Is This The End Of The World As We know It?

The two great aims of industrialism – replacement of people by technology and concentration of wealth into the hands of a small plutocracy – seem close to fulfillment. – 

Wendell Berry

Having taken a sabbatical from writing this blog, I find myself nervous, agitated, a welling of ideas and feelings coursing through my blood… I have recognized this now, after a few days disconsolately roaming the house and staring vacuously at my computer screen searching for the ideal pair of shoes, as the need to write…. but write of what?

There are so many things that I could write of, there are so many images dancing across my consciousness, so many paths invite me into deeper research. Venus, the goddess of creativity, harmony, balance and beauty is in her natural sign of fall, Virgo…. the options are endless, broken down into a myriad of separate parts by Virgo’s need to refine, sort and order. It is not a promising recipe for success, something akin to having an endless list of ingredients and no oven in which to bake a cake!

I flit from keyboard to kitchen to garden, my mind preoccupied with weeding, researching the rise of the Third Reich, casting charts for long dead political activists, stocking the fridge for my ever hungry but seemingly invisible teens and trying to make sense of the apocalyptic world that seems to be manifesting with increasing rapidity outside my front door. I drink too much coffee… home-brewed vegan lattes, but too many nonetheless.

This morning, I have wrestled with the convoluted travel plans necessary if I want to try and see my parents and my brother’s family before the winter (will this be my parents’ last?)… fly? drive? Not go at all? I give up in the end, and resort to transplanting the wild mint, brought back from a treasured expedition with my brother’s family, in the time when travel was easy. I have been nurturing that tiny sprig, taken from an untamed and precious place between the land and the sea, for two years, and have planted the now strong root system into the earth. I trust that it will multiply in the damp and shady spot that I have placed it, close to the earth bound body of my beloved Pippin, and in my heart I secretly hope that as it grows it will bring my brother back to me at some stage.

It has been a long day, and it’s only halfway through. I read for a client this morning, a wonderful experience that reminded me why I do what I do, that I am good at it, and to keep on keeping on, even when I get sidetracked by the inevitable despondency and suspicions that filter in from the world outside. The reading, as is usual, has filled me with an energy that I can only really describe as a “post coital buzz” which leaves me excited and strangely breathless, caught up with desire and longing…. but for what I am not quite sure!

I finally decide that it is time to write. Venus is separating from a trine with Uranus and applying to a trine with Pluto; she is opposing Neptune. In some manner I am picking up on the subterranean electrical excitement, the magnetic promise of resolution, the anticipation of awakening a dormant power; outside, the wind rises in answer, and in the garden things flap and crash, rain showers loom and a storm is in the offing. She is still in Virgo, Venus, nothing can change that until the middle of the month, so I still feel as if I have a long list of ingredients and no cake…. perhaps it is eggs that I need?

In broader astrological terms, I have been much preoccupied lately with the recognition that the current placements of the powerful outer planets are reflecting those that were hanging in the heavens at the time of the rise of Hitler. During the 1930’s, common images were erupting in many countries, as all over the world, people struggled with the arrival of a truly industrial society where never again would men ride into battle upon horses armed with swords, as so many had in the Great War. Mechanisation was becoming widespread, in very much the same way that digitisation is today, and it is no surprise to see that the planet Uranus, which is so closely associated with revolution and forced change, is traversing the same signs, eighty odd years on; the words “reset” and “new normal” are conjured from Uranus’ vocabulary.

The two slow giants, Pluto and Neptune, are currently residing in the opposite signs that they were occupying in the 1930’s, which were Cancer and Virgo respectively, in very similar degrees. Currently, Pluto is in the last five degrees of Capricorn, reflecting a perfect mirror image of its position in the last degrees of Cancer, its position when Hitler was named leader and rose to absolute power over Germany. As Pluto moved finally into Leo through the autumn of 1938, Jews who had been targeted for the previous few years received greater persecution, including travel bans, passport invalidity and exclusion from economic life.

Neptune’s position in Virgo during the 1930’s fully endorsed traditionally “virgoan” themes with the strong focus on racial purity, and hygiene, along with the practice of eugenics, an idea popular in many countries at that time. The idea of “selective breeding” and even of breeding without the need for sexual intercourse, as was written about in Aldous Huxley’s book “Brave New World” was a popular images in fiction and real life alike. Currently, Neptune is reflecting this position in Pisces, and again, we are concerned more than ever with our health, with death, with the size of our population, with the vaccines that promise to save us or kill us, depending on what side of the fence we sit and the growing power of a plutocracy based on pharmaceuticals.

I listen to the talk of borders closing, lockdowns, of the difficulties of travel, of the separation between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated…. and it fills me with dread… I have heard all this before, if only from the perspective of my grandmother, born on the outbreak of war in October 1914; “The War Baby” she was called in her family… what a gift!?…. despite or perhaps because of this, I am a strong believer in the theory of epigenetics.

Meanwhile, firestorms rampage across the planet, destroying lands that in the past I have loved deeply, and I struggle with the theories of climate change, immunity, food scarcity, power outages and the censorship of the free press, along with the interminable and perpetual annoyance of my slow internet connection. I do, however, also feel very grateful that I can grow a small amount of food myself, live a good way above sea level and have the liberty to pursue my interests freely…. for now.

Being an astrologer (or a mother for that matter) does not always seem like a blessing, caught as I am, in cycles that vastly out distance my meager and rapidly diminishing life span; sometimes I feel that I might be happier if I was not either, but that is a fleeting thing, a little like the sense that I get sometimes about cooking… that it is all too much bother. Soon enough, I get swept up in the creation and the beauty of it all, and my list of ingredients eventually becomes something satisfying and fulfilling, pleasurable enough to chase the shadows away from the door so that I can watch the sun go down whilst eating cake and examining the minute but important changes that have meanwhile been occurring in the garden. It is only then that I realise, that all is as it should be, and that I feel fine.

Thank you for listening to my vegetative ramblings…. and I do hope that you will call again. ❤

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