COVERT REBELLION
Greetings Space Cadets!
February is already upon us and so quickly as the months seem to do, here we are now in the transition time between the deep time aspects of Capricorn and the Saturn resolve, and the deep future orientation of Aquarius, our cipher of rebellion, revolutions, and radical departures. Appropriate that we find ourselves collectively in a time of both revolution and evolution of a higher magnitude than has been characterized in historic cycles.
Speaking of cycles and the subject of revolutions it seems that we are currently in the interstitial period between a roughly fifty year secular cycle that seems to thread its way through history. It seems that every 50 years or so there seems to be a cultural upheaval of sorts of that puts all of our institutions and systems into a state of chaos (creation) that is first noted with extensive systemic breakdown or a failure of cultural bulwarks to adapt to a change in prevailing conditions. It is beyond reproach that much of this is being driven by the upset in the political legacies of our system with certain relics in the system which have conspired to empower a soft authoritarianism that the system was designed to prevent, read the electoral college.
What is the overarching problem? There are two, one that the liberal left and even the centrists did not respect the power of big data and that a sophisticated right was able to hijack many of their political concepts and twist the logic into one that fit the narrative of a crypto-fascism so effective because it hides in plain site by using terms such as alt-right (crypto-fascism) and alternative facts (double speak). It was a failure to also further understand exactly how this alt right was able to utilize big data and in particular psychometrics to craft a political message that appealed to the lowest possible instincts in the electorate, and exploited baser fears that of course led to the wave of odious rhetoric that characterized one of the most contentious elections in recent political memory. For a better overview of exactly how this occurred be sure to check out ‘The Data that turned the World upside down’ on Motherboard , which discusses exactly how many different factors converged to empower both Brexit and Trump presidency and if you think somehow it has stopped you would be mistaken. Further, it implicates a novel direction the left can now take to regain some of its lost ground and shift the vector back away from a pernicious right which has used divisive strategies to exploit various divides long evident in the US. (Radio Intro, ends here)
This addresses one of the main wedges that has empowered the current administration the urban-rural divide that actually invalidates the electrical college as a relic of seventeenth century demographics. 80.2% of the U.S. population lives in urban, sub-urban or incorporated areas and it is a trend that is likely to continue, and all of this as of the last US Census.
On a tangential note it seems that the social world undergoes a significant upheaval and renewal of its foundational principles (initial conditions) every fifty years or so. There are many historical antecedents to suggest this we could go as far back as the founding of the US as a nation and the French Revolution which placed the final nail in the coffin of monarchy and the divine right of kings and entrenched the ideals of the Enlightenment into the public imagination (a philosophy that carried such weight that it seems as inevitable and total as Capitalism does today). What’s pertinent to our discussion is that these social upheavals seem to coincide with planetary synods that run on roughly the same time-frame as these salient moments in history (I am not suggesting that the planets have any causitive function, as there are far more organic causes such as changes in political-economy which can better explain these transformations, what I am suggesting is that these apparent motions in the sky can serve as constructive archetypal metaphors for subjectively constructing the meaning behind events). It coincides to synodic patterns in which the interpersonal and transpersonal planets make hard aspects to one another and follow a cyclic pattern culminating in a conjunction before a new cycle is initiated. The chips fall like this, Jupiter will make a square, opposition or conjunction to Saturn every 12 years, Saturn will make a square, opposition and then conjunction to Pluto every 33 years and this will begin with another conjunction. Finally Uranus will make square, opposition or conjunction to Pluto roughly every fifty years (there is always some variation due to each planet’s erratic orbital patterns, Pluto at perihelion will tend to move faster at aphelion it will tend to move slower, Uranus follows a similar pattern). So how does this coincide with historical transformations?
Chronology of Social Evolution:
1776 was the year in which the American Revolution occurred and the Declaration of Independence was signed which severed ties to the reigning monarchy of the time (King George of England). During this time there was a direct square between Jupiter, Saturn, and Pluto setting the stage for a potentially nasty rebellion (a Jupiter synod overlapped with a Pluto synod, a rare event, the next one is in 2020!). 1787 marked the first year if the ten year conflict that would become known as the French Revolution and would transform French society ending the power of the monarchy and the Church and give rise to Laicite and the French Republics that have subsequently followed, it is a vociferous secularism that has lead to a very strident divide between Church and State and has made French society as resilient as it is. The event also coincides with a Pluto-Saturn conjunction which completely re-arranged the public idea of authority, with the lay-people in revolt. 1789 the final year of the revolution saw the establishment of the first French Republic and was also the year that a Uranus-Pluto opposition formed, carrying with it the omen that a new order would emerge out of the chaos of societal upheaval.
