Tuesday, May 23 | What We Cannot See I THINK we're in the middle of an invisible turning point right now, going back about two weeks. I say this in the midst of some culture shock, both of plunging back into American society for the first time in nearly a year, and spending time with very old friends whose viewpoint is mainly political and removed from a backdrop or context that has become increasingly meaningful to me, which is astrology. Doing astrology every day it's easy to take it for granted. Writing to an audience that is either familiar with astrology or expects it to be discussed is part of why. What I'm finding interesting is what shaky ground I feel like I'm standing on when that viewpoint is removed from the discussion. It's pretty difficult to explain why an astrological idea matters at all to people completely unfamiliar and uncurioius about the whole field. Tonight in the midst of a discussion, I tried to interject, "Okay, you can say that, but Pluto is going into Capricorn..." and I realized how ridiculous it sounded. But what was stranger was feeling how baseless the whole political discussion is without an astrological context. Not that I could ever prove or even demonstrate that -- but astrology does add a wider view, and a birds-eye view, and a sense of the energy of what it means to be Now. One of my other big culture shocking experiences tonight (after my first full day Stateside) was Fox News. I've read about Fox, I hear about Fox, I know about Fox, but it happens that I've never seen Fox before now; I would know because I would recognize it, and I've never, ever seen anything like this. I happened to doze off on the couch while it was on, so I had the benefit of an hour or so only semi-filtered by my cognitive mind. Then I started to hear stuff that was so weird and so interesting that I had to wake up and pay attention. And I was just as confounded, really, stunned not only by the political perspective that seemed to be no perspective at all, but by the emotional pitch of the commentators and the way they treated their guests. Basically, if you had views they described as "liberal" you would get the snot beat out of you, like it was a sport. Liberal meant dared to have your own opinion, or take a sensitive view, or express an idea that defied doctrine. The segment that stood out was their discussion about protestors at Boston College turning their backs on Condoleeza Rice on Monday, when she received an honorary degree and gave an address at commencement. What I can say is that the people they chose to speak against the war were sincere, intelligent and emotionally grounded -- and these people were then presented as a freak show, almost pornographically. The way Fox handled it was to focus on the protest and the protestors, then to attempt to ridicule them. Anything that raised a question or revealed a viewpoint that went against their idea of "mainstream" was smacked like a pinata. They went so far as to characterize people who voted for John Kerry as radicals, but also hypocrites, because Kerry supported the war. I kept trying to parse out a viewpoint of the network that I could identify. And finally, I could only find it in the emotional tenor of raging contempt for anyone who would dare to question the Fox News version of consensus reality. Oh, and everyone who worked for the station seemed to wear an American flag on their lapel. One thing about those dumb-ass flag pins that Bush, Cheney and apparently the entire Fox "News" team wear that really surprises me is how their attempt (collectively) at branding the Red, White and Blue, is never questioned by anyone. Why does Bush wear the American flag? Are we really supposed to have that big a question of what side he's on? I keep forgetting to ask, so I can't complain. But just imagine for a moment Tony Blair wearing the Union Jack on his suit jacket. It would be ridiculous, like putting American officials on TV with a big yellow finger pointing to them that says "Patriotic!!". The tone of the rhetoric is so desperate as to belie something. It would not even be recognizable as "conservative" in another era -- say for example the Vietnam era, because it's so shrill as to belie its lack of a base in reality. When you have no base in reality, you really need to keep a poker face, but in our era, you just go on the attack. Anyway, about the week we cannot see. I'm getting the information a lot of different ways, but one of them is Dick Cheney's progressed horoscope. I published this chart for the first time when Cheney had his hunting incident, coming within a millimeter of killing one of his friends in a hunting accident in Texas. I noticed that Cheney's progressed Moon was about to progress from Cancer to Leo, and then go over his progressed Pluto on May 11. A progressed hit of the Moon to another planet really goes on for about four weeks as an exact aspect and then functons for a month or so on either side, where the pre- and aftereffects can be seen. The exact contact, to the arc minute, was about 12 days ago, so we're still in the peak. Something has changed or is changing. Something is different and getting more different. We may not see the effects right away, but an aspect like that cannot have no demonstrated expression. The delicacy of this moment is not lost on me. I am as hopeful as anyone that the truth will come out, but I'm also aware enough to know that all I can hear is the thumping on the other side of the wall, and that I get the clearest picture from the planets. Some of that thumping involved the whole Jason Lepold situation. My sense is that there is a desperate struggle for power going on behind the scenes right now. It's not being reported, and we're only getting the public relations screen thrown in our faces. But a lot is moving back there, something is developing, and we're in the middle of a critical moment. It's a feeling like something is about to happen, but in reality something is happening. Here is Cheney's progressed chart, back to 11 May, the exact Moon-Pluto in Leo contact. http://planetwaves.net/chart.php?c=cheney_progr_may11x