Capricorn Full Thunder Super Moon, Cancer Solar Festival July 2022 Cosmic Weather Forecast

Stormy Sunset, Winston Salem, North Carolina, photo by Jane Sherry

Here in Winston Salem, thunderstorms have been popping up on a daily basis around sunset, creating spectacular skyscapes, ear-piercing thunder, and fearsome cane lightning strikes, soaking our garden, and turning the hard red clay soil the texture of mush in low lying spots.

 

We welcome the rain, though, because we were on the verge of drought here a few weeks ago. Our garden seems to thrive despite all obstacles this year, as do the beetles.

 

We have been harvesting such an abundance of yellow and red potatoes, huge beets, chard, cabbage collards, herbs and flowers that it's hard for two people to carry it all inside from the car in one trip. We do our garden chores early. It gets so hot and steamy in the mornings that you want to escape the garden by 9 am!

 

Still, working in our garden seems a lot more relaxing than reading the news during the July 4th holiday weekend.

 

The news media focused primarily on a Chicago sniper, who killed seven people and wounded dozens more during a holiday parade. 

 

"Gun violence spiked over Fourth of July weekend, with shootings reported in nearly every U.S. state that killed a total of at least 220 people and wounded close to 570 others," according to a CBS News report. 

 

There have been a total of 22,733 deaths from gun violence so far in 2022 in the United States, with 19,684 injured.

The remarkable spike in gun violence of the last few years is yet another example of Plutonic forces at work, surfacing the shadow side of the American collective consciousness.

The response of America's Supreme Court (SCOTUS) to this epidemic of gun violence has been to legalize the public display of deadly weapons throughout America and to curtail the ability of individual states to enact any form of gun control legislation or regulation. 

This is a decision only the National Rifle Association and The Proud Boys could love. But it's not surprising, when you consider that the US Supreme Court has been throwing a right wing tantrum all summer long.

"SCOTUS recently broke precedent about federal money for church schools and followed it up with a ruling that school districts cannot prohibit high school football coach’s prayers on the field," reports author, and activist Reverend Matthew Fox, internationally acclaimed spiritual theologian, Episcopal priest, and activist who was a member of the Dominican Order for 34 years. 

Matthew Fox is a spiritual theologian, an Episcopal priest and an activist for gender justice and eco-justice. 
He has written 37 books, including Original Blessing, The Coming of the Cosmic Christ, A Spirituality Named Compassion,
The Reinvention of Work, The Hidden Spirituality of Men, Christian Mystics and The Pope’s War.

Reverend Fox sees these rulings and the SCOTUS ruling on abortion rights as a dangerous breach in the separation between church and state in our country. 

"This decision to turn its back on pluralism shows clearly in the SCOTUS decision to gut 49 years of precedent and kill Roe/Wade since most religions do not recognize a fetus as a human being until a certain number of months (including most Christians, among them Saint and doctor of the church, Thomas Aquinas)," Fox explains.  "The Jewish tradition (that of Jesus) believes the fetus is not a human until it leaves the womb."

"Clearly Dobbs [the SCOTUS decision overturning Roe vs. Wade and women's rights to abortion] demonstrates venom toward women and especially poor women many of whom are women of color.  This hardly echoes Jesus’ teaching of a 'preferential option for the poor,' does it," Fox continues. "What research did [Justice] Alito do into the impact Dobbs will have on poor women?  In fact, Dobbs will kill poor women and render poor families even more poor."

Make no mistake about it. The Supreme Court has been transformed from a conservative custodian of legal precedent into a right wing Christian revolutionary force, intent upon rolling back all the civil rights, environmental, and social justice gains attained by hard fought mass struggles of the Nineteen Sixties and Seventies. This Court wants to turn back the clock to the Eighteenth Century.

 

Already this summer the Supremes have eradicated the rights of women in this country to bodily autonomy and to legal abortion. In the wake of the overturning of Roe v. Wade, states across the country have rushed to pass Draconian legislation that would force all women, even victims of rape to carry their babies to term, and legal experts warn that the Supreme Court decision opens the door to the criminalization of birth control and the end of gay marriage.

In addition, the Supremes mounted a direct challenge to federal government efforts to mitigate climate change, by restricting the regulatory authority of the EPA to control emissions from electric utilities. This decision also opens the door to further court challenges to all kinds of federal environmental regulations.

The Democratic Party controls the White House and both houses of Congress but has done little or nothing to protect civil rights, women's rights, citizen safety or the environment in the wake of these radical Supreme Court decisions.

It's been nearly a year since Texas’s infamous Senate Bill 8—the bounty-hunter bill that has effectively outlawed and criminalized abortions, empowering vigilante legal action against abortion providers and women—took effect. "At the time, President Biden promised a ‘whole of government’ response to what he called the ‘unconstitutional chaos’ of the Texas bill," reports The Nation magazine. "So far, we’ve seen a lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice that was dismissed by the Supreme Court before the ink was dry on it, and nothing else from the whole rest of government."

As the 2022 November elections approach, Democrats have yet to formulate a robust response to the newly radicalized Supreme Court decisions that threaten to undermine 50 years of legal precedents and gut all the major achievements of past Democratic Party Presidents and Congresspeople. 

 

It's not surprising that many progressive Democrats now favor radical changes to our judicial system. Even Joe Biden, who started his career opposing the right of women who had been raped to have an abortion, now says he supports ending the filibuster so a bill could be passed expanding the Supreme Court in order to reverse the recent Supreme Court decision on Roe v. Wade. Progressives have suggested establishing Supreme Court term limits, and other legal remedies that would essentially redefine the role of the Supremes in the American political system. 

