Corporate
Christianity:

Corporate Christianity
An Astrological Study Of Opus Dei,
Saint
Escriva, And The 21st
Century
n
“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as
when they do it
What is it, exactly, that makes a saint? Holiness, charisma, or corporate approval? You and I might think of our own mothers as saints, we might imagine that holiness is a humble thing both quiet and self-effacing, but we’d be wrong. Saints are officially made by one and only one Corporation on the face of the earth, and that corporation calls itself the Holy Roman Catholic Church. It’s a massive collection of men who genuinely or otherwise believe that Jesus Christ chose them to run an organization He supposedly created just before He was brutally murdered sometime around 33 Anno Domini. It’s the oldest and most massive corporate bureaucracy on the face of the Earth with a CEO known as the Pope or ‘Holy Father’ attended by a Board of Directors known as the “College of Cardinals” which may only consist of males. No women are allowed to occupy any of the high seats of Power in this Catholic Corporate Hierarchy but the topmost executives do get to dress up in long robes with assorted hats and tassels. They are compelled to wear expensive rings as well as bejeweled tiaras as symbols of their offices and on religiously festive occasions they even parade about with jewel encrusted staffs. These men boldly lay claim to their offices by insisting they’ve ruled this Corporation in an unbroken line of succession since Jesus (punningly) told his follower Peter that he was the ‘rock’ upon which God was founding His Church.
God, according to them, thereby intended to establish His own Holy Corporation against which the ‘Gates of Hell’ would never prevail. It would be God’s gift to humanity, His way of assuring He will always be with us looking out for our best, spiritual interests. It would be His own exclusive Club which He expected us to join so we could be assured we were on the right track to Heaven. We are expected to dutifully obey its chief officer and its board of directors because Jesus, Himself, is actually running the Corporation behind the scenes and has assured us that His CEO shall always be divinely inspired. The Holy Corporate Trinity of Jesus, His own Holy Father, and the Holy Spirit would see to it that on all important issues the CEO of His Church would Never make a mistake. These important issues are termed, by the Corporate Church as issues of “faith and morals” and whenever the Pope speaks out on such issues his words must be understood as absolutely “Infallible” –he can never be wrong! Saints are officially declared to be saints only by the CEO and his Board of Directors, and on the sixth day of October in the year of the Lord, 2002, the Holy Corporation declared the man Jose Maria Escriva de Balageur to be an actual, official Saint. That’s saint with a capital S. That’s the ‘real thing’ –just like Coca-Cola, and it’s divinely copyrighted. So now we have Saint Escriva to pray to -who will, like the CEO himself, act as our ‘intercessor’ with GOD. Hallelujah, Brothers and Sisters, can you say AMEN! Rejoice, for there’s a new Saint in Catholic Heaven. Or is there?
I
hope you
will kindly extend to me your Christian-Jewish-Islamic-Buddhist
compassion if I
beg to differ with the judgment of the Holy Corporate Church when I
state what
must be obvious to most who have delved into the life and ‘teachings’
of
Mister Escriva: the man was a fascist. Aside from that judgment, I
offer the
further warning that the mini-corporation he founded and called “Opus
Dei”
is a Fascist Mini-Corporation. It goes without saying that the Holy
Roman
Catholic Church, the parent organization which declared this man to be
a ‘Saint’,
is even more terminally fascistic than either Mister Escriva or his
Opus Dei
Franchise. May Christ have mercy on my sinful soul!
Libera me, Domine,
de morte
aeterna in die illa tremenda!
I think it’s very important in this 21st Century that we risk even the wrath of religious fascism by simply speaking truth to power if we wish to save ourselves and the ecosystem of our planet. I think the time has come for all of us born and raised with various religious beliefs to question those beliefs and the Corporate structures lurking within them. Since our religions together with their accompanying doctrines and dogmas were handed down to us, inculcated into us by our parents, relatives and societies and since those beliefs also come with profound cultural and esthetic models we’ve absorbed since birth, changing or letting go of them is not a simple task. In fact, it’s downright confusing, painful, and often initially feels like a ridiculous form of self-amputation -whack, there go my arms and legs! Whatever am I doing? Cutting off my nose to spite my face? Am I totally mad? Has Satan got hold of me, am I caught in the delusions of Maya, who am I to question and denounce as fraudulent the revered traditions of all organized religions? What hubris! Tremens factus sum ego et timeo, dum discussio venerit atque ventura irae, quando coeli movendi sunt et terra! Will the very heavens and the Earth rise up against me? Am I offending God?
I
don’t think
so. In fact, I’ve discovered that all of Nature and everything I’ve
ever known
as Spirit rejoices in my prodigal return. The heavens and the Earth
hold me in
their arms and welcome me home. I am blessed and in the joy of that
blessing I
reach out to say the corporate ‘God’ of monotheistic arrogance
is caught
in the final throes of his sexist, cruel, and self-imposed death. Down
with
this false god and his vain judgments. Away with his righteous wars,
his
terrible slaughters, his hatred of Man and Earth. Let’s be done bending
the
knee to him, feeding his blind ignorance with our worship, indulging
his Satan
of a schizoid dark side. And may all his proclaimed saints, his sacred
rituals,
and his silly sins befriend him as he awakens to his folly and is born
again -humbly this time, and with a
sense of humor. I offer him a refreshing drink from the fountains of
Spirit,
from the ancient symbology of the heavens and earth, from the very
sacred void
that gave birth to him. And I offer it to you, gentle reader, in the
arbitrary
but ancient form of astrology. [ Yes, all you
Catholics out there, I know I’m pushing your buttons, -it’s me, the
Voice of
the Devil, slyly luring you toward the dark abyss of atheistic
heathenism in
deepest Hell! Come on, now, gimme a break! I’m not claiming to be
infallible. ]
Part One:
A Gnostic
View
Of The 21st Century
Let’s begin, then, by taking a look at the birth chart of the 21st Century arbitrarily cast for the environs of the Capitol of the United States of America -whereupon the dying gods of corporate religions thrash about so vigorously in their war-like death throes:

Chart For The 21st Century
Behold the planet Saturn deeply ensconced and retrograde in the fixed earth of the sign Taurus as the Century begins. In terms of religion, Saturn is the force usurped by the false father god. In the Judeo-Christian-Muslim mythos this force is embodied in Yahweh who is the Father of Jesus Christ. In that sense he is the ‘God’ of both the Old and the New Testaments taken together as the ‘Holy Bible’, and he rests in the sacred sign of the body of the Earth, Taurus. Therein he appears to be suffering under extremely stressful conditions: opposed to the Moon, squaring both her Nodes, squaring the planet Uranus, squaring the minor asteroid known as Pallas-Athena, and in quincunx aspect to both the planet Pluto and the asteroid Chiron. He’s all tied up in a heap of trouble, facing-off with the Divine Mother (Moon), stubbornly challenging his own mythological Father (Uranus), and trying to adjust to the combined forces of Death (Pluto) and Healing (Chiron) while simultaneously irritating the hell out of his own niece (Pallas/Athena) whose force is brightly shining in the sign of Leo Leadership.
