Imagine a giant asteroid on a direct collision course with Earth. That is the equivalent of what we face now [with climate change], yet we dither.
-James Hansen
Greetings Space Cadets!
Welcome to the season of the Witch, October! This month will culminate with the cross-quarter Sabbat of Samhain on the Witches calendar. It marks a time when the dark half of the year moves into its transition to the December solstice the culminating point of the dark half of the year in the Northern Hemisphere and a one complete cycle of Earth’s axial tilt.
Prometheus Engine is the name of a thought technology that will assist us in passing through our Global Initiation. It is the convergence of scientific evidence, ecological awareness, technological interfaces, and place based knowledge that acknowledges the planet as a self-regulating system, in a closed loop, with finite limitations and capacities that must accounted for in technological design, societal planning, and economic agreements.
Currently Humanity faces a number of converging crises which threaten to send us over the precipice of possible species extinction if not the collapse of complex culture. There is a quality of a double edged sword in that collapse is not inevitable even in fragile environments provided you create arrangements that respect the parameters of these environments, what we do matters, technology will not save the day but it will make it easier to handle the situation. It is a mode of thinking that will certainly make us all very uncomfortable and will allow us to live on Earth on the terms as sent to us by reality and the Universe. It will mean we have to kick many of our sacred cows and call into question a great deal of the many assumptions we hold collectively.
The growth paradigm is on the chopping block and perhaps that is a good thing as it has made us a cancer on the planet that threatens to destroy critical life support systems similar to how a tumor will siphon a bodies energy substrates and metastasizes to all major systems before causing the entire system to collapse, in a word the host dies. Climate Change can be a potent metaphor for speaking to a planetary immune response, a kind of Gaian fever that is designed to shake off whatever is threatening to overload its life systems, this is of course is purely a metaphor and not literal. In fact what is happening is that we are messing with the planet’s operating system, physics, chemistry and biology and hoping that it won’t become problematic for us, a foolish thing indeed. It is from this understanding that emerges a new way of thinking.
Humanity must collectively become allergic to bullshit, and willing to induce its own species wide immune response in particular it must dethrone the elites that threaten to maintain a status quo that will mean certain doom. We are slowly awakening to the reality on the ground and it is so profound it can be paralyzing even so we cannot continue to dither in the face of extreme crisis because we do not like the choices and sacrifices that will have to be made in to create a course correction. The system will not change, governments will only change once they no longer serve an oligarchy and the commons demands that they answer to us and not the financial aristocracy. With the progressive dumbing down of the public we have our work cut out for us, as it means that the majority of us must awaken and be willing to contend with the terms of reality, it means the culture of illusion we have enamored ourselves with will need to be scrapped. This is exactly what the Prometheus Engine is it is the part of us that is willing to awaken, to leave behind ancient enmity, superstition, and rhetoric in favor for an unflinching confrontation with the terms of our existence. We must challenge our economics, religions, societies, governments, and cherished beliefs. The Promethean fire that burns in us all demands it and knows that it can steal the technology of the Gods to solve salient problems. Let’s take a journey now through the 13 ciphers!
In the absence of Justice what is sovereignty but organized robbery. –St. Augustine
The world and its communities are facing hard questions of sovereignty under the weight of undemocratic globalization that has been spearheaded by corporate elites creating trade partnerships designed to serve their ends at the expense of everyone else. It is a situation that cannot be allowed to stand. It has led to a trend called delocalization in which local culture and economics is replaced by multinational brands which replace local outfits, it is also spawning a gentrification crisis in many cities driving up the cost of housing and other essential commodities. It is also the main force eroding local sovereignty and creating a political crisis that governments beholden to elites are ill-equipped to do much about, as they no longer serve the public interest. It has gotten so severe that it is reversing the benefits that come with a democratically chosen globalization. The problem is not globalism itself but instead the way in which the economics of it have been hijacked by neoliberal philosophy (the idea of market derived justice, market liberalization with no checks in place, and corporations making policy decisions), even the IMF has declared that it does not work, especially austerity policies the lynch pin of neo-liberalism. It gives corporations sovereignty while depriving it from the public.
Delocalization does not have to happen under globalization there is a way to have the benefits that come with a global culture and economy without eroding local management. It will mean that trade agreements will have to be out to some democratic means instead of being decided in closed to the public meetings. It will mean corporations will have to be regulated and have some limits placed on them, and financial elites will no longer be insulated from the consequences of their decisions. It can be achieved in two ways first decoupling housing, healthcare and other essential commodities from market fluctuations and putting them back under public control, not as valued assets on the open market. The second way is democratically elect trade agreements by putting them up to public debate and scrutiny, in essence giving local sovereignty back to the public, and creating a globalism that works to the benefit of all instead of the enrichment of a few.
