Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Blair the Fundamentalist

There’s a series of programmes called ‘The Blair Years’ on TV at the moment, and I managed to catch part of one of them the other night. It was dealing with 9/11 and Iraq. What struck me was Blair’s position on it, after all this time and after he has left office. What we have, he convicted, is “a visceral struggle between what is right and what is wrong.”


Yes, he really does believe this. The man has learnt nothing from the war, all it has done is give birth to his latent fundamentalism. When there is a war, you have to look at it from both sides if you are going to make any sense of it. And it seems pretty obvious to me that the War on Terror is rooted in Arab resistance to western influence. It’s as simple as that. A bit like how many European tribes must have felt at the time of the Romans.

The West needs the Arab oil, and they’re going to make sure they have enough control and influence in the Middle East to safeguard their supplies. You can’t expect the West to behave otherwise. Nor can you expect the Arabs not to resent this influence in their homeland (for which they get nicely paid). This tension is going to continue for as long as we need their oil. Of course, it isn’t put like this by either side. America is ‘The Great Satan’, and the West is struggling against ‘Evil’.

If anything is ‘evil’, it is the fundamentalism you find on both sides that makes any sort of understanding of the situation impossible. If anything is ‘evil’, it is the way Bush and Blair see the ‘war’ as a battle of good versus evil, with themselves of course on the side of ‘good’.

It is hard to believe that Tony Blair is so foolish and superficial, so psychologically primitive. But he is, and we elected him 3 times to run the UK. Which doesn’t say much for we the British people, or for the American people who elected Bush twice.

Before the Iraq War, Tony Blair went to see the Pope to try to get his blessing. Yes, he really did do this. You couldn’t make something like this up, it is priceless comedy. It also makes it clear that Blair was unknowingly engaged on a medieval crusade against Islam. To the Pope’s credit (and I’m not inclined to give Popes much credit), he didn’t give his blessing.


It is gradually coming out that Blair was always much bigger on God than he let on. He was afraid, rightly, of being seen as a ‘nutter’. He has for some years been close to converting to Catholicism, the main barrier appearing to be political considerations.

Tony Blair was born 6 May 1953 at 6.10am in Edinburgh. He has Moon in 10th House Aquarius in a t-square with Sun in Taurus and Pluto in Leo. The challenge of Pluto is to find your own inner power, your own independent sense of confidence and strength. If you are unaware, if you are not up to this challenge, you will look for this sense of power and authority outside of yourself, and this is exactly what Blair has done with his religious certainty and crusade against ‘evil’. And through his need to be in a position of power. Unlike many leaders, he went straight from being PM to being a Middle East envoy on behalf of the major powers.

Aquarius at its worst can be rigidly ideological, which is where his Moon comes in, and we also see it in his Jupiter-Mars conjunction on the ASC. The fixity of his t-square doesn’t help either.

It was Neptune which liberated the fundamentalist within. Up until 9/11, Blair had been a bit timid as PM, trying to please everybody. After 9/11, and particularly in the run-up to the Iraq War, he became the opposite, he was going to do what he believed regardless of popularity. Neptune made its first exact crossing to his Moon a month before the Iraq War, and since then has squared his Sun and is now in the final stages of opposing his Pluto. As it was Neptune that was activating his chart, we can see what happened in terms of what he would have felt to be an Enlightenment, a waking up to his true mission of battling evil in the specific form of Islamic ‘terrorists’; from the outside, many of us would see Neptune as having created delusion and guru-inflation. As an astrologer, my job is to describe both sides rather than say which is ‘correct’. As an opinionated blogger, I have no doubt which is correct!

They say there is no-one so ‘ex’ as an ex-Prime Minister, and I was slightly taken aback when I realised that Tony Blair still has transits going on, that he is not in suspended animation. Neptune is still finishing with his t-square, and what it seems to be creating is this mad fundamentalist, reminiscent of his hero Margaret Thatcher after she had finished as PM.


Her time as PM was characterised by a series of major Pluto transits, and there were more to come in the 5 years following her demise. The same applies to Tony Blair, who will have Neptune squaring his Mars-Jupiter-ASC in 5-6 years time. It will probably mark his appointment as Archbishop, on his ascent towards the Papacy! At any rate, it would not surprise me if, like Thatcher, we see him becoming more rigid, more of a caricature of himself, over the coming years.


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Saturday, November 10, 2007

DID THE FOUNDING FATHERS USE ASTROLOGY?

The other day I wrote about the stars relating to the inauguration of the US President, which occurs every four years at 12pm on Jan 20th. From 1793 to 1933 (with the occasional exception), the date was 4th March. Diana Rosenberg wrote that she’s always reckoned changing the date was a mistake. Matthew the Astrologer commented that he’s always reckoned the Founding Fathers used more astrology than they were letting on, because they made the date a fixed thing.


I reckon they could both be right.

The star that rules a day, the Heliacal Rising Star, is the one that is last to rise over the eastern horizon before the Sun rises.

