Dear Friend and Reader:

There is a gem of a book from the early 1970s called The Lazy Man’s Guide to Enlightenment. It’s about 50 little pages in total and designed to be memorized. The purpose of the book is a trip guide. At the time, people were taking a lot of LSD and it was still a relatively new thing in the culture, so there was a bad trip problem. The book is about how not to have a bad trip — on acid, or in life.

The author, Thaddeus Golas, explains the vibrational relationships between beings, and how this affects the way we perceive one another. At one point in the book, he explains how people get high off of being threatened. Horror movies are one of the most popular genres; millions of people go out and pay $12 plus popcorn to be terrified for a while.

Well, we have all just been threatened with death for two months running. That’s how you get people’s attention. Nothing like a hostage situation, terrorism, a mass shooting or a bit of anthrax to silence the room and give everyone a cortisol rush.

The ‘Death Works’ Era of History

However, it’s a vulnerable state: death works. Threatening death is a great way to get people to do what you want. The reason for this is most people have not established a relationship with death, which is a necessary step on the path to adult maturity.

Most people you meet are either terrified, creeped out or numbed out by the topic. That’s why bad actors are able to use it to gain power.

This year’s astrology has been dominated by Pluto: the Saturn-Pluto conjunction, Jupiter conjunct Pluto, and Pluto square Eris.

Pluto was discovered in 1930, in time for the Great Depression (what was so great about it?), the rise of Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin, and konzentrationslagers and gulags. The Pluto era has been death-obsessed. It’s time to get over it. We need something more effective than ongoing death threats to get our attention.

Going Beyond Pluto

In 1992, the first object in our solar system beyond Pluto was discovered. For a generation, this was known as 1992 QB1.

This offers access to a realm behind death, and a teacher gentler than the “grow or die” message of Pluto. Tuesday at 7:40 pm EDT, the Sun makes its annual conjunction to Albion/QB1. This is an opportunity for meditation.

In my article on the 20th anniversary of Albion/QB1, I wrote, “There’s a lot here about letting go of fear, which is part of every healing process. QB1 shows us that there’s something on the other side of what we’re afraid of, and of the fear itself. Our prior model of the solar system seemed to be saying that there was nothing on the other side of Pluto, of death; last stop, game over.”

And: “This new discovery whispered that there was more, and that it was worth letting go of the fear, and I think that QB1 shows a way of doing that. In the chart, think of it as pointing the way beyond your perceived limits about death, which remains a thought so terrifying to most people that they cannot even consider it. Now in the metaphor of the solar system, we have something in the model that says there is more; that there exists something beyond this perceived edge, which we can access if we want.”

There is much more in the article, which is a classic.

Mercury square Saturn: Respecting Time Boundaries

Monday, Mercury enters Taurus. The first thing it does is make a square to Saturn, which occurs within hours of Sun conjunct Albion/QB1 the following day. So we get a picture from the inner planets about what this large idea means in an immediate and local sense.

Time is the most important boundary. That is why showing up on time, and doing your work on time, is such a relevant symbol of respect, for yourself, for others and for existence. There is a maturity factor involved. Mercury and Saturn describe this beautifully. The reason you don’t want to hire someone who shows up late for a job interview is they are admitting how immature and disrespectful they are. They are admitting their lack of willingness to plan.

In order to work with time as a friend and ally rather than enemy, it must be used consciously, at least on this plane of existence. Pay attention to how long things take. Make realistic estimates, leaving yourself extra time for delays. Many people do things like estimate their time of arrival somewhere, but leave out getting to the car, parking, and walking to their destination.

There are few things more stressful in the course of an ordinary day than being late, which then delivers a cortisol rush.

To “take your time” does not mean to dawdle; it means to use your time wisely, and to claim and occupy it fully. Time can “be on your side” only if you are on its side.

More on Daily Astrology & Adventure as the week progresses.

With love,