This is of course all Plutonic stuff. During its Pluto return, America is facing the reorganization of its legal system one way or another. We can continue down the path toward a Christian fundamentalist right wing populist legal system that transforms the Republic into a theocratic state not much different from Israel or India, or the vast majority of Americans who oppose that transformation will have to completely change the rules of the political game as it is currently played. 

A new American revolution is coming, one way or another. That is Pluto's message to us now. The old system is imploding into a radioactive mass of rubble, and it is up to all of us to fight for our rights and build something new. 

America's leaders may be at war with one another on domestic issues, but they are united in support of the war in Ukraine. They are unanimous in their support for the global American military Empire, and they are going to spend trillions of dollars to prepare for war with both Russia and China, simultaneously.

They envision long, drawn out conventional warfare such as we see in Ukraine, and also potential exchanges of nuclear weapons with Russian and Chinese enemies.

The American war machine uses more Plutonian hydrocarbon fossil fuels than most countries, and is one of the largest emitter of carbon dioxide in history. "Since the beginning of the Global War on Terror in 2001, the military has produced more than 1.2 billion metric tons of greenhouse gases," according to Inside Climate News.

The American War Machine is in many ways the leading global climate change manufacturer in the world. Its primary mission is to control the flow of petroleum and gas across planet Earth in order to secure American military and financial supremacy. Plutocrats controlling American oil companies and defense contractors and major banks controlling the global flow of petrodollars are the largest beneficiaries of this ecosystem killing machine.

 

In the last few days, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy petitioned the United States and our NATO allies for over $800 billion dollars to support Ukraine's war with Russia and to fund rebuilding efforts in the wake of widespread destruction.

The US Congress has already agreed to send tens of billions of dollars worth of aid to the Ukraine but it is unclear whether that will materially affect the outcome of the war or lead to a rollback of Russian forces. Apparently the US is running out of Javelin and Stinger missiles that are vital to the Ukrainian war effort, and Russian artillery vastly outnumber Ukraine's forces.

"Everything now depends on what [the West] gives us," deputy head of Ukrainian military intelligence Vadym Skibitsky recently told Newsweek magazine. "Ukraine has one artillery piece to 10 to 15 Russian artillery pieces."

There is no indication that the vastly outgunned Ukraine forces will be able to defeat the invading Russians, even with Western help. The Russians now control the strategically important southeastern part of the country, where most of Ukraine's valuable resources are located, and are close to controlling all Ukrainian seaports as well.

In our April Cosmic Weather Forecast,  I said that "The Russian war aims are still unclear, but appear to be designed to capture the Southeastern part of the Ukraine, in alignment with historical Russian strategic priorities, and to thwart US and NATO attempts at encirclement [of Russia]."

"The operation’s goals . . .[appear to be] centered on the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine, where pro-Russia separatists have been fighting since 2014," according to an April NYTimes report. "It was the first time that Mr. Putin himself had effectively defined a more limited aim for the war, focusing on control of the Donbas — and not all of Ukraine, which Mr. Putin and his subordinates have said should not even be an independent country."

In the last three months, the Russians have basically achieved their goal of controlling Southeastern Ukraine. "Russia’s armed forces retain advantages in force size, equipment (specifically artillery and long-range fire), air support, and electronic warfare," according to a June 29th report from the Congressional Research Service entitled Ukrainian Military Performance and Outlook. 

Economic sanctions imposed on Russia have disrupted oil and gas flows to Europe, and economists fret that by the fall Germany's GDP will fall by around 14% as a result, unless Russian gas starts to flow again. That scale of GDP contraction is far more than the 10% contraction in GDP that marked the onset of the Great Depression in the United States during 1937 and 1938. The Euro has dropped precipitously in value in the last few weeks as a result.

"On a global level, the U.S. campaign to get other nations to sanction Russia to punish it for invading Ukraine has been a flop," Michael Lind reports in The National Interest. "A map of the countries that have sanctioned Russia includes the United States and Canada, Europe, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand. Most countries in the rest of the world, including India, Mexico, and Brazil, along with most nations in Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa have refused to go along."

In Cold War II, the non-aligned block of nations outnumbers US allies considerably, indicating that US soft power is in relative decline. It remains to be seen what European countries will do when sanctions on Russian gas plunge the continent into another Great Depression. Will they remain steadfast allies of the United States, willing to endure any amount of pain to achieve Washington's war goals in Ukraine? That remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, US leaders have targeted China as America's number one geostrategic rival, and are preparing a trillion dollar upgrade to America's navy in order to maintain dominance in the Pacific. But China is also upgrading its navy and other armed forces at a meteoric rate.

And America is steadily losing the economic war to China, while China is steadily adding new trading partners to its already impressive roster of client states.

"China is pushing the United States and its allies out of one global market after another," Michael Lind reports in The National Interest. "In 2010, China surpassed America as the world’s leading manufacturer. In 2021, China surpassed South Korea as the world’s leading shipbuilder. A single Chinese company, DJI, makes 70 percent of the world’s civilian drones. One-third of global industrial robots are made in China, which is also the world’s largest market for them. It is probably only a matter of time before China challenges the United States, Europe, and Japan in aerospace and automobiles as well."

