THE 'PATRIOT' ACT
An Astrological Study Of The Birth Chart Of HR 3162.
( Essay initiated just before Thanksgiving Day, 2002 )
* * *

 

INTRODUCTION

Hi there, friends, these are urgent Times !  If you are anything like the 'typical' American, you haven't even read the text of HR 3162 or 'The Patriot Act'. But go now to this link and you will find that complete text: http://personalinfomediary.com/USAPATRIOTACT_Text.htm

Once you've read the text you will have a clearer understanding of what the astrological birth chart of this piece of legislation signifies, and that's what I'll be talking about in this astrological analysis.  I found the chart itself on StarCats.com along with the comment provided by the hostess of this site that she literally 'saw' George W. Bush sign HR 3162 into law LIVE on MSNBC TV at precisely 10:56 AM on October 26, 2001 and that she (Claudia D. Dikinis) will be posting her comments about it ! *
( As of a few days ago Claudia has done it, posted her pithy, direct commentary-analysis right here:) http://starcats.com/newsmakers.html

It's been over a year since this staggering LAW was passed and still the public, 'Big-Guns' astrological community has nothing or very little to say about it. Why, I wonder ? Perhaps it has to do with what I call "Astrology in the Grip of Saturn"…a certain fixation within contemporary astrology to place far too much emphasis upon 'facts', 'details', and 'data'; a certain desire on the part of astrologers to feel themselves to be 'scientifically objective' !

Well, folks, it just so happens that this very same Saturn symbol plays a prominent role in the horoscope of the 'Patriot Act', -the new US LAW signed by G.W, Bush as HR 3162. So, without further ado, let's plunge into a study of the chart.

PART ONE

That Old Red White And Blue Magic

Has Me In It's Spell;
Pluto opposed by Saturn.

Here we go again, it's the opposition of Saturn in Gemini to Pluto in Sagittarius showing up right on cue across the Ascendant-Descendant line of the horoscope for the 'Patriot Act' ! It's a strange ballroom dance resembling a kind of Tango replete with costly black attire, full orchestra, and the hot and heavy passion of Garcia Lorca's Duende! Authority (Saturn) and Power (Pluto) are dancing on the edge of Death, provoking extreme responses from each other as they beat their feet to the rhythm of their dance. It's a dramatic CONFRONTATION,  an hybrid Tango-Flamenco version of a dialogue between the Centaur and the Twins. The need to deal with issues of courts (Sagittarius) and daily communication (Gemini), to deal with the basis of philosophy and law, as well as the daily functioning of communication tools like newspapers, telephones, and the internet. Power, Persuasiveness, and Laws slam-dancing in opposition with each other. Struggles to find objective solutions to issues of daily and long-distance travel by way of planes, trains, and cars. Who gets to say what and go where ? What Saturn-Authority figures will 'objectively' define and structure the Power-Wealth of the Pluto Collective Unconscious ? What hidden forces informing which Shadow Government will define the limits of human communications ? How will Saturn in Gemini dance with Pluto in Sagittarius to attempt to legislate the tempo of everyday life and thought ? Make no mistake about it, Pluto and Saturn are 'heavy' astrological symbols engaged in intensely hidden activities -each with its own kind of powerful charisma. Think Marlon Brando and Bernardo Bertolucci facing-off in a film, think of that film's operatic soundtrack, think Last Tango in America!

This legislation is really all about hiding from the Public (through the Pluto Mask of Invisibility) a serious financial crisis engulfing the US. That's indicated by the fact that Pluto, symbol of Ultimate Wealth and the Rule of the Wealthy (Plutocracy) is right up-front on the Law's Ascendant and opposing Saturn which controls Capricorn, the sign of the zodiac focusing the approach this Law will take toward 2nd house issues concerning the very long list of: - the nation's wealth, its Treasury, taxation revenues, stocks & bonds, exports, investors & investing, (gulp!) currency, the entire purchasing power of the nation. The so-called Patriot Act arises from Plutocratic Forces and threatens to be the complete undoing of the people of the United States, because Pluto is ruling the Scorpio 12th house of this chart (the House of Bondage and Self-Undoing) which concerns labor disturbances, plagues and epidemics, jails, prisons, workhouses, houses of detention, involuntary services ordered by Law, and conditions that militate against the public welfare. Things are definitely NOT looking good here. Remember the scene in Last Tango when Brando uses the stick of butter ? That's the picture !

Saturn on the Descendant of the Patriot Act (now become official LAW) is expressing itself through the sign of WORDS (Gemini) and in the 7th house of 'openly declared enemies'. HR 3162 was signed into Law immediately following the 'terrorist' attack on the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The people of the US were told by the Gemini Media (all Corporately owned and controlled) that the 'enemy' was a group of Sagittarian foreigners -Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban. And the Saturn (Authoritarian) control of the media continued to operate in the Invisible Underworld (Pluto) as delays in printing HR 3162, so that at the time of passage through the Congress few -if any- representatives of the People had a chance to read the 1016 Sections constituting the new LAW. That's how useful a stick of butter can be, folks. Mike Ruppert, one of the investigative journalists currently belittled by the Corporate Media wrote:

" On October 26th - a date which will live in infamy - the President signed the USA/PATRIOT act, officially known as HR 3162. And you should well note that, according to Representative Ron Paul ® of Texas - as reported on November 9th by Kelly O'Meara of the Washington Times' Insight Magazine - the bill had not even been printed and members of the House could not read it before they were compelled to vote on it. O'Meara wrote, 'Meanwhile, efforts to obtain copies of the new bill were stonewalled even by the committee that wrote it.' Most of its provisions have nothing to do with fighting terrorism. "

This is precisely what we might expect from Saturn in Gemini opposing Pluto in Sagittarius, is it not ? Delays in communication, Authoritarian clamp-downs on all forms of communication and travel. Of course, it's all because of those nasty foreign terrorists. But is it ? Astrologically speaking, I think not. While the Sagittarius Ascendant of this 'Patriot Act' does refer to foreigners and foreign ideas and travel, the planet-force which rules it, good old Jupiter, is found in the sign of the American Homeland itself, in Born-On-The-Fourth-Of-July CANCER !  Wave those Flags, kids, beat those War drums, we are being attacked by Terrorists. Only these terrorists are home-grown politicians and court officials backed by Hidden-Invisible Plutonian businessmen; that's why Jupiter is in quincunx (stressful-excessive) aspect to both Pluto and the Ascendant of the Patriot Act. Very powerful financiers are using the Saturn to Pluto opposition and hiding behind their moves; Saturn is controlling the Treasury of HR 3162 because Capricorn in this chart is that Treasury. This is a grim and scary reality. Last Tango in America, anyone care to dance ?

Now it might be argued that I am failing to consider a more positive interpretation of these astrological symbols. Isn't the 12th house of a chart, for instance, the House Of Initiation and Transformation ? Yes, that's true; but 12th house transformation only becomes possible after confronting the hidden nature of that which needs to be transformed, and in the birth chart of the Patriot Act what needs to be transformed is the use of Scorpio energy.

That energy is by nature involved with secrecy, and the power derived from secrecy. And the planet contained within that 12th house is the very planet symbolic of the raw power of secret and invisible wealth, Pluto. We can't transform anything if we don't see its original form. The message of the Patriot Act to Americans, for whom it has now become National Law, is that we as a people must penetrate the shield of the 'helmet of invisibility' worn by Pluto as he sits in Jupiter ruled Sagittarius exercising his Power through the highest court of the land, the United States Supreme Court which illegally (unconstitutionally) terminated the count of votes in the people's state of Florida to declare George W. Bush the new President. As a People and a Nation we are being 'initiated' into the secret machinations of a 12th house character taking place within our own Shadow Government's alphabetic intelligence agencies (CIA, FBI, NSA, CFR, DOD etc.) so that by seeing them in action we can transform them. This confrontation with our own collectively hidden thoughts, fears, and communications is rooted in the birth chart of America and blatantly announces itself through the Mercury to Pluto opposition operative at the moment of the Nation's founding through the Declaration Of Independence. The people of a Nation cannot absent themselves from the doings of their government and their government's leaders without indulging in acute denial and risking the loss of their freedom. Particularly so in the United States, which declares itself to be a government of the People, by the People, and for the People… 'lest it perish from the face of the Earth. The duly elected leaders of the people, the senators and representatives never read nor debated upon this Plutonian piece of legislation before it was signed into Law. The Patriot Act is now a Law which undermines the freedom of every citizen of this country whether we choose to be aware of it or not.

As Mr. Mike Ruppert has concisely explained:

" Any federal law enforcement agency may enter your home or business when you are not there, collect evidence, not tell you about it, and then use that evidence to convict you of a crime; (This nullifies the 4th Amendment to the Constitution). And, says the ACLU, it doesn't even have to be a terrorism investigation, just a criminal investigation. [Section 213 - The Sneak and Peek provision].

Any federal law enforcement agency may, if they suspect that you are committing a crime, monitor all of your internet traffic and read your emails. They may also intercept all of your cell phone calls as well. No warrant is required. (This violates the Fourth and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution) [Section 202 and 216] [See From The Wilderness on Carnivore, Vol. IV, No.2 - April 30, 2001].  http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/112001_f_word.html

The FBI or any other federal law enforcement agency may come to your business and seize any of your business records - if they claim it is connected with a terrorist investigation - and they can arrest you if you tell anyone that they were there. (this violates the First and the Fourth Amendments to the Constitution) [Title II, Section 501]

The CIA can now operate inside the U.S. and spy on American citizens. And, as directed by AG Ashcroft on November 13, it is also permitted to share its intelligence files with local law enforcement agencies (and vice versa). The CIA has spied on Americans for decades, but the fruits of that spying have never been admissible in court. Now law enforcement will have the ability to rewrite the intelligence as a probable cause statement, conduct an investigation and introduce it as evidence. This, from material that was collected outside the rules of search and seizure. (There goes the Exclusionary rule of the Fourth Amendment). [Titles 2 & 9].

