Before trundling off into the wilderness, the ancient Chinese sage Lao Tsu kept his nation’s archives and advised the ruling class. He left some of his guidance behind in the Tao Te Ching. Among his key teachings was that a great country is not belligerent, and that a great leader offers virtue in return for guidance from those led.

That was about 2,500 years ago. History and evolution seem to have been at work since then. It’s high time to acknowledge what has changed.

Somewhere along the line, great nations and their ruling classes seem to have abdicated their proper role, aspiring to become something more akin to gods than leaders.

Just as it used to be with gods, the most powerful nations and their ruling classes now spend most of their resources vying to bring death down from the sky. There is little (if any) acknowledgement or leadership offered to their respective citizens. It is thus not surprising that many of us among the led now typically feel forsaken by our leaders, much as the biblical figure Job was reported to have felt about his deity.

All of which leaves it to you to fill the vacuum and comport yourself as Lao Tsu would have both a great country and a great leader do. After all, if not you — who? If not now, when? The alternative to your stepping up is to abdicate, just as many of your leaders have — allowing the belligerent and those without virtue to fill the void. Unless your conscience can either accept or ignore such consequences, your alternative is to do your best to be the great country that no longer serves you. It is also for you to serve as an example for other individuals to do the same.

Not surprisingly, the cycles of some of the faster planets (which correlate with the pace of your personal life) and their aspects to the slower, more distant objects in our solar system (which move with the rhythms of history) could reasonably be construed to be symbolizing just such a new role for you — and for others who would be inspired to emulate your example.

Right now, astrology’s most current indicator of how you should step up is Mars in Virgo moving to oppose Chiron on the other side of the zodiac in Pisces (180 degrees away). That aspect is exact just before 4:48 am EDT (08:47:57 UTC) on Friday. The implication becomes even more clear when you compare the immediately previous opposition of Mars and Chiron to the next one about to take place.

One thing to remember is that Mars aspects tend to express in advance of being exact. Hence, it’s not too soon to look ahead to Mars opposing Chiron on Friday. In essence, it’s happening all week. Another thing to note is that the word “opposition” for astrologers does not always (or even usually) represent conflict. It’s more a reflection, like the one you get from the mirror opposing your face.

The last time Mars in Virgo opposed Chiron in Pisces was Oct. 31, 2013. On the same day, Mars was in a precise (to the degree) trine aspect (a separation of 120 degrees) with relentless Pluto in Capricorn. When you consider how trines can be enabling, and look at the news on that day, it’s revealing.

The headlines for Halloween 2013 show aggressive Mars operating with impunity, as evinced by a U.S.drone strike (death from above) in Pakistan. Chiron, being more subtle and nuanced than Mars, yet nonetheless ever the “inconvenient benefic” (as the late, great Al Morrison put it), was reflected by undeniable revelations facilitated by Edward Snowden. As result of that one individual, it was revealed that the National Security Agency (NSA) was spying on its allies, as well as on U.S. citizens. Indications are that this time around can be different, but only if you believe you can make a difference.

Regardless of how you feel about Edward Snowden (without whom we would never have known that the NSA was practicing unbridled god-like omnipotence by routinely spying on friend, foe and you), he did demonstrate that one individual can make a difference. While you are probably not in a position to make as big an impact as he did, the biggest constraint on your power in the world is how much you believe you can do.

Interestingly, Chiron will be sharing the same degree of Pisces (and the opposition from Mars) with Borasisi on Friday. As Eric put it last year (in his “Top Five Events for 2015“), “Borasisi is about the power of belief.” When you consider how Chiron makes denial difficult — and factor in another, substantially different trine to Pluto on Friday (from Venus in Virgo — emblematic of personal values) — you get a very different picture from October of 2013.  

That picture, of course, can only be completed by you. That’s how astrology works. You are the most important element. In this case, the deciding factor will be how much you believe in your ability to step up and be a great nation of one, defined by a dedication to peace. It’s time to believe you can be a great leader who offers virtue and accepts guidance. Yours is the privilege to prove how far individual human beings have come since the time of Lao Tsu.

