Writing this Thanksgiving Sunday, a month after my last blog, I am noticing all the mounting evidence for this last gasp of Neptune's passage through the end of Aquarius, that we discussed (see previous blog). "Occupy Wall Street" has become "Occupy Everywhere". The Nation Magazine and the New School held a forum with that title November 10th. The "Occupy Everywhere" panel was about the next steps and the continuing possibilities in the movement against corporate power. When people criticize the movement and do not see it as successful, as the occupiers made no demands, they are missing the point.
The movement is surprisingly successful only to those not following the astrological trends; spreading all over the country in small cities like Fayetteville, Arkansas, and Nevada City, California where 400 people showed up at each place at a moments notice to the small cities in Greece where local occupy movements can address specific needs. The movement doesn't need one location, it is spreading all over the world like fire because it is part of the zeitgeist and has struck a chord that is resonating everywhere.
There is an Occupy Harlem movement for helping people not have their heat shut off, an Occupy Bronx movement to help people not get evicted from their homes; there is talk of Occupy the Food Movement to bring attention to the corporate takeover of our food supply and Occupy Roof movement to highlight the importance of solar energy. It can happen anywhere at any time. As was said at this forum, "they have permission to be their own leader". This is the essence of Aquarian ideals -everybody and nobody is in charge. It is the "people" who rule in direct democracy just as these occupiers are demonstrating.
Any movement's goal is to shift public will by changing the conversation. The Occupy Wall Street movement has done just that by changing the media focus. A month ago the news reports were all about raising the debt ceiling for the 103rd time. Today on the front page of the NYTimes was a investgative piece on Ronald Lauder, heir to his mother's cosmetic company, worth $3.1 billion. Lauder hides all his assets in tax shelters, foundations and tax avoiding schemes that are only available to the very rich. "There's real truth that the taxcode for the 1% is different from the tax code for the 99%", says Victor Fleischer, a law professor at the U of Colorado. Now instead of the debt ceiling distraction conversation, you hear stories about economic equality, the conversation has changed; inequality the 1% vs 99% -the real issue has taken center stage.
Why now? The Moon in a country's natal chart describes the public and its mood. In the July 4th 1776 chart for the USA the Moon was at 27 degrees of Aquarius. We are a people that have a real sense of the brotherhood of man, as the founding fathers said and promised,"where all men are created equal". The planet Neptune has been sitting on top of our Moon since April 2009, symbolically bringing clouds and fog over us all and obscurring our core issues. Apathy, despair and a sense of loss (real too) are associated with Neptune's passage. The Moon symbolizes your home, so we have been suffering from a loss of our homes and our Aquarian values.
When Neptune began its forward motion as we view it in relation to the Sun in the beginning of November, it began to leave the Moon and so just as the fog lifts to reveal what was there all the time but we could not see it, so in Neptune's moving on from our Moon, the American people come out of the doldrums, and our core need for economic and social equality comes to the forefront. How often is it said that you never really know how much you value something until you lose it.
One can also attribute the White House's decision made November 10th to delay the determination on whether to build the Keystone XL pipeline to the Occupy Movement. Although this civil disobedience action started demonstrating in Washington in August, it spread as rapidly as the Occupy movement. The TransCanada company has already been working on permits for two years and it was wildly regarded as a shoe-in for the next ok. But in a surprise move, President Obama delayed it. During his cross country jobs tour in September and October, he was confronted by hundreds of signs reminding him of his campaign pledge to "be the generation that finally frees America from the tyranny of oil". The people began waking up to the collossal environmental disaster that pipeline would be. It is not only a question of economic inequality but the collusion between the government and corporate interests that the current system fosters to the detriment of the common people.
Slowly but surely we are seeing a cultural shift happening, here and all over the world. Who would have thought that Mayor Bloomberg would let the occupiers stay there for 2 months? How many heads of state have been replaced this year? I mowed the lawn this Thanksgiving weekend and took some pink roses from the garden to sit beside the Indian corn on the table. Movements, uprisings, demonstrations, revolutions and occupys can happen very quickly thanks to the technology. Masses of people come together. This is what Aquarius is all about-social and economic parity. Ideas are becoming the new commodity. You do not need demands when you have a movement with an idea whose time has come.
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Neptune and what it Brings
As well as having the interesting New Moon in Scorpio last Wednesday, when we get to begin to think about starting something new in the area of life where we feel the most passionate, we have the planet Neptune making an change in orientation as it orbits the Sun. This occurs next Wednesday the 9th of November. Neptune is at the very end of the sign Aquarius (tropical zodiac) for the last time. The planet will move into Pisces to stay for 14 years or so in February 2012.
As a planet leaves a sign all the evidence of the trends that the planet in a particular sign has brought comes to a head. Neptune brings (and I am not saying causes) an atmosphere of boundlessness. When one is having a Neptune experience one feels like meditating, composing a song, escaping to the movies, getting loaded, merging with another, having an out of body experience, designing a piece of art, day dreaming about the future or longing for a more perfect world.
The sign Aquarius has to do with technology, brotherhood, social and political ideals, humanitarian impulses, freedom, independence, progressive causes, gender and economic equality, groups of people, revolutions. As Neptune passes through the end of Aquarius we can combine the planet with the sign and see evidence in the media of this passage of Neptune in Aquarius since 1998. (I can remember in my own life that year, I joined a network marketing company and went to conventions where the hopes and wishes of thousands of people to realize their financial goals -the cars, trips and a no-work lifestyle with life long financial security were promised. Neptune=dreams and network marketing group=Aquarius-by the way it never happened).
