Neptune (image-making) and Chiron (universal pain) are conjunct in the sky. Saturn (status-quo reality) and Pluto (breakdown) are square each other within a degree, and Uranus (radical change) is moving closer in, intensifying the T-square. Jupiter too, will join the fun in April. What a time to loose the bonds of our minds.

If we believe that consciousness precedes manifestation, this is our chance to prove it. It’s about letting the imagination soar to places beyond the here-and-now, and then beckoning the here-and-now to follow.

John Lennon conducted this sort of thought experiment through songwriting. Like all great artists, he hit a collective nerve. He wasn’t the first to come up with the ideas in “Imagine,” and he won’t be the last. He was reiterating archetypal longings (Neptune): hopes for the human condition that have been expressed across the reaches of time, in prose, poetry, and prayer. Even old Dwight Eisenhower acknowledged them: “I think that people want peace so much.” he said, “that one of these days government had better get out of their way and let them have it.”

But visions like this have an enemy: misused Saturn. That is, the consensual picture of “the way things are.” If we allow this picture to take on more realness than it deserves, it stifles the imagination. We must remember that Saturn doesn’t represent the absolute truth: it just establishes a shared construct, so the group psyche will have something to cohere around. If we aren’t careful, before we know it we’ve entered into an unspoken agreement with our society to pretend that what “Everybody knows…” is the last word in what’s so. That’s when we do violence to a subtle part of our being.

The misuse of Saturn limits our aspirations and enforces dead-weight conformity. Genuine Saturn does not squash dreams; it builds them. But when the Saturn force is abused – either manipulatively, or out of ignorance – it keeps us from putting our energy where our hearts know it should go.

This is the main pitfall spiritual seekers need to be wary of when it comes to working magic in the societal realm. On the face of things, Saturn governs nuts-and-bolts notions like “common sense” and “practicality;” but in common parlance such concepts are often just used to obstruct. They are hauled out to shoot down creative impulses; as in “You can’t launch a software revolution in your garage, Sergei; it’s unrealistic”. Or they are used to deny or delay evolutionary processes (Pluto); as in “Senators, it’s unrealistic to change “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” right now”.

I propose we reclaim Saturn, using it as it should be used: to steady ourselves, so that we can open up to the rest of the 2012 transit picture. We must ground ourselves in positive Saturn before we do anything else. This means getting out of denial. What else is “realism”good for?

At the same time, we need to reject the low-level versions of Saturn floating around in the mass mind. This means approaching notions of what’s “normal” with a cool, crisp skepticism. If high-level versions of Saturn were being used instead of low-level versions, we’d be measuring cultural ideas in terms of their effectiveness and stabilizing effect — rather than because they provoke volatile emotional reactions from crowds.

Consider the way America uses its money. Here’s a nice down-to-Earth topic, one that suits Saturn’s penchant for statistically verifiable facts and figures. A high-level use of Saturn would hunker down with the actual financial realities, and make pragmatic decisions based upon them. Rather than, say, indiscriminately thwarting any and all changes to a hideously unworkable system such as for-profit health-care.

We can always count on a certain sector of society to use Saturnine slogans as a smokescreen: “military preparedness,” “safety,” “homeland security.” But we are living in a historical moment in which the power of the human mind, infused with spirit, can defy these mendacious old con games.

Can you imagine what would happen if Uncle Sam withdrew its troops from everywhere on the face of the Earth where they have set up camp? (Osama Bin Laden had something like this in mind when he issued his three conditions for peace with the Arab world, though few Americans paused to even consider them. Whether or not you believe him to be a madman, his bullet points were and are unarguably sane.) We’d be out of Afghanistan and Iraq, and all the other places that don’t get as much press: Japan, Korea, the Philippines, Columbia, et al (and oh yes, now perhaps Yemen. Is it not astounding how casually the Yemen thing is being discussed? As if: What’s one more war?)

What would a high-functioning collective Saturn make of this situation (its placement in the USA chart, at the Midheaven, has this potential)? I propose that it would go about building the most efficient policy it could, first of all availing itself of all the relevant information.

Such as: that the military costs US citizens $720 million per day.

How remarkable it is that, in the ceaseless public debate about how the USA spends its money, this most critical bit of data is never referred to. If it were mentioned in the mass media, do you think our excitable pundits — the guys who sputter with indignation over “unchecked federal spending” when it comes to healing the uninsured — would be blithely tossing around the idea of invading another country? If the staggering amount of money that goes into these wars were openly discussed, isn’t it likely that a lot of Americans would say to themselves, “My goodness, what a lot of money we could save if we didn’t spend it that way”?

Of course, it is hardly an accident that facts like these remain unmentioned. The brainwashing of the populace by the US media is part and parcel of the old system. The long arm of the media supports the body politic. The public is both denied the facts that really matter, and deluged with factoids that do not matter. The flood of distracting non-information that pours out of the average American TV set effectively erases curiosity; to the point where we don’t know what we don’t know. Ignorance (negative Saturn) and dis-empowerment (negative Pluto) are two of the themes being hammered into group awareness by the 2012-era transits.

This is where the metaphysical perspective becomes critical. Folks with no taste for petition signing or agitprop can skip that level, if they choose. They can work directly on the energetic plane. Others may choose to work on several fronts at once. The important thing is that we repudiate the false cultural narrative and take back the power to define what is real. Then we allow the precedent-shattering outer-planet energies to course through us.

This kind of imagining brings on paradigm shifts, which fill us with power. On the personal level, we may discover that our minds have changed about what’s realistic and what isn’t. We may decide that dedicating our time to gorgeous bouts of creativity is practical, because the energy it generates feeds even the material aspects of our lives. We may decide that the ritual of sitting on a park bench for an hour, just us and the birds in the quiet of the morning, is not just uplifting, but sensible; in that it does more for our health than pumping our paycheck into health insurance.

On a collective level, this shift could manifest as populist movements motivated by life-enhancing, rather than life-destroying, social visions. It is already becoming obvious to a critical mass of people all over the world that ideas once derided as naive are in fact the most workable solutions of all.

Such as the idea of funding peace instead of war. It’s common sense.

Neptune conjoins Chiron to the degree on the 16th -17th of this month. Neptune is the planet of dissolution; that is, what sugar does in hot tea, and what our self-control does when we have an emotional melt-down. Neptune dissolves, erases and effaces things.