This is not about changing the world, at least not for now. It’s about believing you can change yourself. From that belief, truly great countries of many may yet come to be again.

Offered In Service

Harvest. The fall has a special place in my heart for what it brings — the reward for hard work put into the land, its trees, flowers and fruit. This weekend I was at my sister’s house baking pies and cakes, using the sugary-sweet Bartlett pears harvested from trees growing on their land. On the menu for me were a dark-chocolate pear tort and a pear-fig tart.

The kitchen is the alchemical lab: tending the flame under the pot, watching ingredients meld together in the bowl and then in the oven. I get a sensual joy in molding cold butter into flour, water and egg to make a dough, and then rolling the dough to the right thickness.

There is pleasure in working dough around a fruit that benefits from cooking, softening and ripening from the heat of the oven. I love experimenting with the already natural sweetness of the fruit by adding spices and condiments that never overwhelm, but frame the flavors already there naturally. These experiences are magic to me.

Yes, my Aquarian Sun, Gemini Moon and Venus in Sagittarius compel me to write about politics. Yet, my Jupiter and Uranus conjunct in Cancer in the 5th house reverberate all the way into my 11th house of community — where my Ceres is governed by Capricorn, close to my North Node. It is there where my family and friends gather in anticipation of a meal cooked by me.

The kitchen is a place where I utilize my art degree to the fullest, embodying everything I’ve learned from my family and friends in my 60 years on this planet. Along with theater, the kitchen is a place where my personal history and creative proclivity collide to benefit an always appreciative audience on a very substantive level.

It wasn’t always like that. There were lessons I needed to learn. Seven years ago, while visiting Eric in upstate New York, we were preparing dinner while working together on the Planet Waves annual series. Cooking as I always do, I mentioned in passing — almost resignedly — “Yes, I can cook. I cook too well, in fact. Everybody wants me to cook for them. I feel so much like a Mom, even though I’ll never have kids!” Eric responded by turning that around on me saying, “Never abandon that maternal, nurturing side of yours. It’s a huge source of power — own it!”

Even though Eric knew my chart, his comment confused me. Confused by my own maternal inclinations, I was struggling with a part of me that still needed to define freedom for myself. How could I celebrate something I was so conflicted about? A talent to nurture that brought me so much grief because I felt so under-appreciated for it? How could Eric suggest that I relish and celebrate a side of me that, at the time, I perceived as servitude?

My perceptions then were based on carrying baggage from a history of giving away too much nurturing energy in my relationships. I mistook my proclivity to give as something I had to do all the time. I gave too much, most of the time doing so without being receptive to receiving back. I felt myself a victim of my own gifts. I was carrying a subservient mindset — always tending to the needs of others first, with little idea how to be receptive to reciprocation, or how to communicate my own needs to others. I gave too much so I wouldn’t receive.

Some of that mindset was cultural. Filipino women of my mother’s generation were taught to be the quiet, giving force behind their man, submerging their needs and strength for the needs of their mate. And my mother’s example was the imprint of femininity that I carried into early adulthood, and subsequently into my relationships.

Using that example in relationships, it was as if I was constantly carrying two large baskets of fruit: one for others, and the other for myself. Habitually, it was the basket for others that was fuller, heavier and laden with luscious fruit, while my own was meager. Needless to say, carrying more weight for others on one side eventually does “tip you over.” A bout with deep depression and months of therapy put me on that long road to find out what I wanted.

I needed to embrace that overwhelming need of mine to nurture — the quality Eric found as a strength in my chart, but back then I never thought that it was. I struggled with recognizing and appreciating my own power, wants and needs. That had to become primary practice — the yoga of self. To employ the plane flight metaphor: I had to place the oxygen mask on myself first, to break myself out of the over-nurturing rut I experienced in my relationships.

My talent for nurturing had to evolve to a level where I could do it with enjoyment, creating something for the plate that was a full embodiment of personal energy and spirit, not servitude. This for me was my journey to my 11th house, where my Capricornian Ceres and North Node co-exist.

