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marsandchariot · 3 years

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Some thoughts on the natal chart of Heaven’s Gate

William Lilly (b. 1608) popularized the natal chart as a reflection of the individual, but ancient astrology was utilized more as a lens for global (relatively speaking) events like war, agricultural cycles, weather, and the longevity or character of royal dynasties. I love looking at charts in general but I especially enjoy thinking about events’ inceptions as individual narratives that are socially metabolized. Stories jump out of event charts differently than they do from individual charts. If you are someone who considers your own birth chart or the charts of others, make sure also to explore the dates of different events in your life (books, films etc are also fun to examine in this way). Any moment you select is subject to the same archetypal cast of symbols as is an individual life.

This is a bit Aquarian in the idea that we can examine the social through a zooming out from or the collapsing of individual psychologies into macro, mythic surfaces. In keeping with Aquarian themes, I watched a bit of the new Heaven’s Gate doc last night. I wouldn’t say I’m fascinated by cults etc etc, but I can’t help responding to a birth time, and Heaven’s Gate has one! For me this is an ideal reading, where most of what I know about Heaven’s Gate is largely through osmosis. It wasn’t until after watching some of the first episode that I learned that the buildup to what we consider the culminating event was actually ~20 years in the making. I have not studied the progression of--or figures central to--the movement. Some people do their best work when they are immersed in research of a subject; I myself tend toward flash or impressionism, so I want to capture this phase before I continue watching the documentary.

RISING NEPTUNE IN SAGITTARIUS

I’m thinking of this placement less as a moment of inception (the way we might read it in the chart of an individual, as the experience of separation from the body of the parent, becoming a discrete entity) and more descriptive of the way we might encounter the cultural phenomenon of Heaven’s Gate at first glance. It may feel rooted in occultism or obscurity—Sagittarius carries notions of philosophy, education, intellectual magic; I’m thinking of The Magician card and its depiction of a single figure controlling all the elements, convening heaven and earth in their alchemical process of discovery. We often characterize movements as centering around a single idea, or a powerful persona, as with Charles Manson or Jim Jones, but there is always a larger atmosphere to examine. Neptune asks us to look beyond superficial characterizations of events in order to understand their mundanity in equal measure to their mystique. Foucault refers to all research as archaeological in that it is a type of unearthing or excavation, a making-sense of objects that may no longer exist and so deliver not direct answers but different articulations of fragmented meaning. What is important too is that Neptune may represent the illusion of origins and root causes. From Stalker (1979), “I dig for the truth, but while I do, something happens to it.” Obscurity is not dispelled, but re-oriented.

CAPRICORN MOON IN 2ND HOUSE opposite SATURN IN CANCER, 8TH HOUSE

We might think of the moon as the id or the unconscious. Liz Greene describes the difference between the sun and the moon as the difference between aspiration and unconscious emotional need—the former describes an active mode of attainment or embodiment, while the latter is a pulsing lack to which one cannot help but respond. The moon is in detriment in Capricorn, in mutual reception with Saturn, who also experiences detriment in Cancer. This opposition is uncomfortable—the emotional needs are difficult to meet. This difficulty may describe the dispositions of those drawn to the Heaven’s Gate movement; Cancer in 8th may describe one who doesn’t feel “at home”—like the Gnostic subject, who pledges allegiance to the god of an entirely different realm, and must suffer alienation in this realm as a result. The moon’s placement speaks to an unsettled sense of self, a need to strive or work toward a comfortable psychological situation. This moon does not “have enough”—not necessarily in a material sense, but they do feel dispossessed, as if their history and culture do not belong to them, or they do not belong to the history they have been given.

ARIES JUPITER IN 5TH HOUSE

The 5th house speaks to creation, production, a making manifest. What Heaven’s Gate purported to give was a way forward—a strategy, a directive. It doesn’t take particularly complex analysis to guess that for the emotionally listless or dislocated, this resolve would have been seductive. Joan Didion’s collection, The White Album (1979), describes this generation far more incisively and expertly than I will attempt to do here; instead, picture the Aries Jupiter as striding confidently forward without fear, of translating subjective experience into universal understanding, resulting in decisive action. This was not just an idea, but a way to manifest one’s presence in the world; not just about joining a collective, but about using the language of collective experience to articulate higher individual selfhood.

