Budget Reconciliation and a Ramble Against Democracy

Well there’s something I didn’t know: if President Obama isn’t able to get his Healthcare Bill through Congress through straightforward voting, he can force it through by a device known as Budget Reconciliation. It sounds roughly like what it is: forcing laws to be changed so that the budget figures add up. It was an unintentional consequence of the 1974 Congressional Budget Act.

I’m from the UK, so it may seem a little odd that I’m so concerned about the US Healthcare Bill, the details of which I know very little about and am not very interested in. The reason I’m interested is because it matters to me that the US cares about its own people. I don’t know why it matters to me, but it does. And whatever the arguments on each side of the Bill, that’s what it comes down to. The Bill may be hugely watered down, but at least it is a start, it is symbolic. The New Orleans flood was a clear demonstration that a certain type of Republican in power doesn’t care about the people, at least the poorer ones or the black ones. Rather like some elements of the Tory Party, the ‘nasty party’ as it became known under Margaret Thatcher, in the UK.

Mars has been going backwards ever since late December, which is why the Bill has run into trouble. Mars retrograde is a time to re-group, a time to withdraw from the battle and consider options. Mars is just starting to stand still, ready to move forward again in 2 weeks, so it is a time when options can be clarified, realistic courses of action proposed. This applies across the board, not just to the US Healthcare Bill.

The astrology has been so favourable to the Bill – Jupiter, Neptune, Chiron conjunct the US Moon in Aquarius, Saturn opposite Uranus – that I was surprised that it stalled so badly. It has been now or never astrology. But so favourable is the astrology that it is hard to see how it could ultimately fail.

It will emphasise the extreme polarity in US politics if Obama does force the Bill through, but I think it is his job to do so if necessary. To hell with democracy and public opinion and free speech and rights and all that if it doesn’t result in people treating each other decently. I think I’m in favour of benign dictatorship as against democracy if it means people are treated well. And I’m against free speech in the sense of anyone being able to criticise the government in public to whatever degree they feel like. It puts politicians permanently on the back foot and makes it very hard to govern in a straightforward and truthful manner. It’s become a God-given right for the press to be able to attack the government at every juncture, but I think it’s crazy when you stand back and look at it.

Democracy divides people. As one relatively benign African dictator said a few years ago, when under economic pressure from the Americans to be more ‘democratic’, under a democracy his people would promptly divide along religious and racial lines in a way they weren’t currently divided.

What you need is a governing profession just like any other skilled job, in which people are trained for years, and in which anyone is free to join that profession if they have the aptitude. That is what they seem to have in China, and I kind of agree with it, even though I think they go much too far in silencing dissent. What complicates the issue of dissent is that dissenters often have their heads full of western ideas of democracy as the absolute moral good to which all countries should be aspiring, so their dissent is not just about reform, which is fair enough, it is also about revolution, and that is immensely disruptive to a country, and you have to weigh up the benefits of such a revolution as against the suffering. Look at the hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dead in Iraq in the name of creating a democracy.

That said, in the UK we do have our governing profession, it’s called the Civil Service. Ministers come and go with frightening regularity, but the civil servants are in the job for life, and they don’t have to play to the gallery: the Civil Service, unlike politics, isn’t ‘show business for ugly people.’ This contradiction, this classic British bodge, lies behind the 1980s comedy series ‘Yes Minister’, in which you have the newly appointed Minister for Administrative Affairs doing his best to make decisions and create a splash, and you have his Civil Servants doing his best to frustrate him in the light of what they think is best. The Civil Servants always win. Margaret Thatcher, who was better than most at getting her own way, said that Yes Minister should be classed as documentary! Mind you, all along they secretly had a politician feeding the writers real events, which is probably why it rings so true.

Of course, this raises the question of who and what is the real government, where does the real power lie, in your average democracy. It’s an interesting question. In the UK, the Trade Unions had a lot of the power until Margaret Thatcher came along. The City of London has always had a lot of power, and this has only increased in recent decades. Then there’s the press, and of course there are the Americans. Governing politicians find themselves in a very circumscribed situation in real terms, while talking in public as if they hold all the cards. And a lot of their ‘decisions’ are the almost inevitable outcome of processes that have been going on for years, way back in previous governments.

