Corporate

Christianity:

 

 

 

Corporate Christianity

An Astrological Study Of Opus Dei,

Saint Escriva, And The 21st Century

 

By

Francis Donald Grabau

n

 

“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as

when they do it from religious conviction.”

 

- Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)

“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as

when they do it

                

Introductory Comments;

 

What is it, exactly, that makes a saint?  Holiness, charisma, or corporate approval? You and I might think of our own mothers as saints, we might imagine that holiness is a humble thing both quiet and self-effacing, but we’d be wrong. Saints are officially made by one and only one Corporation on the face of the earth, and that corporation calls itself the Holy Roman Catholic Church. It’s a massive collection of men who genuinely or otherwise believe that Jesus Christ chose them to run an organization He supposedly created just before He was brutally murdered sometime around 33 Anno Domini. It’s the oldest and most massive corporate bureaucracy on the face of the Earth with a CEO known as the Pope or ‘Holy Father’ attended by a Board of Directors known as the “College of Cardinals” which may only consist of males. No women are allowed to occupy any of the high seats of Power in this Catholic Corporate Hierarchy but the topmost executives do get to dress up in long robes with assorted hats and tassels. They are compelled to wear expensive rings as well as bejeweled tiaras as symbols of their offices and on religiously festive occasions they even parade about with jewel encrusted staffs. These men boldly lay claim to their offices by insisting they’ve ruled this Corporation in an unbroken line of succession since Jesus (punningly) told his follower Peter that he was the ‘rock’ upon which God was founding His Church.

 

God, according to them, thereby intended to establish His own Holy Corporation against which the ‘Gates of Hell’ would never prevail. It would be God’s gift to humanity, His way of assuring He will always be with us looking out for our best, spiritual interests. It would be His own exclusive Club which He expected us to join so we could be assured we were on the right track to Heaven. We are expected to dutifully obey its chief officer and its board of directors because Jesus, Himself, is actually running the Corporation behind the scenes and has assured us that His CEO shall always be divinely inspired. The Holy Corporate Trinity of Jesus, His own Holy Father, and the Holy Spirit would see to it that on all important issues the CEO of His Church would Never make a mistake. These important issues are termed, by the Corporate Church as  issues of “faith and morals” and whenever the Pope speaks out on such issues his words must be understood as absolutely “Infallible” –he can never be wrong! Saints are officially declared to be saints only by the CEO and his Board of Directors, and on the sixth day of October in the year of the Lord, 2002, the Holy Corporation declared the man Jose Maria Escriva de Balageur to be an actual, official Saint. That’s saint with a capital S. That’s the ‘real thing’ –just like Coca-Cola, and it’s divinely copyrighted. So now we have Saint Escriva to pray to  -who will, like the CEO himself, act as our ‘intercessor’ with GOD. Hallelujah, Brothers and Sisters, can you say AMEN! Rejoice, for there’s a new Saint in Catholic Heaven. Or is there?

 

I hope you will kindly extend to me your Christian-Jewish-Islamic-Buddhist compassion if I beg to differ with the judgment of the Holy Corporate Church when I state what must be obvious to most who have delved into the life and ‘teachings’ of Mister Escriva: the man was a fascist. Aside from that judgment, I offer the further warning that the mini-corporation he founded and called “Opus Dei” is a Fascist Mini-Corporation. It goes without saying that the Holy Roman Catholic Church, the parent organization which declared this man to be a ‘Saint’, is even more terminally fascistic than either Mister Escriva or his Opus Dei Franchise. May Christ have mercy on my sinful soul!  Libera me, Domine, de morte aeterna in die illa tremenda!

 

I think it’s very important in this 21st Century that we risk even the wrath of religious fascism by simply speaking truth to power if we wish to save ourselves and the ecosystem of our planet. I think the time has come for all of us born and raised with various religious beliefs to question those beliefs and the Corporate structures lurking within them. Since our religions together with their accompanying doctrines and dogmas were handed down to us, inculcated into us by our parents, relatives and societies and since those beliefs also come with profound cultural and esthetic models we’ve absorbed since birth, changing or letting go of them is not a simple task. In fact, it’s downright confusing, painful, and often initially feels like a ridiculous form of self-amputation  -whack, there go my arms and legs! Whatever am I doing? Cutting off my nose to spite my face? Am I totally mad? Has Satan got hold of me, am I caught in the delusions of Maya, who am I to question and denounce as fraudulent the revered traditions of all organized religions? What hubris!  Tremens factus sum ego et timeo, dum discussio venerit atque ventura irae, quando coeli movendi sunt et terra!  Will the very heavens and the Earth rise up against me?  Am I offending God?

 

I don’t think so. In fact, I’ve discovered that all of Nature and everything I’ve ever known as Spirit rejoices in my prodigal return. The heavens and the Earth hold me in their arms and welcome me home. I am blessed and in the joy of that blessing I reach out to say the corporate ‘God’ of monotheistic arrogance is caught in the final throes of his sexist, cruel, and self-imposed death. Down with this false god and his vain judgments. Away with his righteous wars, his terrible slaughters, his hatred of Man and Earth. Let’s be done bending the knee to him, feeding his blind ignorance with our worship, indulging his Satan of a schizoid dark side. And may all his proclaimed saints, his sacred rituals, and his silly sins befriend him as he awakens to his folly and is born again  -humbly this time, and with a sense of humor. I offer him a refreshing drink from the fountains of Spirit, from the ancient symbology of the heavens and earth, from the very sacred void that gave birth to him. And I offer it to you, gentle reader, in the arbitrary but ancient form of astrology. [ Yes, all you Catholics out there, I know I’m pushing your buttons, -it’s me, the Voice of the Devil, slyly luring you toward the dark abyss of atheistic heathenism in deepest Hell! Come on, now, gimme a break! I’m not claiming to be infallible. ]

 

 

 

 

Part One:
 

A Gnostic View Of The 21st Century

 

 

Let’s begin, then, by taking a look at the birth chart of the 21st Century arbitrarily cast for the environs of the Capitol of the United States of America  -whereupon the dying gods of corporate religions thrash about so vigorously in their war-like death throes:

 

Chart For The 21st Century

for a larger image click here

 

Behold the planet Saturn deeply ensconced and retrograde in the fixed earth of the sign Taurus as the Century begins. In terms of religion, Saturn is the force usurped by the false father god. In the Judeo-Christian-Muslim mythos this force is embodied in Yahweh who is the Father of Jesus Christ. In that sense he is the ‘God’ of both the Old and the New Testaments taken together as the ‘Holy Bible’, and he rests in the sacred sign of the body of the Earth, Taurus. Therein he appears to be suffering under extremely stressful conditions: opposed to the Moon, squaring both her Nodes, squaring the planet Uranus, squaring the minor asteroid known as Pallas-Athena, and in quincunx aspect to both the planet Pluto and the asteroid Chiron. He’s all tied up in a heap of trouble, facing-off with the Divine Mother (Moon), stubbornly challenging his own mythological Father (Uranus), and trying to adjust to the combined forces of Death (Pluto) and Healing (Chiron) while simultaneously irritating the hell out of his own niece (Pallas/Athena) whose force is brightly shining in the sign of Leo Leadership.