On a personal level, Neptune is associated with the little ego-effacements we endure in the course of living: those moments when our sense of competence disappears. It can throw us off-message; make us feel sloppy, ungrounded and confused. Such experiences weaken our focus on the external world, and humble our pride. This we do not like at all.

Part of the reason we don’t like it is that we’ve been conditioned not to like it. Modern societies define strength in terms of robust activity and competitive accomplishment. Humbling is for 15th-Century nuns; not for us. We equate humbling with humiliation.

But we will miss the point of Neptune transits entirely if we measure ourselves in terms of Type-A activity. These transits have nothing to do with worldly success per se (though they don’t preclude them; they’re just not about them). Neptune is about spiritual awareness. If it has to, it will weaken whatever stands in the way of soul wisdom.

Walls

The conjunction this month¹ is happening in Aquarius, the sign of collective intelligence. The most obvious place to look for this blurring and effacement right now is in the human collective. False separations are melting. illusions of superiority that make one group think it is different from other groups are gradually being erased. Neptune is trying to get humanity to see its inter-connectedness.

This planet, named for the god of the sea, makes its statements in watery terms: it floods, erodes and wipes out. It isn’t just the deltas and habitats of Earth that are threatened right now. Also being wiped out are the boundaries that separate countries. It’s bringing to the surface the fundamental arbitrariness of apartheid of every type.
It’s showing us the madness of the USA’s attempts to keep Mexicans from crossing its border with a literal wall. It’s making us look again at Israel, whose blockades and checkpoints have kept the people of Gaza trapped in their bombed-out peninsula, and whose leaders are now building a wall to keep out African migrants.

Such efforts are not only cruel but stupid. They are doomed to fail. While Chiron makes the wound of class and race divisions more and more obvious, Neptune is making our efforts to divide ourselves from each other as futile as building sand castles at high tide.

Cap and Trade

The world has been taking a crash course in Neptune symbolism since it opposed Saturn (consensual reality) in 2004-07. This was the transit that saw climate change cross the threshold from theory to common knowledge. Last year, Jupiter (dissemination of knowledge) added its promotional skills to the campaign, and the balance was tipped: for more and more people, global warming suddenly got very real. At the tail end of the year, in Copenhagen, the great powers of global officialdom admitted en masse that climate change posed a unique threat to life on Earth.

So people are listening up in a new way. The acceptance of climate change has opened the door to the acceptance of other aspects of our poor stewardship of the Earth, such as species extinction and the increasing shortage of clean water. To admit to the truth of these issues is a huge leap of consciousness. Sometimes the truth hurts, as we know; and letting all these things sink in has, over the past couple of years, has left many of us shocked and numb (negative Neptune).

We have been thrown off our bearings, and this makes us vulnerable. In this state we need to be particularly selective about what information we plug into. Should we listen to the big-power G12 delegates who convened in December — the guys who were driven to Copenhagen in specially commissioned stretch limos? Should we listen to the talking heads on TV, who portrayed the protestors there as irresponsible criminals?

To avoid being overwhelmed by the magnitude of what is happening — and to be of any use to our world — we need to cultivate an eyes-wide-open realism.  This starts by disabusing ourselves of the illusion that America’s elected officials and pundits – funded, as they are, by deep-pocket interests — can give us a workable way forward.

The powerful interests of the world have their stories ready about our various global crises, and it is these stories that fill the airwaves. But in order to make use of this information, we need to decode it. The “Cap and Trade” schemes being cooked up by Western powers and Wall Street bankers would allow mega-corporations to profit from the pollution they cause. While the conscience-driven activists who poured into Copenhagen from all over the world were gassed with chemical weapons and thrown in jail, the delegates inside the polished halls busied themselves with setting up an international speculative market that would buy and sell carbon emissions. It really is something out of a Stanley Kubrick parody, when you think about it.

If what we want is an understanding that is as vast as possible, once we establish a clear-eyed geopolitical perspective we must put what we know into cosmic perspective. These two levels of understanding do not conflict with each other. They are both true, and they are both more necessary than ever.

Cleaning Up Our Act

With denial out of the way, we face the knotty problem of facing the emotions that tend to arise when information this daunting begins to sink in. Fear, despair and helplessness are no fun, and we don’t like feeling them; but if we have made the spiritual decision to say No to denial, it is our responsibility to negotiate these feelings if and when they come up. By allowing ourselves to feel them, I don’t mean to say that we should stay stuck in them. That doesn’t help. It doesn’t help the Earth, and it doesn’t help us.

But the sense of catastrophe we are feeling does have a meaning. We are feeling this urgency for a reason; in the same way that the warning light on the dashboard of your car is there for a reason. Its raison-d’être is to point to something else. The various systems collapses of the 2012 years are pointers to show us how ignorant we have been, so that we can clean up our act.

If we could anthropomorphize for a minute and consider the situation from Neptune and Chiron’s point of view, we would see that worldwide calamities were the only way the recalcitrant human race was going to get hip to the fact that we are all in this together. The cosmos realizes that humanity missed the memo on this one; and as a corrective, it is stepping in. If it takes global warming and the breakdown of world financial markets to make us realize how interconnected we are, so be it.

When we assimilate this understanding as it applies to groups of people — for example, the wackiness of human groups trying to erect racial caste systems to try to prevent miscegenation — we can’t help but extend it further, to every buzzing particle of life on the planet. We start to realize that separating devices of all kinds are man-made ideas. Not Nature’s idea.

As the Bioneers say, “It’s all alive. It’s all intelligent. It’s all connected.”

Our fellow Earth-dwellers from the vegetable, animal and mineral kingdoms can teach us a thing or two. It doesn’t matter to the flora and fauna whether humanity calls their habitat Rhodesia or Zimbabwe. The Earth’s minerals don’t care which superpower owns the rights to them. Earth’s river and ocean systems don’t give a fig about how we categorize their tributaries. The mountains that loom over the plains don’t care what colors are printed on the flags men stick into them.

All On Board

We will be hearing a lot of “I told you so”s from the world’s visionaries in the years ahead. Those prescient souls who saw these crises coming decades ago are increasingly having their voices heard.

It has never been more obvious that necessity is the mother of invention. As the waters rise and the droughts spread, so are the profiles of once-dismissed theorists such as the hippie-engineers who develop clean cooking stoves for third world populations ; the African conservationist who has just been awarded a Goldman Prize; the urban planners whose advocacy of rooftop farming was once met by blank looks.