The foundation for an international secret political police agency is laid by allowing the CIA to receive wiretap information from any local agency and then share it with the intelligence services of any foreign country."
[Section 203] 

This heinous piece of legislation was passed by congress persons and representatives who are predominantly 'on-the-take' from Multinational Corporations. These people receive from us outrageously high yearly wages and often life-long retirement 'packages' guaranteeing them access to medical benefits most Americans will NEVER have. They dance to the hidden and macabre tune of the Corporate Piper, -hence, the Patriot Act, the Last Tango In America. How many sticks of butter fit inside a one pound box ?

Alright then, forget about the damn butter, what other greasy oils might the 12th house Scorpio sign refer to ? It couldn't be that notorious pipeline through Uzbekistan and Afghanistan, or could it ? Might Scorpio be referring to its own basic and essential involvement with Corporations and Corporate investments ? Are these the areas Americans must look into if they wish to transform themselves rather than submit to bondage and self-undoing by a corrupt Supreme Court and a phony 'President' appointed after rigged elections ? I think so. I think each and every one of us must do some very ruthless self-examination to discover all the many, tiny ways in which we collaborate with the game of secrecy and silence at work and in our private lives.

As we wait in line at our airports and watch fellow citizens being singled out for what are often rude and violating searches of their persons do we speak up for them, or are we looking the other way while counting our blessings that it was THEM and not us who were probed ? Do we secretly think that if we are 'well-behaved' we won't be harassed ? Are we willing to play the 12th house game of Secret Scorpio fear and repression ? Do we ever dare to assert our personal rights and viewpoints ?  Are we acting in collusion and by default with the fascist, repressive powers of Negative Pluto in opposition with Negative Saturn ?
see:  http://www.ccops.org/alert20011020.html

Self-assertion is the realm of Mars, and in the birth chart of the Patriot Act Mars is found in the final degree of Law & Order, business-as-usual Capricorn. From that sign and degree it forms a restless half-square (45 degree aspect) to Pluto and a stressful sesqui-square (135 degree aspect) to Saturn. But Saturn is in that tug-of-war opposition with Pluto, and so Mars adds its personal force to the tension of that opposition; the self-assertion and personal thrust of Mars exacerbates an already difficult situation. Who gets to assert what in such circumstances ? Well, considering that Mars rests on the final degree of Mastery in Capricorn, my guess is that the privileged Masters of Business, of Law & Order are those who stand to benefit most by this arrangement. All that tension focused on Mars in Capricorn urges folks to act most guardedly in a conservative Capricorn fashion.

The late, renowned Dane Rudhyar has called this particular waning phase of sesqui-square an aspect which frequently produces Frustration.  He indicates that " others in the environment feel or sense a push coming from the person with this aspect." In this case, however, the 'person' in question is the 'Patriot Act', and the frustrated push is coming by way of Saturn Authority as it 'frustrates' or totally defines and even contracts the ACTIONS of Mars. Eager and ambitious as Mars in Capricorn always is it will tend to make of petty bureaucrats given minor positions of power by HR 3162 (think airport guards and screeners) eager and ambitious lackeys willing to carry out the instructions of their equally bureaucratic bosses…and so on up the chain of command till we arrive at the likes of the director of 'Homeland Security' or that outrageous White House clone, Ari Fleischer, who had the temerity to 'suggest' that All Americans better be careful about what they say.  Or else !  Or else what ?  Mars 'rules' pointy weapons like rifles and knives and …I'm sure I don't know, pass the butter; Last Tango In America.

America and Americans are engaged in a battle of nerves. You can feel the tension cutting the air. It pervades the populace. Who dares to assert his or her personal political or philosophical viewpoints in a Nation where a Law has been passed which is designed to intimidate and harass the citizenry ? If some pesky Jehovah's Witness or Born Again Christian comes knocking at your door proclaiming the 'good news' of the Gospel of the right-wing, flag-waving 'Patriot Act' do you dare tell such a person to get lost, to peddle that zealous 'god' and that equally zealous 'patriotic' flag-waving elsewhere ? Might not this person 'report' you on a 'tips' line to Homeland Security as a suspiciously un-christian, non-patriotic potential 'terrorist' ? Do note that this Mars-Saturn-Pluto configuration of maximized tension is focused right on the religious-philosophical sign of Sagittarius marking the Ascendant of the Law known as HR 3162. Zealots and zealotry are traditionally associated with Sagittarius whenever that sign of the zodiac suffers under too much tension.

The great 'test' which the Mars ruled sign of Scorpio signifies is the test of personal courage in the face of secrecy, lies, disinformation, and spying; the so-called Patriot Act is a secretly treacherous piece of jerry-rigged legislation which needs to be repealed at once. The sooner the better. It totally stifles individual self-assertiveness by stealthily spying upon the actions, conversations, and writings of all American citizens. It is designed to inculcate fear, distrust, and psychological terror in the People. It undermines principles of due-process in law courts. It is a 'Law' designed by cowards for cowards, a law intended to shaft (Mars) the people. Mars rules Scorpio, Scorpio occupies the 12th house cusp of the 'Patriot Act' indicating a hidden, secret, business agenda behind this piece of legislation.  Pass the butter; Last Tango In America.

Oh, you say, I am being 'negative' -I am feeding (through these words I write) the very distrust, the fear and paranoia which I claim the 'Patriot Act' is intended to instill in the Public. Perhaps you think I should consult Buddhist teachings, put my trust in god, think positive thoughts and then this LAW will just 'go away' somewhere never to be put into increasingly restrictive practice. Well, I beg your pardon but it is said that god helps those who help themselves; it is said that laying down one's life for one's neighbors is a genuinely selfless act; it is said that cowards wrap themselves in silence and declare it to be golden. I say all that, and I assure you that silence in the face of treachery is cowardice. We must all speak out against this HR 3162 and force its repeal. It will not otherwise go away. We will go away; we will be dragged off to secret military tribunals, we will be incarcerated in work camps, we will be beaten into submission by the Shadow One World Corporate Government and in due time all personal freedoms will become a thing of the past. We are dealing here with a vast and secretive hierarchical (bureaucratic) scheme. All hierarchies descend by definition from a Sole and Single ONE…call it god, the monad, the president, or the delusion of grandeur. Don't pull a Ghandi, a Jesus or an Alice-Bailey-Says on yourself or me. And don't wait for a promised benign intervention by some 'Galactic Federation' or other because you and I are the only folks right here right now and this treacherous legislation has been passed, is active, threatens all of us. It comes with its own 'Klingon' cloaking device, it comes wrapped in the numinous haze of Neptune. You won't believe it's not butter. Enter the shaft; Last Tango In America.

Yes, Mars arrives via the Patriot Act under the veils of Neptune as it moves into conjunction with that planetary force-field. The two are separated by a flimsy six degrees. Right, now the Saturn-Bound Astrologers amongst us will argue the technical distance of this conjunction; but we may point out to them that the very important Sun of the horoscope of this Law is in stressful, challenging square aspect to BOTH of them. Observe that. The Sun is separating from its square to Mars by four degrees while it is applying to its square with Neptune by less than three degrees. The Mars-Neptune Midpoint is within one degree of being perfectly square to the Sun. This is a complex weave, a cloaking device of many colors, but a definite cloaking device all the same! Oily, greasy butter. But what is being cloaked ? The SHAFT, of course, the ambitious-assertive Mars function in service to the Law's Scorpio Sun. That Scorpio Sun of the 'Patriot Act' resides in the 11th House of the Legislative Branches of Government in bed with the Scorpio Oil and Drug dealers of the Corporate Shadow Government. Stay with me here, I'm no conspiracy theorist, it is the US Government which has officially announced that it harbors within its bosom a 'Shadow Government'…not me! Let's take them at their word and astrologically examine their own statement. Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men ? The SHADOW knows !

In the game of Astrology Pluto is the Lord Of Shadows, Lord of the Hidden Realms and Keeper of the Gates To The Underworld.  He is the Lord Of DEATH.  The Patriot Act, brothers and sisters, wears Pluto on its Ascendant.  The Patriot Act is all about death and shadows.  Its central core essence, the Sun, is found in the Death-Rebirth Hell Realm of Scorpio.  It's a catabolic realm, and Pluto tears away relentlessly at the 'body' of whatever it contacts; it denudes us, strips us bare, strips us down to the bone.  Bones are 'ruled' by Saturn (in Astrological thought) and Pluto is in tight opposition with Saturn in this chart.  Saturn rests in Gemini on the chart's Descendant, the Western Point of the chart, the point symbolic of the daily 'death' of the Sun, the point where the Shadow resides. There's no way we're going to avoid this one, boys and girls, the Patriot Act is 'meant' to lead us personally and collectively into the hidden realm of Shadows and Death.  It will not rest until each and every one of us has had a taste of this realm.  Taste, did I say ?  No, sorry, (thanks, Cicero!) this is a big bite, a full-course dinner of Death.  A total immersion in the raw power of our personal and collective SHADOW.

But the Scorpio Sun of the Patriot Act which carries the CORE messasge of this LAW is centered squarely in the 11th house of the chart which deals with America's Legislated National Aims, legislated desires, legislated purposes, and projects and alliances.  I repeat that this is the house wherein the Legislative Branches of the Government reside.  I'm quoting here, pretty directly, the Encylopedia of Astrology by Nicolas Devore because I'm trying to be 'objective'.  But the message is rather clear for anyone who has eyes open to look or ears unplugged to hear: the Patriot Act is a radical act of Plutonian Legislation wearing DEATH up-front on its sleeve.  The United States Federal Government has declared to all the World that it alone is going to decide what a Terrorist is and who the Terrorists are and, indeed, which entire Nations it shall declare to be Terrorist Nations which it must attack, destroy, and subsume. This is the absolutist, ruthless manifestation of Pluto.  No subtlety here, no 'ifs, ands, or buts', no discussion possible at all; you're either with US or your against US !  Uncle Sam has bared his red, white, and blue teeth grinning for all the World to see the carnivorous mouth of Doctor Death.  If he diagnoses you you can be sure you're a Terrorist unless you agree to every word he speaks, every belief he espouses, every action he dictates.  Dictatorship.

