Aries Full Moon, Libra Solar Festival, October 2022 Cosmic Weather Forecast

You may remember that last month I predicted increased tension and a flurry of activity in sync with the Mutable T-Square at the end of September. "Life could become a balancing act on an accelerating Tilt-A-Whirl,"  I wrote. That has been so true for us!

Hurricane lan pushed through last weekend, and this week our web developer, Alex Smith, said it was time to push the button on the Satya Center website upgrade we've been working on for months. Alex built our first website in 2003 and without him there would not be a Satya Center as we know it.

We've been working day and night and now version 4.0 of the Satya Center website is up and running!

We've designed a new homepage with better navigation and an improved JavaScript menu. Most important of all, the shopping cart and checkout flow are now super smart, fast and easy, and we've created a new, delightful mobile experience for those using their phones to connect to us.

We now accept Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, American Express, Discover, Diner's Club, Shopify, Google Pay, Apple Pay, and Venmo for your convenience.

Detail from New Satya Center Website

We love having an upgraded website but we have spent 10 hours a day the last few days crushing little bugs and familiarizing ourselves with our new software platform's peculiarities. All in all, it reminds us why we hate learning new software with "all the intensity of a thousand burning suns"!

We hope you like Satya Center 4.0, and we encourage you all to provide us with your feedback.

Pluto by Franz von Stuck, 1909  Public domain

Russia wants to carve up the Ukraine, and Putin threatens nuclear war if his takings in Ukraine are attacked. In America, leading geostrategic thinkers believe the US should counter Russia with escalating reprisals, and go toe to toe with Putin.

There is a lot of talk about Russian regime change in Washington, but there has never been a war of choice attempting a coup against a nuclear armed country, and that is terra incognita for militaries around the world.

A Plutonic moment indeed, since Pluto rules nuclear weapons, the fog of war, and journeys into unknown underworld realms. Ominous indeed.

America's Pluto return occurs during the culmination of the Pluto in Capricorn years that began with the Global Financial Meltdown of late 2007, at the same time as the combative, divisive, revolutionary Uranus-Saturn square.

These long lasting outer planetary aspects have occurred in sync with a long-simmering financial and economic crisis of rampant inequality and economic instability that now appears to be reaching a boiling point. 

The 2007-2008 global financial and economic crisis threatened to trigger a global depression, which was only managed by central bankers' co-ordinated regime of ultra-low interest rates that pumped up bubbles in stocks, bonds, and real estate worldwide from 2010 to the present. These bubbles increased the wealth of global elites to truly Pharaonic levels while impoverishing the middle classes.

Rising inequality and a feeling that democratic institutions have failed to help the suffering middle classes have triggered a worldwide authoritarian populist uprising against the neoliberal democratic order, financial globalization and the rule of the American Empire in general.

America's military failures in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan have emboldened our country's enemies. Russia has taken up a vanguard position among the anti-American countries, and is now directly challenging the global hegemon.

The war in Ukraine is escalating. Russia has officially annexed Russian speaking regions of Ukraine near the Black Sea, declaring them a part of Russia. I predicted Putin was focused on carving up Ukraine and obtaining these territories in my April newsletter, at the time Russia invaded Ukraine. 

"Russia's invasion of Ukraine is from one perspective a war of aggression designed to disarm and dissect the Ukraine, extending Russia's sphere of influence to include much of Southeastern Ukraine, which is full of Russian speaking people," I explained in the Libra Pink Full Moon, Aries Solar, Festival Passover and Easter 2022 Cosmic Weather Forecast .

"The Eastern and Southern areas of the Ukraine are predominantly Russian speaking areas, where the bulk of Ukrainian coal reserves are located. Numerous polls of the people in this part of the Ukraine show large numbers who want to rejoin the Russian Federation," I wrote. "This area of the country has been a site of civil war since 2014, when an anti-Russian, Ukrainian nationalist government was installed following a coup."

Despite the fact that Russia has formally annexed these Russian speaking geo-politically crucial regions of Ukraine, Ukrainian forces are currently staging a strong counterattack in that area. Russia has called up another 500,000 troops, and is reportedly planning to send its next generation hypersonic missiles and other advanced weaponry into the war zone by winter, when analysts expect a major Russian offensive.