The women’s spirituality movement, which was seen as silly at best or blasphemous at worst to mainstream thinkers up until a few years ago, is now informing scientists, who call it the Gaia theory. We don’t hear the embarrassingly ignorant phrase “tree-hugger” too much any more. What we hear of is of thousands of young people graduating from green programs in college campuses worldwide.²

Earth-lovers who saw the writing on the wall have waited a long time to assert themselves in fully creative ways. Now, under the Aquarius conjunctions (collective activity) they are pooling their resources. The sustainable agriculture folks are joining forces with the clean-energy researchers; the anti-strip-mining activists in West Virginia are supporting the Nigerian farmers under siege by Shell Oil. Interconnectedness is the name of the game.

Butterflies, businessmen, spotted owls, soccer moms and Brazilian child street hawkers: we are all in this together, watching the old world get washed away.

Just like in the tale of Noah’s arc, we’re all in the same boat now.

______________

Notes:

1 The conjunction is the transit’s only exactitude this cycle, but we have been under its auspices for a while now. Chiron has been in Aquarius for 5 years (Feb 2005-Feb 2011), Neptune has been in Aquarius for 12 years (1998-2012), and they will meet up again in April 2011. The Super Conjunction of 2009 included Jupiter, too, exaggerating Chiron and Neptune’s lessons so we couldn’t miss them.

2 Many of the graduates of such programs seem to recognize that their relatively affluent upbringings allowed them to choose to acquire this knowledge, as a means to back up their idealism. If it seems surprising that this group lacks the sense of entitlement typical of their age, it makes sense astrologically. Born when they were and raised where they were, the best of them are aware of the sense of responsibility for the state of the planet reflected in the Cardinal Cross. At some level of consciousness, all of us know that we were born under a certain set of circumstances for a very specific set of reasons. The world situation is, in every case, the perfect backdrop for our soul development — not random; not a thing apart.

]]> http://www.mothersky.com/2010/02/skywatch-2/feed/ 0 http://www.mothersky.com/2010/01/monsters/ http://www.mothersky.com/2010/01/monsters/#comments Sun, 24 Jan 2010 01:36:03 +0000 jessica http://www.mothersky.com/?p=3238 As Saturn moves backwards down the ladder of early Libra, it is now returning to an exact conjunction with the Midheaven (top-dog status) in the Sibly chart of the USA. Saturn authorizes things: it names people and entities to positions of authority. In this placement it is submitting the country’s corporate and moral leadership to an exacting redefinition process, clarifying who bears the staff of state. At the same time, Pluto (corruption) is continuing its long, slow opposition to the collective Sun-Jupiter-Venus conjunction (ethics and values) . The square between them is showing us who really sits on the throne in this kingdom. Read More >>]]> As Saturn moves backwards down the ladder of early Libra, it is now returning to an exact conjunction with the Midheaven (top-dog status) in the Sibly chart of the USA.

Saturn authorizes things: it names people and entities to positions of authority. In this placement it is submitting the country’s corporate and moral leadership to an exacting redefinition process, clarifying who bears the staff of state. At the same time, Pluto (corruption) is continuing its long, slow opposition to the collective Sun-Jupiter-Venus conjunction (ethics and values) . The square between them is showing us who really sits on the throne in this kingdom.

It sounds like a cliché, but it must be said: This is a battle (T-square) to the death (Pluto) for the nation’s moral (Jupiter) core.

The Eclipse of January 14^th, which took place as Saturn was stationing, was in Capricorn (the sign governed by Saturn). Last Thursday, after the stunning energies of the week before had prepared the ground, the US Supreme Court handed down a decision that allows American corporations more rights than they have ever had before. The transits that showed up in Haiti as crumbling physical edifices (Saturn) and mass physical death (Pluto) showed up in the USA as the crumbling of the edifices of a government: another phase in the death of this democracy.

Layer by layer, the full meaning is being revealed of the USA’s Pluto in the 2nd  house (money) — the signature of plutocracy.

Our government’s perfidious lobby system has long been in place, as a corrupter of the legislative process; and  Wall Street’s crimes suddenly became front-page news two years ago when Pluto entered Capricorn and the karma of capitalism crashed into public awareness. But once Abramoff had been packed off to the slammer, the headlines forgot about K Street. And when the pundits announced that the recession was easing up (Nothing to see here, folks; just move along), we were to believe that the free market had staggered to its feet. A show of closure was performed last week when the titans of the finance industry were trotted out before the TV cameras to mumble semi-apologies into microphones.

It is clear that the powers-that-be have every intention of trying to cover up the rot at the core of the system, rather than digging it out to allow healing to begin.

Now that the Saturn-Pluto square is in full gear, we are seeing a new kind of national sacrilege: the cherished American notion of “free speech” has been pulled into the slime. The ruling last Thursday auctioned off US elections to the highest corporate bidder; not merely effectively (Pluto) — as it has always been –but explicitly (Saturn in Libra: through rule of law). Far more destructive to the republic than the strident warnings that get big news coverage — such as the complaints of tea-bag patriots or the name-calling of alarmist pundits — this judicial act re-defines (Saturn) the empowerment (Pluto) of the larger-than-life business entities to which Americans have vouchsafed their commonwealth.

The corporations have been given new life, but they have been given none of the responsibilities that go with life. Companies like Bechtel, Bank of America, Monsanto, Exxon et al are allowed to live and grow and sue for their rights, like humans; but they can’t go to jail. Should they be fined, their immense wealth will protect them from financial danger.

Moreover, unlike humans, they are held by neither a social nor a moral imperative to “do right” (Pluto opposed US Jupiter). Humans tend to form allegiances to this or that wider group, but corporations have no incentive to identify with any public good; their only allegiance is to their shareholders. The profit motive is morality-free (not immoral, necessarily; simply amoral.) In any case, with non-US citizens on their boards of directors, why should multinational corporations identify with America’s proud First Amendment trip? Are they likely to revere the spirit behind the law? Of course not. But Big Pharma, Big Oil, Big You-Name-It, are to be treated as if they had the same status as a creature with a sense of allegiance, a conscience, and a heart.

Pluto governs monsters: perversely unnatural creatures that are often the results of experiments-gone-horribly-wrong. This is the archetype behind the malformed atrocities of literature; the deformed villains and the hybrid demons with beasts’ faces and birds’ claws. Legends depict such beings as both terrifying and powerful; as humanoid but devoid of human feeling.

At this point in the Pluto-Saturn cycle we find the USA in the role of Dr Frankenstein. The super-corporations are our monsters. We created them, and they are dangerous.