And this is a Scorpio Sun wedded to a Pluto-On-The-Sagittarius-Ascendant form of Legislative Dictatorship, -the kind that shakes its fist in your face with all the zealous bigotry and righteous religious frenzy which only Sagittarius can muster.  The Inquisition was nothing compared to this, I kid you not!  To listen calmly to George W. Bush, Tom Ridge, John Ashcroft, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell or any other crony in this administration is to listen to the voice of fatuous righteousness fired with fear, distrust, and paranoia. Privileged, zealous, bigots declaring unilaterally the rights of the wealthy and powerful over all the rest of the citizens of the globe.  Mouthpieces for International Corporations who just as zealously manufacture every bomb, virus, and weapon of war in the Earth's considerable arsenal.  This is the violent, death-oriented, cloaked and evil force behind the Patriot Act. There is such a thing as evil despite every programmed White New Ager's distaste for the term (not to  mention its REALITY) !  And the Patriot Act and its Global War Legislators are pulling out all the stops in their patriotic rhetoric to make sure that the whole World understands GOD is on their side.  This is that righteous, wrathful God of the Political Christians. Pluto in Sagittarius 'ruled' by Jupiter in Born-On-The-Fourth-Of-July Cancer.  AMERICA has become a righteous cancer infecting the globe, and you and I (brothers and sisters) are Americans.  How many of us shall truly say 'NOT IN OUR NAME' ?  How many of us will personally, privately, and individually ACT on that slogan ?  This is what I mean by our collective confrontation with our SHADOW.   And what is the nature of that Shadow, according to the chart of HR 3162 ?  Why, it's all in the DETAILS.

Saturn in Gemini is our detailed Shadow.  Saturn tells us what we take seriously, what we focus on, how we see Authority.  In Gemini, Saturn inclines us to find or to define the limits of Authority in our everyday speech and communication.  But Gemini is the 'Trickster's' sign wherein speech, messages, facts, data and travels come at us like so many balls we must juggle twenty-four hours a day !  Whoop-dee-do!  Catch this, catch that...lookout, here comes a curve ball !  Did you take out the trash, did you pay your phone bill, did you remember to order that wholesome, organically fed, free-from-hormone-injections turkey for the holidays ?  Ooops, was that right...what I just heard there... out of the radio, the tv, what I glimpsed on the front page of that newspaper ?  Is HENRY KISSINGER REALLY being hired by Bush to oversee the 'investigation' into the events of 9/11 that triggered this legislation ? [ -okay, since I wrote this he's been dropped, but the Iran-Contra criminal, POINDEXTER has been placed inside DARPA! ] ... You gotta be kidding !  Oh, shit, where'd I put those car keys ?  Gotta hurry and pick up that Turkey.  Life is what happens while we're busy making plans...just IMAGINE that, thank you John Lennon !

Country, you had me; but I never had you.  Saturn in Gemini is the trick the media are using as they rapidly flash past us one piece of 'factual information' after another.  Gotta keep us folks dancing!  Shoot 'em this, shoot 'em that.  Factoid after factoid, -rapidly fired in the Duende Death Dance of Saturn opposed to Pluto within the zodiacal signs of communication.  Instill in the American 'masses' (we are not people to Corporations, we are statistics, profit and gain, markets and quotas and masses of data to be Enronically managed) a sense of panic...'The Terrorists Are Coming, The Terrorists Are Coming' (thank you, Dave McGowan)...are you prepared ?  They're going to get you with Anthrax, so submit to your infected vaccination now as ordered by your Governor, your President, FEMA.  Hey, our anthrax is laced with AIDS, it's better than theirs! (See: Cantwell, Horowitz, et.al.)  Step right up like a good, patriotic American and bare your arm, your ass to the needle.  Be good, you  brave little Christian Soldiers, we must all fight these terrorists.  Put your pay check in the Bank where its safe and WE can get at it.  Profits and quotas.  Data and details.  The business of everyday life is where Saturn resides in the chart of HR 3162 operating as our SHADOW.  We can't see it.  We're too busy trying to survive.  That's why Mars is conjunct Neptune, and that's why they're BOTH square to the Sun; our ambitious business VEILS from us our own gullability.  And that, in a nutshell, is the PROGRAM.

I repeat, because it bears repeating, that Saturn rules the 2nd house of this chart, the house which defines the VALUES implicit in the 'Patriot Act'.  Capricorn is on the cusp-beginning of that house and within the house and the sign resides MARS loosely masked by Neptune.  Keep all the 'consumer-buyers' (that's us, remember -the people) actively working hard to make money.  Make sure that VALUES are reduced to MONEY and DEFINE them AUTHORITATIVELY as such.  Pluto is the Dark Lord of WEALTH and Saturn is opposing him  -so as long as people see VALUES as MONEY we got 'em in our pockets!  MASK the materialistic greed of this procedure with Neptune in Aquarius, with mystical-spiritual 'high ideals'.  Draw the mist of religious glamour over the entire gift-wrapped package, sprinkle it with Neptunian Glitter, tie it up with that Pluto in Sagittarius ribbon !  Yep, those 'terrorists' from Afghanistan-Iraq-Where-Ever are attacking us because we shop in Malls, we are WEALTHY, we are 'free'...we are AMERICANS...they bombed those towers and that pentagon because they don't have organic, hormone-free turkeys for Thanksgiving and Christmas.  Shit, folks, them HEATHENS don't even believe in the RED PURITAN (HO-Ho-HO) SANTA CLAUS. In America we know that God is on our side cause we're a Christian Country and God has manifestly shown the WORLD how 'he' favors us by giving us cheap gas, billions of cars, stacks of computers, and pure white skin.  Heck, Cleanliness is next to Godliness.  Let's have another round of smashed potatoes and Turkey.  We gotta fatten up so we can go out there, like our President says, and

buy, buy, buy!

We'll show those terrorists!  Weave the Neptune light fantastic over a lighter shade of pale.  Hide the real causes which brought down the Towers, the O.K.Corral, Ruby Ridge, and the Waco compound.  And as you read these explosive words, my friend, don't dare let yourself off the hook by calling me cynical because that's what Patriot-Act-America is, that's what Mister Bush is: cynical, and smiling, and smirking for all the world to see in his shirt and tie and suitcoat.  Standing there with that convicted Watergate criminal Poindexter, with leacherous Ashcroft, with that prim, purt brat of a Condoleezza Rice, with Colonel [ pawn ] (Black-Hawk-Down) Powell.  Yes, the one who so smugly announced the 'courageous' US violation of any shred of moral decency in the last Gulf War when we deliberately 'took-out' ( we don't bomb, you understand, we don't kill and slaughter turkeys for the holidays either) Iraq's only two Nuclear Reactors releasing poisonous radiation into the air and deep into the country's soil and water:

" On December 4, 1990, the General Assembly of the United Nations, meeting just a few hundred yards from here and apparently having decided that the United States was determined to attack Iraq and that it was powerless to prevent the attack, resolved that no attack should be made on any nuclear reactor—an inherently dangerous facility. The vote on this resolution was 144 to 1; only the U.S. voted against.

The resolution should not have been necessary—such attacks have been war crimes since Protocol 1 Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 1977. Article 56 of the Protocol prohibits what would obviously be catastrophic to life, any "attack (that) may cause the release of dangerous forces... and consequent severe losses among the civilian population." The article protects works and installations from an attack which can endanger thousands and thousands of people in the immediate vicinity and beyond and perhaps in ways we don't know.

On January 23 of 1991—the end of the first week of the assault on Iraq—General Colin Powell announced—and the international media were all there—that Iraq's "two operating reactors... are both gone. They're down. They're finished." (NewYork Times, January 24, 1991, p. A11.) He said it proudly and no member nation of the UN, no member of the U.S. Congress, no international leader, none of the media said a mumbling word in protest. "

(Developed from a talk given by Ramsey Clark, former US Attorney General;
September 12, 1996 at the UN Church Center in New York.)

 

But that's 'okay'...it just assists the plutonium-contaminated-uranium-depleted casings of all those 'smart' bombs we dropped.  Gotta get 'em off the shelves, manufacture the next batch, fill those supermarkets full of American-Made 'Goods'. SMART, that's what Saturn in Gemini is: serious, scientific, and smart. And that's our collective SHADOW.

Combined with Pluto in Sagittarius it makes us religiously smart, technologically intelligent, absolutely righteous.  God is on our side, we are the fortunate chosen folks of the planet wallowing in our goods and services, in our consumer luxury which Dark Pluto labels as invisible DEATH!  In America, as we can see now through the 'Patriot Act', our only GOD is the GOD of SMART MONEY. Greenbacks, One Dollar bills, see, it says so right there: IN GOD WE TRUST !  IT'S GOD'S MONEY. SCIENTIFICALLY GAINED MONEY.  TECHNOLOGICALLY PURE MONEY.  JUNK BONDS> $ $ $
see: http://starcats.com/wealth_and_democracy.html

But we are broke, busted on ALL levels.  Morally degenerate.  Ethically vacuous.  The VICE president is not the only one among us using a pace-maker for a heart.  We are a people standing in the rubble of a once striving nation, a nation which (once upon a time) contained the glimmer of a hope for the common man.  That was our Fairy Tale. We have become the people of the Corporate Marketplace, dysfunctional as we flash back and forth in jaloppies and SUVs jabbering mindlessly on our cancerous cell phones making futile deals with each other.  We will not live happily ever after.  We will ride off into the Saturn Sunset on the descending SHADOW of HR 3162.

Americans have an overdue appointment with PLUTO, KEEPER OF THE DARK GATES.  Death is the Duende in our bones.  Beer, sex, the NFL; Perrier, sex, those organic turkeys; forget the butter...just get out there and buy, buy, buy a Harry Potter T-shirt, a can of Ocean Spray cranberries, a jar of Mince-Meat for the pies; then can you please just shut up and pass the gravy;  Last Tango In A God Bless America.

Skeleton ? What Skeleton ?
( You Mean That Silly Old Skull & Bones ? )

PART TWO

Oh, Calm Down, Baby
Everything's Gonna Be Alright.

Last April, when I made my first post-9/11 flight out of Honolulu to the Mainland my friend Judy joked with me as to how I'd better wear some double gaffer's tape over my mouth.  Just in case, you understand.  Just in case I might unwisely vent my strongly felt objections to having armed National Guardsmen posted at the Airport.  Just in case I might laugh at the absurd antics of bureaucratic folks sweeping me all over with fuzzy wands, demanding that I stretch my arms wide, insisting that I take off my shoes, removing every object out of every piece of luggage I carried with me.  Just in case I might not be able to refrain from laughter and wise-cracks which we all know are no laughing matter when horrible armed terrorists are lurking everywhere in the cracks between molecules composing the very air we breathe.