Experimental hypersonic aircraft layout during the "Armiya 2021" exhibition.
Kirill Borisenko, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

President Putin has issued numerous warnings that if NATO forces intervene or impinge on Russian territories, including the newly annexed provinces in the war zone in Ukraine, Russia reserves the right to use tactical nuclear weapons to destroy Ukrainian infrastructure and military bases, and perhaps even NATO targets.

That winter offensive will occur at the same time that Europe will be experiencing an unprecedented natural gas shortage resulting from sanctions against Russia. This week OPEC nations, including Saudi Arabia and Russia announced a cutback in oil production that will only exacerbate the growing energy crisis and send prices for oil and gas skyrocketing back to levels first seen at the start of the Ukraine War, or perhaps even higher.

Following the recent sabotage of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 Pipelines which had supplied Europe with Russian gas, a dramatic shortfall in European energy supplies is assured. Western media blame Russia for the sabotage, although it is in Russia's long and short term interest for the pipelines to remain intact.

In February, Joe Biden told reporters, “If Russia invades…then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.” After a reporter asked how the US planned to end a project that was under German control, Biden responded, “I promise you, we will be able to do that.”

Now, Europe cannot realistically seek a peace agreement with Russia that would restore their winter flow of gas for heating. I ask myself, "Who benefits?"

Of course NATO leaders are not seeking a peace agreement, but rather planning to push Russia out of the Ukraine altogether. If Ukrainian forces are successful in pushing Russia out of the newly annexed provinces, that could trigger a potential Russian nuclear attack, because Russia has been very clear that if NATO attacks the Russian homeland, Putin would feel free to use nuclear weapons in Russia's defense.

Regardless of the situation on the ground in the Ukraine, skyrocketing prices for oil and gas and the shortages of heating fuels in Europe will trigger a financial markets meltdown in several countries and a major recession, perhaps even an EU wide economy shattering depression. 

Several synchronized once-in-a-generation events appear to be precipitating the bursting of the Global Financial Markets Bubble in bonds, stocks, corporate debt, third world debt, real estate and derivatives, and the pain will not be limited to Europe. It will be global in nature.

The Covid Pandemic disrupted supply chains worldwide at the same time that geopolitical realignment favored the lengthy expensive process of onshoring industrial production in developed countries. 

These disruptions of the globalized economy coincided with the weaponization of financial flows and energy supply chains as a newly empowered Eastern Bloc and West countries faced off in a New Cold War. New trade barriers and tariffs added to the breakdown of existing global business arrangements, fueling inflation.

Trillions of dollars of Covid relief money triggered a further inflation of already tightly stretched financial bubbles in global stocks, bonds and real estate.

By 2021, as supplies of goods were constricted, financial markets went into a feeding frenzy and prices rose rapidly, it became clear that the United States, and the global economy generally, were suffering from the kind of rampant inflation last seen in the late 1970s, after the OPEC oil price shock.

The Federal Reserve responded by implementing the most severe regime of interest rate hikes since the early 1980s, when millions lost good jobs and a major recession stalled the US economy.

The results so far in 2022: The Fed has hiked interest rates 3% so far and is on track to increase them another 1.25% by year end.

Stocks are in a bear market, down 25% from their previous highs. The bond market has suffered the worst losses in US history. Housing prices across the country are falling for the first time in a decade. Two straight quarters of negative GDP growth signal a recession has already begun.

There is incessant talk in financial markets about a Fed pivot to lower interest rates, but Wall Street is just not listening to what the Fed is saying. They don't want to hear it.

Fed officials say they expect to continue rate hikes through 2023, and astute Fed watchers expect that the Fed will not be prepared to pivot until they see the pain caused by a rise from current low rates of 3.5% unemployment to a sustained extremely painful 6% unemployment rate. Each 1% increase in the unemployment rate translates into well over a million jobs lost. 

Wall Street believes that financial markets are addicted to extremely low interest rates and that emerging market countries, corporate issuers of junk bonds, corporations borrowing money to buy back their own stock, mortgage holders, and a host of holders of risky currency, real estate and other financial derivatives, like credit default swaps, will all sustain unmanageable losses if the Fed continues its current course.