The combined impact of all this
stress favors the true
force of Saturn but signals the death throes of the false father god. In other words,
this Century witnesses the Unveiling of the True Force of the Real
Saturn
likely to occur on the physical level as a titanic struggle within the
fixed
earth of Taurus. I mean Earthquakes, Volcanic eruptions,
Tsunamis,
Hurricanes and Tornados, Global warming, radical shifts of land masses,
and an
accompanying riot of airborne and waterborne viral illnesses. In terms
of the
psychology of human beings, it’s a struggle over the definition of just
what
constitutes Authority (Saturn), a struggle over values, money,
and the
well-being of the substance (body) of the Earth (Taurus). And
this struggle is further defined by the false forces of death (Pluto)
and wounding (Chiron) centered in the sign of philosophy and
religion (Sagittarius)
with which Saturn must contend. Pluto and Chiron are combining
(conjunction)
their forces in an absolute way within the energy-field of
religious
philosophy
guaranteeing it will be the matter in greatest need of balance as
retrograde
Saturn struggles to adjust the parameters of religious-philosophical
Authority
on our planet. Religion,
throughout the 21st
Century, is sure to be insisting on its absolute power and authority,
and yet
with Saturn retrograde (moving backwards) the very nature of all
Authority and
everything traditionally understood as constituting Reality is in
question.
In America, where Saturn in Taurus occupies the 8th house of death, secrecy, investments and Corporations its quincunx aspect to the absolute but wounded power of religion reveals that Corporations fighting for control of the Earth will be inclined to misuse religious themes to sanctify or otherwise legitimize their exploitation of the Taurus resources of the Body of Earth. Hence we witness the Bush-Cheney administration masking their Fascist Corporate (Halliburton-Bechtel) greed with Christian fundamentalist language attempting to morally justify the invasion and rape of both Afghanistan and Iraq while citing Islamic fundamentalists as “Terrorists”. Bush, we must realize, literally told the public that ‘God’ who is his ‘other Father’ (the Saturn/Yahweh of the Bible) told him to attack these Nations. Meanwhile Corporations like Halliburton, Bechtel, Blackwater and Whackenhut pocket huge profits amidst blatant charges of stealing and mismanaging war funds. The Taurus Land throughout both these Nations is laid waste, sewn with toxic depleted uranium guaranteeing ill health and increasing birth defects for literally hundreds of thousands of years to come and all in the name of Corporate Christian Capitalism. This latter is what I mean by the death throes of Saturn veiled as the false father god. Illegitimate Authority. Fake Authority. The kind of false Authority that needs to be questioned, exposed, and defied. The kind of Authority that must die if the Earth is to live.
While
the
Pope of the Roman Catholic Church nominally objected to the War on
Iraq, he also
used his ‘spiritual’ clout (false Saturn Authority)
with American
Roman Catholics to advise through his Bishops that American Catholics
should
not vote for Presidential candidates who support a woman’s free right
to choice
where abortions are concerned. What’s left of the American free Press
instantly
pointed out that this statement was guaranteed to negatively impact the
Roman
Catholic vote for the Democratic (and Roman Catholic)
candidate, John
Kerry. Subsequent polls show that it did. Hence
the Vatican influenced the American vote in favor of the war criminal
George W.
Bush. This
is a prime
example of Saturn in quincunx to both Pluto and Chiron in Sagittarius,
an
example of the absolute power of the unconscious (Pluto) via religion
(Sagittarius) to affect the pose of Divine Authority (Saturn). It is seen again in the
fundamentalist Christian
poser, Pat Robertson, calling for the murder of Hugo Chavez and calling
down
God’s wrath on the people of Dover, Pennsylvania for restricting the
teaching
of religion in public schools. It is the unconscious death wish (Pluto)
of religion (Sagittarius) threatening the Earth with Christian
Armageddon, claiming as its justified authority (Saturn) the absolute truth (Pluto)
of its religious texts (Sagittarius). All these events are
examples of
the death throes of the false Saturn of false Authority. He is strictly
male,
the father, patriarchal. He issues absolute edicts because he thinks
he’s
utterly infallible. The
Gnostics of the time of
Christ called him Yaldaboath, the chief of the Archon deceivers, he who
blindly
believed himself to be the Creator God.
Behind the mask of Yaldaboath, behind
the fear mongering
beast Yahweh/Jehovah, stands the true force of the planet, Saturn.
It’s the force of stabilization, of focused boundaries and
responsible free
choices. It’s the Saturn of the fabled ‘Golden Age’ when
Man-Animals-Plants and Earth lived in mutual awareness and respect
causing a
blossoming of joy and the fearless life of shared abundance. This true force of Saturn
collaborates with humans by
arousing within them recognition of their own Authority, by resonating
with the
centering force within man which allows him to be in harmony with the
Earth,
the Heavens, and all sentient being. True Saturn
facilitates the
heart to heart communication between all separate beings and informs
them of
their interdependent distinctness within the web of life. It supports
the
discrete function of each being within the shared and heart-felt wisdom
of the
whole. It is the centering
force of the mutually shared authority
which
constitutes true Holiness. And
the traditional ‘he’ of the true Saturn force is just as easily
‘she’ -Wisdom of the centering
dance in the
yin-yang of complimentary opposites. The bringer of Harmony and Peace. The Authority of Spirit, not the dumb authority of the blindly
deceived and
deceiving ‘Creator God’ we know as Yaldaboath-Yahweh, the boastful and
arrogant
god issuing loud-mouthed ‘commandments’ that all must follow for fear
of his
blasphemous wrath. A strictly patriarchal god of
religious
stone. Moloch, who eats his children. Craves
worship and
fawning subservience. No,
not that sadly
pathetic Archon intruding itself between us and the planet Saturn, but
the true
force of mutually shared authority which informs each of us concerning
our
gifts which are our responsibilities within the whole. It gives us bones and a spine, so we may
stand upright and fearlessly, courageously embrace life.

SATURN ARCHON
Francisco Goya
Whatever became of Jose Maria Escriva and Opus Dei, you ask, isn’t that the supposed subject of this writing? Well, yes, but neither Mister Escriva nor his foundling, Opus Dei, exist in a vacuum. I’ve dubbed him a ‘Fascist Saint for the 21st Century’ and I will argue that both he and his organization are nearly perfect examples of what we are going to witness as the death throes of negative Saturn within the human psyche while this century unfolds. So we must spend a while longer looking at the chart for the century, discovering the kernel of its hundred year long pattern before we can place Escriva or Opus Dei within that pattern. Saturn, we will find, is pivotal to all this work but so is the Moon, the Queen of Heaven. Remember, if you will, that Saturn and the Moon figuratively oppose one another throughout the century just as they do at the century’s birth, and we are examining the moment of that birth through its natal chart. Time is in love with Eternity, and together they act in mutual bliss. Of course, the false Archon of Saturn in the guise of the Greek, Chronos, wants to hide that reality from us, wants to keep us marching along the measured line of causal reality even though that line of chronological time ultimately turns into circles, gears, and clocks imprisoning us in the fear of death and the pain of suffering. But every Planet has its masking Archon seeking to distort its force, so do asteroids and even moons. Indeed, the very living zodiac of signs shines through the obscuring veils of the Archons. As Jesus and Plato both said, we ‘see now through a glass darkly’, yet we may find our other being face to face in the Light of Conscious Awareness.