 

The combined impact of all this stress favors the true force of Saturn but signals the death throes of the false father god. In other words, this Century witnesses the Unveiling of the True Force of the Real Saturn likely to occur on the physical level as a titanic struggle within the fixed earth of Taurus. I mean Earthquakes, Volcanic eruptions, Tsunamis, Hurricanes and Tornados, Global warming, radical shifts of land masses, and an accompanying riot of airborne and waterborne viral illnesses. In terms of the psychology of human beings, it’s a struggle over the definition of just what constitutes Authority (Saturn), a struggle over values, money, and the well-being of the substance (body) of the Earth (Taurus). And this struggle is further defined by the false forces of death (Pluto) and wounding (Chiron) centered in the sign of philosophy and religion (Sagittarius) with which Saturn must contend. Pluto and Chiron are combining (conjunction) their forces in an absolute way within the energy-field of religious philosophy guaranteeing it will be the matter in greatest need of balance as retrograde Saturn struggles to adjust the parameters of religious-philosophical Authority on our planet. Religion, throughout the 21st Century, is sure to be insisting on its absolute power and authority, and yet with Saturn retrograde (moving backwards) the very nature of all Authority and everything traditionally understood as constituting Reality is in question.

 

In America, where Saturn in Taurus occupies the 8th house of death, secrecy, investments and Corporations its quincunx aspect to the absolute but wounded power of religion reveals that Corporations fighting for control of the Earth will be inclined to misuse religious themes to sanctify or otherwise legitimize their exploitation of the Taurus resources of the Body of Earth. Hence we witness the Bush-Cheney administration masking their Fascist Corporate (Halliburton-Bechtel) greed with Christian fundamentalist language attempting to morally justify the invasion and rape of both Afghanistan and Iraq while citing Islamic fundamentalists as “Terrorists”. Bush, we must realize, literally told the public that ‘God’ who is his ‘other Father’ (the Saturn/Yahweh of the Bible) told him to attack these Nations. Meanwhile Corporations like Halliburton, Bechtel, Blackwater and Whackenhut pocket huge profits amidst blatant charges of stealing and mismanaging war funds. The Taurus Land throughout both these Nations is laid waste, sewn with toxic depleted uranium guaranteeing ill health and increasing birth defects for literally hundreds of thousands of years to come and all in the name of Corporate Christian Capitalism. This latter is what I mean by the death throes of Saturn veiled as the false father god. Illegitimate Authority. Fake Authority. The kind of false Authority that needs to be questioned, exposed, and defied. The kind of Authority that must die if the Earth is to live.

 

While the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church nominally objected to the War on Iraq, he also used his ‘spiritual’ clout (false Saturn Authority) with American Roman Catholics to advise through his Bishops that American Catholics should not vote for Presidential candidates who support a woman’s free right to choice where abortions are concerned. What’s left of the American free Press instantly pointed out that this statement was guaranteed to negatively impact the Roman Catholic vote for the Democratic (and Roman Catholic) candidate, John Kerry. Subsequent polls show that it did. Hence the Vatican influenced the American vote in favor of the war criminal George W. Bush. This is a prime example of Saturn in quincunx to both Pluto and Chiron in Sagittarius, an example of the absolute power of the unconscious (Pluto) via religion (Sagittarius) to affect the pose of Divine Authority (Saturn). It is seen again in the fundamentalist Christian poser, Pat Robertson, calling for the murder of Hugo Chavez and calling down God’s wrath on the people of Dover, Pennsylvania for restricting the teaching of religion in public schools. It is the unconscious death wish (Pluto) of religion (Sagittarius) threatening the Earth with Christian Armageddon, claiming as its justified authority (Saturn) the absolute truth (Pluto) of its religious texts (Sagittarius). All these events are examples of the death throes of the false Saturn of false Authority. He is strictly male, the father, patriarchal. He issues absolute edicts because he thinks he’s utterly infallible. The Gnostics of the time of Christ called him Yaldaboath, the chief of the Archon deceivers, he who blindly believed himself to be the Creator God.

 

Behind the mask of Yaldaboath, behind the fear mongering beast Yahweh/Jehovah, stands the true force of the planet, Saturn. It’s the force of stabilization, of focused boundaries and responsible free choices. It’s the Saturn of the fabled ‘Golden Age’ when Man-Animals-Plants and Earth lived in mutual awareness and respect causing a blossoming of joy and the fearless life of shared abundance. This true force of Saturn collaborates with humans by arousing within them recognition of their own Authority, by resonating with the centering force within man which allows him to be in harmony with the Earth, the Heavens, and all sentient being. True Saturn facilitates the heart to heart communication between all separate beings and informs them of their interdependent distinctness within the web of life. It supports the discrete function of each being within the shared and heart-felt wisdom of the whole. It is the centering force of  the mutually shared authority which constitutes true Holiness. And the traditional ‘he’ of the true Saturn force is just as easily ‘she’  -Wisdom of the centering dance in the yin-yang of complimentary opposites. The bringer of Harmony and Peace. The Authority of Spirit, not the dumb authority of the blindly deceived and deceiving ‘Creator God’ we know as Yaldaboath-Yahweh, the boastful and arrogant god issuing loud-mouthed ‘commandments’ that all must follow for fear of his blasphemous wrath. A strictly patriarchal god of religious stone. Moloch, who eats his children. Craves worship and fawning subservience. No, not that sadly pathetic Archon intruding itself between us and the planet Saturn, but the true force of mutually shared authority which informs each of us concerning our gifts which are our responsibilities within the whole.  It gives us bones and a spine, so we may stand upright and fearlessly, courageously embrace life.

 

SATURN  ARCHON

Francisco Goya

 

 

Whatever became of Jose Maria Escriva and Opus Dei, you ask, isn’t that the supposed subject of this writing?  Well, yes, but neither Mister Escriva nor his foundling, Opus Dei, exist in a vacuum. I’ve dubbed him a ‘Fascist Saint for the 21st Century’ and I will argue that both he and his organization are nearly perfect examples of what we are going to witness as the death throes of negative Saturn within the human psyche while this century unfolds. So we must spend a while longer looking at the chart for the century, discovering the kernel of its hundred year long pattern before we can place Escriva or Opus Dei within that pattern. Saturn, we will find, is pivotal to all this work but so is the Moon, the Queen of Heaven. Remember, if you will, that Saturn and the Moon figuratively oppose one another throughout the century just as they do at the century’s birth, and we are examining the moment of that birth through its natal chart. Time is in love with Eternity, and together they act in mutual bliss. Of course, the false Archon of Saturn in the guise of the Greek, Chronos, wants to hide that reality from us, wants to keep us marching along the measured line of causal reality even though that line of chronological time ultimately turns into circles, gears, and clocks imprisoning us in the fear of death and the pain of suffering. But every Planet has its masking Archon seeking to distort its force, so do asteroids and even moons. Indeed, the very living zodiac of signs shines through the obscuring veils of the Archons. As Jesus and Plato both said, we ‘see now through a glass darkly’, yet we may find our other being face to face in the Light of Conscious Awareness.