Saturn, the Moon and the Education System

The Cancer-Capricorn axis represents respectively family life and one’s place in the world. Both are necessary. One is the archetypal world of the mother, the other of the father. Childhood represents a progression from one to the other. The early years are Cancer, the close and nourishing family life (ha-ha!) As we get older, we need to start to get a sense of the world and the demands it will place on us, and this is Capricorn.

Astrology has an answer for the age that this transition needs to start to happen: around the age of 14 or 15. I don’t know if this is traditional, but the astrology seems sound.

Cancer is ruled by the Moon, and around the age of 14/15 we find the Progressed Moon opposite the natal Moon. So the childhood world is starting to change. Capricorn is ruled by Saturn, and around the age of 14/15 we find transiting Saturn opposite natal Saturn: the adult world begins to call us.

Astrological events often occur a year or two before an exact crossing, so I’d say age 13, depending on the individual, is the earliest age this process should start.

In a way the education system reflects this: at aged 14, kids begin in earnest a 2 year process that leads to the first Saturnian event, in other words an event in which the world judges our worth, and that is (in the UK) GCSEs.

I’m not a child psychologist, but I am an astrologer, and I trust its answers. Astrology seems to be saying yes, it is necessary and appropriate that a bit of pressure to achieve and be measured is put on the kids from their early teens. But astrology also seems to be saying that the emphasis before that needs to be on being a kid and having a good home life, that a sound basis in the Moon principle is needed in order for the Saturn principle to work in a healthy way.

Of course, there is a Saturn square Saturn around the age of 7, at about the time you get a Prog Moon square natal Moon. This is also a change, but it is not an opposition, where the demand to change comes from without. A square is more of an internal challenge, so this is when kids need to begin the discipline of learning to read and write etc: as a square, however, the challenge is not from outside themselves, it is not at this stage about achievement, about being measured against other kids and against external criteria.

This, according to the astrology, is where the UK government is getting it wrong in testing all these kids at a young age. It is putting them into the Saturn phase before the Moon phase has had proper time to develop, and this reflects the one-sided Saturn of modern society.

It’s not just the government getting it wrong, because there is also the private educational system, which operates outside of the government system. Here, if anything, it is worse, the classic example being 8 year olds being sent to boarding school. This is big-time premature curtailment of the Moon principle, and premature introduction of the Saturn principle. Without proper development of the Moon, of the emotions, the person is liable to become over-identified in the long-term with the achievement of Saturn as a sort of compensation for lack of emotional fulfilment. It is a good system for creating business leaders of a certain type, for ensuring wealth and success, but at the expense of a narrow personality and probably misery in some of the people around them.

Another way of putting this is that we all have have a natural curiosity and set of interests. Education should be about fostering these (Moon), whereas it is too often about the opposite: negative Saturn puts money and success above all else, and achieves its ends through pressure. So you can end up as an adult without knowing, let alone having developed, your real interests. In its place is a programme that says you must 'succeed'.

Saturn without the Moon is a wilful husk. The Moon without Saturn is a directionless blob. Both tend to be self-centred.

The Saturn Return aged about 29 coincides with Prog Moon conjunct natal Moon. So this needs to be a time when both principles are brought together. Classically, this is a time of both promotion at work, or knowledge of one’s vocation (Saturn) together with becoming a parent for the first time (Moon). But both events involve the other pole as well: parenting is a responsibility (Saturn) while meaningful work is also emotionally fulfilling (Moon).

The Saturn Return is normally thought of in terms of worldly advancement. But bringing in the Progressed Moon suggests more of a balance, it suggests that this period also needs to involve emotional self-knowledge, knowledge of what one needs for personal happiness.

Decadent America

“Don’t believe anything until it’s officially denied.” The Israelis are officially denying involvement in the killing of a Hamas personage in Dubai in January by a group of people using forged British passports. “There is no proof,” the Israelis are saying, which to me is tantamount to an admission of guilt. There is nothing new about the Israelis conducting assassinations abroad, but it’s daft of them to use forged passports from a country that is their ally.