Roughly 50 years later in 1848 the People’s Spring would emerge which culminated in public rebellions in many of the nations of the world, it also coincides three years later in 1851 with the American Civil War which put an end to slavery and created social tensions that persist in the U.S to this day. During this three year period there was an intersection between two synods. 1848 saw a Uranus-Pluto conjunction in Capricorn, and in 1851 there was a Saturn-Pluto conjunction in Capricorn as well. Another 50 years later plus or minus 10 years saw the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia which gave rise to the USSR and the Soviet States which would lay the groundwork for the Cold War to follow in the 1960’s– It was also during this period the World was plunged into its first global war, World War 1, which followed on the heels of the assassination of Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo and would bring an end to the Ottoman Empire, and the formation of the League of Nations, the Treaty of Versailles and the like which would lay the groundwork for World War II. During this period we also saw a square from between Saturn and Pluto in the sign of Gemini. Following closely on the heels of this was another Saturn-Pluto square in 1883 they year that Krakatoa blew its mound, and the Mahdist Revolt happened in Africa. Following not long after in 1947 a Saturn-Pluto conjunction in cancer saw the end of World War II, the emergence of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the establishment of the United Nations.
Again another 50 years transpired since 1917 and we find ourselves implicated in the turmoil of 1965-1970, The Summer of Love, the Watts Riots, The Civil Rights Era, the rise of global liberation movements, the Paris Riots, the Sexual Revolution, The second wave of the women’s movement and so very much more, which would ultimately change the world, and the culture along with it, in the 40 years that have transpired since then. In the interim we have had a Saturn-Pluto conjunction occur in Virgo which coincided with the emergence of the HIV/AIDS crisis an interesting symbolic interaction as it is travelling through one of the signs that actually deals with epidemics, medicine and the interpersonal realm, overnight it changed the culture significantly and radically changed sexual mores and practices and gave rise to a neo-conservative ascendancy that first emerged in 1980 in response to the cultural revolution that the 1960’s wrought.
On the heels of this came the 2011 Pluto-Uranus Squares which gave rise to the Occupy movement and Arab Spring, the Greek Debt Crisis, and the cleaning up of the aftermath of the Economic Downturn of 2008. It followed with the period 2013- 2015 and a series of Uranus-Pluto squares in that interval which culminated in the Paris Climate Accord (2015), The Edward Snowden-NSA data leaks (2013) the rise of Julian Assange and Wikileaks (2013), The Chelsea Manning leaks (2013) the election of Barack Obama for a second term (2012), and the rise of Anonymous, a hacktivist cell committed to disrupting the widespread corruption among the world’s political and financial elites.
This of course has been the perfect set-up for the next fifty year cycle to come albeit we are in the slightly off category as the next ones will occur in 2020 that is to say the Pluto-Saturn conjunctions in Sagittarius which will likely turn the current corporate hegemony and Capitalist dominance on its head and cause us to collectively question the last thirty or so years of neoliberal economics which has wrought austerity, economic crises, and all manner of private invasion onto the public sphere in the dubious Private-Public Partnership (something we need to be deeply critical of). What’s more is because it correlates to Sagittarius and we are now a planetary society it is likely that it will be global in scope and will have implications for foreign affiars and the inter-digitation between diverse cultures across the planetary commons. It is likely we may see radical reforms to the economic policy we have pursued. It will certainly be interesting to witness as Generation X will be coming into its political zenith taking over many of the seats occupied by the Baby Boomer Generation, and the Xers have a much different stance.