 

As the 21st Century opened the Moon was in Scorpio and only 35 minutes of a degree away from exact opposition to Saturn in Taurus. We can understand this as the Wisdom of the Queen of Heaven opposing the Authority of the Patriarchal God. We can see it as the ebb and flow of feeling opposing the focused confines of ‘logical’ reason. Mary, the Mother of Jesus opposing his Father God. Wisdom opposing the ‘Logos’ word of the Law. There are a myriad of facets to this opposition between the Moon and Saturn but they are the warp and woof of a single weaving for their cycles closely mirror each other; the Moon requires 28+ days to travel round the zodiac of signs just once, while Saturn takes 29+ years to do the same. It’s a question of form relating to change, of structure to content. But always, when the Moon stands in full opposition to Saturn, she stands on her own Authority and faces her equal. Feeling has its own form, gravity is the centering of movement. And in the Century’s chart this dance between Moon and Saturn enlivens the fixed signs of Scorpio and Taurus implying a need on the part of humans to move carefully in balance between the waters and the continents, between the flowingly invisible (Scorpio) and the physically substantial (Taurus). Mystery, intrigue, and the possibility for transformation characterize this opposition which warns us of the danger of repressed feelings and intuitions constrained by laws.

 

Mother Moon faces off with Father Time. In Roman Catholic terms, it’s ‘Holy Mother Church’ in opposition to ‘Il Papa’, the Pope. In every organized religion it’s the feeling and soul of the religion (Moon) opposing the laws and dogmas of that religion (Saturn). And especially in America, where the Moon in Scorpio occupies the Nation’s 2nd House (of wealth, taxation revenues, banks and commerce) her opposition to Saturn in Taurus in the 8th House (of corporations, interest rates, birth-mortality rates, and the National debt) warns of a slow down followed by a nearly complete cessation to the flow of money and goods. Commerce coming close to a total halt, mortgage and interest rates frozen, debts coming due. These financial and physical challenges are integrally bound up with religions due to the fact of the Moon being in practical and productive sextile relationship to both Pluto and Chiron in Sagittarius while also opposed to Saturn authority which is simultaneously in quincunx relationship to the Pluto/Chiron combined forces in religion prone Sagittarius. In this 21st Century, therefore, money, land rights, and all forms of government and commerce around the planet are especially subject to, and pointedly influenced by the teachings, rules, and dogmas of various religious/philosophical belief systems.

 

Capitalism, if one looks at its philosophical presumptions, is a direct result and logical outcome of Hierarchical Christianity and its simplistic concepts of good and bad. God rewards the good and punishes the bad according to the Christian mythos, so the good are rich and the bad are poor. Since all Christians are born in sin and need to be redeemed it’s easy to see why most people are bound to be poor. Only the forgiveness of the Jesus Corporation via God’s Holy Bank can make you rich. Most ‘poor sinners’ are poor because they’re just lazy, unrepentant, weak, and bad. To be ‘born again’ is to get a good credit rating and hold a Gold Master Card. To be simple, humble persons imitating Christ it’s best that the masses should actually go barefoot (‘on credit’) as He did and figuratively ride around on donkeys ending their earthly days happy to be crucified. Sin is big business yielding superior profits for investors in Christian Capitalism. Guilt, suffering, and starvation wages go hand in hand with praying for the Redeemer to come again, clear up the books, and set things straight. Armageddon is the settling of all accounts. Cheating, lying, and waging War is the single most profitable and blessed activity to be found at the heart of Corporate Christian Capitalism which is based upon trading and profiting in the wages of death and sin. All this is clearly visible in the 21st Century retrograde position of false Saturn/Yahweh in the sign of Taurus goods and money quincunx to both Pluto and Chiron in the Religious sign of Sagittarius. Only the Moon, the Wisdom of deep feeling found in Scorpio opposes the Patriarchal authority of the Saturn/Yahweh ‘God’ reflecting his own fear based greed straight back to him. Telling him it’s poisonous. Lethal.

 

But the Moon is also Mistress of the Waters, and everywhere around the globe the people of Earth will be increasingly impacted throughout the coming century by the secret controls imposed by Saturn Authority figures on the flow of sacred, life giving and potable water. Scorpio as the sign of poisons, attempts to remove toxic impurities from the body …in this case, the toxic pollution of the waters flowing in, around, and through the body of the Earth. The false Saturn Authorities entrenched in their retrograde stance within 8th House Corporations will stand ignorantly blind and opposed to these needed cleansings, they will hold on stubbornly (Taurus) to their established practices of radically polluting land, sea, sky and earth in their greed for profits. They will stand in challenge to the Century’s Lunar Nodal Axis which marks the Past (Aquarius South Node) and the Future (Leo North Node) declaring a ‘crisis’ over the ‘fate of the earth’. They will cultivate fear in the feelings of the world’s masses (Moon) and promote their falsely created but self-fulfilling Saturn agenda of scarcity and absolute control. All natural land, air, and water ‘resources’ will be controlled through increasingly stricter laws enforced by the mouthing of capitalistic religious precepts.

 

In their vile work they will be assisted by traditional churchmen, mosquemen, stupamen and templemen. Their own greed masking (especially to themselves) their unconscious death wishes will let loose upon the Earth their religious henchmen, the notorious ‘Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse’ who will, in turn, be used to release their masters’ genetically designed plagues upon humanity. The heartless Masters will keep their antidotes for themselves and for the select ‘few’ they have chosen to seed their ‘New World Order’. Many of the innocent and good will be slaughtered before enough people are able to shake off their numbed conditioning and fight back to defend their rights. The dumbly religious will accept their ‘Holocaust-Armageddon’ conditioning and meekly wind their way into the slaughter like pure victims imitating their Corporately designed and packaged Saviour who (they were taught to believe) died on the cross for their sins. The pearly white teeth in the jaws of Moloch will grind them to extinction and they will become the new fodder for the heavenly fields of the fake Jesus, the phony Buddha, the insatiable Allah. Thus will the Age of Pisces Faith terminate, and the Fishermen rot in the polluted seas with their much sought after but thoroughly toxic fish. This is the sickly vision of Yaldaboath, the false Archon masking Saturn who mocks the law of Spirit, the sympathetic relatedness that is Love. And all the while, the Moon as Queen of Heaven, as Fatima, as Shekinah, as Sophia  -as every Mother on the planet will watch her sick and dying children and weep. Or, perhaps She will fight back with Her stirring ‘Vagina Monologues’.

