Corporate

Christianity:

Corporate Christianity

An Astrological Study Of Opus Dei,

Saint Escriva, And The 21^st Century

By

Francis Donald Grabau

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“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 21^st 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. ]

(Note: If you find this white+colors print on a black background distracting or hard to read you may view this entire article together with all charts and images in simpler form as black print on slightly off-white background.  No underlines, no change of fonts and colors.  Just click right here: Corporate Christianity Revised.)

Part One:

A Gnostic View Of The 21^st Century

Let’s begin, then, by taking a look at the birth chart of the 21^st 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 21^st Century

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 21^st 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 8^th 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 21^st 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 21^st 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 2^nd House (of wealth, taxation revenues, banks and commerce) her opposition to Saturn in Taurus in the 8^th 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 21^st 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 21^st 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 8^th 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 21^st 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 21^st 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 21^st 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 21^st 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 21^st 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 8^th 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 4^th 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 21^st 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 21^st 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 10^th into the 11^th 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 10^th degree of Libra, nor is the Moon able to be anywhere but between the 16^th and the 18^th 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 12^th 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 12^th 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 12^th 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 Opus Dei as a ‘Vision’ contains this Sun in Libra to Uranus in Aries opposition. This suggests that the vision stemmed from seeing the unique genius of each potential member of the future Opus Dei (Uranus in Aries) contributing to the harmony and balance of the group as a Social Organization (Sun in Libra). The fact that the core of the Organization itself (Sun in Libra) is in the 12^th House of spiritual retreat while the unique individual members (Uranus in Aries) are in the 6^th house of daily common work fits Escriva’s description of his vision as he saw it: a spiritual bond of such individual members working each at his own job while united through the Organization into a group with a cohesively shared spiritual vision of the meaning of that work’s contribution to the harmony of the whole in God. Indeed, Escriva himself as its founder (Sun in Libra) clearly saw this vision of Opus Dei as his own, unique and individual contribution to God’s plan for His work. But Uranus is, after all, in Retrograde motion suggesting something ‘karmic’ or retroactive concerning emphasis on its member’s ‘uniqueness’ or ‘individuality’, their feelings of being special exceptions to the Central Spirit symbolized by the Sun. Opus Dei is a 12^th House Libra Transformative Social Organization tending to excessively emphasize its Uranian ‘specialness’.

When we view the Sun as symbolical of the founding father and original CEO of Opus Dei we are looking at a person whose social (Libra) ego consciousness (Sun) is in tense opposition with his own sense of pioneering (Aries) uniqueness (Uranus). In personal terms, an individual born with a Uranus-Sun opposition is not noted for being easy to talk with because such a person is often polarized, or caught in the stand-off between his Ego (Sun) and his sense of being a special exception (Uranus) to all rules. Frequently, it turns out that one cannot tell such a person anything at all about himself (Sun) for he feels he knows better and that he’s a unique exception (Uranus) to whatever one might have to say. Opus Dei as an organization partakes of these same qualities. In fact, the Uranus function of Opus Dei is in process of being challenged (wide & out-of-sign square aspect) by the ego energies and executive drive (Mars) within the organization which is expressing itself through that planet found at 29+ degrees in verbal Gemini. Mars, being the faster moving planet, is challenged by its immanent 90 degree relationship to Uranus in Aries, -but Aries is the very sign ruled by red-blooded Mars ! Aha, so we have a very, very aggressive energy flow between the ‘Just Do It’ impulse of Mars/Aries and the multi-faceted busyness of Gemini indicating an organization whose members are inclined to become actively involved in an assertive/aggressive way with writing, speaking, and all forms of Gemini communication. That certainly fits the Escriva who founded Opus Dei and his many published religious books, and it accounts for the charges frequently brought against Opus as an organization: that it intimidates and aggressively pursues prospective members. It confirms many peoples’ suspicions that this organization is not without a very active agenda. The question that the public has consistently asked is: ‘What agenda is Opus Dei promoting?”

Members of Opus Dei become very irritated by this persistently gnawing question declaring both themselves and their organization to be transparently open and accountable. They recite the Church’s definition of themselves and their work as a ‘Personal Prelature’ under the direct wing of the Pope. Nothing scandalous or secretive about them, they say, they are merely a ‘do-gooders’ association of loving Christians within the Roman Catholic spectrum of Christianity. But the chart above cast for Escriva’s ‘vision’ of Opus Dei does not support that claim.

Reflect, if you will, upon the zodiacal position of Mercury the very day of the Vision; it is found in the secrecy loving sign of Scorpio at 4 degrees and 28 minutes and tightly conjunct Venus there at 3 degrees and 44 minutes. Less than a degree separates Mercury from Venus, thought from desire. Both thought and desire were intimately bound together in Scorpio as Escriva received his Vision of what quickly became Opus Dei, and it was this nearly perfect astrological union of Mercury and Venus in fixed Scorpio that assisted his deep contemplation and no doubt earnest concentration as he struggled to ‘listen’ to his god’s voice (Mercury) declaring Escriva’s unique (Uranus) Vocation, -his Call to his own special notion of what constitutes god’s work. Curiously enough, Scorpio is the energy-field and sign of the Occult, of all that’s invisible and dwells beneath the surface of appearances. It’s the sign of secrecy, poisons, death and rebirth. In fact, in Christian terms it signifies the Hell realm of the Mars passions when out of control, and its modern ruling planet is Pluto, Hades, -the very devil of a Satan, himself ! Irony, it seems, abounds in god’s work. And when that work is characterized by a Venus desire for the stingingly poisonous tail of the deadly Scorpion, as it can be when the Mercury of thought and speech joins it, and the two are in stressful (quincunx) aspect to Uranus the way they are in the chart of Opus Dei, then caustic Sarcasm and cruel speech are likely to make their presence known. So too, can a uniquely special (Uranus) desire and love (Venus) for secret (Scorpio) and excessively stressful (Uranus Quincunx to both Venus and Mercury) thought and communication (Mercury) make itself known.

The planet Venus is said by astrologers to be in its ‘detriment’ or ‘debilitation’ when found in Scorpio because that sign of the zodiac is directly opposite one of the two signs, Libra and Taurus, which Venus ‘rules’. As ruler of the fixed earth energies of Taurus, Venus delights in the joys of the senses, trusts the body, loves the Earth and sees the Divine in all that is physical and ‘earthy’. But when found in Scorpio, Venus needs to attune itself to the Invisible, the non physical, the intangible. The fixed water of Scorpio holds the desires of Venus in thralldom to all that is unseen, secret, intangible and causes Venus, as the Goddess of Earthly Love, to contemplate (often to her own detriment) the death and transformation of her earthly desires. She can then (and often mistakenly by way of the Archons) reject her own Taurus body, reject or become fearfully obsessed with Taurus money. Figuratively speaking, she becomes Persephone the virgin daughter of Mother Earth who runs off with Pluto to dwell in the Underworld of Scorpio’s Hell. But that sort of thing would be Satanic to most Christians, so they’d have to seek the meaning of Venus in Scorpio through their Saints, and two such Catholic Canonized Saints are the mystics, John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila both of whom were Spanish as well.

The positive expression of Venus in Scorpio can be thoroughly understood by anyone who has read and experienced the “Dark Night Of The Soul” or the journey to the “Interior Castle” which these two saints evoked with extraordinary psychological truth and through astute metaphysical analysis. They wrote of the experience of spiritual darkness, of the drying up of faith, of the experience of God as Nada –Void- and they confronted this void within themselves and their god. But these two Spanish saints were Reformers inside the decadently wealthy Carmelite Order of monasteries/convents within the Catholic Church who brought into being the new, ‘Discalced Carmelites’ -an Order which (at the time of their reform) embraced poverty and simplicity and whose members walked barefoot (discalced). Indeed, the Spanish Inquisition still flourished when these Saints walked the Earth and they were perpetually in danger from it. Neither Mister Escriva nor members of Opus Dei would ever embrace that path to the Divine for they wear shoes, eagerly cooperate with the modern version of the Inquisition, and promote the philosophy of material abundance. Not ‘personal’ abundance, but abundant wealth that can support their organization and its Church. God’s work for the rich?

“Escrivá once said: "Ask the Lord for money ... but ask him for millions! He owns everything anyway. To ask for five million or 50 million requires just the same effort, so while you're at it ..." Throughout the 20th century, there was a battle within the Catholic Church about whether the Vatican's power should be used to help the poor by advocating social change, or whether they should tell the poor to self-flagellate and think of the next world.”

[Source: IRC, Group Watch http://rightweb.irc-online.org/groupwatch/od.php#P8255_1619678 ]

The dark side of the Scorpio energy is its involvement with secret wealth, corporate investments, banking and the ‘invisible’ power of money. Scorpio is traditionally the sign of shared money and investments, taxes, credit and loans. It’s traditional ruling planet is Mars and its modern ruler is Pluto. Venus in Scorpio, in an individual’s or an organization’s birth chart, can signify a struggle over possessiveness, jealousy, and covetousness. Her marriage to Pluto, Lord of the Underworld (and all the Wealth of that Underworld) can signify a virtual lust for both power and money obtained by using the fixed water feeling (self-containment + self-control) implicit in Scorpio to fulfill her desires. Her domination by Warrior Mars tends to deprive her of her softer, more traditionally feminine side. In an organization like Opus Dei wherein the very core Purpose (Sun in Libra) of the Organization is largely determined by the planet Venus (ruler of Libra) found in her detriment in Scorpio (co-ruled by Pluto & Mars) the desire for power and money is likely to be intense. Employing the powers granted her through Pluto’s famed Shield of Invisibility Venus can wax wanton, deal in poison and death, crave secrecy and employ it to mask her nefarious deeds. She can fall madly in love with the Lord of Power and Death in the guise of false Pluto, and drag herself and her ‘lovers’ down into the unconscious. The Archons veiling both the real Venus and the real Pluto as well as Scorpio know how to distort these powerful forces for their own ends. They are the masked schemers we hear and witness when Escriva says:

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

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

In these fascist words we hear the false Mercury in union with his Mistress Venus, speaking through the negative distortion of the true sign Scorpio. We hear the scheming Messenger of the Archons. In the language Escriva employs we often hear the voice of the Archon (false god) masking true Scorpio, we hear the Archon who loves pain, suffering, self-flagellation, and secrecy. The one who urges us to destroy our bodies and the Earth through a distorted ‘danse macabre’. Cilice, the ‘discipline’ anyone? Inquisitors, who directed the torturous dismemberment of ‘heretics’ limb from limb in the hideous name of their ‘faith’ and their ‘god’ spoke with this negative, Archontic combination of Mercury and Venus in Scorpio. They loved the power of death implicit in their ‘excommunication’ and fed on the fear based denunciations of Christians by fellow Christians to the ‘Holy Office of the Inquisition’ which today calls itself the ‘Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’. Prior to his appointment as current Pope, Ratzinger (alias Benedict XVI) held the key post in this particular ‘Congregation’ of the Corporate Catholic Church and he’s a fond supporter of Opus Dei.