Many of them grew up with technology and so have an ease with it that prior generations do not. It is one of the more heterogenic generations featuring a great spectrum of diversity with a significant portion being made up of people of color. This generation also has a more relaxed attitude to social issues than generations prior including policy on drug use, euthanasia, Climate Change and other social issues. It is likely we will see many financial reformed at this time as this generation attempts to balance some of what the prior generation had stolen away from them, and it is possible the Xers may act from some resentment at feeling like their futures were stolen from them. The Millenials will also be rising at this time, and this is a generation that is centered politically further left than any of its predecessors so as they start to begin shapers of public policy it is likely that more reforms will be in the offing and our culture will undergo a tectonic shift once again, which will be just in time for the demographic transitions that will re-shape the face of America and the world over the next 40 or so years. By 2042 64% of the US population will be people of color, it is likely that we will be feeling the first major impacts of Climate Change and that it will be at the center of our policy machinations, and that there will be expanded focus on science and technology as we approach the possible technological singularity, it is this transition that the Millenials will be the catalyst for. Onto the signs!
Aries: April 19th-May 13th: Burn it to the Ground?
The Rams in their quiet moments imagine themselves as political firebrands (which they are). Always picturing themselves in active roles, throwing the Molotov cocktail, breaking things and setting them on fire, and there are contexts that certainly call for that if nothing more than to send a message that when you push individuals too far against a wall they fight back to get out of being cornered. Fight or Flight, and more often fight as politics is a battleground with concerted struggles. It illustrates a paradox that Aries often wrestles with and that is a politics of subterfuge which uses cunning and indirect tactics to create the needed dramas that compel the hands of policy machination to finally contend with realities on the ground.
This is the tactic of the long arc, the one that utilizes mass movements and non-violence as its strategy to push for needed change. Then there is the other more fiery aspect that targets private property (a note on distinctions here, private property is different from personal property- the books you read, the clothes you wear, your smartphone, what we mean by private property is land, means of production, and other material substrates that belong to a commonwealth being taken out of common ownership and transferred to a private individual in the production of capital, translation: banking facilities, factories, and the like that could easily be transferred to social ownership held in common but is not, because corporate hegemony, Capitalism, social inertia, wealth inequality, you name it).
There are arguments for each, those that say the destruction of private property to symbolically send a message about a social responsibility to recognize a commons is not a form of violence. Then on the other side of the coin there is the idea that history supports the idea that non-violent mass demonstrations and civil disobedience work more in the long-term as they prevent the provocation of increasingly militarized police forces to then turn state sanctioned violence on bystanders who get confused in the crosshairs (which has the downside of discouraging participation from more marginalized groups, who are often targeted by law enforcement). History also reveals that periods of extreme upheaval can potentially lead to addressing severe inequality, but with horrific violence in the wake. It is unlikely that we can avoid all violence. But perhaps it can be contained and redirected to a mental theatre that has powerful impact on society, which is to say art and agitprop as revolutionary tools that evolve the social dialectic.
The task for our age given that the current administration is giving police forces carte blanche more authority is to come up with strategies that are mostly non-violent and amplify marginalized voices, and yet also send powerful messages about a need to question the hegemony that corporatism has imposed on the rest of us through the deft manipulation of public policy. Underneath the typical Aries bravado is a fine mind dedicated to the task of tactics and subterfuge (there is something to be said for disruption, one of the more effective non-violent tactics) if need be which is to say powerful strategies that manage to go under the radar and don’t provoke responses from authority that culminate in a lockdown and a state of emergency exploited to impose more authority. Aries, you have a brilliant mind and it can be used to great effect to change society. One more note, there is a need to be critical of a liberal hand wringing and denouncement that emerges from a middle class dialectic that criticizes the more vociferous tactics, please don’t engage in it, if you aren’t in a position to take the risks necessary, then don’t take them, but please recognize that someone has to, someone has to risk the frontline, the possibility of arrest. Everyone has a different approach, and while largely mass demonstrations are best when peaceful there is also room for other tactics however uncomfortable that makes us, it’s a delicate balancing act that requires nuanced thinking, and Aries is certainly built for the task.
Taurus: May 14th– June 19th: Economics doesn’t lie
I am sure dear Bulls you noticed in the frenetic news cycle of our Edward Munch ‘The Scream’ times that the stock prices for Nordstrom went up, this despite them dropping the Ivanka Trump lines (due to low sales) and a bombastic Trump Twitter storm (not very presidential, more like an impetuous child). Perhaps this four percent jump represents the real pulse of where the nation is currently at, and it would seem the popular culture of the day is losing patience with the Trump dynasty (one can dream!). If media accounts of the last two months can be trusted there is a sense of outrage at governmental machinations that has not been seen since the firebrand days of SDS and the Civil Rights Era. Perhaps this is a good thing, although Taurus the ever concerned lover of the sensual is mindful of the economic implications.