 

The future need not be this bleak if we as humans would embrace the opposition between the Moon and Saturn and resolve it within ourselves. It’s the opposition between the flow of feeling and the responsibility of authority. When each of us is ready to accept our feeling relationship (Moon) to all of Life and act responsibly (Saturn) on that feeling relationship we immediately attune ourselves to real authority (Saturn) because we no longer seek to make anyone or anything outside ourselves responsible for our own decisions. We realize our innate ability to be centered within the whole and are at once Holy. We escape the clutches of the ignorant Archon Yahweh/Yaldaboath and cease to imitate its arrogant, separatist ignorance. We no longer bounce back and forth between a good god (elation) and an evil satan (depression) for we recognize these polarities within ourselves and get them together in our embrace. We give birth to our feeling selves (Moon) and finally acknowledge our own responsible authority (Saturn). We define (Saturn) our soul (Moon) and are able to walk in the light of Spirit (Sun). We must dial up and tune into our feeling intuitions through the Moon for, as the Korean video artist Nam June Paik so beautifully demonstrated, “Moon is the oldest TV set.”

 

The Sun, in the chart for the 21st Century, is located in Saturn ruled Capricorn linked to the Moon by the fertile green line of a sextile aspect and to Saturn itself by the heavenly blue line of a trine aspect. Good news, because it compliments the fact that Earth, herself, mirrors the Sun by forming a fertile sextile to Saturn and a heavenly trine to the Moon. These fertile and heavenly aspects assure us that the 21st Century is the century in which humanity as a whole will come to know of the ‘Golden Age’ of Saturn once again because Spirit (Sun) and Soul (Moon) will be recognized and experienced as lovingly inherent in the divinity of matter (Earth) and responsibly defined (Saturn) as fact. Mankind will no longer accept the fallacy of a transcendent male god but will experience the divine as immanent in and flowing through all creation. All of matter will be known as sacred and alive, and the ‘fall’ from love and joy into suffering and pain will be healed. Guilt and shame will become honesty and openness, and without their draining presence the lion shall indeed lie down with the lamb.

 

I realize this sounds (and actually is) a bit … shall we say, Utopian. But it’s the best dream dwelling in the hearts of humankind and it yearns to come out and express itself. It wants to be realized. It’s the call of Spirit, and Spirit is the Love which conquers all. Besides, even Hollywood and Broadway know this is the time of the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. But dawning takes time, and our experience of time is often distorted through the delusory tricks of the false Archon which masks the true force of  Saturn. True Saturn knows time as the play of  Eternity, and in the ‘Golden Age’ of Saturn --who is the ancient historical ruler of Aquarius as well as Capricorn- both telepathy and time travel are natural. As the Age of Aquarius slowly dawns upon us we will stumble again upon these True Saturn realities and reclaim our wearied souls, rejuvenate our fractured Spirit, experience the Divine in all that is human, earthly, unearthly, and natural. Fear will no longer rule our lives because we will have realized the ‘marriage of heaven and hell’ and just as Jesus said, as Buddha taught, as Mohammed knew we will all know we are the sons and daughters, the children and friends of God eternally evolving in love and play. We will find our centers within the Holiness of the whole and recognize our collaboration as Spirits in Spirit. We’ll even be able to recognize and heal within ourselves the blind ignorance of Yahweh who will happily cease his pontificating babble as the chief CEO of the Corporate Goon Squad mouthing off about its ‘chosen people’ –whether Christian, Catholic, Jewish, Islamic, or Buddhist. The only remaining hierarchy will be an Aquarian one wherein we shall all enjoy our collaboration as fluidly adaptable musketeers intoning together the Song of Spirit, “All for One, and One for All” !

 

Ah, yes, ‘tis true my brothers and sisters … but no sooner do we grasp this joyous vision than the as yet unhealed Archons lay claim to our minds. They mock us saying ….

 

“Well, tut-tut, maybe so, but Greed and War are alive and well all over this Earth that you claim is so ‘divine’. You and your brethren still cower helplessly in fear before Our Authority. Get back to your worrisome work, you have to EARN a living! Extra Ecclesiam, nulla salus  -Outside the Church, there is No Salvation proclaims the Holy (Archon) Father. Outside the Bank, there is No Money add the Holy (Archon) Bankers! This is the way of things where you are now, and they will never change. Not until you die and go to your various Heavens. Work and suffer while you’re alive on Earth, and then your Father God will take care of you. Your pain and suffering are holy in the eyes of the Lord!” 

 

 

 

 Part Two:

 

Jose Maria Escriva, The Cruel Kind Of Saint 

 

“Blessed be pain. Loved be pain. Sanctified be pain. Glorified be pain. You know your body is your enemy and an enemy of God’s glory, why do you treat it softly?”  These cunning words, my friends, are the words of the Archons pouring forth from the mouth of that latest gift the corruptly usurped Authority of the Vatican has chosen to bestow upon the Humanity of the 21st Century. It’s a gift straight from the mouth of Jose Maria Escriva canonized as an official Saint by the religion knowing itself as the ‘Holy Roman Catholic Church’ in this 21st Century. Well might we ask ourselves, what hath (which) God wrought!  Lingering shadows from the faithfully suffering Age of Pisces still stalk the dawning Age of Aquarius. Here’s our chance to explore them, and by exploring dispel their darkness.

 

 

 

Natal Chart Of Jose Maria Escriva

(Source: Lois Rodden; rated ‘AA’)

for larger image click here

 

 

Escriva is born just at the New Moon when a pronounced cluster of attending planets all came together in what astrologers call a stellium in the sign of Capricorn. A New Moon temperament is usually a wide-open, free, energized and childlike temperament which astrology relates to the fact that this is the most fertile time each month for seed planting. It’s the moment of fresh, new beginnings. A time when the energies of the Sun & Moon are conjunct indicating the alignment of Spirit (Sun) and Soul (Moon). A person born at such a time benefits from the fact that the soul and the spirit are in agreement within the personality because they are both expressing through the same energy-field (sign) of the zodiac indicating inner harmony.

 

Jose Maria Escriva’s intense alignment of spirit and soul are personally expressing through Capricorn, a cardinal earth sign marked by a very public and objective form of self awareness usually associated with Business, Government, and Politics. It’s essence is classically conservative and it’s ruled by serious Saturn. Tellingly, Saturn is EXACTLY conjunct the Sun right there in the sky of Capricorn at his birth, revolving between the Sun and Moon. This is an uncommon and difficult combination of energies because a New Moon Temperament is at its best when totally open to life, it’s a spontaneous and freedom loving sort of temperament living very much in the subjective freedom of the moment. But Saturn is the very symbol of focus, boundary making, and objectivity, and we see it exactly conjunct the Sun, wedged between the Sun & Moon. Hence we are looking at an essentially conflicted personality torn between the innocently fertile openness of the New Moon and the serious, contracting focus of responsible Saturn. Escriva may accurately be called a spontaneously serious personality, a subjectively objective person, an overtly conservative seeker of the kind of freedom he will only be able to find in the Authority of Saturn.  Actually, he’s something of a living conundrum, an odd kettle of fish!