Alright, I confess, I have been cursed with the gift of hyperbole (this may take a while, but open your ears it's perfectly painless).  I am a Poet to the core, a fool for love, a frenzied 'terrorist' of words flinging them all about me in a veritable orgy of sounds!  Behold, the Elf King (talk about 'grandiose' !) shall quote to you from memory these words out of Emily Dickenson's mind -
" Inebriate of Air, am I and Debauche of Dew ! "  Or Shelley crying, " I fall upon the Thorns of Life, I bleed, I die! "  Okay, so perhaps you feel that all this is in 'bad taste', maybe you don't like Shelley, or Emily, or any poetry at all.  Too bad for you!  Maybe you think even Elf Kings should hold their tongues in the presence of serious terrorist danger.  Well, you know, Plato himself wished to ban Poets from his Ideal Society -so we'll give you a point on that score.  Just remember, my fellow Americans, Poets are the unacknowledged Legislators of the World !  Thus speaketh that laudanum addicted Shelley in his Defense Of Poetry.  Therefore, shall I calm me down.  This instant.  As I did on my way to the airport and as I was hitherto hyperbolically telling you.  And don't worry, I'll get to the base astrological facts soon enough.  Bear this hyperbolic constraint with me, for it is un-natural. (But look !  There go the last of the excessively happy hyperbola!  Hyperbolae ?  Hyperbolas ?  Rolling over hills and dales like so many slightly out-of-shape hoola-hoops! )

To get to the point then ( Ouch ! Why do I always feel pierced and stuck whenever I get to the point ? ) it all happened just the way it was 'supposed' to.  I was felt up, wanded, forced to remove my shoes, forced to remove my laptop from its casing, and found to be unterroristically harmless.  Three times in a row in one airport alone!  But then my flight was delayed and Delta airlines had to put more than 200 of us up for the night in a Ritz-Carlton kinda dump on Maui.  This, after hours and hours of lugging heavy baggage up and down airport aisles and lining up for vouchers.  Vouchers for the Hotel.  Vouchers for the taxis taking us to the hotels.  Vouchers for a free snack worth up to $7.50 (in an AIRPORT, that amounts to a cup of coffee and a crumpet!).  Leaving the airport at 4:00 AM, but needing to vacate the vouched-for quarters by 10:00 AM -that's not eight hours of sleep, is it ?  I need my sleep to keep me in touch with 'reality', to help fasten that invisible gaffer's tape to my mouth, to subdue all that hyperbole.  But I didn't get it.

Next day, I went in another vouched-for taxi at 10:00 AM back to the airport to leave, but Delta had no planes leaving till 8:00 PM that night.  Wonderful, I get to sit in an airport 'attending' my luggage for the next ten hours.  A huge duffle bag full of heavy books and a few clothes and a printer for my laptop.  My laptop itself, as well as a backpack filled with more books, decks of Tarot cards, tape recorder, tapes, all the hoopla I need for teaching workshops and doing birth charts for the next six months. All together about 120 lbs. of luggage.  Ah, the joys of air travel !  Mercury, I hasten to inform you, was NOT retrograde.  I was.  I always am.  Born that way, gotta deal with it.  The Elf-King Poet with the retrograde tongue, the circuitous hyperbolic speaker.
(Behold, Astrology has finally made its belated entrance once again.  Be of good Faith, my children, according to Hemingway the Sun will also rise !)

Let's see, wear was I ?  What was I whereing ?  Indeed, the airport,- after the patriotic passage of HR 3162 through the Congress and its signing into LAW by the President.  There I was, fatigued and grouchy and needing to laugh while standing in yet another long line with all my luggage. And this incessant message was repeating through overhead speakers in a droning voice saying that ALL unattended luggage would be confiscated and DESTROYED !  Not held, not examined and then released, but DESTROYED.  First time I ever heard a message like that in an airport.  Oh well, THE TERRORISTS ARE COMING, THE TERRORISTS ARE COMING !  And the people all about me are wearing seriously grim faces, not a smile in the bunch.  I am witnessing, I think to myself, the intended affects of HR 3162.  Delays, public provocations, probings and jabbings and no joy at all.  My shoulders and arms are aching, my spirit is low, I'm tired.  So I speak to the guy wearing a shirt and a tie in front of me in the line, and I soberly comment that I think the airports are becoming tense, nervous, and somber places.  He grudgingly grunts, yea.  And being the Elf-King I am I take this as a sign to launch into my baroque hyperbole explaining that the 'Patriot' Act is a threat to the joy of the Earth, that the collective mood of America is being attacked by this 'Act', that I didn't find the scenery or the costumes very inspirational. In fact, I informed him, I am certain as the day is long that hidden forces within US Corporate-Intelligence-Government are responsible for what happened at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.  They are trying to stifle us with all this tedious bureaucracy, they are trying to crush our spirits, button our lips, close down our collective imagination by way of their Corporately owned Media.  Even in the airports !  Did he hear that droning message over the speakers ?  Whoever heard of airports DETROYING unattended luggage ?  What will they do next ? I need to take a wiz, will he please watch my luggage ? Certainly not, says he, and I feel sorry for you, says he, you have such a bleak, paranoid, and negative outlook on Life !   Ouch, he made his point.  Directly.  Ah well, I'm all for diversity of opinions and lifestyles.  But... WOW !!!   Tight ass !  No wiz for me (sorry, kidneys !) 'till I can get on board. Calm down, Baby; Everything's Gonna Be Alright ! Praise the Lord, and pass the Ammunition.

To bite the bullet here, I am concerned about the terribly cushy relationship Venus and Mercury are having together in the horoscope of the Patriot Act.  Conjunct, Astrologers say, in the sign of the yoke, the sign of Libra.  A conjunction is a con+junctio, a joining or yoking together, and when this conjunction involves Mercury and Venus it is thought and desire that are intimately bound.  Now Libra is the zodiacal sign of the LAW, of Justice and Balance.  But it is also an energy-field notorious for its tact, diplomacy, and 'good form'.  After reading my personal story about the airport, you can certainly understand where my concern is focused regarding this love of polite speech and diplomatic tact !  Language and love need to be in balance here in the 'Patriot' Act, thinking and desire want to be well-behaved, tactful, and diplomatic.  This is the signifactor of the 'POLITICALLY CORRECT' syndrome.  And PUBLICLY so, for this conjunction of Mercury and Venus falls in the very area of the chart specifically referring to the Public World (10th house).  It's also the house of the President in the mundane horoscope for a national event which HR 3162 certainly is,  -just as certainly as George Bush is born with his Moon Feelings conjunct his Chiron Wounded-Healer conjunct his Jupiter Social Outreach all in Libra with Chiron tightly conjunct by degree to the Mercury Speech and Thought patterns of the 'Patriot' Act. Are we all supposed to end up thinking and speaking like the newly self-proclaimed President, King George ?

Well, folks, he may seem to some to appear to be pleasant and tasteful (appearances are astrologically 'ruled' by Libra), but an astrologer can see that his appearance of politeness is wounded and inflated because his Libra Moon, Chiron, and Jupiter are ALL in stressful square aspect to his 12th house Cancer Sun.  King George can be very polite and nice in appearance as long as his personal cancer feelings have their way, but he has incarnated in this life to surrender his excessively subjective and protective personal feeling preferences so that he may learn to respect and honor the Balance and Harmony which all true Libra Law requires from each of us.  Many folks born with Libran energy under stress in their birth charts display a lack of personal  centeredness; they become obsessed with pleasing others...or seeming to.  Because negative Libra energy is most adept at masking its true self, its feelings, and its social agenda.  It's Hamlet's complaint to the World when he speaks of how one can smile, and smile and be a VILLAIN.  Our wounded Moon in Libra resident in the White House was merely the VEHICLE through whom this HR 3162 LAW came into control of our country and our personal lives.  But the very LAW known as the 'Patriot' Act suffers from the same wound itself. Calm down, baby; everything's gonna be alright.

In the horoscope of HR 3162 we find that BOTH Mercury and Venus are in applying, waxing square aspect to Jupiter in Cancer.  This, in itself, merely informs us that there is likely to be a feature or features of the Patriot Act which go overboard by way of excess.  Too much of something, but what ?  Well, the revealing thing is that Cancer also controls the cusp-beginning of the Law's 8th house, the house concerned with such things as: the public income, the earning power of the nation, frozen assets in properties, stocks, and bonds, trust and insurance companies, and the birth and mortality rates in different classes of society.  This 8th house is the house of corporate investors and investing and the quintessential OCCULT area of life; it's the 'natural' house of Scorpio and relates to hidden and secret goings-on.  Now the Patriot Act is born, so to speak, with its Sun -Core Essence- in the sign of Scorpio, so this bears looking into, don't you think ?   Perhaps, since Jupiter rests in Cancer (though in the 7th house) and both Venus and Mercury in 10th house Libra form squares to it, the EXCESS which these squares engender will have a certain hidden side to it, an 8th house side masked by all that cushy, chummy, Libran appearance of grace and charm and kindness.  There is definitely a muted note of loud dissonance here.  There's a hidden ring or hum accompanying the Cancer tune carried by Jupiter's trumpets.  Something fishy appears to be going on behind the scenes.  Jupiter in Cancer in the chart of HR 3162 falls very close to the Sun in Cancer of America's birth chart.  This Patriot Act appeals to the Cancerian love of home and security that distinguishes Americans, and it claims to be protecting them in its womb.  But is it ?

Let's take a closer look at Jupiter in the horoscope of this LAW.  It forms no major positive or flowing and easy aspect with any other planet except, perhaps, for its bi-quintile relationship with Uranus in its own home sign of Aquarius.  Well, the Quintile Family of aspects are very touch and go; they are aspects of Mind or Keen Intelligence, but often devoid of feeling or heart.  Dane Rudhyar has stressed that without heart these aspects can be very catabolic in a destructive fashion.  They are aspects derived from division of the 360 degree circle by 5, but 5 is the pentagram-pentagon of the Magician and some magicians can be very bad indeed.  So we cannot derive much assurance from Jupiter's bi-quintile to Uranus, but it does suggest we should all keep our eyes on the PENTAGON.  After all, it was the attack on that building as well as the World Trade Center that catapulted the 'Patriot' Act into LAW!  (Calm down, baby; everything's gonna be alright.)

