It’s a new month. The Mars retrograde of 2016 is over, although Mars remains in the same degree of Scorpio where it turned around on Wednesday. On Monday, we will have a New Moon in the sign Cancer on the anniversary on the U.S. Declaration of Independence. Any fireworks displays you see Monday night will thus take place in a moonless sky.
Also on Monday, a robotic spacecraft called Juno will, if all goes as planned, begin a long orbital errand around Jupiter (which has about two and a half months left in Virgo). The purpose of Juno’s mission will be to give the people of Earth a greater understanding of the largest planet in our solar system.
The fact that a new page on the calendar, a new lunar cycle, a new space mission and a new year beginning for the U.S. are all basically taking place as Mars resumes direct motion gives you reason to think about a fresh start. There is meaning in that. After all, before anything can be achieved, it must first be conceived.
Of course, a reason to conceive does not stand much chance of manifestation without belief. That’s where you come in. What’s perceived in the skies above has at least one thing in common with what is experienced on Earth below. That common thread goes through you. Whether one is addressing deities, planetary correlations or the course of human events, your belief (or lack thereof) has a big influence. Perhaps even more important is whether and how you act.
Action makes things real. Unless you act, everything inside your head stays there. In your hands is the power to transform conceptions into achievements. Of course one person alone does not usually amount to much in a big world, but that’s where things must begin.
What has been proven to amount to something in the world is human beings acting together. To cooperation we owe our very existence. Through communal action the world has been changed, and will continue to be changed, for better or worse. That’s how you come in again.
The single greatest factor determining whether group action makes the world better or worse is the conscience of the individuals who make up the group. It may be true that you are born with a intuitive sense of right and wrong, and even a concern for the greater good. Even so, it is also self-evident that teaching and learning play a role in determining whether and how people participate in society.
It is not only individual and collective actions taken, but also the examples you and the rest of us set that contribute to turn the wheels of history and determine what will happen next. If the civil calendar, celestial cycles, history and ongoing group achievements are any indication, a whole heaping handful of wheels are now going around to come around at once.
That’s how you might want to consider the next several days to be a special time. There is meaning implied in what is happening now. More to the point, however, there is meaning to be conferred. By you. By us. Upon the Earth, even as it is in the heavens.
May your holiday weekend be safe and fulfilling.
Offered In Service
Attention anyone with a Cancer Sun, Moon or rising: Eric has recorded the audio portions of your birthday reading for the next 12 months — nicknamed The Cancer Illumination Kit. You can access them by ordering now; the video will be released after July 4. Not familiar with Eric’s audio or video readings? You can listen to last year’s reading here, as a gift.
“The single greatest factor determining whether group action makes the world better or worse is the conscience of the individuals who make up the group.”
And this is what makes me uneasy — afraid, actually — about Congress voting in the PROMESA bill and Obama signing it into law. This is the bill that sets up a “control board” to run Puerto Rico’s economy, removing democratic control from the island’s residents, in an effort to stem the island territory;s debt crisis.
Do I trust the conscience of whatever group of career politicians might make up that board? No. More to the point, I do not trust whose interests they have at “heart”: PR’s citizens, or the hedge fund managers?
There are incredible natural areas under protection in Puerto Rico. Specifically, the island of Culebra has managed to prevent/escape the rampant, indiscriminate development that plagues the coast and waters of mainland PR. Culebra has escaped this development partly due to a law its citizens managed to pass that gives the islanders powerful say in its development. What might happen to that in the face of this “crisis” need to restructure their debt?
As it is, there’s a right-wing congressman trying to dismantle the National Park Service, and trying to block a GIFT of land to the state of Maine to create a new national park — something two thirds of Mainers support.
What happens in PR if its citizens have no real say over what gets done there? As it is, it already has barely any state’s rights, since it is not a full state. There is an interesting debate on today’s Democracy Now! program. It’s too late to influence the PROMESA vote, but it is still work knowing what is going on, both the positive potential and the negative potential.
I keep thinking of Flint, Michigan’s Emergency Manager, or whatever he was called. What protections do PR citizens really have regarding the decisions this “control board” makes?
And I get that most people do not register Puerto Rico at all. Having been there twice, all I can say is that it is not perfect, but it is a real place, with real people — and even before the debt crisis and yesterday’s vote, it was in an “interesting” situation as a US territory without full, voting representation in Congress.
(rant over)