Do “Signs of the Times” Exist?

When is a sign a sign, especially “of the times”? Whether they are religious or secular, when it comes to disasters and climate change issues, most people are inclined to adopt very either/ or  positions in which both/and has no part. Arguably this risks missing something rather vital and distorts perception of any possible ‘”signs of the times” when insistent crises and disasters present themselves to troubled public questioning.

It should be obvious that many current disasters are manmade, everything from overfishing the seas to fracking the earth, from polluting the air to laying waste forests destabilizes  ecosystems and climates. Only special economic interests or super fundamentalist determination to perceive every disaster as a divine punishment  will dispute the obvious fact of a high measure of human responsibility. And in turn, only the more globalist style of politics keen to increase the powers of authorities and generate action at all costs, will be quite so keen to  keep issuing warnings even when it may be unclear whether there’s a problem more with global warming or cooling.  

Despite affinities of sorts with New Age and Green talk of Mother Nature’s  “anger”, when radical Christians speak of God’s wrath in nature, no position is perhaps more dismissed. It is so including by most Christians as it appears to contradict teachings of God’s love and concern. This dismissal nonetheless risks putting people at variance with the possibility of ever reading any  “signs of the times” at all.

Biblically and prophetically any warning “signs” are often associated with amplified disturbances in nature and increased disasters – floods, fires, volcanoes, quakes, pestilences, even as in Revelation to the extreme. How and why, it gets asked, is there such an identification of divine wrath and love to the point some feel it’s akin to an  S/M relation that many today would prefer rationalized away leaving the last word to the bare facts of materialist science. For such as Kathleen Raine (Prince Charles’ poet guru) the deity of Revelation is a devil god, (though paradoxically she wrote a hymn to Shiva, the destruction god, as needed deliverer from modern breakdown and chaos!).

ORIGINAL BELIEFS

 The affirmation “I believe in all things visible and invisible” is a part, if widely ignored, of the Christian creed. It nonetheless belongs with an important  item of original biblical belief,  namely that not only does  a whole parallel spiritual world exist but, at some level, God indwells and upholds all nature Col 1:15,16). And creation itself groans and travails towards redemption.(Rom 8 :17).  Just as humans are threefold, body, soul and spirit, so too is all creation and this may affect how one sees and interprets nature’s activity.

Through the lens of the spiritual a quake, say, is not necessarily  just a measurable shaking of the earth recorded by a seismograph but an event we  might in some cases sense engaged a wider framework of reference with a symbolism or messages in light of its name, place,  intensity,  timing  and prior  regional associations. (A challenging, perplexing case of apparent synchronicity that has assumed the status of a classic in some circles is the strange case of a whole history of disasters on or near the time America has placed pressure to divide Israel, something which runs counter to biblical principle . See https://facingperiloustimes.wordpress.com/2011/09/05/when-usa-tries-to-divide-israel/ ). Whatever, prophetic/biblical forecasts of upheaval usually seem extreme and cosmic, their strength and repetition seemingly designed to impel attention. They do not just register another event that media may safely ignore as it (and the average preacher) often reassuringly tends to do with even quite strong phenomena.

From the standpoint of especially any belief in a Fall, the relation of God to humans and world is basically one of suffering and separation. What most people and religions and mysticism consider contact with Ultimacy is a relation to personal and/or world soul (the anima mundi or nature of classical thought). It is not a relation to the  spirit and the divine perfection itself. This can only be reached, if at all, under special conditions involving not least some degree of faith and repentance. These conditions if continuously ignored lead to the hell space which is the fullest absence of God, the furthest point from God where God is experienced as the spiritual fire that God is but with no admixture of mitigating and blessed elements.

Asked  concerning the fate of those who died when the tower of Siloam fell, Jesus doesn’t allow the victims were necessarily especially guilty but that without repentance (metanoia, mind change) anyone could suffer their fate  (Luk 13:1-5). If everyone is potentially at risk in this way it is because everyone is more or less “separated”.

Given the divine perfection (“holiness”) it follows that at a point of crisis, especially at any end of era time [ 1], God is most present and most speaks to society not as reassuring loving support and easy rescue but as absence, as a withdrawing, a suffering, perhaps judgemental force that may make for a certain  helplessness  the prime realization and basis of any return to God – one thinks of the Bonhoeffer paradox, that the only God who can help you is the God who can’t help you. Or not obviously help, or not help the troubled many who have long lapsed from God. But the process of divine withdrawal that determines so much in a given generation can be  considered  on its own terms as more or less natural and automatic.

Evil in the world, including not least the exploitation and destruction of the earth, also “hurts” the same Creator who supports nature and is separate from evil. Accordingly, in times of extreme strife, evil and godlessness, God is in withdrawal and the general and almost taken for granted protection of people and nations through  the divine presence decreases (divine “wrath” above all signifies divine absence).

NATURE GROANS AND TRAVAILS

Nature shifts, groans and travails as a result….. even if, like a receding wave, withdrawal anticipates a still stronger comeback. Such is basically the prophetic/apocalyptic picture in which the dark time of the Antichrist and Tribulation represent the point of greatest divine withdrawal from a seriously disturbed earth ahead of a Second Advent which introduces a Millennium with its radically harmonious nature and peace.

While major issues of prophecy are beyond present scope, the crucial point is that it is wrong to dismiss all possible relevance of prophecy and “signs” due to what is effectively a one-sided materialism or a scientism that does not see further than the bare facts of any event.  

 For Jesus “Signs of the Times” do exist and are meant to be read as surely as we reckon to gauge patterns of weather (Matt 16:1-5). Today however this will not happen where there is a refusal to believe in any level of truth beyond the  realm of bare fact and the visible. It is not a case of being anti-science but of allowing that truth is multivalent, that symbol and poetry have truth and their own value not to be dismissed in the course of events.       

NOTE: (1) As indicated elsewhere on this site and McCleary’s Alternatives, I submit we are in the dangerous transition from the biblical age of grace which is equivalent celestially to the age of Pisces, and the age of Aquarius which is being entered, so far painfully, through an expression of its dark side.

DEMOCRACY AND VIRUS

[DISCLAIMER: I don’t oppose vaccines as such and have always taken them but don’t intend to do so for Covid. Given my medical record it would be inappropriate. Also, known to me personally are cases of persons  suffering serious side-effects within hours of taking the shot and then they find there is unwillingness to acknowledge the damage done as it doesn’t fit favoured narratives. But beyond these issues there are those of democracy. Never intending to write on this subject I have  only done so in exasperation at reports out of Melbourne such as insulting, insensitive remarks of former premier Bob Carr about refusniks. Accordingly this isn’t a deeply source-citing article which as an author and academic I would prefer, but as a lot  touches on common sense, logic and reason which even the facts of science are not immune to, the statement can stand ] 

PROBLEMS WITH TRUTH

At school a mathematics teacher would remind us that “figures can’t lie but liars can figure”. A  similar kind of wisecrack formula could well be applied  to scientific and media pundits in relation to the current health crisis. Amid this not just lives but democratic values are at stake through a virtual censorship of opinion and debate at a time when such could usefully be enlarged if policies are not to threaten  present and  future social values. 

There are too many points at which, if we are honest, the current narrative around Covid and managing it doesn’t quite fit and begs questions. It’s been the same from the very first and still somewhat applies as regards the true origins of the blight – how accidental or political and deliberate were they?  

Currently it is insistently stressed the only way out of the woods is through being jabbed even though those places like Israel, Ireland, Iceland and Singapore with highest rates of full vaccination have some of the highest hospital admission rates for Covid  for the fully vaccinated, while undebated are how  effective the natural means to immunity that dissident doctors have proposed to the jab, might be.

There isn’t much that can’t be disputed around most elements in the management of the pandemic like the real value or harm of mask wearing. But average policy doesn’t proceed as though the data meant much as opposed to imposing the will of leaders at all costs. If  there is the politicization of the subject some have alleged from almost the first,  this has been helped, it seems, by the great clout of the dubious  Dr Fauci world of WHO (World Health Organization) whose involvements with China raise questions.  (Fauci has been both for and against imposing masks without clear reasons).

It has been said thousands have died in America because WHO disapproved use of the hydroxychloriquine which Trump was mocked for claiming success with, but which even Britain’s prestigious Lancet medical journal came out in favour of – and later retracted.  WHO also opposed use of ivermectin – yet a WHO doctor in India has been on trial for her life for opposing its use and again allegedly losing  lives unnecessarily (genocide in effect it’s said) given the (affordable) treatment has enjoyed success.

Just today a Houston doctor promoting ivermectin has been suspended for promoting “misinformation”, a favourite almost compulsory media word for any dissident opinion https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/texas-doctor-touted-ivermectin-covid-treatment-suspended-rcna5588 How more contrary can  persons, regions and reports be? If you want to be seriously shocked and surprised about what and who you are being required to trust your health with, consider this most memorable of reports from this brave investigative journalist in India. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYIJxoh7gqw

DIS AND MISINFORMATION

But normally in health issues if the question is a really serious one like treatment of a cancer condition  second opinions are recommended and sought. In the current pandemic  second opinions that could well be considered a democratic right and the ideal norm, are discouraged and ever less allowed. This doesn’t  bode well for the future of society at any level.

In a minor way I first registered there could be some problem months ago after listening to a youtube by that  entertaining royal commentator Lady Colin Campbell. Though she was due to take the jab herself, she was uneasy about management of the pandemic, mentioned the Great Barrington Declaration from some Harvard  doctors advising interested viewers to sign in their support. I was never able to do this over several days and it seemed I was blocked.

I am an occasional and minor user of Facebook, not cultivating followers. I did however post a couple of links to  feature articles I thought might prompt one or two interesting opinions in reply. One was about the distinguished Thai German virologist Dr Sucharit Bhakdi who (like many German doctors) has negative opinions re what he calls the “experimental” vaccine that he especially believes should never be administered to children and whose ingredients could have long term health effects for anyone. The other  article was about another distinguished (Nobel Prize winner), Dr Jean-Luc Montagnier who similarly questions the whole project of widely administering the jab which may even spread virus variants more than real cure. Anyway,  I was taken aback to receive big brotherish Fact Check stamps over my innocent messages – these issue, I gather, from companies that make and market the hoped for cure-alls.

This kind of intervention may or may not be something rare, but more disturbing, according to a recent Guardian report that actually got through on the MSN Net news, internationally dissident doctors, scientists and activists now complain of death threats, and women of threatened sexual assault, for expressing their views. If so, what does that say about democracy today under the pandemic, and what might it say about the regularly dismissed claims of conspiracy? Can the threats  arise from no centres of one-narrative conspiracy at all? In this instance I chance to have record of the relevant report’s link which I had sent to a friend. It was https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/world/scientists-abused-and-threatened-for-discussing-covid-global-survey-finds/ar-AAPtJGr?ocid=msedgntp  but this can no longer be reached.

FAR RIGHT PREJUDICE OR LOONEY LEFT IMPOSITION?

Aided by standard media reporting bias, any alternative views are nevertheless liable to be dismissed as anything from “selfishness” if a person doesn’t want to be jabbed, to “far right”  conspiracy  theory or “disinformation” for almost any reason. But how often have these dissidents, whether silly or sensible (and many refusniks are educated people, nurses, teachers, doctors who may be well read in the subject), actually been quoted or interviewed? And with society half cowed by an unrelenting fear narrative – “cases” and “infections” get referred to as though sure-fire fatalities which however represent a minority among them – few by contrast will dare or  be allowed to speak  of left wing rubbish and bullying attitudes like that of former Labour Premier of Victoria, Bob Carr. He recently proposed any unvaxxed persons are stupid and if they fell to Covid should pay for all treatment and care. 

Current Victoria Premier, left wing Daniel Andrews and so far the world’s biggest most efficient semi soviet tyrant of lockdown, despite his shocking personal record in politics including controversial dealings with China, is not besmirched or dislodged for this, as he should be. Left wing Premier of Queensland Annastacia Pałaszczukhas has acted with despicable, arbitrary cruelty as in the case of children of a dying parent they came half way round the world to visit but were refused to see even briefly. Dictator Dan wants a “vaccine economy” in his state  and if  report is true, outside Australia celebrated left wing philosopher Noam Chomsky has suggested anti vaxxers should be jailed or starved into submission.  nea

MATERIAL AND SPIRITUAL

With looney left  near fascist opinion circulating at a time of resented mandates being imposed, it should hardly be surprising and hardly deemed merely eccentric that some are seeing shades of the apocalyptic Beast System which will seek to impose the Mark and refuse buying and selling to those who reject  it (Rev 13:16-17). (The jab while obviously  not  the Mark itself can seem like a prepping towards it, a  move towards general surveillance with tracking and tracing for all –  world domination with a sanitary excuse as a group of dissident Spanish doctors  has it. That behind current arrangements there are gratuitous elements of anti – religion is surely certified by the treatment of some clergy in especially Canada in a variety of ways   such as  when, with absurd strictness, the likes of  drive-in services have been prevented or charged with transgressing social distancing.