For the 4th of March in Washington, the Heliacal Rising Star is entirely appropriate: Deneb Algedi – the Ancient Law Giver, which is to be found in the tail of the constellation Capricornus. Bernadette Brady says: “Deneb Algedi is linked to the symbolism of the law-giving, justice orientated ancient god who is trying to civilise his people. Therefore, matters of justice are a theme of your life, and you are a person who is trying, in some way, to use wisdom and knowledge to protect and help the people around you.” Yes, there is a good case that they were using astrology!

Then we move on to 1933, and those foolish people who no longer consulted the heavens. And what do we find for 12pm Jan 20 every four years? Menkar conjunct the ASC - one of the most difficult stars, that makes the President vulnerable to the worst of the collective. And the Heliacal Rising Star is Acumen: ‘Suffering at the hands of others; subject to rumours.’ “Aculeus and Acumen are the tail of Scorpio, the sting, and are linked to attacks, not only physical, but also mental, verbal or spiritual. Acumen leans towards the small, irritating attacks that can slowly weaken you. So with Acumen in such an important position on the day of your birth, you will feel that your life-path may be filled with attacks or hindrance. It is therefore imperative that you learn to overcome obstacles on your path, whether placed there by yourself or others.”


I think Acumen accurately describes what it’s like being a leader in a modern democracy. You are constantly subject to attack through an up-to-the-minute media that reaches everyone’s home. Indeed it is seen as a healthy part of the democratic process that the leader is constantly under such attack. And you are ‘weak’ if you can’t handle it. Which means having a skin so thick that there isn’t much room left for a brain.

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Tuesday, November 06, 2007

OF PRESIDENTS and SEA MONSTERS

The President of the USA is inaugurated on the same day and at the same time every 4 years, giving certain enduring qualities to the institution that are possible to analyse astrologically. The date and time are 20 Jan at 12pm in Washington DC. There are occasional exceptions, and before 1937 the date was the 4th March.


This consistency of time and date gives almost the same Angles and Sun for every inauguration. The fixed Sun (c.1 Aquarius) and ASC (c.14 Taurus) suggest the stability and endurance of the institution. Aquarius indicates the democratically-elected nature of the job, that the President is not there as a tyrant but as someone who ideally works with all the different groupings of people and interests. America is known for its wealth, which it does not have by accident, and Taurus Rising shows the importance of the President managing the economy well, perhaps also a need to express (ASC) his polices in economic, even materialistic terms. And the Capricorn MC shows that the President is there to achieve something and to leave a legacy. (Hence e.g. the Presidential libraries).

This consistency in the chart means we can also bring some of the stars into the equation. The strongest stars are those which are found on an Angle, and in this case, since the 1949 election, the star Menkar has been conjunct the ASC (using a 1 degree orb).

So more than any other star, Menkar describes the modern US Presidency. It is the brightest star in the constellation Cetus, the Whale. In ancient times, whales were not eco-friendly super-intelligent beings, but human-eating monsters from the depths. The Babylonians referred to this area of the sky as "the chaos of the deep". It is known as one of the most difficult stars to live with, because it makes you so open to the unconscious depths, to collective forces.

Menkar, or Alpha Cetus, is in the nose or jaw of the whale

All leaders tend to be an expression of the fears, desires and aspirations of the people, but Menkar here suggests that in post-war America this sort of identification has been unusually close. Positively, this can be a leader who is aware of, tuned into the collective but not unconsciously identified with it, and able to move it in a creative direction. An example of this is perhaps Roosevelt, who managed to get the economy out of the Great Depression and win two major wars with the country coming out thriving, as well as lay the groundwork for a really intelligent and successful reconstruction of Germany and Japan (cf Bush and Iraq). Menkar was just out of its 1 degree orb during this period, but you could argue that it was actually very active, with the wideness of the orb providing the possibility for self-awareness in a President, allowing him to be aware of and creatively use the collective forces.

The other possibilities with Menkar are that the President becomes an expression of the worst of the collective, or is a victim to it. Since 1949, the orb of Menkar to the Presidential Ascendant has been narrowing, and around 2041 it will be exact. You could argue that the narrower the gap, the more likely it is that Presidents will manifest the negative potential of Menkar.


And I think we have seen that with both Clinton and Bush, both of whom interestingly have an outer planet on their ASC – Clinton has Neptune and Bush has Pluto – making them personally open to collective forces, for better or for worse. Clinton, via the Monica Lewinsky scandal, became a victim of the collective, of the right wing Republican mentality that could not stand him. But he was also able to use his connection to the collective more positively, so that he became known as ‘The first black President.’ Whereas Bush’s connection seems more one-sidedly negative, through his appeal to the rednecks and his ability to whip up the fears and prejudices of the collective to serve his own purposes.

With Menkar closing in over the next 34 years, it is possible that we will see much more of these types of President, who are tuned into the collective and become either victims of it or who manipulate it. It will probably be a good thing, therefore, if the Presidents are not personally too open to the collective, if they do not have Neptune or Pluto Rising, for example. With the Uranus-Pluto square just around the corner, and with the forces for change gathering pace in the world, and with all the insecurity that brings, these are the sort of times we are most likely to see the collective rising up from the deep like the sea monster of old, and electing leaders that suit its purposes.


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