Divine Redeemer Catholic Church, Colorado Springs. “I was having continuous thoughts of suicide. Sometimes it was just images of myself jumping out the 10th floor window at my office job, popping into my head unbidden. That’s not a sin. But if I stopped to think it over, if I looked over the edge and thought about jumping, that was a sin. The line between the unbidden image and the intentional thought is kind of hard to discern. Mostly, I just felt bad all the time about feeling bad all the time. Ugh. Also, my misery made me doubt God, but not believing in God is a sin, too. So I was going to confession every week, always confessing the same things: I don’t believe in God and I’m thinking about killing myself.” — H.D. Photo by Stacy J. Platt, from the series #exvangelical; all rights reserved. Exvangelical is a community for those who have left evangelicalism or fundamentalism to share stories of their experiences with others and receive support in a safe, affirming, private space.
The astrology of Tuesday’s congressional election is set within the wider context of many astrological events involving Pluto and Capricorn. Tuesday’s astrology does not stand on its own; there’s a long arc of history involved, because the United States is in its Pluto return, an event that happens just once every 250 years.
The Pluto return looks and feels like a great unraveling, a restructuring of society on every level, and even a kind of civil war. Any student of history will tell you that the United States is often divided and polarized, though this comes in peaks. We’re at one of those peaks now, and it seems to be getting worse.
Rocky Mountain Praise Church of God, Colorado Springs. “I think the biggest thing I realized was my lack of navigational skills. I was given a bible to answer life’s questions. My parents would flip a coin and pray before any important decisions. That prepared me very little for a future of much of anything. I’m still stunted by that lack of understanding and feel it often in my professional life.” — K.S. Photo by Stacy J. Platt, from the series #exvangelical; all rights reserved.
Everyone is feeling it. There’s a sensation of instability, which is overlaid by a power struggle between points of view that seem to be irreconcilable. Half the country is worried about a caravan of sick and injured refugees “invading” the United States, and the other half is watching sea levels rise, with our government in an agonizing state of conscious denial.
Awaiting the Rapture
And there’s another factor, which I cover in an interview on tonight’s Planet Waves FM: Trump’s base is made mostly of Dominionist or Evangelical Christians, who are ready for the end of the world. They are awaiting the rapture or the revelation or Armageddon or the apocalypse, and whatever brings it on the faster is allegedly doing Christ’s work. This cosmology is similar to radical Islam, which is basically a spinoff of fundamentalist Christianity based on the Book of Revelation.
This sounds ridiculous to a reasonable person, though I suggest you consider the extent to which this is driving the insanity of our times. You cannot reason with people who expect to fly up to heaven at any moment. You cannot reason with people who think you’re going to burn in a lake of fire because you’re not virtuous like them.
The U.S. Pluto return fully engages in 2022, though we’ve been experiencing its effects since the summer of 2008, when Pluto first entered Capricorn and the United States went into a financial crisis. This was precipitated by a structural collapse of fraudulent financial instruments that took down banks, insurance companies, the real estate business and many other structural elements of our country, with global impact.
There are two major stops on the way to Feb. 20, 2022. One is the Saturn-Pluto conjunct of Jan. 12, 2020; and the other is the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction of Dec. 21, 2020. Those two elements, each epoch-defining on its own, describe the year of the presidential election, and are currently active as background factors.
Internet Consciousness
There’s one other factor of the environment or background that we have to be mindful of: digital consciousness. The insanity that we are witnessing and feeling is the product of digital infesting every last aspect of our lives. New media change us, and change society. We live within a maelstrom, a swirling vortex of energy that is not letting us out. The problem is, most of us are clueless; we just think we’re texting.
New eras in the media environment often come with war and aggressive behavior by individuals. The shift eliminates our previous context for identity and how we fit into reality, and humans really struggle with that. We don’t respond well to the unknown, or to biological forces — and those are present at full strength right now.
First Evangelical Free Church, Colorado Springs. “One of my earliest memories of terror and religion was when my mother forced us to go to an exorcism at the church because she believed our family was cursed with ‘generational demons’. It was a terrifying experience to see people shaking and vomiting and screaming knowing I was next. Luckily the church sent us away and said we were too young. ” — J.H. Photo by Stacy J. Platt, from the series #exvangelical; all rights reserved.
Digital is now well into the robotic or artificial intelligence stage. We hear discussions every day about what robots can do, we interact with them constantly (every algorithm is based on robotic consciousness) and many are eagerly awaiting the day when computers will make our decisions for us, drive our cars, and do all the heavy mental lifting.
This is the abdication of consciousness, of choice, of awareness: and if there’s anything that could rightly be called inhuman, that would be it.
Tuesday’s Chart: An Existential Crisis
Many of these factors are described in Tuesday’s chart. There’s a concentration of planets in Scorpio, which is evoking the sex-death complex that freaks most people out. We are one day before the Scorpio New Moon, which has the sense of something imminent closing in.
That is the mood driving the election, on both sides, red and blue. Though analysts say the stakes are being described in “apocalyptic terms,” that is symbolically and psychologically true for the Evangelical camp, and a scientific fact for what you might call the Secular camp.
The problem here is that ideals really mean nothing. Power and money are at stake, and politics is never really about the people; it’s about the people who want to gain or hold onto power. That in turn is usually about money, which is a direct derivative of the sex and death aspects of Scorpio.
So the chart describes something that feels desperate. To compound this, Jupiter, which sometimes offers wisdom and protection, is anaretic in Scorpio: it’s in the very last degree of that sign, about to change signs to Sagittarius on Thursday. That has an edgy feeling, which might be moderated by trying not to take things too seriously. Hey, life is but a joke, right?
The Neptune in Pisces Factor
There’s one last major factor of the background that I’ve been remiss about discussing: Neptune in Pisces. This is a delusion factor. We live in a culture that even on a good day is driven by fantasy: the illusory world of film, TV, internet, drugs (prescription and recreational), alcohol, sugar and the rest.
Normally we might look to something like Capricorn for information about how we would ground ourselves in practicality at such a time, and that’s the scene of the Saturn-Pluto earthquake unfolding in slow motion.
Most humans have not developed the capacity to take up the question of their own existence any more than what it takes to eat, have shelter and perform bathroom-level maintenance on their bodies.
However, right now, we’re being called upon to develop just that kind consciousness, on the level of how we relate to the world around us, and to society, and what we’re going to do about the problems that we face.
I know — it’s a stretch.