As
the 21st
Century opened the Moon was in Scorpio and only 35 minutes of a degree
away
from exact opposition to Saturn in Taurus. We can understand this as the
Wisdom of the Queen of
Heaven opposing the Authority of the Patriarchal God. We can see it as
the ebb and flow of feeling opposing the focused confines of ‘logical’
reason.
Mary, the Mother of Jesus opposing his Father God. Wisdom opposing the
‘Logos’
word of the Law. There are a myriad of facets to this opposition
between the
Moon and Saturn but they are the warp and woof of a single weaving for
their
cycles closely mirror each other; the Moon
requires 28+ days to travel round the zodiac of signs just
once,
while Saturn takes 29+
years to do
the same. It’s a question
of form relating to
change, of structure to content. But
always, when the Moon stands in full opposition to Saturn, she stands
on her
own Authority and faces her equal. Feeling has its own form, gravity
is the centering of
movement. And in the Century’s chart this dance between
Moon and
Saturn enlivens the fixed signs of Scorpio and Taurus implying a need
on the
part of humans to move carefully in balance between the waters and the
continents, between the flowingly invisible (Scorpio) and the
physically
substantial (Taurus). Mystery,
intrigue, and the possibility for transformation characterize this opposition
which warns us of the danger of repressed feelings and intuitions
constrained
by laws.
Mother
Moon
faces off with Father Time. In Roman Catholic terms, it’s ‘Holy
Mother
Church’ in opposition to ‘Il Papa’, the Pope. In every organized religion it’s the
feeling and soul of
the religion (Moon) opposing the laws and dogmas of that religion
(Saturn).
And especially in America, where the Moon in Scorpio occupies the
Nation’s 2nd
House (of wealth, taxation
revenues, banks and
commerce) her
opposition to
Saturn in Taurus in the 8th House (of
corporations, interest rates, birth-mortality rates, and the National
debt)
warns of a slow down followed by a nearly complete cessation to the
flow of
money and goods. Commerce coming close to a total halt, mortgage and
interest
rates frozen, debts coming due. These financial and physical challenges
are
integrally bound up with religions due to the fact of the Moon being in
practical and productive sextile relationship to both Pluto and Chiron
in
Sagittarius while also opposed to Saturn authority which is
simultaneously in
quincunx relationship to the Pluto/Chiron combined forces in religion
prone
Sagittarius. In this 21st
Century,
therefore, money, land rights, and all forms of government and commerce
around
the planet are especially subject to, and pointedly influenced by the
teachings, rules, and dogmas of various religious/philosophical belief
systems.
Capitalism, if one looks at its philosophical presumptions, is a direct result and logical outcome of Hierarchical Christianity and its simplistic concepts of good and bad. God rewards the good and punishes the bad according to the Christian mythos, so the good are rich and the bad are poor. Since all Christians are born in sin and need to be redeemed it’s easy to see why most people are bound to be poor. Only the forgiveness of the Jesus Corporation via God’s Holy Bank can make you rich. Most ‘poor sinners’ are poor because they’re just lazy, unrepentant, weak, and bad. To be ‘born again’ is to get a good credit rating and hold a Gold Master Card. To be simple, humble persons imitating Christ it’s best that the masses should actually go barefoot (‘on credit’) as He did and figuratively ride around on donkeys ending their earthly days happy to be crucified. Sin is big business yielding superior profits for investors in Christian Capitalism. Guilt, suffering, and starvation wages go hand in hand with praying for the Redeemer to come again, clear up the books, and set things straight. Armageddon is the settling of all accounts. Cheating, lying, and waging War is the single most profitable and blessed activity to be found at the heart of Corporate Christian Capitalism which is based upon trading and profiting in the wages of death and sin. All this is clearly visible in the 21st Century retrograde position of false Saturn/Yahweh in the sign of Taurus goods and money quincunx to both Pluto and Chiron in the Religious sign of Sagittarius. Only the Moon, the Wisdom of deep feeling found in Scorpio opposes the Patriarchal authority of the Saturn/Yahweh ‘God’ reflecting his own fear based greed straight back to him. Telling him it’s poisonous. Lethal.
But the Moon is also Mistress of
the Waters, and
everywhere around the globe the people of Earth will be increasingly
impacted
throughout the coming century by the secret controls imposed by Saturn
Authority figures on the flow of sacred, life giving and potable water.
Scorpio as the sign of poisons, attempts to remove toxic impurities
from the
body …in this case, the toxic pollution of the waters flowing in,
around, and
through the body of the Earth. The false
Saturn Authorities entrenched in their retrograde stance within 8th
House Corporations will stand ignorantly blind and opposed to these
needed
cleansings, they will hold on stubbornly (Taurus) to their established
practices of radically polluting land, sea, sky and earth in their
greed for
profits. They will stand in challenge to the Century’s
Lunar
Nodal Axis which marks the Past (Aquarius South Node)
and the Future (Leo North Node) declaring a ‘crisis’
over the ‘fate
of the
earth’. They will cultivate fear in the feelings of the world’s
masses (Moon)
and promote their falsely created but self-fulfilling Saturn agenda of
scarcity
and absolute control. All
natural land, air,
and water ‘resources’ will be
controlled through increasingly stricter laws enforced by the mouthing
of
capitalistic religious precepts.
In
their vile
work they will be assisted by traditional churchmen, mosquemen,
stupamen and
templemen. Their own greed masking (especially to themselves)
their
unconscious death wishes will let loose upon the Earth their religious
henchmen, the notorious ‘Four
Horsemen Of The Apocalypse’ who will, in turn, be
used to release their masters’ genetically designed plagues upon
humanity. The
heartless Masters will keep their antidotes for themselves and for the
select ‘few’
they have chosen to seed their ‘New World Order’. Many of the
innocent
and good will be slaughtered before enough people are able to shake off
their
numbed conditioning and fight back to defend their rights. The dumbly religious will accept
their
‘Holocaust-Armageddon’ conditioning and meekly wind their way into the
slaughter like pure victims imitating their Corporately designed and
packaged
Saviour who (they were taught to believe) died on the cross for their
sins. The
pearly white teeth in the jaws of Moloch
will grind them to extinction and they will become the new fodder for
the
heavenly fields of the fake Jesus, the phony Buddha, the insatiable
Allah. Thus will the Age of
Pisces Faith terminate, and the
Fishermen rot in the polluted seas with their much sought after but
thoroughly
toxic fish. This
is the sickly vision
of Yaldaboath, the false Archon masking Saturn who mocks the law of
Spirit, the
sympathetic relatedness that is Love. And all the while,
the
Moon as Queen of Heaven, as Fatima, as Shekinah, as Sophia
-as every Mother on the planet will watch
her sick and dying children and weep. Or,
perhaps She will fight back with Her stirring ‘Vagina Monologues’.