Cooking and baking are now my passions, which I pursue like a dance, preferably when I have the physical energy and the time to make it truly enjoyable for myself and others. These talents to nurture and sustain others had to mature to a level where I would get something back for giving — not only monetarily, but energetically. The kitchen had to become a place of magic and joy for me. I think, by and large, by accepting my power and energy flow as a constant and equal exchange — going out and coming back in — I have succeeded.

As a friend of mine once said recently, “Fe, cooking — for you — is a form of meditation.” Another said, “Fe, you are a magician with food.” I’d like to think that I am. As I walked the road of this life leading to the fields of Ceres, I came to accept a natural part of myself I once denied. I’ve given myself the chance to sustain and enrich myself and others, on the plate and in spirit.

Leaning in, I lift out a freshly baked pear pie from a hot oven. I can feel the harvest goddess’ breath on me while the smell of a golden, butter crust and bubbling fruit comes from what I made with my hands. The experience is a gift from Ceres, leaving me full of thanks for her help in re-claiming a large part of me.

By Amanda Moreno

This week I have been thinking about patterns. I’ve been noticing old patterns coming up again in many spheres of my life. It’s kind of annoying, really, but life seems to be built on these patterns. I feel fortunate to be able to bring awareness to them even when I’m frustrated by the fact that simple awareness doesn’t seem to change them.

Photo by graywacke/A Landing a Day

I’ve also spent some time reading The Soul Speaks: The Therapeutic Potential of Astrology by Mark Jones. As is always the case, Mr. Jones’ work resonates at the deepest core of who I am, speaking to just about everything I’m interested in.

In the book, he references the work of James Hollis, a Jungian analyst. Hollis discusses the expectation that a person tends to have upon entering a therapeutic container, be it traditional therapy or an astrological consultation: that some magic will occur as the therapist traipses into the client’s psychic space, exorcising personal demons and promoting instantaneous healing.

In response to this expectation, Hollis points out that there is no guarantee against future suffering, that we have to be willing to disassemble our defenses in order to make progress, and that that progress will likely be slow going. Our original issues tend to stay with us through our entire lives, even if they change form. Jones takes the commentary further to illuminate the perils of having the astrologer-therapist accept the role of being magician.

Not really a strong platform for advertising therapy, is it?

As resistant as I’ve been to the idea that change is so slow, I also hear a truth in it. Especially when I combine it with my understanding of karma.

In the Vedantic teachings they talk about Samskara and Vasana — two kinds of karmic imprints. Vasana is more like a subtle tendency, whereas Samskara is a wound that is associated with the concept of karmic gravity. Samskara is based on trauma and is repetitive karma. It is based on impulses that we could not complete in past lives and that therefore get replayed over and over again. This is the essence of most of our karma, and part of the reason patterns change so slowly is because there is a weight to them that causes repetition.

According to the Tibetan Book of the Dead, when consciousness leaves the body and is no longer rooted in the dense structures of the body, it is able to create reality based on thought instantaneously. This is why the Tibetans put such emphasis on ‘dying well,’ and on being aware of the transition: so that as our consciousness transfers out of the body we are able to traverse the afterlife states in a way that facilitates our healing, and transfer into another life without the weight of so much karma. A truly incredible documentary on the process can be found here.

The theory, as well as my experience in past-life regression work, would say that when we die unconsciously (as so many of us do), we transition with all of that weight. We die thinking, “why did he leave me” or “I never have enough,” or “I’ll never get out of this.” These thoughts create reality in the afterlife. We transition through the afterlife often without knowing what’s happened. The weight of the emotional and physical content remains as imprints in our energy bodies, which reincarnate with us in the next life. The cycle continues.

So yes, patterns change slowly. They have a weight to them.