The Obama administration also seems to be being a bit daft in its approach to China. It needs China on board if it is to get a multi-lateral agreement on Iran. Iran is China’s 3rd largest supplier of crude oil, so it needs those supplies, which complicates any agreement over sanctions. Yet, in a brilliant bit of mistiming, the US government has recently announced a big arms deal with Taiwan, and a visit to the US by the Dalai Lama later this year. Both of these issues touch on China’s sovereignty – one being its claim over Taiwan, the other over Tibet – and sovereignty is a touchy subject for any country.

Iran is such a crucial issue that the US behaviour to China is kind of gobsmacking. It’s like the US still thinks it can do what it likes, that it can offend other countries and then expect their co-operation. It is becoming a decadent Empire, like the British were last century.

Another sign of this decadence is reflected in an article in yesterday’s New York Times. It describes “a complaint being directed at Washington with increasing frequency… The unwillingness of the two parties to compromise to control a national debt that is rising to dangerous heights.”

“I used to think it would take a global financial crisis to get both parties to the table, but we just had one,” said G. William Hoagland, who was a fiscal policy adviser to Senate Republican leaders and a witness to past bipartisan budget summits. “These days I wonder if this country is even governable.”

I’ve often thought of America as ungovernable, at least from the point of view of Congress being able to pass legislation that changes anything. Look what happened to healthcare, and that had about the most favourable astrology behind it that you could ask for (Jupiter-Neptune-Chiron conjunct the US natal Moon). Astrologically, it was now or never, and it looks like never.

This ungovernability is also to me a sign of a decadent empire on the slide, a slide that began when America’s progressed Saturn (its standing in the world) began to go backwards for the first time ever in 1997, followed a few years later by its progressed Mars (military capability and general initiative) going retrograde for the first time.

I think it was a measure of Obama’s inexperience that he thought he could go in and change it all, and it was that conviction that got him elected. In the novel American Wife, a fictionalised account of Laura and George Bush, Alice/Laura ends up feeling protective towards the American people because she realises just how gullible they are (I think this applies to most democracies).

“Don’t believe anything until it’s officially denied.” This was part of the blurb on the back of John Pilger’s documentary The War On Democracy, in which Pilger shows exactly the extent to which the US has exerted political and economic control over Central and South America since WWII. The US will go to whatever lengths are necessary to exert political control in countries in which it has an economic interest. By the same token, it exerts the same level of political control, where it can, in the Middle East. So it is not surprising that we have Al Qaeda etc. The Arabs want control of their homelands back. As Rev Wright said, 9/11 was the chickens coming home to roost for America. Obama denounced the man, who was his spiritual mentor, for saying this, and Obama meant it. Obama does not understand what is a simple truth to anyone outside of America – and probably to many people within America - namely that all its troubles with ‘terrorists’ etc are ultimately a result of its attempts to exert political control over the Middle East in order to ensure its supplies of oil.

Given this naive parochialism on Obama’s part, I was surprised that he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, because such one-sidedness always leads eventually to conflict. It was ironic that the day before the prize-giving ceremony, he ordered 30,000 more troops into Afghanistan!


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In late 2011 the US Progressed Asc/Desc axis will shift from Leo/Aquarius to Virgo Pisces. This will reflect a change in the way the country expresses itself and comes across to others, from proud (Leo) and ideological (Aquarius) to helpful (Virgo) and open to the influence of others (Pisces). This process began 5 years ago with Prog Sun moving into Pisces and the humiliation of the US in Iraq, and the coming shift of Asc/Desc axis is maybe already present in the more multi-lateral foreign policy approach of the Obama administration.

We also see this change reflected in the shift in the balance of power that is taking place as China rises and America struggles, and as Pluto squares and Saturn conjoins the US MC, its place in the world. Timed charts are hard to generate for China, but what we do know is that the People’s Republic has Sun at 28 Virgo, which Pluto squared a few years ago, and the chart for the government of China has Sun at 8 Libra, which Pluto is starting to square: in China’s case the Pluto transits indicate an empowerment, rather than a disempowerment, of the country.

Twitter

By the way, there is a Dharmaruci on Twitter and it's not me, in case anyone was wondering!