Taurus is certainly no lover of the ruthless cut throat antics of current political economy and it has been on their minds of late. The biggest implications are of how to change it and turn it on its head. Taurus intimately understands the underlying ethical implications of financial systems and how they have an impact on policy, there is a praxis that acknowledges that economic decisions are decidedly political ones. Taurus is observing that our political economy lacks an ethical barycenter, and it is deeply troubling. As it stands too late Capitalism is no longer in the service of humans, but is now servicing the vampiric aggregates of corporations. So not everything can be blamed on them but most of the maleficence and economic manipulations can be as they have hijacked governments left and right. I hate to harp on you Taurus but you are adept at this form of analysis and your tasked with coming up with novelties in this area that spring from nothing. We need a new political-economy, and one that acknowledges that society is not a Darwinian contest to see the fittest survive, it is instead a commonwealth in which there must be a focus on ensuring all of its members have an equality of opportunity and a level playing field.
Gemini: June 2oth-July 20th: Tell a Better Story
Psychometrics is an emerging new filed that interfaces computer science and the personality inventories of psychology. It is the one analytic that actually gave the current election over to the Trump camp, it also empowered Brexit as it was used in such a way to pivot the disaffected among the public to these ends. It is a tool the left has so far failed to exploit and that is a grievous oversight that needs to be addressed. This I where you come in Gemini. With your powerful capacity to exist in two contradictory realities at the same time you understand how to interface the digital with the quotidian. In an age when authoritarian ideologues can hijack the tools of the Computer Age to the supporting of coporatocracy, there is a concerted need to redefine the uses of these technologies to more liberatory ends. The generations that are now beginning to come into ascendancy as the Boomers are on their way out (Generation X and the Millenials) are much more left leaning than their predecessors ( even though it was the Boomers that did bequeath us with a more leftist politics, credit given where it is due!).
What is different perhaps is that this generation is on the verge of understanding the limits of identity politics and is recognizing the need to appeal to a populist base that addresses many issues beyond the limits of identity. These generations have the advantage of being tech savvy and heterogeneous, with a more relaxed attitude towards social diversities. This technological capacity is very needed in ensuring that the left can now begin to utilize the psychometric tools in the chaos of the political discourse that alt-right seems to have become adept at as well. Especially salient at a time when institutions are at great threat and civil liberties are in a questionable state of limbo. Gemini please use that charming communicative ability, the light speed mind and a willingness to interdigitate with technology to address seemingly insoluble political conflicts.
Cancer: July 21st-August 8th: GTFO!
Recent years have seen a spate of editorials written by Baby Boomer authors deriding the Millenial generation as entitled, indolent and ungrateful (a similar declaration was lobbed at this generation in its heyday as well, it seems to be a trait that elders launch at their younger predecessors). These thoughtless think pieces are laughable and insulting coming from a authors of the “me” generation who gave rise to the modern iteration of neoliberal economics a brutal competitive system which has funneled wealth to the elites on top at the expense of the rest of us. Empowered a adversarial politics that we are still contending with today and gave rise to banal anti-intellectual personalities like Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, and Mitch McConnell, persons who go out of their way to deny reality and put Humanity closer to its endgame, motivated to watch the world burn if it improves their bottom line. The Boomers may have won this round of electoral politics, it is the Millenials and to a greater extent Generation X however who can claim to have won the Cultural victory, as the Boomers begin to age out of the system and these other generations take the helm it is likely that the Boomers will have to pay for their excesses and political blunders.
Generation X in particular may respond out of the anger many of them feel for the future that was largely stolen from them by decisions of political economy made by their predecessors; it is likely that they will put policy into place that better addresses these imbalances. It will mean prioritizing science and the environment (Climate Change), and economic reform to address explosive inequality and the need for an economy not organized around resource extraction but more so equitable distribution (expect to see Universal Basic Income being a likely plank in any policy framework in the next 20 years). The Millenials will continue this precedent at a feverish pace as they have inherited even more of this burden and have the additional wrinkle of Climate Change whose impacts they will experience in their lifetimes.