Up in the sky are a series of transits that are designed to humble us; to squeeze the arrogance out of us. I realize most of us don’t like being humbled. But as you’ve probably heard me say before, liking has nothing to do with anything except Venus. Whether we like or dislike a transit is neither here nor there. The only question is: Are we going to learn what it’s trying to teach? The Cardinal Cross and the Aquarius transits are major humblings. Their motive is to curb our excesses, clarify our blind spots, and make us more human.

To astrologers who track the US Sibly chart, it’s no surprise why the American populace is feeling so anguished right now. Our collective self-image is being stripped bare by the Pluto-Saturn-Uranus T-square. Ouch. Like a giant band-aid being ripped off raw skin, the mask is being stripped off the reality.

As the transits zero in on the national Midheaven (public face), one of the facades that’s being stripped away is that of the Good Cop (Saturn). As a kid, I learned that the reason the USA was top dog in the world was — though it was never spelled out explicitly — our moral superiority. This is what schoolchildren in Victorian England were taught, too, about their country’s God-given right to govern one-quarter of the world. Past empires were quite unapologetic about their belief that a higher power compelled them. Thus inspired, they  galloped into undefended parts of the globe, appropriated the resources, and took up “the white man’s burden.”

How appalling this sounds to the post-millennial mind! But it is the attitude still being proclaimed by the self-professed patriots here and now who speak of “good guys” and “bad”.

My schoolbooks told me that part of our entitlement had to do with our being a champion of peace between nations (the US chart features Midheaven in Libra). In the mid-sixties — which was the last time we saw transits similar to what we are seeing now — Watergate and Viet Nam disabused large numbers of Americans of such delusions. Now, with the transits stripping off the country’s blinders more mercilessly than ever before, there is disillusion on an even larger scale.

Pluto was opposing the US Jupiter cluster (moral high ground) and Saturn was almost on top of the US Midheaven when it was announced that Obama would be awarded the Nobel Prize. What is so intriguing about the timing here is that the announcement actually exacerbated, rather than dispelled, the discontinuity between America’s peace-cop self-image, on the one hand, and the truth of its incessant militarism, on the other.

It wasn’t just a smattering of snide critics who pointed out the irony here. The first thing on observers’ minds worldwide was the fact that the peace prize was being handed to a man who was just about to green light more bloodshed in Afghanistan. The transits — sneaky buggers that they are — were exposing, in a backhanded way, the gaping contrast between the country Americans think they live in and the country the rest of the world sees.

Saturn has been crisscrossing the US Neptune (mass illusions) and Midheaven (standing in the world) for several years now. At the same time, Uranus (jolts and shattering) has been opposing Saturn since late 2008; and Pluto (exposure of decay) has been opposing the country’s natal planets in Cancer. The economic meltdown was the signal manifestation of all this; and it is not over, any more than this transit system is over. It is segueing into the 2012 years.

It does not take an astrologer to see that the world will probably experience a financial crash of even greater intensity than the one in late 2008. But it takes mental discipline to forestall the fear associated with this idea; and it takes spiritual commitment to focus instead on the ultimate meaning of what’s happening.

On the level of cultural observation, it takes independent thinking to ask some very simple questions; questions we would surely ask if we were more closely in touch with our common sense than we are with what the media says.

With Saturn (status quo) being blasted by Uranus (revolution), there is intense discontent on Main Street — the kinds of rumblings that historically have led to popular revolt (the real thing; not just the tea-bag kind). In the USA and elsewhere, millions of people will continue to lose their jobs while their social safety nets disappear, while at the same time, more and more power will become concentrated in the hands of the exclusive club of multinational forces that oversee the world’s governments. It seems to me that the question we should be asking is not “Will there be a mass uprising?” but rather, “Why are we not seeing a mass uprising?”

The answer to this lies in the manufactured deceptions that keep us moderns estranged from ourselves and each other. American pop culture is the engine for this malady of the soul. As the premier exporter of fads and commodities as thin and empty of nourishment as potato chips, the USA is the world leader in products whose purpose is to help us avoid self-confrontation.

The Chiron-Neptune conjunction, whose job is to point out our delusions, will be right on top of the US Moon when it reaches exactitude next month (February 16-17^th, 2010). These are extreme transits, and as such they are showing up in extremely different ways for different people. Over the last several years, many consciousness-seekers have been inspired to more clarity and purpose than they have ever known. But others have given in to an orgy of escapism, made easy by a cultural environment awash in ways to medicate ourselves (Neptune) and cover up our pain (Chiron).

Since the conjunction came into orb, we have seen an explosion of gadgets and trends aimed at keeping us from the truth of ourselves; from social networking — the conceit of “friending” electronically, rather than being a friend — – to the democratization of cosmetic surgery – an effort to win love and approval through plasticizing the body. In the ten years since Neptune went into Aquarius, compulsive consumer entertainments have proliferated– from video games to Indian reservation casinos (a stunning phenomenon, the tragedy of which runs many layers deep). These amusements render self-reflection all but impossible. Designed to distract, they keep our minds off our isolation and loneliness.

At this moment in history the human psyche is at a crossroads. Those who take up the challenge of transformation are breaking through lifetimes’-worth of old pain. Others are running around like chickens with their heads cut off, unable to concentrate. For the latter group, despite all the pseudo-communicating being done on little hand-held doodads, the failure to deeply connect has never been more evident.

The conjunction of Neptune and Chiron, which extends through 2011, is trying to teach us where our malaise originates. It is in essence a spiritual transit, intended to show us the paucity of genuine interconnection (Aquarius) in our lives, so that we may realize how profoundly we yearn (Neptune) for it. This is the humbling that is called for: that of admitting our pain, self-forgivingly, and crying Uncle — after which we can be released to heal (Chiron).

Mid-month features a surge of energy. Saturn’s station on January 13^th, just hours before the Solar Eclipse, will exacerbate the tension building between Pluto and Uranus,² whose square is the anchor of all transits between now and 2016. When Uranus moves into Aries this Spring,³ the forces of cardinality will be hugely intensified. It will be like a spark igniting dry straw.

For the next six years, ⁴ the conflicts indicated by these squares and oppositions will be at the forefront of human affairs. If we want to know the meaning of this era, the Cardinal Cross is our first tier of interpretation.

The second and third tiers of meaning are spelled out by the more quickly-moving planets. Their interplay provides the subplots in the world’s developing story.

