Welcome to the June 20, 2016 Summer Solstice Full Strawberry Moon in Sagittarius, Gemini Solar Festival edition of the Satya Center Cosmic Weather Forecast.
Warm greetings from your co-Editors, Curtis Lang and Jane Sherry.
Boca Garden Report
Here in South Florida, the rainy season has begun, which means sunny mornings and usually a short thunderstorm in the afternoon. That’s a good thing because a much-needed cool breeze dissipates the steamy tropical heat from time to time.
This is the Strawberry Full Moon, so named by Native Americans because it marked the time for the peak of the strawberry harvest in most of North America.
We are in the sub-tropics, so our seasons are quite different from the Northeast, but our thoughts are on fruits, vegetables, and gardening in general. It’s not too late for planting here in South Florida, believe it or not!
Jane and I are very excited because we have engaged a young, talented permaculture expert, Erica Klopf, of Florida Edible Landscaping, to build a food jungle in our tiny suburban yard in Boca Raton. Installation is next month.
Jane and I want to be able to grow a substantial amount of our own food and this garden should enable us to do that.
We are wanting to be more self-sufficient in the middle of uber-suburbia. I think that’s appropriate given the state of the world today. So we are working hard and getting acclimated to our new home.
We’re planning on vegetables, spices, herbs, fruits, and wildflowers carefully selected for their affinity with local conditions. Of course we will use raised beds for most of the veggies and herbs, so we can control the soil and soil amendments.
We’ve added a truckload of amendments and mulch already in the back yard and a couple of months later, you can see sand peeking out here and there as the underlying sandy soil just vacuums the compost and mulch down and away from the surface.
That same sandy soil also acts as an effective natural drain during tropical storms, which is a good thing, so we are not complaining!
Erica has given us an amazing 3-D fly-through of what the garden will look like one season after installation. Wow! Check it out.
Cosmic Weather Forecast
June 2016. Summer doesn’t start until this Full Moon Summer Solstice Monday, but it already feels like we’re deep into a long, hot summer. "Africa-originating Haboobs and 95 to 107 degree heat blanketing large sections of Southern and Eastern Europe are not at all typical weather for mid to late June,” reports Robert Scribbler in an article entitled Monster African Thunderstorm Hurls Enormous Haboob at Europe, 100 + Degree (F) Heat to Follow.
Scribbler thinks this is the new normal. “. . . Weather extremes associated with human-caused climate change will tend to make these kinds of North African hot air and dust storm invasions more and more likely as time progresses,” he argues.
An Intense, prolonged, and potentially record-breaking June heatwave is hitting California.
Mars is retrograde in Scorpio. That’s a planetary placement that encourages muckers, mass killings like the Orlando tragedy, promotes rumors of war, and sparks incipient rebellions. We’re 164 days into 2016. We’ve had 133 mass shootings.
The now-infamous Grand Mutable Cross forms and re-forms this month, perfecting this Sunday, June 19, and regressing into a potent T-Square on June 25. There is a fog of confusion, paranoia, anger, recrimination, and ego-inflation blanketing the collective consciousness.
We are in the no-man’s land between one age and another. The way forward is uncharted. There are no gps systems that provide co-ordinates for the unfolding new world that will emerge in the new age to come. If anyone approaches you with a treasure map or some other deal that seems too good to be true, rest assured, it is!
During the early years of the Second World War, when fascism was ascendant, Italian anti-fascist Marxist social theorist Antonio Gramsci was imprisoned by Mussolini. Yet he remained optimistic about the world crisis, and his optimism was well-placed. “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new is yet to be born. And in the interregnum, a great variety of morbid symptoms appear,” Gramsci explained.
It is up to each one of us to focus supremely, maintain our balance, stay grounded, and call upon the most acute powers of discernment we can access to help us maintain a positive attitude during this difficult transition.
This Monday, June 20, 2016 a very rare cosmic coincidence occurs. At 7:02 a.m. Eastern Time this Full Moon at 29° Sagittarius is opposed by the Sun at 29° Gemini, and Monday is also the Summer Solstice, the day when the Sun enters the sign of Cancer.