Unacceptable though attitudes  along Chomsky’s reputed line are, they would be less so if the actual cure was all-round more clearly reliable. Rarely heard is the reasonable question, why is the unvaxed person stubborn, “selfish” and anti-social? If the jabbed remedy is so effective, the jabbed person should not suffer the virus at all or very minimally. The reality is that the jab doesn’t prevent transmission  so what is more likely to occur and sometimes has, is that the unvaxed will catch the virus in the vicinity of the jabbed in confirmation of the angrily denied claims of Nobel prize winning virologist Jean-Luc Montagnier that launching the fast invented vaccines on society can spread the virus and variants  of it rather than prevent them. 

Vaccines are of two kinds, therapeutic and prophylactic, the former diminish the strength of the illness if you have it, the latter hopefully prevent you catching it. What is advised and increasingly ruthlessly mandated would seem to be only hopefully and at best and in many cases therapeutic – necessarily so or else how to explain figures and cases of infection among the immunized of highly immunized societies?  ( See this very latest admission from even Fauci https://www.msn.com/en-au/health/medical/fauci-says-covid-hospitalizations-rising-among-fully-vaccinated-people/ar-AAQS7tT?ocid=msedgntp )

Though the vaccines usually work therapeutically,  it is still extreme to present it as a final necessary answer because there are questions, already suggested by recourse to boosters (which could well become annual or bi-annual events!), that it may be they are efficient at the expense of the greater immune system over time and permanently so. For this I can cite a statement that amounts to something  https://www.naturalnews.com/2021-10-24-take-covid-vax-never-full-immunity-again.html I also note this – it used to be the superstitions “misinformation” of the ignorant to suggest there could be problems for the DNA, but something of the sort is now conceded https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Unt03UBhbU&t=133s

I don’t mean to suggest that Covid is not an ugly disease one should make all efforts to avoid, but looked at sociologically and psychologically it would  seem to ride upon some measure of fear-mongering and exaggeration in which every case/infection is mentioned as though it was the automatic threat and fatality that it isn’t . It ignores that annually people do die by the thousands including from the flu whose numbers have diminished under the pandemic, while many who do die of Covid are often in the older age group while America’s very high diabetic rate has some connection to its high pandemic fatality rate.

THE QUESTION OF ALTERNATIVES

Out of New Zealand (which until recently has been freer than Australia in the report of dissident views), the Jacinda Ardern idea we are not safe unless everyone is safe, i.e  immunized to the last person, is between dangerous and ridiculous – the principle would need to apply to any illness we might ever have. It is moreover to push a falsehood and virtual idolatry of the vaccine that only a  materialistic society would quite fall for and a dull church go along with, to propose there is no alternative to the saving vaccine which like the Mark you must oblige society by submitting to. 

There are at very least two alternatives that pass virtually unmentioned and untried. If western  society were not so godless and its churches asleep, a day of national prayer along biblical lines would have been instituted. But even without a scrap of faith there should still be advice towards achieving a high level of purely natural immunity (which however some parties may not wish if the the larger hidden purpose is a bridge towards globalist surveillance tracking just everyone under a new world order). Early on while they were a little more heard, dissident doctors recommended  various vitamin cocktails like daily Zinc, Vit D (1000 IU) and two tablets of Vit C. This would supposedly either prevent infection or, if you fell victim but kept at it, especially the D –  though the C would help with Covid’s respiratory problem – this would  diminish the effects. Being cheap like Ivermectin may not have helped this approach to affairs!

 It’s all very well to charge anti vaxxers with “far right conspiracy theory” or talk of deliberate population culls, but if you dismiss all alternatives to the jab, might you yourself  not care enough about humanity and democracy to grant scope to all possible measures that could offer hope to many or be a way out –  given some people’s histories immunization could be risky. To be jabbed or not involves the most fundamental rights, bodily rights..And with rights come responsibilities.

The one thing that could most reasonably be held against Covid anti-vaxxers is that they didn’t take a few precautions which is something they could easily do in line with the above. And to especially religious people who would trust in God alone either to be not infected or to be so mildly enough to have obtained natural immunity thereafter, I would answer they presumably reckon to teach their children hygiene against attack from  germs without making that a faith issue.

But it’s not just the refusniks who should take precautions. Society as a whole if it is to remain democratic in fact and attitude should be more willing to inquire concerning its leaders and experts who can be far from always consistent, logical or open about their aims. Australia as against some nations and societies has adopted a particularly radical line against the virus. The average citizen has for the most part taken on board whatever they have been told and been subject to uncritically, not inquiring into what could undo aspects of their democracy and permanently ignoring how little globalism is favourable to democratic values. One feels the society has listened to too many pied pipers and acted like lemmings who make their way to the precipice. It really needs to stop.  

 

THE DEFAULT AFTERLIFE (thoughts around Halloween season)

Halloween falls on the 31 October and Mexico’s Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) on November 2^nd.  Years ago I was in America at Halloween, a festival more celebrated there than here in Australia or the Ireland which brought the festival to the New World. I have also experienced Mexico’s Day during a prolonged stay in that country. Both left   me with strong impressions.

Mexico’s colourful Day left me surprised and rather appalled. The kind of superstitious, materialistic devotion to forebears for whom everything from favourite cigarettes to beer would be left displayed for their enjoyment or to invoke their favour, bespoke an as good as wholly pagan culture that  centuries of Catholicism had never quite touched or taught. And as a result  almost inevitably this blends today into such as the ghastly cult of Santa Muerta, Saint Death. Various social and religious outsiders like narcos will pray to her for favours  including revenge against rivals.

To be Christian at all is to have a mind towards God and certain faith convictions about resurrection and the life everlasting. Specifically Mexican culture with its history of death linked cults may not have been helped by the ubiquitous crucifixes with their dead redeemer as opposed to empty crosses more redolent of  life. Regardless, for St Paul (1 Cor 15:14) failure to have faith in Jesus’ resurrection with all its implications is equal to no belief at all.

So where do the Mexicans imagine their dead relatives who still hanker for cigars and favourite sweetmeats exist? Possibly in some non biblical medieval purgatory which if it existed would still be as materially  hard to reach into as paradise. Perhaps as in the Homeric world they imagine a general hades to which all ancestors are automatically gathered rather than any paradise.

American  Halloween is a more humorous affair, but only to a point. Though I like  the carved pumpkins that’s about all. Much of the rest can be so ugly and ghoulish that just aesthetically it’s hard to see the attraction. It’s not like, say, Chinese fairy lights but is at root dark. Every year the questions arise should Christians participate and the answer must surely be no, as the words below from the late Satanist Anton la Vey render clear enough. Even disregarding his words, it remains the case that Christian pleasure can never be well based around death and what’s ugly.

American Christian broad mindedness in this area tends to be of one piece with growing  belief under the inclusive society umbrella that there can be more than one way to God. Adding to confusion here, but of a kind that some would prefer to leave unresolved, is whether such inclusiveness means you can be positively saved by Krishna or Buddha etc (even though in fact example Buddha denied the existence of God a personal self and preached an auto-salvation) or whether you mean that  God can save those who only knew and responded to God  as culturally presented to them.  It’s a big and subtle difference. On the one hand it is undeniably biblical that there is only one saviour and one saving name (Acts 4:12),  but the same source teaches that in the case of ignorance God deals appropriately (Acts 17:30).

Placement of belief becomes a more vital issue if and when people consider (which living in the moment many don’t) where and with whom they reckon to spend their afterlife – if anywhere at all. A prime minister of Thailand told me on the authority of his education in the royal monasteries that when he died someone or something else would be born, not him, who would receive the effects of his deeds (karma). It’s hardly a future I feel too many would  look forward to and it’s beyond high time western Christians realized in what ways Christianity is distinct. I give one short cut to this here: https://mcclearysadditions.wordpress.com/2019/01/22/christianity-and-the-jupiter-difference/

Nowadays a sentimentalized popularized,Christianity has it most people not criminals go to heaven. But this is a purely modern idea. Early, original Christianity in a rare agreement with pagan faiths, taught that the general destination was the Hades that Christianity called hell and a place of darkness. For pagans, everyone and everything from Lesbia to Lesbia’s sparrow went to dark Hades/Hell like the rich man in Jesus’ parable of the Lazarus and the rich man.

A few heroes or initiates of Eleusinian or Orphic mysteries might hope to rise higher, but the gods didn’t even reckon to answer prayers for immortality. Accordingly a belief, open to all, of  resurrection to the heaven of God through Jesus was a promise that gave Christianity huge potency when it didn’t obtain the derision of such as immortality-denying Athenians. Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God said St Paul (1 Cor 15:50). A new spiritual body alone is fit to communicate with the perfections of God the Father/Creator for whom one needs to choose or almost enlist. The present, fallen world belongs to the Satan (the accuser) but willed belief attached the believer to Jesus’ work of progressive reclamation of the world from evil.(1 Joh 3:8).

St Paul speaks of Corinthians being baptized on behalf of the dead (relatives?)  (1 Cor 15:29) This is one of several under-emphasized statements indicative that not everyone who is not a clearly signed up believer automatically goes to hades as fundamentalists across the centuries have maintained. Nevertheless it remains true and is dishonest to deny that, as a broad generalization, the Christian position is that without faith and a will directed towards Jesus as redeemer, hades/hell can be considered the default residence of the imperfect or indifferent soul. As in the case of the penitent thief on the cross, neither goodness nor evil alone determine the fate; human faith and placement of the will matched with divine grace have a lot to do with salvation in a spiritual organization of things which allows no one to boast(Eph 2: 8,9) they simply earned and deserved their lot.

The former atheist Howard Storm who claims to have visited and been delivered from hell,(My Descent into Death ) in his style refreshingly free of Christianeze  has stated that however rough and tactless their treatment of the message, evangelicals who preach “Repent and believe the Gospel”(Mk 1:15) are nearer to the truth than some of the others. I am inclined to agree. Current talk about Christianity as service, tolerance, acceptance, culture , and all those good things one wouldn’t say it shouldn’t represent, are hardly the real item; or not if these things are not going to be presented more “evangelically” and in relation to metanoia (repentance) and placement of faith and will upon a Christ redeemer.

Most churches fall short here. Eastern Orthodoxy is almost a line in sublime experience of culture and ritual that scarcely knows how to preach anything -it will never call for Putin to reform!); Catholicism, little shamed by blots on its past like the Inquisition, has for centuries been geared towards controlling the masses and imposing religion by political and legal means with much of the religion directed less to God, salvation and biblical basics than communications and favours from Pope, Mary, saints and angels; Lutheranism by contrast is almost demythologized out of existence; Anglicanism is about compromise with almost anything going; Methodism is a branch of socialism  and social action; the evangelical/fundamentalist churches half drown in minutiae of biblical exegesis and overblown arguments as on women and gays. It’s an uninspiring picture in which treatment of the afterlife is effectively shoved to one side.

Which is why compromises with the likes of Halloween and Day of the Dead still thrive and mislead the public about who we are, what doing and where going.

SECRETS AND SURPRISES OF THE HARPAZO ZONE

This article will take you on a ground breaking journey of discovery into the workings of prophecy that you would not have imagined and I wouldn’t myself until very recently.

A DISGRACED  FALSE PROPHET

Easily one of the most harmful and misleading false prophets of the century was Harold Camping (1921-2013). Famously he promoted belief in an apocalyptic event, the so-called Rapture or harpazo (snatching away and transformation of prepared believers before the apocalyptic Tribulation with its rule of a false anti Messiah ). The anticipated event, massively advertised at great cost across America, was to occur on May 21 2011.

Some lost homes and fortunes and nearly life and sanity over the matter when it didn’t deliver. But if we can understand something about this fiasco, it can provide an unexpected key to some things worth knowing, particularly at this time when seemingly apocalyptic events proliferate and signs of the end of days are often forecast. And it should help clarify the often ignored question of the relation of religion to celestial signs, symbols and the astrology often dismissed as irrational or biblically verboten.

Camping’s deception and its strength was not just tied to some date miscalculations from AD 31 as the year of crucifixion – it was AD 30 as per majority scholarship. More esoterically it happens that his birth sun on July 19th at 25 Cancer was in direct negative stress aspect to a sensitive point in a zone of great significance for Christianity (one that would likewise prove a stumbling block for Camping’s spiritual predecessor, Edgar Whisenant (25.9. 1932) who disillusioned many with his 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Be in 1988 ). But what is this “zone” and how could one hope to know or prove anything about it? Be patient and I will explain much that’s revealing at this time of dire events and urgent prophecies.