The future need not be this bleak
if we as humans would
embrace the opposition between the Moon and Saturn and resolve it
within
ourselves. It’s
the
opposition between the flow of feeling and the responsibility of
authority.
When each of us is ready to accept our feeling relationship (Moon)
to
all of Life and act responsibly (Saturn) on that feeling
relationship we
immediately attune ourselves to real authority (Saturn) because
we no
longer seek to make anyone or anything outside ourselves responsible
for our
own decisions. We
realize our innate ability
to be centered within the whole and are at once Holy. We escape the clutches of
the ignorant Archon
Yahweh/Yaldaboath and cease to imitate its arrogant, separatist
ignorance. We no longer bounce back and forth
between a good god
(elation) and an evil satan (depression) for we recognize these
polarities
within ourselves and get them together in our embrace. We give birth to our feeling selves
(Moon) and finally
acknowledge our own responsible authority (Saturn). We define (Saturn) our soul (Moon)
and are able to walk in the light of Spirit (Sun).
We must dial up and
tune into our feeling intuitions through the Moon for, as the Korean
video
artist Nam June Paik so beautifully demonstrated, “Moon is the
oldest TV set.”
The Sun, in the chart for the 21st Century, is located in Saturn ruled Capricorn linked to the Moon by the fertile green line of a sextile aspect and to Saturn itself by the heavenly blue line of a trine aspect. Good news, because it compliments the fact that Earth, herself, mirrors the Sun by forming a fertile sextile to Saturn and a heavenly trine to the Moon. These fertile and heavenly aspects assure us that the 21st Century is the century in which humanity as a whole will come to know of the ‘Golden Age’ of Saturn once again because Spirit (Sun) and Soul (Moon) will be recognized and experienced as lovingly inherent in the divinity of matter (Earth) and responsibly defined (Saturn) as fact. Mankind will no longer accept the fallacy of a transcendent male god but will experience the divine as immanent in and flowing through all creation. All of matter will be known as sacred and alive, and the ‘fall’ from love and joy into suffering and pain will be healed. Guilt and shame will become honesty and openness, and without their draining presence the lion shall indeed lie down with the lamb.
I realize this sounds (and actually
is) a bit … shall we
say, Utopian. But it’s the best dream
dwelling in the hearts of
humankind and it yearns to come out and express itself. It wants to be
realized. It’s the call of Spirit, and Spirit is the Love which
conquers all.
Besides, even Hollywood and Broadway know this is the time of the
dawning of
the Age of Aquarius. But
dawning takes time, and
our experience of time is often distorted through the delusory tricks
of the
false Archon which masks the true force of
Saturn. True Saturn knows time as the play of Eternity, and in the ‘Golden Age’ of Saturn
--who is the
ancient historical ruler of Aquarius as well as Capricorn- both
telepathy and
time travel are natural. As the Age of Aquarius slowly dawns upon us we
will
stumble again upon these True Saturn realities and reclaim our wearied
souls,
rejuvenate
our fractured Spirit, experience
the Divine
in all that is human, earthly, unearthly, and natural. Fear will no longer rule
our lives because we will
have realized the ‘marriage of heaven and hell’ and just as Jesus said,
as Buddha taught, as Mohammed knew we will all know we are the sons and
daughters, the children and friends of God eternally evolving in love
and play.
We will find our centers
within the Holiness
of the whole and recognize our collaboration as Spirits in Spirit. We’ll even be able to
recognize and heal within
ourselves the blind ignorance of Yahweh who will happily cease his
pontificating babble as the chief CEO of the Corporate Goon Squad
mouthing off
about its ‘chosen people’ –whether Christian, Catholic, Jewish,
Islamic,
or Buddhist. The only remaining hierarchy will be an Aquarian one
wherein we
shall all enjoy our collaboration as fluidly adaptable musketeers
intoning
together the Song of Spirit, “All for One,
and One for All” !
Ah, yes, ‘tis true my brothers and sisters … but no sooner do we grasp this joyous vision than the as yet unhealed Archons lay claim to our minds. They mock us saying ….
“Well, tut-tut, maybe so, but Greed
and War are alive and
well all over this Earth that you claim is so ‘divine’. You and your brethren still cower
helplessly in fear
before Our Authority. Get back to your worrisome work, you have to EARN
a
living! Extra Ecclesiam, nulla
salus -Outside the Church, there is No
Salvation proclaims the
Holy (Archon) Father. Outside the Bank, there is No Money add the Holy
(Archon)
Bankers! This
is the way of
things where you are now, and they will never change. Not until you die
and go
to your various Heavens. Work
and suffer while you’re alive on Earth, and then your Father God will
take care
of you.
Your pain and
suffering are holy in the eyes of the Lord!”
Part Two:
Jose
Maria
Escriva, The Cruel Kind Of
Saint
“Blessed be pain. Loved be pain. Sanctified be pain. Glorified be pain. You know your body is your enemy and an enemy of God’s glory, why do you treat it softly?” These cunning words, my friends, are the words of the Archons pouring forth from the mouth of that latest gift the corruptly usurped Authority of the Vatican has chosen to bestow upon the Humanity of the 21st Century. It’s a gift straight from the mouth of Jose Maria Escriva canonized as an official Saint by the religion knowing itself as the ‘Holy Roman Catholic Church’ in this 21st Century. Well might we ask ourselves, what hath (which) God wrought! Lingering shadows from the faithfully suffering Age of Pisces still stalk the dawning Age of Aquarius. Here’s our chance to explore them, and by exploring dispel their darkness.

Natal Chart Of
Jose Maria Escriva
(Source: Lois Rodden; rated ‘AA’)
Escriva is born just at the New Moon when a pronounced cluster of attending planets all came together in what astrologers call a stellium in the sign of Capricorn. A New Moon temperament is usually a wide-open, free, energized and childlike temperament which astrology relates to the fact that this is the most fertile time each month for seed planting. It’s the moment of fresh, new beginnings. A time when the energies of the Sun & Moon are conjunct indicating the alignment of Spirit (Sun) and Soul (Moon). A person born at such a time benefits from the fact that the soul and the spirit are in agreement within the personality because they are both expressing through the same energy-field (sign) of the zodiac indicating inner harmony.
Jose Maria Escriva’s intense
alignment of spirit and soul
are personally expressing through Capricorn, a cardinal earth sign
marked by a
very public and objective form of self awareness usually associated
with Business,
Government, and Politics. It’s essence is classically conservative and
it’s
ruled by serious Saturn. Tellingly,
Saturn
is EXACTLY conjunct the Sun
right there in the sky of Capricorn at his birth, revolving
between the Sun and
Moon. This is an uncommon and difficult combination of energies because
a New
Moon Temperament is at its best when totally open to life, it’s a
spontaneous
and freedom loving sort of temperament living very much in the subjective
freedom of the moment. But Saturn is the very symbol of focus, boundary
making,
and objectivity, and we see it exactly conjunct the Sun, wedged
between
the Sun & Moon. Hence
we are looking at
an essentially conflicted personality torn between the innocently
fertile
openness of the New Moon and the serious, contracting focus of
responsible
Saturn. Escriva may accurately be called a
spontaneously serious
personality, a subjectively objective person, an overtly conservative
seeker of
the kind of freedom he will only be able to find in the Authority of
Saturn. Actually, he’s
something of a living
conundrum, an odd kettle of fish!