Congregation For The Doctrine Of The Faith

Please understand that Venus conjunct Mercury in Scorpio is not, by any means, compelled to express in the negative fashion I’ve just outlined. But when both these planets are involved by the EXCESS of the quincunx aspect to both Uranus and the Lunar North Node while the latter two are in productive sextile aspect to each other, a very difficult because excessively stressful situation arises which the late Dane Rudhyar somewhat playfully dubbed ‘The Finger Of God’ situation. Within the chart of Escriva’s Vision of Opus Dei this Finger of God or Yod formation focuses on Mercury and Venus in Scorpio, and is based upon the pragmatic relationship Uranus has with the Moon’s North Node from Aries to Gemini. It suggests some sort of preoccupation with secrecy and money (Scorpio) within that organization rooted in eccentric (Uranus) communication (Gemini). Basically, it attests to a mutually shared bond of separatist dissatisfaction (double quincunx) which breeds the kind of secrecy instilled in the organization’s members through a persistent preoccupation with negative Scorpio shame and guilt. This guilty shame operates on an unconscious level and needs to be transformed or else the entire organization needs to be disbanded or ‘die’ (Scorpio). There is additional astrological information in the chart of Escriva’s original vision which supports this conclusion.

Observe the planet Neptune in Virgo which, just like its lower octave Venus in Scorpio, is located in the sign of its detriment and debilitation. Here we see the ruling planet of both the sign and the ‘Age Of Pisces’ not in Pisces, which it rules, but in Virgo where it tends to confuse one’s attempts at lucid analysis and self-examination. Nor does Neptune function without tension in Virgo, for it opposes the asteroid Ceres (Goddess of the Harvested Grain) found in Pisces and, even more ominously it is challenged (square aspect) by both the Nodes of the Moon found in Gemini (North Node) and Sagittarius (South Node). All three of these signs are involved with COMMUNICATION: Sagittarius communicates about visions, truths, and goals while Gemini communicates about data, tricks, and facts. Virgo has the unenviable task of sorting out both these approaches by developing the humble gift of wisdom and discernment. Neptune in Virgo symbolizes the intuitive imagination of both Escriva and the membership of Opus Dei struggling to analyze the differences between truth and fact, goals and tricks, visions and data. The South Lunar Node combined with the raw, instinctual power of the Black Moon in Sagittarius reveals a definite preference to favor Sagittarian religious goals over plain Gemini facts. This puts a lot of confusing and religious pressure on Neptune, already uneasy and in detriment in Virgo.

The South Lunar Node is always an indicator of automatic, comfortable behavior while the North Lunar Node symbolizes a struggle to overcome such automatic behavior by developing new skills. In the case of both Opus Dei and Escriva (its Founder, Sun in Libra) this new skill is the Gemini ability to see that ALL truths are relative to the facts, data, and information available IN THE MOMENT. Any given moment, situation, or personal action or judgment must be understood in its related (relative) context. Gemini reveals that there are always at least two (The Gemini Twins) sides to every issue and frequently very many more. Yet the ‘infallible’ doctrinal viewpoint of Roman Catholicism does not allow for relativity where ‘faith and morals’ are concerned and that inflexible stance is precisely what is indicated by the South Lunar Node of Escriva’s vision of Opus Dei found in Sagittarius conjunct the Black Moon. In fact, the Moon herself as well as Jupiter, (ruling planet of Sagittarius) are both found in the stubborn fixed earth of Taurus (security, money) at the birth of ‘god’s work’. Under these circumstances Escriva and Opus Dei will always give their money and allegiance to the support of the authoritative and infallible truth which they or the CEO of the Roman Catholic Corporation dictates. It makes them feel secure. Besides, the Moon in Taurus is separating from a waxing quincunx aspect with the intimidating Authority of Saturn also found in religious Sagittarius which causes the Moon-Feelings of both Escriva and members of Opus Dei to be further constricted by the authoritatively dogmatic stance of that Religious Corporation, or as Escriva explains it:

“If you were to obey the impulses of your heart … you would always be flat on the ground, prostrate, like a filthy worm, ugly and miserable, before that God (actually ‘Church’) who puts up with so much from you.”

The best because most useful of new skills which Escriva clearly lacked and Opus Dei is in need of, is the Gemini North Lunar Node skill called

‘having a sense of humor’ -about themselves, their ‘Visionary’ Franchise and their feudal subservience to the ‘Lord’ of their medieval Church. But that is as likely as ‘the chance meeting on a dissecting table of a sewing machine and an umbrella’.

If, then, we make a tally of the astrological facts so far discussed concerning Opus Dei we find an extraordinary emphasis on Scorpio secrecy and the Organization’s 12^th House:

Sun in Venus-ruled Libra in the 12^th House, the ‘hidden’ or ‘subconscious’ or ‘closeted’ area in any chart.

Venus, as ruler of the 12^th House Libra Sun, found in Scorpio noted for its Secrecy.

Mercury tightly conjoined with Venus in Scorpio indicating speech and communication ‘in love with’ or favoring Scorpio secrecy.

Neptune, archetypal ruler of all 12^th Houses found in Mercury ruled (hence Scorpio flavored) Virgo.

Both Lunar Nodes found in Sagittarius & Gemini in challenging/applying Square aspect to Neptune as Archetypal 12^th House ruler.

It would appear as a logical (astro-logical) deduction from all this data that the Sun in Libra Organization known as Opus Dei addressing the Libra focus on the Social Pyramid and the ‘hierarchy’ of Social Structure, because it is ‘ruled’ by the planet Venus found in the occult, secrecy oriented, and Corporate sign of Scorpio, may be expected to have a fairly pronounced element of said Corporate Social Secrecy within its basic structure. Yet because its core focus, the Sun, is found in the 12^th House any element of such Scorpio occult secrecy may be masked by the need for and concern with Spiritual Transformation which is the essential call of the 12^th House. This complexity echoes the ‘Saints And Schemers’ theme cited earlier.

Always there is something ‘hidden’ in the 12^th House, something which requires real Spiritual Transformation. Escriva and members of Opus Dei would no doubt claim that Spiritual Transformation is the core purpose and publicly announced goal of their work. As long as the general public has no concrete evidence proving otherwise their claim cannot be factually refuted. Yet, certainly there is room for questioning the aura of secrecy that surrounds their organization, a secrecy that astrological evidence would suggest operates within the membership on 12^th House subconscious levels. Astrology suggests that any organization founded at a time when Mercury was conjunct Venus in Scorpio would have to contend with its natural proclivity for a Venus love of Mercury communication through Scorpio secrecy. Such an organization just likes to think in Scorpio terms and all of its forms of verbal/mental communication would carry the Scorpio focus of probing beneath the surface of things to their darker underbelly. Members of such an organization would have the ‘detective’ trait of Scorpio in evidence among themselves, and in their communications with the general public.

Scorpio, remember, seeks to purge poisonous toxins from living systems. Opus Dei and its founder, Jose Maria Escriva, are both conservative Saturn in Sagittarius [Opus] + Jupiter in Capricorn [Escriva] entities within the Roman Catholic Church opposed to what they experience as the ‘evil’ poison within that Church which seeks changes within its dogmatic theological structure. Changes such as those Pope John XXIII tried to implement, changes of the kind found within the ‘Liberation Theology’ movement. But the traditional, conservative members of Opus Dei prefer to purge the Church of the ‘poison’ of Liberal teachings. They personally purge themselves of their sins, do penance by wearing the barbed cilice on their upper left thighs (South Lunar Node + Saturn + Black Moon in Sagittarius, sign governing the hips and thighs) and despite their frowning upon Dan Brown’s DaVinci Code, they flaggelate their shoulders, buttocks, and backs with the medieval device known as ‘the discipline’. It may seem a bit ‘kinky’ to outsiders, but to true believers in the suffering and crucifixion of Christ what’s at all odd about a little splattered blood? It helps you get into the mood of the ‘Suffering Saviour’ message. It’s a sign of one's closeness to Christ to adhere to Sacred Tradition, to want to share His pain. I mean, didn’t the Seraphic Saint Francis Of Assisi ‘earn the blessing’ of the 'Holy Stigmata' because of his love for Jesus? Isn’t that why Mel Gibson filmed his gory Passion film? Come on now, folks, what’s the problem with a bit of serious ‘penance’ ?

Scorpio is the astrological sign of Death, Hell, and the Christian Resurrection. ‘Sin’ is a poisonous Christian toxin religiously sewn throughout Society and within each Soul by these proselytizing Christians. Purging that sin through heresy hunting and sincere blood-letting is a fervent Christian action. It can vividly remind you of Christ’s social rejection, of His brutal suffering and Resurrection, you are merely emulating your God. Ach, it’s the work of the Archons, Saint Francis notwithstanding. But wait just a minute, protest the lovers of scholarly tradition, pain and suffering gratuitously self-inflicted appear in many cultures, consider the Sun Dance among Native Americans or various modalities of body piercing practiced by many indigenous tribes. Suffering is manly, no pain no gain, all soldiers suffer through boot camp. Grin and bear it. Suffering builds character! False Saturn. The Archon Yaldaboath/Yahweh. Bloody sacrifice. A complex brew of ‘tough love’. Spare the Rod and spoil the Child. Pain and suffering, punishment from the great Deceiver Archons. Jesus Christ, Superstar.

Which brings us, by way of James Joyce, to the curious relationship between Pluto and the Sun in the chart of the Vision of Opus Dei. They are in waxing/applying square to each other, but it’s a very wide square and just beginning to form in 1928 when the whole thing got started. However, 9-10 years later the Progressed Sun moved into exact square with Pluto and the Spanish Civil War began. A few years after that, Generalissimo Franco took over and Fascist Spain came into being. The outspoken poet of the ‘Duende’, Garcia Lorca, both political and homosexual, was murdered by the Fascists, but Jose Maria Escriva and at least 90% of Opus Dei members kissed the male authoritarian boot and increasingly thrived. Why? What is Opus Dei’s relationship to the raw, unconscious Power, the Fascist Wealth of false Pluto. Rhetorical question. Pluto wasn’t even officially discovered until 1930, two years after Escriva had his vision. And it was discovered in the same sign, Cancer, that it occupies in the organization’s founding chart. Opus Dei secretly worships Power, seeks Power, calls it the Power of God.

Endless numbers of astrologers have observed that Pluto’s (1930) discovery in emotionally clannish and conservative Cancer correlated to the rise of Fascism all over Europe. It signified the Absolute (Pluto) Power of clannish (Cancer) Nationalism. Cancer, after all, is the polar complimentary sign directly opposite to Capricorn, and opposites attract. National, ‘down home’ Cancer feelings easily merge with Capricorn National Industry to give all the Cancer home folks jobs and the much needed Cancer feeling of emotional security that comes with a good, steady job. The raw Power of the collective unconscious symbolized by Pluto expressed itself as overwhelming Cancer feelings of Pride in the ‘Volk’, the ‘Fatherland’ and the Generalissimo Franco, the ‘Il Duce’ Mussolini, the ‘Fuehrer’ Hitler –all Male, all ‘Fathers’, all Capricorn figures of Authority turning the Mother Earth into an assortment of ‘Fatherlands’ …. as astutely depicted in the musical Cabaret: ‘O Fatherland, Fatherland show us the Sign your children have waited to see…’ spooky stuff. On the rise again today in the USA with Bush, the Great Decider who gives us ‘Homeland Security’ just as the Pope, Il Papa gives the ‘Faithful’ security through his ‘infallible’ powers. In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost! God has sent me to be your Leader and I demand your whole hearted worship. I can’t get it wrong. God won’t let me. You believe in God, don’t you? Opus Dei. Pluto in Cancer. Sun in Libra. Society (Libra) is far too polite, too ‘politically correct’ to criticize the absolute power (Pluto) of its National Homeland (Cancer) when that Power grips its collective social unconscious. What, you don’t like it here? You don’t like the Fuehrer, the Leader, the Father, the Pope, the Great Infallible Decider –get out, leave, we don’t need your kind ….. you commie-pinko-spick-scheister-faggot-nigger-atheist-gypsie. Your Divine Father can do no wrong. He’s God.