 

The intense agreement between his Spirit essence (Sun) and his Soulful feeling (Moon) is enhanced by the fact that Mercury and Jupiter are also exactly conjunct each other, and more loosely conjunct Sun, Moon, and Saturn. This speaks of a rational mind (Mercury) in agreement with the personality’s intuitive mind (Moon) again emphasizing what is clearly a very focused (arguably single-minded) attention to all that Capricorn embodies: hard work, serious self-discipline, public ambition, and very pronounced conservative viewpoints focused in the Capricorn + Saturn fondness for rules, obedience, and traditional Authority. A man born with the Sun exactly conjunct Saturn is a man who identifies his very Solar Essence with Saturn, and when that man’s Mercury Mind is also exactly conjunct Jupiter in Authoritative Capricorn he naturally thinks he's a Jupiter Teacher of Objective Truth. When that man is a subjective New Moon temperament it’s perfectly natural for him to spontaneously assume that he’s objective. In the person of Escriva we have such a man, we have that odd reality expressed in the English language by the word ‘oxymoron’. A living contradiction of incongruous energies, a keenly focused but very difficult combination of ‘spontaneously constrained’ energies, something which I have called a conundrum but which the Merriam-Webster dictionary (on-line) calls an ‘oxymoron’ and illustrates by the expression “cruel kindness”. 

 

In the person of Escriva we are looking at a complex and irascible personality, a riddle of a man who is spontaneously un-spontaneous. A man who feels at home with authority, feels he is or needs to become an authority figure and has a need for the boundaries, structures, and focus which he’s certain he can only find in authoritative structures. He’s especially attuned to the authority of religion since his Jupiter function (Religion/Philosophy) conjoins his Mercury function (Thought-Speech) in Capricorn (Authority). The social outreach of his Jupiter function combined with its impulse to teach the truth as he sees that truth (Sagittarius is symbolized by the one-pointed arrow of the Heavenly Archer) all but guarantees that he will try to carry his personal (‘spontaneously un-spontaneous’) single mindedness right out into the world; into the objective and political, cultural and business realms of Capricorn.

 

Indeed, the cornerstone of his life’s work is a book of aphorisms he wrote which he called, “The Way”. These are terse maxims aimed at teaching truths, and they brilliantly illustrate what any astrologer would expect to find in the writings (Mercury) of a man born with the teacher-proselytizer function (Jupiter) in conjunction with Mercury at birth and in Escriva’s birth chart Mercury and Jupiter are exactly conjunct (combined and merged) in Capricorn. His writings are subsequently marked by the combination of conservative emphasis on Obedience and hard Work, and he takes for granted the obvious Truth of what he so tersely asserts. The stuff is absolutely priceless, I mean it’s blatantly “over the top” in a way that would seem hilarious if it were not for the fact that this man and his writings are being pawned off onto all the People of the  world as “saintly”. Here are a few examples (and I warn you, although these are terse maxims, Escriva is no Pascal):

 

Maxim 59:   "One's own mind is a bad adviser.”


Maxim 387: "The standard that God asks of us is determined by these three points: holy intransigence,

                  holy coercion and holy shamelessness."


Maxim 936: “You have come to submit, to annihilate yourself.”


Maxim 941: "Obedience, the sure way. Unreserved obedience to whoever is in charge...obedience in your                apostolate, the only way."


Maxim 623: "One must obey in every little detail, even if it seems useless and difficult. Do it!”

 

[Those interested in doing so can read more of Escriva’s ‘maxims’ here: http://www.escrivaworks.org/book/the_way/point/387 ]

 

One can actually overdo the whole authoritative-obedience (Capricorn-Saturn) issue, don’t you think? But in the chart for the 21st Century wherein we find Saturn in stressful quincunx aspect to both Pluto & Chiron in religious oriented Sagittarius this kind of strictly rigid Saturn-Authority applied to taken-for-granted religious notions can be very appealing to many. We find Christian fundamentalists in America unreservedly backing the quasi-religious platitudes mouthed by George W. Bush & Company on a daily basis. After all, it is ‘reasoned’ he’s the President, the ‘elected’ one who “is in charge”, the ultimate executive Authority in America and that fact alone makes him right; our job is merely to follow him in unquestioning obedience as if he were the Pope and all Americans were devoted Roman Catholics. He certainly is a living embodiment of Escriva’s precept cited above –“holy intransigence, holy coercion, and (particularly) holy shamelessness” ! One would think George W. Bush and Jose Maria Escriva would see eye-to-eye on a lot of issues, and while we don’t have to worry that those two will ever meet in the flesh, it is a fact that Escriva’s organization called ‘Opus Dei’ which lives by “The Way” is definitely alive and well in the halls of power throughout these United States.

 

Let’s dip a little deeper into Escriva’s astrological profile.

 

 

 

Saint Escriva

 

This is the birth chart of a man born with the active-aggressive force of Mars expressing through the sign of Aquarius noted for its affiliation with large-scale social reforms. He’s a man whose ego energies (Mars) are definitely focused upon stirring up society, leading social groups, deriving ego satisfaction from any success he might achieve in areas of social reform. This Mars function impacts his Virgo Ascendant by way of the highly restless and out-reaching aspect of 135 degrees called a sesquisquare (the aspect is only 8 minutes of a degree short of exact) and it forms a similarly tight square aspect to both his North & South Lunar Nodes found respectively in Scorpio & Taurus and in the 2nd and 8th Houses of his birth chart. Since the Lunar Nodes represent one’s “Destiny Line” it is clear that Escriva incarnated into his current life with a marked focus on the use he might make of his Mars ego energies concerned with aggressively assertive action. In other words, much of his life would predictably center around how he expressed himself as a potential Mars in Aquarius social reformer, his spiritual destiny would depend upon how he responded to his soul’s crisis over the use of Mars force. And the sesquisquare which Mars makes to his Virgo Ascendant (his Body and his Dharma Path) tells us that the Virgo traits of self-discipline and focus upon detailed hard work in service to others should be marked traits of his personality.