We have already seen that Jupiter's relationship to both Venus and Mercury is defined by its squares to each of them, but we should add that astrologers often write of the square from Venus to Jupiter to be frequently indicative of a certain self-centered spoiledness, while Mercury in square to Jupiter usually signifies a kind of inflated thought and speech which can become quite delusionally grandiose.  Anyone listening to America's White House speech these daze knows that to be true.  Grandiose righteousness has rarely had a finer day.  But now we must pass to the eerie Quincunx formed between BOTH Pluto in Sagittarius and the Sagittarius Ascendant of the Patriot Act to the planet Jupiter.  This double quincunx points to definite psychological-spiritual imbalance or outright illness in the body proper of the LAW known as HR 3162. The nature of this illness is a dangerously over-zealous righteousness of the religious, Sagittarian sort.  Fanatical belief.  The Crusader's Jihad.  The Roman Catholic Inquisition.  The deathly duende which draws one such as Giordano Bruno to the fires of the stake.  It is indicative of Righteous Radicalism.  A frenzy for Plutonian Power, for Secret, Hidden, and Deathly Power.

And look you now to the position of the Moon's South Node on the final degree of Sagittarius in the 1st house of the Patriot Act.  That past tendency needing to be transformed is in the very righteous, religious, philosophical sign which Jupiter rules: SAGITTARIUS !  Ominously enough, it is in bed (conjunct) with Chiron, the famed Wounded-Healer. This LAW is the karmic result of America's history, can there be any question about it ? Is this Sagittarian-Religious-Philosophical karma of Americans not related to the 'Divine Mandate' our White European ancestors felt when they landed on the continent's shores ?  Is it not the CHRISTIAN HUBRIS of assumed SUPERIORITY to the Native Inhabitants whom our white ancestors proceeded to steal from and slaughter ?  Perhaps we shall say more of this later, but now we must pay attention to the PEOPLE themselves, to ordinary contemporary Americans.  They are represented in the horoscope of HR 3162 by the MOON.

How fare they by this LAW ?  Mysteriously, to be sure, for the Moon has just entered the zodiacal sign of Pisces, the sign of mystics, dupes, and martyrs.  The sign of VICTIMS.  But also the sign of Poets and Musicians and artists of all sorts...unfortunately, also of Film Makers and Hollywood.  Think Black Hawk Down, Pearl Harbor, We Were Soldiers etc. just be aware of the glamorous illusion of propaganda.  Pisces is the energy-field of closure, letting go, and surrender.  Drugs and drug addicts are found within this energy-field when it has turned negative.  Negative Pisces is the realm of deceit, delusion, and self-undoing.  It's a little scary to see the Moon of the PEOPLE here and right on the boundary line between the Treasury and daily, everyday communications.  It's scary because Pisces is 'ruled' by Neptune and we have seen that Neptune is blended with Mars and both of them, in turn, are being challenged by the Scorpio Sun of the 'Patriot' Act.  This produces tension within Pisces, Neptune's own energy-field wherein the Moon of the People resides. It indicates that We The People may be caught up in 'dreamy', evasive moods, subjected to devious third house propaganda on a daily basis via the Media. It suggests the strong likelihood of negative Pisces delusion abetted by negative Scorpio secrecy on the part of HR 3162 and the President himself.  It suggests that both oil and opium are implicated behind the scenes in this piece of legislation. This is not good, nor is it very promising or hopeful. There is real and serious present danger to the People's health through clandestine dissemination of contaminated vaccines and the viruses of the biochemical corporations, -all suggested by Neptune, sometime symbol of drugs and weakened immune systems when found under stressful aspects.  But I must reiterate that ALL these dangers are predominantly coming from WITHIN the US.  Why ?  JUPITER IN CANCER, that's why! (Calm down, baby; everything's gonna be alright.)

The People's Pisces Moon falls exactly opposite the mid-point of the squares made by Venus and Mercury from Libra to the 'really big' planet, Jupiter in Cancer.  Consequently, the People's Moon forms 135 degree sesqui-squares to all three of these planets in direct tension with each other.  It's an insidious kind of tension here, a tension expressed as restless outreach, the kind that covers itself with bombasity, with bravado, with nervous distraction.  It puts a 'happy face' on the medicine bottle that should be ( and is ) actually marked with the Skull & Bones of Poison.  A kind of hysterical, pretend 'positivity' fed by the ability of Venus and Mercury in Libra to emphasize NICENESS at all costs, to believe in APPEARANCES no matter what, to want to speak, think, and act as if nothing is out of sorts.  Rudhyar has dubbed this particular geometrical-energetic configuration the 'FINGER OF THE WORLD' and says that it "challenges one to concrete action [square] that must be well-advertised and disseminated [sesqui-square] but which at the same time should stand on its own as an almost self-evident answer to a pressing social need".  That is precisely how (it seems) most Americans see the Patriot Act.  But he has warned, and this is where I'm looking from...that when sesqui-squares express negatively they refer to...

"...an inability to put over one's idea and vision (which) essentially means a failure to include the needs of others...in the plans one makes -a failure in compassion and in understanding the conditions which a new plan or organization (think Homeland Security) will have to meet when becoming exteriorized and ready to operate in the environment whose needs it should serve.  The project and blueprints may be wonderful in and of themselves.  But if they do not take into account the character of the materials which they should organize and integrate for use, or the needs of the people expected to use what results from them, the outcome is an at least temporary failure -and means for the planner a more or less acute sense of disappointment, resentment, bitterness, or even a 'persecution complex'.

His public outreaching may then become overstressed...".
                                                                                           [ Astrological Aspects: A Process Oriented Approach.

                                                                                                                               Dane Rudhyar & Leyla Rael; ASI Publishers, New York; 1980, pg. 124.]

 

It is my judgement that HR 3162 is a negative example of the pressure of social outreach which Rudhyar warns us about.  It did NOT really originate in response to the events of 9/11 but has been being prepared from behind the scenes for years.  Solid investigative reporters (not heard on Corporate Media) have documented this fact. http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.21B.jvb.usapa.911.htm

We The People are being duped by this legislation.  Jupiter, which is the ostensible legal force behind it is in the sign of Cancer, truly America's Homeland, but the Pisces Moon of the People which rules Cancer and hence America's Homeland is 'disposed' or controlled by Neptune which is under stress from the Sun in Scorpio.  Hence, there is every likelihood that hidden beneath the appearance of this LAW'S PUBLIC MANIFESTATION is a combination of powerful Plutonian Global Corporate Monies and Agendas designed to delude the People into surrendering their freedom like befuddled Piscean victims and martyrs to a lost cause.  This LAW must be repealed or it will steal from Americans their Homeland. Calm down, baby; everything's gonna be alright.  Really ?  What's that supposed to mean ?  Trust me ?

I don't feel too comfortable as an astrologer when a voice (Mercury) speaks to me kindly (Libra) with dulcet tones (Venus) assuring me it is only too interested in my personal security and comfort (Cancer); especially when that voice is inflated (Jupiter) with urgent excess ( 90degree Square Aspect) and pumped at me non-stop from politically correct (Libra) public speakers (Mercury+Venus in the 10th house).  Just what is all this appeal about 'homeland' (Cancer) and 'security' (Cancer) intending to arouse in my personal feeling state (Cancer) as I listen to this Mercury-Venus sweet talk (Libra) ?

Why does all this urgent exuberance (Jupiter) feel like its coming at me with absolute force (Pluto) as a kind of stressful urgency (150degree Quincunx Aspect) telling me I must buy (Sagittarius) a trumped-up message ( Mercury in square to Jupiter ) if I want to feel I belong as a good (Jupiter) American (Cancer) among my fellow Americans ( Sagittarius on the Ascendant referring to the public consciousness and collective expression of the nation as addressed by the 'Patriot' Act) ?  I'm urged to be 'Politically Correct'.

No, my friends, I say please don't tell me " Calm down, baby; everything's gonna be alright." because I can feel a 'con' coming on, I know there's a coyote in the hen house !  This frenzied patriotic kinda talk is Pluto talking right up-front on the Ascendant of HR 3162.  It's the kinda talk that knows I'm a citizen of the US and it knows that ALL citizens of this country are affected by the Mercury (Speech-Words) of the country's birth chart which expresses itself as love of home and privacy ( US Mercury in Cancer ) suffused with feeling (Cancer).  But it also knows that my mind and ears (Mercury) are in a tug-of-war (180degree Opposition Aspect) with my own [ and the collective ] American Unconscious (Pluto) which operates in the field of Politics, Government, and Business (Pluto in Capricorn).

And this peculiar aspect of my collective 'destiny' as an American Citizen will further appeal to me by telling me (Mercury) that the Business Government Law (Capricorn) is ALL-POWERFUL (Pluto in Capricorn) although it will initially do so with that sweet, politically correct charm inherent to Mercury+Venus in Libra.  Then it will drop all pretense of a pleasing tone and become the voice of strictest, dire necessity.  MARTIAL LAW...to protect us, you understand, from the 'evil' machinations of the 'enemy'. But our Enemy is within the gates, it is our own Federal Government.  The message can be heard clearly in that classic film All America Loves (it's played yearly on Corporate-Owned American TV), and the message is:

"PAY NO ATTENTION TO THAT MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN".

That man, of course, is Uncle Sam cloaked in the 'helmet of invisibility' owned by Pluto...the Great And Powerful Wizard Of OZ !  Hey, folks, I've seen the movie.  Do you think I'm gonna jump on board with the Patriot Act and float off into DARPA space with that Wizard ?  Nope, I wanna be down to earth on Earth, in places like Hawaii, Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, and Oklahoma but if I climb aboard with him I'll never LAND because, as the good man said to Dorothy when she missed his balloon out of OZ (remember, he was -in his opinion- a good man, just a very bad Wizard):

"I can't come back, I don't know how it works!"