Opus Dei courted Franco, the Vatican courted Hitler. Just a little matter of Libra social tact, merely a ‘formal gesture’. Don’t you know you gotta go along to get along. No pain no gain, pass the cilice, swing the discipline …O Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. What’s my penance? Tokenism, just say three ‘Hail Marys’, one 'Our Father' and make a good act of contrition. Now rest in peace, faithful peon, your ‘Holy Father’ leads your equally ‘Holy Mother Church’ in this time of great suffering. Soon, Jesus our Savior will come again, and straighten this whole mess out. Ask the ‘Holy Ghost’ to give you Faith in His ‘Holy Spirit’. God works in mysterious ways His wonders to perform. Opus Dei. Pluto in Cancer. Absolute emotional commitment to the worship of Invisible Power. Archons on the march, waging war, sewing death and destruction, holy pain and suffering all over the Earth. A living being. A Sacred being. A globe. Our whole, round, spherical and truly blessed home ravaged by the Archons:

Archon (Gr. αρχων, pl. αρχοντες ; Archōn) is a Greek word that means "ruler" or the like, though it is frequently encountered as the title of some specific public office. In form the word is simply the masculine participle of the verb stem αρχ- (meaning "to rule"), derived from the same root that appears in words such as monarch and hierarchy.

In late antiquity some variants of Gnosticism used the term Archon to refer to several servants of the Demiurge, Yaldaboath the "creator god" that stood between the human race and the real God that could only be reached through gnosis. In this context they have the role of the angels and demons of the Old Testament.

[ Note, in the above quotations I have made two corrections: I added ‘Yaldaboath’ as the name of the Demiurge, and I changed ‘transcendent God’ to real God. SOURCE: Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archon#Gnostic_Archons ]

It is my contention in this essay that the combination of the personality of Jose Maria Escriva and his vision which became Opus Dei is an ugly and dangerous combination resulting in the official canonization of the man, and the privileged exaltation of his organization into a special ‘Personal Prelature’ within the Fascist Roman Catholic Church. I think that astrology and common sense urge any global citizen of the 21^st Century to examine carefully this ‘saint’ and his organization in the light of the manifest rise of renewed Corporate Fascism already in evidence in this Century. Furthermore, I think it’s perfectly evident that fanatical religious temperaments feel revulsion and disgust both for the human body and for the body of the Earth. This disgust has led Caucasian Church Christians (especially) to reject their responsibilities to the Mother Earth, to their own and Her healthy and happy existence. The fanatics among them can’t wait to get out of here and go to ‘Heaven’ while their less ardent members comprise the religious foundation of all that we know as Western Technological Culture. In their nominal Christianity they pollute and destroy the Earth mouthing righteous slogans of Christian Capitalism to justify their greedy and manifest death wish.

Christians are taught to value ‘God’ and His ‘Heaven’ while scorning the Earth and the things of the Earth. Their major ‘sin’ is their psychological projection of all that they see as ‘evil’ onto each other and Mother Nature. Their creed is their blind imprisonment within the false system of authority they are eager to accept on the basis of their ‘Faith’. That blind faith also blinds them to the beauty and life-giving ecosystem of planet Earth which they feverishly exploit and ravage in their chosen but subconscious glorification of pain, suffering, and death. They are by definition purely Patriarchal, following their Father God and his bloodied Son while forsaking their Holy Mother Earth. They are fools, deceived and deceiving, passing their earthly days in thralldom to equally blind, disembodied psychic forces known as Archons. Blind obedience by way of blind Religious Faith is the primary tool employed by these Incorporeal Archons-Authorities-Rulers to undermine the Divine Spirit in mankind. Escriva and his vision came to concrete realization in the blind and blinding organization known as Opus Dei which amounts to nothing if not another arm of the inky-kinky octopus which is Roman Catholic Christianity. Let’s look further at the evidence supporting these claims, here in the combined charts of Escriva & Opus Dei:

Part Four:

Opus Escriva Dei

ESCRIVA, Inner Circle - OPUS DEI, Outer Circle

for larger image click here

The astrological eye is immediately struck by the pattern of interlocking squares and right angled triangles (all the red lines) dominating the interaction of planetary energies operative between these charts. That, and the significant conjunctions (the yellow circles and rays) as well as the pointed oppositions (shades of purple). Taken altogether, these geometrical patterns tell the story of the dynamic restlessness and emphatic singularity of focus operative between Escriva and his Organization. Let’s examine a few of these.

One of the most revelatory is the T-Square shared between the two charts when the Opposition aspect between the Sun and Uranus in the chart for Opus Dei locks into a right angle triangle with the zodiacal position of Chiron in Escriva’s natal chart. Since the chart for Opus Dei also pictures the TRANSITS of the planets in the sky as they impacted Escriva’s birth chart on the day of his ‘Vision’, that chart may be read in terms of how his personal psyche was impacted by all the planets that day. What was going on within Escriva’s psyche was that his Chiron in Capricorn (his Wound as well as his potential Healing Gift) was being challenged both by the Sun in Libra, and Uranus in Aries. As the respective signs involved are all active Cardinal signs we can be sure he was chomping at the bit, highly restless, feeling the Wound in his psyche and wanting to heal it. Were we to ask ourselves what the nature of his personal wound was we’d have to say it was a personal flaw/wound he felt in relation to Capricorn issues of work and authority, and that said wound was affecting his Capricorn ruled 5^th House of creative self-expression and fun.

The 5^th House is the House of creative Play, but with both the Sun and Saturn exactly conjunct each other as well as the cusp of that 5^th House one would expect that Escriva’s sense of play was both stern and serious, and his sense of creativity was wholly focused upon himself (stellium of planets including Sun & Moon in Capricorn) as a Business person, an Authority figure, and a Politician. Since he was a fierce Roman Catholic we’d have to say further that his ‘Vision’ that day was most likely to have been a political-authoritative-business ‘Vision’ focused upon his Church. He felt a need to create the political, authoritative, business which became known as Opus Dei, the Work Of God or God’s Business (It’s none of your business, it’s God’s business! Secrecy.) His ‘vision’ satisfied his need to feel creative and pointed the way toward healing his Chiron wound which is actually a problem with objective authority. It’s a problem that often makes one feel as if one were wounded as a Capricorn realist and unable to accomplish anything of substance in the objective world of business and professional work. It’s the kind of psychological wound that easily causes one to fear that he cannot take himself seriously as an authoritative person, nor can others.

In his creative vision of Opus Dei he would be the Founding Father, the originator and central authority figure of his own religious organization within the parent organization of the Church. Of course, “God” was visualized/imagined as the metaphysical Author of the work and it would be “God’s” work, but Jose would get to be its physical founder and leader. This, he no doubt thought, would heal his wound and make him an authoritative, genuine healer. Possibly even a ‘Saint’. Visions of himself as Bernard of Clairvaux may have drifted through his thoroughly pickled Catholic brain. Gosh, what fun! Playing the authoritative God. Having an official business in the Church, to boot! Everybody would have to take him seriously then, …if he could just pull it off. He’d have to be careful, though, for the Holy Roman Catholic Church is a very big business and one doesn’t just declare boldly, ‘Hey, I’m the inspired founder of a new Catholic Order!’ No, there’s quite a bit of footwork that must be done, holy scheming if you will. Opus Dei is not a ‘Religious Order’ in the Roman Church, it’s a ... ‘Personal Prelature’ !

The Personal Prelature Of The Blessed Trinity

Why not just an ordinary ‘Order’?  Well, observe how Uranus in the ‘me first’ sign of Aries (Opus Dei) is challenging by square aspect Escriva’s Chiron. Uranus in Aries demands that this ‘vision’ must become shockingly unique, highly individual, surprisingly different. Opus Dei, fought long and hard within the Church to become legally defined as a ‘Personal Prelature’  which is a singularly clever device:

“Personal prelatures, similar to dioceses and military ordinariates, are under the governance of the Vatican's Congregation for Bishops. These 3 types of ecclesiastical structures are composed of lay people served by their own secular clergy and prelate. Unlike dioceses which cover territories, personal prelatures —like military ordinariates— take charge of persons as regards some objectives regardless of where they live. As to "what the law lays down for all the ordinary faithful," the lay members of Opus Dei, being no different from other Catholics, "continue to be ... under the jurisdiction of the diocesan bishop," in the words of Ut Sit. As jurisdictional circumscriptions, personal prelatures were set up by the Second Vatican Council to enable the Catholic Church to organize itself better in addressing specific pastoral objectives.”

(This explanation cleverly avoids the fact that the non-lay ‘priests’ of Opus Dei are uniquely NOT under the ‘jurisdiction of the diocesan bishop’!)

[ SOURCE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_prelature ]

Uranus, planet-symbol of the unique exception to every rule is also (in Escriva’s personal birth chart) in challenging aspect to his way of relating to others (the Virgo-Pisces line of the Ascendant-Descendant) so we know that it frustrated and embarrassed him. Mister Escriva himself walked around with the rather perpetual feeling that he was quite special and unique as Uranus demands one be. But how ‘unique’ can a man be who is thoroughly bound to the status-quo (stellium in Capricorn) and carries the Age Of Pisces on his descendant as his ‘shadow’ function? Well, he aspires to become a Virgo Rising, self-effacing and unique Saint working selflessly for others within the rigidly dogmatic parameters prescribed by the oldest established Corporation of the Piscean Age. He flails himself, bloodily seeking to atone by way of his self-effacing Virgo Ascendant for the fact that he feels uniquely special (Uranus). It’s the ‘sin’ of Pride! Violently striving to attain Christian humility. But his Authoritarian manner coupled with his Uranian willfulness and his hot tempered Mars anger squaring his Lunar Nodal 'Destiny' Line causes him to erupt in furious bursts of self-righteous anger such as this one he reportedly directed at one of his followers:

“Addressing me, Monsignor Escriva shouted, "I give you the second admonition, hypocrite. You write me a letter on my saint’s day, telling me you want to begin again, and this is what you do to me! Tell these people everything, everything. You’re a bad piece of work. I warn you that I’m waiting for some affidavits from Venezuela, and you will find out what’s trouble. You’re a wicked woman, sleazy, scum. That’s what you are!”