Russia, China, Iran, India and other non aligned nations are already planning for a post-American century. They are busily building an alternative financial system that allows them to trade without using the dollar denominated global banking system and American multilateral financial agencies like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. This is a multi-decade project, but it indicates a level of serious intent by the strategically all important Eurasian countries, along with many Latin American countries, and much of Africa, who collectively intend to supplant American institutional arrangements with a new Eurasian centric Global Order.

President Donald Trump accelerated this trend when he rejected America's role as global leader and now, as President Biden claims "America is back", the United States appears to be stalemated in its efforts to reassert its dominance militarily, culturally, and economically. American culture no longer appeals to the majority of people in the world, and American democracy no longer inspires awe, fear, envy or esteem. 

The vast majority of Americans surveyed recently said that America's global reputation is in decline. But that has not turned the American people against the notion of America as the world's policeman. So far most Americans support America's war in the Ukraine, and vast majorities in both parties continue to support America's Plutonian hydrocarbon based war machine that is polluting the planet and enriching Plutocrats in the defense, oil, high technology and financial industries.

Americans of both parties appear to be extremely threatened by the prospect of a diminishing global Empire. Republicans want to Make America Great Again.

Democrats declare that America is Back, and the dominant neo-conservative wing of Democratic Party foreign policy experts favor a long drawn out Ukraine war that will make Russia bleed, and perhaps even break it up into several harmless, smaller states. Maybe they forgot that Russia is a nuclear power?

As Americans, our narcissistic ambition, our drive to be "number one" in the world, and our determination to compel peoples around the world to adopt our political system, our values, our religion, our economic system, our culture and our way of life have appeared to us as a heroic adventure.

Yet seen from a spiritual perspective that heroic adventure is really a Plutonic compulsion to exploit the resources, the labor, and the energy of less technologically developed peoples for our own collective advantage. That's what colonialism and imperialism are all about. 
When others resist our grand designs, we label them as lesser peoples, undemocratic autocrats, uncivilized savages, and we impose our beliefs and our social systems on them by force. This has been the core of the American adventure since the times of our slave holding Founding Fathers, who established this country and its Constitution the last time Pluto was at this same exact position in the sky. 

This time around, as Pluto returns to the same position in Capricorn it inhabited at the time of America's Declaration of Independence, our leaders are not initiating a war for freedom from an oppressive, outdated feudal system led by an inbred, mentally challenged King.

No. This time, in a fit of hybris that outdoes the Imperial ambitions of George III, our leaders have declared a Cold War against both Russia and China to maintain our hegemony over the Eurasian land mass, which is the largest and most densely populated area of planet Earth, and the most strategically and militarily important piece of real estate known to humanity.

It is in Eurasia that Great Powers play the Great Chess Game of Imperial domination that has shaped the politics and economies of the world for the last 800 years, since the time of the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, and English Empires. America has dominated Eurasia through an elaborate network of military and naval bases for 100 years, and this has been the foundation of the first and only truly Global Empire the world has ever seen. The rewards for the American elite have been incalculable.

But now China, Russia, Iran, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia and a host of non-aligned nations are in revolt. The Eurasian chessboard is obscured by a fog machine. The stakes are high. America is backing its pawn, Ukraine, in the first land war in Europe in 100 years.

 

America's leaders have to dominate the planet militarily to maintain their privileged position at the commanding heights of the global economy, and that's an expensive proposition. America is a global Empire, and the costs of that Empire crowd out all other government spending. 

This year America's leaders have agreed on a $1.4 trillion National Security Budget that includes $773 billion for the Pentagon, plus hundreds of millions more for American intelligence agencies, Homeland Security, Veterans' Affairs, and interest on the debt accrued to pay out all these monies. 

"The most concerning part of the new budget proposal, however, may be the administration’s support for a three-decades long, $1.7-trillion plan to build a new generation of nuclear-armed missiles (as well, of course, as new warheads to go with them), bombers, and submarines," explains William D. Hartung, a Senior Research Fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. "As the organization Global Zero has pointed out, the United States could dissuade any country from launching an atomic attack against it with far fewer weapons than are contained in its current nuclear arsenal.  There’s simply no need for a costly — and risky — nuclear weapons “modernization” plan. Sadly, it’s guaranteed to help fuel a continuing global nuclear arms race, while entrenching nuclear weapons as a mainstay of national security policy for decades to come. (Wouldn’t those decades be so much better spent working to eliminate nuclear weapons altogether?)."

And as we pointed out in a recent Cosmic Weather Forecast, the cost of this new global arms race, which extends far beyond nuclear arms, to air, naval and ground based armed forces, will crowd out any funding available for the transition away from the fossil fuel economy that is destabilizing the entire planetary ecosystem, and precipitating global climate change that will eradicate most currently viable species of plants and animals from the face of the Earth within the next few decades.  

So of course our leaders tell us that we cannot afford universal health care like the rest of the developed world. They say we cannot expect to earn a living wage. They say they cannot afford to forgive the usurious trillion dollar student loan debt that is crippling the younger generations' chances for a stable family life. They say it's too expensive to build a less polluting alternative transportation system like high speed rail that would reduce air travel throughout the East Coast corridor, a system like those in place in China, Europe and Japan.

Our leaders won't tax the rich. They won't provide relief for the poor or the middle classes.

Recent polls show that 83% of Americans have a negative view of the economy, the highest level of pessimism in 50 years.  58% of Americans say they are living paycheck to paycheck, including 30% of those earning $250,000 or more. 56% of Americans say they could not cover a $1000 emergency with their savings. There is not a single American county or state where a minimum wage worker can afford to rent a two bedroom house.