Sovereignty, liberty, and individual rights are all areas that fall under the Aries symbol set, there is a particular passion to this regard in the Aries psyche. In October you are facing questions of personal autonomy and where you may have surrendered some that to forces designed to work against your interests. If the public better understood what policies were in place that undermined them we would have a new world in 60 days. Aries, please get yourself informed about what is going on, it is what you get to spend October doing especially in light of an upcoming election in November that could decide if the nation has a future.
Whatever happens in the world is real, what one thinks should have happened is projection. We suffer more from our fictitious illusion and expectations of reality. What is needed is the intelligent management of Earth’s resources. If we really wish to put an end to our ongoing international and social problems we must eventually declare Earth and all of its resources as the common heritage of all the world’s people.
–Jacque Fresco, The Venus Project
Climate Change is by far the most significant existential challenge Humanity has ever faced in its 200,000 year history as a species. An interesting corollary is that it is likely a climate change that created the conditions for our species to emerge. That said, they are now creating the conditions for a massive economics shift and of course this has been a long time coming. Other influences on the economic transition have been the preliminary emergence of a post-scarcity era for which Capitalism is very ill equipped to deal with and a massive spike in inequality which is damaging to the social fabric, environmental integrity, and even negates the gains that can be had under late Capitalism. I like to call the current era the Too-Late Capitalist Era as neoliberalism and trickle-down economics begin their inexorable decline new systems will begin to emerge to better reflect the shifting realities we are all facing. It is highly likely that a fusion between a participatory economics as advocated by anarchist political theory with social ownership of the means of production and a resource based economics linked to a collaborative commons and crypto-currencies will emerge. This eliminates the class system and the possibility of financial elites forming and concentrating wealth into only a few hands.
This will then integrate with a Resource Based Economics involving the emergence of a collaborative commons in which increasingly commodities, finished products and natural resources are no longer funneled through the reducing valve of a monetary system and instead become the common heritage of all life on Earth and all of its inhabitants. What this serves to do is make money increasingly irrelevant and all transactions using it reduced to ever diminishing returns, it also eliminates the need to barter, trade or sell for the means of survival and frees people to pursue their lives free of the tyranny of required work, or wage slavery, the modern version of indentured servitude.
A stop gap measure to get us to a post money era will be the Universal Basic Income which will guarantee access to the necessities of life as well as provide an easy phase transition to the new economic regime. Under this regime efficiency and sustainability are default assumptions, planned obsolescence is eliminated preserving global resource bases, by designing modular products that last and only need parts replaced instead of the entire unit. It could be funded first by using a progressive Carbon Tax which would effectively address Climate Change concerns. It would require a new energy infrastructure that favors a carbon-free mix of energy generation technologies both renewable and existing. This is needed as the salient feature too much of this is the necessity for automation and the utilization of artificial intelligence to manage the system and make it ever more precise. This system would more closely align with the true definition of an economy which is a system to efficiently and sustainably manage resources to the benefit of all the participants in that economy (Capitalism can never do this as it is predicated on competing for wealth which gets concentrated in the hands of those most adept at pooling the wealth, which means there are always losers).
Let’s take a breath that is a lot to take in. Why does this have anything to do with Taurus, the Bull represents beauty, harmony, art, and finance! It is a decidedly economic and economizing sign that understands the need to build sustainable systems that benefit all and work within the framework of planetary limits. The October project is to economize and figure out systems that are sustainable and work for everyone. More personally Taurus is moving away from a need for luxury toward a more equitable use of its resources, both energetic and physical. Now would be a good time to draft a budget and start demanding more of our social intelligence (or what’s left of it).
Sense of place, community, and rootedness aren’t just poetic ideas. They are survival mechanisms.
–Madeline Ostrander
The problem with apocalyptic eschatology (the end of day’s narrative) is the particular brand of insanity and paralysis that it inspires. A particularly insidious example of this is Doomsday Preppers falling under the ideological umbrella of Survivalism. It is a philosophy unparalleled in its paranoia and instead of being a constructive response to a society in massive transition it reifies the worst in U.S. culture and it is a distinctly wrongheaded approach to the disruptive chaos that any number of black swan events can create. Instead of creating the conditions for a community to endure crisis this approach merely regurgitates the exhausting narrative of hyper-individualism, and begs the question how successful can you be in a bunker when the water supply runs dry, or you need access to medical care beyond first aid? Every person for themselves is not the conditions under which Humanity evolved, it was our more altruistic tendencies that gave us our adaptability.