Visit EarthSky for more information on this year’s summer solstice.
The Cosmic Weather patterns that dominate the Solstice Full Moon day will set the tone for the entire summer season of 2016 to follow, so this is a very important Full Moon.
All this month, the Grand Mutable Cross has appeared and re-appeared in the sky. A difficult outer planet T-Square with Jupiter in Virgo, Saturn in Sagittarius, and Neptune in Pisces has been in place off and on since fall of 2015 and whenever one of the inner planets enters Gemini, the Grand Mutable Cross appears.
For individuals this energy manifests as a whirlwind of conflicting and overlapping commitments that challenge us to stay focused and grounded.
Periods of substantial progress are interrupted by episodes of frustration. It’s as though we were on a cosmic merry-go-round, going faster and faster yet never really getting anywhere new.
The Neptunian fog of misinformation, disinformation and astral glamour makes it difficult to see clearly, difficult to trust our own inner vision and certainly inadvisable to trust others blindly.
We discussed this alignment at length in the last couple of newsletters.
For society as a whole, Saturn square Neptune indicates a conflict between established structures and hazy dreams of grandeur, accompanied by anger-fueled rebellion against the status quo.
It’s a time of grandiose promises which are in conflict with existing facts on the ground. Perhaps those promises are made in good faith, perhaps not.
The US Presidential campaign presents a perfect representation of the activity of this T-square and Grand Cross in operation on a societal level.
Society is permeated with a simmering rage at the perceived deterioration of America’s pre-eminence and power, and at the increasing political gridlock and income inequality that makes life more and more difficult for 99.5% of the population.
There is a palpable sense that the American empire is in decline.
For the first time in American history, the three front-running candidates for President are all engaged in a nostalgia driven struggle to go Back to the Future.
Donald Trump promises to Make America Great Again by building a big wall, stopping Muslims from entering the country, and offering massive tax breaks to the wealthiest 1% of Americans.
The sub-text for Trump’s campaign is that he will return the country to a mythical time prior to political correctness when men were men, women knew their place, and white people occupied the commanding heights of society in all areas of life.
Hillary Clinton promises to restore the magical kingdom of Nineteen-Nineties America, when her husband Bill was President, the Internet boom created abundant jobs, and every man and woman was an investing genius – until the Dot Com bust of course.
That magical kingdom also included a war against minorities and the poor called “entitlement reform”, the fiasco of free trade agreements like NAFTA that destroyed countless good jobs in America, and the deregulation of our financial system that led to the 2008 Global Financial Meltdown. But never mind all that.
Unlike Bill Clinton’s campaign against George Bush Sr., which promised the end of utopian laissez-faire capitalism and Reganomics, Hillary is all about identity politics. The sub-text of Hillary’s campaign is that all Americans, whatever their race, gender or color, will be free to join the 1% if they can transform themselves into the kind of economic predators who claw their way to the top in a relentlessly competitive capitalist paradise. All will be welcomed by the oligarchs, once they become billionaires.
Bernie Sanders promises to return America to the glory days of modest social welfare programs epitomized by the New Deal and Great Society.
The sub-text of Sanders’ campaign is that identity politics has failed as a progressive force in America, and the time has come to return to a class-based politics that will empower the 99% at the expense of the 1% who control political institutions, financial institutions, the news media, and cultural centers.
Sanders is fond of calling this retro-political project a revolution, and, to be fair, it does contain some modestly radical ideas, such as free college education and re-regulation of the financial industries. Sanders of course, will not be the Democratic candidate for President.
So let’s look again at the two top contenders.
Trump corresponds to a modern day George Wallace, the Alabama Governor whose right-wing populist, segregationist politics made him a contender in four Presidential campaigns from 1968-1976. Wallace was the most deeply polarizing major political figure on the right wing of American politics during these years of social upheaval.