America's leaders don't see the destruction of the middle classes as a symptom of the decline of democracy and a manifestation of Plutocracy. Our leaders have an enduring commitment to the failed neoliberal economic policies of the last 50 years -- policies that have led to the most inequitable distribution of wealth in human history.

According to Ronald Reagan and other architects of the current neoliberal global economic system, a massive concentration of wealth was supposed to lead to a surge of investment in new technologies and companies that would provide high wage jobs to lift the working poor out of their misery. But that concentrated wealth has not "trickled down" to workers after fifty years, instead a new class of billionaire Plutocrats has arisen.

The $5 trillion in wealth now held by 745 billionaires is two-thirds more than the $3 trillion in wealth held by the bottom 50 percent of U.S. households, according to the Federal Reserve Board. 

Our leaders don't prioritize peace, climate change mitigation, human rights, or the financial problems of the American people, which are the result of a low-wage, monopolistic, winner take all, financialized economic system that enslaves the vast majority of the population in a 21st century form of debt peonage.

 

No. Their top priority is to break the back of inflation by raising interest rates. They see inflation as a symptom of too much economic demand, too much money in the hands of the American people. They don't understand that today's inflation is a result of supply side shocks caused by the Covid pandemic and Cold War II, which has divided the world into warring economic blocks, weaponized global finance, and triggered the ongoing slow disintegration of the global supply chain.  

The last time the Fed raised interest rates to crush inflation, in the early Nineteen Eighties, when Ronald Reagan was President, the Fed interest rate hikes triggered a short, sharp two year recession, millions of manufacturing jobs were lost, unions were crushed, rich bond holders became much wealthier, health, safety and environmental regulations were eviscerated, restrictions on monopolies were loosened, financial speculation was encouraged, taxes on corporations and Plutocrats were slashed and a new class of ultra rich Americans emerged. 

The Fed crushed inflation in the 1980s, and Ronald Reagan declared it was Morning in America.

Those lost high wage jobs never returned. The Fed's rate hikes did lower demand by making sure the American people had a lot less money in their pockets, and ultimately led to a 30 year regime of low inflation and low interest rates that created a series of financial bubbles in bonds, savings and loans, dot com stocks, housing, cryptocurrency, Web 2.0 startups, and other high risk financial fads. These bubbles enriched speculators, and when they burst, they required the Fed to bail out banks and Wall Street firms and investors with trillions of dollars of US government money.

This time around, conditions are different in our high inflation economy. If the Fed raises interest rates enough to crush wages and hike unemployment substantially, in order to crush demand, trillions of dollars worth of high risk, high return stocks, emerging market economies and the housing market will crash and corporate bonds and bonds of emerging market countries will default. In short, today's Global Everything Bubble could burst.

A synchronized global recession will throw fuel on the fire of the current escalating military and economic confrontation between Eastern and Western powers.

The computerized financial globalization and economic interdependence that underpins the supply chains that enable America to enjoy the benefits of low cost labor in China, Vietnam and India will be thoroughly disrupted. Trade wars and the weaponization of finance will insure that costs of vital resources such as gas, oil, food, and minerals required for high technologies will continue to skyrocket. 

The result is liable to be a post-American Empire world of warring blocks of nations fighting over a shrinking economic pie and dwindling resources during a period of rapid climate change and simmering proxy warfare in the Ukraine, South Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and Africa. Not Reagan's Morning in America.

Right now, Wall Street is betting that the Fed will not actually follow through on its plan to raise rates substantially over the next year or so, because Wall Street is well aware of the potential for the Global Everything Bubble to burst. Economists are seeing a slowdown in retail spending, gasoline prices are lower, home sales are slowing, and the Fed is well aware of the risks associated with higher interest rates.

But in their June meeting, Fed officials “recognized that policy firming could slow the pace of economic growth for a time, but they saw the return of inflation to 2% as critical to achieving maximum employment on a sustained basis." The US rate of inflation in May was 8.5%, so the Fed is a long way from achieving their goal. They intend to keep raising rates this year, next year, and the year after, until something breaks in world markets and crisis ensues.

After the minutes of the June Fed meeting were made public last week, the odds for a 75-basis-point interest rate increase at the Fed’s July 27 meeting rose to 90.9% on the CME FedWatch Tool, which would increase the Fed's key interest rate by 3/4 of a percent, a big jump that could roil markets and increase mortgage interest rates substantially. If the Fed is to believed, they will not stop raising rates if the US officially enters a recession. 

Still, markets are betting that the Federal Reserve will wimp out in the face of impending global financial chaos, that America will be in an officially recognized recession later this year, and that the Fed will start lowering interest rates in 2023 to avoid a financial crisis similar to 2008. 

Professor Nouriel Roubini, nicknamed Dr. Doom because of his accurate predictions of the 2008 financial crisis, believes that it is likely the Fed will be forced to back off long before its projected 2023 and 2024 interest rate targets are met, but he argues that whatever the Fed decides, it will be bad news for all of us.

"Will monetary-policy tightening by the Federal Reserve and other major central banks bring a hard or soft landing?" Roubini asks. "Until recently, most central banks and most of Wall Street occupied Team Soft Landing. But the consensus has rapidly shifted, with even Fed Chair Jerome Powell recognizing that a recession is possible, and that a soft landing will be 'challenging.'”

If rate hikes trigger a recession, and if that takes stocks and bonds sharply lower in value, would that change the Feds' mind about more hikes?