“Pacing the room, he continued, shouting at me: "I was thinking all night about whether to tell you this or not, but I believe it is better that I should tell you." Looking directly at me with a dreadful rage, moving his arms toward me as if he was going to hit me, he added at the top of his voice, … …"You are a wicked woman. A lost woman! Mary Magdalene was a sinner, but you? You are a seductress with your immorality and indecency! You are a seductress. I know everything. EVERYTHING! EVEN ABOUT THE VENEZUELAN NEGRO! YOU ARE ABOMINABLE. YOU HAVE A WEAKNESS FOR BLACKS. First one and then the other! LEAVE MY PRIESTS ALONE! DO YOU HEAR? LEAVE THEM ALONE! You’re wicked, Wicked! Indecent! Come on, look at the business of the Negro! And don’t ask me for my blessing because I don’t intend to give it to you !"    …he turned around to shout a final insult. "Hear me well! WHORE, SOW…"

[ SOURCE: http://www.opusdeialert.com/modernistcult.htm ]

Well, ‘Holy Shamelessness’, Saint Escriva, -get a grip why don’t you! The above quote illustrates negative Pluto speaking in opposition to shockingly sudden Uranus from Gemini to Sagittarius, it’s violent and abusive speech not usually attributed to Saints. But ‘Saint Escriva’ -we must never forget- was that wonder of wonders, the uniquely exceptional, shockingly humble, Uranian Saint. Maybe his cilice was fastened a bit too tightly that day; or his bloody, flailed, and ‘disciplined’ back might have been bothering him. Certainly, he was in a foul mood. But all this righteous anger and rage are part and parcel of the exchange between Escriva and the members of Opus Dei, and it infuses itself into the spirit of the organization. How? Let’s look at the red planet Mars sometime symbol of force, fighting, anger and aggression. Let’s look at how it interacts from one chart (Escriva) to the other (Opus Dei):

Escriva’s Mars in Aquarius challenges (square) Mercury, Venus, Ascendant of Opus Dei in Scorpio.

Escriva’s Mars in Aquarius challenges (square) Jupiter, Chiron of Opus Dei in Taurus.

Opus Dei Mars in Gemini conjuncts (intensifies) Neptune function of Escriva also in Gemini.

Now let’s examine these three:

Escriva’s Mars in Aquarius challenges (square) Mercury, Venus, Ascendant of Opus Dei in Scorpio.

Here we are seeing the Mars ego energies of Escriva’s Aquarian social outreach in challenging struggle with the Venus ruled members of his Libra Opus Dei organization. Traditionally, Mars in square aspect to Venus between two entities indicates a lack of rapport, a brusqueness, and even an aggressive possibility for violence. It can also work out as a mutually shared ‘irritant’ between the two that spurs each one on to ambitious Action; the membership of Opus Dei is ‘whipped into shape’ by Escriva’s personal ego drive (Mars) while their Venus values and desires (hidden beneath Scorpio’s penchant for self-control) causes him to probe into their hidden desires. By doing so he activates his Scorpio North Lunar Node which seeks greater depth of sharing. But there’s a heap of tension here, and because Venus-Mars are the sexual dyad in astrology there’s every suggestion that this tension carried hidden sexual undertones. Considering Venus as ruler of the Taurus need for security, comfort, approval and money there was inevitable tension around these issues as well between Escriva and his organization’s members. In summary, we can say that Escriva’s Aquarian impulse toward social reform marked by Mars in Aquarius exacerbates the Mercury+Venus in Scorpio SECRECTIVE tendencies of Opus Dei members resulting in the Organization’s proclivity for trying to achieve social reform by way of employing secrecy (Scorpio), investments (Scorpio), and Guilt (Scorpio).

Escriva’s Mars in Aquarius challenges (square) Jupiter, Chiron of Opus Dei in Taurus.

This is a curious mix of energies since both Jupiter and Chiron are Retrograde not only in Taurus but in Escriva’s Natal 8^th House, the House naturally associated with Scorpio. Escriva’s 8^th House refers to his own ability to share with others, to be ‘naked’ in Spirit before others, to make his own personal journey down into the Hell realm of Death and rebirth to resurrect himself. Here, in this area of Escriva’s life we find the Opus Dei love of physical security and abundance characteristic of Jupiter’s focus in the security oriented and money loving sign of Taurus. This love of and ability to attract money characteristic of Taurus colors Jupiter’s teacher-philosopher-priest energy, and accounts for the extensive property holdings, business investments, and ‘greed for god’ which characterizes Opus Dei as an organization. But the fact is that Chiron is tightly conjoined with Jupiter in Taurus and both are Retrograde indicating that there is something karmic, dysfunctional, and ‘wounded’ about the organization’s focus on and accumulation of Taurus land holdings and money. Yet Escriva’s personal ego energies of assertion (Mars) stimulates (square aspect) the membership of Opus Dei to accumulate wealth as we hear in his advice to members that they ought to: "Ask the Lord for money ... but ask him for millions! He owns everything anyway. To ask for five million or 50 million requires just the same effort, so while you're at it ..." Now, while this sort of advice clashes with the praise for his ‘Lady Poverty’ which Saint Francis of Assisi preached and lived (many have claimed that aside from Jesus Christ himself, Saint Francis was the only other True Christian who ever walked this Earth) neither Escriva nor his ‘vision’ of Opus Dei favor such a stance. Why?

Well, consider that Venus, ruler of the sign Taurus, was in ‘detriment’ in Scorpio at the time of the founding vision. It was conjunct Mercury, and when Venus as Money is wedded to Mercury as Thought folks are inclined to be thinking a great deal of the time about Money. Perhaps that’s why Venus & Mercury are in applying opposition aspect to both Chiron and Jupiter Retrograde in money loving Taurus (Opus Dei Chart) while in Escriva’s chart his socially active Mars function in Aquarius squares all four of these planet functions found in his organization. Escriva’s vision seems to have had a nasty little subliminal subtext, it would allow him to obtain Power within his Church by creating a wealthy Organization exempt from traditional (though obviously meaningless) ‘vows’ of poverty taken by members of religious Orders within the RC Church. God’s work in Opus Dei is all about ‘god’ getting rich & powerful, and for further evidence of that fact I suggest reading, ‘Their Kingdom Come; Inside the Secret World of Opus Dei’ by Robert Hutchinson a review of which may be found right here:

http://www.natcath.com/NCR_Online/archives/102398/102398l.htm

Opus Dei Mars in Gemini conjuncts (intensifies) Neptune function of Escriva also in Gemini.

Here we observe that the Collective Mars Ego drive of assertive action within the Opus Dei organization is focused in the area of daily communications, in the trickster sign of Gemini. Now considering that Mars is the traditional ruling planet of the sign Scorpio, it’s presence in Gemini gives a Scorpio tone to the Gemini communication processes of Opus Dei. Indeed, Mercury, the traditional ruling planet of Gemini is found as we have already seen conjunct Venus money in Scorpio at the Organization’s inception. Opus Dei, in other words, is found to have Mars and Mercury in what astrology calls ‘mutual reception’ with each other and a simple way of understanding what this means is that they are able to ‘trade places’ with each other: Mercury can (figuratively speaking) scoot up from Scorpio into Gemini, while Mars can slide down out of Gemini into Scorpio. Voila! We are looking at masterfully astute communicators involved with both secrecy and money, with forceful language and the ability to employ that language in secret ways to raise and use funds. Furthermore, this Mars in Gemini placement in the chart for Opus Dei equates to the fact that it was moving in the sky by transit exactly over Escriva’s natal Neptune in Gemini the day he received his ‘Vision’ of god’s work. Mars was ACTIVATING Escriva’s creative imagination (Neptune), his call to selflessness (Neptune), his opportunity to practice unconditional love for all beings (Neptune), as well as his capacity for escapism and delusion (Negative-Archon-Neptune). The question arises, therefore, which was it: was Esciva ‘divinely inspired’ by God, or was he indulging in escapist delusion? Perhaps, there was a subtle mixture of both, but how can we know, how can we attempt to discern the difference?

This here is not a pipe.

(Magritte)

A good place to start is with Escriva’s personal relationship to Neptune at his birth, and when we start there we observe that Neptune in Gemini at 29+ degrees is in very flowing, easy Trine aspect to his personal Venus function in Aquarius also at 29+ degrees. This aspect asserts that Jose’s personal desire/love symbolized by Venus is in flowing harmony with his creative imagination and his sense of selflessness symbolized by Neptune. We can be all but certain that he truly did aspire to love God unconditionally/selflessly, and that his understanding of personal love (Venus) was in flowing harmony with his vision of what constitutes impersonal/transpersonal and unconditional love (Neptune). On the day of his literal Vision, October 2, 1928 Mars was activating all these impulses within Escriva’s psyche/soul. Mars, in other words, was informing his Visionary ‘Higher Self’. This distinctly gives his original vision of Opus Dei astrological credibility as a genuinely ‘mystical’ (Neptune) and possibly spiritual and selfless (Neptune) vision. But a Vision ‘fired’ by the ego assertive energies of Mars in talkative Gemini.

Both Gemini and Aquarius are Air signs or zodiacal energy fields operative upon the level of Mind, the Mental Plane. A mentally inspired vision of selflessness and of selfless service to society is not an altogether foreign vision for many folks to experience off and on throughout their lives, but ‘grounding’ such a Mental Vision by bringing it down to Earth and translating it into practical, daily behavior usually is a far more difficult task. One’s Whole Being must become committed to the Vision and (perhaps) especially must one’s feelings. On this level, too, there is strong evidence that Jose was wholly engaged in his Vision because the very symbol of feelings and Soul, the Moon herself was moving through the energy field of grounded Taurus wherein she is ‘exalted’ in astrological parlance. From Taurus, the exalted Moon was flowing in yet another Trine aspect to Escriva’s natal Sun, Saturn, Moon, Jupiter, Mercury stellium of planets in hard working and realistic Capricorn. His Vision concerned people working in the public Capricorn World in such a way as to consecrate their work in the Spirit of Selflessness to God symbolized as the invisible Neptune. He certainly translated his abstract Gemini-Aquarius Vision into practical and concrete terms almost immediately setting out to gather hard working people into his Opus Dei plan of dedicating humble, everyday work to God. All this is definitely the ‘Right Stuff’ for traditional Sainthood. We are looking at ‘primo’ level quality vision here. So what went wrong, since I am arguing that neither Escriva nor Opus Dei are the ‘Holy’ entities the Roman Catholic Church declares them to be, but actually Un-holy Fascists?

The major error came in by way of Pluto in Cancer. On the day of Escriva’s Vision that Pluto function was at 18+ degrees of Cancer exactly opposing his Natal Sun+Saturn conjunction at 18+ degrees of Capricorn. The Absolute Power, Absolute Wealth, and Absolutely cathartic (Pluto) Demand for Death and Rebirth was staring Jose straight in the face. This is a radical challenge to any person’s Spirit (Sun) or Ego (Sun) as well as to his sense of Structure (Saturn) and Authority (Saturn). It does not call for tidy little adjustments in these areas, it calls for profound self-questioning and subsequent ‘death’ to the petty self of the ego (Sun) and its sense of defined identity (Saturn), it demands a thorough death/rebirth experience by challenging the ego’s sense of POWER. Pluto’s absolute (and by definition, therefore, unconscious) POWER challenged Escriva to radically redefine both his ego sense of Self (Sun) and his sense of just what defines Authority (Saturn) and Reality (Saturn). He responded by tapping into his New Moon in Capricorn natal personality which, you will recall, I have analyzed as a ‘subjectively objective’ and ‘spontaneously unspontaneous’ personality, and that personality I have further analyzed as one struggling from birth with a …“waning quincunx of Sun, Saturn, Moon to Pluto (which) attests to an excessive psychological craving for public recognition and power originating from deeply unconscious feelings of personal impotence.” The result was something that might properly be called: Opus-Escriva-Dei.