GEMINI MARS IN 7TH TRINE LIBRA MERCURY + PLUTO IN 11TH

With two Geminis exiting the White House next month, it feels important to acknowledge the more toxic stereotypical Gemini qualities at play in tearing the country apart for the last four years (though of course the foundation for such a conflict is deeper-rooted and further-reaching than a single presidential term, as it is unrealistic to attribute the momentum of such movements to simply a demagogue). The Trump argument for a stolen election is one element of what has been described as “mass political disinformation.” Gemini cares less about the truth, and more about how a truth is expressed; less about the effectiveness of an idea, and more about being pleased by its shape. And they won’t be pinned down, held to anything they’ve previously said, if in some later context that thing no longer serves them (if you watch enough Bob Dylan interviews you’ll see what I mean—don’t ask him about folk music, don’t ask him what he believes, don’t ask him where he’s from—if you never tell the truth, then it’s almost like you’re never really lying, you’re just saying things, creating momentum through language).

We can see this stereotype on the one hand as, yes, members of Heaven’s Gate were lied to and manipulated. Gemini’s ruler, Mercury, is a slick operator in Libra. Libra quells doubt, seals holes, soothes unease—all the dynamics involved in the appearance of equilibrium or social harmony. We can see Mercury’s conjunction with Pluto as the god of communication acting in service to the god of death. The rhetoric of Heaven’s Gate is designed to ease its members toward radical sacrifice. The 11th house speaks to communities, groups, friends—the social world, and, in this case, social organization and purpose.

The 7th house is the house of the Other, and is where we may look in an individual’s chart to read their close 1:1 relationships. It would have been important for Heaven’s Gate to discredit the friends and families of their members, to emphasize that these are the people that the members should no longer trust and confide in. The Gemini stereotype here, of manipulation and dishonesty, is projected onto the Other—a Them—to consolidate the self, an Us. Mars here makes the disconnection from loved ones particularly dramatic. Mars wants to cut, to define, to separate; it is the individuating act. It is also worth mentioning Lynn Bell’s description of Mars as the protector of the moon, of the unconscious; if the moon feels threatened, it is Mars who steps in and takes over. If an increased involvement in Heaven’s Gate results in members’ loved one’s questioning their involvement, then it is the deep-seated sense of alienation (the moon) that is heightened, ameliorated by a severing of ties (Mars). If Gemini speaks to duality or two-ness, Mars is about making that division manifest.

LEO VENUS IN 9TH

The 9th House in Hellenistic astrology represents temple work or religious duties, and so for readings of individuals alive today we typically adapt this meaning to describe academic or professional institutions, but here we can really embrace the ancient associations. This is absolutely how the institution of Heaven’s Gate represented itself—transparent, loving, and in loyal service to the good, and to the happiness of its members. The “gate” itself feels as if it refers to a 9th house structure (thinking of heaven elsewhere described as a “kingdom”), with Venus at the threshold guiding members toward an embrace of institutional values. I haven’t looked at the charts for Ti and Do, but it feels significant that they are “the Two”—a platonic pair whose relationship forms the wellspring of the movement, which feels very Venusian. We might place The Lovers card beside the card of The Devil, and see the same figures in both cards. The Lovers’ equivalent in the zodiac, of course, is Gemini.

VIRGO SUN IN 10th

If the moon is the id, the sun is the ego—the conscious experience of the self, the path that is chosen, the disposition by which the self feels most connected to worldly perception. The 10th house, “the crown you wear,” positions the ego identity of Heaven’s Gate; what it thinks it is, as a public organization that is meant to efficiently serve its members—to construct and carry out a plan. It is interesting to think of Virgo and Scorpio on either side of Libra, two weights in balance on the scale; this also describes the Persephone myth, in which Virgo descends to the realm of Scorpio and returns with divine knowledge, incurring the changing of the seasons; whose being is intricately tied to the rotation of the earth. Virgo’s responsibility, then, is to bear the fate of the world in their minute actions. Heaven’s Gate in this way positions itself as serving humanity through a practical, incremental system, which relies on everyone “doing their part.”