The reason I mention it Cancer is that it is you who uniquely understands the transformative power of generations and that each new generations task is to address the insufficiencies of the last and to create novel cultural narratives that shift the direction of society, in a word the task of the young I to dismantle the hypocrisy of its predecessors. I counsel this, the next time you hear a political pundit, president or average asshole on the street (Internet) make ridiculous claims and especially if they are a Boomer, you tell them to Get the Fuck Out! Their fossilized politics is over and the generations under them are done with their nonsense, they may be holding their dominance but it is by a fingernail.
This is not meant to bash the Boomers, in fact many of us Millenials have parents in that generation that we love and admire deeply, and let’s not forget some of the inheritances of that generation that are worth celebrating, they gave us the Sexual Revolution, an explosion I new art and musical genres, radical politics and liberation movements that emerged out the Civil Rights Era, a time when the Boomers were in their political ascendancy. Unfortunately many of them became casualties of the 1980’s, a transition not entirely their fault as every generation has its blind spots. That said, the time is ripe to declare get out of the way, live within your means and know that the bill is coming due, we will not be subsidizing your second home, or your car payment any longer! A new rebellion is coming it will change everything, and just in time, 2020 marks a pivotal year when many of these changes will be apparent and runs coincidental with the Jupiter-Saturn-Pluto conjunctions that will typify that year, along with the Mars squares. The changes will be most obvious in the USA as these aspects will be conjuncting crucial natal points on the nations Sibley Chart.
Virgo: September 16th-October 19th: Working Class Hero
There is a powerful need in our society at present to seriously question the disconnect between policy makers and the reality of people in the ground and it seems neither of the dominant political parties in U.S. politics has been particularly adept at addressing it. One is stuck in the ivory tower of an echo chamber (The Democrats) and the other pays lip service to the concept, but utilizes policies that entrench elitist positions and reinforce corporate hegemonies. It seemed that neoliberalism was on its last legs but this all changed with the empowerment of Trumpism which is in essence a policy framework that is neoliberalism on steroids backed by an authoritarian corporatocracy (don’t believe me? Here is a study from Princeton (https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf) that definitively spells out far down the Oligarchy rabbit hole America has fallen).
The descent has translated into three ugly and pernicious trends that will have to be explicated. The first is that both parties have failed to properly contend with their bases in the nations Hinterlands, which has permitted a hollowing out of rural communities creating massive economic and health disparities and a social despair that is palpable (hello, Opiod crisis, spikes in HIV rates in the South and Indiana, and mass unemployment leading to a desperate destitution). It has created two America’s one of coastal elites living in echo chambers unaware of where the middle actually is politically, and of course a middle swinging gradually towards the authoritarian right in reaction to policies which have brutalized the demographics of these areas (and yes there is a certain white privilege that informs the backlash and at the same time a valid argument for economics that includes the idea of race, class, and gender in this dialogues). It has also created a balkanized heartland wallowing in desperation and fed the non-stop propaganda of non-stop talk radio and Fox news.
It is unavoidable that this social realm also must be questioned in its tendency to aggressively avoid information that threatens the stranglehold that traditional religion has on this demographic, they would do well to acknowledge the need to see other perspectives and what’s more to be exposed to other cultures and a more in depth understanding of history. That said the left could also benefit from this as well as it is something that is becoming increasingly absent from its dialogues. There has been a collapsing of meaning into the tools of analysis along race, class and gender and while great perspectives they fail to acknowledge biology and history and the careful interface between Nature and Culture.
The modern Academe has turned a blind eye for the need to address this disparity, and specifically has eviscerated the dignity and value of the trades and vocational training. This is sad state of affairs as it denies the underlying class warfare that defines contemporary society and fails to acknowledge the every real need for the trades. Without a valuing of these industries we get the hinterland hollowing, we get coastal elites out of touch, we get authoritarians unwilling to grapple with reality, we get an identity politics on both the left and right unwilling to address political-economy and a balkanizing in the extreme that turns every issue into a partisan issue when there are issues of concern that transcend partisan divides and would do well from a more integrated approach. Virgo, you already understand this because you are working out systems designed to address everyday reality.
