Dear Friend and Reader:

Yesterday once again the world was greeted by a mass shooting. This one happened in Paris, a place free from serious terrorist attacks since the mid-1990s. Tweets and therefore news reports rippled out within minutes of the incident. It became a global event, which I will define as spreading in a very short time to every continent including the laboratories in Antarctica (where people spend a lot of time on the Internet).

Human contact at Place de la Republique Wednesday night, where crowds gathered in support of the slain journalists and in declaration of freedom from fear. Photo by Danielle Voirin.

Underneath the perceptible story of what happened — a shooting by Islamic militants at a satire newspaper that made fun of everyone, including Islamic militants — there is the invisible part of the story.

That is how each of us must cope with being exposed to this event, miles away, with no real ability to respond in a meaningful way.

When other living creatures are in distress, the natural response of sane, humane people is to take action, to do something to avert the danger. But we’re dangling out on the end of the line here on the Internet, far from Paris, with exceedingly few ways to take action.

The energy shoots across the wires, through the satellites, across fiberoptic networks, the 3G and 4G networks, wifi and Bluetooth, runs into your central nervous system and hits a kind of dam. There’s no place for the energy to go; no intuitive way to respond. That is the helpless feeling you get when news like this happens. It’s that sense of psychic and emotional overload that’s so difficult to describe, and so challenging for sensitive people. [The Onion once did an excellent parody of this right after 9/11.]

In Paris, people did something healthy, and something that they do as part of their culture. Tens of thousands of Parisians left their houses and poured into the streets, gathering at Place de la Republique. This was ostensibly a political gesture in support of free speech and to inform the shooters and their sponsors that “we’re not afraid.”

Really, it was an opportunity for mass grieving, and to personally witness that other people felt something similar. It was a way to respond, in body; to make eye contact; to feel the warmth of humanity, even under duress on a cold night.

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Tarot decks from the inventory of the late David Roell at the Astrology Center of America. Photo by Eric.

Dear Friend and Reader:

It’s taken me 14 years to get a handle on the 21st century, but I finally feel like I’m making some progress. One thing that I will say is that I’m learning how helpful it is to look to the past for some information about where we are today. It may not be the ultimate guide, but if you want to know where “here” is, it’s a good idea to know where you came from and how you went.

That includes the astrological past, and it includes the past as told by eras when one communication medium collided with another one. Fortunately there is an easy intersection of those themes, as told in astrology, media studies and social history.

In 1964, in a time much like our own, when many things were changing very fast and few people understood what was happening, a soft-spoken English professor, a Canadian fellow named Marshall McLuhan, came out with a book that explains how society has become a product of its media. It always does, he says, and if you want to understand what society is becoming and why it’s becoming that way, look at how people communicate. Look at their technology. That will tell you the story of what is actually happening.

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Dear Friend and Reader:

When Robert McCulloch said the words, “no probable cause exists,” it was 8:25 pm. He is the St. Louis County district attorney who revealed that a police officer was not charged with a crime after killing unarmed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in August. That is, not charged after firing 11 or 12 shots at him, hitting him at least six times.

A demonstrator sat in front of a street fire during a protest in Oakland following the grand jury decision in Ferguson. Photo by Stephen Lam.

This is, as we all know, part of a pattern of white police officers killing unarmed black youth with impunity.

Grand juries seem ready to indict just about anyone except a police officer who has killed an unarmed person of color.

As I said in my earlier coverage of this issue, we are talking about the badge being a license to kill. It was never deigned that way, but in effect that’s what it’s become.

At no point did McCulloch state the actual reason that police officer Darren Wilson believed that his life, or someone else’s life, was threatened, therefore giving him legitimate reason to fire his weapon. And incredibly, no journalist who later questioned him asked about that issue. If there’s an elephant in the room, this is the one. We all agree that police officers and even civilians have the right to use deadly force — if life is threatened.

So in order to determine that Officer Wilson did not commit a crime, we would need to know what his reasoning was. And this was left out of the story, and from what I’ve read from his testimony, he failed to explain it to the grand jury.

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Dear Friend and Reader:

Saturday, Nov. 22, is the Sagittarius New Moon exact 7:32 am EST (12:32 UT) — and it got me thinking. Years ago, a Sagittarian ex of mine said to me, “You’re the only person who’s never judged me for being who I am.”

E.T. with his heart light on. Image: Universal Pictures.

He was a creative, sensitive poet-type and was having trouble reconciling his authentically non-monogamous side with the part of him that truly desired to settle down and start a “traditional” family. Not everyone he dated was comfortable with the tension that dichotomy generated, or appreciated how hard he was trying to be true to himself.

We tend to think of Geminis, the sign opposite Sagittarius, as being the ones who can’t decide between their options. Sagittarius is attributed a more singular focus, represented by its symbol: a centaur (half horse, half human) shooting an arrow into the sky.

But what if it’s not so much indecision, as a case of “getting it all” on one level — getting that everything’s connected, that we’re all one, that it’s all love — and then just wanting it to work on the ground the way they know intuitively that it should? There’s something very compelling about this kind of Sagittarius when you meet them. Unfortunately, much of the world just is not operating on that level. And that can be very painful for them — and those who care about them.

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