SCORPIO URANUS IN 12TH

To me it is difficult to find more aptly conflated synonyms for death, unless maybe you replace Uranus with Pluto. Uranian matters are dramatic, revolutionary. They speak to transformative change—as does the 12th house, as does Scorpio. This placement imbues Heaven’s Gate with such an inevitability of death, but the kind of death that is cosmically resonant in that it has the power to change how death in this context is understood. This 12th house, “the bottoming out,” feels like a reservoir that feeds into the Sagittarian Neptune, the sediment that must be continuously re-worked or rediscovered in whatever form it takes in its periods of hibernation. Neptune in Sagittarius may represent the fossilization process of Uranus in Scorpio. I may have more to say about this once I finish the documentary, but I am looking forward to watching for impressions of how “death” is constructed, or re-made as an artifact of social, extraterrestrial liberation.

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politicalfilth-blog · 7 years

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Is Your Government a Democracy or a Totalitarian State?

We Are Change

Article via The Daily Sheeple

The USA is already a Totalitarian State with a Ministry of Propaganda that works overtime to generate a flimsy illusion of “democracy.”

Is your “democracy” (or republic) actually a Totalitarian State? That is, is it a “democracy” or “republic” in name only? To find out, take this quick quiz.

1. Does your government (federal, state and local) seize citizens’ assets without due process? In other words, the rule of law is dead; the state is the law. If the answer is yes, Your “democracy” is already a Totalitarian State. The answer in the USA is a definitive “yes.”

2. Does your government impose tyranny by complexity? If so, the average citizen lacks the wealth and connections needed to fight the seizure of private property without due process or recourse.

In the USA, the answer is “yes,” the government is a tyranny by complexity.

3. Is your government essentially “for sale” to wealthy elites? If the answer is yes, Your “democracy” is already a Totalitarian State–or more accurately, a fascist Totalitarian State.

4. Does your government spy on its entire citizenry? If the answer is yes, Your “Democracy” is already a Totalitarian State. The answer in the USA is a definitive “yes.”

Well, you have your answer: the USA is already a Totalitarian State with a Ministry of Propaganda that works overtime to generate a flimsy illusion of “democracy.” Please read the following links if you seek documentation of these systemic abuses of centralized power.

Orwell and Kafka Do America: How the Government Steals Your Money–“Legally,” Of Course (March 24, 2015)

Government in the USA is expropriating the private property of its citizenry without due process on a vast scale. I have provided documentation of this extraordinary reality many times over the years.

The various levels of government have a variety of “legal” (haha) means to steal your property without due process or recourse: civil forfeiture, absurdly expensive traffic fines that lead to jail sentences in the local debtors prison-gulag, forfeiture of assets, including land, should government agents find the marijuana plants they planted on your property (surprise!), the state steals your money in a bank account and notifies you after the fact that the state suspects you owe it taxes, though they have zero evidence of that claim–and on and on.

The courts place no limits on the central state’s power, for they are simply one side of the same statist coin, and so we have a totalitarian kleptocracy that in true Orwellian fashion claims it is a functioning “democracy”:

Criminalizing Poverty For Profit: Local Government’s New Debtors Prisons (October 20, 2009)

“Upholding the Law” or Simply Theft by Other Means? (October 26, 2009)

Theft By Other Means II: When the State Steals Property, Is It Not Theft? (November 10, 2009

State Over-Reach: Stripmining the Citizenry for Fun and Profit (November 13, 2009)

Death of Donald P. Scott (Wikipedia); (source):

“In October of 1992, millionaire recluse Donald Scott and his bride of two months, Frances Plante Scott, lived in a storybook wooded valley in the mountains high above Malibu, Calif. Trails End Ranch is almost completely surrounded by state and Federal park land, and the neighboring government entities had made numerous attempts to buy out Scott and annex his property.

Stymied in their attempt to buy the Scott ranch, government officials hit on an alternative plan. Contending an officer had seen “marijuana plants growing under the trees” during a drug-seeking overflight, agents from various jurisdictions gathered quietly outside the locked gate to the ranch in the morning mists of Oct. 2, 1992.