Capitalism is a stage in the overall social evolution of the West, and of course it is also a development that has run its course and a new more sustainable option yet to be articulated must take its place (or we risk extinction). There is a strong need for a counter-vailing force to re-emerge that appeals across partisan lines, that acknowledges reality and offers an alternative to the prevailing model of austerity, economic crises, and technological unemployment. It is likely we will have to roll out some form of a universal basic income to absorb the technological upheavals in the offing. This along with a re-invigoration of vocational and “trades” training. A futuristic infrastructure is still going to need the people who can build and maintain it, bridges, pipes, sewers, fiber optic networks and the like. With any luck this will address the both the threat of Climate Change and exponential inequality and could also address the class parasitism that seems to be a dominant theme.
Libra: October 30th– November 22nd: Obscure Symbols
The movie Hidden Figures did not receive the critical acclaim that it deserved as the movie had a density to it that is vastly unappreciated. I mention it for Libra, as the movie depicts many of the aims that most Librans are working towards. The dismantling of barriers to equal participation in society and the leveling effect of Justice to ensure that all individuals have an equal footing, and an equality of opportunity. The movie depicted three brilliant mathematicians, Mary Jackson (Janelle Monae), Dorothy Vaughn (Octavia Spencer) and Katherine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson) who happened to be Black women in the times of Jim Crow segregation. Through their valiant efforts of persistence and applied intelligence they challenged the prevailing systems at the time, and at considerable personal risk to themselves. What is more is what their tenacity and dedication did to inspire acts of resistance in the other principal characters in the movie.
Two actions that stand out in particular are Al Harrison (Kevin Costner) the director of the Friendship 7 project using a crowbar to dismantle a “Colored Restroom” sign and declaring that “Here at NASA we all pee the same color” this was after Mary Jackson’s impassioned speech regarding her work ethic and the institutional and social barriers that made her work more difficult to complete. The other stand out action is when Dorothy Vaughn is offered a Supervisory role of the IBM computer programmers unit at NASA by Vivian Mitchell (Kirsten Dunst), which followed a confrontation in a de-segregated restroom in which Dorothy explicated the implicit biases and unintentional prejudices of Vivian Mitchell, it was inspiring to see.
The film raises important concepts of internalized racism and implicit bias that is relevant to a society with a long history of immigration and racism. It speaks to the fact that the newest frontier beyond breaking down the institutional barriers that still remain in so called “post-racial” America. The new frontier is de-colonizing our minds and dismantling the barriers in our own minds which prevent us from seeing the privileges and advantages that a minority of us receive by default of our gender, race, or ethnicity. More so it also is meant to dismantle the blindness that privilege brings to the suffering that the whole juggernaut is founded upon. Here’s the tea, it doesn’t have to be this way. The barriers both internal and external can be taken down to create an equal opportunity society, but the work involved is potentially painful and on-going much like the process of evolution. It will look like this for those Libra’s in positions of privilege you will begin the work of dismantling this supremacy both within and without, for those not you keep doing you and trust that we will continue to clean up the mess our ancestors made.
Scorpio: November 23rd-November 29th: W.I.T.C.H.
“Sex-positivity. Body-centredness. Lack of duality. Women honoured as priests and leaders. Queers out of the margins, into the centre. Battling oppression and defending life. Magic. Folk wisdom. Spirits. Listening to Place and Cycles. Myth. Empowerment. Initiation. Responsibility. Community. Fierce love. Artfulness. Cunning. Awareness. Witchcraft. Yeah, there’s nothing to like there.”
-Fio Aengus Santika
W.I.T.C.H. stands for Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell, a long defunct at least since the late 1960’s radical women’s group that would critique the excesses of Capitalism, attempt to smash the Patriarchy, and generally rabble-rouse in the long traditional of radical organizing. It went by many alternative monikers, Women Inspired to Tell their Collective History, and Women Interested in Toppling Consumer Holidays along with many other variations. The group cleverly used the terrifying symbol of the witch, an archetype with a long history in the Western World. In light of recent political developments a group of like-minded activists have revamped the group and centered a new collective in Portland Oregon dedicated to the spirit of the original group which book-ended the Civil Rights Era. What’s more, is that the group has reformed to move beyond the hesitations of its Baby Boomer forebears (which it must be noted did originate the group and were a contingent fighting against the archaic culture that now a subset of Boomers seem intent on reinstating). What is great is the group has reformed to address the vagaries of the modern era, and in particular has centered itself on intersectionality and anti-oppression. What’s more is that they are using a symbol with decidedly Scorpio undertones.