I have a particular relationship pattern I’ve been working with consciously for about five years now, surrounding my fear of abandonment and loss. I’ve done ritual around it many times, worked on it in therapy and regression, and gotten understanding about it through astrology. It retained a charge for a long time at all levels, however. I would have physical reactions when it was triggered, in the form of back and neck pain; emotional reactions in the form of sobbing breakdowns; and mental reactions in the form of my mind racing, which just increased my anxiety.

A few weeks ago something happened to trigger the pattern. Afterwards, I found myself walking down the street, thinking about what had happened, when I suddenly realized: I wasn’t in pain. I wasn’t struggling to breathe under the onslaught of anxiety. I didn’t feel like crying at all. All that still remained was my awareness of the fact that my mind was trying to engage its loop of racing thoughts. The emotional and physical charges, however, were no longer there. I clapped my hands with glee and ran off to the metaphysical store where I work to share with a friend.

That’s not to say the pattern is entirely gone. I’ve felt it rearing its head as life has continued throwing me triggers. The astrological counseling, ritual work and everything else I’d done to try and change the pattern had all combined together with time and perseverance to help me move through the pattern. It’s not gone, not forgotten — but something has shifted.

My experience of that shift goes a long way towards mediating the frustration I sometimes feel when I seem to be stuck in a loop, with outside forces exerting the same pressure in the same spots over and over again. Time will tell as to the long-term effects. But for now, it felt like a great example of the Virgo-Pisces axis that is so emphasized right now: recognizing a pattern, and letting it go.

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

“Ethics is nothing else than reverence for life.”
–Albert Schweitzer

This week, American citizens — or at least the more than fifteen million of them that tuned in to the debate in Las Vegas — were stunned to discover that politics does not have to be a contact sport, blood letting and circus act. They’d largely forgotten, if they knew at all, that intelligent people have no need to talk over one another, toss out insults, and behave like loons in order to make their point.

Don’t get me wrong, there were diverse personalities on stage and not all of them above throwing a jab, as did Clinton about Sanders’s voting record on gun control, although both candidates have earned a solid and disapproving F from the National Rifle Association on gun rights. But by and large, the conversation was stimulating, the proceedings respectful and the politics progressive, except for ex-senator and military minded Jim Webb, whom one pundit described as a “perfectly respectable Republican.”

By the way, if you’re interested in finding out where each of our candidates — right and left — stand on policy as reflected by their record,you can find that information here.

If you read on-line and watch cable news, you will discover that everyone won the debate (except Webb and poor Lincoln Chaffee, who seems a very nice man but not up to the rigors of a presidential run). Polls, blogs, and forums all report that whoever you liked going in, you thought won at the end of the evening. Obviously, we like the sound of our thoughts echoed back to us.

Big Bill sent out an e-mail to the faithful, crowing that Hillary had swept the event, and mainstream (read that corporate) media agreed. She seemed poised and polished, having been at this ‘public scrutiny’ thing for most of her adult life, and offered an authentic and passionate moment when she discussed the Republican attack on Planned Parenthood. Hillary has an impressive record working with and for women.

On the other hand, alternative media and progressive sites all agreed that Bernie had won, having set the agenda that the Warren Wing of the Democratic party had embraced, heart and soul. Sanders led in all the casual polls and forums, and raised over a million dollars that evening,  and two more million over the next two days, all from small contributors. The loser of the evening was probably Joe Biden, who, should he still be looking for a reason to run, found none.

The Pubs behaved as expected, most of them either professing boredom or referring to the debate as a conversation about “giving away free stuff,” like Medicare and Social Security. Lindsey Graham couldn’t bring himself to watch the whole thing, Trump couldn’t figure out why everyone was so nice to each other, and Karl Rove called Bernie “an elderly dyspeptic Bilbo Baggins,” still unaware, I suspect, that those on the left — and even much of moderate America — would gladly vote for Bilbo over any of the narrowly drawn bully-boys running on the right.