This, of course, is a judgment call on my part but a judgment firmly based in astrological thought. Escriva was born with his New Moon Capricorn Personality in shaky relationship (quincunx) to his grasp of and desire for Power, so his efforts to understand what constitutes Power were already inclined to focus his understanding in terms of traditional Capricorn Authority. On the day of his shattering Vision when Pluto in Cancer exactly opposed his Sun in Capricorn (Personality/Ego/Spirit) he automatically ‘defaulted’ to his greatest weakness, his craving for the false, Archontic Power that can be found by way of subservient obedience to already established Archon Authority –he went for ‘a piece of the pie’, the Catholic Church’s Piety. He could not imagine questioning the Authority of that Capricorn Corporation, he could not envision a Saturn form, structure, or focus for his Opus Dei vision outside the dogma of the Church which conditioned his earliest childhood emotions and basic feeling expressions. Additional evidence supports this viewpoint.

That evidence is found in transiting Neptune at 0+ degrees of Virgo while the Lunar Nodes traveled in their usual retrograde motion to form a tight, challenging T-square to Neptune. The Nodes were at 3+ degrees of factual Gemini (North Node) and 3+ degrees of religious Sagittarius (South Node) resulting in his mental confusion of facts through his religious self-delusion. It was a powerful T-square configuration occurring in mutable (adaptable/flexible) signs all concerned with thought and communication. Virgo’s critical and wise gift for discernment had to be channeled by way of intuitive/imaginative and often escapist/deluded Neptune in the sign of its ‘detriment’ -and in tense relationship between Gemini facts and Sagittarius vision. Because Escriva’s natal Venus is found at 29+ degrees of Aquarius, this transiting Neptune at Zero degrees of Virgo was just completing its process of opposing his Venus function testing his social, idealistic, and abstract (Aquarius) value system. It was testing his personal ability for self-analysis, his ability to critically discern his own deepest motives and desires. He felt enormous pressure under these circumstances to use words to explain to himself and others what his Vision meant. But transiting Neptune in detriment in Virgo caused his faculties of critical analysis to defer to his preferred imaginings, and with transiting Mars (ego-assertive energy) exactly conjunct his Natal Neptune in verbal-mental Gemini his ego became obsessed with asserting and explaining his Vision before he could really digest it. Escriva was experiencing a temporary Grand Cross, his own personal ego ‘crucifixion’ upon different facets of thought, speech, values and critical-analytical communication.

Opus Dei Dreams Of Hugo Chavez

This Grand Cross became a permanent state of affairs between the ‘saint’ and his new found organization leaving lots of room for Negative (because in ‘detriment’ and under stress from the Lunar Nodes) Neptune confusion between Escriva and the members of that organization. Neptune, please note, is the ruling planet of Escriva’s Pisces Descendant which depicts both his personal ‘shadow function’ and his style of relating to others. He projected his feelings of personal crucifixion onto members of his organization. He passed on to them his personal preference for the use of the ‘discipline’ and the ‘cilice’. He created a special organization of uniquely secretive and strictly bound but ‘special’ followers. He created Opus Dei, an occult political organization masking itself as religion, a personality cult unconsciously focused upon the teaching of its founder’s oxymoronic ‘cruel kindness’.

Part Five:

Opus Dei In The 21^st Century

Opus Dei –outer circle; 21^st Century –inner circle.

The Politics of Corporate Religious Propaganda.

The chart for Escriva’s vision of Opus Dei plugs into the chart of the 21^st Century exactly where the Century’s wound and Humanity’s call to healing resides. It fits neatly into the niche created by Saturn’s opposition to the Moon and its excessive quincunx to both Pluto and Chiron in religious Sagittarius. The Saturn function of Opus as well as its South Lunar Node and Black Moon are all in Sagittarius and, in fact, the Opus Saturn function conjoins or unites with the Century’s Pluto+Chiron in Sagittarius. At the same time, the wound needing healing (Jupiter conjunct Chiron) of Opus Dei conjuncts the Authority (Saturn) holding the land and money (Taurus) throughout the Century. In the United States all these money + land issues are centered in the occult 8^th house of Secret Corporate business dealings. Jupiter, the ruling planet of Sagittarian Religions, is found in the chart of Opus to be conjunct the Century’s holding power of Authoritative Saturn in Taurus, and the secrecy inclined Mercury in Scorpio of Opus Dei’s communications is found conjunct to the Scorpio Moon of the masses in the Century’s chart.

These connections are more than mere happenstance, they are ominuous. There is every astrological indication that the religious politics of Opus Dei and similar organizations will function as hidden, economic ‘terrorist cells’ throughout the coming Century. I refer to such organizations as ‘terrorist cells’ because the meaning of Pluto conjunct Chiron in Sagittarius refers to a collective religious wound of a Pluto nature … and that means of an Extreme, Powerful and Absolutist nature. Religious extremism is fanatical. Wealthy Plutocrats encourage and use such fanatical religious zeal to further their own ends as we can see in the Wahhabi Sects of Islam furthered by the Saudi family (close friends of the Bush’s), the Zionist Mossad forces of Israel, and the Opus Dei-Dominionist forces in the United States. Saturn Authority Figures in Capricorn Governments also use and manipulate fundamental religious extremists because fundamentalists of every stripe and color crave the absolute certainty of Saturn-Capricorn Authority. Such fundamentalists seek to impose their religious ‘morality’ upon everyone around them. That morality is strictly black and white, yes and no, you’re either with us or against us. Religious fundamentalists positively delight in punishing ‘sinners’. In the case of Opus Dei, its preference for extreme conservative and Authoritarian politics as well as its fetishistic indulgence in punishment are everywhere in evidence since its founding.

As Escrivá wrote, "To punish for the sake of Love: this is the secret that raises to a supernatural plane any punishment imposed on those who deserve it. For the love of God, who has been offended, let punishment serve as atonement. For the love of our neighbor, for the sake of God, may punishment never be revenge, but a healing medicine."

Who thinks the spirit of the ‘Holy Inquisition’ has been laid to rest? If one brushes aside the propaganda of the RC Church it is more than obvious that Mister Escriva was not a healing man. He was an irascible, ambitious and authoritative sado-masochist who craved the giving and receiving of orders, pain, and punishment. He was a tortured and tormented man who created yet another ‘secret service’ organization within the corrupt and power crazed Catholic Church to rival the original Society of Jesus. The highest members of Opus Dei are not spiritual people but repressed, religious, and fanatical people who follow a hidden agenda centered around the themes of aristocracy, and political-theological conservativism in politics and religion. They believe they are ‘closer to God’ precisely because they follow such an agenda. They seek something they think of as ‘prestige’ via their founder whom I quote again writing in his little book, ‘The Way’:

"In order that he [Christ] may reign in the world, it is necessary to have people of prestige who with their eyes fixed on heaven, dedicate themselves to all human activities, and through these activities exercise quietly and effectively an apostolate of professional character."

Members of Opus Dei play endless mind games around basic issues such as requests from others to read the ‘Prelature’s’ constitutions or its governing laws of stated behavior, goals, and intentions. These ‘mind games’ fit their Organization’s Venus + Mercury conjunction in secretive Scorpio, and yet they protest over and over again that they are not interested in secrecy. Here’s a quote from a Spanish-English website concerning the Opus Constitution:

“The 1950 constitution for the movement emphasized the importance of "public office" for the movement's mission: ‘A particular means of apostolate of the Institute are the public offices, especially those which carry the exercise of leadership.’ The 1982 canon law governing Opus Dei says that members should ‘…have special concern for intellectuals, those of high office or status, because of the great weight they carry in civil society. … In order for the Institute to reach its proper end more effectively, it wishes to live as hidden, therefore it abstains from collective acts and does not have a name or common denomination by which its members are called. Given the character of the Institute, which externally does not desire to appear publicly as a society, it is not appropriate that its members should engage collectively in certain manifestations of cult like processions.”

[SOURCE: Lee Penn, Opus Dei and the DaVinci Code. http://www.scp-inc.org/publications/journals/J2902/index.php ]

Somehow, we are asked to believe that an ‘Institution’ employing language of this nature is not interested in secrecy. Nor are we to believe it takes any interest in the business of International Politics, (get this!) because its founder said so. But Escriva’s ‘sayings’ are as contradictory as he himself was. On the one hand he asserts that his Opus Dei Franchise is not interested in nor involved with politics, on the other hand he writes: “Have you ever bothered to think how absurd it is to leave one's Catholicism aside on entering a professional association [or] Congress, as if you were checking your hat at the door?”

In the United States of America Opus Dei is playing quite a game with our Constitution and our National Politics from ‘behind the scenes’ just as it has played with Politics in Chile, El Salvador, Spain, Italy, and many other nations. In every case it’s political agenda has been exposed as extreme right-wing conservativism, and there is no question but that its members prefer the Authoritarian despotism of Fascists. Of course, they only like ‘Holy’ Fascists like Franco, Pinochet, Escriva, or the current Nazi Pope, Ratzinger. Following the power cult of their founder they are not so ‘absurd’ as to leave their particularly extreme ‘Catholicism’ at the door when they enter secretly into the halls of power. Oh no, not these guys, they proselytize, evangelically spread their self-righteous ‘morality’ about them wherever they go. And they do so clandestinely with their organization’s Mercury/Venus conjunction in Scorpio squaring the DESITINY LINE of the 21^st Century’s North/South Lunar Nodes in Leo and Aquarius. The fact that the Neptune function of the Century is also square to the Mercury/Venus of Opus Dei leaps out at us as a warning because it represents the Faith of the Piscean Age which it rules, and the members of Opus Dei with their secrecy loving mentality can and have taken advantage of the Confusion/Delusiuon which Neptune under stress tends to create. Since this Neptunian confusion is of an Aquarian High Mental and Idealistic nature it’s threat to us all is Delusional Idealism, and anyone reading the output from Opus Dei can decipher the fact that its members believe that any means whatsoever to bring back the Piscean Age of Faith in the Roman Catholic Church and its warped version of the teachings of Jesus Christ are justifiable. What they intend by that is transparently obvious: they are not talking about the Jesus of love and compassion, but their imagined Church Jesus of hierarchical, ecclesiastical Law and Order. Clandestine zealots worshipping a vile Archon of a despotic, cruel, and dictatorial ‘God’. Righteous. Scheming. Not to be trusted. Mercury in Scorpio square Neptune in Aquarius.