The intense agreement between his Spirit essence (Sun) and his Soulful feeling (Moon) is enhanced by the fact that Mercury and Jupiter are also exactly conjunct each other, and more loosely conjunct Sun, Moon, and Saturn. This speaks of a rational mind (Mercury) in agreement with the personality’s intuitive mind (Moon) again emphasizing what is clearly a very focused (arguably single-minded) attention to all that Capricorn embodies: hard work, serious self-discipline, public ambition, and very pronounced conservative viewpoints focused in the Capricorn + Saturn fondness for rules, obedience, and traditional Authority. A man born with the Sun exactly conjunct Saturn is a man who identifies his very Solar Essence with Saturn, and when that man’s Mercury Mind is also exactly conjunct Jupiter in Authoritative Capricorn he naturally thinks he's a Jupiter Teacher of Objective Truth. When that man is a subjective New Moon temperament it’s perfectly natural for him to spontaneously assume that he’s objective. In the person of Escriva we have such a man, we have that odd reality expressed in the English language by the word ‘oxymoron’. A living contradiction of incongruous energies, a keenly focused but very difficult combination of ‘spontaneously constrained’ energies, something which I have called a conundrum but which the Merriam-Webster dictionary (on-line) calls an ‘oxymoron’ and illustrates by the expression “cruel kindness”.
In the person of Escriva we are looking at a complex and irascible personality, a riddle of a man who is spontaneously un-spontaneous. A man who feels at home with authority, feels he is or needs to become an authority figure and has a need for the boundaries, structures, and focus which he’s certain he can only find in authoritative structures. He’s especially attuned to the authority of religion since his Jupiter function (Religion/Philosophy) conjoins his Mercury function (Thought-Speech) in Capricorn (Authority). The social outreach of his Jupiter function combined with its impulse to teach the truth as he sees that truth (Sagittarius is symbolized by the one-pointed arrow of the Heavenly Archer) all but guarantees that he will try to carry his personal (‘spontaneously un-spontaneous’) single mindedness right out into the world; into the objective and political, cultural and business realms of Capricorn.
Indeed,
the
cornerstone of his life’s work is a book of aphorisms he wrote which he
called,
“The Way”. These are terse maxims aimed at teaching truths, and
they brilliantly
illustrate what any astrologer would expect
to find in
the writings
(Mercury) of a man born with the teacher-proselytizer function
(Jupiter) in
conjunction with Mercury at birth and in Escriva’s birth chart Mercury and Jupiter are exactly
conjunct (combined and
merged) in Capricorn. His writings are
subsequently marked by the
combination of conservative emphasis on Obedience and hard Work, and he
takes
for granted the obvious Truth of what he so tersely asserts. The stuff
is
absolutely priceless, I mean it’s blatantly “over the top” in a
way that
would seem hilarious if it were not for the fact that this man and his
writings
are being pawned off onto all the People of the world
as “saintly”. Here are a few examples (and I warn you, although these are
terse maxims, Escriva
is no Pascal):
Maxim 59: "One's
own mind is
a bad adviser.”
Maxim 387: "The standard that God asks of us is
determined by
these three points: holy intransigence,
holy
coercion and holy shamelessness."
Maxim 936: “You
have come to submit, to annihilate
yourself.”
Maxim 941: "Obedience, the sure way. Unreserved
obedience to whoever is in charge...obedience
in your apostolate, the only way."
Maxim 623: "One must obey in every little detail, even if it seems useless and
difficult. Do it!”
[Those interested in doing so can read more of Escriva’s ‘maxims’ here: http://www.escrivaworks.org/book/the_way/point/387 ]
One can actually overdo the whole authoritative-obedience (Capricorn-Saturn) issue, don’t you think? But in the chart for the 21st Century wherein we find Saturn in stressful quincunx aspect to both Pluto & Chiron in religious oriented Sagittarius this kind of strictly rigid Saturn-Authority applied to taken-for-granted religious notions can be very appealing to many. We find Christian fundamentalists in America unreservedly backing the quasi-religious platitudes mouthed by George W. Bush & Company on a daily basis. After all, it is ‘reasoned’ he’s the President, the ‘elected’ one who “is in charge”, the ultimate executive Authority in America and that fact alone makes him right; our job is merely to follow him in unquestioning obedience as if he were the Pope and all Americans were devoted Roman Catholics. He certainly is a living embodiment of Escriva’s precept cited above –“holy intransigence, holy coercion, and (particularly) holy shamelessness” ! One would think George W. Bush and Jose Maria Escriva would see eye-to-eye on a lot of issues, and while we don’t have to worry that those two will ever meet in the flesh, it is a fact that Escriva’s organization called ‘Opus Dei’ which lives by “The Way” is definitely alive and well in the halls of power throughout these United States.
Let’s dip a little deeper into
Escriva’s astrological
profile.

Saint Escriva
This is the birth chart of a man born with the active-aggressive force of Mars expressing through the sign of Aquarius noted for its affiliation with large-scale social reforms. He’s a man whose ego energies (Mars) are definitely focused upon stirring up society, leading social groups, deriving ego satisfaction from any success he might achieve in areas of social reform. This Mars function impacts his Virgo Ascendant by way of the highly restless and out-reaching aspect of 135 degrees called a sesquisquare (the aspect is only 8 minutes of a degree short of exact) and it forms a similarly tight square aspect to both his North & South Lunar Nodes found respectively in Scorpio & Taurus and in the 2nd and 8th Houses of his birth chart. Since the Lunar Nodes represent one’s “Destiny Line” it is clear that Escriva incarnated into his current life with a marked focus on the use he might make of his Mars ego energies concerned with aggressively assertive action. In other words, much of his life would predictably center around how he expressed himself as a potential Mars in Aquarius social reformer, his spiritual destiny would depend upon how he responded to his soul’s crisis over the use of Mars force. And the sesquisquare which Mars makes to his Virgo Ascendant (his Body and his Dharma Path) tells us that the Virgo traits of self-discipline and focus upon detailed hard work in service to others should be marked traits of his personality.