 

The restless sesquisquare traditionally reaches out with a ‘Vision’ and in Escriva’s case this Vision became ‘Opus Dei’ the literal Latin Work of God. On October 2, 1928 Josemaria experienced something he called a “Vision” (in the Catholic Religious sense) and it was “Opus Dei”, the creation of an organization of ordinary Roman Catholics who would go about their daily Virgo routines of humble/ordinary work while prayerfully awake and dedicating their simplest Virgo tasks to the greater glory of God. Certainly that’s a good thing to do, and even (potentially) a Saintly thing to do. But there is that Mars emphasis informing this Sesquisquare Vision, and Mars is the symbol for active, self-conscious ego assertion …that’s something any Saint has to watch out for, tame, subdue, and ultimately transform (through humility) into selflessness. Certainly Escriva knew that and, therefore, from the date of his Vision of Opus Dei until his death we can assume he was in constant ‘battle’ with his ego while ambitiously striving (all those planets in Capricorn) to attain the selflessness characteristic of Sainthood, and pointedly asked of everyone born with a Virgo Ascendant.

 

We cannot afford to pass beyond Escriva’s Mars function until we take into account that it’s natal position in the fixed sign Aquarius squaring the Lunar Nodes in the fixed signs Taurus (South Node) and Scorpio (North Node) is perfectly expressed in his own maxim which emphasizes what he called “holy intransigence” for the great problem with fixed signs is precisely that, -their Fixity. Such people find it almost impossible to back down from any position once they’ve embraced it, they are not noted for their adaptability which is the characteristic of the mutable signs. Yet Escriva’s birth chart contains one of the 4 mutable signs on each of the chart’s 4 Angles! So we are looking at a man with an external persona that appears to be -and actually is- Flexible. But, within the flexibility of the mutable Angles of his external persona (Asc-Dsc + Mc-Ic) we find the fixed, determined, and ‘intransigent’ T-Square created by Mars (ego energy) in Aquarius squaring the Taurus-Scorpio Nodes. This is like one of those disturbing candies in an assortment of chocolates, -the coating is sweet and soft chocolate but when you bite deeper into it your teeth crunch on the hard nut inside. Inside Escriva is a rigid tension focused on sex and money, on Scorpio and Taurus. Warrior Mars activates his sexual-financial tension from the idealistic and abstract mental plane of Aquarius while it simultaneously challenges his Virgo Self-Discipline Ascendant with a 135 degree Vision restlessly trying to communicate itself. Here again, in the combination of his Fixed T-Square with his Flexible Angles, we witness the peculiar oxymoron that is the ‘flexible intransigency’ of the man Escriva. His  ‘cruel kindness’.

 

That he felt this sexual-financial tension right up front on his Virgo Ascendant cannot be doubted, for the Ascendant signifies the body and Mister Escriva adopted a form of bodily self-discipline straight out of the European Middle Ages, echoed in his Spanish ancestral roots. He practiced self-flaggelation and wore the cilice. He inflicted physical pain on himself, and his infamous ‘maxims’ are replete with references to the wonderful joys of pain suffered ‘for God’. No doubt his tortured mental state which is everywhere in evidence throughout his writings (unless one happens to be a traditional Catholic religiously romanticizing pain) communicated itself to his followers causing many of them a great deal of personal anguish and confusion.


There is, for instance, the anguished testimony of Maria del Carmen Tapia found in her book “Beyond The Threshold: A Life In Opus Dei” a review of which can be read here: http://www.natcath.com/NCR_Online/archives/090597/090597l.htm

 

Jose’s chart reveals him to be a man caught in the grips of sexually frustrated power. Not only is his Mars sexual function challenging his Lunar Nodes and personal destiny line but Uranus, modern day ruler of the sign Aquarius in which his Mars function is found at birth, rests at the base of his symbolical spinal column on the IC (cusp of 4th House) in the fiery sign of Sagittarius. From that IC, Uranus opposes Pluto on his Gemini Midheaven and squares both his Ascendant and Descendant marking his style of relating. This is a complex sort of ‘Gordian Knot’, a bundle of tightly strung nervous energies signifying enormous tensions between his root mulahdara chakra and his crown chakra which, no doubt, also gave him a few Virgo intestinal problems. Uranus, after all, is the force of shocking rebellion and Escriva experienced this force at the very roots of his personal power, in his genetic Spanish ancestry focused through the religious sign of Sagittarius. (Torquemada and the infamous ‘tricks’ of the Spanish Inquisition immediately leap to mind.) It is from that vantage point in his body/psyche that Uranus tightly opposes Pluto found in the Gemini sign of the writer-communicator at the Midheaven of his Public Persona. We are looking at an authoritatively riveting because sexually and emotionally frustrated man (Pluto opposite Uranus; Mars square both Lunar Nodes) with an energized and often angry gift for writing and speaking shockingly religious things (Uranus in Sagittarius) in absolutist (Pluto) jargon (Gemini) guaranteed to grab the public’s attention. He called it ‘The Way’.

 

Keep in mind that this man is born with a powerful stellium of planets including Mercury (ruler of both his Gemini Midheaven and his Virgo Ascendant) in conservative, authority oriented, and obedience loving Capricorn! He makes a strict religious teaching out of his need to resolve his inner contradictions by rigorously adhering to Authority and promoting authoritarian structures. He innocently but rather narcissistically offers that teaching as a form of Virgo Service to his fellow man. He’s a fixed and stubborn personality (Mars squaring both Lunar Nodes, all three in fixed signs of the zodiac) crucified on the cross of his Mutable Angles (Virgo-Pisces, Sagittarius-Gemini). This ‘crucifixion’ is driven by the powerful internal forces of the fixed T-Square between Mars and the Lunar Nodes which releases in Leo, the dramatic sign of ego and leadership. Uranus and Pluto, in opposition within his psyche, give both shocking and powerful (verbal and written) expression to his crucified agony through the signs of the teacher (Sagittarius) and the Communicator (Gemini). Throughout his chart we see abundantly repeated evidence of the same conundrum: the oxymoron of ‘cruel kindness’ that is Jose Maria Escriva. A frustrated religious conservative whose dull and angry maxims are contained exclusively within the Capricorn confines of traditional, establishment religion. A safe and shockingly unimaginative ‘Saint’ living strictly within the parameters of Authoritative Religion as a form of Capricorn Business wherein he was destined to struggle mightily (by repressing his sexual-emotional, Scorpio-Taurus feelings) for recognition as a man of power. No saint at all, or else the Patron Saint of Bureaucrats.