The witch inspires ideas of diabolic manipulations and what more powerful symbol could we call upon than the dark alchemy that transforms the world before our eyes (what I mean by dark alchemy is that it is mysterious or not apparent, not evil or negative). Scorpio, please take a page from that book, and use this technique of altering the meaning of meaning to guide your actions over the next interval. In a world of post-truth denialism and alternative facts propaganda, being capable of questioning meaning itself and adept at manipulating the imaginal technologies that create meaning is a super-power and it makes you immune to bullshit. Cultivate this and use the powerful symbol of the witch as your guide, it is a mantle of emancipation and autonomy beyond authority.
Ophiuchus: November 30th-December 17th: Radioactive Star
We need an alt-left, to counter the emergence of the alt-right and what’s more to represent the fact that the right does not have a franchise on dissatisfaction with inequality, depressed wages or the hollowing out of national economies due to a globalization that favors corporatocracy and low wage service jobs over manufacturing and cultural diversity. We also need this alt-left to emerge to challenge the brash authoritarian stance with a more powerfully thermonuclear anti-authoritarian stance. What’s more the alt-right is blaming the wrong actors in the creation of this crisis we are now facing. Defaulting to the petty arguments of history and blaming the cultural crisis on feminists, gays, the disabled, immigrants and migrants and the like even though these are not the players responsible for depressed wages, strained race relations and two disparate Americas. To posit that hard control and a vainglorious return to the past will somehow ameliorate the complexities of the 21st century is both absurd and colossally mal-adaptive; it is also indicative of extensive ignorance of 21st century power relations. It is easy to blame economic woes on immigration when in fact it is not immigrants that are depressing wages and causing closures of long standing manufacturing juggernauts it is in fact the owners of the means of production, policymakers, politicians, corporate lobbyists, and capital holders who are holding the every-man’s bread and butter to scraps and scrapings. It is thirty years of neoliberal policy pursued by both dominant parties in the US and a variety of economic drivers throughout the world (think IMF, World Bank, even the economic arm of the EU) who have brazenly pursued an economic philosophy that failed to work in the time it was constructed because it could not accord with the non-linear dynamics of reality. A policy that deliberately through ignorance of chaotic dynamics has generated economic downturns, eviscerated local economies and led to policies of austerity (which only worsen economic crises).
It demonstrates that the extreme right has run out of ideas and has run its historical gambit into the ground and is now using provocative tactics to glamorize the worst and most extreme ideas, already relegated to the dustbin of history, and cross hatching it with technology you have to wonder what reality these people are living in and whether it is a joke or not. That they cannot fathom that their philosophies are likely to become footnotes is telling as they cannot grapple with the realities of demographic transitions and the final death screams of the dominant social order. Liberal democracies are for sure undergoing transition and yet it is a needed change as we move into a more technically dominated era of western society. I mention only because it must be met with a resistance that is even more provocative and surreal in the opposite direction and all the better if it can begin to unite the disparate strands in this fractured country into a countervailing power that can truly address the real causes of our woes, nearly forty years of misery inducing economic policy. Ophiuchus you are uniquely attuned to this task as you understand that being the provocateur is in service to a higher order of functioning, that it can lead to a contagion that changes cultural vectors by hijacking the mechanisms of culture and reprogramming them express a new meme, like a retrovirus which can insert its own DNA into the host genome. That the feminine principle has finally been able to hijack the tools of the Patriarchy and attune them to the task of creating a more balanced society that lifts all boats (one of the happy side effects of the Enlightenment is that is improved the station of women and gave them an autonomy they would not otherwise have, that said a new direction is called for). It turns the Audre Lorde formula on its head and shows that yes the master’s tools can dismantle the masters house but first they have to re-engineered into new tools, that is what Ophiuchus is doing.
Sagittarius: December 18th-January 18th: No one is Illegal
Sagittarius will never understand the xenophobia that seems to define national policy of late. It seems that this cycle of racist hysteria seems to cycle itself around in U.S. history with relative frequency every time the economy tends to dip below a certain point or white majorities feel their influence slipping even slightly. There are many examples that can be pointed to that show this. The opium hysteria of the late 19th century which singled out Chinese immigrants had more to do with a white fear of wealth transfers that it did with illicit drug use. It should be noted that at the time there were more white people using opium than there were Chinese, but because it was an upper class practice it went largely un-criticized. However, the moment that Chinese laborers seemed to be over-represented in job categories that American native born seemed unwilling to do anymore, there was outright hysteria! They are taking our jobs! And so a smear campaign which sought to sully the names of Chinese immigrants began in earnest. The same thing happened to Blacks with the anti-marijuana crusades of the 1920’s, and it didn’t stop there.
