Scorpio Full Moon, Wesak and Taurus Solar Festival 2024 Cosmic Weather Forecast

Welcome to the April 2024 Cosmic Weather Forecast by Curtis Lang with Jane Sherry. Here in Winston Salem a thick patina of golden tree pollen fills the air, covering our car and the outdoor furniture on our balcony. We enjoy spectacular spring sunrises every day!

Blowback from the Mars/Saturn Conjunction in Pisces

On April 1, the day Mercury went retrograde in the fiery sign of Aries, an Israeli airstrike on the Iranian Embassy in Damascus, Syria killed several Iranian commanders and diplomats, provoking a further escalation of the Gaza war. 
In response, on April 13th, three days after the incendiary Mars/Saturn conjunction in Pisces, Iran launched hundreds of missiles and drones at targets in Israel, including the military base where the F-35s that leveled the Iranian embassy in Damascus are based. 

This was Iran's first direct attack ever on Israel.

In last month's newsletter, I anticipated escalation in the Gaza war when I wrote that "Mars and Saturn conjoin in Pisces on April 10th, two days after The Great American Eclipse. A Mars/Saturn conjunction traditionally symbolizes expanding warfare, new threats of war, and natural disasters, so the potential for fruitful Libran negotiations in the Middle East and Ukraine wars appears minimal at this time."

"Especially with Mercury retrograde as of April 1st," I continued, "there is substantial danger that mental miscalculations combined with incendiary new provocations will result in the escalation of the dangerous, bloody conflicts in the Middle East and in Ukraine."

"The stars indicate that the aggressor in any escalation will probably be unable to achieve their objectives, and could be subject to substantial blowback from poorly executed strategies and tactical blunders, characteristic of military operations initiated during Mercury retrograde," I concluded.
As I predicted, miscalculations by the Israelis resulted in escalation, blowback and increased tensions in the Middle East.

Even worse, the Israeli attack undermines the rule of international law and the global convention that embassies and consulates should be held harmless during times of war, a convention that has been honored for thousands of years.

"Since the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas, an Iranian ally, and Israel’s subsequent bombardment of the Gaza Strip, there has been escalation after escalation and miscalculation after miscalculation, raising fears of a retribution cycle that could potentially become an all-out war," The New York Times commented,  four days after Iran's counterattack on Israel.

Meanwhile the International Court of Justice has ruled that it's 'plausible'  that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza. Israel's scorched earth attacks on Gaza would be impossible without the ongoing help of the United States, so the United States is clearly an accomplice in genocide.

America's post World War II "rules based order" is clearly crumbling before our eyes, as we stand on the precipice of World War III.

Of more immediate concern, Israel and Iran are now poised on the verge of a catastrophic war, and as of today, April 22nd, the potential for further escalation and for a wider war that would engulf the Middle East and drag Lebanon, America, Russia and China into the conflict has risen exponentially.

Despite warnings by the US to exercise restraint after the Iranian counterattack, "Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would decide whether and how to respond to Iran’s major air assault earlier this week, brushing off calls for restraint from close allies," according to ABC News.
Israel's initial response to the Iranian counterattack was to initiate drone and missile attacks on the Iranian city of Isfahan, and on numerous sites in Iraq and Syria, some of which contained Iranian military assets, according to a report in Al-Jazeera. 

Isfahan is home to Iran's fleet of American made F-14 Tomcat fighter jets, and also contains prominent sites housing Iranian nuclear facilities, "including its underground Natanz enrichment site, which has been repeatedly targeted by suspected Israeli sabotage attacks," as reported by the Associated Press.

The Israeli attacks on Iran, Syria and Iraq came after Iranian General Ahmad Haghtalab warned Israel  that if Israel attack or invades Iran, Iran will respond by targeting Israel's nuclear facilities and will act to obtain and develop its own nuclear weapons as soon as possible.

That would definitely cross an Israeli red line, and escalation would be swift and catastrophic for both parties. 

We can only hope that as we approach the Taurus Full Moon and the Wesak spiritual festival celebrating the birth of Lord Buddha, that a spirit of peace will enter the hearts of these intransigent belligerents.
2024 is a time of great stress wherever we live and it's normal to be anxious about developments in the Middle East and around the world.

Let's take a look at what the configurations of the stars have to say about the month to come.

As the Greek Platonist philosopher Plotinus said, “The stars are like letters that inscribe themselves at every moment in the sky. Everything in the world is full of signs. All events are coordinated. All things depend on each other. Everything breathes together.” 

Scorpio Full Moon, Wesak and Taurus Solar Festival 2024 Cosmic Weather Forecast

On Tuesday, April 23, 2024 at 7:49 PM EDT the Full Moon occurs at 4º18' Scorpio, opposite the Sun positioned at 4º17'59" Taurus, creating a potent T-Square with the dominator planet Pluto, residing at 2º05' Aquarius.


For the collective consciousness, Pluto in Aquarius is all about intense loyalty to group associations, and there is a pronounced tendency for individuals under the influence of this aspect to unthinkingly conform to the imperatives of the collective.

Moon square Pluto aspects indicate the potential for a complete absorption of the individuality in the group mind, and a compulsive desire to achieve security in the group's home territories, at any cost.

Where Pluto is involved, every conflict is perceived as an existential crisis for the entire collective. Every slight is perceived as a major attack. Every shadow in the background of life is perceived to be a demonic presence.