A RECENT ANNULAR ECLIPSE AWAKENING ISSUES

I have long claimed to possess working charts for both the birth of Jesus and Christianity [1] and just recently they have been suggestively “active”. For example, the last solar eclipse on 10^th June at 19  Gemini hit on Jesus’ degree of the asteroids Tempel (Ger. Temple), Jonan (Jonah) and DNA. Near that time Israel suitably enough gained a new PM more intent than his predecessor in regaining authority over the Temple Mount and keen to see a third temple rise. Then, outside Boston from a boat named Ja’an, a fisherman was swallowed and spat out by a humpback whale in an event some in Israel and America regarded as messianic.

DNA, prominent at the first Easter, looks to issues of bodily change, translation, resurrection. With the eclipse emphasizing it there could be, and was, an uptick in the people increasingly expecting this radical change across a variety of dates, helped by the fact the eclipse was “annular” which some automatically associate with a marriage theme. Certainly there were considerable numbers of people anticipating harpazo , especially for the solstice on June 20^th. They had plausible reasons given certain frames of reference I needn’t detail, unless to mention the latter did not include in a positive way what I will call the harpazo section or zone – in fact Venus (things and persons much desired) was negative But what is this zone?

A SPECIAL ZONE

I haven’t kept diary record, but over the years have noted that when there is some notable statement or argument around endtimes and the Rapture theme there is usually some emphasis on a harpazo zone in the foundational pattern for Christianity. This zone stretches from around 20 to 27 Libra and is especially lively around the 25/26 Libra mark. The 25/26 area is opposite 26.57 Aries, the church’s degree of its destiny house Venus. This fiery Venus (symbol the fiery dove of the Spirit descending), technically “rules”, triggers or times for anything the religion has in Libra, especially at 26 degrees of that sign. Situated within Christianity’s fourth house (sector), under the rules this point is necessarily concerned with endings of all kinds in the affairs of the religion.

This potent zone  includes all of such factors as the Part of Fortune, the Part of the Hour of Marriage, but also the Part of Divorce (a seeming  contradiction but think perhaps the divisive parable of the Ten Virgins) and even oddly Arabis – I recall a visionary once declaring the harpazo would gather people to something like a vast lift which would rise above Saudi Arabia.

As I mentioned, Camping’s 25 Cancer sun “afflicts” towards the centre of the designated zone. His date setting spiritual predecessor, Edgar Whisenant (b. Sept 25 1932) showed a moon somewhere in the later half of Cancer (likely around the same degree as Camping’s sun, though we can’t be certain lacking a birth time); but he certainly had transformative, even annihilating Pluto in Cancer afflicting by difficulty square to the zone’s crucial base of chart point (its IC) at 23 Libra. Also Uranus at 22 Aries and Saturn at 28 Capricorn plainly stood awkwardly facing the edges of the designated zone.

It should be immediately stated that astrology reflects not just what happens but social trends, things thought and believed. Accordingly a Libran factor in Christianity’s birth pattern and overseen by a “ruling” Venus in Aries, bespeaks the early church belief in harpazo. It does so whether or not anyone believes it shows any literal destiny. But, under the rules, the fourth sector should still provide some intimations of endings of any person or institution. And Christianity’s Aries is “cardinal” (fast moving) as is likewise the pattern’s Libran factors, Libra being “cardinal” air. So….planets and signs do agree to suggest a possible ending of the institution is up in the air double quick! It could even just disappear given that Schwanden (Old Ger. disappear) directly aspects the 23 base of chart from religion and beliefs sign, Sagittarius.

Even so you may well ask, what does any of this signify beyond a possible rather mundane coincidence of thought with its symbolization, something special but not too special? Indeed a reason that for many rabbis astrology is not, as it is for vocal “bible believing” Christian conservatives, something extraordinary or a Torah forbidden “divination”, is because any astrology worth its name is not dependent upon random patterns, intuitions or spirit guides. Rather it is solidly empirical, based on the study of observable cycles so that, as per the book of Ecclesiastes, what has been will be (Ecc 1;9). Accordingly there is always some basis for declaring by the stars the kind of things that will occur, not necessarily to the day (eclipses especially can colour affairs over months) but at certain seasons.

Since however no record exists for when the likes of Enoch and Elijah were translated to heaven, it would seem there can be nothing to assist research in terms of precedent. It follows speculation could only be around indicators like, say, a time frame emphasizing shocks or aerial events through, say, positions of the aerial and surprises planet Uranus. But this is obviously insufficient as guide to any major  issues. So we are back to square one. Or are we?

AN ACCOUNT  TO CHANGE  PERCEPTIONS

Recently on the 16^th of June, a certain Akida Lavender posted a youtube  in which he said that the day before his son had reported a Rapture dream. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qnm7v9DozLg&t=7s

He was inclined to ignore it and assume his son could have picked up things heard from his parents, so he only listened in fairness because he had himself once had a harpazo dream years before. At the time he knew relatively little about bible and prophecy so was simply bewildered as to what it meant when he had been suddenly snatched to heaven – he said the feeling  was like he was sucked up by a vacuum in an instant – and then he saw great light and then a lamb.

When he woke up it is important that Akida felt God  (the Holy  Spirit) strongly urged him to write the vision down and include with it record of the date, which Akida says was 17^th April 2012.  ( It is understandable God might impel Akida to record the date because he is evidently weak on them. He mentions a dream of Oct 24 in 2012 saying it was a Friday when it was a Wednesday!). Much later and when he knew more bible but remained puzzled by the memory of his experience, the April date became significant to him not least when he realized that 1 Thessalonians 4:17 (April is the fourth month) is one of St Paul’s core statements about the harpazo.

However, from the more astrological standpoint I would immediately note that the day gave Sun at 27 Aries, sign of the ram/lamb,  conjunct Christianity’s destiny house Venus at 26.57 Aries, while opposite that was father time Saturn at 27 Libra – the harpazo zone is activated.

Further striking is the claim that the vision had ended with a lamb. I am prepared to believe it did. On April 17^th  2012, Neptune (often taken today as a Jesus symbol) strong in its own sign Pisces, was on 2 degrees of Pisces – the degree of Lamb at the birth of Christianity and the degree of Jupiter in these recent days of June that this whole subject returns and I write about it. One way or another Akida had a significant dream, highlighted by the fact that communicating Mercury on that day in 2012 was on the 0 Aries world point: news for the world.

But the crux of the matter, the prophetic game changer is surely this: the Libran harpazo zone is not just associated with beliefs and arguments, but in this instance with actual vivid experience of sorts, the physical sensation of harpazo. The zone is not just one of thoughts and trends but potentially of active occurrence, materially relevant. The degrees of this section must hold special weight in any analysis of  issues around endings and end times claims.

VARIATION ON A THEME

The son’s experience also holds some interest but not in the same way. Reflecting perhaps that the father is disinclined to listen and believe so that an age effect must be overcome, Pluto at 26 degrees in the sign of age and authority, Capricorn, negatively aspects the zone’s crucial Venus. This apart, in its own way the experience is again “material” and somewhat complex – it is not just anyone’s flying dream which at least some reported harpazo dreams doubtless are.

The son’s experience occurs under what is called Mercury’s apparent retrograde and appropriately serves to make his father remember and review something, surely its main function. It begins with transparent angelic hands lifting him, consistent with the fact that both sun and Mercury are in the sign of hands, Gemini, on the day. The angels then crown the child (Mercury that day at 18 Gemini was conjunct Koronis (crown) at 19 Gemini) then they say something to the effect it’s time to go the feast. Akida understands this, correctly I’d fancy, as the marriage feast of the Lamb.

In at any rate the chart of Christianity, there is a distinct association of this feast idea through a fortunate grand trine in earth signs – Lamb 5.53 Taurus,/Koronis 5.40 Virgo/ Festin (Feast) 6 Capricorn. It cannot be said the son’s dream sets these three off by close contact on the 15^th unless we allow Jupiter, the Bethlehem star currently at 2 Pisces, as broadly overseeing them.

As though almost a consolation prize and promise to those who didn’t have experiences like Akida’s son but whom recent days had filled with haparzo hopes which the solstice factors (minus notable Libran input and with Pluto at 26 Capricorn squaring the church’s Venus in Aries),  then disappointed, this unusual video appeared on the June Cancer solstice from  David Hernandez. (I’d never heard of him and have reservations about any evangelist out of California, especially one who once admired Benny Hinn. But I can’t deny the astrology involved ).

At the Pentecost birth of Christianity Coelum (Lat.heaven) rose on the horizon at 4 degrees conjunct the day’s all-important Uranus in fiery Leo. On the day of the recent solstice, action -associated Mars had just left the same 4 degrees for 5 Leo but was obviously involved in the picture, while as regards any angel(s), 13 Virgo is the degree of Angel in Jesus’ chart and this was fortunately trined at the solstice from surprising Uranus at 13 Taurus.

The account begins with a special view and understanding of the sea and progresses to an idea of the perfect home. These two themes belong especially to Cancer which is at once sign of the seas and of home. Where at this time was the heaven asteroid Coelum? It was at 21 degrees of “glorious” Leo, sign of the Pentecostal fire, in direct aspect to Venus (what is most loved and desired)  in the sign of the seas and home sweet home, Cancer at 21 degrees. This means it was in an aspect (semi-sextile) associated with meetings and financial dealings which in a sense is the conclusion – what is the cost?!

Hopefully this may give a small indication of how as Psalm 19 has it and anti-astrological “bible believing” Christians plainly don’t believe, day and night the skies speak and utter knowledge i.e continuously, not solely through the rarest, most unique signs. As Ps 139: 16 has it, every day of our lives is known in advance But one needs to know how to hear and interpret which may take a lot of study and learning. Before looking more carefully at a few dates of possible visionary significance this year, in a few paragraphs I must ( at least for some – others can skip) cover a  bit of the why and how of what I’m doing.

RELIGIOUS USES OF ASTROLOGY

Any prophetic/visionary function the churches and believers might have,(and believers are not supposed to despise prophesying 1 Thess 5:20), is much incommoded by the near total dismissal of astrology and its potential complementary function in certifying or checking purported forecasts in the way that stargazing of the magi accompanied Jesus’ foretold messianic nativity.

Ironically it is even lack of basic astrological awareness that makes it so difficult for believers who would like to communicate with family, friends or society, about “the end times” to do that.. In effect they are talking about what at least some portions of society do grasp and are more ready to speak of, namely the end of the age of Pisces (at the beginning of which Jesus was born), and the incoming age of Aquarius. The latter has a lot to do with the biblical Millennium, which is reached across the perilous bridge of a time of Tribulation and false messianism.

As regards any celestial signs, the most that is countenanced in some circles is  “Christian Astronomy”, a quasi-sidereal constellational reading of the heavens looked for at  Stellarium on the Net. But unless practitioners cared to progress to forms of Sidereal or Vedic Hindu astrology which is constellational, they have no way of checking anything like trends and events after the manner of standard astrology’s tropical moving zodiac. It is on this that  the  highly descriptive and effective patterns for Christ and Christianity referred to here depend.

NOT “DATE SETTING” BUT…

What I know and do doesn’t mean I aspire in the following and elsewhere to be some kind of  apocalyptic date setter.  What I have always been prepared to do, is assess for their levels of probability and connection, dates and times that people and/ or their dreams settle on. Some forecasts are not even in the running under the rules, some are more suggestive and could belong to some point of crisis and decision worth watching.

Such clarification could be almost pastoral in function. It prevents persons falling into the ditch of depressive disappointments over failed dates at the same time as it keeps others from falling completely asleep on a subject to which believers are supposed to be basically awake and looking for signs.

But how does this assessment of time frames and predictions sit with supposedly not knowing the day or the hour as per Matt 25:13 (a statement that may refer to the absolute end of the world rather than the end of the age and harpazo). If  one can’t or shouldn’t  know, why work with some  assumed set of values to judge for and against dreams and visions? Basically  because the motions and positions of planets and asteroids are regular. They are not surprise shooting stars.

Unless like some early Christians you assume the Bethlehem star was not messianic Jupiter in telling aspect and a sector of the heavens then associated with Israel but instead a complete novelty in the heavens, it must be that one day in the future it would be possible to sit down and discern some pattern that absolutely reflected what happened. Even if one wouldn’t have predicted it. There are not an infinite number of possibilities to consider. There are simply more or less suggestive patterns at certain time that function as a basic guide.  