Nouriel Roubini, Professor of Economics and International Business, Leonard N. Stern School of Business, New York University, USA; 
World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, January 27, 2012.
World Economic Forum, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

"If they stop their policy tightening once a hard landing becomes likely, we can expect a persistent rise in inflation and either economic overheating (above-target inflation and above potential growth) or stagflation (above-target inflation and a recession), depending on whether demand shocks or supply shocks are dominant," Roubini explains.

Regardless of the Fed's decision, Roubini believes the oncoming recession will not be short and mild, but instead will trigger long lasting severe economic and financial crises. 

"Today, we face supply shocks in a context of much higher debt levels, implying that we are heading for a combination of 1970s-style stagflation and 2008-style debt crises—that is, a stagflationary debt crisis," Roubini concludes.

Crowd of Trump supporters marching on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021
TapTheForwardAssist, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The global economy and financial system are about to enter a period of unprecedented crisis, against the backdrop of a multi-year pandemic, increasingly severe economic impacts from planetary climate change, global supply chain disruptions, a hot war in Europe, and the weaponization of finance by America, as its sanctions against Russian gas and oil threaten to crash Europe's economies, which are dependent on Russian fuel supplies.

This will be explosive! Who will governments bail out? The rich, the corporations, investors and bankers? Or the working Americans who already are severely challenged to pay their bills? It's not hard to predict a series of populist uprisings around the world, if people feel they are being exploited again, as they were in 2008.

Americans in both parties are petrified by the multiplying symptoms of America's decay, visible all around them. They are stunned by the prospect of impending economic recession accompanied by surging price inflation, usurious housing and rental prices, the precarious nature of work in the gig economy, unprecedented inequality, a political system in peril, human rights in decline, and a population increasingly at war with itself.

"Americans across political lines are united in their generally negative feelings about the US and its politics, according to a new CNN Poll conducted by SSRS, with Democrats particularly unlikely to express political enthusiasm," CNN reports. "Just 14% of Americans say they're either excited (4%) or optimistic (10%) about the way things are going in the country, with 65% calling themselves concerned and another 21% saying they're scared."

It's the season of the Plutonian Dark Night of the American Soul. In the near future as these multiple crises intensify, systems will break down, and radical solutions will be necessary. The question is -- what kind of a revolution will emerge?

Will Americans demand an end to rule by Plutocrats? An end to the Plutonian American Empire? An end to endless wars? An end to climate destruction?

Or will they opt for rule by a minority of Christian fundamentalist right wing populists dominated by the same old neoliberal Plutocrats that engineered the last 50 years of failed American policies at home and abroad? It's up to us to make the change we want to see in our world.

It's up to us to meditate upon what political activism will look like in this new world, and to take appropriate action. 

Cosmic Weather Forecast - The Capricorn Full Thunder Super Moon and Beyond

On July 11th 2022, Pluto returns to 27° 33' Capricorn, the same exact position it inhabits in the US Natal Chart, July 4, 1776. This marks the second of three exact passes of Pluto over that natal point. The last of the three will be on December 28th, 2022. On Wednesday July 13th, at 2:48 PM Eastern time, The Full Moon at 21°21′ Capricorn will be only a few degrees away, creating a broad conjunction between the two.
Moon/Pluto conjunctions signal emotional extremes and potential eruptions of repressed and unconscious behavior hidden deep within the personal and collective unconscious. Tsunamis of collective astral glamours sweep us away if we cannot remain centered and grounded. Especially with Neptune active in Pisces, collective delusions and illusions, propaganda and self-deception create a fog of misinformation and disinformation obscuring our way forward in life.

Discernment and intuitive guidance are required to navigate the turbulence in the astral currents. That turbulence makes it hard to concentrate and focus, and evokes strong, difficult, unpleasant feelings in resonance with the negative emotions produced by the huge numbers of people who are living in reaction to the dramas and traumas unfolding in the world around us.

Fortunately there are some positive aspects to balance out the deep distress and mental paralysis characteristic of the Moon/Pluto conjunction. The Capricorn Full Thunder Super Moon is trine Uranus in Taurus. Uranus, the planet of electrifying insights, creative illumination and sudden transformations, appears well grounded in Taurus, and can assist us in discovering new pathways forward through the astral soup swirling around us this week.

 

As the Moon/Pluto conjunction dissolves our consensus reality, we begin to realize that there is no reason to be attached to that old energy of the status quo, which has become our biggest liability, and Uranus in Taurus trine that conjunction will supercharge us with a burst of new energy that we can use to begin to create an entirely new reality. 
America's Pluto Return, Shiva's Dance of Dissolution, and the Dark Night of the American Soul

Fear, anger, stress, and a sense of being overwhelmed by out of control events -- these are the hallmarks of America's Pluto Return thus far. We feel threatened by enemies around the world, and by our own internal conflicts, which appear set to destroy the political and social structures we have established to maintain our democracy, and solidify our privileged position in the world order. 

In Esoteric astrology, the planet Pluto represents the force of creative destruction, analogous to the Hindu God Shiva, often depicted as dancing on the body of the Demon of Ignorance.

 

Shiva's dance ushers in the wholesale destruction of the Universe at the end of a kalpa which lasts approximately 4.32. billion years. Coincidentally, scientists estimate the Earth to be 4.53 billion years old.

The dissolution of the old reality is known as pralaya and leads to the rebirth of a new cycle of Life and a new Universal reality.