Very good evidence suggests that communities that endure massive shocks are those that create cohesion and cooperation not those who hunker down and isolate form one another. Books like Jarrod Diamonds ‘Collapse’ and Rebecca Solnit’s ‘A Paradise built in Hell’ argue as much. In a word the places and communities that endure crisis are those that have a sense of place and rootedness to that place and a viable social network that creates a local culture. Gemini is a natural at creating social networks and particularly adept when it comes to local environments (Gemini correlates to neighbors, siblings, and local networks). It is likely that many communities throughout the world will continue to deal with many wrenching transitions ahead, everything from technological upheaval to the early knock on effects of Climate Change. It will be vital for many of us to cultivate local networks and create partnerships that go beyond insignificant differences. Gemini in October is compelled to look at its local relationships, it concept of place, and its connection to the immediate environment. Look for ways to cultivate and strengthen the ties to your community whatever that may be and as always the adage Think Globally, Act Locally, definitely applies. This will create an impetus to move beyond the corrosive individualism that has defined U.S. culture since 1980 and move us towards a far more cooperative element that will allow us to move beyond the destructive political gridlock of the contemporary era.
Cultural survival is not about preservation, sequestering indigenous peoples in enclaves like some sort of zoological specimens. Change itself does note destroy a culture. All societies are constantly evolving. Indeed a culture survives when it has enough confidence in its past and enough say in its future to maintain its spirit and essence through all the changes it will inevitably undergo.
–Wade Davis, The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters to Modern Society
Indigenous People’s Day falls on October 10th this year, a time when the global community acknowledges the autonomy, integrity and contributions of indigenous populations all over the world and honor their cultural contributions to the evolution of the human species. Their contributions of course cut profoundly deeper than symbolic acknowledgement can elucidate. It is these cultural understandings that may hold the key to Humanity’s survival in a world of an emerging new normal on a fundamentally altered planet. While we are too far along in our technological and social development to return to a state of nature, we can do what we can to preserve the people who never left that state, and those who have been dispossessed of their ancestral heritage. There are two essential approaches, one we must repatriate to the best of our capacity, the peoples who have been stripped of their cultural autonomy and ancestral lands allowing them a return to their cultural integrity, the result of a century’s long occupation and colonization. The second trajectory is with deep reverence, respect and humility we can learn from and integrate with any eye towards reconciliation and restorative justice (to avoid cultural appropriation).
Many native people have developed rich cultural tapestries based on long cultural memory and a long-term perspective. Over the aeons of long observation these cultures have developed a complex psychological technology that emphasizes and makes primary an inextricable link to the biosphere. This intimacy with the natural world, the ground of being, is essential for all life and social systems to flourish as it is provides the physical foundation on which it all rests. If we could reframe our cultural assumptions to align with the needs of the biosphere we could effectively transition beyond our ecocidal/suicidal trajectory. Ultimately I envision indigenous people blazing the trail and leading the way for the world out of our collective insanity. Cancer is the repository of cultural memory and holds the genetic and ancestral heritage of all people throughout time and space. Cancers are deeply concerned with roots and legacies and continue the deep work of cultural reclamation. The task for October is to ponder these deeper connections and to make real the connection to the life-tide we all share.
One of our political leaders said not too long ago that the American way of life is not negotiable. We’re going to discover the hard way, that when you don’t negotiate the circumstances sent to you by the Universe, you automatically get assigned a new negotiating partner name reality. Then it will negotiate for you, you don’t even have to be in the room
.-James Howard Kunstler, Earth 2100, author of The Long Emergency
Many of our social and environmental problems are the result of the majority of us pandering to a modern aristocracy. Multinational corporations, financial elites, and the government leaders who have been sold to these interests easily explain why the U.S. government is an oligarchy and not a democracy, and why the majority of international decisions exploit people in other nations, destabilize their governments, and destroy their environments. It is a dangerous precedent that must be stopped. Before things will ever get better abroad and domestically we must dethrone the aristocracy. It is this elite that is responsible for a misguided energy policy that favors fossil fuels even though we need to keep 80% 0f them in the ground in order to avoid blowing the carbon budget and spurring apocalyptic climate change. It this same elite responsible for so much of the inequality in the world that has been wrought form their policy initiatives such as neo-liberalism which even the IMF one of the main proponents of this philosophy publishing a study showing that it doesn’t work.