 

I’d simply dismiss him as a wholly servile boot licker and be done with him. But this man, a religiously irascible, tortured and torturing sado-masochist obsessed with Authority has hoodwinked millions of Roman Catholics and founded an organization steeped in the same ethos of fascistic subservience (masking ambitious aspirations for political power) which was his own. He called to his aid a formidable coterie of similarly fawning brutes. Religious Machiavellians. Instruments of the Archons (Authorities; Rulers). The members of this Roman Catholic Cult marked by secrecy and unquestioning obedience to their leaders are dangerously deceived promulgators of religious-political fascism. Their founder and his teachings have received the ‘imprimatur’ of their Church, and that Church is manifestly the oldest and worst of the Corporate Cults still exploiting mankind and wreaking havoc on the Earth. Escriva is, in many ways, an ‘Exemplar’ acting out the crisis that marks the 21st Century because, if you will note, his personal ‘destiny line’ marked by the Nodes of the Moon at 10 degrees of Scorpio & Taurus is conjunct the Moon-Saturn opposition in those same signs which sounds one of the Century’s major themes -the repressive, zealous, and often downright fanatical power of Religious Authority. Escriva’s personal Mars in Aquarius function squaring his own Nodal Destiny Line also squares the Century’s Moon to Saturn opposition, so in his personal dilemma we can see reflected the dilemma of the 21st Century –a tendency to crave the stability which adhering to Corporate Authority imposed from outside offers the fearful. The Opus Dei Franchise he established is a shocking model for the kinds of repressive (false) Saturn organizations likely to spring up from fearful and self-righteous Fundamental Religious Capitalists all around the planet, so I choose to gird my loins and press onward with this distasteful business!

 

Pressing on, one finds oneself confronted by the fact that Escriva’s natal Sun, Saturn, Moon functions all conjunct in Capricorn are in imbalanced waning quincunx aspect to the powerfully placed Pluto in Gemini of his Public Persona Mask. Pluto in Gemini is Trickster power, tricky and Unconscious power informing Gemini words. Opposite Uranus it inclines him to make willfully abrupt assertions and/or shocking verbal puns all at the service of blind obedience to the Authoritative Capricorn Establishment. This man’s writings strike me as having nothing of the necessary ‘lightness’ required for punning, rather his language is blunt, bludgeoning, crudely self-evident, full of pain and subliminal anger. The quincunx is a stressful aspect notorious for its alternating energetic shift from ease to stress. It’s an aspect frequently distilled into one, key, descriptive word: Excess. When the excess of the quincunx is of the ‘waning’ nature that excess tends to be psycho-spiritual or psychological rather than physical, as it is in the case of the ‘waxing’ quincunx. In both instances, the quincunx speaks of excess as disturbing to the balance of one’s inner harmony whether physical or psychological. In Escriva’s case, the waning quincunx of Sun, Saturn, Moon to Pluto attests to an excessive psychological craving for public recognition and power originating from deeply unconscious feelings of personal impotence. This craving is actually a compensatory psychological complex in direct conflict with the inherent shyness and tendency to self-deprecation found in his Virgo Ascendant. Radical Pluto in tricky Gemini challenges that Ascendant as does shocking Uranus in Sagittarius, so we get more of the Escriva conundrum, more of that ‘cruel kindness’. Consider this quotation from the ‘saint’ speaking to his French followers in 1959:

 

"I want you to be pious, cheerful, optimistic, hardworking, and schemers."

 

[ Source: Saints & Schemers, pg. 381  http://www.takingfive.com/house_of_cards.htm ]

 

Scheming is the sly game of the ‘Trickster’ Archetype when it works in service to the Archons, and when such schemers are religious their scheming takes the form of missionary proselytizing. They have duped themselves and seek to dupe unwary others because they need the psychological comfort of greater numbers. When these schemers are Christian they call their scheming the ‘apostolate’ of the gospel of the ‘good news’. They feel they’ve heard the ‘call’ and that ‘call’ is their ‘Vocation’  -their license from ‘God’ allowing them to inflict their personal opinions and often their neuroses on others. Their ‘apostolate’ usually comes with its own little book of rules and regulations tidily done up in mechanical moral strictures direct from the sayings of that ignorant but self-proclaimed Archon of a ‘creator god’ Yahweh/Jehovah/Yaldaboath … Mister “Thou shalt NOT….” do or say this, that, or another thing. These sayings were consistently questioned by Jesus Christ in his day, and he frequently commented (through use of parables) upon the fact that the ‘authority’ behind them spoke mixtures of truths, half-truths, and downright deceptions. Such trickster ‘authority’ is employed by the false Archon, Yahweh, masking the true authority of Saturn.

 

Upon reflection, it becomes evident that a ‘morality’ which does not arise from deep and personal self-recollection, the kind of rigid ‘morality’ Escriva urged upon his followers, is dangerous at best because it derives from fear, and fear inevitably leads to following external authority. The root meaning of the word Authority arises from the Latin augere to grow or increase and refers to the personal, internal, and subjective realization of the value and truth of one’s essential being. Authority, consequently, arises from one’s own increase and growth of being  -as does the kind of knowing embedded in the Greek word, gnosis. Hence, the Gnostics before, during, and after the time of Jesus Christ understood truthful Authority to naturally arise from equally truthful knowing, and referred to their own inner awakening and their growing self-realization as Gnosticism. It’s a basic tool, a way of contacting the authority innate in one’s being through a process of anamnesis or soul awakening, -remembering one’s divine essence. It is found nowhere in any of Escriva’s writings. As we have seen, he preaches (as does his Church) exactly the opposite: “One’s own mind is a bad advisor.”

 

Behaviour originating from the real gnosis of self-awareness can be genuinely moral, but other forms of ‘morality’ are spurious at best. Mister Escriva had every right to explicate his own process of knowing, and to believe in and testify to his own (or his preferred Church’s) authority. Nor does anyone question his freedom to write maxims or books expressing that personal process. But what we find in Escriva’s writings is in no way originating from his own self-exploration, he merely communicates his psycho-theological musings upon the received authoritative teachings of his preferred Roman Catholic Church. His ‘self-exploration’ is operative only in so far as it moves within the confines of the ideas, morality, and ‘apostolate’ he found in the corporately organizational business of Roman Catholic Doctrine. Unlike his countrymen Juan de la Cruz and Teresa d’Avila he breaks no new ground either as a thinker or a writer. Nevertheless, his personal style of preaching Roman Catholic theology appeals to many Catholics, and his canonization by that Church gives it the ‘imprimatur’ of ‘holiness’. This is where the social danger to all of us lies (including non-Christians as well as non-Catholics) because his radically intense language of ‘suffering for Jesus’ and ‘obedience to the Church’ heightens and extends the corporately hierarchical (and ultimately fascist) epistemological theology of the Roman Catholic Church. This is a strictly Patriarchal Corporate Organization which has continuously masked its disrespect for women and the body of Mother Earth through its absurd insistence on personal sin and guilt, together with suffering (and insufferable) piety since its fraudulent inception. Escriva preaches unthinking adherence to this agenda of his chosen Church in his ‘Way’:

 

Maxim 520: “Catholic, apostolic, Roman! I want you to be very Roman. And to be anxious to make your 'path to Rome', videre Petrum — to see Peter.”

 

Maxim 597: “If you were to obey the impulses of your heart and the dictates of reason, you would always be flat on the ground, prostrate, like a filthy worm, ugly and miserable, before that God who puts up with so much from you.”