Part of the show

There will be plenty of action. As January begins, Mars is flexing its muscles, fresh from its retrograde station. It will be nipping at our heels all winter. For those Baby Boomers with natal Pluto in Leo, the red planet has been inspiring obsessively productive focus (at best) and low-down, gut-deep power plays (at worst).

For all of us, of every generation, Mars is forcing a distinction: that between what we think we want vs. what our soul wants for us. When every part of us is aligned with what our soul wants, that’s when we become full participants in this extraordinary era.

This means we need to stop reacting to what isn’t there, and start responding to what is there. It’s really very simple. Then why does it feel so difficult?

Much of the problem stems from the climate of constant of distraction that keeps most modern people’s minds in addled, reactive mode. If we were able to tune out the noise, and listen to the cues with a silent mind, we’d be in much better shape to handle this month’s challenge: that of truly responding (Saturn) to the moment, and actively engaging (Mars) in what it has to offer.

For those who can manage this, there is tremendous power available this calendar year. It’s a power that explodes into being once our conscious mind gets in touch with our super-conscious mind (symbolized in this case by the Uranus-Pluto square). Our goal should be to show up for the cosmically-ordained rendezvous each of us set up, pre-incarnate, with the mysterious dimension of our selves who decided it wanted to be part of this show.

No one will be forced to do anything, of course. In high-stress times, just as in low-stress times, we have a choice. We can either allow ourselves to be taken over by the lower chakras of survival (negative Mars) and thereby waste our vital energies running scared, or we can get our more primitive drives to work with our more sophisticated drives. The latter type, associated with the upper chakras, are the ones that know how to create realities.

Transits of Mars, and of the other personal planets, can be used as a stepladder, helping us reach the full empowerment augured by the transcendental planets (the ones furthest from the Sun). This is when we start to identify with the deeper purpose of our chart. At that point it stops being a vague, wished-for concept. We start to feel it.

This is when our lives start to become fluid. Beneficial scenarios arise naturally, both in the outer world and the inner world. Organically, we feel driven to do the “right” thing. Herein lies the answer to the question so often asked by consciousness-seekers about the years ahead: But how will I know what to do?

When we’re living in the Now, we happen upon exactly those solutions that the moment requires.

Systems Collapse

The Saturn-Pluto square, which reached exactitude in mid-November, peaks again on January 31^st. This will push to a new breaking point the global systems collapse that broke through the crust of mass denial two years ago when Pluto (breakdown) moved into Capricorn (social institutions). Saturn, the planetary ruler of Capricorn, is echoing Pluto’s merciless purge of governments and financial systems worldwide. Each time this square peaks, the pressure mounts.

The fractures in the old power structures are turning into gaping crevices. Like eroding ravines, the walls of corrupt governments all over the world — in Africa, Afghanistan , Italy, Eastern Europe, North and South America — are crumbling in upon themselves.

In November’s Skywatch we discussed the death of the age of empire, a hot topic since Pluto entered Capricorn two years ago. Obama’s decision in early December to amp up the occupation in Afghanistan (to call it a “war” is misleading) was announced when Saturn and Pluto were exact to the degree, and surprised no one except those voters whose relief at seeing the end of George W. Bush still has them blinded.

Another layer of Pluto in Capriorn‘s meaning is the death of financial structures, which we can also infer from Obama’s decision. As Congress niggles and frets over the cost of health care for the poor, hundreds more billions of dollars have just been green lighted for robot planes to kill civilians in the mountains and plains of Central Asia.

Epochal Mistake

This decision was not just a mistake; it was an epochal mistake – one that matches the epochal transits above. Hearing Obama’s speech made one want to send him a copy of Heaven’s Command, in which James Morris describes the massacre of British occupiers at Kabal in 1838 ⁵. This tale of revenge is only one of a long series in the collective memory of the Afghan people. A century and a half after the English were driven to their deaths in those unforgiving ravines, Morris went back to Afghanistan and asked a toothless old villager what would happen if his country were occupied again. “The same!” he hissed.

By caving in to his generals and their war-contractor buddies in this decision, Obama has demonstrated that he has not only failed to learn from the fates of the Mongols, the British and the Russians; he has not even learned from his own government’s eight-year history in Afghanistan.  Since Uncle Sam’s bombs started falling on them, the Muslim world in general and Afghans in particular now have far more reason to agitate against the West than they ever had before. It is overwhelmingly the dirt-poor civilian population who, after being brutalized by forty years of war, are being martyred by the Pentagon’s killer drones. As for Al Qaeda — they’ve moved to Pakistan.

The stupidity of these politicians and warmongering pundits is morphing into insanity as they try to use the old imperial tricks to maintain power. But these tricks cannot work in our postmillennial world. They can only backfire.

As global infrastructures — meteorological, political and financial — further collapse over the course of this calendar year, it will become monumentally evident that humanity’s various status quos (Capricorn) are dying of old age (Pluto).

Only Respond

It really is quite a show.

As individuals, our experience of it will hinge upon our willingness to participate. Some of us will play our parts in a more overt way than others; everyone has a different modus operandi. Whether we respond to the Cardinal Cross by moving deeper inside ourselves in spiritual practice, or by exploding outwards in political activism; whether we convene meetings in an auditorium or hold hands in a hospice — what matters is that we act through our charts. That is, authentically.

In the years upcoming, many people will not respond at all; instead they will react to the energies around them. They will suck up the fear being pumped into the collective mind by unscrupulous voices in positions of authority, and they will frame their lives in terms of the faux-realities fashioned by the mass media. These folks will probably have a dreadful time.

Others will spend these years expressing who they are to the fullest. They will grow into the purpose revealed by their unique natal chart. They will attract into their lives people, ideas and activities that resonate to that purpose. Whether public or private, their energies will raise the vibration of the planet.

These are the people who will help the world transform.

_______________

Notes

1 The apocalyptic action film 2012 was an example of Hollywood exploiting the public’s anxiety, in this case cannily bestowing an archaeoastronomical gravitas to a standard-issue action flick. But the timing of the movie’s release reveals its other layers of meaning. 2012 hit the theatres two days before Saturn and Pluto squared for the first time (11/13/09).

2 So will the Mercury station on the fifteenth: two days after Saturn’s, with the Eclipse in between.

3 Against the backdrop of the Pluto-Uranus-Saturn T-square, in mid-May Jupiter will join the grouping; and, a few days later, so will the Moon — at the most storied degree of the zodiac: zero Aries. These will be followed by an extraordinary lunar eclipse in June.