Following these observations I made speculation on patterns for the months to October. I am deleting these as now only relevant to the extent they showed what now looks like – perhaps – a general crescendo for later in the year or first part of 2022. What I saw was sometimes right and relevant but not sufficiently to preserve here and now in an already long article. Go now to the article Is November 2021’s ‘s Lunar Eclipse significant? https://mcclearysadditions.wordpress.com/2021/11/12/how-significant-is-november-2021s-red-moon/

NOTE 1) https://rollanmccleary.wordpress.com/2013/12/06/the-magi-at-eras-end-a-poem/ See especially the prose section op-ed

STARS AND SYMBOLS OF THE ABRAHAM ACCORD

WHEN SKIES SPEAK

According to Psalm 19:2 and referring to the heavens it is said: ”Day to day pours forth speech / and night to night declares knowledge”. (NRSV)

Christians and others who dismiss astrology outright won’t understand what that means,  nor appreciate how especially nowadays with modern techniques and recourse to name, place and concept asteroids, the skies can be made to speak and name people, situations and general fate patterns as in the case of the recent  Abraham  Accord Peace Treaty.

I touched on features of that event in the preceding article but can read further   for some points now that I have the crucial time for setting the relevant Event chart. My chief aim is to gauge how likely this treaty is to possess the kind of “prophetic” significance  which especially some Christians seek to give it in light of all the talk out of Jerusalem about a Messiah awaiting to appear.

According to an astrologer friend in California who watched the ceremony, for purposes of analysis  the correct  moment summarizing and symbolizing the whole event should be the time  those involved finished their signatures to the Accord and held them up to view. This was 1.37 PM EDT in Washington DC.

THE CRUCIAL TIME

Simply as an Event chart for an epoch-making treaty (Trump’s long awaited “Deal of the Century”), the pattern  was strikingly apt under the rules. Though I will suggest there was and is a lot more than meets the eye, consider first just a few standard timed  chart basics.

• “This moment now” is reflected by the fated Midheaven   point. It ‘s in Libra, sign of peace,  agreements and diplomacy. Mercury (any signatures) at 15 of Libra in the destiny sector is making helpful, fortunate trine to the 14  Gemini descendant angle (agreements, unions of persons or nations but a bit divided in the style of Gemini).
• Rising on the horizon at 14 degrees and with some connection to who is involved, is the sign of Sagittarius. This is sign of the foreign, of religion and philosophies (themes  ranging in the background of what is being agreed). This ascendant angle representing the environment and those involved in the event  is then conjuncted from 13 degrees by asteroid AMERICA. That nation via Trump and his son in law is obviously much involved!
• The treaty is among other things a distinctly financial deal, and the Capricorn facilitator/negotiator, Jerad Kushner, is all of a business man. Suitably, and in Kushner’s own sign, there is a fortunate Jupiter in Capricorn conjuncting the event’s cusp of the second house of finances. From  there Jupiter is in looser conjunction within the money house to Saturn and Pluto, two factors signalling major transformations in the area of economics.
• The treaty is very much predicated upon at least a postponement of Israel’s intended annexation of its long troubled but historically associated West Bank region. This is reflected in the way that Israel’s fourth house sector of anything to do with land and home  shows Mars in in its natural sign, Aries, and in its apparent retrograde (i.e. a going back upon the originally intended aim as regards territory).

Such then is the basic nature of the event and its accurate enough reflection through the pattern. But what about any more shadowy background themes,  anything from the new messianism  in Jerusalem  to promotion of a new Chrislam style religion that some suspect?  It must be said  suspicion in these areas  seems  warranted through some strange coincidences and possible  warnings starting with the Venus (peace and agreements) that in the previous article I pointed out was emphasized on the day but tricky.

THE OTHER MESSAGES

• Venus at 10 Leo in the eighth sector of secrets and transformations is conjunct asteroid Church. This bespeaks  how the treaty  can be linked to the plans of many, but especially Pope Francis, for a union of faiths, especially Abrahamic. But within the same sector, and conjunct the world point of 15 Leo, is  the asteroid Lie.  And  Conjunct Lie at 14 Leo is the apocalyptically and symbolically resonant  Babylon (the summation of false world economic and religious systems) dominated by Revelation’s false Messiah but due to be destroyed during the Tribulation period. (Rev, chaps 17 and 18).  Well….of astrology’s six world points, 15 Leo is deemed the most unfortunate!
• The belief of Jerusalem rabbis that at this fated time the Messiah’s appearance is at hand and that there is already communication with him, is arguably implied by the way Masi (Messiah)  at 7 of religious Sagittarius in the twelfth sector of the hidden  is in direct tension square to Jerusalem  and in the communications sector besides  at 7 of mystical  Pisces . The latter  is sign of the star of Bethlehem and the outgoing era.
• At 14 Gemini conjunct the chart’s unions-related  Descendant angle is  Koronis (Crown). This is what has been made by the Temple Institute and currently awaits to be placed on the assumed Messiah’s head  (During a season of  Corona virus perhaps?).
• Within the Accord’s unions house at 24 Gemini are the fated nodes at 24 Gemini  Interestingly enough,  in my data for Christ  this point corresponds to the degree of Leroy (the King). If there is a false Messiah connection such agreements and disagreements between charts are only to be expected. Chart comparison is important…which leads to the point……
• The Accord’s Venus-associated Midheaven at 2.34 Libra makes easy fortunate trine to the 2.45  Aquarius Mars of the most suggestive, likely chart for any false Messiah data such as I derive from a  famous  vision of the birth in 1962. In Revelation this leader arrives in white and on a white horse suggestive of peace, and receives a crown, but he has a bow and goes out to conquer  (Rev 6:2)  – the Tribulation is a time that peace is removed from the earth (Rev 6:4) all hopes of peace  and a strengthened  peace covenant despite.  The Accord’s 2 Libra Midheaven is, besides, conjunct an Aparicio at 3 Libra in the data for Jesus. Might the degree  belong with appearance to the world of another kind?
• There is no explicit Antichrist asteroid, but over years and empirically I believe the  Achristou  asteroid  is  what I call its “astrospeak” version and works appropriately. If this is correct, then at the recent ceremony Achristou  was strongly placed. It is  in the religion sector more or less at the midpoint of the Sun and Midheaven itself and conjunct Isa (Jesus) there. Since conjunctions are very pro or contra something depending on the factors, there can be an implicit struggle here over  Christ (i.e. Anointed One, Messiah) as regards status and meaning.  The mentioned midpoint normally carries the meaning of advancement, successes. The fact that the Accord’s Mercury at 15 Libra fortunately trines the AC’s natal  sun would indeed make for facilitated aims if and when this leader appeared. The Accord’s moon in Leo itself conjuncts the AC’s significant conjunction  of his ruling planet Uranus with the fixed star of royalty and rule, Regulus along with Achristou.
• The asteroid Theotes (God, Godhead) is descriptively placed at 27 Aries conjunct the day’s Mars strong in Aries, likewise at 27 degrees and likewise in apparent retrograde within the sector of origins, home and inheritance. I have already mentioned re the ceremony’s Mars in the previous article. The meaning of the asteroid here  rather suggests God seen as defender of the Torah position which regards the land as covenant related, not something that can be given away or permanently sold (Lev 25:23) as per popular two state solutions.  Some critics of the treaty accordingly do regard it as a betrayal. That its arrangements could be seen as controversial and undermining, is suggested by the way that asteroid Israel  stands at 24 Scorpio in the twelfth sector of loss, hidden enemies and and things hidden, in opposition to modern Israel’s natal sun at 23 Taurus.
• One of the greatest tests but possible achievements of the treaty could concern the temple mount and the now much desired construction of the third temple there with all the messianic issues this entails. At any rate, with Pax (Peace) at 16 Cancer opposite liberating Jupiter at 17 Capricorn but those two factors respectively in opportunity sextile and fortunate trine to Tempel at 16 Virgo,  this looks like an unavoidable subject of disputes and negotiations.

The fascination some Christians have around the Accord is linked  to the conviction among of those of Pre-Tribulation persuasion, that the AC cannot fully appear unless and until the Rapture has occurred.  It was because of the rabbinic rumours   from Jerusalem about a Messiah  that this year’s recent Feast of Trumpets engaged such intense expectation as a likely time of Rapture. A major issue for both astrology and theology is involved here.

Astrology is almost more efficient at predicting what is hoped to manifest but then doesn’t  and can’t happen rather than what absolutely will. Astrology always indicates what is possible at a given time for people and nations…. because not just anything is always possible. If  the Rapture were to occur this week, as a minimum time-frame requirement there would need to be signs and symbols registering in the chart for Christianity  for extreme confusion, even chaos on earth. Also desirable would be some indication of “marriage”   which the Rapture also is.  Such signs were absent from the patterns and prior lunation for the church for this year’s Feast of Trumpets.. One could safely predict disappointment for the watchers whose notion of celestial signs is derived from the  misleading system they call “Christian Astronomy”….If you want to judge things and speculate according to the skies, use traditional astrology or just desist.

Theologically, too, people  have also  confused themselves with expectations around fulfilment of  the Jewish   festivals. Since the main events of Jesus’ life and death are associated with the Jewish   spring festivals which fall close together (even in the case of Pentecost with its 50 day separation from First Fruits),  the assumption is the remaining three autumn festivals, beginning with Trumpets, finish the salvation process.  Since however the spring festivals are so close together, why decide Rapture should occur at Trumpets and the remaining two festivals seven years later, post Tribulation?  It is more logical and plausible that Trumpets should be fulfilled at any second advent open return of Jesus to earth and thus the last three festivals be fulfilled, like those of the first advent, in quick succession.

Both recent expectations and their disappointment were predictable enough astrologically as I warned a few people and indicated last article,  and it is lamentable Christians cut themselves off from the uses of astrology to their own hurt. Will  believers next object to the Magi?

ABRAHAMIC ACCORD AND THE SIGNS OF SEPTEMBER 15TH

[Although this article of 2020 is obviously dated, it saw significance and was on the right track. The event was historic and can still prove  consequential. Exactly one year after it, PM Benny Gantz has told Israel to recall  the event and its (to him positive and peaceful) meaning that it includes Israel  must release sovereignty of the West Bank areas (Judaea, Samaria and Gaza). This   from a more biblical/prophetic angle is however a forbidden dividing of the land and thus an invitation to the apocalyptic “Time of Jacob’s trouble” which within Christianity is also associated the appearance of a false Messiah or Antichrist figure who confirms  a covenant ].

NEW BEGINNINGS, NEW DIRECTIONS

This 15^th September, an  Abraham Accord peace treaty is to be signed in the White House normalizing relations between Israel and the UAE. It  is likely to be as historic for Mid East affairs and beyond them as generally assumed. Already (Sept 12) Bahrain promises to join what will clearly be a major new diplomatic movement. Several nations have recently promised to set up embassies in Jerusalem.

As I will indicate, the celestial signs are exact and telling to a notable degree, and that includes for religion which interposes in this development quite apart from any immediate political and economic issues. As only one thing, the treaty cannot but help facilitate the Abrahamic Faiths Initiative favoured by Pope Francis and represented in work on the Abrahamic Faiths Centre for Jews, Muslims and Christians  due for completion in UAE in 2022.

This year September 15th (anyway a significant date for reasons presently), is like a Messianic moment in itself. Just before the Feast of Trumpets opens the secular year across 17th/18th September, this time for the first time in two millennia, the reconstituted Sanhedrin is applying to have the shofar blown on the Temple Mount.

And this is suitable in its way  given the extent of Messianic expectation in Jerusalem’s rabbinic circles. Last month   Israel’s Radio 2000 aired a three hour programme featuring rabbis discussing messianic imminence with one rabbi claiming to be in communication with the Messiah who only waits the right divine moment to appear.  Recently according to Rabbi  Shalom Arush,  this year’s Feast of Trumpets should be the last one  to be celebrated without the Messiah who will appear “this year” i.e. any time Jewish year September 2020  to September 2021 but possibly, he allows,  soon and within this  current Gregorian year.

Albeit  for different reasons, some Christian circles likewise see prophetic signs and possibilities, not least helped by all the talk and even posters touting “peace and security” in relation to this momentous treaty.  From a prophetic perspective undeniably it is  a time of sudden reversal  “when they shall say peace and security sudden destruction comes”. (1 Thess 5:3) that is  associated with teachings on the so-called Rapture of the believing prepared of the church and/or the outbreak of  Ezekiel’s Gog/Magog war of “the latter days”. Especially those who believe the False Christ cannot  appear prior to the Rapture event, are inclined to regard any treaty as  the treaty, or precursor to a treaty/ covenant the Antichrist will confirm or strengthen “with many” (Dan 9:27)…..And then the reputation of Gerard Kushner as a possible facilitator of new messianic moves is not exactly helped by his office address on Fifth Avenue being 666!