Why all of this talk of monarchy and aristocracy? It is because Leo understands power dynamics like this being the symbol of royalty and monarchies. While monarchies will likely not rise again in human history and this is a positive development some of the old monarchies that were enlightened recognized that their heightened status also came with heightened responsibility and that if they failed to manage their subjects and their kingdom wisely it would be their heads, as the French Revolution made quite clear. It is from this awareness that emerges Leo’s decidedly emphatic stance that the status quo simply must change. Leo understands that leaders are acting disgracefully and that they too must not be insulated from the consequences of their decisions as a true leader, leads by example and feels right along with the group they are leading. Leo has the October project of figuring out where it can bring enlightened leadership and where it has the power to dethrone illegitimate power, a tall order. Leo is distinctly primed to succeed at this power struggle and come out victorious if a little beat up. What’s more Leo’s are not going to let stand the insularity of the neo-aristocracy they are calling it out and smashing down the gates that keep everyone else out.
Science is the only news. When you scan through a newspaper or magazine, all the human interest stuff is the same old he-said-she-said, the politics and economics the same sorry cyclic dramas, the fashions a pathetic illusion of newness, and even the technology is predictable if you know the science. Human nature doesn’t change much; science does, and the change accrues, altering the world irreversibly.-Stewart Brand, Whole Earth Discipline
Going back to Nature is the fantasy of much of the environmentalism that has lost is sensibleness and its willingness to deal with facts. There are uncomfortable truths that those who have fallen under the Nature fallacy are unwilling to acknowledge. It is a completely unworkable proposition given the population and complexity of the current human population and society, what’s more it would be an utter disaster for the world’s ecologies as we would draw resources down faster if we attempted such a move. Our situation requires more technology not less, to effectively solve and this is in the words of one of the pre-eminent scientists who has spent his life studying the matter, James Lovelock who also wrote the Gaia Hypothesis the text and concept that single-handedly gave rise to modern Climate Science. What is meant by this is not a technology that destroys and consumes but one that is put in place to help us manage, quantify and observe the conditions on the ground that will allows us to best solve the environmental crisis we are slamming headlong into, in essence eco-technology. It is our eyes in space as the satellite network around our planet that allow us to do climate modelling, computers that run the simulations and take the measurements that tell us if we have past the tipping point of bio-diversity, and also the same technologies that lighten our footprint upon the planet. Virgo being the symbol of Earth itself and all the regulatory cycles that keep it alive and healthy (Gaia is in fact a deeply Virgoan metaphor).
Along with a new suite of technology designed to preserve the life support systems of the planet is a policy framework that is laid now that creates the impetus for this technological development as well as creating a strategy that can help civilization mitigate and adapt to any environmental stressors that may cause instabilities. Now is the time to make these decisions, preemptively not when we are in the midst of a crisis in which decision making capacity is diminished from Amygdalic thinking, that is Fight or Flight thinking coming from the Amygdala the part of the brain that helps us deal with a crisis situation by shutting off the neo-cortex that deals with complexity and judgement. In the heart of a crisis we will make sloppy policy decisions that will reinforce the worst capacities in people, nationalism, xenophobia, hoarding and the like instead of the best. If we act now to put this in place we can avoid having to make poor decisions later. Virgo understands this intimately, and also acts deliberately and preemptively capable of long memory and a wise assessment of environmental realities. Virgo is the symbol of the life systems of the planet, the hydrological cycle, the nitrogen cycle, essentially all the cycles that keep the planet in relative homeostasis. Virgo further acts in a way that aligns with natural cycles and uses them as inspiration for other interventions, as the basis for medicine, technology, agriculture, and infrastructure all areas that fall under its symbolic purview. It also seeks to deploy these methods so that it benefits the commons, another of its domains. Virgo’s October project is figuring out exactly what its role is in this laying the foundation for a new society to emerge. More personally they are looking at their own lives and figuring out how they can use nature as inspiration. We may never be able to return to a state of nature that said we can certainly align with it, and we must if we hope to have a future on this island in the ocean of space.
I’ve begun to look at the world through apocalypse eyes. Our society, which seems so sturdily built out of concrete and custom, is just a temporary resting place, a hotel our civilization checked into a couple hundred years ago and must one day check out of.