[ SOURCES: For further evidence of Opus Dei’s political agenda start here: http://www.johannhari.com/archive/article.php?id=433

and go here to The Evolution of Opus Dei by Alberto Moncada: http://www.odan.org/tw_evolution_of_opus_dei.htm ]

In Washington D.C. just a few blocks away from the White House we find America’s own little imitation of ‘Saint Escriva’ in the person of Father C. John McCloskey III whose arrogant and ‘aristocratic’ posturing knows no limits. He refers to himself as a “salesman” for the Roman Catholic Church (he’s being ‘hip’ or ‘timely’ or something like that) and his Wall Street Brokerage past oozes out of his every pore. Slick, clever, in the very same catholic league as Patrick J. Fitzgerald (see study of Fitzgerald's chart here) though utterly lacking Fitzgerald’s appreciation of intelligent (but casuistry ridden) nuance. Here’s a sample of his Wall Street rhetoric:

“I would suggest that one of the major issues for the Church in the decades ahead will be clarity as to who is considered a practicing Catholic and who is not. This may result in a smaller but much more fervent and evangelizing Church, ready to carry out the New Evangelization in the United States that can bear so much fruit in the 25 years ahead, both at home and throughout the globe.” And we can follow that up with this little spiel wherein his righteous and ‘political’ tone is so evident:

“Of interest from a cultural viewpoint are the changing voting patterns of American Catholics over the last 40 years. Since the 1960s, there has been a clear shift towards the Republican party and away from the Democratic party by Catholic voters. When the polls differentiate between church-going and non-church-going Catholics, Republicans dominate by a wider margin among the church-going, and Democrats among the non-church-going. I would extrapolate that the more orthodox in belief and regular in church attendance the Catholic American, the more likely he is to vote for Republicans, whose national platform, particularly on non-negotiable matters such as abortion, homosexual marriage, and embryonic experimentation, is more in sync with the Church's teachings.”

[SOURCE: McCloskey - http://www.catholicculture.org/docs/doc_view.cfm?recnum=6864]

Here we witness an American Catholic Priest member of Opus Dei mirroring the Jupiter + Chiron + Moon conjunction in conservative, orthodox, money loving and security oriented Taurus found in the chart of the Corporate Franchise to which he belongs. Conservative religion for the conventionally wealthy, secure, and privileged. Not surprising from a ‘priest’ who worked for Citibank and Merrill Lynch before Opus Dei decided he must become one of their select cadre of ‘priests’. That’s an interesting facet of Opus Dei, it’s diverse ‘levels’ of membership which extends to embrace non-member ‘cooperators’ like the donors who helped them build there new 60 million edifice in downtown Manhattan. Now put these facts in the context of the interface between the chart of Opus Dei and the chart for the 21^st Century and you see the Religion of Money (Jupiter in Taurus –Opus Dei) in collusion with the established authority of Saturn in Taurus 8^th House Corporate Business (Saturn in Taurus –21^st Century). Holy Money!

Saint Escriva Says:

"Ask the Lord for money ... but ask him for millions!”

There actually are such religious-businesses already well established in the USA and ‘Father’ McCloskey knows all about them. He sits on the Board of Directors of the infamous “Institute for Religion and Democracy” and is the ‘charismatic’ converter responsible for bringing into the Catholic Church such illustrious figures as Republican Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas and ‘journalist’ Robert Novak. He knows all about the ‘Project For A New American Century’. He’s a ‘high-profile’ priest within elite circles of power, the kind of ‘unique’ member of Opus Dei signified by that organization’s Sun in Libra opposed to Uranus in Aries, America’s very own clone of Escriva. A ‘priest’ with the morality and feeling of an ‘ivy-league broker’ from Wall Street!

[ For deeper, more detailed insight into Mister McCloskey begin here: The Catholic Right Part Three: Rev. John McCloskey, the Face of an Opus Dei Agenda. By Frank Cocozzelli http://www.talk2action.org/story/2006/5/23/82935/0830 ]

As I write this in late June of 2006 the USA which sees itself as a ‘Christian Nation’, has become a Nation run by Corporate Fascists, a Nation whose highest political offices are filled by the likes of Alberto Gonzales, Dick Cheney, John Poindexter, John Negroponte, and the Bush Crime Family, a Nation whose Supreme Court composed of only nine (9) judges has five (5) nominal Roman Catholics among them, a Nation that has invaded both Iraq and Afghanistan and violated just about every one of the Geneva Conventions. It is a cruel, fascist and Immoral Christian Nation, just as Hitler’s Christian Germany was immoral and Mussolini’s Catholic Italy was immoral. Like those Nations the United States insists it is a Christian Nation. It has a new ‘Patriot Act’ allowing it to nullify citizens’ rights, it has an announced War Policy of ‘Preemptive Strikes’ and openly declares its right to TORTURE anyone it deems to be a ‘terrorist’. And, of course, it has many thousands of Christian Churches, Christian Preachers and Catholic Priests all of whom either openly support its immoral policies or do NOTHING EFFECTIVE to oppose such policies. Yet its manifestly psychopathic ‘President’ talks to Jesus who, he says, wants him to invade other Nations and send out American Forces recruited mostly from among the poor and disadvantaged to go off to kill, torture, poison and rape the citizens of these other Nations while forever contaminating their Lands with toxic and lethal Depleted Uranium. Even though all of this is Official Government Policy written into laws, both the Government and the Press/Media daily proclaim that ‘America’ doesn’t do such things! The Christians, Jews, and Muslims of America chant together in mesmerizing unity: Credo quia absurdum, I believe because it is absurd!

Have the priests, preachers, rabbis, lamas, mullahs and their congregations taken to the streets to put a STOP to this immoral murder? No, they have not. Nor will they, for the History of the last 2000 years worth of Religion is replete with such National Immoral behavior, and yet virtually ALL the members and clergy of ALL these Religious Faiths believe it is their Religions alone (or in ‘ecumenical’ affiliation) that make men ‘Moral’ and pleasing to ‘God’. They rant on and on about the ‘civilizing’ gifts their Beliefs have brought to humanity via Science, Art, and Law though it has now become apparent that the Planet Earth they live upon has reached a state of severe imbalance, its waters and its atmospheric womb are poisoned. Fish, mammals, plants and humans are facing either radical reduction or outright extinction. These are the kinds of extreme issues found highlighted in the astrological chart cast for the beginning of the 21^st Century, and they are the reason I am writing again that it is our collective human philosophical and religious beliefs that are blinding us to the issues we need to face.

More specifically, it’s the ‘hidden’ or unconscious aspects of our beliefs as they have led to the creation of a massive Global Corporate Plutocracy which we need to change. YESTERDAY! What the 21^st Century Chart offers us is insight into how our religious beliefs (Pluto + Chiron in Sagittarius) combined with our personally stubborn and comforting habits (Saturn in Taurus in Quincunx aspect to our Pluto-Chiron-Sagittarius) are leading us to numb our feelings (Moon in Scorpio opposing Saturn in Taurus) and give our allegiance to both Religious & Scientific Beliefs which demand accession to their Established Corporate Authority and thereby teach mindless obedience to ALL Authority –especially of the Political-Business kind supportive of a One World Global Corporate Plutocracy. The decadent and faithless FILTHY RICH among us who do not share these antiquated beliefs in any way, nevertheless support them and use them to keep us all in bondage to their various greedy agendas.

Just as the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank hoard the wealth of the Earth and her People, so too do the Churches, Temples, Stupas, and Mosques hoard wealth immeasurable. The Authoritative Establishment found in Vatican City and St. Peter’s Cathedral, like the Mosque in Makkah possesses and keeps enormous wealth, they do NOT give it away to the poor and starving, the sick and dying except in the most showy of ways meant only to impress us with their ‘charity’. It is truly a Religious Abomination. The Major Leaders of the Major Religious Institutions all around the globe maintain a controlling-maintenance-function for the Authoritatively Wealthy, the PLUTOCRATS. The Pope of Rome and his Machiavellian Priests have been in operation for nigh unto 2000 years aiding, abetting, and competing with every historical Business of Government in every Nation. The first of the Corporately employed International Intelligence Agencies and the first Internationally Organized Bankers all got their start from the Roman Catholic Church, the Hindu & Buddhist Lamaseries, the Temple of Jerusalem, the Mosque in Makkah and other such points of Religious interests.

Religion and Business are Government. These three taken together are the Sacred ‘Trinity’ of monotheistic Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. In this 21^stCentury this ‘Trinity’ becomes the three ‘planets’ Saturn, Pluto, Chiron relating to each other under stressful conditions through the two signs of the Zodiac named Taurus and Sagittarius. Meanwhile, the Global Masses represented by the MOON are held in check in the Hell Sign of the Scorpio Underworld by the Established Authority of Saturn in Taurus stubbornly insisting that its Holy Established Authority must own and control all the Taurus Earth! The situation depicted in this Moon to Saturn opposition allows the MOON Masses no room to maneuver, no place to go, and stymies their basic aspirations by calling upon Sagittarian Religion, Science, and Beliefs to quell any signs of rebellion among them. This is the Century when the ABSOLUTE HAND OF PLUTOCRATIC POWER favors only the Corporately rich and cooperative, and actively plans for the genocidal extermination of billions among the Global Masses. Absolute Power and Wealth will poison all the Taurus Land and Scorpio Waters, it will contaminate the atmosphere around the planet and genetically engineer all the seeds of all the World’s Crops to be sterile except for the mother load of seeds it gathers and exclusively controls. Who is assisting the Hand of this Plutocratic Power but the many well-paid bureaucratic functionaries in the Churches and the local Government Agencies.

“It is so beautiful to be a victim!"

( Escriva Maxim 175, ‘The Way’ )

Opus Dei is merely one of numerous ‘Christian Organizations’ seeking to actively work in collusion with extreme right wing factions of Governments to bring about a kind of mechanical, well-behaved ‘morality’ among and within disparate Nations. It has a continuous history of collaborative behavior with fascistic and dictatorial governments because, like such Governments, it is rigid, authoritarian, secretive and fear based. Yet it is more than intimidating that the Libra Sun of Opus Dei conjoins the Libra Ascendant of the 21^st Century, forms a productive and efficient sextile aspect to the Century’s Pluto/Chiron conjunction in Sagittarius and a quincunx aspect to the Century’s Saturn in Taurus. This results in the creation of a ‘Finger Of God’ configuration between Opus and the 21^st Century, and a Finger of God based within the Century’s Libran Social Pyramid and the wounded (Chiron) Sagittarian (Religious) craving for absolute (Pluto) power expressed by way of Fanatical Evangelical Proselytizing! Escriva, after all, literally urged the members of Opus Dei to ‘kill’ themselves ‘for proselytism’. Talk about your ‘suicide bombers’ ! These people, when faced with ‘Satan’s Evil’ will just as readily kill others as themselves in the name of their evangelical proselytism.

Except that highly secretive and educated as they are, their murderous weapons are more likely to take the form of sacred notes and secret votes than clumsy, bloody bombs. White collar Christian Terrorists use political business deals as their bloody bombs. Don’t believe me? Ask Dick Cheney, Ken Lay, George Bush, John McCloskey or the ghost of Jose Maria Escriva. He’s the one who gave us this ‘Finger of God’ as Opus Dei’s contribution to the 21^st Century, and while the phrase is redolent of Christianity, the author of that phrase, the late astrologer Dane Rudhyar spoke of using it in order to evoke the sense of ‘the writing on the wall’, the sense of excess destined to work itself out through feelings of separateness and discontent giving rise to what may almost feel like ‘destined’ or ‘fated’ actions outside the conscious parameters of one’s own ability for self-control. It can feel like a ‘Vocation’ or the intimidating call of America’s ‘Uncle Sam’ on old World War II posters saying: “Uncle Sam Wants You”!