Well, friends, Uncle Wizard Sam may claim he doesn't know how it works but you and I can determine how it works by studying the horoscope of this 'Patriot' Act in the context of the birth chart of America, the chart for the Declaration Of Independence.  Here they are together (the handsome couple!):

Here's how it works: the charming Venus-Mercury conjunction of the 'Patriot' Act are walking together arm-in-arm with the forces of contraction, law, business, and the police (Saturn) down 'Fifth Avenue' on 'public display' in the Nation's 10th house having an 'Easter Parade'.  It's an old, old Movie a bit out of season -a Neptunian illusion- wherein they try to mask themselves as Judy Garland and Fred Astaire.  Any fool can see that while the Venus-Mercury conjunction of the Patriot Act falls on the 14th and 16th degrees of Libra, the natal Saturn function of America's Independence falls on the 15th degree of that same sign creating a Triple Conjunction of Venus+Mercury+Saturn between the two.  Appearances, politically correct and decorous behaviour a la mode are taken very seriously here in a rigorous, authoritative fashion.

Authority is in fashion,
it's on public display; it's fashionable
to be 'polite', 'decorous', and well-behaved.

All Saturn-like public figures of 'Authority' are taken quite seriously here; that's the MEANING of this combination of the planetary forces in Libra between these two charts.  Everybody falls head over heels to 'please' everybody else.  'Peace', and 'beauty', and 'harmony' are the storefront commodities on sale -CHEAP.

And CHEAP is exactly what I see in America today; cheap people fixated on cheap sales and cheap money looking for and selling each other cheap 'bargains'.  CHEAP souls, ugly people up for sale to the lowest bidder, always looking for the easiest way out of any dilemna.  There is very little 'harmony' in the United States, but there is a total glut of laziness masquerading as harmony.  We are a people utterly devoid of real ethical values, glutted on oil, technology, fashion, and 'movie stars'.  A self-indulgent populace more concerned about our Christmas Shopping than the IMMORAL WAR our Nation is about to declare upon the people of Iraq.  A deluded, self-undoing, negative Moon in Pisces people pulling the wool greedily over our own eyes.  We don't need the Bush Gangsters, or the International War Criminal Henry Kissinger, or the 'Patriot' Act, DARPA, or Homeland Security to trick us into giving away our freedom -such as it was.  We are all too willing to hand over the care of our Souls to Corporations, Churches, and Bankers.  We just want 'retirement' funds.  I tell you that 'We The People' are a shameful boil on the face of this Sacred Earth.  Somebody has to say this, because it's true.

America is born with what is (arguably) the ultimate astrological symbol of self-indulgence in the horoscope of the Declaration Of Independence.  It's the Venus+Jupiter conjunction in Cancer; the 'feel-good' Nation, the Nation addicted to 'abundance'.  Sweet lovers, suckers for sweet talk -that's what Venus in Cancer craves, and that craving is expanded and amplified by Jupiter. Look at the Sun of the Declaration Of Independence floating there in the 14th degree of the Womb of Cancer in stressful (90degree square aspect) relationship to the planet Saturn found on the 15th degree of Libra.  America is still-born in the grip of Saturn with a Crisis In Consciousness, as Dane Rudhyar has said.  Personal feelings (Cancer) in challenging crisis to self-discipline and Law (Libra); genuine nurturing feelings in challenging crisis to the formal (Saturn) appearance (Libra) of feeling.  A love of appearances, of 'packaging'.  Incredibly, George W. Bush and the House Of Enron look good to Americans; the public parade of corporate business hand-in-hand with vulgar buckaroo government is our collective hearts' desire.  A fake Libra facade, a phony appearance of beauty and harmony, a trashy low-level sleeze of a government: ignorant, uncuth, treacherous and with murder in its 'heart'.  All masked by that newly passed Patriot Act which brings it's love of sweet-talking appearances to the Law, a triple conjunction of Venus+Saturn+Mercury all in triple challenge to the core essence of the feeling-dream, the Vision (Sun in Cancer) which was America.

Americans as a people don't want to think.  They want to 'personally' feel, that's why the Nation is born with its Mercury (mind-intelligence) Retrograde in Cancer.  This testifies (astrologically) to the fact that we are a people excessively caught up in our own personal families, our own personal well-being, and our own personal 'feelings' of being 'free'.  The Saccharine Bush Business running the United States knows how to expertly play upon this inate flaw in the American temperament.  Give the stupid, anti-intellectual people cloyingly sweet and artificial reassurances that you are not running away with their freedoms.  Hire hundreds of media experts to coach the 'President' on how to 'project' the IMAGE (Libra) of 'heart-felt' earnestness and sincerity.  Hire astrologers to coach you on how to TIME your public displays of phony 'Patriotism'.  Astrologers are for hire in America; they are cheaper by the dozen; they are increasingly trained to be blindly enamored of the Saturn function of 'objective' thinking.  They can rationalize their participation in the GREAT LIE which the Federal Government presents to the masses because they are scientifically trained 'professionals'.  That means their skills are for sale to the highest bidder; they believe the white man's indoctrination which teaches that 'Knowledge Is Power'.  It is 'indifferent', -neutral...facts and data are just facts and data.

The fact that an astrologer provides you with facts and data doesn't mean that he/she has done anything 'wrong'.  Do the 'experts' in any field of 'Knowledge' concern themselves with the moral-ethical implications of the uses to which they put their expertise and 'knowledge' ?  Not in Western European Culture.  We are 'scientific', 'detached', and 'objective'.  Physicists make Hydrogen Bombs, doctors make Biological Warfare Viruses, Corporations sell Arms (along with those Biological Warfare Viruses), and astrologers sell techincal information concerning profit and loss cycles, technical information as to the timing of prevalent mass moods.  Hence, it should come as no surprise to anyone that at the TIME of the destruction of the World Trade Center Towers and the Pentagon the planet Mercury was found (O, how mysterious!) precisely upon the very degree of Libra where Saturn resides in America's birth chart, and that degree was precisely rising in the East, was the Ascendant at the time in New York City.  Talk to the people (Mercury) with Seriousness (Saturn), they are in a serious mental mood.  And tell them that the structural foundations (Saturn) of their government are in good hands.  Speak Authoritatively (Transiting Mercury conjunct US Saturn) with the APPEARANCE (Libra) of social concern. They are Americans, after all, they will be collectively caught up in PERSONAL FEELINGS (US Mercury RETROGRADE in Cancer) and they will neither want to resort to clear thinking, nor be capable of intelligently processing data in any transpersonal way.  Release, through the Corporately Owned and Government Dictated MEDIA, a veritable orgy of fearful, shocked, irrational emotionalism and lead them to believe it is real, personal, FEELING.  It was not feeling; it was patriotic emotionalism.  It was the hot air balloon of Uncle Sam Wizard.  It was mass mood control, and you can be sure a veritable 'college' of astrologers was consulted as to the TIMING of this criminally STAGED 'moment': the WORLD, before and after 9/11 !  Clever, trite, and obvious.  And staged by our own 'Government' ?  Oh, unthinkable !!!  "TREASON" !!!  Not really, let me suggest to you here how it works.

At the BIRTH of this NATION only two planets in the sky were RETROGRADE: MERCURY & PLUTO.  Both these planets were energetically configured in stressful 180degree OPPOSITION to each other; Mercury Retrograde in the 25th degree of Cancer in America's 8th house of SECRETS and Corporate Business Money, together with Pluto Retrograde in the 28th degree of Capricorn in America's 2nd house of VALUES and the wealth and prosperity of the people.  Now this is the mental acuity (Mercury) of the people in STRESSFUL OPPOSITION to the collective unconscious (Pluto) of the people.  This configuration tells us that we Americans must strive to become intellectually conscious (Mercury) of something which prefers to remain unconscious, hidden, and unknown (Pluto).  It tells us there is a SECRET (Mercury in 8th house) concerning our personal feelings (Mercury in Cancer) which it is TABOO (Pluto) for any of us to even discuss(Mercury).  What could that SECRET be ?  Well, it's focused in the only two areas (houses) of the horoscope which specifically deal with VALUES and MONEY.  And it takes place in the complimentary opposite zodiacal signs which deal with...BUSINESS (Capricorn) and HOME (Cancer), LAW (Capricorn) and PERSONAL PRIVACY (Cancer), the OBJECTIVE (Capricorn) and the SUBJECTIVE (Cancer). Here's a 'hint' as to what this means:

" The United States is the largest arms dealer in the world. Since 1992, the United States has exported more than $142 billion worth of weaponry to states around the world. Keep this in mind when you hear Washington politicians decry the proliferation of weapons such as air-to-ground missiles. We've exported more than two-and-a-half times as many weapons as the No. 2 and No. 3 states — the United Kingdom and Russia, respectively.

In 2001, total world arms transfer agreements were worth nearly $26.4 billion, and the United States accounted for 45.8 percent of them. The U.S. arms industry, by the way, is the second-most-heavily subsidized industry after agriculture. In 1999, the United States supplied arms or military technology to 92 percent of all the conflicts around the globe. This military largesse often goes to nondemocratic countries with abominable human-rights records.

But in addition to being the world's chief arms peddler, we also train the military personnel in more than 70 countries and have our own troops stationed in nearly 100 foreign countries. It has not been unusual for Americans to end up fighting people with American equipment and American training. The missiles on the wings of the Chinese fighter plane that collided with our intelligence aircraft were Israeli copies of American missiles. People trained and armed by the CIA during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan founded much of al-Qaida. "

Charly Reese; http://reese.king-online.com/Reese_20021209/index.php

 

It is TABOO for us to openly express subjective personal feeling in objective business matters, and it is TABOO for us to discuss or verbalize anything that might be related to HIDDEN BUSINESS and GOVERNMENT agendas.  To do so is to be labeled as a subjective, 'conspiracy theorist' or, more recently, as a 'drama queen'.  It is to be ridiculed and shamed because ridicule and shame are the classic tools for guarding and preserving SECRECY.  Astrologers identify SHAME and TABOO as the realm of negative PLUTO.  But we can see from the horoscope of America that unless open, honest thinking and speaking of a conscious Mercury nature are used to INTEGRATE, TO BRING INTO CONSCIOUSNESS the unconscious business and government practices of this Nation THE PEOPLE WILL BE PULLED APART BY THE OPPOSITION BETWEEN MERCURY &  PLUTO, we will find a complete schism, a disjunct and schizophrenic separation operative between our subjective, private lives and our objective, public lives.  We may end up 'thinking' (in a subjective, introverted way) that we are FREE, when in objective fact and on a collective financial and political level we are BOUND. (We may very soon discover that in the new 'Bush-As-Emperor-America' ALL dissenting speech revealing that the proverbial Emperor wears no clothes will be labeled 'Treasonous' and punishable by a police escort to a military prison for 'trial' by tribunal without any honest legal defense.)  We may become a 'people' sharply divided into two opposing camps.