-Neil Strauss
The Roman Empire never really ended, and if it did then the current U.S. society is reifying many of its salient features and that is a dangerous knowledge. Of all the modern industrial societies the U.S. ranks last in terms of fairness. Its government is an oligarchy and its elites are insular and not held to account for the consequences of their short sighted policy decisions. U.S. based corporations work in their isolated interests and turn all the results into externalities that they pawn off onto the masses to endure. In Rome senators from the elites planned, conspired, and bribed their way into military strategies to enlarge empire, another way of saying that they subdued foreign destinations to amass wealth and power. This is especially true of U.S. corporations which have consistently violated human rights, environmental protections and the sovereignty of other nations all in the interests of profit and delivering value to their shareholders who are you guessed it many of the political leaders, and policymakers in power in the U.S. (this strategy is called forcible Regime Change and it is a violation of both Constitutional Law and International Law). This concept emerging from the work of a Classics professor Mary Beard out of Cambridge University who has authored a book S.P.Q.R.:A History of Ancient Rome. A quote sums it up nicely:
When the US government illegally intervenes in the affairs of a sovereign state by plotting the removal of its leader, it’s often because the leader is improving conditions for the poor. For example, if a democratically elected socialist leader uses the profits from their nation’s oil to pay for free health care, food, schools and rebuilding eroding infrastructure for the people, then said leader will immediately be seen as a threat to US corporate control over foreign resources, such as oil, which has benefited multibillionaires at an appalling cost to ecological communities and entire populations. Such “regime change” violations of national and international laws are impeachable offenses.
It also means that a fair and egalitarian society will be an uphill struggle to develop in the U.S. even with a long cultural precedent set for it by the Constitution and continuing civil rights struggles. Libra is absolutely committed and married to the idea of fairness and equality. Libra lives by an impartiality that ensures fairness and further is constantly deliberating on the ethics of an egalitarian society. Libra has their work cut out for them no doubt and as we enter the season of Libra’s solar luminescence Libra will feel the tug to demand that fairness become part of international and national policy especially in the face of Climate Change which brings up concerns of environmental justice. On a more personal level they are struggling with their own sense of fairness, and attempting to avoid situations in their lives where decisions seem more like bread and circuses instead of Shangri-La.
We are Gods and might as well get very good at it
.-Stewart Brand, Whole Earth Catalogue, and author of Whole Earth Discipline
Current society has developed an insidious tendency towards distraction, so many of us are caught up with wonder what the Kardashians are up to that we forgot that our society is in trouble. The Trump said, Clinton said back and forth bickering between presidential candidates is a ridiculous distraction for the fact that the modern U.S. is dangerously riding into the possibility of societal collapse. It has some of the hallmarks that set it on to this precedent. Rampant inequality, an elite largely insulated from the consequences of its action, extreme environmental degradation, trading partners on a similar trajectory and of course the usual course of hostile forces amassing, largely the result of its international policy which creates said hostility. These are all considered some of the parameters that can lead to the collapse of society, it was the same set of conditions present in other famous societal collapses, the Maya, Anasazi, Easter Islanders, Greenlandian Norse, and the Roman Empire, societies that had over extended themselves and spent their energy on pandering to insulated elites, creating suffering and misery for the masses who did have to suffer the consequences of their actions. There is even a study that demonstrated that the U.S. Government is no longer a democracy but has devolved into an oligarchy creating a policy framework that serves the financial elites and not the will of the people, team that to a general dumbing down of the populace and the trigger is set for possible catastrophe.
Scorpio has a finely tuned survival instinct to such an extent that it recognizes the greatest dimensions of self-preservation mean that the world that envelopes them also has to be preserved. It is from this instinctual understanding that the scorpion is capable of sounding the alarm and doing everything it can to hasten the changes that will transform this trajectory,
(Pluto ruled sign of the Transformer). It is exactly this kind of unwavering dedication to course correction that is needed in the world right now to avoid the collapse of Global civilization as these conditions are not limited to just the U.S. and unlike historic local collapses our society is global so there is no jungle for us to melt back into, barring finding another planet we are all in this together. Scorpio recognizes that the politicos may keep talking and offering promises but action is what is called for anything else is re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Scorpio your task for October is to absorb this idea of shared destiny and to begin to formulate exactly what role you are playing in the transition of world culture to true sustainability, the task of a lifetime. Scorpio is always riding the edge of inexorable forces and recognizes that superficial and short sighted concerns are nothing in the face of inexorable forces and that certain crises call for a suspension of assumptions and an unflinching conforming to the terms delivered by reality.
It would be immoral to leave young people with a climate system spiraling out of control.
–James Hansen
Human culture is undergoing a massive transition. We sit at a crossroads of sorts, if we continue with the status quo we’re fucked, cooked possibly extinct. There is however an emerging new direction that we could go down if we could find a change in our focus that would facilitate it. It is the turn towards an eco-technic civilization, characterized by a heightened ecological awareness and why I titled this post return of the goddess as it returns to a modern version of ancient view that saw the planet as a Mother figure or Goddess that provided for her children and allowed countless ancient populations to live in balance with the environment. At this point with humanity achieving a planetary influence we cannot afford to get this wrong. The ecology movements that emerged out of the 1970’s also gave rise to an eco-spirituality movement that brought nature centered religions and cultures into focus. This in turn gave rise to neo-paganism and the Return of the Goddess movement that emerged out of women’s studies. These movements sought to return Humanities religious impulse to one that would preserve the natural world and reorient social priorities. It has become an evolving movement that has given rise to changes in both policy and human subjectivity, although not tot extent hoped, it gave us the EPA, and a slew of environmental regulations that have cleaned up air and water. Climate Change presents an opportunity to make inroads in ways that have not been possible up to now.
