“There is more to history than politics. Politics is to civilization what the ego is to the self.” —William Irwin Thompson
JUST AS I WAS FINISHING the edits on this month’s horoscopes the war with Ukraine ignited.
In the days that followed, I made the mistake of reading a wide collection of the astrological community’s commentaries on the event and was gobsmacked by the ignorant rhetoric running rampant on social media.
I’ve long loathed how astrology is abused online, but the last week revealed a new gold standard in imbecility.
Reams of sloppy-hysterical ‘readings’, bogus D-rated mundane horoscopes being expounded upon, and (supposed) correlations that linked the escalating war directly to the US’s Pluto return.1
I can count on my fingers the number of astrologers qualified to discuss and write about the global circumstances we’re living through. Individuals with the skill and wisdom (and humility) to venture opinions that are educated and instinctive.
And more than half of those astrologers have no online or social media presence whatsoever.
I recall reading once where Gurdjieff was asked where the so-called ‘awakened people’ on the planet resided. “Why were they not more forthcoming?”
And he explained that anyone who had actually snapped out of the trance of consensus reality tended to deliberately drop out of the din of the maddening crowd. To essentially disappear.
And, yes. I understand this sentiment more than ever amidst the tech infoglut (and cacophony) most of us are immersed in.
The month’s key symbols
My regular readers know that I like to work with the dreamlike images of the Sabian Symbols (a system where each of the 360 degrees that comprise the Zodiac is aligned with a particular mediumistic picture).
Let’s consider the two symbols for the two lunations for March 2022. The New Moon for tomorrow, March 2, calls up the 13th degree of Pisces—and the symbol reads:
AN ANCIENT SWORD, USED IN MANY BATTLES, IS DISPLAYED IN A MUSEUM.
Does a New Moon on this degree translate as a reengagement with a tool of war that had passed from activity into a benign display case within a museum?
Where only memories of battles are rekindled? It seems we are in the midst of finding out.
Maven astrologer Dane Rudhyar, who was the first to champion the Sabian Symbols into a holistic context, writes of this degree—as applied by an individual on the path to consciousness:
“Through the effectual use of their will a consecrated person can become a symbol of courage for all those who follow in their footsteps.” [Pronouns have been modernized by me].
And so the New Moon presents each of us with the question: How am I applying the sovereignty of my will within this moment of collective upheaval?
I can offer one suggestion. To expose the delusion of inside/outside, us/them and all of the inane misinformation that cements those polarities in place.
Let’s consider the conclusive phase of this lunation cycle, and look at the Sabian symbol for the Full Moon on the 18th which calls up the 28th degree of Virgo:
A BALDHEADED MAN WHO HAS SEIZED POWER.
(Imagine how my chin slumped towards my chest upon landing on this image.)
Rudhyar’s keynote for this reads:
“The sheer power of personality in times that call for decision.”
And I think it’s important to expound upon the symbol as he writes here:
Whether at the religious or at the socio-political and cultural level there comes a time when obsolescent patterns of order and cultural refinement have to be radically and relentlessly challenged. Catabolic personages emerge to seize power and dictate decisions that alter the structures of society; or within an individual life, an intense urge for cathartic changes mobilizes the will, and traumatic decisions are made. At such times, the issue has to be met and, ruthless as the power may appear, it must be accepted.
At this…stage…we face the un-postponable necessity for decision and transformation. Existence is motion. No static formation, however beautiful and inspiring, can remain long unchallenged. Everything bows to THE POWER OF THE WILL — divine, executively human, or Satanic.
If we apply his reading to the conditions unraveling between Russia, Ukraine, and the international community, we’re left with a soul-wilting conclusion.
The ‘static’ sword in the museum’s display case is reannimated—as nothing remains still in nature. All is movement and motion.
But I think it’s more relevant to consider this in the light of what Michael Ventura describes in his book Shadow Dancing in the USA. Namely that history is not a spectator sport. Where the animated sword is employed to cut through the fog of implied helplessness.
“There is not you and history. There is you, in which history lives. And there is history, in which you live. If you are concerned about Nicaragua [or Ukraine], that produces history; if you are unconcerned, that produces history. There is no way you can be ineffectual.”
He writes more in this chapter about how media makes each of us feel ineffectual by steeping us in non-stop angst.
We are then, “connected neither by a shared worldview nor common goals, but by a common and thorough anxiety.”
Why? Because consciously (or unconsciously) we do feel our integral connection with events. With each other.
But media, for its intents and purpo$es, reproduces ‘world-class’ events magnified in scope and compressed in time, distorting them out of the human scale.
When in fact they are very human.
No wonder, as the cacophony builds (and nervous systems snap), the tech overlords who manage the flow of information are now presenting us with the option to remove ourselves entirely from the historical equation.
To enter the metaverse or book a getaway to Mars. Two new worlds that they will continue to oversee and monetize.
Ventura again:
“History is the psyche writ large. It can't be something unimaginably beyond the power and scope of the individual when we make history every day with everything we say and do and dream. We are history.”