 

His proselytizing message is clear: rather than follow our hearts or our faculties of reasoning we must beat a path straightaway to Catholic Apostolic Rome to see Peter who, like his ‘God’ and his Church puts up with so much from us filthy worms. Escriva, far from being anything even vaguely similar to a saint, is an authoritarian fascist through and through. He and his Opus Dei mafia have never shown any appreciation for that faint glimmer of humanity that arose in the Catholic Church called “Liberation Theology” but have ruthlessly denounced it on every occasion. They are fundamentalist Christians marching in step with the evangelical Protestant Dominionist movement. And I might just add that I don’t like his ‘ad worminem’ attack on worms! One can only imagine the response Saint Francis of Assisi might have to this hauteur, this arrogant dismissal of one of God’s smaller but impeccable creatures. Maybe it takes a farmer to appreciate the holiness of the worms!

 

Since Escriva disdained to follow the ‘impulses’ of his heart and thought of his own reason as ‘dictatorial’, what guidelines did he follow in his sadly tortured but politically ambitious life ? He followed (as far too many Church Christians do) his twisted (because heartless and unreasonable) but very ‘evangelical’ notions of the ‘dictates’ of the Roman Catholic Christ!

 

Here’s a quote concerning Escriva from James Martin (SJ)  -one of his fellow religionists: “Even Escriva’s writings emphasize at least the idea of recruiting. In the internal magazine, Cronica, he wrote in 1971:

 

‘This holy coercion is necessary, compelle intrare, the Lord tells us. You must kill yourselves for proselytism.’ ” 

 

It behooves us all to realize that WE are the Targets of this coercive and killing proselytism, this righteous and authoritative crusade designed as a monolithic (monotheistic) tool of persuasion. We are the evangelical focal point for his Fascistic Religious program of indoctrination masking itself in the guise of ‘love’ for Jesus. Anyone familiar with even the approved Roman Catholic canonical texts of the four gospels knows that Jesus himself never used coercion in his work, never praised pain and suffering as marvelous ‘tools’ of God, and even asked his ‘Father’ (while praying in Gethsemane) to take the ‘cup’ of pain away from him. He practiced non-interference in the lives of others and made exceptions to that practice only when he defended those under attack from their fellow ‘religionists’ for breaking the rules. Let he who is without sin among you cast the first stone, he said to the religious crowd ready to kill the woman taken in adultery. He took up whips and drove the officially sanctioned money lenders out of the Temple. He never gave his support to the organized religions everywhere around him, and the priests and judges of the Temples were the ones who condemned him to death stirring up hatred among their followers to have him crucified.

 

Evangelical proselytism is an illness indulged in by those whose ‘faith’ has no conviction unless they can convince others to join them; it’s a form of mob psychology and mass control everywhere in evidence from Corporate advertisers who need to stir up customer-consumers to buy their ‘holy’ products. Bludgeoning others over the head with what one thinks to be the ‘good news’ of one’s bargain basement purchases is just intrusive marketing. It’s certainly not sharing love! Organized Religious Churches are dangerous at best and downright lethal far too often. The Roman Catholic Inquisitions (lasting several Centuries) were not aberrational ‘flukes’ but the repeated outbreaks of the rabidly violent righteousness inherent in religionists whenever they get carried away by their own insecurity and hysteria. Organized Christianity has a very bad track record on this score. Organized Church Christianity is a Corporate control game specifically designed to entrap the unwary and guaranteed to fleece them. Jesus never organized his friends, nor founded churches, nor did he pass around a collection plate for donations to his teachings. That’s the work of Popes and Bishops, Pastors and Rabbis, Mullahs and Dalai Lamas! Drop nothing into their ‘apostolic’ begging bowls, and run like a bat out of hell whenever they show up in your neighborhood. Which, conveniently, brings us back around to ‘Saint’ Escriva and his own ‘little shop of horrors’, the Opus Dei Franchise.

 

 

 

Part Three:

 

Opus Dei, The Vatican Version Of God’s Work

 

 

OPUS DEI VISION

( chart for the organization’s inception )

October 2, 1928

Madrid, Spain

for larger image click here

 

Jose Escriva said that he had a ‘vision’ of ‘God’s Work’ on October 2, 1928 in Madrid, Spain sometime in the morning after Mass. He says that he was looking over some old notes he’d written at the time but does not state the exact clock time, so I’ve looked at multiple times that morning and opted to use the chart above to discuss his vision. I do not, by any means, insist on this time and remain open to other possible times. I’ve chosen this time mostly because it puts the planet of writing-thinking (hence, reading notes) exactly on the Ascendant in the sign of Scorpio. This is the sign of the zodiac in which Escriva’s North Lunar Node is found at his birth and that node symbolizes growth for him in his current lifetime. I believe Mister Escriva saw his god’s work (Opus Dei) as his lifework and, therefore, think the choice of Scorpio Rising is appropriate. [For those not altogether familiar with astrology I’d like to point out that all the planets found in this chart will remain in the same degrees of the same signs throughout that entire day with only the following two exceptions: the Sun might move out of the 10th into the 11th degree of Libra, and the Moon might move as far ahead as 26 degrees of Taurus or as far back as 12 degrees Taurus. But within the parameters of Mister Escriva’s statement that his vision occurred in the morning after Mass the Sun is not able to move into the 10th degree of Libra, nor is the Moon able to be anywhere but between the 16th and the 18th degree of Taurus, so this allows us to interpret the chart with a fair amount of accuracy.]

 

In the case of a chart cast for a vision which became an Organization the Sun may be read as symbolizing the central conscious thrust or purpose of that organization and might even refer to its founder. This chart shows the Sun in Libra and in the 12th house of Spiritual Retreats and Monasteries. Escriva was making a retreat in a monastery at the time of his vision, so the shoe seems to fit. A Sun in Libra Organization would be one concerned with Libra issues like tact, diplomacy, a hierarchical sense of the pyramid of Society, issues of law and counseling. Ideally, within that Organization there would be a high overall regard for harmony, balance, and artistic aesthetics. If the Sun is indeed in the 12th House as well, such an Organization would also rightly be concerned with issues of personal and social transformation by way of spiritual or even religious techniques. Escriva has informed us that his vision was one of people (essentially Roman Catholic people) from all walks of life and every social level learning how to sanctify their work and make it pleasing to God by continuously remembering His Presence and focusing on doing their work in the spirit of prayer offered to Him. All this fits a chart with the Sun in Libra in the 12th House.

 

Notice how the planet of Individuality, of individual uniqueness and even personal genius, URANUS, is in Aries the sign opposite to that of the Sun, and that it’s found in Retrograde position at 5+ degrees of Aries. This means that roughly 4 days earlier the Sun exactly opposed Uranus and on the date of Escriva’s vision it had not separated from that opposition by more than 4 degrees, so the foundation of Opu