Smeared Lenses: THE WEEK AHEAD: Sep 7-13

Nobody can deny that our world is going a little ‘nuts’ these days. Our ‘informed’ societies have slowly descended into such a state of absurdity and cognitive disorder that it now seems an impossible task to both ignore or bring things back into some semblance of the cohesive sensibility we used to know and love. Who can predict which way things will turn out when so much of what we hear seems distorted by our own inability to see things clearly?

Is it because of a worldwide, silent, invisible disease that could kill any of us at any time and destroy the lives we assumed were so solid? Are we not, after all, the most technologically advanced humans of all time? How can we possibly be so vulnerable to being randomly annihilated by a virus, or by raging state-wide fires, flash floods, or random law-enforcement accidents or the actions of a crazed fellow human? Surely those things only happen to others, in those other countries or past regimes – merely statistics on the evening news or in our history books.

No matter how hard we try, we can’t ignore the very real possibility that our busy, money-centred, denatured routines are taking a severe hit. We are being forcibly reminded of this everywhere now. This current, 2020-state-of-emergency absurdity is not so sudden to us, however. It has merely escalated gradually to critical proportions ever since Pluto swung into Capricorn in 2008.

Pluto in this cardinal earth sign has come to show us how naive and obnoxiously ambitious it is of us to assume that we have been granted any level of immortality. Perhaps it is our obsession with status, money, rejection of joy and gratitude and our predilection to cynically moralise and judge everything to the point of schadenfreude which has deduced much of our humanity to a genuine hardness of heart.

Since Saturn and Jupiter also entered this harshly existential sign, we are each slowly coming to terms that perhaps there is no escape from our human frailty; that death is indeed life’s one inescapable ‘underlying condition’ and our susceptibility to sudden death can absolutely and all at once render our lives perfectly meaningless. Nobody who assumes to be even 20% ‘awakened’ to any ‘alternative’ or ‘higher’ state of consciousness, especially those more ‘spiritual’ types, can deny that the human race is now facing its most serious dilemma yet – one where extreme disintegration of our species (or at least the fear of such an outcome) can bring out the absolute worst, most rotten side of human nature.

As they square Eris, the genie of strife and discord has been let out of the bottle and there’s just no way that we can put it back. Perhaps in our self-centred arrogance, we merely forgot to be modest, thinking that everything is possible for us, that we are exceptional, that we can continue to do business the way we always have, make arrangements to travel and attend rallying campaigns, express extreme political opinions. How dare anything or anyone negate our retirement plans, cancel our journeys and strip us of our right to debate? Did we put all our eggs in one basket?

We are completely nuts… at our wit’s end. Our planet has gone insane and out of control and this online obsession we are having with idle gossip and malignant or unproven assertions, presenting unverified ‘facts’ and splodgy statistics as ‘gospel’, is descending humankind itself into an instrument of propaganda. It is certainly not reporting. It is a mania to corrupt and minimise the reputation of anyone who professes to be an authority on anything. Certainly, those who know understand what the real is epidemic here. It is our infatuation with partisan media and its flagrant attempts to manipulate us.

On some level it is understandable. Pluto’s deathly stranglehold over Saturn (straight-laced convention) and Jupiter (religiosity and academic law) have this year generated an uncompromising urge to try to rationalise and synthesise what is accepted as known ‘science’ into some form of an official narrative. Those who try to assume order and control by trying to discredit and eliminate all things abstract and abstruse seem increasingly polarising. Much of what we hear from others does not measure up under closer scrutiny. And, in the strictest sense of empirical analysis and investigation, they do not. We are in a period of utter chaos and confusion.

It is possible that, at heart, we all consider ourselves to be honest human beings in the sense that we don’t intentionally go around lying to people. Except… in so far as we ourselves are not willing to face the truth. This doesn’t make us deceptive, but it does mean that sometimes, for the sake of convenience, we indulge in going along with things that aren’t true. That’s what happens when we are not fully in possession of the truth and not willing to engage in the rigours of finding out whether or not what we are about to say is the truth.

The sad reality is that, whether we are lying to ourselves or to others, the alternatives are difficult. For often, to tell the truth, to change our opinions, to alter our actions when it doesn’t fit neatly into our preconceived plans or with our character could prove catastrophic and humiliating. Hence, we appear to be prisoners of our own hubristic ego-complexes.

The shrewdly analytical Virgo Sun’s sympathetic alliance to this harshly existential agenda that is going on in the ambitious Capricorn only lends credence and jurisdiction to any personal or ‘state-sanctioned’ campaign to pervert and distort any inconsistencies and deviations to our official narrative. And I say “our” not “their”. Our governments and other patriarchal institutions are only there because we keep supporting them, counting on them to provide us with social structure and purpose. Virgo sometimes refuses to see the forest for the trees. It harps on details, statistics and minutiae and holds a most short-sighted view in spite of the whole picture.

In short, the side of us which wants things to stay orderly and predictable is struggling with accepting all the possible unknowns and mysteries that are fiendishly encircling our globe in the form of disease, aeons of social disparity and human rights violations, wild political unrest, intellectual muddling and confusion of data, public character-smearing, schadenfreude and the ominous threat of emerging economic imbalances and currency collapse. Of course, one would argue that these uncertainties have always been present, but it is our growing awareness of these which is now reaching epidemic proportions.

This week’s story begins in the midst of the outer-planet chaotic swirl that now appears markedly beyond the steady reins of any one individual (or party).

If you are of the kind who likes to keeps things under control, then you are likely pulled (or coerced) towards the extreme of passing harsh judgements and executing plans whose consequences could hold diabolical consequences to any future expectations. Extreme moves often result in equally extreme counter-movements.

For instance, few people are comfortable with accepting that there’s now really no hope of ever returning to some preconceived or historically-defined sense of social order. None of the political systems of the 20th century (democracy, socialism, communism, fascism, etc.) seem to be working today. The ‘old normal’ is now patently falling away, and to try to argue that we can replace it easily with a ‘new normal’ is also patently naive, or at least ignorant of the myriad of variables that are messing with our currently crumbling systems.

We all have our opinions on what must be done, but these often fall apart under any serious scrutiny or debate. Managing earthy resources is one thing, but to the opinionated freaks, psychic gurus and techno-geniuses out there, those who hold old-school power appear to be completely unscrupulous, authoritarian and insane. Which invites an equally as crazy opposing reaction. In between the two extremes of light and darkness lies the solution.

Unless you are somehow centred and balanced in all of this, meaning that your interests are not too heavily invested in one or two specific outcomes for the ‘foreseeable future’, it might feel as though you’re irreconcilably torn between your delusional nostalgia for yesterday and some fancy dream (or dystopian nightmare) for what tomorrow may hold.

One thing is certain: Nothing is certain. Which leads all current expectation toward an unfortunate state of disappointment and despair.

So let’s take hold of this moment for a moment. Let’s look at the astrology:

The warring factions between the Capricorn sector, which seeks some sort of twisted, clandestine version of total domination of everything known (or else), versus Aries, whose fight is to at least protect the right to stay impulsive, do impulsive shit, whenever, wherever is starting to throw matters into a completely disjointed state of mid-cycle turbulence. We’re really only at the first-quarter phase of a two-year period of intense activity to reform our society and we have seriously hit a tumult.

Mars is currently getting red-hot as he slows down to retrograde. By Sep 9, the fiery god of war will reach 28°08′, almost the end of his domicile. Like leaving the iron on the hot coals for too long, these next few weeks will show our tempers flaring to white-heat levels.

MARS RETROGRADE: Kicking Oneself for Not Having Acted Appropriately

In Aries, Mars appears like he’s going to battle this out on his own, daring to go where no soul has ever gone before if only to test the limits of his own audacity. However, he is not alone there, for also near the end of Aries, at 24°24′, is also his famously snubbed sister – Eris, goddess of Strife and discord. Eris has been at war with Pluto lately. It’s an extremely morbid duel, one which will continue well into the next couple of years, with the mantra of ‘evolve or die’ often manifesting in the most explicitly literal ways.

The Mars/Eris alliance is pivotal in the way the rest of this year pans out, and those feeling neglected, forgotten, snubbed or cancelled will beg for an extensive explanation as to what, where, why and how things are going to work out for them. Nobody wants to be left behind in the race for survival.

Meanwhile, many of us here are aware that the evolution of humankind is undergoing a massive, forced, mandatory upgrade, and we can squabble and fight all the way to the most advanced biometrics labs, vaccine clinics, technological engineering solutions, satellite surveillance systems and cashless currency agendas, but whether we go nicely with our most futuristic masks on, or get thrown into destitute hardship for resisting and wanting “rights” we may never have possessed in the first place, is irrelevant. In the end, we are all going to be faced with one very crucial decision – the choice in whether to evolve or to perish.

As his fervour intensifies through September, Mars’ impish resistance to being controlled and constrained is met with enormous social pressure, frustration, harsh judgements, ‘selfishness-guilt’ and state-applied inhibition at the mean hands of the apoplectic Jupiter/Saturn/Pluto stellium. In Capricorn, the peer pressure and “doing the right thing by society” has become a fear-sponsored tyranny, leading towards an environment of hyper-policing and super-shaming.

Following the T-square to Venus, the dehumanisation of natural, individual urges and interests such as intimacy, sex and the ability to see and touch one another from a place of instinctive love and affection seem quaint and irresponsible. With every new level of restriction, we are sensing the gradual obliteration of romance and spontaneity. Those of us who sympathise with the wave of collective fear and its increasingly hard-line measures are playing into a state-dominated tyranny somehow. This is how all great periods of global authoritarianism commence. Gradual forfeiting or denial of basic human liberties creates monsters which will devour us whole. This is one way of ‘liberating’ our individual souls.

Needless to say, with a stationing Mars (Wednesday), the individual urge to act impulsively could erupt into violent displays of anger. This could express itself either as domestic violence, street-brawling, or even widespread spontaneous rioting, which itself only succumbs to the auspices of martial-style laws and secret, systemic surveillance, which, due to its clandestine nature (Pluto is invisible to the naked eye), we might not even know is occurring.

“You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you mad.”

~ Aldous Huxley

As Mars comes to a station, so does Jupiter (Saturday). These two planets form a dead midpoint over Pluto this month, just as the Mars/Pluto midpoint sits on Saturn. These, and other similar midpoint pictures involving Eris are absolutely gruesome. Just observe how extreme or arbitrary applications of force expand into wildly subversive or vigilante activities, provoking legal and martial reactions within all sectors of society. Tremendous powers being used against one another calls for tougher, more extreme force. This is often the only way society changes in drastic ways – through the application of brutal force. Needless to say, it can feel a little scary and traumatic, particularly if we get all caught up in it.

Meanwhile, the Mutable Last Quarter Moon in Gemini forms a tight T-square to Neptune, producing a heightened sense of awareness to the chaos and confusion that’s going on. Here, we observe that the more we try to analyse and decipher the news-reports, facts, numbers, data and information that are circulating among us, the more we can slip into altered states of disturbance and dismay.

Mistakes and misunderstandings are happening ever more frequently in our ‘trusted’ media sources and on ‘official websites’, where information is supposed to not only be reliable but affects our critical decision-making processes. More and more often, these mistakes are huge and embarrassing ones, reflecting a now-common but highly corrosive atmosphere of mind-manipulation and deceit. Under any degree of scrutiny, most of the ‘facts’ with which we are being presented commonly confuse the term “confirmation” with “unproven assertions” or “unverifiable claims”.

This is because it is impossible to present any absolutes. The deeply-felt impact of nebulous and ill-definable exterior planets like Neptune, Pluto and Eris are creating chaos, distrust and strife – surreptitious forces behind all disagreements, divorces, scraps, skirmishes, fights, battles and wars.

Strife and discord, by its very nature, cannot be brought under control. Once the “apple of discord” is thrown into the picture, all order and control, however total and absolute in its attempts, is rendered ineffectual.

The outcome of this pan-demonic chaos can not be predicted. The only ‘absolute’ it offers is the utter devastation it will leave in its wake. No alarms and no surprises there. It’s what humanity is totally up for (and you are so ready for it).

Blessings, and have an amazing week xx

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