Now, if things go as currently projected and Hillary gets the most caucus votes, it seems clear that she has plenty of energy and confidence for the run and, although an Establishment politician, will have the loyalty of voters on the left. If, however, Bernie captures the nomination, there is very little about the man’s politics to object to in terms of where he wants to take domestic policy, even among many Republican voters who view Hillary through a filter of literally decades of disdain. Those wobbling righties who refuse to vote for a Democrat under any circumstance might look at their own candidate and decide an Independent who wants to take on Wall Street is not so bad.

That’s the report on the political week, up to the actual topic I want to discuss today, which is character — national, presidential, and individual. I think of Eric’s discussions about the Pluto/Uranus energies, echoed again this week with the activity in Virgo, when I consider how far we’ve slid down the zip line since the sixties. The antithesis of the altruistic, spiritually-inclined anti-establishment qualities I knew as a kid is represented in the needle-swing of today’s Republican Party, whose mistrust of government verges on manic, along with a frightening disregard for intellectual discourse and the measured but secular response of science or social science.

They are no longer interested in electing the smartest candidate in the crowd, they’re going for the brashest. They have no love of religious scholarship that asks big questions seeking larger answers, they’re more comfortable with snake-handlers and creationists. They cotton to Ayn Rand’s manifesto that the superior man takes what he wants and deserves what he takes, with no mind to the ideals of the republic and its commonwealth that have provided them the freedom to think so.

And ethics? When Donald Trump declared that God was awesome  — because He’d made that wonderful golf course he was so lucky to have purchased at a heckuva  bargain — and lost no polling points, had no evangelical pastor thunder against his shallowness from the pulpit, caused no mainstream media pundit to question the ineptitude of his response as a sop to the Religious Right, it is easy enough to surmise that ethics has no place in the right-wing. That’s the same right-wing whose purity tests are so stringent that very few Pubs can live their life ‘out loud’ and pass them — and so they don’t.

Which brings me back to Tuesday night’s debate. A few things happened that made me think ethics might be making a welcome comeback. Most everyone heard about Bernie’s deflecting the heat off Hillary for her e-mail dilemma, winning him approval and applause from those who consider the issue another of the time-wasting tactics the right likes to employ. I suspect that’s where Trump would have pounced, and where he began to scratch his head at such polite behavior. Indeed, nobody was expecting Mr. Sanders’ exasperated response to a loaded question, especially Mrs. Clinton whose face showed not just relief but absolute joy.

Now we could say that Bernie made that comment based on his dislike for political posturing and personal attack, that he was just living up to his pledge not to bash other candidates. Or we might say that his answer was an extraordinarily clever hop-scotch over a Hillary-centric question in order to make way for his own message (which he then delivered). But since Bernie is not scripted, I’m going to take him at his word; an explanation given to a reporter right after the debate, who asked why he’d done it. “It was,” said he, “the right thing to do.”

Sanders typically does what he thinks is right. For instance, when asked about black lives mattering, Bernie had the right answer, which drew thunderous applause and preempted the question. In his response, he mentioned the name of Sandra Bland — the young black woman who was arrested for a traffic violation in Waller County, Texas this summer, found hanging in her cell three days later — which he’d promised her mother he would do when they lunched together recently.

The meeting was accidental, and remained confidential, despite the kind of political volume it would have engendered, much like the dust-up over the Pope’s meeting with Kentucky’s anti-gay poster child and religious zealot, Kim Davis. Clearly, Sanders’ decision not to exploit that occasion was an ethical decision that would have gob-smacked the average politico, who would have found some covert way to leak his growing bona fides with the black community, pre-debate.

Doing the right thing — despite the consequences — is within Bernie Sanders’s character, and I can’t tell you for sure that such ethical politics won’t disqualify him for the American presidency. That will be largely up to us as a culture and a constituency, able in the next months to push the nation into a return to ethical rule of law designed to meet public need, committing ourselves to that movement — or not.

I’m not bashing Hillary in this piece, as she’s doing a fine job of leaning as left as she can without cutting the threads she’s spent a lifetime weaving into the monetized politics of corporate neo-liberalism. If the left holds her to campaign promises, she may overcome her moderation to make some waves on domestic issues. I’m less hopeful about international entanglement.