After greedily studying the maps of the 200 acres of prime land they were told they’d be able to grab under federal asset seizure laws should they find as few as 14 marijuana plants, they cut the chain on the gate with bolt-cutters and raced a mile up the dirt drive to the ranch, complete with police dogs.

Frances Scott was in the kitchen, brewing her morning coffee, when dozens of men in plainclothes and brandishing guns — no badges or warrants in evidence — came swarming in. Understandably, she screamed for her husband, still asleep upstairs.

Donald Scott, 63, came hurrying down the stairs, a handgun held over his head. The officers shouted for him to lower his weapon. He did. They shot him dead.”

Your government in action–completely legally, of course. I hope you approve. The irony of tragedies like this is that when young Americans faced similar “law enforcement” tactics in the late 1960s and early 1970s via COINTELPRO and other blatant violations of constitutional rights, we were written off as radical hippies who were a threat to something (certainly not democracy, but “something.” Like perhaps an illegal war and an out-of-control secret government?)

Now that average citizens are facing similar tactics, they might find it interesting to study the COINTELPRO campaign of the FBI and other “law enforcement” officials against the anti-Vietnam War movement three decades ago.

According to attorney Brian Glick in his book War at Home, the FBI used four main methods during COINTELPRO:

1. Infiltration: Agents and informers did not merely spy on political activists. Their main purpose was to discredit and disrupt. Their very presence served to undermine trust and scare off potential supporters. The FBI and police exploited this fear to smear genuine activists as agents.

2. Psychological Warfare From the Outside: The FBI and police used a myriad of other “dirty tricks” to undermine progressive movements. They planted false media stories and published bogus leaflets and other publications in the name of targeted groups. They forged correspondence, sent anonymous letters, and made anonymous telephone calls. They spread misinformation about meetings and events, set up pseudo movement groups run by government agents, and manipulated or strong-armed parents, employers, landlords, school officials and others to cause trouble for activists.

3. Harassment Through the Legal System: The FBI and police abused the legal system to harass dissidents and make them appear to be criminals. Officers of the law gave perjured testimony and presented fabricated evidence as a pretext for false arrests and wrongful imprisonment. They discriminatorily enforced tax laws and other government regulations and used conspicuous surveillance, “investigative” interviews, and grand jury subpoenas in an effort to intimidate activists and silence their supporters.

4. Extralegal Force and Violence: The FBI conspired with local police departments to threaten dissidents; to conduct illegal break-ins in order to search dissident homes; and to commit vandalism, assaults, beatings and assassinations. The object was to frighten, or eliminate, dissidents and disrupt their movements.

I’ve published many first-hand accounts of the kleptocratic predation of the state of California. I invite you to read this carefully:

Welcome to the Predatory State of California–Even If You Don’t Live There (March 20, 2012)

First the state steals the $1,343 and authorizes its parasitic predatory bag-“person” Wells Fargo Bank to steal another $100 for handling the state’s theft.

A week or two later the citizen is notified of the theft as a fait accompli. Now the onus is on the law-abiding citizen to attempt to reclaim his own money from a distant, all-powerful Kafkaesque state agency. How can this be legal in a nation supposedly operating under rule of law?

Let’s be very clear about what happens here in America on a daily basis:

1. The state (or other agency of government) steals citizen’s money without due process.

2. Then, in a move akin to the executioner making the condemned buy his own death bullet, the state authorizes the “too big to fail” corporate bank which received billions in taxpayer bailouts to steal $100 from the citizen for the digital theft of his money by the state.

3. If the citizen needed that money to pay rent, buy medication to stay alive, etc., tough luck, Buckwheat, the state of California has your money before they notify you of the purported tax liability and now you enter the Kafkaesque insanity of pleading for a “refund” of your own money from an agency designed to thwart transparency and the reclamation of your own money.

So if you get evicted and are living in a cardboard box and pass away due to inability to buy your meds, hey, the State of California’s political class and special interests couldn’t care less: they want your money and the rule of law doesn’t apply to them.