4 There is no absolute boundary for the Cardinal Cross Years; Nature operates in gradualisms and transits bleed one into the other. But many astrologers mark its tenure by timing the square between Uranus and Pluto. This is the longest-running piece of the Cross, involving the most powerful and slowest-moving planets. It is exact seven times between 2012 and 2016.

5 Heaven’s Command: An Imperial Progress, Harcourt Brace,1973.

It’s a good time to consider what we mean by politics.

Sometimes the word seems to mean the outer world in general. As when you hear someone say “I’m not interested in politics” but you know they’re referring to something more all-encompassing than governmental systems. Is the real meaning here “I don’t like to think about global warming”? If so, the response can only be: Well, who does?

Then there are those who really are referring to political systems when they express lack of interest, many of whom defend their stance with the claim that politicians are all crooks and idiots (which probably masks another unspoken assumption: that “politics” only takes place in the USA). If that’s their rationale, true enough; but most fail to consider that the politicians the mainstream news deems worthy of coverage do not constitute anywhere near the full range of political thinkers across the cultural landscape.

Behind this myopian assumption is another one, more troubling because more entrenched: the assumption that it’s just about Democrats and Republicans. The media would have us believe that the national conversation is a two-joke-show; and, strangely, we accept this as the immutable truth.  What it is is a duopoly. And it keeps the American political imagination in a stranglehold.

If Cynthia McKinney ever got airtime, I wonder if more people would suddenly become interested in the state of the commonwealth.

It is undeniable that the connection between the will of the voters and the results of actual elections is getting more and more tenuous; given the workings of lobbyists, the unrepresentative electoral college, Supreme Court president-selecting and the fact that Wall Street holds our economy hostage, among other sobering realities.

Since the 2008 election the Democratic Party has sorely disappointed a lot of its liberal fans, who had expected the newcomers in Washington to sweep the system clean. I don’t know what led these folks to expect that the Democratic establishment was somehow less intimately bonded to the powers-that-be than their counterparts across the aisle, nor what they make of the situation now. One doesn’t hear much from them.

The Republican Party, which used to be an ideological construct, no longer is. It has betrayed its theoretical underpinnings (fiscal responsibility, moral accountability, dedication to the US Constitution, etc.) so thoroughly that it’s hardly even a party any more; its more like a collection of hot buttons waiting to be pushed.

Politics in the USA, as Gore Vidal has said, is now show biz. This era was launched by Ronald Reagan, who remains the gold standard for ersatz politicos. Such was the Gipper’s uncanny charm that he succeeded in bluffing his devotees, himself, and many of his enemies with the proposition that appearing to believe in something was enough. Reagan’s words never had the vaguest relationship to reality, but nobody minded. The content of his speeches was only an accessory, like the color of his tie.

It is bad enough that the American public is conditioned to expect big, phony feelings from its leaders (consider the sentimental displays we hear whenever a Christian Republican does something naughty). Worse, it is conditioned to reject anything else. We have reached the point where sincerity isn’t telegenic enough. An honest politician like Dennis Kucinich makes a large segment of the US public uneasy. He’s too real. He’s too short. Ralph Nader was too fearlessly accurate. He had to be marginalized and scapegoated.

The current star to don Reagan’s mantel is Sarah Palin; although, given the times, she has updated his brainless affability with apocalyptic vitriol. She has kept the Gipper’s just-plain-folks schtick and mixed it up with Rush Limbaugh’s attack-dog defensiveness.

Over the last few years, American culture has witnessed a merger of the pundit class with their politician counterparts, thus finalizing the equation with show biz that Reagan’s election began. In the years to come, it will be increasingly difficult for Americans to avoid the realization that all but a handful of their public servants are, like Glenn Beck and his ilk, professional front men whose job it is to get a chunk of the population lined up in a certain way. The agencies that employ these spokespersons rely upon their persuasive powers. They know they won’t get the public to line up behind the simple truth.

The plutocrats’ interests would hardly be served by a politician or a pundit who said on the air, “The guys who finance me want you to hand over billions of your money to the bankers, with no strings attached, after their crazed betting spree left you evicted and jobless.” This kind of thing is a hard sell. Better to fund the campaign of some suit who can issue bland non-explanations from a podium, or sponsor a shock jock who distracts the public’s attention with immigrant-baiting.

From here on the ground, it certainly seems that the epochal configurations up in the sky are coming along at just the right time. As we ready ourselves for this first year of its peak, we should keep in mind that the Cardinal Cross, with the US Sun in its cross hairs, promises break down of only those societal structures that are already in decay.

If there are any that still work, Pluto will leave them alone.

Now that Saturn is in Libra, it’s time to look at the issue of fairness.

Libra is an idealistic sign, and its tenets are a point of pride for many conscientious folks. Who doesn’t like to think of themselves as fair-minded? Saturn, however, does interesting things to the sign it’s passing through. This planet does not indulge our self-imagery; it exposes our inconsistencies.

Saturn’s two-and-a-half-year tenure in Libra is a teaching about fairness in the archetypal sense. Does this definition of fairness have anything to do with its conventional meaning? That’s what we’ll find out.

U.S. Saturn Return

In the USA, whose natal chart features Saturn in Libra, fairness is a big deal. For most Americans, “fair” means “both sides must be represented.” But which two sides? This question is seldom asked, because of the reductive premise that lies behind it. In American public discourse, when people think of “both sides” they think “Democrats and Republicans.”

Saturn, however, is the enemy of shaky premises and vague assumptions. It likes things solidly defined. When in Libra it will raise questions such as: Who says there are only two political parties? (Well, we know who. That is, we know that the powers-that-be have a vested interest in maintaining the Dems-&-GOP polarity as the only game in town. And we know they’d like Ralph Nader, Ron Paul, Matt Gonzales et al to go away. But let’s leave the question rhetorical for the time being.)

This transit will force into the open a peculiarly American dilemma. The USA’s crowning Saturn (Sibley tenth house)¹ makes us esteem fairness and equality as supreme virtues. We grow up feeling special that our country allows for the expression of divergent views. But the provenance and integrity of these views are seldom considered. The vast majority of the American populace doesn’t have enough information to cobble views out of. They don’t know what’s going on in the world, or how their own country works.

Are viable debates possible when the debaters lack rudimentary information? Students of American history will remember that the founding fathers’ number-one fear was exactly this. The Constitution warns, over and over again, that an ignorant populace cannot self-govern.