But doing the right thing is something many of us have found a resonance for — some even a passion — not just in our own lives but projected into the community and beyond to government. So much that we see on a daily basis seems the wrong thing to do, institutionalized, politicized and stubbornly unyielding. So much is just plain unethical.

For instance, it’s hard to argue against a call for free (or even reasonably priced) public education when we discover that outstanding student loans amount to over a trillion dollars, a good portion of that in profit to the government, or hear of seniors dependent on Social Security having their checks garnished for back payment.

It’s difficult to justify multi-billions in corporate welfare to businesses that not only don’t need a hand, but don’t pay a cent in taxes to the nation that continues to feed them with perks and public money, while still playing with the notion of further cuts to the safety net.

It’s ridiculous to note the uptick in medical insurance and pharmaceutical costs when it’s clear that the prices being charged are “all the market can bear,” even though the free market isn’t free, the fair market is only a glimmer in a progressive’s eye, and all the market can bear is akin to Ayn Rand in perpetual orgasm. And that’s just the obvious.

It’s not the right thing to continue doing so much that we do these days, including celebrate bogus holidays that were politicized from the git-go. Since we’re just past it, let’s take Columbus Day as a likely example of how much we got wrong — and how diligently some of us are trying to make it right.

As I’ve already exceeded my word limit (!) I’ll offer a few quotes and links, for your exploration. This is a topic dear to the heart of natives of this nation and continent, and those of us who identify with them. I like what David Swanson has to say about Christopher Columbus, who we should all acknowledge was cruel to the point of sadism, possibly even a sociopath, and responsible for beginning a genocide that eliminated over 90% of this continent’s indigenous population even BEFORE the Pilgrims landed:

“Columbus was not a particularly evil person. He was a murderer, a robber, an enslaver, and a torturer, whose crimes led to possibly the most massive conglomeration of crimes and horrific accidents on record. But Columbus was a product of his time, a time that has not exactly ended. If Columbus spoke today’s English he’d say he was “just following orders.” Those orders, stemming from the Catholic “doctrine of discovery,” find parallels through Western history right down to today’s “responsibility to protect,” decreed by the high priests of the United Nations.

Evil is almost always mundane, is it not? A feisty little Italian, given to overreach, trying to impress the leaders of his country and church, while making a little stash for himself? A man not unlike some we know today. So long as we continue this antiquated notion of Manifest Destiny and colonialism, pushing ourselves where we’re not wanted in search of resources not ours — as long as we pretend that might makes right and profit is all that matters — we continue to be the anachronistic evil that infects the human race.

There are communities all across this nation changing out Columbus Day activities for celebrations of their native peoples, like Seattle’s Indigenous People’s Day. All it takes for that kind of sanity to spread is an educated population, respect for humankind and yes, a determination to do what’s right. Besides those already indicated, here are a couple more links worth your time — weekend reads, if you will — the first from people’s historian, Howard Zinn.

The Real Christopher Columbus

As Cities Give Columbus the Boot, Indigenous Peoples Day Spreads Across US

Doing the right thing is a matter of personal consciousness, of course, but it should look like, feel like, a higher calling than self-seeking and aggrandizement. An easy enough template to follow: whenever it looks like an ego-stroke, you can bet it is one.

When we live our life reaching up for that ‘right thing,’ integrity not only becomes easier, it becomes easier to notice when it’s absent. That’s where many of us find ourselves today — sensitized to what’s gone missing, and longing for it. The magic of transformation is found in doing what’s right instead of what’s easy.

If enough of us adopt that philosophy, the collective mind will change for the better, and perhaps in exercising those spiritual muscles we will find that we’ve discovered our purpose. Like Albert Schweitzer — a man of great compassion and a lifetime of service — told us, “Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing.”

It does seem to be Bernie’s thing, and a number of others I can think of, but few of them with a stomach for politics. Maybe we need to make it our thing, too, if we’re to create the personal, as well as collective, world we’re yearning for.