If you understand that a purported tax liability is one issue and due process is another far more important issue, then you understand that we now live in an totalitarian nation where “rule of law” is only invoked at the convenience of the political and financial Elites for propaganda purposes.

The state of California has three basic methods of looting law-abiding citizens:

1. The old “you didn’t pay a $25 filing fee, the fine is now $499 which we took from your bank account.” Never mind you have the cancelled check endorsed by the state, proving they received it and cashed it; the Board of Kafkaesque Authority claims “we didn’t get the check” and loots your account for the $499 (true story.)

2. “Fishing expeditions” where companies and citizens are dunned for taxes and fees they might owe, though there is no evidence they do in fact owe fees and taxes. I received many emails describing these fishing expeditions, for example, merely having a license is “evidence” that you must have unreported income.

3. Enforce all sorts of dubious claims, most importantly:

A. That anyone collecting a pension from work performed while residing in California is liable for California taxes on that pension, regardless of where they live;

B. Any income resulting from something invented in California must be reported as income in California, regardless of where the income is derived from or where the inventor now lives.

In other words, residency has no meaning. Any income remotely connected to California–for example, you had the idea while residing in the state–obligates you to pay California income tax on that idea in perpetuity.

You know the dominant emotion that the government at every level generates in law-abiding, taxpaying citizens? Fear. And for good reason.

Welcome to the United States of Orwell, Part 1: Our One Last Chance to Preserve the Bill of Rights (March 26, 2012)

Welcome to the United States of Orwell, Part 2: Law-Abiding Taxpayers Are Treated as Criminals While the Real Criminals Go Free (March 27, 2012)

“I received a letter last year that we owed the state of California’s Franchise Tax Board $90,000 for taxes in the year 2008. We replied to the Franchise Tax board in a similar manner as RT stating that:

— Did not reside in California in 2008

— Did not file a State income tax return in California in 2008

— Did not have any outstanding tax issues with California in 2008

— Did no business in California in 2008

— Owned no property in California in 2008

The CA Franchise Tax board responded by putting a lien on us in the state – fortunately, our banks and assets have no business in CA or I am certain our accounts would have been robbed as well.

After a great deal of uncertainty and angst, I found an accountant in CA who advised us that we needed to file a complete CA tax return for 2008 even though we did not owe any tax. We filed the return and received a response that we owed the state $625 to cover the State’s collection fees. We paid the fee and within two weeks received a “refund” check for the $625.

On reflection, we felt as if we had been “held up” by some powerful gangsters and if it had not been for an honest tax accountant we would have suffered much financial damage.”

Welcome to the United States of Orwell, Part 3: We had to Destroy Democracy in Order to Save It (March 28, 2012)

Welcome to the United States of Orwell, Part 4: “Consumer Protection” Just Another Federal Reserve Power Grab (March 29, 2012)

The Dodd-Frank bill, like Obamacare, is tyranny by complexity. Consider the Glass-Steagall Act, at 37 pages in length, and the 2,319-page monstrosity of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.

If you still doubt the government is the tool of elites, please read this:

The Purchase of Our Republic (by Y. Falkson) (June 5, 2014)

Centralization and sociopathology are two sides of one coin: the central state:

Centralization and Sociopathology (May 21, 2013)

At the lower levels of the kleptocracy, employees of the government enrich themselves by legalizing their own looting.

Pay Our Pensions Or We’ll Throw You in Jail: the Legalization of Looting (March 19, 2014)

“Improving Public Safety” and Theft By Other Means (January 15, 2010)

What happens to once-legitimate governments that devolve into totalitarian kleptocracies? They lose their legitimacy (“the Mandate of Heaven”) and fall.

Smith’s Neofeudalism Principle #1: If the citizenry cannot replace a kleptocratic authoritarian government and/or limit the power of the financial Aristocracy at the ballot box, the nation is a democracy in name only.

This article was originally seen at TheDailySheeple.com and was authored by Charles Hugh Smith

The post Is Your Government a Democracy or a Totalitarian State? appeared first on We Are Change.

from We Are Change https://wearechange.org/73506-2/

#We are Change #We Are Change

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