Here’s where thing’s go a little into the Looking Glass. Ophiuchus is obsessed with the idea of immortality, to such an extent that it is likely these movements could converge with transhumanism, and specifically its techno-Gaian arm which is focused on utilizing technology to preserve and protect the environment and the planetary ecology. How this ties in with immortality is this, in protecting the ecological foundations upon which all technology is built, we ensure that societies can endure over the long term, become functionally immortal, and further that as our technologies advance and make it possible for us to become virtually immortal in fact as individuals (think advances in medicine, nanotechnology and mind uploading), we will need to ensure that our planetary platform is not destroyed in the process as it would unwind any gains we have made thus far. What’s more if we allow climate change to spiral out of control than many of the medical gains we have made will be unwound and we could see epidemics re-emerge on violently apocalyptic scales. Ophiuchus is also concerned with eradicating disease and violence neither of which can be done if we destroy the biosphere. It is hoped that if we can change the human conception of the planet from one of inert, and dead matter, which underpins an economics that turns living matter into dead things, to one in which we view it as a an organism, alive and self-regulating, in a word see it as a Goddess or a planetary mother it is hoped that maybe we will be less willing to anything that would bring harm to it. This has the added benefit of ensuring that we don’t cause our own extinction, 2 birds with one stone, and it also allows our technology to continue to develop in ways that are environmentally benign.
Ophiuchus, October is devoted to crafting new world visions, and working with the sticky realm of human subjectivity to encourage a course correction. Utilizing art and creativity and symbolic manipulation, great for those who are in the arts. Personally it is a matter of looking at your own subjectivity and seeing whether it is helping or harming, it’s a wrenching evolution, the Snake-bearer however is very adept at this, and you are committed to bettering the situation on the ground.
More than ever, we need a new international order that draws on the experience and results achieved in these years by the United Nations. It would be able to provide solutions to the problem of today…based on the dignity of human beings, an integrated development of society, solidarity between rich and poor nations, and on the sharing of resources and the extraordinary results of scientific and technological progress.
-Pope John Paul II
Much of what our species faces in terms of crisis and opportunity is global in scale and requires a coordinated effort from an international angle as well as strong national policies. What’s more is the bigger nations will be called on to take more aggressive policy stances within their borders, to set a precedent for other nations to follow. From a historic perspective that only seems fair given that it is the wealthier nations that unwittingly precipitated the crises in the first place. Said nations it seems have spent years believing they are insulated from the results of these crises, the evidence point to this being a very mistaken idea. In light of a need of unilateral international effort to address a number of problems that nations cannot tackle in isolation there is once again the need to consider the establishment of a world government.
There is fierce opposition to the idea no doubt as there are legitimate fears of losing national sovereignty on some policy issues, the concerns of which are minor when the benefit of such a system is obvious in light of the global scope of the problems we are dealing with. Climate Change remains one of those global in scope efforts that will require action across the board to effectively address. Currently we have the United Nations, which while minimally effective is not strong enough to effectively deal with the nature of the crisis. This largely due to the fact that few national governments have demonstrated a willingness to further empower it into a global governing body, this remains our only lasting option for global peace, prosperity and the initiation of a global carbon tax, truly the only economic instrument that will actually aggressively deal with the changing climate by preventing a catastrophic change.
Sagittarius is particularly concerned with the Global complex as foreign lands, long distance travel, and “foreign” cultures fall under its purview. There is a vast difference between Globalization, an economic process that has entrenched neo-liberalism and inequality all over the world, and globalism which is a conceptual framework that allows the easy diffusion of culture, innovation and scientific knowledge which has definitely made conditions better in nations that would otherwise not have benefited. It is the latter that is Sagittarius is committed to and the former that is up for review under the Pluto Retrograde. In this instance we are seeing crisis precipitated by a neo-liberal globalization that have created a spiraling gentrification crisis in cities all over the world to say nothing of environmental degradation. In light of this a new globalism may be emerging the kind that ensures fairness and a more aggressive approach to dealing with salient issues, this evidenced by increased multi-national activism. The Archer’s October project is to understand the vital connection they have to the world and ironing out what they are personally doing to be involved in that. The adage think globally, act locally applies here, what you do in the immediate environment will have a greater impact globally through chains of connection.