The restless sesquisquare
traditionally reaches out with a ‘Vision’ and in Escriva’s case this
Vision
became ‘Opus Dei’ the literal Latin Work of God. On October 2, 1928 Josemaria
experienced
something he called a “Vision” (in the Catholic Religious
sense) and it
was “Opus Dei”, the creation of an organization of ordinary
Roman
Catholics who would go about their daily Virgo routines of
humble/ordinary work
while prayerfully awake and dedicating their simplest Virgo tasks to
the
greater glory of God. Certainly that’s a good thing to do, and even (potentially)
a Saintly thing to do. But
there is that Mars
emphasis informing this Sesquisquare Vision, and Mars
is the symbol for active, self-conscious ego assertion
…that’s
something any Saint has to watch out for, tame, subdue, and ultimately
transform (through humility) into selflessness. Certainly Escriva knew that and,
therefore, from the date
of his Vision of Opus Dei until his death we can assume he was in
constant ‘battle’
with his ego while ambitiously striving (all those planets in Capricorn) to attain the selflessness
characteristic of Sainthood,
and pointedly asked of everyone born with a Virgo Ascendant.
We cannot afford to pass beyond
Escriva’s Mars function until
we take into account that it’s natal position in the fixed sign
Aquarius
squaring the Lunar Nodes in the fixed signs Taurus (South Node) and
Scorpio
(North Node)
is
perfectly expressed in his own
maxim which emphasizes
what he called
“holy
intransigence”
for the
great problem with fixed signs is precisely that, -their
Fixity. Such people find it
almost impossible to
back down from any position once they’ve embraced it, they are not
noted for
their adaptability which is the characteristic of the mutable signs. Yet Escriva’s
birth chart contains one of the 4 mutable signs on each of the chart’s
4
Angles! So we are looking at a man with an
external persona that
appears to be -and actually is- Flexible. But, within the flexibility of the
mutable Angles of his
external persona (Asc-Dsc + Mc-Ic) we find the fixed, determined, and
‘intransigent’ T-Square created by Mars (ego
energy) in Aquarius
squaring the Taurus-Scorpio Nodes. This is like one of
those disturbing
candies in an assortment of chocolates, -the coating is sweet and soft
chocolate but when you bite deeper into it your teeth crunch on
the
hard nut
inside. Inside Escriva
is a rigid tension
focused on sex and money, on Scorpio and Taurus. Warrior Mars activates his
sexual-financial
tension from the idealistic and abstract mental plane of Aquarius while
it
simultaneously challenges his Virgo Self-Discipline Ascendant with a
135 degree
Vision restlessly trying to communicate itself. Here
again, in the combination of his Fixed T-Square with his Flexible
Angles, we
witness the peculiar oxymoron that is the ‘flexible intransigency’
of the man Escriva. His
‘cruel kindness’.
That
he felt
this sexual-financial tension right up front on his Virgo Ascendant
cannot be
doubted, for the
Ascendant signifies the
body and Mister Escriva adopted a form of bodily
self-discipline straight out of the European Middle Ages, echoed in his
Spanish
ancestral roots. He practiced self-flaggelation and wore the cilice. He inflicted
physical pain on himself, and his
infamous ‘maxims’
are replete with references to the wonderful joys of pain suffered ‘for
God’. No
doubt his
tortured mental state which is
everywhere in evidence throughout his writings (unless one happens
to be a
traditional Catholic religiously romanticizing pain) communicated
itself
to his followers causing many of them a great deal of personal anguish
and
confusion.
There is, for instance, the anguished testimony of Maria del
Carmen
Tapia found in her book “Beyond
The Threshold: A
Life In Opus Dei” a review of which can be read here: http://www.natcath.com/NCR_Online/archives/090597/090597l.htm
Jose’s chart reveals him to be a
man caught in the grips
of sexually frustrated power. Not only is his
Mars sexual
function challenging his Lunar Nodes and personal destiny line but Uranus, modern day ruler of the sign Aquarius in
which his
Mars function is found at birth, rests at the base of his
symbolical
spinal column on the IC (cusp of 4th House) in the
fiery sign
of Sagittarius. From that IC, Uranus
opposes Pluto on his Gemini Midheaven and squares both his Ascendant
and
Descendant marking his style of relating. This is a complex sort of ‘Gordian
Knot’,
a bundle of tightly strung nervous energies signifying enormous
tensions
between his root mulahdara chakra and his crown chakra which, no doubt,
also
gave him a few Virgo intestinal problems. Uranus,
after all, is the force of shocking rebellion and Escriva experienced
this
force at the very roots of his personal power, in his genetic Spanish
ancestry
focused through the religious sign of Sagittarius. (Torquemada and
the infamous ‘tricks’ of the Spanish Inquisition immediately leap to
mind.)
It is from that vantage point in his body/psyche that Uranus tightly
opposes
Pluto found in the Gemini sign of the writer-communicator at the
Midheaven of
his Public Persona. We
are looking at an
authoritatively riveting because sexually and emotionally frustrated man (Pluto
opposite Uranus; Mars square both Lunar Nodes) with an energized and often angry
gift for writing and
speaking shockingly religious things (Uranus in Sagittarius) in absolutist (Pluto)
jargon (Gemini) guaranteed
to grab the public’s attention. He called it ‘The
Way’.
Keep
in mind
that this man is born with a powerful stellium of planets including Mercury (ruler of both his
Gemini Midheaven and his
Virgo Ascendant) in conservative, authority oriented, and
obedience
loving Capricorn! He
makes a strict religious
teaching out of his need to resolve his inner contradictions by
rigorously
adhering to Authority and promoting authoritarian structures.
He
innocently but rather narcissistically offers that teaching as a form
of Virgo
Service to his fellow man. He’s a fixed and
stubborn personality (Mars squaring
both Lunar Nodes, all three in fixed signs of the zodiac)
crucified on the cross of his Mutable Angles (Virgo-Pisces,
Sagittarius-Gemini). This ‘crucifixion’ is driven
by the powerful internal forces of the fixed T-Square between Mars and
the
Lunar Nodes which
releases
in Leo, the dramatic sign of ego and leadership. Uranus and Pluto, in
opposition within his
psyche, give both shocking and powerful (verbal and written)
expression
to his crucified agony through the signs of the teacher (Sagittarius)
and
the Communicator (Gemini). Throughout his chart we see
abundantly
repeated evidence of the same conundrum: the oxymoron of ‘cruel
kindness’
that is Jose Maria Escriva. A frustrated
religious conservative whose dull and angry maxims are contained
exclusively
within the Capricorn confines of traditional, establishment religion.
A safe and shockingly unimaginative ‘Saint’ living strictly
within the
parameters of Authoritative Religion as a form of Capricorn Business
wherein he
was destined to struggle mightily (by repressing
his sexual-emotional, Scorpio-Taurus feelings) for recognition as a man of
power. No saint at
all, or else the Patron
Saint of Bureaucrats.