The collective consciousness responds by demonizing all those belonging to groups considered antagonistic to the collective, and by launching ill-considered holy wars against those others, who are seen as existential threats to collective security, homeland and family.

This belligerent, single minded focus on collective security can easily lead to dictatorial behavior on the part of individuals and the group as a whole.

Individuals under the influence of Sun square Pluto aspects can display extremely willful, even authoritarian behavior toward others, in their single-minded pursuit of their goals and the goals of the group with whom they identify. 

Obviously this Full Moon's potent T-Square could activate fears related to homeland security in the group consciousness of nations, religions, political parties, and other groups, and these deep seated insecurities could easily be transformed under Plutonic influences, into extremely belligerent behavior toward other groups and individuals perceived to threaten that security.
In other words, this is a bellicose Full Moon T-Square in Fixed Signs, with the potential for continued battles between combatants locked into intractable positions around the world.

This month we are also likely to see more evidence of unyielding polarizations that divide political parties competing with one another in the 64 nations preparing for elections during 2024. 

There is little in this chart that points to positive prospects for peace, love and understanding on the world stage.

With America still very much under the influence of its Pluto return in 2024, there is the potential for the United States to be unconsciously motivated to engage in war with a variety of enemies, real and imaginary, that it perceives to threaten its global hegemony.

It is very worrying that President Biden has imposed new sanctions on Iran in response to its April 13th missile attack on Israel after the Israeli bombing of the Iranian consulate in Damascus.

As we approach the climax of America's Pluto Return this fall and winter, the only thing that Republicans and Democrats can agree on is that they must continue to spend freely to prolong and widen the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.
Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson was finally able to pass a foreign aid bill providing $95 billion for the Ukraine War, a few billion to prepare Taiwan to fight China and $26.4 billion in aid for Israel to "defend itself against Iran and its proxies, and to reimburse U.S. military operations in response to recent attacks." 

President Biden and many Democrats have voiced support for the bill, and President Biden says he will sign it when it reaches his desk. 

Clearly, President Biden has no interest in furthering a diplomatic settlement in Gaza, or in Ukraine, and his actions can only serve to embolden the more radical extreme Israeli leaders who would like to widen the war and directly attack Iran.

Why do both Republicans and Democrats embrace this bellicose foreign policy? Whatever happened to American diplomacy in support of a rules based order that would avoid the need for war?

"The entire foreign policy community in the United States now shares the basic tenets of neoconservatives," explains Professor Michael Brenner, a Senior Fellow at the Center for Transatlantic Relations at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). "Actually, the scripture is Paul Wolfowitz’s notorious memorandum of March 1991 wherein he laid out a comprehensive, detailed strategy for systematizing American global dominance. Everything that Washington is doing, and thinking, now is derivative of that plan."

President George W. Bush and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz in the Oval Office,
March 16, 2005.
See page for author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

"Its core principles: the United States should use all the means at its disposal to establish American global dominance; to that end, it must be ready to act preventively to stymie the emergence of any power that could challenge our hegemony; and to maintain full spectrum dominance in every region of the globe. Ideals and values are relegated to an auxiliary role as a veneer on the application of power and as a stick with which to beat others," Brenner continues. "Classic diplomacy is disparaged as inappropriate to this scheme of things."

"For Biden himself, a confident, assertive, hard-edged approach to dealing with others derives naturally from belief in Americanism as a Unified Field Theory that explains, interprets and justifies whatever the US thinks and does," Brenner concludes. 

I remember when Democrats proclaimed George Bush, Jr. and his neoconservative foreign policy gurus to be crypto-fascists in the run up to the 2008 election, when it became apparent that they had lied about Saddam Hussein possessing weapons of mass destruction, and led us all into an ignominious, massively destructive Iraq war by promoting a pack of lies. 

Now of course, Bush's neoconservatives are prominent analysts on Democratic leaning MSNBC, and the Clinton-Biden wing of the Democratic Party, which is in complete control, utilizes neoconservatives as primary tools to implement their Imperial foreign policy.

A case in point is Victoria Nuland, formerly Dick Cheney's right hand woman, who just "retired" after a failed stint as Biden's point person in Ukraine.

Knowing that both Red and Blue politicians in America plan to pursue their continued plans for global domination through war rather than diplomacy, we know that it's important to pray for peace, to stand up for peace, to oppose genocidal wars and to make every effort to resist the war machine as best as we can during the month of the Wesak Full Moon celebrating Buddha, the Prince of Peace and Unity Consciousness.

Buddha Carving on Montainside in Thailand
Photo by jessica rigollot on Unsplash

On the psychological level, each of us can make an effort to resist the social pressure to demonize, condemn and attack an entire group of people for the crimes or sins of a few members of that group. Instead let us practice a loving kindness meditation.

If the people of the United States had been able to confront their own shadows and resist the call to declare war on the entire Muslim world after 9/11, and limited America's counterattack to the actual members of Al Qaeda, we could have avoided twenty years of ceaseless bloody warfare, which resulted in around 4.5 million casualties, around half a million civilian deaths, and the displacement of around 38 million refugees.

Likewise, if the Israeli government limited its counterattack to members of Hamas rather than targeting the entire civilian population of Gaza in a potential genocidal series of attacks, we could avoid the prospect of a long, wide, bloody and potentially uncontrollable Middle East war.

It is important to know that despite the depressing and ominous geostrategic outlook, on a personal level there are a number of positive aspects this Full Moon that speak to our higher natures, and indicate the potential for an extremely fruitful, beneficial Wesak Festival celebration.