Spiritually, Shiva and Pluto are both Lords of Death, presiding over the death of desire, the death of the ego personality, and the death of our attachment to forms and material being.

Psychologically and spiritually, we are being challenged collectively to enter into that unknown Plutonic realm known as the collective unconscious, and to confront the paradoxes and contradictions within us that have precipitated the current crisis, and triggered our collective descent into darkness visible.

Our attachment to the status quo is so strong that the entire civilization we have built is collapsing around us to enable us to let go. The threats we see all around us are opening our eyes so we can see the world around us as it really is, and not as we would wish it to be. This is truly the Death of Ignorance.

Ultimately we are being forced by inner and outer events to let go of our attachments to our current American way of life, our habits of conspicuous consumption, and all the rest of our egoistic desires.

This is truly the Dark Night of the American Soul.

 

Pluto in Capricorn symbolizes the dissolution and destruction of the social, economic and political systems sustaining our global hydrocarbon fueled civilization. As this dissolution progresses, we are being asked to heal the division between the material and the spiritual worlds, and to heal the division in our own consciousness between the individual self and the world around us.

I think that current Plutonic events reflect this world's status as a midway point between spirit and matter. There are most likely other worlds with more evolved civilizations, more spiritually evolved populations than ours. There are most likely other worlds with less evolved and more “barbaric” or more “evil” or more “matter-entrapped” civilizations.

Psychologically and spiritually we can say that there are conscious entities or energies that exist in realms of light, in harmony with the great Universal web of Life and the consciousness that is the Source of manifestation in the Universe.

There are conscious entities or energies that exist in realms more dense and less evolved than our four dimensional space-time continuum. 

The Earth exists at the junction where these opposing realms of light and darkness meet, offering a wide range of choices to all human beings. Earth is a magnificent place to work out an understanding of the dualities inherent in material creation for this reason alone.

This reality is represented in the above diagram, illustrating the Garden of Eden, and used in initiation rituals by members of the Order of the Golden Dawn and the Ordo Templi Orientis.

The figure at the top of the diagram is the Great Mother, clothed in the Sun, Source of the energy that sustains material reality.

The figure beneath her is Adam Cadmon, the collective consciousness of humanity, representing the personality, composed of memory, will, imagination, emotion and intellect. 

Beneath Adam is the figure of Eve, representing Mother Nature, and the instinctive, animalistic part of the human soul.

Beneath her feet is a sphere inhabited by the Seven Headed Serpent, the Realm of Gehenna, which is the place where the densest, imbalanced energies in the Universe are stored.

The Ancient Wisdom Teachings of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life provide us with a map of the microcosm and the macrocosm, the human consciousness and the Universal Overmind. Those who have mastered the teachings are enabled to travel to higher spiritual realms of being, experiencing elevated states of consciousness and encounters with Devas, Angels, Deities and more. Kabbalists learn to modulate their consciousness to experience a variety of highly exalted states of being, which involve mastery of their physical, etheric, emotional and mental bodies.

 

By learning to connect their egoistic personalities to their Higher Mind they learn very practical ways to manifest their intent in the physical realm, in accord with Higher Purpose. This is all possible because Earth is the gateway between the realms of pure spirit or consciousness, the four dimensional space time continuum, and even more densely manifested realms much less frequented by magicians with common sense and a well developed survival instinct.

Humanity as a whole is enrolled in this same Earthly school to learn about the various realms of being and the states of consciousness associated with them. 

At this time in Earth's history, the human population is reaching the end of a long period of evolutionary history which highlighted the advances of the individuated consciousness, the rational mind, and the scientific model of reality as applied to the material world, considered as separate from the observer and separate from the world of “energy”, ie spiritual worlds.

Thus we find ourselves trapped in a materialistic culture that worships material success and power over nature, power over other sentient beings, and for this reason is self-destructive in the extreme.

The social structure of this society is a reflection of this moment in evolutionary consciousness, highly structured, hierarchical, and driven by mental considerations of perceived self-interest on the part of small elites who govern on the principles of fear, greed and obfuscation.

However, the next evolutionary step for human consciousness, the next step in the Ascension process, is to re-establish conscious ancient connections with the web of life, with the extended consciousness of the human over-soul, and with the multitude of spiritual beings in higher worlds, to offer in self-sacrifice our highly developed individuated consciousness to the guidance of Higher Self, to act in accordance with Higher Purpose, and to establish a new society based on Higher Consciousness here on Earth. 



This is the task of the next Cosmic Day, the Age of Aquarius, as we progress from the depths of the Kali Yuga, and the Piscean crucifixion on the cross of matter into the Dawn of the Aquarian moment of stellar synchronicities, which are the material manifestation of spiritual energies accessible to the human mind, and of the dawning of scientific spirituality -- all symbolized by the seven pointed star.

The Piscean moment, which combined blind faith in hierarchical quasi-tribal religious organizations with a primitive kind of scientific rationalism, can be symbolized by the image of the Pieta, the dying god cradled in the arms of the World Mother, and represents a moment of evolution in which the lesson presented was all about the limits of male deification, left-brain rationalism and hierarchical priestly, kingly, judicial, scientific and economic elites organized by the self-interest of the developing individualistic egoistic personality.

In many ways the Piscean age has been the flip side of the late Neolithic moment presenting the myth of the dying and reborn god, consort of the Great Mother, because the Neolithic moment was about the limits of the female dominant, right brain dominant, Taurean, tribal, agricultural elites dependent upon blood line and blood sacrifice.

