A Brief Look Ahead ~ Autumn 2022

Over the course of the next few months and especially in the several weeks ahead, forces between change and stability, tradition and innovation will be locked. This creates a global pressure cooker of events that can only be relieved if something is done to release steam. This time frame includes the season’s political unrest which is magnified by larger, slower forces in play which are yet to culminate. This rare combination of planetary influences creates enormous amounts of rebellions and volatility in politics, weather, stock markets, and global conditions. If you’ve been watching the news – you see it.

Saturn represents structure, something needed to function in the world and much like the god, Saturn (Cronos) who ate his children because he was unwilling to hand the baton to them, he began to self-implode until he released them while fighting with Jupiter (the planet of hope and possibility thinking). In an uneasy comparison to this myth, inflexible and unbending formats of government and business are also imploding as Uranus (the planet of innovation and breakthroughs) pushes and pushes for change. When Saturn refuses to change, life forms crumble. In a hard aspect to slower moving Uranus (which has precedence), foundations corrode, systems crumble and chaos ensues, forcing alteration but not without a fight.

Uranus is the cosmic creator and only when stymied, creates extreme eruptions. If old forms (Saturn) are willing to bend even a little, then Uranus is wonderful in presenting magical opportunities with unforeseen innovation, – and change that works for everyone. When old orders refuse even a scintilla of new thinking, Uranus pushes. This the stuff of revolution- both with internal, psychological changes and/or seen on the global stage.

A few examples of this cosmic performance are playing out globally. The women and many of the younger men in Iran are protesting and rioting in the streets. The women are cutting their hair and burning their hajibs. This is in response to the brutal killing of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who was wearing her hajib, but not ‘properly’ wearing it – according to Tehran’s Morality Police. After three days in a coma and after she was arrested, she died. The Morality Police said she had a heart attack. Others disagree – saying she was beaten because of this. This sparked a revolt that is still going on in Iran, with many risking arrest and some their lives.

An interesting factor is that Uranus is currently in the feminine sign of Taurus (where it also was in the 1930s). It has just arrived at the middle degrees of that sign – where it ‘has legs’ and continues to gather momentum for about three more years.

A year ago, I presented a forecast on what might come in 2022 and one of the things I mentioned was that we were going to see more women stepping up and rebelling in a feminine revolution and fighting fiercely for rights that are slowly being stripped away. This is happening all over the world and one of the upshots of this intense energy right now in the USA is that more women are speaking out, registering to vote as Roe versus Wade was recently overturned. More to come on that next year.

In Russia, after Putin’s announcement that he was drafting 300,000 more Russians to continue his illegal war in Ukraine, Russians are scrambling to either leave their country or protesting in numbers – also risking being killed or jailed. This is another manifestation of Uranus (the cosmic messenger) locked into a tight square with Saturn (old fixed, ideas of government that is unbending and rigid). Frankly, Putin’s threat of nuclear war is not a threat (my opinion) and the eclipses coming up on his chart in late October and early November are remarkably like the eclipse where Chernobyl blew up many years ago on April 26, 1986. These as well as the ones in April and May 2023 are particularly troubling and in this author’s opinion that something is about to break in these next few months. How, I do not know – but the astro-climate seems perched for surprises in October/November 2022, late January/early February 2023 or April or May 2023.

In America, right here in California and just a week ago, as Hurricane Ian was wreaking havoc in Florida, I was working on a project in Northern California. I had decided to take a week away to focus on an upcoming project for classes I am scheduled to teach in 2023. I was up at Fort Ross, California near Gualala. After working steadily for a week, I decided to take my last day and meet a friend of mine for our long overdue lunch. As she was leaving to return to Fort Bragg, I noticed one of those rare sightings these days – a delightful community bookstore in Gualala.

It was an eye-opening afternoon in that as I was finishing my review of this great bookstore, I came upon a table of books that the very sharp owner had laid out for her patrons to witness firsthand. This collection she displayed was just a small part of the much bigger list of banned books banned in many school and community libraries in the USA. She had done this because that week – September 18 to 24 – was the “Fight Banned Books” week.