I’d simply dismiss him as a wholly servile boot licker and be done with him. But this man, a religiously irascible, tortured and torturing sado-masochist obsessed with Authority has hoodwinked millions of Roman Catholics and founded an organization steeped in the same ethos of fascistic subservience (masking ambitious aspirations for political power) which was his own. He called to his aid a formidable coterie of similarly fawning brutes. Religious Machiavellians. Instruments of the Archons (Authorities; Rulers). The members of this Roman Catholic Cult marked by secrecy and unquestioning obedience to their leaders are dangerously deceived promulgators of religious-political fascism. Their founder and his teachings have received the ‘imprimatur’ of their Church, and that Church is manifestly the oldest and worst of the Corporate Cults still exploiting mankind and wreaking havoc on the Earth. Escriva is, in many ways, an ‘Exemplar’ acting out the crisis that marks the 21st Century because, if you will note, his personal ‘destiny line’ marked by the Nodes of the Moon at 10 degrees of Scorpio & Taurus is conjunct the Moon-Saturn opposition in those same signs which sounds one of the Century’s major themes -the repressive, zealous, and often downright fanatical power of Religious Authority. Escriva’s personal Mars in Aquarius function squaring his own Nodal Destiny Line also squares the Century’s Moon to Saturn opposition, so in his personal dilemma we can see reflected the dilemma of the 21st Century –a tendency to crave the stability which adhering to Corporate Authority imposed from outside offers the fearful. The Opus Dei Franchise he established is a shocking model for the kinds of repressive (false) Saturn organizations likely to spring up from fearful and self-righteous Fundamental Religious Capitalists all around the planet, so I choose to gird my loins and press onward with this distasteful business!
Pressing on, one finds oneself confronted by the fact that Escriva’s natal Sun, Saturn, Moon functions all conjunct in Capricorn are in imbalanced waning quincunx aspect to the powerfully placed Pluto in Gemini of his Public Persona Mask. Pluto in Gemini is Trickster power, tricky and Unconscious power informing Gemini words. Opposite Uranus it inclines him to make willfully abrupt assertions and/or shocking verbal puns all at the service of blind obedience to the Authoritative Capricorn Establishment. This man’s writings strike me as having nothing of the necessary ‘lightness’ required for punning, rather his language is blunt, bludgeoning, crudely self-evident, full of pain and subliminal anger. The quincunx is a stressful aspect notorious for its alternating energetic shift from ease to stress. It’s an aspect frequently distilled into one, key, descriptive word: Excess. When the excess of the quincunx is of the ‘waning’ nature that excess tends to be psycho-spiritual or psychological rather than physical, as it is in the case of the ‘waxing’ quincunx. In both instances, the quincunx speaks of excess as disturbing to the balance of one’s inner harmony whether physical or psychological. In Escriva’s case, the waning quincunx of Sun, Saturn, Moon to Pluto attests to an excessive psychological craving for public recognition and power originating from deeply unconscious feelings of personal impotence. This craving is actually a compensatory psychological complex in direct conflict with the inherent shyness and tendency to self-deprecation found in his Virgo Ascendant. Radical Pluto in tricky Gemini challenges that Ascendant as does shocking Uranus in Sagittarius, so we get more of the Escriva conundrum, more of that ‘cruel kindness’. Consider this quotation from the ‘saint’ speaking to his French followers in 1959:
"I want
you to be pious, cheerful, optimistic, hardworking, and schemers."
[ Source: Saints & Schemers, pg. 381 http://www.takingfive.com/house_of_cards.htm ]
Scheming is
the sly game of the ‘Trickster’ Archetype when it works in service to
the
Archons,
and when such
schemers are religious their scheming takes the form of missionary
proselytizing. They have duped themselves and seek to
dupe
unwary others because they need the psychological comfort of greater
numbers. When these
schemers are Christian they call their
scheming the ‘apostolate’ of the gospel of the ‘good news’.
They feel they’ve
heard the ‘call’ and that ‘call’ is
their ‘Vocation’ -their license from
‘God’ allowing them to inflict their personal opinions and often their
neuroses
on others. Their
‘apostolate’
usually comes with its own little book of rules and regulations tidily
done up
in mechanical moral strictures direct from the sayings of that ignorant
but
self-proclaimed Archon of a ‘creator god’ Yahweh/Jehovah/Yaldaboath …
Mister “Thou shalt NOT….” do
or say this, that, or another thing. These sayings were consistently
questioned
by Jesus Christ in his day, and he frequently commented (through use of parables) upon the fact that the ‘authority’ behind them
spoke mixtures of truths,
half-truths, and downright deceptions. Such
trickster ‘authority’ is employed by the false Archon, Yahweh, masking
the true
authority of Saturn.
Upon reflection, it becomes evident
that a ‘morality’
which does not arise from deep and personal self-recollection, the kind of rigid ‘morality’
Escriva
urged upon his
followers,
is dangerous at
best because it derives from fear, and fear inevitably leads to following
external authority.
The root meaning of the word Authority arises
from the
Latin augere to grow or increase and refers
to the personal, internal,
and subjective
realization of the value and truth of one’s essential being.
Authority,
consequently, arises from one’s
own increase and growth of being -as
does the kind of knowing embedded in the Greek word, gnosis.
Hence, the
Gnostics before, during, and after the time of Jesus Christ understood
truthful
Authority to naturally arise from equally truthful knowing, and
referred to
their own inner awakening and their growing self-realization as Gnosticism. It’s a basic tool, a way of
contacting the authority
innate in one’s being through a process of anamnesis or soul awakening,
-remembering one’s divine essence. It is found nowhere
in any of
Escriva’s writings. As we have seen, he preaches (as
does his Church) exactly
the
opposite: “One’s own mind
is a bad advisor.”
Behaviour originating from the real gnosis of self-awareness can be genuinely moral, but other
forms of ‘morality’
are spurious at best. Mister
Escriva had every right to explicate his own process of knowing, and to
believe
in and testify to his own (or his preferred Church’s)
authority. Nor
does anyone question his freedom to write maxims or books expressing
that
personal process. But what we find in Escriva’s writings is in no way
originating from his own self-exploration, he merely communicates his
psycho-theological musings upon the received authoritative teachings of
his
preferred Roman Catholic Church. His
‘self-exploration’ is operative only in so far as it moves within the
confines
of the ideas, morality, and ‘apostolate’ he found in the corporately
organizational business of Roman Catholic Doctrine. Unlike
his countrymen Juan de la Cruz and Teresa d’Avila he breaks no new
ground
either as a thinker or a writer. Nevertheless, his personal style of
preaching
Roman Catholic theology appeals to many Catholics, and his canonization
by that
Church gives it the ‘imprimatur’
of ‘holiness’.
This is where the social danger to
all of us lies (including non-Christians as well as non-Catholics) because
his radically intense language of ‘suffering
for Jesus’ and
‘obedience to the Church’
heightens and
extends the corporately hierarchical (and
ultimately fascist) epistemological theology of the
Roman
Catholic Church. This is
a strictly
Patriarchal Corporate Organization
which has continuously masked its disrespect for women and the body of
Mother
Earth through its absurd insistence on personal sin and guilt, together
with
suffering (and
insufferable) piety since its fraudulent
inception. Escriva
preaches unthinking adherence to this agenda of his chosen Church in
his ‘Way’:
Maxim 520: “Catholic, apostolic, Roman! I
want you to be very
Roman. And to be anxious to make your 'path to Rome',
videre
Petrum — to see Peter.”
Maxim 597: “If
you were to obey the impulses
of your heart and the dictates of reason, you
would always be flat on the ground, prostrate, like a filthy worm, ugly
and
miserable, before that God who puts up with so much from you.”