Clinton’s extreme hawkishness in foreign policy, matched with her dogged determination to maintain the status quo in all matters economic and financial marks her as a modern day version of what was known in the 1970s as a Rockefeller Republican. She is a proud representative of the international elites who control the transnational corporations and global financial behemoths currently impoverishing entire countries to enrich the elites in America and their allies around the world.
However, America’s position in the world is vastly different today than it was in the 1970s.
Although our dollar is still the world’s reserve currency, one has to wonder for how long. Just this week the Federal Reserve Chairwoman, Janet Yellen, suggested that perhaps the Fed is overdoing its reliance on financial forecasting, probably because the Fed’s financial forecasts have proved so unreliable over the last year or two.
After over seven years of monetary easing, and trillions of dollars of give-aways to big banks and Wall Street firms, the economy is still not in a real recovery. The Fed did not keep rates this low during the aftermath of the Dot-Com bust which tells you everything you need to know about the supposed economic recovery.
Americans are increasingly concerned that they are not safe in their home towns. Mass shootings in smaller cities like San Bernadino and Orlando create a feeling that everyone is on the front lines, not just people who live in New York and Paris.
Building a big wall, excluding Muslims, and bombing ISIS and Syria are unlikely to provide the feeling of safety Americans crave. Increasingly living in America looks like living in Israel, where random mass violence is simply a fact of life.
The Republican Presidential candidate brags that he will stop spending US dollars to insure the safety of America’s close allies, and they will have to pay vast tribute to the North American empire to prove their continued fealty.
Perhaps the greatest cause for concern at the moment is the uncertainty surrounding the US Presidential election. Can the world’s leading democracy conduct fair and free elections that will generate an outcome that will be respected by the entire population?
As we know, Donald Trump asserted throughout the primary season that his campaign was being treated unfairly by the Republican insiders who structure the primary elections. He went so far as to say that if he was denied the nomination there could be some bad consequences at the Republican convention, implying a threat of violence by his supporters, who are rowdy, to put it politely, at the best of times.
On the Democratic side, the last couple of weeks have been full of accusations by supporters of Bernie Sanders that the Clinton campaign is engaging in voter fraud in numerous states around the country.
Among the vast majority of Americans of all political persuasions there is an increasing sense that the mass media are skewing the elections to increase their own profits and to prop up the candidates favored by the corporate overlords who control the small oligopoly of mass communications companies in the United States.
A recent Harvard study accuses the print and broadcast media of improperly influencing the primary elections during the months leading up to the primaries. "Thomas Patterson, Harvard’s Bradley Professor of Government and the Press, in conjunction with the Shorenstein Center on Media, Public Policy, and Politics, conducted an analysis of eight different cable networks and newspapers and found that media companies devoted an unprecedented amount of coverage to Donald Trump from the start of his campaign, effectively shutting out over a dozen of his competitors. The Shorenstein analysis also learned that the Republican candidates got roughly twice as much media coverage as the Democratic candidates."
"Furthermore, the majority of the coverage for Trump was either positive or neutral despite his frequently bigoted and inflammatory statements."
“In addition, the study found that the American news media had an anti-Bernie Sanders bias. Patterson remarked that the astonishing lack of media attention for Sanders’ campaign undoubtedly left permanent damage on his ability to be competitive in the Democratic primaries and caucuses, as the media’s earliest coverage deemed the Vermont senator a ‘likely loser’.”
“The Shorenstein Center’s study should vindicate supporters of Bernie Sanders and non-Trump Republican candidates alike, as it proves the media’s inherent bias in covering the billionaire real estate developer and the former Secretary of State for the purpose of driving ad revenue and clicks rather than for the purpose of informing the public.”
So there is every reason to be concerned that neither Sanders nor Trump supporters will be satisfied that the 2016 Presidential election is either free or fair. Quite likely neither of these extremely large groups of voters will be satisfied with the results of the election, and if the election is a close one, and if Hillary wins, there is every reason to believe that Trump will dispute the election results. After all, he threatened violence at the Republican convention while on a triumphant roll through the primaries, and he is a self-described “winner” who cannot ever lose.