This past week though, I have seen some pieces in the paper that epitomize for me this passage. One is Tom Friedman's op-ed piece in the NYTimes Oct 22nd which speaks to the two revolutions occurring; one on Wall Street with the social revolution that has mushroomed all over the world and the other in Silicon Valley which is having a technological revolution which will change how companies and societies operate.
All the social media Facebook, Twitter, Linked-In, Groupon, Zynga are converging because of cheap wireless technology, web enabled smart phones and "the cloud". "The cloud" (Neptune) are these enormous server farms that hold and constantly update thousands of software applications speeding up innovation, product cycles and competition. Think of Kickstarter where one person with a good idea and no money can post it on the web and have $1 million dollars from 13,500 people in 50 countries within a month. (Aquarius)
Another example was in the Sunday October 23rd, NYT Styles section announcing that the lost art of group portraits is having a renaissance. These banquet photos where one hundred or more guests pose at the same time had gone out of style in the late 1960's. "These photos (camera technology-Aquarius) create a classic sense of connectedness" (Neptune), says photographer Terry Gruber.
I also read in the October 10th New Yorker about "bitcoin". This is a currency that you buy online if you have a fast computer and can be used like money-the rate of exchange can vary but it does not depend on the banks. (The wave of the future IMO). The article was presented in part to explain the process but also try to figure out who put the website up. That person or persons has remained anonymous for obvious reasons.
Of course we can consider that the "Occupy Wall Street" movement is also part of the Neptune in Aquarius swan song. A dozen people sat in a circle in Bowling Green last August 2nd at the very first meeting of what came to be know as "Occupy Wall Street" This self appointed "process committee" had a dream to create a New York General Assembly which would operate like the committee, by consensus (Neptune in Aquarius).
This model for a truly democratic society has never really been tried (except perhaps in the native American and Quaker traditions, the Civil Rights Movement and the SDS of the 60's)), but this group of Aquarian dreamers are still operating this way 3 months later. There is no voting, decisions are reached by general assent. "The process toward creative synthesis is really the essence of the thing" says David Graeber in Issue 3 of " The Occupied Wall Street Journal".
Truly this is the very essence of Neptune in Aquarius where the impossible, direct democracy and a society based on human solidarity is being demonstrated. We are taught that this country was founded with these principles, and now we see a movement taking place to put those principles into action.
As a planet leaves a sign all the evidence of the trends that the planet in a particular sign has brought comes to a head. Neptune brings (and I am not saying causes) an atmosphere of boundlessness. When one is having a Neptune experience one feels like meditating, composing a song, escaping to the movies, getting loaded, merging with another, having an out of body experience, designing a piece of art, day dreaming about the future or longing for a more perfect world.
The sign Aquarius has to do with technology, brotherhood, social and political ideals, humanitarian impulses, freedom, independence, progressive causes, gender and economic equality, groups of people, revolutions. As Neptune passes through the end of Aquarius we can combine the planet with the sign and see evidence in the media of this passage of Neptune in Aquarius since 1998. (I can remember in my own life that year, I joined a network marketing company and went to conventions where the hopes and wishes of thousands of people to realize their financial goals -the cars, trips and a no-work lifestyle with life long financial security were promised. Neptune=dreams and network marketing group=Aquarius-by the way it never happened).
This past week though, I have seen some pieces in the paper that epitomize for me this passage. One is Tom Friedman's op-ed piece in the NYTimes Oct 22nd which speaks to the two revolutions occurring; one on Wall Street with the social revolution that has mushroomed all over the world and the other in Silicon Valley which is having a technological revolution which will change how companies and societies operate.
All the social media Facebook, Twitter, Linked-In, Groupon, Zynga are converging because of cheap wireless technology, web enabled smart phones and "the cloud". "The cloud" (Neptune) are these enormous server farms that hold and constantly update thousands of software applications speeding up innovation, product cycles and competition. Think of Kickstarter where one person with a good idea and no money can post it on the web and have $1 million dollars from 13,500 people in 50 countries within a month. (Aquarius)
Another example was in the Sunday October 23rd, NYT Styles section announcing that the lost art of group portraits is having a renaissance. These banquet photos where one hundred or more guests pose at the same time had gone out of style in the late 1960's. "These photos (camera technology-Aquarius) create a classic sense of connectedness" (Neptune), says photographer Terry Gruber.
I also read in the October 10th New Yorker about "bitcoin". This is a currency that you buy online if you have a fast computer and can be used like money-the rate of exchange can vary but it does not depend on the banks. (The wave of the future IMO). The article was presented in part to explain the process but also try to figure out who put the website up. That person or persons has remained anonymous for obvious reasons.
Of course we can consider that the "Occupy Wall Street" movement is also part of the Neptune in Aquarius swan song. A dozen people sat in a circle in Bowling Green last August 2nd at the very first meeting of what came to be know as "Occupy Wall Street" This self appointed "process committee" had a dream to create a New York General Assembly which would operate like the committee, by consensus (Neptune in Aquarius).
This model for a truly democratic society has never really been tried (except perhaps in the native American and Quaker traditions, the Civil Rights Movement and the SDS of the 60's)), but this group of Aquarian dreamers are still operating this way 3 months later. There is no voting, decisions are reached by general assent. "The process toward creative synthesis is really the essence of the thing" says David Graeber in Issue 3 of " The Occupied Wall Street Journal".
Truly this is the very essence of Neptune in Aquarius where the impossible, direct democracy and a society based on human solidarity is being demonstrated. We are taught that this country was founded with these principles, and now we see a movement taking place to put those principles into action.
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