The Piscean moment is male dominated, left brain dominant, and featured replacement of the tribal blood lines of the Neolithic Age with the Imperial reign of Rome, Spain, Holland, England, and now, America.

Here at the end of the Piscean Age, we are addicted to oil and to industrialization, to power games and greedy consumption of the Earth's resources without concern for future generations, the web of life called the environment, or the web of life we know as higher worlds, the world of energy forms and signatures.

We can choose to dedicate the rest of our lives to the peaceful restructuring of our current deluded lifestyle, consciousness and social structures, as individuals and as groups, or we can choose to squander the Earth's remaining Plutonian hydrocarbon resources and our remaining time on earth in fear-based reactive actions which will result in a war of all against all.

 

There exist spiritual forces emanating from the realms located beneath the feet of Eve on the Tree of Life that feed upon the negative emotions and deluded thought forms of unenlightened humanity, and these forces are at work in the world today.

These forces  may be conscious or merely parasitic in nature, but they work toward the fostering of the war of all against all, and they foster the perception that they and those deluded humans who serve Mammon and material creation at the expense of spiritual worlds are all-powerful.

These forces send us a powerful message: that we who oppose their design must struggle against them by mental and material means in a “war” of good versus evil. This is part of their plan, to suck us into squandering our energy.

Meanwhile, the Piscean age mental & social forms and structures and those people that inhabit them, particularly the elites and the true believers, work to use force and mind controls of various kinds to damage the emerging new world moment so that they can continue their social institutions and individual privileges. They seek to consolidate their waning power through a series of wars, through increasingly autocratic governmental structures, and through religious fundamentalism that will unite social structures in hierarchical domains fighting for dominance, resource control and ideological and religious supremacy.

There are two ways we can enter this new age as a group, as humanity. We can choose the reactionary path that seeks to perpetuate the Piscean dispensation, or we can choose to enter the New Aquarian Age. The stars have aligned to support this transition to the New Age.

 

The conjunction between Jupiter and Saturn in Aquarius on the Winter Solstice, December 21, 2020 was the defining astrological event of the year, and it established the start of an astrological era in which Jupiter and Saturn unite periodically in air signs -- an era that will continue until 2159.

This is the signal that we are now on the cusp of The Age of Aquarius. It is no coincidence that we fast approach the pivotal year of 2025, which esoteric astrologers, beginning with Alice Bailey, have long predicted could see the externalization of the spiritual hierarchy, including our beloved Ascended Guides and Teachers. The appearance of the spiritual hierarchy on planet Earth in physical bodies has not occurred since the Fall of Atlantis, long before the advent of recorded history.

It is important for all of us to be aware that there is more than one way that the spiritual hierarchy can manifest on Earth in the physical realm. Certainly it is possible for an Avatar or Avatars to appear in physical bodies to guide humanity forward into a New Age. 

What I have been experiencing in meditation tells me that the Spiritual Hierarchy stands ready, at this very moment, to manifest its loving wisdom, its healing power, and its acute intelligence and discernment by acting through the minds, hearts and physical bodies of the Lightworkers, meditators, and spiritual aspirants of all traditions, East and West, who ask to participate in this monumental undertaking.


The new Age of Aquarius represents the moment of the balance of male and female, and the image of this New Age is of the Divine Lovers in an embrace of eternal love, and their Union is the union of matter and spirit, mind and Higher Self, humanity and the web of life.

Together, in a partnership of equals, in the energy of unconditional love and balanced sexual affinity, men and women can work together to heal the split in the consciousness of humanity between personality and Higher Self, and to heal the wounded heart of the the world.

To counter the negative energy represented by the reactionary forces of the remnants of the Piscean Age, it is important that we hold total faith in the workings of the Divine Plan for human evolution, perform our spiritual practices with single-minded devotion, do what we can to advance the cause of scientific spirituality that respects all paths to the Divine within, and quietly work within groups dedicated to humanity's spiritual, environmental, political and social advancement into greater balance and greater love, in greater service to the Divine.

Depending upon the choices humanity makes as a whole, there could be vast differences in the scale of suffering inflicted on the world population in the physical realm in the near future, as the dissolution of the current Piscean hydrocarbon fueled World Order progresses.

Our well-intentioned attempts to educate those around us about world conditions and the current dangerous crossroads of history we inhabit can only be a positive force, if they are carried out without taint of fear, emotional reaction, judgment or desire for revenge against those who would thwart the Divine Plan for human evolution.

 

Karmically, we all bear memories of past Aeons in which reactionary spiritual forces delayed and perverted the evolutionary current to the detriment of collective human evolution. Recall the myth and reality of the Fall of Atlantis!

This trauma created the samskaras (the subconscious imprints created by an individual's past actions) that trigger fear, emotional reactions, critical judgmental attitudes, cynicism, and the desire for revenge against these reactionary forces today in people like you and I who participated in these earlier cycles of human development. Unfortunately, these negative emotions cause our friends and neighbors to tune us out.

It is part of our job to ask for help from God and our spiritual guides and teachers to burn away these particular samskaras from within us so we can be more effective servants of the Divine by being more articulate, less aggressive, and less emotionally reactive, as we explain these emotionally charged matters to others around us.

We've all been through the transition of the Ages before, and we all share memories of these transitions in our collective consciousness. For instance, the Piscean Age was hampered by the remnants of the Age of Aries. These remnants of tribal warrior elites instilled tribal warfare patterns into the religious, sacrificial initiatory moment embodied by the life of Jesus the Christ, which was intended to unite all tribes and nations in an Empire of Light based upon principles of non-violence, and adherence to the path of Self-realization.