The astrology of November 2016 unfortunately reinforces these concerns. The Mutable T-Square re-emerges on November 15, leading into a brief re-appearance of the Mutable Grand Cross, followed by a Cardinal T-Square November 24 that brings up all the issues connected with the multi-year Grand Cardinal Cross that brought us the Global Financial Meltdown, and the last seven years of ever-increasing environmental, financial and political turmoil around the world.
We can only speculate upon what the results of the election will be, but it is virtually certain that the aftermath of the election will be incredibly divisive, with the possibility that large segments of the population refuse to accept the results as free or fair, and this opens the door to a crisis of confidence in the American Presidency. Will this election pave the way for a new American revolution? Will there be a new Paul Revere?
This does not look like the profile of a leading nation, much less a global Imperial power in control of the entire planet. There is every reason to see America as an aging, over-extended military empire in decline.
Immanuel Wallerstein, one of the world’s foremost sociologists, and the father of World System Theory recently wrote an article entitled The Increasingly Unstable United States that addresses the current American crisis.
". . .the United States has been truly losing its authority in the rest of the world. It is indeed no longer hegemonic,” Wallerstein explains. “The protestors and their candidates have been noting this but consider it reversible, which it is not. The United States is now considered a weak and unsure global partner.”
"This is not merely the view of states that have strongly opposed U.S. policies in the past, such as Russia, China, and Iran,” Wallerstein continues. “It has now become true of presumably close allies, such as Israel, Saudi Arabia, Great Britain, and Canada. On a worldwide scale, the feeling about the ‘reliability’ of the U.S. in the geopolitical arena has moved from nearly 100% during the golden era to somewhere far, far lower. And it increases daily.”
"As it becomes less ‘safe’ to live in the United States, look for a steady increase in emigration. It is not that other parts of the world are safe – just safer. It is not that the standard of living elsewhere is so high, but it has now become higher in many parts of the global North.”
"Not everyone can emigrate of course. There is a question of cost and a question of accessibility to other countries. Undoubtedly, the first group that may increase their emigration will be the most privileged sectors. But, as this comes to be noticed, the angers of the more middle-class ‘disillusioned’ will grow. And growing, their reactions may take a more violent turn. And this more violent turn will feed back onto itself, increasing the angers.”
"Can nothing alleviate the attitudes about the transformation of the United States? If we were to stop trying to make America great again and start trying to make the world a better place for everyone, we could be part of the movement for ‘another world.’ Changing the whole world would in fact transform the United States, but only if we stop longing to go back to a golden era, which was not so golden for most of the world."
Here we have the key to understanding our present situation. We must begin to let go of the past. It is gone, and our nostalgia is preventing us from envisioning and enacting a new viable future for us and for our children and grandchildren.
We must let go of our sectarian differences, our limited worldviews, and our strongly held identities based upon tribal, racial, gender and sexual orientations. Only in this way can the global triple crisis affecting the environment, the financial system, and global politics be successfully addressed. Ponder this during your Full Moon meditation this weekend. This is the second Full Moon in Gemini, a Blue Moon if you will, and thus the second Festival of Humanity. It is entirely appropriate to once again connect with the energies of this powerful spiritual festival this weekend.
The Sabian symbol for this Full Moon in Sagittarius is The Pope Blessing The Faithful. Those who maintain faith, show strength, and remain receptive to spiritual guidance will find a way forward through the no-man’s and no-woman’s land we inhabit in this time of convulsive global environmental, financial, and political changes.
May Spirit bring you the strength, perseverance, wisdom, acute discernment, patience and loving kindness you require to navigate the troubled waters rising all around us this long hot summer of 2016.
Meditation Moment: Speechless
SPEECHLESS
"Inside this new love, die.
Your way begins on the other side.
Become the sky.
Take an axe to the prison wall.
Escape.
Walk out like someone suddenly born into color.
Do it now.
You're covered with thick clouds.
Slide out the side. Die,
and be quiet. Quietness is the surest sign
that you've died.
Your old life was a frantic running
from silence.
The speechless full moon
comes out now."
-- Rumi