It is important to note that the list of banned books lists has grown exponentially since 2021. It is one of those things we read about in the news, but don’t always check out – and here, being in the right place at the right time, I saw just a small portion of what is considered banned in our educational libraries throughout the United States. It was shocking to say the least.

This is NOT the first time in history, where books have been banned. It happened in Nazi Germany (during the last Uranus in Taurus cycle mentioned earlier). There have also been book bans in the United States e.g., during the McCarthy Era of the 1950s during what was termed the “Red Scare’. Playwrights and writers were banned for ten years: losing their rights if they were deemed to be Communist or accused of being Communists. Some of the books banned during that period were the books about Robin Hood (which started the craze) because Robin Hood ‘robbed from the rich and gave to the poor.’ Prior to that it was considered a classic. Other books banned were by Ernest Hemingway, Langston Hughes, Thomas Paine, Upton Sinclair, Lillian Hellman. For more on this list and what was done go to: https://www.lmelliott.com/lauras-blog/knocked-over-feather-mccarthy-and-book-burning

But now I was in Gualala, and it was September 2022, and seeing firsthand what was happening now with more ferocity and greater reach due to internet access. The concerted effort to ban books, which is really a knee-jerk reaction to Saturn’s fear of the status quo being upended, was right in front of me. Many were the classics we were required to read when we attended school, one of them being George Orwell’s, 1984! With that said, I want to share just a few of the names that are currently on that list. It was disheartening and frankly, terrifying. It is important to see this, and so what follows are just a few of almost 1600 banned at the present time:

• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
• Ulysses by James Joyce
• Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
• All the Harry Potter books (banned because of a satirical article in The Onion which people believed!)
• Lord of the Rings by Tolkien

And, of all things, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, written during the McCarthy era whose story is about people in society who are not allowed to read books and only listen to large TV screens that spew government propaganda 24/7. If they are found to read books, the Firemen are sent to burn their books and they are punished!

There were also many books banned that covered diverse topics such as gender identity, LGBTQ (which is not part of this discussion in today’s newsletter), but many were at an elevated level of traditional classics as you can see from this partial list. Even a famous little children’s book, “Where Did I Come From” by Peter Mayle, a non-threatening explanation of the ‘birds and the bees’ to children is banned.

Why is this important?

Because fear that stems from not knowing all the facts, or, being stuck in a certain position without looking at another viewpoint or being afraid of change – even though life is all about change, locks people and countries in such a vice that life becomes untenable. Lack of dialogue and extreme views leave no room for compromise thus forming the seeds of collapse in any society as free speech and thought are stripped away. The freedom to wake up to new viewpoints, some of which might even work (Uranus) and letting go of things we already know are not right and we know require change and restructuring and are unwilling to bend even a little (dysfunctional Saturn) creates chaotic environments of extreme violence and mass tragedies. This all stems from being fearful of the future.

Whether it is banned literature, reduction of women’s rights, or pro-life positions that stop abortions but will kill children when they are born by using assault weapons while not educating or feeding them, these illogical positions are indicative of decay in a society that can’t move forward (my opinion for which you may not agree, but we still have free speech and thought at this writing).These thoughts plague me as I see the situations cropping up around the world just as this stressful Saturn square Uranus begins its long-fixed walk through our lives while Pluto goes direct in a few days, forcing many of us to make choices that are not easy but very much due. When fear is so part of a culture’s fabric, nothing changes, and things blow up. How unfortunate that we change only when that happens. When all along we felt it ‘coming.’

This is a cycle in which all of us must muster up some courage, think even a little differently while creating dialogues where all viewpoints are expressed in safe ways thereby avoiding the inevitable explosions we face. This is the way to deal with this particularly important combination of planetary configurations.

It is now or never. Complacency is not the choice. It is time to use the brain cells lying inactive and speak up and stop being frightened and pull courage from the deepest parts of us and moving forward because as a friend of mine used to say, “The past is another country.”

If you aren’t aware of the banned book list which is at about 1600 publications right now, go to https://www.nypl.org/blog/2022/09/14/banned-books-week-2022