Madness

I haven't been writing for a few days because on Tuesday I had an operation on my big toe to remove a spur of bone that was interfering with the joint. It was more a matter of managing something than solving it, and this was reflected in the astrology: Mars (cutting) at the apex of a yod. A yod has 2 inconjuncts, an aspect that cannot be resolved in the sense of getting 2 planets to work harmoniously together: a compromise is usually necessary. At the base of the yod was Jupiter (nice) in Pisces (feet) and Pluto (getting to the root of a problem) in Capricorn.

My Scorpionic homeopath has her own take, that the trouble with both my foot and my knees (arthritis caused by years of flat-footedness) express a need for a greater connection to the earth, where my power lies. It's a relative thing, because I'm pretty practical, but at the moment Pluto is starting to conjoin my only personal earth planet, Mars in Capricorn, and part of the symbolism of that is the power (Pluto) of the earth (Capricorn). Capricorn, of course, also rules knees.

I dreamed the other night that Michelle Obama had gone mad. I think this dream came out of a combination of influences: reading American Wife (recommended), a fictionalised account of the life of Laura Bush; a discussion in which I’d noted that in relationships, one partner often unconsciously compensates for, and can thereby exacerbate, the imbalances of the other; and watching ‘A Woman Under the Influence’, a 1970s film about a housewife who is a good mother but nuts, and what makes it worse is everyone’s well-meaning attempts to make her ‘normal’. Also in there was Barack Obama’s recent comment that he could do with more time to reflect on his job.

Dreams are Neptune’s realm, and you can see how separate elements become combined and related in his watery domain, where the usual separating barriers (which we need for day-to-day life) are broken down.

Michelle Obama, as far as I am aware, has not gone mad. She’s a sturdy Capricorn. Mind you, if she was born after 11.30am, she would have Moon in Pisces opposite Uranus. So she may be going quietly mad under the apparently solid surface, doing it for Barack, who has Moon in double-sided, light-and-shadow Gemini square to Pluto and square to Michelle’s Moon. The man is so together and self-possessed under ongoing extreme pressure, and seems to have no safety valves like interns and cigars, or mass slaughter in a foreign country. With 12th House Saturn (conjunct Michelle's Sun), he’s not going to let the madness in easily. The way in 2008 that he cast out his mentor Rev Jeremiah Wright, a dispenser of unhoneyed truth, was pretty revealing. It was politically necessary, but nonetheless showed a compartmentalised psychology reflected, perhaps, in his Gemini Moon.

Speaking of madness, I know 2 people who once tried to commit suicide, and in both cases they were ostracised by most of their friends; in one case, they were Glastonbury ‘spiritual’ people who did the ostracising, it was like a whole herd of self-appointed ‘elders’ turning against one of its members. It was quite shocking, and quite an eye-opener as to where many ‘spiritual’ people are at when something real happens for once. They can’t handle it, because their so-called spirituality is an escape from their own darkness and irrationality, which they haven’t come to terms with. How would we cope without scapegoats?

A few years ago I went to a Liz Greene Seminar on God in the astrology chart, and she began the day by asking quite directly who in the audience considered themselves to be ‘spiritual’? A load of hands went up, and I sat there unsure. A friend who is an unlikely Buddhist told me he hadn’t stuck his hand up. I realised later that I don’t consider myself to be ‘spiritual’ because I don’t accept the split with ‘worldly’ that is implied, or the idea that people are anything other than people.

Charismatic Psychopath charged over Killer Sweat Lodge

Pluto is currently turning red due to its poles shifting. It’s part of a regular cycle, but he’s turning red much more strongly than astronomers had predicted. The reason for this is that he was demoted to minor planet status a few years ago, and he’s not pleased. What a way to treat the Lord of the Underworld. Pluto is also said to be the higher octave of the red planet Mars, so there is another resonance there.

Someone who clearly doesn’t honour the Lord of the Underworld is James Ray, the ‘motivational speaker’ under whose ‘expert’ leadership 2 people died in a sweat lodge in Arizona last year, and a 3rd died later from multiple organ failure. 21 of the 64 people inside the lodge were taken to hospital. According to participants, Ray kept the ceremony going despite people’s distress. Now he has been charged with manslaughter, and has pleaded not guilty.