The Jews, Italians, and Irish all faced similar backlash when they were migrating en-masse to new shores (oddly enough because of foreign policy decisions made by the US government). Alas, we are now seeing with both the Mexican border wall and the refugee ban that was rammed through by Executive Order. It seems to be built on the same house of cards argumentation that past moral panics are built on as well. Of note that out of the seven countries selected for the travel ban only one of them has been known to harbor legitimate links to terrorist organizations and only because it is currently under attack form said group. What is interesting is the absence of countries with established security risks (Saudi Arabia remains conspicuously absent the ban even though it was Saudi nationals responsible for the attacks of September 11th) and how interesting that the nations excluded seem to have extensive business ties to the current administration (as he has clearly not separated himself from seeming conflicts of interest very unbecoming of a public servant).
All of it has either enraged Sagittarius or given them a great deal of pause with many of them asking themselves searing questions. Why are people being excluded from areas that we have bombed into the ground for the last 60 years to protect economic interests within their borders? Why is it that an outright ban has been declared even though the US has had one of the most stringent vetting processes in place? Why a ban in place that actually inflames security risks by fueling propaganda about American exclusionary tactics against Islam, empowering Daesh? Then again Sagittarius is renowned for its love of foreigners and its desire to learn the customs of other cultures, acknowledging that this diversity is of particular strength. Since there is a centering ion this idea Sadge, may I suggest that you quite publicly (if you are able to without too much consequence) raise these objections that are swirling around your psychic barycenter? The national dialogue at present could potentially benefit from such analysis, not to mention it empowers existing protest movements that are raising these same moral dilemnas.
Capricorn: January 19th-February 15th: Ideology is Idiocy
Capricorns are realists in the extreme, skeptical bordering on cynicism. A great majority of them currently are bristling, even if of more conservative leaning politics, currently in response to a bombastic and ideologically fueled administration. Reeling from executive orders that fly in the face of evidence, are an insult to a free society, and empower an authoritarian autocracy not seen since the dark days of McCarthyism. Capricorn, even those who would rather operate through established channels have a hard time swallowing this whale dreck, clearly motivated by ideology. Capricorns are guided by a deep commitment to evidence and policy centered on it, due process, experimental deliberation, the replication of salient findings, and the careful analysis and application of existing theory and fact.
The Sea-goats cannot stand for even a nano-second any policy or instrument driven by fear, double-speak and ‘alternative facts’ (lies) They especially don’t well tolerate policy that flagrantly ignores reality, and there are many concerning realities, Climate Change, foreign affairs, and national security. The bombastic and overblown policies that have come out of Washington of late have left many gob smacked. There is good reason for this, few if any have been properly vetted to ensure that they follow legal precedent, departmental procedure, or constitutional concordance (the benchmark of policy in the US). The most flagrant is the one that would ease restrictions on FDA regulations to allow novel untested drugs to be fast-tracked, drugs only vetted to be safe but not effective, essentially turning the public into an involuntary clinical trial for potentially useless drugs (that there is not more outrage to this is alarming!). Capricorns, can’t stand this unwillingness to accord with reality and it is likely they will raise quite a stink even if they have to move through established channels. Like the Luddites disrupting machines they were literally being crushed under, Capricorns will thrown the wrench in the gears, and say loudly “Hold-Up, Stop” this needs to be more carefully thought through! The fact that there has been considerable pushback from our social institutions regarding these bombastic orders is a heartening sign that a resistance in fomenting and the normally conservative Capricorn is suddenly deviating, as proof more scientists than ever before are streaming in to take public office.
Aquarius: February 16th-March 11th: Post Blastwave
“My point is that you cannot force social change at a speed it cannot go. Social change is evolutionary, not revolutionary. Deep social change takes time, and slowly the culture is changing. The MTV generation is far more tolerant, and that tolerance is growing.”
–Camille Paglia, Playboy Interview, May 1995
Aquarius is profoundly frustrated by the gradualistic pace of social change, it rails against the more Promethean tendencies of the water-bearer. The average Aquarius is 30