will have additional coverage on our main blog and in Friday’s edition.
It’s always a bit unsettling when the most volatile region in the world verges on going totally out of control. We’ve seen a revolution in Tunisia, we’re about to see one in Egypt, and the natives are restless in Jordan. Regardless of whose theory you accept as to how this all started, that says little about how the cookie will crumble.
This is an unusually strong New Moon for a number of reasons — beginning with that concentration of planets in Aquarius. At the center of the cluster is Mars, closely conjoined by Ceres, the Moon and the Sun. Aquarius is about ideas and Mars is about passion and energy — this puts the two together. Don’t be surprised if you find yourself feeling rather strongly about an idea you have. Aquarius-styled, that’s going to be an idea about standing out as an individual, something that most of us could do with a little more of. Conformity is boring, and we know that at the end of the discussion one must be who one really is — there is no point in faking it.
The other attribute of this New Moon worth paying attention to is that it’s close to the cross-quarter day Imbolc. I mention the Aries Point a lot; that term, pertaining to the first degree of the tropical zodiac, also translates to eight different points along the zodiac: the quarter days (equinoxes and solstices) and cross-quarter days when the Sun is at the midpoint of a season, right in the middle of a fixed sign. Events close to these cross-quarter points can be every bit as influential as eclipses, reverberating with that ‘personal is political’ energy of seemingly larger events.
Chiron, now slow and powerful, is on the brink of changing signs into Pisces, bringing in one of the basic energies of the 2012 era. This is the last New Moon before Chiron ingresses Pisces on Feb. 8 (where it will remain continually until it first dips into Aries on April 17, 2018). For now, Chiron is lingering in the very end of Aquarius, one of the most interesting degrees of the zodiac. Though a little long to quote here, the degree (randomly channeled by a psychic nearly a century ago) is about individual initiation into group consciousness — a key theme of Aquarius.
One theme of Aquarius is the tension between individuals and groups. Because few people actually express their individuality, they cannot rightly be part of a group; Alice Bailey distinguishes mass consciousness to describe what happens when not so individuated people think like bees buzzing in a hive rather than mature individuals who come together for a conscious purpose.
For its part, Mars in Aquarius is about asserting individuality from cliques and social scenes; it’s about not being afraid to be unpopular. Part of the current madness of the world is our obsession with being approved of, and the simultaneous obsession with seeming like you’re not as different as you really are. This lunation is an invitation to try something different, and depending on where it reaches your chart, your circumstances will provide just such an opportunity.
The combination of Ceres, Mars and Aquarius had me a little nervous about food when I presented this chart initially (check audio of Jan. 26 for details), and I called the theme of genetic modification of crops. It turns out that we’re at a crucial turning point, where the biggest players in the organic food industry (including Whole Foods and Stonyfield Farm) are ready to sell out to the USDA and Monsanto, which want to cover the world with its Roundup-ready genetically engineered alfalfa.
What is at stake is whether engineered pollen contaminates nearby organic farms — in essence, the integrity of the organic food industry. Alfalfa is a crop that can often be grown without any herbicides at all — so why do we need a Roundup-ready version? To sell more Roundup? Now that Monsanto is officially a person (thanks to Citizens United v. FEC), perhaps it should be ‘personally’ criminally indicted for murder each time someone dies of cancer from its pesticides.
Most of us treat GMO foods like they were something normal, without realizing what an enormous threshold this is in the history of the world. It’s going to look a lot bigger than it does now with a little hindsight, particularly when we figure out where this is all heading. Again and again, we fall for the reassurances of government and industry, or act like there’s nothing we could possibly do to influence the flow of events.
To those who may believe this: have you ever hoped you were wrong?
It would be easier if we didn’t give away our power so easily or so willingly. There is a revolution going on in Egypt where an entrenched military dictator is currently being thrown out by a populist movement; he may be gone by the time that Aquarius New Moon passes overhead. Egypt has responded by cutting off Internet and cellular phone service to the entire country, another first in the history of the Internet. If I were going to choose a sign to represent the ‘Net it would be Aquarius, in part because of its morph of populism and elitism, and of individual vs. collective reality; and in part because it is a nice picture of an information infrastructure. The New Moon in that sign presents an interesting picture of that situation, and so does Chiron there right on the edge of Aquarius as if on the brink of a new moment.
There may have been an excuse for ignorance 10 years ago, but now with most families essentially having a global library coming into their homes or into their pockets, today there is no excuse for ignorance about genetically modified foods or any other issue.
Yet the one thing you cannot find on the Internet is the willingness to learn. That’s the ingredient you have to supply on your own. In our times, curiosity is an act of defiance, akin to marching at a civil rights rally in the 1950s.
Yours & truly
Farmers’ rights:
http://www.boingboing.net/2011/02/03/the-amish-raw-milk-b.html
“Two people have died in the last 10 years from drinking unpasteurized milk. Twelve states have banned it. (By comparison, between two and twelve children die every year playing high school football. When will high school football be banned?)”
Gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “Got milk?” The longer article from The Daily, here: http://www.thedaily.com/page/2011/01/27/020311-news-amish-milk-2/ quotes one of these guys as saying “Your choice of what you get to eat is a right,” said Mauer. “It’s not a privilege.”
Another is called “the Rosa Parks of the farmers’ rights movement.”
“Though shy about the comparison, Nolt doesn’t disclaim the nickname. “What were we to do? Agree to their falsehood? Or just stand upon the truth? And we chose truth.” “
tatonnement –
I loved watching FOOD, INC. Depressing and empowering at the same time. I would recommend it to anyone.
sparky —
VERY interesting that you should mention large-scale banana crops being damaged in queensland as a result of the cyclone in the context of the GMO conversation here.
i recently read an article in organic gardening mag about the possibility of some GM tests done with bananas possibly being ok and even useful since they are such an important crop many places but they *do not propagate via pollenation* — therefore, there is no risk of cross-contamination with non-GMO bananas.
i need to find the article; it seems the GM being proposed was with other plant genes, not, say, mice brain genes or pesticides. but i need to check.
it was both an interesting check on the “all GM is evil” mantra as well as a check on the “organic elite” — the magazine is published by maria rodale, and we know one always has to follow the money trail when things get big enough.
but i have to say, the arguments by these particular scientists about not throwing the baby out with the bathwater gave me something to think about.
Queensland, Australia was hit with a catagory 5 cyclone last night. Queensland grows 98% of the countries banana produce. 100% of these crops have been wiped out.
ps occasionally use bleach (rarely) too if lemon juice isn’t strong enough.
The thing to watch out for and say no to! is control of seeds so that for example you have to buy your veg seeds each year instead of keeping your own, because the seeds you buy only produce fruit but not reproducing seed. if you control that you control the people since food is controlled at source. I read too of a canadian I think who had all his crop uncertified because pollen had blown onto his fields and then he was successfully sued for ‘stealing’ pollen – I should check this actually because it is some years ago I read it and perhaps I haven’t remembered the detail.
With research and publications it is always a good idea to ask who is paying/benefitting from the info put and what spin might be on it
I think it might be an idea to grow our own food as much as possible. I don’t know if Planetwaves could include this but is there room here or somewhere for some pages about natural health and gaining and keeping health and healthful things – I have a lovely homeopathic recipe for biodynamisng compost without the steiner cruelty to animals, I make floor polish from time to time with beeswax and turpentine, I’m not the best at it but we make our own paint from lime water fromage blanc egs and earth pigments. For the last 10 years I’ve cleaned only with washing up liquid, vinegar and coffee grounds (plead poverty in the beginning). our neighbours wash up with cinders. Yesterday I got Clean and from what I’ve read this is a lovely book from Mr Junger helping the body to help itself. I’m happy to write out these recipes.
Gotta run but sunshine to all
pam
Ya know, cmassy, I think you are absolutely correct and that Monsanto et al are watching for such opportunities quite closely and I would not be one bit surprised to learn they are even manufacturing or nourishing such opportunities. And I know that that “reasoning”, about oh feed the hungry masses, is repeated often and loudly to those who are not curious enough to uncover some of the back stories going on. Some of the people who actually work in Monsanto labs buy into this…. I connected with one such once, a bright bright woman with a truly good heart who believed what she was doing was good work in the world, working on that GM crap. It was quite sad.
For some bloody reason, in terms of the Egypt situation, I just don’t believe they are going to get away with this one.
How synchronous, someone just sent me the link to a page about Food Inc: http://www.takepart.com/foodinc
which I was not aware of til now….
Another reason for the uprising in Egypt, aside from the affordability of food, was the use of torture as a tool of government. People didn’t like that anymore than they liked being hungry, I reckon.
Great audio, Eric, thank you so much for it.
i guess they could be lying. http://www.stonyfield.com/blog/
Watch the movie Food, Inc….you will be horrified at the way Monsanto bullies small farmers in pursuit of complete contr.
Well, you would need the data to see if these frankenseeds grow better or worse than the real thing.
As far as Monsanto is concerned, it’s all about profits. I would love to know if Monsanto execs would even dare eat their own products.
As for BASF and Bayer, they are the offspring of I.G. Farben, the Nazi chemical company that produced Zyklon B. They would probably be embarrassed to feed the hungry.
I’ve always thought that the “argument” for GMO food (of which I personally find truly heinous) is this:
If we want to feed the poor, then this is the answer to that question. Feeding the masses is a noble thing to do and it keeps the peasants at bay. Here’s the way to do it!
I think of that as being something of a “strawman” argument which has the potential to get the human race to a sort of “Soylent Green” moment. Laugh all you want but as far as I’m concerned, Monsanto and ADM could position themselves VERY strongly here as “the answer” to a problem that’s part of the fundamental reason why Egypt and Tunisia became inflamed in the first palce. Lack of food. Or, rather, I should say, lack of affordable food.