What was he doing with 64 people inside the lodge? The leader needs to be aware of all the participants, and that is not possible with those numbers. It might have something to do with the event it was part of, which cost thousands of dollars. You make a lot more money from a lodge with 64 people than with, say, 15-20. This incident is the latest in a series going back years.

James Ray was born 22 Nov 1957. His Sun is on the Scorpio/Sag cusp, square to Pluto, and his Moon is in Sag. You have to watch it when you’ve got a hard Sun-Pluto aspect and you find yourself in a leadership position, because you don’t have an easy relationship with power. Honesty is needed. Sagittarius, with its eyes fixed on its lofty goals and grand horizons, is one of the signs that can be least interested in, or comfortable with, examining its ordinary human motives. It's a good sign, for example, for thinking that you are doing God's Will. I'd put Mr Ray in that well-known lineage of spiritual teachers, the 'charismatic psychopaths'.

(Note: if you talk to God, that makes you religious; if he talks back, that makes you psychotic!)

It has surprised me for some time that there has not been a load of legislation around sweat lodges from the health and safety people. I’ve been glad there hasn’t been such legislation, because it’s a pain and it’s restrictive, and if you’re being reasonably responsible, you don’t need it. But people like Mr Ray can spoil it for everyone else by producing a need for legislation.

A friend used to teach rock and roll dancing at a local adult education college. For him it involved people having fun and feeling at ease being sexy. He ran it for years, and then the education mafia came along and said they weren’t happy because his course did not lead to a certificate; furthermore, in the short meditation he led them through at the end, he had his eyes closed, which meant he couldn’t see what was happening, and this created health and safety issues! My friend realised it was time to stop running the classes.

But this is what the health and safety people do, and I can’t see it lessening under Pluto in Capricorn. I can imagine sweat lodges horrifying them. You’d need, for example, a building permit, a light inside, a barrier around the rocks and a door that opened automatically if it got too hot, or stayed hot for too long. You’d need someone with first aid training (not a bad idea), insurance and a doctor’s clean bill of health for all the participants. The rocks would need to go in while everyone was outside having their health checked between rounds. There would need to be a couple of emergency exits apart from the main door. The rocks would need to be of a type that let off no noxious fumes. The firekeepers would have to wear special fireproof clothing and faceguards and have a certificate.

And so on. Let’s hope Mr Ray’s behaviour doesn’t bring the health and safety mafia down on the rest of us who have been running sweats for years without serious incidents.

There is actually a Chippewa-Cree form of sweat lodge that is set up as an underworld experience. It is for moving on particularly painful or traumatic experiences. Before you go in, you put on a mask, so it's like eradicating your old identity, and that is how you remain inside the lodge. At the end you are reborn. This is very like a Pluto transit, where you die, you lose your old identity, and then you are reborn, transformed. I haven't been in one of these lodges, but a friend who has been in one described it to me (slightly against the rules, as the element of not knowing is important). The next night something old and painful moved on as if I had actually been in the lodge. In my case, it was because it made such mythic sense, because it was using a form that I was so familiar with from astrology, that I was able to connect in this way.

Cherie Blair versus the National Secular Society

Cherie Blair, the barrister wife of Tony Blair, has come under fire from the National Secular Society. Sitting as a judge in a case where one Muslim broke another’s jaw in a fight over a place in a bank queue, she decided to suspend the man’s sentence because he was a religious person and had not been in trouble before. She added: "You are a religious man and you know this is not acceptable behaviour."

The National Secular Society has complained to the Office for Judicial Complaints that her attitude was discriminatory and unjust, and suggests she might have treated a non-religious person less leniently.

I fully agree. Cherie Blair should not be let away with this. No doubt in her own head she is being liberal and open-minded, because the guy is a Muslim, whereas she is a Catholic. But actually she is putting religious people above those who are not, and this is prejudice and intolerance. (Maybe also it's a case of 'Nice Lion', the Blairs being a prime target for muslim extremists).

If anything, I would argue the case the other way around: many people take to religion because they can't handle living in an uncertain universe. With the false certainty that religion provides comes a sense of rightness and superiority that can be used to justify unethical actions. So if I were in Cherie Blair’s position, I would be asking how much this guy’s religion justified the violence that occurred when the other person ‘sinned’ by shoving in front of him in the queue.