SIGNS OF THE TIMES

Be that as it may, as already said, 15^th September engages telling celestial signs to a notable degree. Some salient points are these:

• This year the sun at 23 Virgo on Sep 15^th  makes perfect trine to Israel’s 23 Taurus natal sun. Israel does and will regard the agreement as fortunate, which in some respects it is for it, but not fully.
• On the 15th,  Venus (anything  peace) falls at 10 Leo. This means it is at perfect midpoint of Israel’s natal 10 Gemini Mercury (any treaty/agreement) and its Neptune (dreams, and ideals, not least spiritual and messianic), at 10 Libra.
• But Venus at midpoint Mercury/Neptune is given in the standard Ebertin system as a formula for deception. It looks like some things are not understood or disclosed in the arrangements, not least as regards the two state solution and division of the land. (Israel’s Mercury in Gemini makes for divisions of many kinds, even though under the Torah Israel is not supposed to be divided up or bargained for). Also, Trump being more pragmatic and as a Gemini more dual and changeable  than his supporters care to admit, it seems likely now that  America will be selling the UAE S35 Stealth fighter jets which is not ideal from Israel’s usually strong defence position.
• Venus at 10 Leo on the 15^th is not just at a difficult natal midpoint but is in degree perfect tension and denial square to revolutionary, shocking Uranus currently at 10 Taurus. This treaty can hit a few roadblocks and surprises!
• It’s worth noting that news of the forthcoming treaty was announced on August 13^th. At that time  Venus (peace) at 5 Cancer was suitably conjunct Israel’s natal 4.49 Cancer Venus, while Mercury (any news and signings on) at 16 Leo was degree exact on Israel’s destiny house Saturn (blocks and difficulties).

NAMES, WORDS, BELIEFS

Some Christians  perceive the deal as  momentous either because it could be, or lead to, the treaty/covenant of the mentioned  Antichrist (False Messiah)  or else because, like Pope Francis, they regard the so-called Abraham Accord as leading to a Chrislam-style union of faiths. Just this is possible given the erratic, changeable beliefs of this Pope now seen by many traditionalist Catholics as an Anti-Pope especially after his controversial abandonment  of Chinese Catholics into the hands of the CCP.

It seems that  Francis, at least privately, is prepared to question everything from miracles to the resurrection and divinity of Christ; so it belongs to the picture he admits to believe everyone worships the same deity under different names and should join as brethren (He scarcely seems aware of or protests the situation of Christians and other minorities in Muslim majority countries).

• Remarkably, on the 15^th Sept the sun at 23 Virgo conjuncts  Christianity’s (i.e. First Pentecost in AD 30 ) 23 Virgo asteroid Abramson, itself conjunct Abramenko (son of Abraham) at 24 Virgo.  Definitions, meanings and covenant issues re Abraham and the original Abrahamic covenant (Gen 15) come under the spotlight.
• Also at Christianity’s 23 Virgo degree which the sun conjuncts on the 15th,  is Olia (oil, a national symbol of Israel and a symbol of peace) yet also  Eris (strife), perhaps peace leading to strife?
• On the 15^th  warlike Mars, but a Mars in its apparent retrograde, is in perfect fortunate trine from 27 Aries to Israel’s Jupiter at 27 Sagittarius. If Israel were attacked from outside in the wake of this agreement, Israel would win because those who strike first in relation to Mars retrograde, lose. (Students of the prophetic might relate this to any Gog/Magog wars and threats of same).

The 15th September has further significance in its own right. As regards the chart of Jesus, whose true birthday falls on 15^th September, (see https://wp.me/p2v96G-ip ) the sun on the 15^th this year conjuncts his natal conjunction of Fama (fame) with Flammario (shocking, controversial fame). But more to the point is that on the 15^th Neptune, a, or the, messianic planet, falls at 19.27 Pisces, i.e. almost perfectly challengingly opposite the 19.23 Pisces position of Jupiter, the Bethlehem Star, at Jesus’ birth. We are at the end of the just over two millennia, Piscean era’s “dispensation of grace” something that only the favouring and  forgiveness  of Jupiter (traditional ruler of Pisces) could ever quite represent.

If I have the correct  suggestive  data of the Antichrist  (taken from an alleged vision of 1962), then the  Christ asteroid at 19.53 Pisces falls in the other Messiah’s sector of religion and philosophy challengingly opposite the Bethlehem Star. So the 15^th looks towards events and issues around the historical and doctrinal  status of Jesus that a new Messiah’s appearance would raise.

PITFALLS FOR THE APOCALYPTIC PREACHER

Almost no preaching in the world can be more distinctive and in your face than the American Evangelical variety .

At this time of division in America’s history when many are dreaming and forecasting apocalypse and the concomitant need to preach repentance for a supposed last time to a guilty nation, (See  previous Covid  article on this site),  it’s worthwhile considering what typically does and will get preached.

If there’s any truth in such as  the gone viral Dana Coverstone prophecy of the progressive destruction of America from this northern autumn onwards, then it’s said  the end times declarations to be preached will this time occasion only unprecedented indifference and sometimes persecution. In which case it’s worth considering how and  why that could be. At least some of the time, the preachers might be to blame.  I suggest the anticipated audience  reception problem is based on issues that go a long way back in American life but which remain mostly unexamined.

AMERICA’S CALVINIST SHADOW

The least attractive and spiritually enlightened of the Reformers who gave Protestantism to the world was surely Jean Calvin (1509- 1564). More in the spirit of  sect than religion the man was tyrannical, a merciless critic, mocker or opponent to the point of public humiliation of anyone who presumed to question him and his system. Recreations from dancing to card playing were banned, theatre and   music were disfavoured – no music save psalms without instruments was acceptable. Free Geneva became a virtual police state and prison house under his watch.

Although American Protestantism is diverse and owes to a variety of independents and Baptists (who were originally strong for separation of church and state), American Evangelicalism has been broadly influenced by Calvinist Presbytery. It arrived with especially Scottish and Ulster Protestant immigrants, who held ideas and manifested character foundational for the American way and its  values.  American religion  carries all the hallmarks of a Calvinistic legacy right down to even the often wildly aggressive, critical tone towards dissenters that Calvin’s sub-Christian style encouraged from the outset.  Everyone out of line risks being declared a heretic, a blasphemer, a snake, a Jezebel and being persecuted in the end. The language is so fierce that to survive it one needs to become impervious with the result that when real criticism is justified, it is liable to run like water off a duck’s back and nothing is truly learned or corrected.

Also encouraged from the getgo as a sign of divine blessing and predestination was the novel belief (developed to the point of decadence in modern American Christianity) that  financial and vocational success would be in evidence. Today one can even hear people saying they are, or feel, too poor to go to church in America. It’s embarrassing to be there where you are almost shamed into openly keep on  giving. I  appreciate that America may be currently threatened by a degree of neo-communist, neo-Marxist undermining factions, but for too long the willingness to abominate the very word and thought of “socialism” (which to many outside America often means little more than a society with the adequate safety nets and health care America is short on), has been neurotic and hysterical. It is anyway somewhat inconsistent with biblical principles like Christ’s workers in the vineyard parable (Matt 20 1-16).  There was certainly a socialist side to Jesus and the long association of American Christians with the right, often hard right, raises serious questions..

There is more. What is at once broadly “calvinistic” but still mostly unexamined, unacknowledged but  increasingly less acceptable to people today are the following points.

1.  Like Calvin’s Geneva, today’s Evangelical Gospel seems increasingly to represent a measure of policing, a socio-political, kingdom now, imposition that people instinctively resist. It will cite  the  words “occupy till I come” (Luk 19. 11-27) from a parable about wise investment  rather than  socio/political arrangements. The evangelical gospel seems no longer inclusive of the liberal democracy Protestantism is often regarded as helping to birth in the West.  Evangelicalism appears to lack interest in a democracy which does not serve its own interests and is not in line with “God’s Word” – i.e. policies which do as the Bible, or the Bible as interpreted by the sect, requires. In short, no one should be allowed to go to hell by their own route as Voltaire of the Enlightenment reaction would have it, a sentiment nonetheless in line with biblical laissez-faire type statements like Revelation’s “Let the evildoer do evil still…”.(Rev 22:11). Thus health care arrangements that might help a broad range of the disadvantaged can be wrecked because sensitive “Calvinistic” consciences could never tolerate their taxes include support for anything like birth control or whatever they might not assent to. And contrary views of anything can be shamelessly blocked and censored on a regular basis.   No need to elaborate here, but as a non American Christian with a few original views, I can testify to experience from the evangelical camp of some underhand opposition, refusal to permit legitimate debate, reply or self defence, in short dealings one can experience as little better than  the workings of some in-group mafia.
2.  The clannish, sect-ridden fundamentalist/evangelical mindset leads to the position     that no one (as in the early church) can be defined as Christian because they assent to simply the Apostle’s creed. The believer, convert or penitent is expected to become a “Bible Believing Christian” (usually a bible in the antiquated KJV version that cover for translation errors  through its style ), which means they accept the total inerrancy of “God’s Word”, which they will be constantly reading as  almost the only sacrament of the new life and the only real guide to  almost anything. Ironically, the Bible itself doesn’t entirely support  this inerrancy principle. The “Logos (Word) of God” is Jesus himself who says the scriptures are read in vain if he isn’t found there. (Joh 5:39). Plainly  Jesus  isn’t  found  nor meant to be found in every single line. There are occasional blemishes (possibly even a providential warning against bibliolatry) like the call of one Psalmist in Ps 137 to smash Babylonian children against the rocks, and there’s St Paul as a man of his times overdoing things about women in the occasional statement that even the fundamentalist conveniently ignores. The totally inerrant “God’s Word” is a fiction, a paper pope, an object of bibliolatry. People today naturally turn away from the kind of potential mind trap involved.  Those who don’t, may give themselves half a lifetime of difficulty trying to squeeze belief and rules of conduct into some impossible biblical parallel when reading a few commentaries, (or even a few writers contemporary of the biblical ones to gain a few perspectives), might serve understanding and avoid hypocrisy rather better
3.  The doctrine of hell can be emphasized to the point it contradicts the Bible itself and produces dismissive incredulity that then doesn’t wait around to hear more. It is undeniable Jesus speaks of hell and of a need to be reborn, while Mark’s’ gospel near its end includes the statement that those who disbelieve are condemned – or damned according to your translation (Mk. 16:16). This is not however justification for the extremer, unthinking declarations from  preachers that  no one not born again will ever enter heaven but are trapped in hell – forever. It’s a kind of fatalism that belongs with the spirit of Calvin’s extreme predestinationism, and if it were true the greater part of the world’s population since time began would be damned. Instead, we find St Paul in pagan Athens allowing some scope to spiritual insight on the part of a famous pagan Greek poet and declaring “the former times”  God overlooked but now he calls all to repent (Acts 17:30). Those former times and sins could hardly be overlooked if even the ignorant are automatically condemned to perdition. That some persons might  choose and serve Christ in their ignorance seems implied by the parable of the sheep and goats (Matt 25:31-46). The evangelist Billy Graham though strong on the second birth imperative,  was in trouble with conservatives for allowing that possibility.  A hint that pagans might be saved with the hell zone functioning as a kind of purgatory, is suggested by statements like Luk 12:59 regarding the management of justice: “you will never get out until you have paid the last penny”. Be all this at it may, at the Last Judgement of all souls who have ever lived, a judgement to which believers in Christ are not subject, it is stated souls are judged by their works (Rev 20:11) and are either found or not found in the Book of Life according to certain deeds.   For Christianity right belief and true repentance certainly matter, but in the last resort inscrutable divine will determines the fate of souls. On hell I  have put some relevant thoughts in the article. Greg Sheridan’s ‘God is Good for You‘: A Major Book with a Fatal Flaw”  https://wp.me/p2v96G-16w
4.   Before today’s evangelical preacher opens his mouth, or opens it and starts on about the evil of “alternative lifestyles”, much of today’s audience has switched off in response to what is by now felt to be an entrenched “homophobia”. The assumption that such is involved is often correct and reaches again into some longstanding Calvinistic style  hypocrisy in this area. Because  St Paul in Romans 1, probably referring to recreational bisexuality, spoke of men exchanging the natural way, and because the bible is the perfect guide to just everything, it is assumed no one could ever be born same sex  orientated.  Accordingly the evangelical idea is that gays either should not exist (it’s only ever a “lifestyle” to be rejected like old clothes), or if improbably it does exist, it should be banned and possess no rights – including because divine wrath would descend upon the people or nation that did tolerate it. Originally, evangelical America acted as though gays indeed didn’t exist and looked the other way, or even tacitly approved, the bullying and discriminations including the laws that meant relatives of gays could ignore their wills or refuse hospital visiting rights to  gays not legally related to a dying partner. Originally gays were only ever “fornicators”. As soon as gay unions or marriage was proposed, this greater conformity to regular lifestyles with changes to law was portrayed as equally or more immoral, a rebellion against God – only the born again really have the right to be married and to define that state!  Once gays have rights at law, evangelicals are liable to protest they are being persecuted or discriminated against. Just sometimes Christians are so, (America, as a politician’s wife once said to me, is the land “where everybody persecutes everyone else in the end”), and I don’t write from any position that gives unqualified approval to all LGBTQ claims and actions. Nor do I suggest the  whole gay subject is not a complex one theologically with issues beyond present scope. But the evangelical position on this subject has been somewhere between hypocritical and ignorant; it’s undemocratic and society knows it. And it doesn’t need superstitious preaching to the effect because the White House was once illuminated with rainbow colours the nation is open to apocalyptic judgement.  This sort of thing brings Christianity into disrepute and so much ignorance an d hypocrisy has surrounded this subject one feels some serious repentance and re-education is  required to address this subject properly at all, let alone speak of any end times Sodom.
5. Something similar applies to the treatment of women and especially the abortion issue. Recently America’s Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, evangelical style, declared that abortion is not a personal right. Not and Never? I am not about to say that abortion is a good thing, still  less that its legalization to the point of partial birth abortion should be celebrated in lights above New York. Nor will I deny that abortion for sex  selective or career advancement  has  become a serious widespread abuse in America. However, it is also highly questionable to deny that any human right can ever be involved. Outside the Calvinist shadow where  privacy means next to nothing, the late Barbara Bush, a practicing Episcopalian, opined abortion is a very private decision.  Surely in cases like extreme handicap that could render the life of the child and its parents between difficult and hellish, it is a private issue and a sensible judgement can be made in harmony with doctors?  Right to life and Pro Life sits oddly with a bible whose Old  Testament is very free as regards the taking of life.  And still today when medicine is vastly improved over previous centuries, still births and miscarriages happen all the time and there is no divine intervention in the course of nature here. Life is precious, but not infinitely so or without exception.  God is quite prepared to kill “the cherished offspring of their [the unrighteous] womb” (Hos 9:16). Pro Life is often accompanied by protests against the capital punishment the OT takes for granted as an aspect of justice. But no. The evangelicals know the score better than any bible they reckon to cherish. A woman who has an abortion might as well sacrifice to and worship Moloch. A woman who has an abortion has as good as done murder (as in another area, have persons who have favoured termination of life for some chronic locked in syndrome case). America, which we may agree has many wrongs to its name, not least scandalously high murder rates of adults (why aren’t pro life evangelicals for gun control?), is told it is faced with divine judgement especially on account of abortion. It’s a kind of “cherchez la femme” idea projected onto the religious/prophetic sphere, and again people turn away in disgust. People sense the hypocrisy. If you are Pro Life without exception, sign up to adopt an extremely handicapped child. Be prepared to devote yourself lifelong to the cause in that way….or else modify your judgements from the Calvinistic absurdities!
6.   Although undeniably porn is another modern drug with potential to distort lives and values and buying into it is like supporting the sex industry itself, there is a kind of evangelical preaching which, like  Ray Comfort’s, is designed to make people feel uncomfortable and which is unrealistic about the least stirrings of the flesh. If you look into the spontaneous comments that for example youtubes produce, you will begin to wonder about all the  guilt and angst over “impurity”,   uncontrollable repeated sins etc which plainly has some preachers  frequently pronouncing upon while  believers are worried about their salvation and sanity. Though less common today and more dismissed, it is apparent that some evangelists are  somewhat prepared to exploit emotions in the area of what some would regard dirty little secrets – except that Calvinistic attitudes cannot allow anything dirty or pure to be private and will discuss it from the roof tops. Instead of a few sentences, one pastor has recently entered a nine part series on  Youtube on the M subject. Another has offered a video on the status of M among married couples.  Please!  “Purity” in these kind of church circles gets defined especially against an absolute, unthinking use of Jesus’ words about looking upon a woman to lust being as good as adultery (Matt 5:28). Jesus is internalizing the Ten Commandments and in terms of intentionality . But the fact remains one commits adultery with other people’s spouses. It’s a matter of coveting and wishing to and/or aiming to possess them. To assume any erotic feeling towards any woman was implied would be as controversial as to assume the same Sermon in dealing with violence and murder seriously means that merely to call someone a “fool” (a wrong translation the subject is potentially murderous abusive attitudes towards minority persons) risks hell .  (The other purity source is St Paul on rejecting “the flesh”, an expression so wide and embracing everything beyond lust  from theft to arguments that it might be better to speak of “the lower nature”). But evangelicalism is so atomistic it can barely allow reasonable generalization. Sex however is about the only subject evangelicalism will generalize, so it follows that Jesus and Paul must be referring to almost all and any erotic feeling or image  – it used to be that American fundamentalists protested against nudes in art galleries. If this extended, generalizing application were valid, it’s amazing evangelicals can’t see it might run the risk of producing gays by default as all and every feeling got detached from interest and desire for the opposite sex!  Alternatively  it could produce something like St Augustine’s frustration with the spontaneous, uncontrolled nature of the male organ seen as a rebel against God. This encourages  a sex- hating  prejudice  which then leaves even a morning stiffness an attack of the devil or something evil.  In the normal way of things, not all sexual fantasy and/or auto-eroticism is  unnatural or even undesirable (some stimulation is believed to serve a health function preventing such as prostrate problems in men). For those with spiritual, ethical revulsion against that inconvenient fact, it’s probably true to say that masturbation, common throughout the animal kingdom (and assuming its fully neurotic association for humans only in eighteenth century  theories), has or should have the status of biblical attitudes to wine – something  whose real status rather depends.  Wine will support everything from holy communion to alcoholism and various in betweens like health and relaxation. And as experts are realizing, auto-eroticism can anyway be engaged in controlled ways and be minimally  or non-visual in emphasis as per a few  Tantric-influenced techniques applied in this area. If one still  wanted to make the subject a  major spiritual issue,  criticism might be  better directed to the esoteric level as it sometimes is against  yogas, namely their possible effects upon the aura  from  spirits. But this consideration is precisely esoteric/occult, a subject beyond present scope but one the Calvinistic mind anyway dismisses.