Michael C., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Already in England, which is not yet officially a Third World country, there was a financial panic surrounding risky real estate derivatives held by pension funds, and the Bank of England had to step in to avoid a Lehman Brother moment that could have caused a total financial market meltdown and loss of confidence in the pound sterling.

There are currently over $600 trillion in various flavors of financial derivatives in the global system, and most of those holdings are black box securities, traded in opaque markets that are not normally well regulated or understood by central banks or governments around the world. A large proportion of those derivatives are interest rate sensitive, so many on Wall Street think the Fed can't keep raising rates because the risk of financial meltdown is too severe.

Wall Street is probably wrong. The New York Fed released a paper last week explaining why they will continue to play their game of chicken with financial markets, so we can expect higher rates in our future.

The Fed says that when a big bubble is created by low interest rates and financial players are making big bets with vast sums of low cost borrowed money the interest rate required to bring the economy back to normal will be well above the interest rate that represents an equilibrium in financial markets.
In short, the financial system will become unstable before the Fed can reduce inflation by throwing vast numbers of people into unemployment and reducing overall demand for goods and services. This problem is what caused financial panic in London recently.

So the Fed knows they must try to manage a potentially dangerous series of financial crises while continuing to raise interest rates to achieve their objective and they intend to pursue their objective even if things start to break.

As the Fed and Wall Street confront one another, it's the monetary policy equivalent of the US and Russia going nose to nose while escalating the war in Ukraine and threatening nuclear war.
The Fed's willingness to risk the stability of the financial system in pursuit of low inflation bothers me, because it is based on their belief they can manage any emergent crises they create in the process. But the Fed's forecasting track record recently has been quite poor and they have not been able to predict the effects of their own policies on markets and the economy in recent years.

Not much more than a  year ago the Fed made the following forecasts: 

1. Rates will remain lower for longer.

2. Fed is unlikely to raise rates until 2024.

3. We believe a recession is unlikely.

4. Inflation is transitory and not a problem.

5. Inflation should fall to 2% in 2022.

How much more wrong could they have been? 

 Royal Australian Air Force Leading Aircraftswoman Adele Taylor gives a safety brief to passengers aboard the KC-30A Multi Roll Tanker Transport (MRTT) before a flight in support of Cope North 13 on Anderson Air Force Base, Guam, Feb. 13, 2013. 
U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Matthew Bruch, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Your pilot recommends that you fasten your seat belts. We are entering into an unprecedented storm that could test the structural integrity of our aircraft. Be prepared to apply oxygen masks and feel free to take this opportunity to say some prayers.

On Sunday, October 9 at 4:55 PM Eastern Daylight Time the Full Moon in Libra conjunct the wounded healer Chiron opposes Sun and Venus in the warrior sign of Aries. 

Libra constellation from Uranographia by Johannes Hevelius.

The celestial spotlight shines on our relationships, and we are challenged to establish a dynamic equilibrium between our own needs and desires, associated with Aries, and the needs and desires of our significant others, symbolized by Libra.

Since Venus and Chiron are intimately involved in the Sun-Moon opposition, we would do well to attend to our love relationships. It is quite likely that old relationship wounds could surface for healing, and we may be called upon to offer our much needed love and support to those in our inner circle of loved ones, friends and family.

It's a good idea to take some time off from our daily work and routine this next week Now is the time to relax and allow our minds and bodies to recover from engagement with the many stressors we are all experiencing in these days of global transformation.

Those stressors will re-emerge as early as October 12, when belligerent Mars in Gemini squares Neptune in Pisces. Feelings of exhaustion will coincide with the arousal of nebulous desires. This unpleasant sensation will subside as quickly as it appeared, however.

The Sun in Libra makes a harmonious trine to Saturn in Aquarius on October 12, and trines Mars in Gemini on October 18, signaling the start of a new cycle of activity in which we can work more consciously to achieve our goals within the limitations we encounter in our interactions with others and with the world at large.

We will be able to enter into a Libran dynamic equilibrium with the Universe, which is experienced as a conscious awareness of new paths forward in life, and a sense of being in the flow, generally.

Major outer planet aspects will dominate Cosmic Weather patterns toward the end of October and into the months to come. Outer planet aspects indicate long term transformations in the collective consciousness. 

On October 23, as the Sun and Venus enter intense Scorpio, we all benefit from a little bit of Scorpio's famous X-Ray vision, and we can see more clearly into people, places and key situations in our lives. 

