Zeitgeist Trends: October 23, 2021
COVID bloomed and science did the near-impossible and hatched a ready-Freddy vaccine. Too bad its arrival coincided with a new phase of technophobia.
Redux note: A WOODRUFF paid subscriber emailed me yesterday and suggested I make this post a ‘free read’ for non-paid subscribers. She felt the inquiry might bring clarity to those struggling with understanding the astrology of the moment and how it relates to the accelerating idiocy related to the COVID vaccine. Re-reading it again this AM I decided a repost as a ‘free read’ was be a good idea. Please consider a subscription to WOODRUFF so I can continue to generate content like this that’s worth your reading time. FW.
SATURN SQUARE URANUS. I can’t explain why, but for some crazy-ass reason the ongoing transit—our clarion call of the moment—calls to mind that Taylor Swift song Wildest Dreams.
But not the twee version that Swift released. I’m hearing the twanging and tumbling Ryan Adams remake from his homage to Swift’s album 1981. Melancholic and sinister.
“This is gonna take me down.”
Dreams are Neptunian by nature, although presently the Neptunian has been replaced by the Uranian. The collective dream is our technological dream.
What used to be an endlessly layered palimpsest—painting the veil of our unconscious—is now a solid glass screen. Held in our hand. Sitting on our desktop. Streaming the dreaming. Outside not inside.
This is a dangerous rearrangement.
“Heaven can’t help me now.”
The Saturn Uranus square is ordinarily interpreted as Saturn’s saturnine solidity being undone by Uranian pressures and paroxysms.
But think of it another way. Saturn as a golem who bears a poisoned apple— the suspicions that send Promethean clarity into a tailspin of projection.
“He’s so bad but he does it so well.”
COVID bloomed and science did the impossible and hatched a vaccine in months rather than years. But with it came the bad apples.
Today I read an article in the New York Times about Joseph Mercola, an internet-savvy osteopath in Florida (it’s always fucking Florida) who is considered one of the world’s kingpins of disinformation.
Even Mercola’s last name is caught up in the zeitgeist—I mean, a mercury-laced soda would kill you.
Fitting too is Mercola’s rangy, saturnine appearance. He’s the perfect circuit board for someone responsible for sharing 65-percent of all the anti-vaccine messaging on social media.
Inquiring minds want to know: When does misinformation become murder?
“Nothing lasts forever…”
People incorrectly assume that the anti-vaxxer’s distress is related to something ominous about the vaccine. Never mind the historical relevance of polio, smallpox, and mumps vaccines.
The internet has gifted the Cassandras with both crazy wisdom and amnesia—haywire Uranian prescience, to—
“…see the end as it begins.”
Timing, we’re told is everything. In the same way that god only spares some mobile homes in the trailer park during the killer tornado.
At baseline what we call ‘timing’ doesn’t exist. Meaning, what seems to be synchronized is simply this and that arising and disappearing simultaneously within our field of experience. (You figure this out after 45 years as an astrologer).
COVID arrived just as the culture (Saturn) was hitting its tipping point regarding our technological mindfuck (Uranus). Suddenly zealot-like mania flipped into paranoia.
And reading this expose on Facebook today, well, who can blame us?
It is technology—what Thomas Pynchon called, “a conspiracy between human beings and techniques”—a sort of witchcraft—that carries our shadow today.
And the umbra has landed on the vaccine. Setting off a rift within the culture that makes old-timey partisanship seem quaint.
Our current schism, fomented by technophobia, is—like all wars—fraught with the potential for mass destruction and death.
Although now, with the poison (Saturn) ensconced within a billions-reaching electronic platform (Uranus) the frequencies are short-circuiting—the vaccine static is deafening.
As in any war, propaganda becomes the fallout of our addiction to stories. Hell, we’ll listen to any narrative if it helps to make sense of the incomprehensible.
But what used to be called investigative journalism has been replaced by memes and misinformation.
Does veracity matter? (Don’t ask Mark Zuckerberg—his Moon Saturn conjunction in Scorpio makes him a key player in plague dispersion.)
Truth is too expensive to access today. It’s all locked up behind a paywall.
“I thought heaven can't help me now…”
Good luck interpreting our new wild dream. Your life might depend on it.
Love,
I love this! It helps me understand the astrological significance of our current global situation. As always your writing is dynamic and compelling. Thank you!
Thanks for sharing. I’m relieved to read something that is not urging the rise up of ‘people’ against the ‘government’ as both categories have many nuances, paradoxes and are not simple binaries. What I’m noticing is there is small independent media actually doing investigation. For example ICIJ and the Pandora Papers. I’m also seeing people on the frontlines sharing info and finding a way forward. Many injustices have been revealed and there is a possibility for collective action. Can this break through the myths around us and the ones we weave ourselves from? Who knows.