I am sure that faced with the unsatisfactory picture  of preaching-to-repentance  given here many would say greater spiritual depth was required. There is no need to deny that. But recalling that the children of this world can be wiser in their generation than the children of light (Luk 16:8), simply more wisdom and even common sense might be useful. Added to which, for truth and relevance today, any would-be apocalyptic preaching could do worse than grab person-in-the-street attention by stressing we are living at the end of the Piscean era. This is  equivalent to St Paul’s “dispensation of grace” which followed upon the often misunderstood OT with its “Lord God of Armies”,  and which belonged with the blood and fire, military, super-patriarchal age of Aries. The Piscean age began around the time Jesus was born and it tis is now bordering the Aquarian age whose utopianism is suggestive of the prophesied Millennium ideal.. However, to the Calvinistic mindset such useful  points like much else don’t count, indeed Christians have long been so opposed to astrology that even before Calvin there were believers to state with Origen that the Magi  themselves were merely devil worshippers…… These days it’s a miracle if anything like Christian truth  ever gets out. Sympathetic audience connection hardly matters to some preachers who almost feel themselves more relevant and successful if they are unsuccessful and rejected.

 

 

UNDERSTANDING “COSMIC SKEPTIC” ALEX O’CONNOR

YOUTHFUL ENIGMA

Alex O’Connor, the Net’s “Cosmic Skeptic”, describes himself as the most atheist person he knows. An impassioned and successful youtuber and podcaster when not at study as an Oxford philosophy and theology undergraduate, he is the most vehemently atheistic person I’ve listened to on the Net.

I have done so because he is so clearly one of a kind, a phenomenon whose psychology interests me more than his ideas with which he endeavours to puncture all over-confident belief. O’Connor is like a twenty first century excited Shelley at Oxford without the poetry but with the protests and causes which include Veganism – atheist Shelley was a vegetarian in case you weren’t aware.

Even at seventeen there was already a side of Alex (b. 1999) that for someone so young would seem remarkably savvy,   self-dramatizing, sophisticated and decided in his views – in his earliest youtubes, especially if wearing a Micky Mouse shirt, he looked like a child ready to scold the world. He has always given as good as he gets and more, often in torrents of words and at great speed. But now and again there emerges a more sensitive, vulnerable side, one that is even disarmingly candid enough to admit that despite himself and all the reason and logic he periodically briefly fears hell, his “hell blips”, an interesting point on which I comment later.

But first for something that Alex would dismiss out of hand, something of forbidden, esoteric, invisible realms, namely what one can derive, and rather clearly, from his birth data. Even without the desideratum of a birth time this still proves oddly eloquent with its information, especially when one includes the modern input from asteroids.

THE ARIES COUNTER RELIGION IN CONTEXT

Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, Roger Scruton, A C Grayling and Madalyn Murray O’Hare (who said she liked a good fight and fighting God would be the ultimate) were all born under Aries as were Satanists like the poet Baudelaire and California’s Anton Le Vey (The Satanic Bible). The blood and guts, super-patriarchal sign of Aries was the same one that oversaw the age of Aries under which the scriptures of the Old Testament were forged, the same sign that much later produced the founder of the Salvation Army, General Booth.

Fast forward to today in which New Atheism is almost a product of Aries, and ….unsurprisingly….. we find that Alex O’Connor was born March 27^th 1999 in Oxford, on 6 degrees of the fighting, head butting, crusading, psychologically rather patricidal or father rivalling sign of Aries, an inclination often crucial to the sign’s belief patterns at the archetypal level.

Whether believing or unbelieving, Aries is much inclined to fundamentalist, evangelical, crusading and literalistic treatment of issues. Thus the bible can readily assume the status of pure lie if the world was demonstrably not created in seven days, a perspective others could find as oddly alien as proposing a parable of Jesus is “untrue” because it fails to tell us the name of the sower who went out to sow and the day he did so.

COSMIC SKEPTIC UNDER THE SIGN OF THE RAM

Alex’s identity- giving Aries sun at 6 Aries is conjunct philosophy and religion planet, Jupiter at 9 degrees. Not so surprisingly, since conjunctions are very for or against something, Alex has been studying philosophy and religion – to meet the enemy in its den so to speak!  It’s not such an odd choice for him because  at  3 Sagittarius, (the religion and philosophy sign  that traditionally Jupiter “rules”), contains the wounded healer Chiron.   This suggests despite some more or less permanent hurt around beliefs, Alex can still make mileage from it  given the planetoid’s  basically fortunate trine to the natal sun.

The sun being the identity and will, anything conjunct or aspecting it counts. Alex calls himself “Cosmic Skeptic”, so suitably asteroid Skepticus conjuncts his sun and his Jupiter from between them both at 7 Aries while the Alex name by which he is commonly known, falls at 6 Pisces exact semi-sextile his 6 degree Aries sun.

What the Cosmic Skeptic wants and loves is science. That he really does o is indicated by Scientia  at 29 of the birth sign  Aries being there on what’s called an anaretic degree indicative of a certain insatiability and/or dissatisfaction.  The situation is further problematized by the fact that Scientia is in out-of-sign conjunction with Saturn (the doubting, empirical,  scientific but also limiting factor in things) at 2 of practical Taurus. Science will not have  the  required answers in many instances.

It’s a reasonable assumption given the name O’Connor and the fact of being raised Catholic, that some kind of Irish background (even if strongly rejected like a James Joyce in revolt), is somewhere involved. If that’s the case, it would be well covered by the way that asteroid Ireland at 7 Libra happens to oppose (challenge) the sun and Skepticus, while asteroid O’Connor at 8 Capricorn is in tension square to sun and Jupiter; so it looks as though Alex might well be opposed to, or opposed by, or in some kind of  tension with, family identity and legacy.

Unless Alex was born early or late in the day, the self-dramatizing Leo moon would have to have been more or less opposite Uranus, itself strong for him in its own sign Aquarius heightening any contrarian impulses. Indeed, at 15 Aquarius Uranus is on one of the six world points, helpful to the kind of wide, popular impact made. Uranus to any planet, but especially the moon, is common in gay charts, so whether or not Alex is gay, the aspect reflects the importance of the ever  tricky  gay theme for his anti-faith position.

Mars, Aries’ ruler, is at home in the chart within its other sign of affinity, Scorpio. From there at 11 degrees of that sign it’s opposed to Venus in its natural sign, Taurus, (though engaging what interests by house we can’t really guess without a birth time). The aspect nonetheless bespeaks the fixed, stubborn, tenacity in opposition to anyone or anything with possibly a quarrelsome, difficult relation with the opposite sex. The wide conjunction of Mars with Saturn could be, as Alex seems to be, a bit overworked, workaholic and /or obsessive.

THE OTHER AND QUIETER  ALEX

Against this fighting warrior pattern of someone possibly trying to rival his father (who unlike the rest of the family we hear was atheist), there is almost another Alex, represented by a close tension/frustration square of Saturn to Neptune. This can be a sad and sorry, vulnerable and depressing, sometimes sickly aspect. Religiously it engages the strong doubt factor of Saturn which in this case is directed upon the kind of things Neptune represents – not least the mystical, the poetic, the mysterious and, some astrologers would say, Christ. There’s also some association with music and in his spare time apparently Alex pursues it.