Mister McCloskey the Third (III) –of endless Opus Dei Fame- is on record stating that those 21^st Century citizens of the USA who do not subscribe to his ‘God’ or his God’s “normative moral truth” are living in a “Culture of Death”. Not a word about the moral failure of American Catholics or other American Christians mindlessly supporting the ‘War on Terror’ or the USA rape and immoral invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. No, his concern is that folks who don’t go to Christian Churches, pay lip service to Christian ‘Morality’ or follow “ …the teaching authority of the Catholic Church and strive to live accordingly…” are the ones creating his “Culture of Death”. He’s pointing the Opus Dei ‘Finger of God’ at all of us in this 21^st Century who do not subscribe to his Church’s tortured rationalization of the theologically ‘Just War’ doctrine while at the same time he celebrates the Religious Beliefs of Roman Catholics this way: “A good Catholic isn’t worried about going deep into these theological levels (of Faith) … You say, ‘I believe’ ”. Credo quia absurdum, once again, whenever it’s convenient.

More of that heartless, irrational … “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.”… fascism preached by Escriva, more of that “absolute obedience to whoever is in charge”. I submit for your serious consideration that this kind of thing, this ‘Finger of God’ is precisely what we all need to be wary of from Opus Dei and other Fundamentalist Christian Organizations as they interact with us in the 21^st Century.

Finally, there is the matter of the Grand Cross in Fixed Signs that comes about when the chart for Opus Dei is combined with the 21^st Century Chart. It’s essential to understand that a Grand Cross depicts four (4) areas of extreme stress operative within a chart, and in the case of the chart for the 21^st Century such a Grand Cross already exists. It consists of the Moon in Scorpio opposition to Saturn in Taurus in square aspect to the Century’s Lunar Nodes in Leo (North Node) and Aquarius (South Node) with the South Node also tightly conjunct Neptune in Aquarius. Realizing that the Nodes of the Moon are classically considered as a kind of ‘fate line’ or ‘destiny marker’ in any chart, their presence in the fixed signs of Leo and Aquarius squaring the Moon to Saturn opposition in the fixed signs of Scorpio and Taurus depicts a kind of intensely blocked energy, a Century long ‘confrontation’ between stuck or resistant forces. These forces are perhaps best understood by considering the Moon as representative of the feeling needs of the Masses of Humanity (People) in a showdown or struggle (180 degree opposition aspect) with the Authority of the Establishment represented by Saturn (Law).

The Moon in Scorpio indicates that People feel deeply suspicious and emotionally constrained by the Laws promulgated through the Saturn/Taurus Authority of the Establishment. This is a Global issue experienced by All People around Planet Earth as the Century began. The Masses in opposition to the Laws, globally. People everywhere can feel that we’ve reached (as a species) a kind of ‘stand-off’ or ‘grid-lock’ the resolution of which will profoundly effect our collective fate. But the situation of the Grand Cross in Fixed Signs of the zodiac indicates that the feelings of stasis, of no movement and no essential change are held in check and deepening. Enormous psycho-spiritual pressures are building up throughout the 21^st Century in the collective feelings of the Moon Masses of humanity, and the People find no outlet through which to express and release these feelings due to Scorpio’s tendency to concentrate feeling to the point of implosiveness. It’s a question of ‘Do or Die’ for the masses of the People and they Feel this truth, but they are bound by the Fixed Water of Scorpio and the opposition of the Established Authority of Saturn.

On a psychological level, what is depicted in this Grand Cross is the human feeling equivalent of the ‘critical mass’ requiring an ‘initiator’ to achieve a release of pent up energies through a triggering device which will result in an ‘implosion-explosion’ comparable to the 20^th Century’s ‘Atomic’ bomb. A massive Global Revolution currently held at bay by the Archontic powers that be is depicted. The force building behind this Global Revolution cannot be averted but it can be distorted and perverted. Neptune conjunct the Century’s South Lunar Node in Aquarius signifies many centuries of Neptunian dreams and visions of a truly free and classless Society, a Utopian-Aquarian Society such as ‘The City of the Sun’ that Tommaso of Campanella envisioned. These dreams and visions are the ripe seeds waiting to be released at the Moon’s South Node in Aquarius.

Uranus accompanied Neptune in this sign as the Century was born, and is the very ruling planet of the Aquarian Age. The powerful combination of Neptune and Uranus is reawakening in the minds and hearts of humanity the understanding that the Earth is Alive with Soul and that all of matter and Nature participate together with mankind in a varied but unified field of Consciousness. Nicolas of Cusa and Giordano Bruno are two more Western Philosopher-Mystics whose writings explicate the kinds of Yearnings and Dreams currently stirring at deep levels in the Scorpio Moon of the People. Understanding of ‘God’ as seeded throughout the Universe in Nature and Stars, Planets and Moons is reawakening within the Scorpio Intuitions of the People who are deeply questioning the established, status-quo definitions of the origins and forms of our current Saturn laws, businesses, and governments. A new ‘paradigm’ is undermining the Corporate, Christian, Capitalist model of life, and Saturn in Taurus signifies this new paradigm emerging as our collective and seemingly new found grasp of the importance of the Earth in our lives. Words like ‘ecology’ and ideas such as the ‘Gaia Hypothesis’ are indicators of what’s emerging as is the Peoples’ World-Wide realization that Mother Earth, Humanity, and Nature are under severe attack from religiously long standing habits of malicious abuse.

The 21^st Century is the century in which Common People all around the Earth will become shockingly aware of the iron hand in the velvet glove that is the hidden, economically political agenda of religions. It is not merely the IMF or the World Bank which is destroying the living environment of the Earth, it is the Corporate Politics of Organized Religions preaching suffering, humility, and poverty to the Masses while defending the Aristocracy of the Wealthy and blindly destroying Natural Life on Earth. At the very highest Hierarchical Levels, the Leaders of the World’s Religions are embedded with the Governments of the Rich and are often stockholders in the Corporations profiting from the production of bombs, planes, tanks, bullets, nuclear reactors, and heaps of Depleted Uranium.

It is the Religious War Machine that is evangelically destroying the Earth, and within that Religious War Machine both the myth of ‘Saint Escriva’ and ‘Opus Dei’ occupy prominent positions. Lurking in the background, hidden from view is the Chief CEO of the Gnostic Archons, the false Saturn of Yaldaboath who, in this Century will be unmasked thus ending a long Spell cast over our eyes and over all the Earth. True Saturn rests in our hearts and minds giving us the innate true Authority to follow our hearts and minds and stop bowing down to Corporate Religions and their enslaving ‘Authorities’.

Christian $uffering Incorporated

One Man, caught by tradition and conditioning in the thralldom of the Corporate Roman Catholic Church, stands out as a Model and True Exemplar whose actions we might emulate and who was clearly feared and hated by the very Church he had believed in until they colluded in his assassination. That man was Oscar Romero who was busy awakening to the cruel realities hidden behind his Archontic Church while the petty fascist Escriva was busy buying his aristocratic title as: Jose Maria Escriva de Balageur y Alba, Marquis of Peralta.

Romero’s awakening has been described this way:

“Romero already understood the church is more than the hierarchy, Rome, theologians or clerics—more than an institution—but that night he experienced the people as church. "God needs the people themselves," he said, "to save the world . . . The world of the poor teaches us that liberation will arrive only when the poor are not simply on the receiving end of hand-outs from governments or from the churches, but when they themselves are the masters and protagonists of their own struggle for liberation."

[ SOURCE: http://salt.claretianpubs.org/romero/romero.html ]

The Roman Catholic Church made the fascist Escriva into a phony ‘Saint’ while the martyrdom of Oscar Romero –and his Church’s collusion in that martyrdom- remains a mute point within the Ratzinger infested corruption of Rome. Shot through the heart while saying Mass the day after he urged ‘terrorists’ trained by the School of the America’s (in the USA’s lovely state of Georgia) to cease the slaughter of their ‘brothers’, Romero was replaced by an Opus Dei man supportive of the criminal regime still in power in El Salvador. And that, my friends, is how the Opus Dei factor of Mercury conjunct Venus leads to love of Scorpio intrigue, secrecy, and death and interacts with the chart of the 21^st Century.

I can think of no better way to end this study than to quote from the words of Oscar Romero delivered to the People of El Salvador from the altar of his Church because these words reveal the Soul of a man awakened from the deep trance of subservience to the False Archons pulling the strings behind the scenes of Organized Corporate Christianity. A man that Organized Church silenced by murder:

“I'd like to make an appeal in a special way to the men in the army. Brothers, each one of you is one of us. We are the same People. The farmers and peasants that you kill are your own brothers and sisters. When you hear the words of a man telling you to kill, think instead in the words of God, "Thou shalt not kill!" No soldier is obliged to obey an order contrary to the Law of God. In His name and in the name of our tormented people who have suffered so much, and whose laments cry out to heaven: I implore you! I beg you! I ‘order’ you! Stop the repression!”

Completed June 26, 2006

Atascadero, California

---

NNNotesAddenda

ADDENDA

SAINT, n.
A dead sinner revised and edited.

The Duchess of Orleans relates that the irreverent old calumniator, Marshal Villeroi, who in his youth had known St. Francis de Sales, said, on hearing him called saint: "I am delighted to hear that Monsieur de Sales is a saint. He was fond of saying indelicate things, and used to cheat  at cards. In other respects he was a perfect gentleman, though a fool."

Ambrose Bierce; The Devil's Dictionary
http://www.alcyone.com/max/lit/devils/

Notes & Links:

GROUPWATCH

Opus Dei works with worker groups in Spain, Argentina, Colombia, and Brazil; with youth clubs in Kenya, Nigeria, Japan, Puerto Rico, England, Canada, Australia, Portugal, Mexico, Belgium, Ecuador, Kenya, and Spain; with students in Costa Rica, Australia, Austria, Spain, the United States, England, Nigeria, Belgium, Uruguay, Philippines, Italy, Venezuela, Chile, Colombia, Canada, Ecuador, and Switzerland; with universities in Spain, Peru, and Colombia; and with women's study centers such as the Escuela Tecnica de Hosteleria y Hogar Montemira in El Salvador, and others in Mexico, France, Canada, Colombia, Ecuador, Spain, Philippines, Peru, Brazil, United States, England, Argentina, and Italy.

El Salvador: It entered in El Salvador in 1958. In 1985, the Catholic church appointed two non-native bishops. One of them, Fr. Fernando Saenz, is a member of Opus Dei. Acconding to the Salvadoran Jesuit magazine, Estudios Centroamericanos, these appointments showed the Vatican's determination to control socially activist sectors in  the church. Opus Dei supports right-wing political groups in the country through its religious courses and schools, and through newspapers, magazines, and television outlets  influenced or owned by members in El Salvador.

Guatemala: Opus Dei runs a dormitory for male students who attend a university but receive additional education through the group. Opus Dei holds seminars
"to change attitudes" of workers of all religions in Guatemala. They also have programs for women and business owners and run a worker center called
"el Centro de Formacion y Capacitacion Obrera Kinal."