Christ of Zapapon, Mexico
Salvadormello30, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Nevertheless, Jesus the Christ did extend his etheric body into the etheric body of the planetary consciousness at his Death, and this opened a spiritual doorway for all humanity. Today, if you seek him out in Nature, you will find the living Christ available to you, because of this sacrifice and this successful fusion of the Christ within the etheric body of the Natural world. Call to him in the mountains, in your garden, or in the woods and he will speak to you.

Those of us who are old souls are always concerned, sometimes even fearful, that the adherents of past initiations and past social structures flowering from those initiations will hamper the human over-soul's development.

Nowhere is this fear more acute among highly sensitive spiritual souls than in America. America has gone in a few short decades from a shining city on a hill to a dark Plutonic warrior society, exemplifying all that is reactionary and backward-thinking in today's world.

Once the model for political and financial democracy, social justice and fair play, America has become a land of increasingly rigid hierarchies, with remote elite politicians and corporate chieftains purveying a bifurcated global culture composed of the super-rich and the disenfranchised masses.

Once a land defined by moral values and spiritual aspirations, America has become the global purveyor of a rancid culture characterized by rampant consumerism, myopic materialism and me-first egotism.

Once a land aligned with the world's freedom-loving and peace-loving peoples, America has become the global bully-boy, intent upon maintaining its privileges, such as control of the world's oil supply, at the expense of the rest of the world.

Unfortunately, America's leaders are locked into a herd mentality with little or no room for new thinking.

Their interests are best served by a continuation of the status quo of American dominance, less democracy, mindless consumption, environmental degradation and increasingly hierarchical social relations. 

But that status quo is unsustainable. Something has to give.

The Global American Empire was birthed at the time the US demonstrated its mastery of the Plutonian atomic bomb, and it is maintained today by its Plutonic nuclear arsenal and its control of the Plutonian fossil fuels that issue from the Underworld of Planet Earth. In many ways, America, with its historically unparalleled wealth and rule by Plutocracy, is at its roots a Plutonic Empire. Now, at the time of America's Pluto Return, that Empire is threatened with dissolution.

This is not just a Dark Night of the American Soul. It is a Dark Night of the Planetary Soul. Politicians, powerful corporate interests, oligarchs and wealthy families in countries around the world share the same ill-conceived values that drive America's leaders. Spiritually, we can say that humanity's leaders are drunk with demonic delusions. But for all these powerful people in every country around the world, the reality is the same.

Shiva has begun his dance. 

Rising Sun from the alchemical treatise Splendor Solis, attributed to the legendary figure Salomon Trismosin

The time is coming for change in America, and around the world, one way or another, after the shattering reality of the dissolution of the status quo global world order, a new dawn will come. 

If humanity is to survive, mean and women must work together around the world as equal partners to fashion a transition from today's unsustainable global consciousness of competitive predation, war and over-consumption to a new consciousness of love and spiritual science.

Only a revolution in consciousness will enable us to downsize the lifestyles of the top 10% of humanity and mitigate runaway climate change, end the threat of nuclear war and establish a world of freedom and social justice for all peoples. Let us choose to be in the forefront of that revolution.

That is the opportunity, and that is the clue to the nature of our role, as midwives to the birth of an embryonic new World Consciousness establishing right relations among humanity.

Let us approach that birth with reverence, with confidence, with bravery, with a clear mind and a heart singing with faith, devotion and yes, surrender, to the New.

In this way, we harmonize our life force, our soul force, our mind and our emotional bodies with the elevated energy signatures of Humanity's Guides and Teachers who are unfolding the Divine Plan for humanity.

Curtis and Jane under the grape arbor at Bethabara Historical Park, Winston Salem, NC, photo by Jane Sherry

Jane and I join our hearts and minds now with the legions of incarnate humanity seeking illumination and with those big spiritual beings who prepare the way, even now, for the coming victory of the forces of Life. We affirm that you receive the grace and guidance you require to manifest the best and highest good for yourself and all your loved ones during this time of global turbulence and we send you Love and Light!

Meditation Moment: Cast All Your Votes for Dancing

“I know the voice of depression
Still calls to you.

I know those habits that can ruin your life
Still send their invitations.

But you are with the Friend now
And look so much stronger.

You can stay that way
And even bloom!

Keep squeezing drops of the Sun
From your prayers and work and music
And from your companions' beautiful laughter.

Keep squeezing drops of the Sun
From the sacred hands and glance of your Beloved
And, my dear,
From the most insignificant movements
Of your own holy body.

Learn to recognize the counterfeit coins
That may buy you just a moment of pleasure,
But then drag you for days
Like a broken man
Behind a farting camel.

You are with the Friend now.
Learn what actions of yours delight Her,
What actions of yours bring freedom
And Love.

Whenever you say Her name, dear pilgrim,
My ears wish my head was missing
So they could finally kiss each other
And applaud all your nourishing wisdom!

O keep squeezing drops of the Sun
From your prayers and work and music
And from your companions' beautiful laughter

And from the most insignificant movements
Of your own holy body.

Now, sweet one,
Be wise.
Cast all your votes for Dancing!"

~Hafez


A fictional painting of Hafez
English: Abolhassan Sadighiفارسی: ابوالحسن صدیقی,
 CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons