Balancing the Books ~ September 17, 2008
I had intended a piece for today in honor of Saturn in Virgo and to commemorate the 146th anniversary of the bloodiest single day in American history - the battle of Antiedam. On September 17, 1862, my great, great, great uncle, a Virgo, General John Sedgwick, four days after his 49th birthday, marched the Second Corps of the Union Army into a cornfield and suffered 2,200 casualties - approximately half his corps - in about twenty minutes while under the influence of Saturn in Virgo. My ancestor and many other generals and soldiers were doomed that day by failures to apply the high standards set by Saturn in Virgo. The combination of faulty intelligence, miscalculation and terrible battle planning held disastrous results. By day’s end the casualty count on both sides exceeded 22,500 killed, wounded or missing in action. My ancestor was wounded three times. Two years later, General John Sedgwick would declare to his troops that the enemy sharpshooters couldn’t hit an elephant at this distance. He received immortality in the famous last words category and became the highest ranking officer in the U. S. Army killed on the battlefield. Damn that estimation.
This past week, other gross miscalculations, speculations, incompetence, poor intelligence and faulty strategies led to a blood letting on Wall Street, an event whose reverberations continue to jostle the entire planet. What to do? What to do? First, step back from the shock wave. While in shock, feeling panic and reeling in a lack of reality, one can do little good.
We now deal with the Jupiter in Capricorn to Saturn in Virgo trine. Jupiter makes things bigger, often to the point of bursting and beyond. Saturn contracts, condenses and shrinks when applied to mundane matters. For months, I’ve contended that during this interval the U. S. Presidential candidate coming up with the best economic plan stands to win the election. I had not imagined it would be under these circumstances. As well, I reckoned that this trine begins economic recovery and ends the fiscal recession/depression. While that may not appear to be the case, I remain optimistic that the Universe forces the global economy back into something that resembles equilibrium using the collection of Libran planets. Mercury - soon to retrograde, intends to check all facts and figures thrice, now spends time with Venus and Mars. For two days or so, just before Venus dives into Scorpio on the 24th, the Sun adds its push to balance the books as it, too, tips the Libran scale - a Libran was once a unit of currency, roughly equal to a pound.
While we don’t have a lot of context for it yet, the Trans-Neptunian Object, 2003 EL61, the fastest spinning object in the solar system, was part of the economic runaway train we just witnessed. As mentioned in a recent GT, this body aligns with the Sombrero Galaxy - the galactic entity whose velocity confirmed the expanding Universe and contributed to the economic realization that not every failing financial institution can be infused with an unending stream of money. Since this body quickly turns on its axis (3.9 hours), can we expect momentum swings shifting daily economic tides potentially correlating with this period? Perhaps so.
Some claim the housing market must seek out its low point. Perhaps so. What seems more evident is that adjustments in consciousness that steer actions taken might shift things around. Perhaps so.
Pluto, now in Capricorn, has been forecast by many to be the doom and end of modern economic methods. That’s a bit more grim than I can absorb. He does rule the underworld where he greedily hoarded gems and other underworld commodities. While Neptune refers to oil, crude is created in Pluto’s domain. I suspect Pluto rules oil speculation, futures, profits etc. Let’s examine a general attitude about greed. I hear so many speculators declare losses while still in the profit zone. If one bought a stock at 5 of whatever currency measure and it rose to 15, then dropping back to ten, that person still enjoys a gain of +5 not a -5 loss. If the stock gain was not converted, technically it’s not money in the pocket and it remained “other people’s money” or Pluto’s possession.
The law of supply and demand must be reset and the inverse proportion annihilated. Imagine being hit by a violent storm, losing everything, fretting about how the insurance company will attempt to wiggle out of paying benefits and contending with rising gas prices and lack of availability though crude oil ironically dropped to its lowest level in months. I’m wondering how Lord Pluto assesses this situation.
The system seems bass-ackwards on many levels. Regardless, the class war just underwent a huge battle. It seems the upper class lost ground relative to the lower class - or the creation of Plutocracy suffered a temporary defeat.
On the 24th of September Venus enters Scorpio. This trend shall bring perspective shifts to the bottom line. Business as usual that no longer works cannot continue business in that manner. Expect adjustments. As Mercury retrogrades, a lot of ideas bounce about. I expect the next phase of carving in the economic stone will not complete until Mercury follows Mars into Scorpio, ironically occurring on the day of the U. S. Presidential election.
I defer making specific calls about economic considerations to my competent colleagues who specialize in such matters. The point I seek to render is: step back from the whirlwind and let things settle. If your hand is not forced, it might make sense to wait and see how the Scorpio transits play. Ultimately everyone on Earth has the bottom line of wanting enough to eat, a safe place to live and a secure life for the family. Beyond that, everything else is a topping. Of course in today’s society, getting ice cream with hot fudge seems an anachronistic impossibility with all the candy and such mushed into the mix. It’s not simple anymore.
Mars follows Venus into Scorpio on October 4th. Underground online news sources report that President Bush will declare on October 5th that the U. S. Presidential Election shall be delayed because of the economic emergency. Right, like that would fly. I sense that speculation is more of the rabid fear hysteria infusing the collective consciousness. Evidently the CERN accelerator start-up did create black holes - one in Merrill Lynch, the other in Lehman and maybe another yet in AIG. You see, that prophecy of doom was right! Perspective please!! We’re enduring an economic spin cycle and the washer used to clean up money has a load imbalance. The good news is, with all of this going on, I’ve not read anything in the past two weeks about the end of the world correlating with the rollover of the Mayan Calendar.
With Mars in Scorpio, I expect cutting to be the continuing trend. I would love it if airlines, instead of cutting employees, airlines would cut extra baggage charges. It makes sense that instead of subsidizing the airlines’ fuel issues, maybe repealing the tax on aviation fuel could reduce the rising cost of travel, allowing your favorite astrologer to afford visiting your local group. Maybe laws will be sliced and others created aimed to stop the vacillations. When the Sun enters Scorpio on October 23rd, Mercury will be about a week direct. This all starts to sort. It has to. I think of the economic powers that be, whoever pulls those strings, insidious folks or those just wanting to make a good living, to be like pilots flying a jetliner. If something goes wrong, they’re going to try and save their own ass.
So, as the books balance, may we all succumb to no more miscalculation, faulty speculation or fearful projections. May cool heads and visionary thinker prevail and calm the masses.