Politicians think that if matters look difficult, compromise is a good approach. Unfortunately, nature and the laws of physics cannot compromise – they are what they are.
-James Hansen, Former NASA Climate Scientist, the Grandfather of Climate Science
Economics has long been a standard argument against addressing the salient crises Humanity is facing everything from inequality to climate change. It no longer can be used as an argument as both OECD research has found that inequality has exerts negative pressures on the economy. The nail in the coffin comes with a study that demonstrates the modest costs of 1-2% of Global GDP it would cost to mitigate and avoid the worst Climate Change scenario is pocket change to the amount it would cost to do nothing or have to deal with it after it has gotten out of hand. All told if nothing is done towards mitigation the cost to the world economy is measured at 23% of Global GDP that would be crippling. There are no longer any more viable arguments even economic ones to allow catastrophic Climate Change to occur. In addition to the severe costs of inaction both socially and economically there is already activist movements moving towards new economic schemes, the push for Universal Basic Income, a living wage, the first rough outlines of a carbon tax and finally an international coordinated campaign of fossil fuel divestment that is spearheaded by college campuses and religious organizations teaming up with environmental non-governmental organizations. We also have the first policy signal and social framework in place to ensure the world does not go above 2 degrees Celsius of warming albeit deeply flawed, with the 2015 Paris Agreement. All of this at some point will reach a critical mass and converge into a fully integrated policy which will have the effect of creating a completely new valuation scheme for fossil fuels and related industries and also create the incentive and selective pressure to move the energy industry into new infrastructures. In time it could have the effect of lowering the profitability of fossil fuels better left in the ground to avoid species suicide/extinction. Corporations that base their profits on this are of course fighting tooth and nail for this not to happen and protect their future profits and avoid a balance sheet filled with stranded assets and the shuttering of their operations due to a changed economic playing field. Don’t look to corporations for the change to happen ditto on governments institutions are already sold into the hands of the elite instead look to the groundswell where the real effort will come from.
All this talk of the economics of Climate Change seems a detour from Capricorn, it isn’t the Sea goat is often known for its shrewdness in business and economics, its symbol sets also correlate with social institutions and the operations of infrastructure as such these are deeply goaty issues. In a word Capricorn is recognizing the need to retire outmoded institutions and creating new emergent ones that can adapt and change with fluctuations in conditions on the ground. Capricorn your assignment for October is this, how exactly are you contributing to the project of creating new social forms and institutions that will ultimately serve the commons and the community and economy of life to which we all belong? More personally where in your life could you use a course correction, what is not working and what new forms could emerge? It’s not easy work but given your plodding and calculating acumen I have no doubt that you can manage in four weeks what might take others years.
“Atheism is unprovable, so uninteresting. However unlikely it is, we can never be certain that God once existed—and has now shot off to infinity, where no one can ever find him… Like Gautama Buddha, I take no position on this subject.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, 3001: The Final Odyssey
Aquarius has a problem with contemporary society and mainly it bristles against the culture of anti-intellectualism that has come to dominate public discourse, this is particularly pronounced in the U.S. but not limited to there as the Brexit fiasco in the U.K. made lucidly clear, it seems idiocy is not contained by geography. The growing epidemic of absurdity has empowered the rise of the new right, the supremacy of demagogues like Donald Trump and Marion Marechal Le Pen in France, and a new strain of irrationality on the left that has led credence to some anti-scientific conclusions. The center position is equally absurd in its insistence on compromises so profound that they are compromised and reduced to ineffectual symbolic action and weak policy initiative. The whole machine has Aquarius in a bunch. Whether it is the xenophobia, intolerance, bigotry, islamophobia, and science denialism on the right or the poor handling on the left of crucial issues where the science is firm (nuclear power, GMO’s, vaccines, and cognitive evolution). Aquarius holds logic and evidence as an ideal so rhetoric, pathos and solipsism in policy decisions or decisions that affect the lives of millions. Intolerance and at the same time logical fallacy is the genesis of the rage of Aquarius. It has a deeper implication than an election cycle.