Informed vs. Uninformed

I have registered elsewhere my opinions about the American penchant for dividing voters down into two groups (for example, Red and Blue). Though these divisions are forever being referred to as conflicting ideologies, they aren’t really. That is, they are conflicting, but they aren’t ideologies.

We certainly have two opposing camps, with an abyss between them. Sometimes the battle is referred to as Liberals-vs.-Conservatives; sometimes it’s referred to as Elitists-vs.-Real-Americans. Whatever it’s called, the polarity here is not really about My-Ideas-vs.-Your-Ideas.

It’s about Informed vs. Uninformed.

No offense implied; I’m not calling anybody stupid. There’s nothing wrong with ignorance that can’t be corrected. I’m just saying, let’s call a spade a spade. It’s not a real debate if one side doesn’t know what they’re talking about. I’m not interested in conversations where I’m supposed to “give equal time” to somebody who thinks Obama is a muslim, or that Acorn is a threat to democracy. Better these folks should clue in to some basic facts than waste time in debates.

I don’t blame Americans for misconstruing what’s going on. As readers of my screeds know, I blame the mass media. And, like Gore Vidal, , I blame the policymakers behind the US school system, who seem to have decided some decades ago that if the USA was going to be a global empire it’d be best if the citizenry didn’t know beans about the rest of the world.

A populace that is knowledgeable about other countries is less likely to go along with the destructive geopolitical decisions of its leaders. Take the ol’ We’re-bombing-these-people-to-give-them-freedom approach to foreign policy. I propose that the odds of an American voter finding this policy sociopathic rise in proportion to the amount of accurate information that voter possesses.

For example, geographical information. It seems to have been decided at some point that the work of empire-making would be a lot simpler if Americans did not know where other countries were located, at least until after Uncle Sam had finished invading. After that, news broadcasts could show little maps to illustrate where the bombs were falling.

But if a country wanted to save a few trillion dollars in military expenses, a little education would come in handy. I‘m pretty sure that any fifth grader who looked at a map and saw Afghanistan located smack dab in between Pakistan, Iran and Russia would see immediately why a superpower would want to control it. Give an American kid a map and a history of the Silk Road and she’d understand right away why her parents’ taxes were funding this occupation.

Education is good for people. But it’s bad for the military-industrial complex.

Devolution Now

The breakdown of America’s self-image is part of a greater process. Western culture is in the process of devolving right now, so that humanity can evolve.

It is not just astrologers who have pegged the period we are in right now as world-altering. Environmentally conscious scientists have been trying to tell us for several decades that the upcoming crisis of peak oil represents a line in the sand for the modern world.² For an even longer time, the ancient Mayans have been posthumously warning us that ours is the era of ultimate choice. Many spiritual traditions have legends depicting this epoch as being about a long, wayward process playing itself out.

The USA, as the world’s hyper-power, plays a key role in this unprecedented drama. This struggling empire is undergoing a crisis of maturity (Saturn) , and of essential values (Pluto in the second house) at the same time.³

Americans who are up to it will want to get on the bus. This means embracing the immense collective changes afoot – not just as a political slogan, but as part of our soul path. It means conceding that if we are American, we are American for a reason. We each have a role in this critical re-framing of national identity; and if we want to live up to our charts’ fullest potential, we may have some self-deprogramming to do. Certain ideas we were brought up with will have to be closely reexamined. Some will have to be discarded as false.

Where in your chart is Saturn in Libra passing right now? This is where you are witnessing the deconstruction of the grand ideals of fairness, justice and balance.

Civil Conversation

How might we approach this deconstruction on an individual level?

To get off on the right foot with Saturn in Libra, we might press into service some old-fashioned rules (Saturn) of engagement (Libra). Though out of vogue for several decades, politeness and graciousness in personal encounters will be increasingly appropriate. It is time to develop a post-millennial etiquette. The pithy pronouncements of social guides like Miss Manners a.k.a. Judith Martin, the wonderful newspaper columnist, will become more and more relevant.

In intellectual discussions, the ability to reason will be tested. Saturn in Libra is about having grown-up conversations again. We can honor the transit by refusing to engage in disrespectful arguments. Remember Roberts’ Rules of Order? In grade school we learned to structure group discussions, and found that by cleaving to such boundaries as setting an agenda, raising our hands and awaiting our turn to speak, the proceedings were not only more civil, but they allowed us to decide things (Libra) and work towards a goal (Saturn). The trouble is, the state of American public discourse has become so chaotic and debased that a remedial step needs to happen first.

We will have to call out “debates” based on false premises.

A couple of years ago the brilliant political analyst Brian Becker was invited to appear on CNN. It was one of those shows that profess to give everybody their four minutes to speak, and he was to be their token anti-war voice. But Becker’s lucid, complex answers to sound-bite questions came off as out-of-synch. His intelligence didn’t fit the format. When he tried to explain an interesting idea, he was interrupted; when he resisted having his points simplistically rephrased, he was scorned. When he requested to be allowed to finish his sentence, he was shouted down.

We need to understand that this kind of format is a con. The word “debates” suggests meritocratic matches; but these exhibitions are about something else entirely. The networks’ true intention is to provide a gladiatorial blood sport. I am not so much condemning the bear-baiting aspect of these affairs – let people choose their entertainments where they will – as proposing that we understand the misrepresentation involved.

Fairness and balance is not possible when your opponent has rigged the game.

Terms of Debate

This transit is giving us an opportunity to clarify the collective conversation, and its first teaching concerns what happens even before the words and ideas start flowing. Before we do anything else, we need to identify the hidden infrastructure (Saturn) of the exchange (Libra).

We need to know who’s dictating the terms of debate.

As an astrologer, I am sometimes asked to debate scientists. It is thought that a feisty dust-up between a special-guest-science-teacher and a professional mystic will prove entertaining to an audience. Early in my career I earnestly took up the challenge. Doing my best to explain the Dark Mysteries to left-brain thinkers, I climbed up on the soapbox and tried to be persuasive, in an effort to out-authority the authority.

It was years before I realized that it was a trap, posing as a level playing field. The set up was that the scientist, as an exponent of the linear viewpoint we are all taught in schools, would sit in judgment of the circular viewpoint of the Divine Feminine. But this was apples and oranges: one cannot judge one paradigm using the vocabulary of another. In the context of this “debate,” not only was the paradigm-of-choice already established (it was of course the culturally normative one), but it was presumed to be the only one in existence. I was expected to use the criteria of that paradigm (empirical evidence, statistics, cause-and-effect) to explain realities that transcend such criteria.The windowless room of the radio studio, with its blinking machines and aura of technological mastery, itself bore witness to the unquestioned superiority of modern mechanistic materialism over ancient spiritual principles.