Interestingly as I recently pointed out at the time there were rumours that Pope Francis doubts many things and even privately denies Christ’s divinity, a natal opposition of Saturn opposite Neptune in the Pope’s chart must be taken into account.

I won’t say all that strikes me about Alex’s pattern, but I will mention that the hell asteroid Hella is in Capricorn, the sign most inclined to be in fear of anything. But there is more to the confession of hell blip fears than just the astrological hint of it. It is arguably quite meaningful and could well be set against other stories of mental attempts to banish God from such as the philosopher Sartre and the radical feminist Mary Daly. And this has next to nothing to do with the religion as child abuse idea that Alex derives from his local Oxford hero Richard Dawkins.

Sartre is an interesting case because he didn’t carry heavy baggage from any Catholic upbringing, and almost uniquely for any atheist admitted in his autobiographical Les Mots, that when he was young Christ had appeared to him, but that he had turned away in irritated disgust (it’s not clear why so, but possibly because he felt he had been caught out burning the carpet with matches). Sartre admits that had his response been different his life might have been different. It’s not the quote  I want, but later in  the philosopher’s life and from the Net I do find Sartre quoted as saying “That God does not exist I cannot deny. That my whole being cries out for God I cannot forget”.

THE ALEX “HELL BLIP” AND A PERENNIAL TRUTH

Like Sartre (and many others), Alex believes science has made God impossible. But really what has made God “impossible” is a type of science-associated western dualism whose starting point is misleadingly “objective” as though able  and   justified to stand apart from a deity that can be observed like a galaxy and grasped by so many facts and arguments. This    type of inquiry may take some people  some way, but divine truths are always more spiritually than intellectually discerned.

The widely accepted notion that God created something ex nihilo from nothing is misleading as some Jewish mystics (and St Teresa of Avila who had a vision of everything inside God) realized. If “nothing” could even exist it would be a rival to God. Any divine creation is thus necessarily within a prior formed womb-like space within deity. In this model of spiritual reality it has to be that people are   closer or less bound, nearer to or further from the sustaining God.

The reason that Reason does not permanently obliterate hell fears even while it can appear to abolish deity as an idea, is because God is already within the self and will forever be so, at least as regards the individual’s spiritual part (which God won’t destroy but only “quarantine” else he would not be the Creator, Lord of Life),  a quarantined separation that may be “forever” because the post-mortem, purely  spiritual realm are essentially timeless.

Given  the element of freewill possible within the temporal, material zone, the individual is only ever nearer or further in relation to God. The more reflective individual will intuit something of the sort. Hell is simply “outer darkness”, the darkest and furthest point away from the inclusive divine light. Early world myth is broadly agreed on the withdrawal of the Creator God from an imperfect/become evil world. The general human sense of rejection by, or distance from, a deity now only rather conditionally approached if at all,  is reflected in the way that the world Christianity originally entered, assumed the darkness and living death of Hades/Hell, was, except for a few heroes, the automatic fate of the majority.

The Christian hell is thus effectively God experienced as what mystics and visionaries experience divinity most essentially to be, namely (spiritual) fire, but in hell as nothing else, i.e. fire uncombined with the other elements that make life pleasant and possible. As theology of the Eastern churches has it, it is the same light that shines on the saved, torments the damned.

Anyone who has been off-put or plain embarrassed by the kind of supposedly knock down arguments for faith delivered by evangelists behaving like second hand car salesmen, may be pleased, amused or occasionally enlightened  by Alex’s tenacious dismissals and chop logic. But Alex himself can in turn also presume on listeners, try the patience and give a few uneasy feelings.

FEELING WHERE WITHIN BEING HE IS

There is a troubling je ne sais quoi about Alex’s vehemence (albeit this is not always in evidence)  and will to demolish any and every contrary position for the sake of it. One feels at times it approaches the madness of Aries poet, Alfred De Vigny, whose hatred of God was such he wanted to burn churches down (Aries is a fire sign!). And there is a real risk of engaging madness when one insists, like the devil, the “father of lies” (Joh 8:44), on unacceptable levels of lie and libel like proclaiming the bible “corrupt from beginning to end” and religion “child abuse”.

All the historic ills and errors of religion admitted, such talk is simply to ignore the comfort and inspiration towards good that the bible and faith have given to many. Denying such things gets too close to  talking  Reason but writing the next instalment of  Le Vey’s Satanic Bible. And these wild declarations anyway profit from a Christian tolerance that especially Islamic society would never allow for similar religion-directed accusations.

To skate over these problems and endorse illusions as Alex sometimes does, risks calling good evil and evil good many consider to be at the heart of the unforgivable sin against the Spirit (Luk 12:10) or, to the extent there is a will to destroy faith and draw people, especially the young and confused, away from God, it approaches the great offence it would be better to be drowned in deep seas than to commit (Matt 18:6).

So, at this level and beyond the intellectual entertainment, the Alex phenomenon can convey an unhealthy vibe. And we can safely predict God and hell are not going to leave Alex at the waving of any rational wands. They will simply recur, possibly a little fainter with time (because as philosopher Simone Weil had it, if we are deaf, God is like a beggar who keeps returning until suddenly he doesn’t). They will recur because Alex is clear-minded and sensitive enough to register at unconscious levels where he stands with Ultimacy. Since everyone has some deeper consciousness of sorts,  Alex’s hell fear is the only,  yet in its way perfectly authentic, God consciousness or “conversation” with the divine that he can have and may always have as long as his protests  and ultra-empiricism endure.

Whether this type of  peculiar  individual “conversation”  would ever alter its disconcerting direction and tone I couldn’t  say, but to the extent Theotes (Godhead) at 10 of mutable Gemini makes what’s called opportunity sextile to beliefs planet Jupiter at 9 Aries, one can only affirm some species of opportunity exists.

 

ASTRO-FORECASTING 2020: FOUNDATIONS SHAKEN, SYSTEMS CHANGING

A TIME ON THE ERA CUSP

Though any year can be called “memorable”, 2020 will undoubtedly be all of that because whatever emerges amid its turmoil, there will be real and marked change.

Clarity about the nature of the pressures building and the barriers passed might wait till the end of the year  and beyond, namely in the wake of an important conjunction at the Solstice on 21st December. However, significant conjunctions and factors precede 2020’s Solstice event and the movement towards change will be irrevocable and part of a larger turning of the ages, and life on the cusp.

Precisely when in astronomical terms the approximately 2100 years reign of one era gives way to another cannot be measured, but the end of 2020 and its December Solstice effectively serves as the nearest to a distinct celestial marker for entry into the age of Aquarius. It’s then that, following a total solar eclipse on the  14th December,  the generation chronometers, Jupiter and Saturn, make grand conjunction in air sign Aquarius. This is the first of an uninterrupted series of their conjunction across two hundred years of  in futuristic Aquarius and the air signs as opposed to earth signs which have been operative since the industrial revolution. The switch to air signals an inflow and consolidation of new interests, ideas and systems.

The inflow is unavoidable. Whether  it’s for  good or ill  depends on many things. Every incoming sign has its positives and negatives, though at its inception what’s ill may  not be  obvious. When any sign acquires an unfamiliar new strength, the sheer novelty can  seem the answer to everything unsatisfactory at the time and previously.

Way back in the seventies,  a new age figure, Sybil Leek, warned the coming age  might  shock many by being rather totalitarian.  It’s clearer now  that despite all the excited new age idealization of Aquarius in recent decades , society might soon find itself swept into unparalleled high tech arrangements supporting  super surveillance and limiting free speech.  As a sign and hence as an era, Aquarius has a dual Saturn/Uranus rulership, Senex et Puer, Age and Youth which need to cooperate. We have a taste of this issue in the increasing youth versus age conflict in politics, already well  exemplified in Thunberg versus Trump relation   Interestingly,  if her vision was  valid, the late Catholic seeress, Jeane Dixon, warned of the advent of a false prophet antichrist,  who would function like a guru to especially crowds of youth.  Born under a super-cluster of Aquarian planets back in the sixties, this person would deceptively precede the true and full expression of Aquarian Utopianism in the long desired Millennium.

WIDESPREAD DISCONTENT

Be that as it may, positioned on the cusp of the eras as we now are, for whole populations like those of  Lebanon, Hong Kong, Chile, Iraq, Iran, France  etc, late 2019 already carried the flavour of 2020. It did so because the period was already in the shadow of 2020’s first of that year’s major conjunctions between the slow moving and portentous Saturn and Pluto. The pair finally conjoin exactly around mid January (the 12^th) at 22 Capricorn. This is likely to be a time (though not necessarily to the day) of considerable tension political and/or economic or even natural disturbance and in some places  given also asteroid Ceres involved, food shortages.

A Saturn/Pluto conjunction in Capricorn reverberates in the area of especially politics, leadership, economics (and corporations)…the more so as 12^th January is preceded by a solar eclipse on 26^th Dec at 4 Capricorn, and a lunar eclipse on the 10^th January at 20 Cancer, a water sign that may include a hint that disasters in the course of the year, and these will manifest,  will have some bias towards floods. (Eclipses engage themes that can work out across 6 months (lunar) and up to 12 months (solar) ).

Both these eclipses lock in the power of the conjunction, engage and challenge the very public and political nature of the Cancer/Capricorn axis  which, however, is not especially democratic in feeling. In fact, as part of the current narrative, democracy is on the decline in the West,  not least in America and Israel which will be considerably involved in major currents of the time that lead towards the more Aquarian era mode.  Governments and leaders can topple in 2020 and corruption, both real and imagined, be highlighted.

A major current of the times but negatively, is simply lies, deception, fake news  and whatever undermines things. It’s a trend assisted by the fact that  at the end of the Neptune-ruled Piscean era, since 2012 Neptune has been particularly strong  in its natural sign  and will remain there several years yet during this time of transition.  At its highest level Neptune is enlightened mystical insight,  compassion and service.  At its lowest octave  it is  just  ultra-permissiveness , lies and self-deception   as of the white person self-identified as black and ready  to accuse whoever  challenges it as a bigot. The candle flame rises brightest  before extinction and the strongest Neptunian effects for good or ill attend the era-cuspal situation.

AMERICA AND ISRAEL

Both America and Israel are mired in  the charges and counter charges of noisy factions. The December solar eclipse at 4 Capricorn opposite modern Israel’s Venus at 4 Cancer, looks like a demand upon Israel in 2020 to sort out everything from the extraordinary stalemate that has overtaken its leadership and voting arrangements to working out some definitive Middle East peace deal (a Venus issue). This could be along the lines of Trump’s grand design, or Macron’s threatened alternative if things don’t hurry up,  or some new alignment with  Arab Gulf states with which Israel has been in quiet negotiation in  late 2019. It may be relevant  the solar eclipse begins over Mecca  and crosses Muslim zones on its way to South India and East towards the Philippines,

Israel’s  year will likely see both war and peace.  Since nowadays Israel seems to be so often on alert in a semi-war state or  in ignored or minimally reported skirmishes with Iranian proxies, it’s hard to pinpoint when there might be outright war, but two seasons seem possible.   The month from the lunation of 23rd April at 3 Taurus which affects the nation’s ascendant and MC angles  and its moon could be  a trigger.  Hostilities might break out in August when that month’s lunation on the 19th makes conjunction with the national Mars in the nation’s destiny house while transiting Mars in bellicose Aries makes favourable, protective trine to the national Jupiter.

Given January’s lunar eclipse at 20 Cancer conjunct America’s Mercury at 22 Cancer, we can assume affairs of America are well in the spotlight, and divisively so in true Mercurial style, whether in relation to impeachment, Israel, China or anywhere. Also that Trump won’t enjoy too much peace and overwhelming success given his natal restrictive Saturn within calling distance at 23 Cancer. The general security of America could be at risk during 2020. In  June the eclipse of the  21st falls on one of the 6 world points (the same O degree Cancer,  natal sign of America, that preceded 9/11). Since at the time of the eclipse America’s Mercury is degree exact opposed by Pluto, this is not a mark of safety for that month and following. Extreme situations and decisions are possible.

I am not well versed in the astrology of American politics or the status of Trump’s main rivals, but my impression is that Trump, who will suffer more Pluto opposition in  July,  probably won’t gain second election….or…he will do so narrowly and it will be burdensome for him  and he likely wouldn’t finish his term.  One could apply various judgements here,  but  my deduction is made simply from the way  the lunation prior to the Nov 3rd election is in degree exact stress square to Trump’s natal Saturn. Then on 4th November, when presumably America has the result, transiting Saturn squares Trump’s Venus, ruler of his leadership house. Granted Saturn can be involved with the weight of office for winners and losers alike, but one needs plenty of positive stuff to accompany a real winning streak (admittedly, though, and rather importantly, there is a Jupiter trine to the Midheaven around the time, so perhaps he will gain second term after all, but as said not very happily so for him).