SATURN is the principle of boundary making, focus, and form; it 'rules' the sign of Capricorn; it is 'exalted' in Libra in the Capricorn 10th house of America's Birth Chart.  We, as a people, exhalt the LAW in America -or so we claim, and we have an exaggerated sense of AWE for our 'Founding Fathers'.  Saturn, in astrology, equates to both FATHER and LAW.  Saturn in Libra in the 10th house of America's Founding refers to the function and the OFFICE of the LAW; it refers to the objective OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT and NOT to the subjective PERSON who occupies that OFFICE.  I, personally, have great regard and respect for the OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT, but I have no respect at all for the person of George W. Bush.  I consider him to be a cheat, a liar, and a poser.  I consider him to be a traitor, a would-be dictator, and a dangerously ignorant man.  A willfully ignorant person.  To say such a thing publicly in America is absolutely TABOO!  And that is because poorly educated Americans consider the office of the President to be inseparable from the person who occupies that office.  It is absolutely and fundamentally and most objectively TRUE that G.W.Bush was NOT ELECTED PRESIDENT by the people of the United States.  He was appointed President by the thoroughly corrupt Supreme Court of the Land in VIOLATION of the CONSTITUTION. (Legal experts may and do quibble over the legal details.)

Shortly after the enforced installation of the person of G.W.Bush into the office of the President of the United States the TABOO, SHAME, POWER, SECRECY, WEALTH theme of the planet Pluto reached this Nation's Ascendant, its collective national traits and habits.  This is the VERY FIRST TIME SINCE THE FOUNDING OF THESE UNITED STATES THAT PLUTO HAS TOUCHED ITS ASCENDANT.  At the time the Bush cabinet (Cheney etc,) created the edict of 'THE WAR ON TERRORISM' Pluto was involved in a thrice repeated opposition with Saturn and this opposition took place right on this Nation's Ascendant-Descendant Axis of Relating, its Self-Image and its Shadow Self.  It does not, as they say, require a 'rocket scientist' to figure out what's going on here.  The TABOO themes of America's Founding are being ACTIVATED for us all to examine.  The OFFICE (Saturn in Libra) of the President of the United States has been absolutely stolen away from the people by a hidden business plutocracy; American's are being challenged to SPEAK THE TRUTH.  To break the TABOO.  That TABOO is inherent in the OPPOSITION of Retrograde Mercury to Retrograde Pluto at the roots of America's Declaration Of Independence. And one of the Representatives of the People, one of the really, truly ELECTED Representatives of the People, Representative Ron Paul, the Republican Representative from the State of Texas had this to say during that Pluto-Saturn opposition in regard to the 'Patriot' Act:

"Our forefathers would think it's time for a revolution.
This is why they revolted in the first place...
They revolted against much more mild oppression."
see: http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/112001_f_word.html

But contemporary Americans, by and large, don't even DREAM of being Revolutionaries; they see all that sort of thing in the light of their collective Mercury Brain-Memory as a kind of decorative 'nostalgia' for the Past, -that's what Mercury Retrograde in Cancer can so easily do.  Be Retrograde, turn backwards toward nostagic feelings for the Past.  We are the real and only FREE PEOPLE, the only 'Democratic People' on the face of the Earth; our ancestors did it all for us, these days we just get 'born free', it comes with birth in America and it is nostalgically eulogized and utterly taken for granted.  Right; sure, now just keep tuning in to those radio stations playing 'oldies but goodies' and drift through your dream-induced slavery within the Matrix-Cancer.  In vain have thinking Americans over the years repeatedly pointed out to their fellow citizens that 'freedom to shop' is no freedom at all.  Consumerism is not Citizenship.  But how many Americans know that truth when public surveys reveal that the majority of us can't even find Iraq or (I kid you not) our own Country on a World Map ?

It would be Revolutionary for an American to think clearly, -free from the provable (if flattering and preferred) delusion that our 'founding fathers' were devout christians.  Or that they really thought 'all men are created equal' if they didn't have land or money, or if their skin wasn't 'white'  -but 'red' or 'black' instead.  It would be Revolutionary for Americans to deal on a personal-collective basis with our need to INTEGRATE our conscious rational brains with our unconsciously emotional need for appeasing authority, for wanting a Father God or President or Resident Dali-Lama (or even channeled 'Galactic Federation') to watch over us 'kindly' and remove from us forever our need to live free-thinking and independent lives outside the Cancer Womb.  Sure, it's 'safe' inside those warm waters of devotional feeling, but real human foetuses get born again and not as christians sucking up to jesus dependency or 'esoteric' astrologers devoted to some invisible 'Hierarchy', but as responsible, unique, independent beings outside the womb!  To awaken from the collective trance state represented by Mercury Retrograde in Cancer to Pluto Retrograde in Capricorn is to become one's own Mother and Father, to detach one's umbilical cord from the Matrix, to INDIVIDUATE.

The last time the Planet Pluto made contact with one of the four major Angles (Ascendant, Midheaven, Descendant, Underheaven) of America's Birth Chart was back in the early 70's when it passed over the Midheaven in Libra. At that time it affected the OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT by publicly revealing in a 10th house way that the Person occupying the OFFICE was a LIAR and a CRIMINAL.  That was WATERGATE and Nixon, but he wasn't IMPEACHED...he was allowed to quietly sneak away being 'pardoned' by the Crony who replaced him.  All that secret apparatus he employed remained perfectly intact. It was the Pluto apparatus, the machinery of taboo, secrecy, wealth.  The Global-Corporate-Criminal Wealth's hidden agenda.  This time around, as Pluto goes over the Nation's Ascendant we've got Bush and the thoroughly vile LAW now known as HR 3162.  That Traitorous piece of Legislation has given birth to the obscene Department Of HOMELAND SECURITY and Big Brother's EYE, DARPA.  Shit, DARPA is another one of those interminable acronyms currently laying waste to our lives; it stands for Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency...a truly melodious mouthful of jargon.  It's slogan is: "Scientia est Potentia" which illiterate news readers in the Media mouthingly stammer 'means' 'Knowledge is Power', but what is this 'scientia' really ?  It's from the latin scio, scire...it does, indeed, refer to a way of knowing.  The 'scientific' way of knowing via the measurable senses.  But, as the Eighteenth Century 'poet', William Cowper, (he's actually a versifier!) once pointed out:

" Knowledge and wisdom, far from being one,
Have oft'times no connection.
Knowledge dwells In heads replete with thoughts of other men;
Wisdom, in minds attentive to their own.
Knowledge, a rude, unprofitable mass,
The mere materials with which wisdom builds,
Till smoothed, and squared, and fitted to its place,
Does but encumber whom it seems to enrich.
Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much;
Wisdom is humble that he knows no more."

Discerning the difference between Gemini (Knowledge) and Sagittarius (Wisdom) is the very crux of the matter for America and Americans because these two signs of the zodiac occupy the Ascendant-Descendant Axis of the Nation's Birth Chart.  As a mere glimpse of the chart of the Patriot Act will show these two signs also occupy its Ascendant-Descendant Axis.  I mean really, folks, take a look at that!  There sits Pluto in Sagittarius smack dab on the very degree of BOTH the Declaration's and the Patriot Act's Ascendant!  And opposite Pluto sits Saturn, not even separated by ONE full degree from the Gemini Descendant of both charts.  Got the picture ?  Knowledge is the skill of learning Gemini facts and data, but Wisdom is the ability to INTEGRATE those facts and data into the depth of meaning thereby arriving at the moment of UNDERSTANDING.  Understanding is not merely being able to know and contain information, it's the willingness to bear the weight of all that one knows and actually LIVE under the weight of that knowing.  To walk one's talk is Wisdom. Scientia is NOT Potencia, except on the most surface of Gemini levels.

Sapientia est Potencia; Wisdom is Power.  America and Americans need Wisdom if they must weild Power.  Alas, while we are indeed 'encumbered' with lots of technical knowledge we show as yet no sign of the humility which is the discerning mark of Wisdom.  We worship science, facts, data, and money like the bimbos we are  -chomping hot dogs and waving flags every time its our 'Birthday'.  I repeat, we are, as a Nation, Stillborn.  We haven't gotten our wits together.  We dwell in the hypnotic womb of the comfortable land of make-believe, -Mercury Retrograde in Cancer !  We are all awash in sentiment, but have very little feeling ... (Happy New Year, People of Iraq; have a couple more thousand tons of agonizing death from [ Ho-ho-Ho ] the People of America) !  That's how the Media were so easily able to sweep us up in the pre-programmed and thoroughly scripted tsunami of 'patriotism' while some of our innocent friends and family members threw themselves out of the burning towers of our own 21st Century Babylon.  They came swooping down on us like digital vultures seeking road-kill, exploited our grief, anger, shock, and sentimentality... and thereby confounded our language.  Just the way you might expect a Retrograde Pluto to gobble down a Retrograde Mercury.  It's very smart business.  Think back to WATERGATE TIMES, 'my fellow Americans', and reflect upon the lying President's lying words:

" I didn't lie,  I didn't lie,  I didn't lie."

The TAPES prove otherwise.  We must pay attention now, for the Cock is Crowing again.  The Wizard wants us to lift off to WAR on his hot-air balloon.  You can tell, you can hear it in the Mercury square Jupiter of the Patriot Act  -inflated speech, dipped in the honeyed tongue of Venus cozily cuddling up to Mercury in politically correct and always charming Libra. Yes, 'Presidents' can smile and smile and yet be VILLAINS.  So can Patriot Acts.  Hamlet's father died from POISON POURED INTO HIS EARS WHILE HE WAS SLEEPING IN THE GARDEN. That's the Ivy-League variety of Poison:the charming and elitist tongue of The Skull & Bones Society.  But of course, as the trebly conjunct energies of Mercury, Venus, and Saturn all combined together between the Declaration Chart and the Chart for HR 3162 insist, there is only reason and beauty in America.  The lethal legislative poison is mislabeled, deliberately advertised as the medicine of

" INFINITE JUSTICE. "

Okay, so they took it back; it was -perhaps- just a tad too obviously inflated ?  Nevertheless, the poison has been poured  -our 'neighbors' as well as the Nation's righteous Military-Industrial-Police shall soon be paying us a visit, tapping on our doors, whispering sweet nothings in our ears.  Those flying Monkeys in the Haunted Forest were nothing compared to this.