Saturn in Infrared

Infrared image of Saturn taken by HST's NICMOS instrument, courtesy NASA

The same day, Saturn finally ends its long retrograde phase, moving forward in trine with Mercury. This aspect symbolizes oppressive restrictions lifting and a sense of personal empowerment arising from a new practical vision for self-improvement and a new blueprint for manifesting our true heart's desires.

The square between slow-moving outer planets Saturn in Aquarius and Uranus in Taurus continues to dominate cosmic weather patterns for the foreseeable future. This aspect reached a point of maximum power in February 2021 and is once again within one degree of exact on October 23rd. Saturn will enter Pisces in March 2023, and we can begin to see this challenging aspect in our rear view mirrors.

As we know, this aspect has been associated with financial crises, economic collapse, geopolitical turmoil, the rise of autocratic leaders, diminishing democracy, curtailment of individual freedoms, and unprecedented rebellion by people responding to the call for change within an ossified and increasingly unsustainable civilization. 

On October 31st, Mars in Gemini, associated with mental cruelty and naked aggression in the Thoth Tarot deck, makes a spooky Halloween retrograde station, ushering in five months of retrograde Mars in Gemini, just in time for the November elections in America. Mars retrograde often symbolizes aggressive behavior manifesting in irrational ways that harm the individual or group initiating the aggression.

During this entire five month period Mars in Gemini will be Out Of Bounds, an astrological aspect that serves to heighten all this Martian mayhem. Technically this means that Mars is traveling outside of the plane of the ecliptic, which is the observed track the Sun takes around planet Earth. Generally planets remain within the plane of the ecliptic and when they travel Out Of Bounds planetary activity expresses itself in odd, inexplicable, and irrational ways. 

With Mars in Gemini, the gloves will come off, self-destructive acts of aggression will abound, and the rules of combat in every area of life will suddenly no longer apply. 

This Out of Bounds Mars retrograde in Gemini bodes ill for America's cultural and political warriors, who will all be embroiled in a lengthy and contentious struggle over the election results, which are sure to be contested at the state and local level all across the country.

Whoever initiates military offensives in Ukraine is likely to suffer greatly, although the suffering may not be limited to the aggressor, since Mars in Gemini can inflict lots of collateral damage.

If the Federal Reserve continues its aggressive policy of hiking interest rates during a recession in a tremendously fragile moment for global financial markets, blowback could be extreme.

The collective consciousness is likely to respond to this aggressive Grand Irrationality by entering full blown Pan-ic mode. Those who can keep calm and carry on in the midst of the storm will stay safe and can achieve great things by harnessing the wild energy unleashed during this time.

The Great God Pan, aka The Devil, Thoth Tarot Trump XV

America's Pluto return, with Pluto in Capricorn, will continue to manifest its trademark signature of Global Pan-demics, Political Pan-demonium, and Naked Oppression by America's Pluto-cracy.

We must endure a long six months until Pluto finally progresses into Aquarius on March 23, 2023, only to retrograde back into Capricorn twice before shifting into Aquarius for good on November 19, 2024.

It's still the Dark Night of the American Soul for some time to come. Much care should be taken by our leaders if they are to avoid Empire-shattering mistakes, such as triggering nuclear war, crashing the American architected global financial system, and killing off American democracy for the sake of maintaining the unsustainable status quo. 

Each one of us would do well to utilize discernment to avoid getting caught up in the social, political and cultural turmoil around us. While the system collapses in slow motion, we must remember this is a process that has taken some 14 years to reach the current crisis point, and it could be that this crisis will continue for decades to come.

If we can learn to value what is truly worthwhile and let go of that which glamorizes but does not constitute true wealth in our lives, we will be well served.

If we can join together with others committed to preserving what is best in our culture while rejecting the conventional wisdom of the consensus reality that seeks to perpetuate the decaying American Dream, we will be able to create islands of sustainable sanity that can persist into the future, despite the ongoing crumbling of our global hydrocarbon fueled dystopian civilization.

We are the seed banks safeguarding the human spirit in a Dark Age. Jane and I send you all Love and Light this Full Moon and we affirm that you all receive the grace and guidance you need to navigate these troubled waters with ease and grace.