As we collectively continue to pitch towards the Age of Aquarius the superstitions that have defined Humanity will continue to slip away, even the literal interpretation of Astrology, a welcome development. It will become increasingly apparent the metaphorical nature of subjective systems, and it is likely that religion will increasingly slip into a vague agnostic mysticism, a move that will be welcome as it has been a source of divisiveness, will it entirely disappear, probably never but it will undergo a much needed evolution a protean change in function and hopefully will begin to reflect reality as we experience it, and not based on impossible myths and tricks our eyes play on us. That may sound harsh but it epitomizes the logical thought of the Aquarian archetype, and Aquarius would be the first to admit that everything from politics to astrology is archetypal and symbolic in nature in the first place and that there is a tacit agreement between people that we will maintain the efficacy of these symbolic systems without taking them too literally, and why because it reifies the late Age of Pisces trope that ultimately reality will always retain a sense of being a salient mystery, a riddle humans will be playing with for as long as there is a human species or some variant of that with self-reflective consciousness. That said, Aquarius holds the task of cutting through deceptions and misrepresentations of evidence, facts and reality, this largely due to a Saturnine co-ruler ship which imbues the sign with a sense of pragmatism. The October task for the water-bearer is to become so fatally allergic to drivel, smokescreens, and demagoguery it develops anaphylaxis in its presence. To develop the courage to call out misrepresentations of the evidence that seek to grind a political axe.
“Mushrooms have taught me the interconnectedness of all life forms and the molecular matrix that we share. I no longer feel that I am in this envelope of a human called Paul Stamets. I am part of this stream of molecules that are flowing through nature, that are becoming eddies of life. I am given a voice, given consciousness for a time, but I feel I am part of this continuum of stardust into which I am born and to which I will return at the end of this life.”
-Paul Stamets, Mycologist, and holder of a patent of a novel biopesticide
Pisces is adept at holding two seemingly contradictory realities existing in the same place in time and space. It is largely because they have abandoned the dichotomy of either/or and have accepted that reality is often a Both/and proposition. Its relevant to the contemporary scene where there are consistent arguments of either/or, in religion G_d(s) are autonomous beings with their own agency or G_d(s) are merely metaphors, extensions of the human imagination giving an identity to forces that inherently lack one, the answer is both not one or the other. It is even more contentious in light of an election in the U.S. that is hinged on an extreme bipartisanship that has created two, three, four different Americas, a situation in those with diverging viewpoints are unwilling to talk with one another across the aisle. It has created a perfect storm of political crisis that has divided the votership in a critical election that could decide the long-term future of American society. Further Climate Change, inequality and other factors are fast putting civilizations future into question and necessitating the need for course correction and a completely new form of society, the emergence of an eco-technic civilization one that is factually sustainable and relatively egalitarian.
Pisces holds two overarching visions in its psyche. One of utter collapse and the nightmare vision of global apocalypse, with its attendant epidemics, wars, and draw down of resources, and a nightmarish die off of human population that a collapse would trigger. The other being the course we take if we change our trajectory, the dethroning of elites, ecological restoration, the wise and careful use of our resources and a world increasingly global in its scope and made up of citizens who see themselves in planetary terms instead of purely national ones. It is the Eden we are hoping to create and yet it requires we deal with the terms presenting to us by the Cosmos and the Island Earth realities of our existence. Pisces is capable of holding itself in the realm of stardust visions as well as deeply pragmatic realities. The October task for Pisces is to bridge the two worlds of reality and vision and figure out exactly what your personal contribution is to the project of uniting Heaven and Earth, and restoring the Edenic conditions of life on Earth. It can be done if we waste no more time and get serious about what needs to be done, namely avoid a more than 2 degree Celsius, 3.5 degree Fahrenheit increase in average global temperature, initiate a global carbon tax to incentive becoming carbon negative long before 2050 (which will be largely too late to avoid catastrophic change), unseat the elites controlling the political process, put a muzzle on multi-national corporations, adopt a vision of the Long Now, dump the growth model of economics which fuels wasteful cyclical consumption and finally completely re-design our civilization to be resilient, centered in ecological awareness and global in scope. We can do it, we did it once before during World War II with the Manhattan Project, we need a Manhattan Project for the Earth, and Pisces has the vision to make it happen.
New Moon in Virgo: The month begins on deeply practical footing with strong attention to detail. In this lunation cycle having a clearly defined pathway is essential, don’t move forward with projects or plans unless the details have been ironed out. The normal bugs and hiccups may emerge but if you have managed the details they will prove to be minor.
Full Moon in Pisces: the lunation culminates on a deeply sensitive frequency. I liken it to the metaphor of a hyper-sensitive test mechanism, it can detect the minutest frequencies of a phenomenon and produce a number the trick is deciphering whether or not the measurement is meaningful or just an expression of background noise. In this lunar phase as projects move to completion it is essential to decide if the feelings around them are meaningful or just the normal emotional weather we are all subject to.
That’s a wrap Space Cadets! See you all next month for a historic and wickedly important election, hang in there. (here’s an article just for fun not related to the election at all).
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Prometheus Jones with HiC Luttmers, R(E)volution Radio
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