I shall next attempt to outline for you the probable TIMING of these untoward events, but please, no more of this: Calm down, baby; everything's gonna be alright !  Go back to sleep now kids, (the Cancer Womb is lulling) and only DREAM of being a REVOLUTIONARY.  To actually be a Revolutionary you must first convert from CONSUMER to PERSON to CITIZEN.  Yep, ya gotta really be BORN AGAIN.  And then again. YOU GOTTA STOP BUYING IT ALL !  Buying and stealing are our 'karmic' inheritance...whereas we could STOP and be FREE.

Oh, yeah -sure, Uncle
Claudius!

PART THREE

The American Plague

" My Father's spirit -in arms ?   All is not well.
I doubt some foul play.  Would the night were come!
Till then sit still, my soul.  Foul deeds will rise,
Though all the earth o'erwhelm them, to men's eyes! "

[ Hamlet; Act I, Scene ii; Willy Shakespeare. ]

 

I'm afraid there's no getting around it; very dark times ahead.  America faces the karmic results of three hundred years of bloody expansion, and we all know what goes around comes around.  The 'foul deeds' of the American Empire are rising up to consciousness requiring resolution.  A bloody mess is what we have on our hands, and no bar of soap can wash it away.  Nor can Fifty United bars of soap.  Nor any other American Brand of manufactured cleanser: not Lysol, not Comet, not Mister Clean. Nope, the very Statue of Liberty has pulled up her metal skirts and become a stranger  -even to herself.  Stalks the Land in mad delirium.  Sometimes fancies she's Good Queen Gertrude.  Then veils herself in dark folds of shame.  Laments repeatedly like Lady Macbeth ......"Out, damned spot!  Out, I say!"  Treachery.  Treason.  But all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten her hands. "Here's the smell of blood still."

Wasn't it Pablo Neruda, the Poet from Chile, who spoke of "America, where Liberty is a Statue" ?  Yes, well, maybe it was Octavio Paz, but whoever succinctly spoke this truth hit the proverbial American nail on the sleeping American head. Brand names. DARPA.  Speedy jingoism.  We have ourselves distilled quite a brew of masks and personas in this country now...as if all the characters out of Shakespeare, Sophocles, and Edward Albee decided to come together for a midnight gathering  [ -at the United Nations by Rockefeller Center- ] downtown in Old New York, New York.  Just to see, you understand, if they can 'make it' there. Drama in High Places. Gated Communities. Neighborhood Watch.  Maybe Hamlet, Oedipus, and Tiny Alice just wanna meet Liza Minnelli, cavort with the ghosts of Frank Sinatra, Geronimo, Phoebe Pyncheon.  'Tis said her relative, the kindly Old Judge sits on the Supreme Court these days.  Surrealistic.  The House Of Seven Gables.  The White House.  UnAmerican.  Diego Rivera.  Quick, -call Homeland Security.  Dial 911.  Your call is important to US.  But all our Operators are busy at the moment. Disinformation.  Please hold, and be sure your ears imbibe our invisible murals of sub-luscious sounds...Attention, deficit disorder.

We The People sure are confused. Metaphors are all mixed up, -death, war, and corruption head toward us on direct collision course disguised as 'freedom'.  Stacatto war drums beat in strained and untuned ways.  Ravel's Bolero blends with Sousa's trumpets, and the Catholic Music Man is marching into town with all 76 of his trombones tromboning, - just to molest the kiddies.  Things are out of tune, off-pitch. Yes, we got TROUBLE, and I do mean TROUBLE right there in 'River (Potomac) City' and that starts with 'T' and that rimes with 'P' and that stands for 'Patriotism' -as an Act.  Uncle Sam's acting like King Claudius on Prozac, raging around the Nation breathing fire as the Drugged Godzilla he is  -knocking down World Trade Towers!  We ought to be concerned.  But seem to want to face it all with our usual uninformed optimism.  Unfortunately, I'm afraid that our 'innocence' really is a pose, and we know it.  There's no rousing, happy chorus in sight for the conclusion of this Bawdy Musical.  It's Grotesque, a real Norman Rockwell style of...

American Blood Wedding,
a walk into Star-Spangled Hell.

Perhaps we ought to call it what it is:  Uncle Sam Pounds Yankee Doodle Dandy To Death.  Or,  more pertinently, in terms of this astrological article: The Patriot Act Rapes Lady Liberty.  So, my fellow Americans, without undue literay flourish or fanfare [ O sure, yeah-yeah/'Liar, Liar, Pants On Fire' ! ] and with just a touch of Elf-ish Hyperbole (is this the optimistic 'American' in me ?) -here are the forbidden and taboo 'Predictions' of 'Coming Attractions' !

PLUTO is by no means done with us, not even for a little while.  This Dark Lord Of Death, Shadows, and Hidden Wealth stalks the first house of both HR 3162 and the Declaration for years to come.  Not until the last months of 2008 will Pluto finally leave the sign of Sagittarius.  And after that, when it enters Capricorn it will sequentially oppose the Nation's natal Venus, Jupiter, Sun, and Mercury providing years and years of continuing challenge to the fabric of these United States Of America.  So, we're in for a good long ride.  Not until 2022 will America, via the Declaration Chart, experience its first completed Pluto Cycle.

Of course, I hope it's already sufficiently clear from what I've written that ever since 9/11 and even before (during the whole span of triple Saturn to Pluto oppositions) the United States has been 'at war' with itself.  Powerful struggles behind the scenes involving America's military, business, and Federal Government departments have characterized these oppositions.The post 9/11 "War On Terrorism" with the Patriot Act legislation is, I consider, a clear statement that America's Federal Government is no longer run by Elected American Representatives but primarily by an Invisible, Plutocratic, Global Corporate Conglomerate.  I don't care what we call them or how we label them just so long as we realize that THEY are there and THEY are running the show.  The announced (and un-announced) agenda is to keep the United States engaged in a declared State Of War for so long as it shall take to not-so-gradually enforce upon the citizens a de facto Plutocratic Rule by a consortium of Business-Arms-Bankers.  The 'Program' is to bring the peoples of the various Nations to their knees, by destabilizing their economies and covertly attacking their health and well being. Laboratory engineered pathological mutant viruses are central to the plan, as are forced vaccinations with contaminated vaccines and the increasing introduction of genetically mutated and irradiated foods.  All this is in process of happening now.  Any American Citizen who believes in any way for even an hour that mainstream corporate media such as TV, Radio, Newspapers, and Magazines are ever honestly reporting the news is deluded.

WE HAVE REMAINING TO US ONLY ABOUT A YEAR BEFORE OVERTLY CLEAR AND OBVIOUS CONTROL OF AMERICAN CITIZENS IS PUT INTO INCREASINGLY WIDE-SPREAD PRACTICE.

That's how I see the picture.  It would be wonderful to discover that I'm wrong about it.  But here are the most immediate dates whereupon Pluto will be critically impinging on this nation's sense of its own collective identity:

EXACT dates of PLUTO OPPOSITION (180degrees) to MARS in the US DECLARATION CHART:
1. January 27, 2004.
2. May 24, 2004. (retrograde)
3. November 25, 2004.

These opposition aspects Pluto makes to the US Chart's Mars function are followed by ( and inextricably interwoven with ) a series of three SQUARE aspects it will make to the Neptune function of that same Declaration Of Independence Chart.

EXACT dates of PLUTO SQUARE (90degrees) to NEPTUNE in the US DECLARATION CHART:
1. December 23, 2004.
2. July 14, 2005. (retrograde)
3. October 19, 2005.

What do all these dates mean ?  What events will transpire ?  What are we 'supposed' to do ?  Well, I'll tell you what I think they indicate, but you'll have to decide for yourself what to do...or just do nothing, just 'wait and see' what goes down (I really can't support that approach!...here is a very good explanation of the 'Spectator Sport War' syndrome in America:  http://www.rense.com/general34/pay.htm [ if this link doesn't take you there by clicking on it then just copy and paste it onto your navigation browser, -the article is there ]

First, let's focus on these critical transits to America's Declaration Chart, later we will look directly at the chart of HR 3162.  But, I must emphasize that in order to grasp just how these transits of Pluto will affect the MARS FUNCTION of the United States Birth Chart one must first understand the basic predisposition of Mars at the founding of this Nation.  It is in Gemini in the Nation's 7th house of relationships with other Peoples and Nations.  This is the area of the chart which deals with relating to openly professed ENEMIES as well as to FRIENDS.  And it is expressing through the Energy-Field of Gemini which deals with all forms of daily communications from telephone calls, to bus-car rides, to letters-emails-chats.  It's a restless and verbal-mental sign of the zodiac known as the sign of the 'Trickster'. Now Mars itself is the symbol of assertiveness, action, and aggression.  So this tells us that all of us as Americans are collectively 'marked' by an assertive, active, and even aggressive verbal-mental nature.  We are a bag of laughs, an assorted sampler of Tricksters, very fond of movement and action on a daily basis.  Mars in Gemini inclines us to be 'general factotums' -the 'jack-of-all-trades' syndrome.  We are a People who like to feel that we can 'fix it' ourselves, if need be; we can DO it ourselves.  'Home Depot'.

You know, Mister & Misses FIX-IT -kinda like Mister & Misses Potato Head...remember, that weird 'toy' from 50's ('Leave It To Beaver') America ?   Take a potato, just any old potato will do, and stick on it plastic, pre-made arms, feet, eyes, glasses, hats; any and all accouterments.  A potato head can be a female or a male, just depends on what you stick on it.  Then you graduate to Barbie Dolls and G.I.Joes till you work your way up the ladder to CEOs.  It's all very neuter, really, and quite 'democratic'.  If the shoe fits wear it.  My country, do or die.  God bless America.  Quick,