Christianity and Islam both have a long history of righteous violence. The recent/current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are a testament to this. In the case of Christianity, there is on the one hand the teaching of Christ, but there is the Old Testament as well, which Islam also accepts, with its eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth teaching.

So I find it ridiculous that Cherie Blair should raise religious people above secular people in this way. Islam, I guess, is her enemy’s enemy (secularism), so for now it is her friend.


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I don’t know much about what Cherie Blair is like, but her chart reveals a Virgo Sun and Leo Rising and Moon. The Virgo Sun gives her the analytical, flexible mind that a lawyer needs, and the Leo gives her the ability to perform that a barrister needs (her father was an actor). Pluto squared her Sun in the last few years, and part of the meaning of this must surely have been the more independent identity that was possible when her husband stepped down from being Prime Minister.

Jupiter is near the Ascendant (also square to Mercury and Neptune), and this gives her religion, but with Uranus also there, I am surprised her religion is so conventional. What I have noticed with the 1955 Jupiter-Uranus bunch is that while on the one hand they are often forward thinking, they also tend towards fanaticism and intolerance – a bit like Aquarians, who are Uranus-ruled. If you mix this in with the sense of rightness that a double fire sign gives, as well as the conservatism of Leo, then I think you have Cherie Blair. She also has a liberalism (Jupiter-Uranus) to her – she is, after all, the wife of an ex-Labour PM, and is famous for saying in reference to Palestinian suicide bombers: "As long as young people feel they have no hope but to blow themselves up, we're never going to make progress, are we?"

Pluto is squaring, and Saturn opposing, her MC this year, so I would expect her career to move forward significantly. She’ll probably be appointed as a full-time judge.

George Bush and my Neptune-Sun Transit

Last night I dreamed I was in a boat at night that capsized, and we were all left swimming in arctic waters. I knew I was going to die. After a while, I hit land off the coast of Norway. I was able to guide everyone else to safety too.

I think that is about right for the end of my Neptune-Sun transit (which has also coincided with my time on the astroblogosphere). With Neptune-Sun it can be like the light has gone out (night-time) and there is no solid ground underneath you. So we’ll see what happens. Pluto conjoining my one personal earth planet – Mars – will no doubt be implicated.

I’m reading American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld. It’s a fictionalised account of the lives of George and Laura Bush in the form of Charlie and Alice Blackwell. It’s a very good dissection of 2 incompatible characters, though how much they correspond to George and Laura is hard to say. It’s written in the 1st person, from Alice’s point of view. She is given the birthday of 6th April 1942, which doesn’t suit the character. Laura Bush’s birthday of 4th Nov 1946, though, works excellently for the Alice character. Sun in Scorpio trine Moon in Pisces: quiet, insightful, truthful, compassionate. Also a bit of a goody-goody and uptight.

It’s interesting that the rich people behave in exactly the same tedious, superior way that moneyed people in England do. I’ve only got to the point where Charlie/George buys his baseball team, but he is obsessed with his ‘legacy’, which Laura cannot understand. As she puts it, some men ‘panic’ about it, which sounds about right. I know glimpses of the feeling from the middle of the night, when I am briefly appalled at my lack of ‘legacy’. Then I return to my senses! It’s just another brainwashing that stops you actually living, and it’s the curse of ‘successful’ families. I’ve spent 30 years undoing this one, and the more I do so, the more I feel I’m connected to life. It’s a Saturn thing – I have Moon conjunct – which gives the ability to apply yourself over a long period and to become good at something. But it also curses you by reducing your self-respect to what you are good at, what you have to ‘show for yourself’, instead of self-respect as a natural part of being human.

A life on this planet is a very short, ephemeral thing in the grand scheme, in the vast stretches of time that have been and will be. It isn’t important enough to get so serious about a ‘legacy’ or an ‘achievement’ or about anything. Your legacy will be forgotten within a short time anyway, apart from as a measuring stick for your children and grandchildren to feel inadequate by! (It’s part of the 8th House of inheritance.) We’re only here very temporarily, so trying to create something solid and lasting is delusional. And it gets in the way of that wonderful, rich, charmed experience that day-to-day living can provide, if we’re not trying to improve on it!

Also spoken like someone at the end of a Neptune-Sun transit.