His proselytizing message is clear: rather than follow our hearts or our faculties of reasoning we must beat a path straightaway to Catholic Apostolic Rome to see Peter who, like his ‘God’ and his Church puts up with so much from us filthy worms. Escriva, far from being anything even vaguely similar to a saint, is an authoritarian fascist through and through. He and his Opus Dei mafia have never shown any appreciation for that faint glimmer of humanity that arose in the Catholic Church called “Liberation Theology” but have ruthlessly denounced it on every occasion. They are fundamentalist Christians marching in step with the evangelical Protestant Dominionist movement. And I might just add that I don’t like his ‘ad worminem’ attack on worms! One can only imagine the response Saint Francis of Assisi might have to this hauteur, this arrogant dismissal of one of God’s smaller but impeccable creatures. Maybe it takes a farmer to appreciate the holiness of the worms!
Since Escriva
disdained to follow the ‘impulses’ of
his heart and thought of his own reason as ‘dictatorial’,
what guidelines did he follow in his
sadly
tortured but politically ambitious life
? He followed (as
far too many Church
Christians do) his twisted
(because
heartless and unreasonable)
but very ‘evangelical’ notions of the ‘dictates’
of the Roman Catholic Christ!
Here’s
a
quote concerning Escriva from James Martin (SJ) -one
of his fellow religionists: “Even Escriva’s writings
emphasize at least the idea of recruiting. In the internal magazine, Cronica,
he wrote in 1971:
‘This holy
coercion is necessary, compelle intrare, the Lord tells us. You
must kill
yourselves for proselytism.’ ”
It behooves us all to realize that
WE are the Targets of
this coercive and killing proselytism, this righteous and authoritative
crusade designed as a
monolithic (monotheistic) tool of persuasion. We are the
evangelical focal point for his Fascistic Religious program of
indoctrination
masking itself in the guise of ‘love’ for Jesus. Anyone
familiar with
even the approved Roman Catholic canonical texts of the four gospels
knows that
Jesus himself never used coercion in his work, never praised pain and
suffering
as marvelous ‘tools’ of God, and even asked his ‘Father’
(while
praying in Gethsemane) to take the ‘cup’ of pain away from
him. He practiced
non-interference in the lives of others and
made exceptions to that practice only when he defended those under
attack from
their fellow ‘religionists’ for breaking the rules. Let he who is without sin
among you cast the
first stone, he said to the religious crowd ready to kill the woman
taken in
adultery. He took up whips and drove the officially sanctioned money
lenders
out of the Temple. He
never gave his support
to the organized religions everywhere around him, and the priests and judges of the
Temples were the ones
who condemned him to death stirring up hatred among their followers to
have him
crucified.
Evangelical
proselytism is an
illness indulged in by
those whose ‘faith’ has no conviction unless they can convince
others to
join them; it’s a form
of mob psychology and
mass control everywhere in evidence from Corporate advertisers who need
to stir
up customer-consumers to buy their ‘holy’ products.
Bludgeoning
others over the head with what one thinks to be the ‘good news’
of one’s
bargain basement purchases is just intrusive marketing. It’s certainly
not
sharing love! Organized Religious Churches are dangerous at best and
downright
lethal far too often. The
Roman Catholic
Inquisitions (lasting several Centuries) were not aberrational
‘flukes’ but the
repeated outbreaks of the rabidly violent righteousness inherent in
religionists whenever they get carried away by their own insecurity and
hysteria. Organized Christianity has a very bad track record on this
score.
Organized Church Christianity is
a Corporate control game specifically designed to entrap the unwary and
guaranteed to fleece them. Jesus never organized his friends, nor
founded
churches, nor did he pass around a collection plate for donations to
his
teachings. That’s the work of Popes and Bishops, Pastors and Rabbis,
Mullahs
and Dalai Lamas! Drop nothing into their ‘apostolic’ begging
bowls, and
run like a bat out of hell whenever they show up in your neighborhood.
Which,
conveniently, brings us back around to ‘Saint’ Escriva and his own ‘little
shop of horrors’, the
Opus Dei
Franchise.
Part Three:

OPUS DEI
VISION
( chart for
the organization’s inception )
October 2, 1928
Madrid, Spain
Jose Escriva said that he had a
‘vision’ of ‘God’s Work’
on October 2, 1928 in Madrid, Spain sometime in the morning after Mass. He says that he was
looking over some old notes
he’d written at the time but does not state the exact clock time, so
I’ve
looked at multiple times that morning and opted to use the chart above
to
discuss his vision. I do not, by any means, insist on this time and
remain open
to other possible times. I’ve
chosen this time mostly because it puts the planet of writing-thinking
(hence,
reading notes) exactly on the Ascendant in the sign of Scorpio. This
is the sign of the zodiac in which Escriva’s North Lunar Node is found
at his
birth and that node symbolizes growth for him in his current lifetime.
I
believe Mister Escriva saw his god’s work (Opus Dei) as his lifework
and,
therefore, think the choice of Scorpio Rising is appropriate.
[For those not altogether familiar with astrology I’d like to point
out that
all the planets found in this chart will remain in the same degrees of
the same
signs throughout that entire day with only the following two
exceptions:
the Sun might move out of the 10th into the 11th
degree
of Libra, and the Moon might move as far ahead as 26 degrees of Taurus
or as
far back as 12 degrees Taurus. But within the parameters of Mister
Escriva’s
statement that his vision occurred in the morning after Mass the Sun is
not
able to move into the 10th degree of Libra, nor is the Moon
able to
be anywhere but between the 16th and the 18th
degree of
Taurus, so this allows us to interpret the chart with a fair amount of
accuracy.]
In the case of a chart cast for a vision which became an Organization the Sun may be read as symbolizing the central conscious thrust or purpose of that organization and might even refer to its founder. This chart shows the Sun in Libra and in the 12th house of Spiritual Retreats and Monasteries. Escriva was making a retreat in a monastery at the time of his vision, so the shoe seems to fit. A Sun in Libra Organization would be one concerned with Libra issues like tact, diplomacy, a hierarchical sense of the pyramid of Society, issues of law and counseling. Ideally, within that Organization there would be a high overall regard for harmony, balance, and artistic aesthetics. If the Sun is indeed in the 12th House as well, such an Organization would also rightly be concerned with issues of personal and social transformation by way of spiritual or even religious techniques. Escriva has informed us that his vision was one of people (essentially Roman Catholic people) from all walks of life and every social level learning how to sanctify their work and make it pleasing to God by continuously remembering His Presence and focusing on doing their work in the spirit of prayer offered to Him. All this fits a chart with the Sun in Libra in the 12th House.
Notice how the planet of Individuality, of individual uniqueness and even personal genius, URANUS, is in Aries the sign opposite to that of the Sun, and that it’s found in Retrograde position at 5+ degrees of Aries. This means that roughly 4 days earlier the Sun exactly opposed Uranus and on the date of Escriva’s vision it had not separated from that opposition by more than 4 degrees, so the foundation of Opu