I resolved to respond henceforth to all such invitations with a statement of my own conditions. To wit: I would enter into such debates only if they were held on the beach under a Full Moon.

______________________

Notes:

See my book, Soul-Sick Nation, , Chapter Six.

There is reason to be skeptical of the information being disseminated by the official agencies tracking oil and gas supplies. A whistleblower with the International Energy Agency has said that the organization’s claims that fuel production will not peak before 2030 have been deliberately underplayed for fear of triggering panic buying . An Oct 09 report by the UK Energy Research Centre moves the forecast closer to the range of Cardinal Cross and the US Pluto Return, predicting that worldwide production of conventionally extracted oil could “peak and go into terminal decline before 2020.”

In addition to its Saturn Return, its upcoming Pluto Return and its skewering by the Grand Cross , the USA chart is experiencing a conjunction of Neptune and Chiron to its Moon (self-image). With Jupiter involved for the last time, this grouping will peak again this month at the solstice.

The squeeze is on. The Saturn-Pluto square, which has been building for several months, has now hit the 90-degree point. With Saturn freshly arrived in Libra and clicking into formation with Pluto at the second degree of Capricorn, the defining aspect of the Cardinal Cross is now in place.

We are going to need Saturn in the years ahead. If used with clarity, Saturn will build new infrastructures when our planetary karma hits the fan. But right now there’s a lot of low-level Saturn buzzing around, intensified by Pluto to the point of social insanity. When distorted, Saturn manifests as reactionary ideas. When Pluto is distorted, too, and added to the mix, reactionaries are empowered.

In the USA the Old Guard has hit the panic button. This segment of the population is reacting to the rumble of social transformation as if it were a life-or-death matter. Which of course it is.

To negotiate the forces of reaction we must understand them. Astrology tells us that Saturn governs tradition; but, like any term that has become a buzzword, this one is often used as a smokescreen. In the current cultural climate, “tradition” is often invoked by those who fear change. How can we tell when the concept is being exploited in this way? When the folks who call themselves “traditional” neglect to articulate what their traditions are.

Remember the woman who stood up at the town hall meeting last summer and said, eyes wet with feeling, that she wanted “her” America back? This was code, of course. Those who applauded her, fueled with the angry enthusiasm of the righteous, knew exactly what she meant. I’m pretty sure she was saying she did not want people with skin darker than hers, and accents different from hers, to move into the neighborhood, the schools, the Oval Office.

If asked what she did want, she would perhaps have answered, “A traditional America”. But to which America does this refer? Was she thinking of the America extolled in the famous lines on the Statue of Liberty, inviting to our shores the world’s “tired and poor?” Who knows but that those luminous words, with their compassionate embrace of immigrants, welcomed this very woman ’s ancestors to New York harbor.

I think it would help the national conversation a great deal if people were asked to define what traditions they are defending. When they talk about “traditional marriage,” for example, which model do they have in mind? The hard-scrabble partnerships of 17^th Century Massachusetts, perhaps? The polygamous arrangements in not-so-long-ago Utah? Or shall we go back further still (after all, the implication behind most “traditionalist” arguments is that those rituals that have been around the longest are the most valid), to the child-brides bartered off in real estate deals throughout most of recorded history?

And what are we to make of the evangelicals’ implicit claim that theirs constitutes “traditional” religion? In the longevity department, Hinduism and Mother Goddess worship , to name just two, are incomparably older than every sort of Christianity — especially the sort practiced in the American Bible Belt.

Then there is the “traditional family.” What exactly does this phrase mean to its champions? One suspects it means families like the ones Norman Rockwell painted fifty years ago. Even if we allow for a certain amount of nostalgic idealization (when I was a kid in the 50s, no family I knew looked like that), there is no sociological foundation for the widespread presumption among Americans that this kind of domestic unit is universal and eternal. The middle-class nuclear family is only a tiny blip on the time line of human living arrangements.

But the Family Values folks don’t seem to be interested in facts or historical perspective. So what are they interested in? In order to understand this we need to look at the psychology involved.

Consider this conundrum: “social conservatives” know all too well that their theories diverge from their behaviors.They are already deluged with proof of how messy, sexually profligate and prone to breakdown actual families are. Though they have made a campaign of laying these sins at the feet of the liberals, it is their own leaders who win the prize for the kind of behavior this group condemns as immoral.

This whopping inconsistency is perfectly exemplified by the phenomenon of Evangelical Preacher Crime. America’s rogues’ gallery of fallen clergy (Jim Bakker, Ted Haggard, ad nauseum) presents so glaring a counter-example to the traditionalists’ self-image as to argue for re-categorization as the rule rather than the exception.

And then there are the family-dishonoring politicians. Again the list is endless. It includes divorcé Ronald Reagan, estranged from his own offspring; Sarah Palin, with the pregnant teen daughter and almost-son-in-law-turned-Playgirl-model; Marc Sanford with the mistress in Argentina; Newt Gingrich, who cheated on his dying wife.

There seems to be an unspoken agreement between these guys and their fan base that when the hero falls from his pedestal he must wax obsequiously repentant, portraying himself loudly and fulsomely as a violator of the revered standard. Then, if his self-condemnation is maudlin enough, he will be instantly forgiven.

These exercises in shame and redemption function as collective catharses. They also seem, counter-intuitively, to strengthen the sense of moral superiority of these leaders and their fans. The result is a sort of Teflon syndrome that shrouds the transgressors (consider Sarah Palin’s statement to her admirers after word leaked out about her daughter’s pregnancy: “Hey, life happens,” she said; and her base was just fine with that). Fortified by celebrity sinners who fess up, the Saturn crowd gets to circle the wagons.

But this faction is holding up a system of crumbling social fantasies. The shenanigans that these moralists fall prey to — and then condemn themselves for, and then congratulate themselves for admitting to — are, now and always, part of being a human being.

Hypocrisy, too, is normal. We’re all hypocrites about something; inconsistency runs rampant all along the political spectrum. But Pluto’s job is to expose such vagaries of the social animal, warts and all; and Saturn’s job is to lend definition to that which is fuzzy and vague.

The practice of tolerance can be a pragmatic as well as a moral benefit during these times. It can help us avoid ending up with egg on our faces when our own foibles are exposed.