United States: U.S. membership remains small, at approximately 3,000. the U.S. branch was founded in Chicago by a Spanish priest in 1949. Opus Dei has established several student centers in Chicago, New York City, Milwaukee, San Francisco, Indiana, and Washington DC  A priest from the American Catholic church said that Opus Dei is a "devious, antidemocratic, reactionary, semi-fascist institution, desperately hungry for absolute power in the church. It ought to be forced either to come out into the open or be suppressed."

http://rightweb.irc-online.org/groupwatch/od.php#P8271_1624134

WASHINGTON, SAN FRANCISCO, AND MANILA -- October 14, 2005 -- Knowledgeable sources are reporting that the case of  accused White House spy Leandro Aragoncilla, a former Marine aide on the staff of the Vice President and later an FBI employee, involves a Roman Catholic Opus Dei espionage and political assassination team operating in the United States. Aragoncilla and his control officer, Michael Ray Aquino, a former officer with the Philippine National Police's Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force (PAOCTF) in the Philippines, were arrested for illegally obtaining classified documents from the office of Vice President Dick Cheney and an FBI computer system that were injurious to Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. The documents were passed by Aquino to Philippine opposition figures linked closely to a powerful Opus Dei movement in the country. That movement was reportedly participating in a planned coup against Macapagal-Arroyo. (The April 2002 U.S.-supported abortive coup against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was also supported by Opus Dei elements in Venezuela).

The Philippine Department of Justice has asked for an arrest warrant to be issued against Aquino and his one time police assistant Cesar Mancao for the murder of Philippine publicist Salvador "Buddy" Dacer and his driver Emmanuel Corbito in November 2000. The Aragoncilla-Aquino ring is being linked to a wider Opus Dei espionage and political black bag operation that reached into the highest levels of the FBI. Convicted Soviet and Russian spy Robert Hanssen was a longtime member of Opus Dei's St. Catherine of Siena's Church in Great Falls, Virginia. Other prominent members of St. Catherine's included Hanssen's boss at the FBI, Louis Freeh, Jr. The Opus Dei espionage ring operating out of Cheney's office is reported to have had a degree of approval from officials inside the Bush White House. Although Aquino is being held in jail in Passaic, New Jersey, Mancao is reportedly at large in south Florida, possibly with a wink and a nod from Gov. Jeb Bush's administration.

http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/intelwhispers/intel.htm

The Hand of Opus Dei in El Salvador
Marianne Johnson

Oscar Romero, the martyred Archbishop of San Salvador, is revered in Latin America as a saint because of his support for the voiceless and the poor. But the civil war is over and times have changed. A lay volunteer and researcher in El Salvador assesses the policy of Romero’s successor.
.....
The Church in El Salvador, in short, has been re-romanised. Archbishop Sáenz’s efforts to centralise and control, to create a uniformity of outlook and action amongst clergy, is part of a larger, Opus Dei-led strategy in Latin America as a whole.

http://www.thetablet.co.uk/cgi-bin/archive_db.cgi?tablet-00458

God's Torturers: From Torquemada to Opus Dei
Torture Works
By MANUEL GARCIA, Jr.

Some years ago, I went to church in Spain and confessed (I am a freelance Catholic, I accept some aspects of the Church and its doctrine, but about others I am critical or skeptical). I didn't know the priest was a member of Opus Dei, the Catholic right-wing sect who supported Franco and Pinochet. He asked me why I have not been in confession for so many years, so I told him briefly about my four years in jail, and my exile in Sweden. He asked me how I felt about the men who interrogated me. I was a bit struck by his question ... up until that time, I had not given them much thought. Yet he insisted, and so I said "Today, I am not sure how I feel. I can accept that many of them believed they were right, and that torture or pressure were only methods to gather information, but ..." He interrupted me and said: "But you should love the people who tortured you. They did it to save your immortal soul. If you died under torture, you should go directly to heaven. They were good Catholics, and only wanted to save you from the devil, and from Marxism." Torture is still in my body as a memory and as a trace. It's still a challenge for me to discover the reasons why friends of my uncles, and good Catholics, could torture and kill, and still go to church on Sundays.

http://www.counterpunch.org/garcia03282006.html

THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS
Vatican Politics, the Calvi Murder and Beyond...
by Conrad Goeringer

There are a couple of historical backwater eddies that need to be mentioned here. The first concerns the Knights of Malta. They have a very convoluted history going back to the time of the first crusade in 1099, but it was Leo XIII who in 1834 allowed the Knights to established their headquarters in Rome. The American branch was founded in 1927, in 1941 Francis Cardinal Spellman is the “Grand Protector” of the order, and a lot of the American knights are linked to the unsuccessful attempt to stage what amounted to a fascist coup in this country that was designed to put General Smedley Butler in power. Butler was tapped by these people to head up a new government but he blew the whistler and implicated a number of Maltese Knights including John Farrell, then the president of US Steel, and Joseph P. Grace. After the war, Spellman works with then-bishop Montini who is undersecretary of state at the Vatican in running the Vatican ratline. After the war, on November 17, 1948, the Knights award their Grand Cross of Merit to Reinhard Gehlen who served as the German Chief of military intelligence on German’s eastern front during the second world war, and after the war Gehlen’s organization become a paid subsidiary of the CIA. None of this should surprise anyone, after all during that period of time James Jesus Angleton, who later would become the CIA chief of counterintelligence, was also a member of this Catholic order.

Let me now turn to the collapse of Banco Ambrosiano. Basically, several things are involved here. ...

There is some compelling evidence to suggest that the Vatican plan to rescue Calvi and basically cover their butts involved a secret Catholic group some of you might be familiar with called Opus Dei.

... Escriva was a believer in a conspiratorial view of history that taught that Jews and freemasons were trying to control the world, a theme that has resonated throughout many conservative religious ideologies and which even has found a new lease on life in the musing of Pat Robertson’s book THE NEW WORLD ORDER. In Spain, Opus Dei was closely linked to fascist and nationalist movements, including the regime of General Francisco Franco.

As an aside, let me point out that John Paul I, the 30-day pope who died under what some say was highly questionable circumstances, intended to rein-in Marcinkus and the Vatican Bank, and he was very much at odds with the structure and politics of Opus Dei.

Prior to his death, Calvi made very specific statements to his close associates that in exchange for 16% of Ambrosiano, Opus Dei was going to close the $1.3 billion dollar hole that existed, and cover the debts of Ambroasiano’s -- and the Vatican’s -- overseas holdings. If that were true, that means that Opus Dei would ALSO have had to resort to some kind of financial intrigue, including capital flight and “peekaboo” corporations, because no one person or group could in theory own more than 5% of the stock. We know that Marcinkus didn’t like this plan, though, because that would have probably put a representative of Opus Dei in Marcinkus’s chair.

http://www.buinhuhung.com/CongGiao_va_DanToc/THROUGH_THE_LOOKING_GLASS_Vatican_Politics_the_Calvi_Murder_and_Beyond.htm

Opus Dei in the News Media
This (below) is the Opus Dei Awarness Network aka ODAN. Excellent sources and personal testimonials.

Inside the World of Opus Dei
The Journal News/April 22, 2001
By Shawn Cohen and Gary Stern

“In Europe, the media has regularly accused Opus Dei of trying to infiltrate government. During the final years of Francisco Franco's authoritarian regime in Spain, more than half of his cabinet ministers belonged to Opus Dei. And during the Cold War, Opus Dei was a strident foe of Communism, making Hanssen's alleged ties to Russia even more bizarre.”

http://www.odan.org/opus_dei_in_the_media.htm

HOLLYWOOD HERESY
Marketing “The Da Vinci Code” to Christians.
by PETER J. BOYER

Dan Brown’s novel portrays Opus Dei as a powerful force for regression, which is exactly how the prelature is seen by Vatican II-era progressive Catholics, whose hopes for reform (such as the admission of women into the priesthood and a more liberal policy on contraception) have long been frustrated. As John Paul neared death, Father Richard McBrien, of the University of Notre Dame, a consistent liberal voice, said that one of his complaints against John Paul was his affinity for Opus Dei. “Opus Dei is as close to a fascist organization [as there is] in the Catholic Church,” he told me last year. “They’re a very, very definite, militant, ultra-conservative group in the Church, who are basically trying to undo the work of the Second Vatican Council. In this Pope, they had a willing ally, because there was a quid pro quo. They gave him a lot of money and a lot of support for his efforts, going way back, to support the Solidarity movement in Poland. And they had a great influence in John Paul’s pontificate.”

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060522fa_fact

The Vatican Conspiracy
by David G. Guyatt
Nexus Magazine

Malta knighthoods are awarded to many leading individuals who are part of the military and intelligence community. The CIA's Bill Casey, for example, was a Knight of Malta. Former NATO General and later US Secretary of State Alexander Haig is also a Malta Knight. Another is General Vernon Walters, the former Deputy Director of the CIA under DCI George Bush, and later appointed a roving ambassador during the Reagan Administration. The legendary head of the OSS (the WWII precursor of the CIA), "Wild" Bill Donovan, was made a Knight along with his wartime compatriot and later CIA Chief of Counterintelligence, James Jesus Angleton. And John McCone, another prominent member of the US "spook" agency, was also distinguished with a Malta knighthood. The list goes on. Most interesting is Reinhard Gehlen, the former Nazi intelligence expert recruited by the US in 1945-46 to head the Gehlen Org--a secret, German-based intelligence arm of the United States that was composed of former SS and Gestapo agents, many of whom, including Klaus Barbie, were wanted Nazi war criminals. The foregoing names amount to a listing of some of the most powerful and influential members of the Western intelligence community over the last five decades.

One Vatican group that has extremely close ties to the Knights of Malta is the ultra-right-wing Opus Dei. This is an immensely powerful faction in the Vatican today, and its public "do good" activities eclipse a plethora of the darkest political and financial machinations known to man. It will not come as a surprise, perhaps, that Carone was closely associated with Opus Dei and, in particular, with a covert operation that had its origin back in 1944. This was Operation Amadeus.

...In facilitating and aligning itself with many of the foregoing activities, the Vatican aimed to help eradicate a communist ideology that despised Christianity. Opus Dei and a host of other Catholic-cum-fascist secret groups engaged in a litany of murder, money laundering, drug peddling, arms trafficking, concealment of WWII loot, embezzlement, manipulation of financial markets and many other consummate illegalities. The purpose of all these activities was, arguably, to allow the Vatican to remain the spiritual bulwark of the Christian West.

http://www.nexusmagazine.com/articles/smokemirrors.html

Opening the Doors of Opus Dei
Published On Thursday, April 10, 2003  12:00 AM
By ELIZABETH W. GREEN
Crimson Staff Writer

Today, former FBI Director Louis Freeh is known to be close to Opus Dei. According to Bucciarelli, Freeh’s children attend Opus Dei schools and Freeh knows Opus Dei members. Bucciarelli also says that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia knows members of the Work, and Scalia’s wife is reported to be an Opus Dei member.

But Bucciarelli and others firmly deny that the religious group is in any way political. “No goal of Opus Dei is political,” Bucciarelli says. “Opus Dei has nothing to do with personal political ideology.”

…………………… “It is in the nature of the “intellectual apostolate” preached by Opus Dei founder Escriva that the Work try to reach the brightest minds. This might explain the presence of Opus Dei centers near the campuses of not only Harvard, but also Princeton, Stanford, Brown, Columbia, UCLA, Georgetown and at least ten other American colleges.”

http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=347478

Apocalypse No!
An Indigenist Perspective 
by Juan Santos
www.dissidentvoice.org
July 31, 2006

 It doesn’t matter if you “believe” in it or not.

If you live in a “Christian Nation” and think you’re not a “Christian” -- if you think you’re above all that, put aside the question of “belief” for a moment. Dwell, instead, with the images: The Beast; Armageddon; the Seventh Seal, and watch as their compelling power asserts itself. 

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/July06/Santos31.htm

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