In Israel where embattled  Netanyahu may be correct that he is the object of a virtual coup, he is a little better placed than Trump. At any rate the January conjunction conjoins his natal Jupiter rather than his Saturn.  At the time of writing (early Dec 2019) it is expected Israel will go to a third election in probably March.  If Netanyahu can survive till then, things may go more in his favour, starting with a lunation in late February favourably trine his surprise-bringing Uranus followed by a full moon in March which at 19 Virgo conjuncts his leadership Midheaven. Admittedly this moon  is directly opposed by the transiting Neptune at 18 Pisces which is tricky, deceptive and even belongs to a few potential mysteries pending for Israel and its leader that I’ll revert to in conclusion.

BRITAIN, AUSTRALIA, IRELAND AND  CHINA

   

Britain with its 19 Cancer moon in the nation’s important 1801 Union chart conjuncted by  January’s lunar eclipse, could remain well challenged not only by ongoing Brexit issues but Scotland’s desire to leave the union and divide Britain.

Dividing the nation or not, the royal family will continue to be swayed and weakened as living symbols of the British system. With the January conjunction’s degree in exact stress square to Prince Andrew’s 22 Aries Destiny/Reputation Midheaven, he may be expected to further squirm in 2020 and the Epstein scandal remain news at some level. And  since the lunar eclipse  hits exact on the Queen’s fated nodal axis,  the scandal affects her at a time she is already revising her role and deputizing.

The Andrew scandal broke with Pluto at 21 Capricorn, degree exact on the queen’s ascendant. It was a time some astrologers for some years had quietly speculated she might pass. That this did not occur nonetheless reflects the intense blow to the monarch and monarchy of what has  happened. No one and nothing emerges unscathed or unchanged from what for many can be a once in a lifetime  Pluto transit.

Traditionally the chart of a monarch was the chart  for a nation itself. On that basis at least, even if a clear Brexit break is not clearly shown for Jan 31st,  the fact that the monarch’s chart has the Saturn/Pluto conjunction so close to her ascendant is eloquent. In normal circumstances it would indicate a person’s isolation or going it alone. Alternatively here it could point to British independence as a theme for the year.

Meanwhile Australia, battered in late 2019 by massive fires, severe drought, record heatwaves   and also political issues with China, doesn’t look promised too much relief. The Dec 2019 eclipse  within  3 degrees of the national Saturn is hardly promising could be belt tightening for the people and demanding for the leaders. The nation has  nonetheless hopefully seen its very worst as regards fires (their  November peak in 2019  when many places were affected as opposed to the current greater concentration on New South Wales) corresponded to enlarging Jupiter in fiery Sagittarius conjuncting  Australia’s natal Jupiter in Sagittarius…. It  would be alarming if the conjunction should be read as opening a whole new cycle rather than marking a peak. The full moon of November 2019  at almost 20 Taurus  was closely conjunct Australia’s Taurus moon, general ruler of the home, and as this is natally conjunct Flammeus, the perennial  danger to rural  home properties from fire seems inscribed).

According to the  Australia chart I use (1) with its destiny and leadership Midheaven and hence its opposite IC point representing the land at 24 Capricorn/Cancer, the nation should feel some effects of January’s eclipse and conjunction. And since at the time of writing Sydney is threatened by encircling fires, it is not reassuring that the Jan eclipse  is closely conjunct asteroid Sydney in the national chart (19.40 Cancer). One must hope it means  re-think about the often careless planning and building  in the sprawling city.   With Pluto mid year hanging around the nation’s  Destiny/Reputation/Leadership point, Republicanism may well be re-ignited and the ruling party much challenged and  forced to be more pro-active on climate, water, food supply and safety issues if it is to retain power.

Since modern Ireland’s natal Mars at 20 Aries in its sector of land and history gets stress squared by both the Cancer eclipse and the Capricorn conjunction, Eire looks to be as threatened as its new nationalists/populists are warning it is. Forces, apparently globalist in the EU and assisted by dubious members of the Irish government, have encouraged the setting up of Direct Provision centres.  Despite Ireland’s  own desperate problems with homeless people living on its streets, the government is  bussing in refugees of a kind unlikely to integrate and  into unsuspecting,  unconsulted villages including remaining pockets of so far preserved Gaelic culture regions. It looks like the powers-that-be seek to undermine or abolish classic Irish identities perhaps as a test case for their policies elsewhere. And hate speech laws to be introduced in 2020 threaten to criminalize as “racism” nationalist protest resistance.

Plainly with Mars affected, many in Ireland will react with rage and with at  least 17% of the small country now composed of immigrants, by mid century the Irish, the only colonized nation in Europe, could become a minority in the land they waited centuries to reclaim. The historic evil of the Ulster Plantation policy now has its modern variation.  Europe, or at least the bureaucracy-ridden EU, is basically hostile to Irish interests, something  shown by the way Europa at 1 Taurus is in frustration stress square  relative to the otherwise fortune potential of the  freedom loving national Jupiter at 0 Aquarius. That this eloquent sign is no fluke is certified by the way England has its own perennial  alienation from Europe marked indicated by Europa in opposition to protesting, separative Uranus and involving the immigration and overseas affairs axis of the root 1066 chart for England. Brexit is fundamental to the English psychology and by the looks of it Irexit is or needs to be to Ireland’s!  That issue apart it is possible the Cancer eclipse carries a warning of floodings in Ireland during the year.

With Jupiter in its hidden twelfth house at 22 Capricorn, China will not be immune from what affects the rest of the world, especially economic in 2020, though  with Jupiter involved it can roll  with the punches better than some countries and might even  in over- confidence precipitate some of the problems .

One of the more important effects on Chinese life during the year will be linked to what happened on Dec 1st 2019 when new phone users were obliged to be subject to  the biometric revolution and its face scans. The nation is constantly increasing surveillance in harmony not least with its natal Mercury/Neptune conjunction. This is a difficult, secretive aspect behind much of the suspicion internationally of China’s meanings and motives. Interestingly, the conjunction is closely conjuncted by the asteroid Draco (Dragon), an echo of earlier  beliefs and a sign the nation is not as attuned to modern values as it maintains it is, nor tolerant of non dragon beliefs Christian or other – expressions like “Almighty God” are being blocked  from mobile  phone messages in China!

However, let’s note the following point apparently so far unmentioned by astrologers and relative to  recent problems around Hong Kong.  Modern  China’s ascendant angle defining the people, falls at 5 Aquarius where  it is in conjunction with its moon at 3 Aquarius and asteroid Hong Kong  at 4 Aquarius.

Use of asteroids in analysis is fairly recent, but to unpack  the message here let’s first realize that Communist China’s moon/ascendant conjunction is much, perhaps chiefly, involved with China’s long time  one child policy  and its sometimes forced abortions – the moon is a general symbol of mothers while mythically Uranus, ruler of Aquarius, has birth control and abortion associations. Given these factors in China’s pattern,  one could expect “motherland” and family possession are issues for all concerned  and that is the case with the Hong Kong issue.

With Hong Kong just inside the nation’s twelfth sector, (often associated in personal charts and medical astrology with the womb), the Mother country sees HK as part of itself. Since however asteroid Hong Kong is placed  in degree exact 150 degree quincunx aspect (a keyword for the aspect is “adjustments must be made”)  to the ruler of Aquarius, Uranus,  and in the mother sign of Cancer too, Hong Kongers  perceive any Chinese belonging in different, less dependent  terms. They favour the Uranian theme of freedom and independence, even protest and revolt. Ultimately both sides will need to compromise for the best possible outcome.

The HK troubles belong with the period starting from June 2019 when transiting Uranus at 4 and 5 Taurus (natal sign of HK leader, Carrie Lam, who is Taurus rigid and stubborn),  was making exact 90 degree stress square  to asteroid Hong Kong  in Aquarius.  Uranus continued on to 6 degrees then retrograded, and towards the end of 2019 with the success of the democracy movement in local elections and the intervention of Trump in support of democracy, Uranus was back at  a less overtly dangerous 3 Taurus. (2)

The tense square aspect to 4/5  degrees will repeat for the last time during March and first half April 2020. If  all parties can keep cool, the worst problems may be avoided for a while or more permanently; but one must always be ready for the shocks and surprises and openness to novelty  that are associated with Uranus. And  2020 is a difficult year. Theoretically, China with its sun in Libra should be a master of compromise and legal dealing, but factors within its pattern can work against this,  not least the mentioned Mercury/Neptune aspect which makes for distrust among negotiators. Different, perhaps  pragmatic attitudes from both sides might emerge in 2021 with Saturn across China’s ascendant and Hong Kong. Whatever  happens, it will not help China’s reputation in the world if it cannot acccept the element of Uranian individualism that will always characterize Hong Kong in relation to China.

THE SHEER WEIGHT OF PLUTO/SATURN

The cycle of Saturn/Pluto, especially at its conjunction or opposition points, is always serious news – the beginning of WW1, the onset of the Great Depression, the beginning of the Cold War, anciently the sack of Rome, the expulsion of the Jews  from Spain (anti-Semitism can wax strong  in this  cycle) and the crucifixion of Christ, the list goes on. It is the severest, most testing, ruthless and “apocalyptic” of transits, one at times assuming a kind of God versus devil conflict, Saturn being an old symbol of Satan and Pluto a newer symbol of Creator/Destroyer.

Saturn is involved with structure, politics, tradition, Pluto with creative power, destruction and transformation. The meeting of these forces tears down and destroys, hopefully but not automatically to transform. Often savage nature joins in, and in his analysis of political and cultural cycles, Richard Tarnass notes a correlation of even Melville’s birth and publication of his Moby Dick, with the Saturn/Pluto cycle, the whale that attacks ship and man is a symbol of pitiless natural force. Hardships through nature like major food shortages such as preceded and facilitated the French Revolution can be another feature of the times.

The mentioned Irish dilemma which highlights new problems with a radical globalism, looks towards what could prove a feature of the year more widely and one enabling to any globalist juggernauts, namely a whole new global currency system in the wake of general economic collapse. The reason to suspect this is given by an important conjunction in July of (once again) Saturn and Pluto, but this time the fatal pair joined by the more optimistic, internationalist input of Jupiter. But again this happens in politically and materially minded Capricorn, and that’s a sign factor which could send reform in a ruthless direction.

NOT SINCE THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

A line -up of these three planets within specifically Capricorn has not occurred since 1284. That was the year that the Republic of Venice launched the gold ducat that would be standard coinage for the next six centuries. Astrology is not wild forecasting but judgement from symbols and cycles. It would be surprising if some kind of economic revolution did not take place during 2020. Rendering the system more total, biometric or joined to some radical NWO 666 chip would come later, certainly not before the end of 2020’s Aquarian conjunction that seals in any push towards more Uranian, high tech and electronic trends.

That the July conjunction really should have global effects seems certified by the way it is preceded by a solar eclipse on June 21^st on one of the six world points (in this case 0 Cancer – a point suitably eclipsed ahead of 9/11). Moreover a lunar eclipse on 5^th June hits challengingly opposite the Vatican’s sun. Since the Vatican is an international institution and now under Pope Francis even a globalist-minded one but either way a body heavily involved in finances through the Vatican Bank, crisis would bring reforms its way. There look to be reverberations at once economic and religious for Vatican leadership over the six months from that eclipse. Altogether I think for several reasons June’s lunar eclipse could be a really important one for the Vatican..

Italy can hardly be dissociated from such events, and with a natal conjunction of Saturn at 23 Cancer and Venus at 21 (its Saturn inside the 9^th house of religion and overseas affairs), Italy should be feeling the force of conjunction and eclipse. As indicated in my description of Italy astrologically, https://wp.me/p2v96G-Nc art is much involved in the nation’s Venus/Saturn in Cancer and it would be unsurprising if, given the eclipse and conjunction, there were not more Venice style challenges from nature to preservation of the national heritage along  with affirmation of national identity in the face of EU globalism.

APOCALYPTIC SCENARIOS?

Saturn/Pluto is weighty enough, but with shocks and revolutions Uranus transiting earthy Taurus during 2020 and for several years, it’s unlikely the momentum of earth moving quakes and disturbed patterns of season and weather will be dying down any time soon. The earth’s foundations are being, and will be further, shaken. Indeed, the pressing question (in line with the perennially “apocalyptic” concerns of Saturn/Pluto) is whether that also corresponds to actual “end of days” scenarios and the beginning of the so-called Tribulation period, itself sooner or later overseen by the NWO of 666.

There are undeniably some indications for such an historical tipping point like the fact that the medieval prophecy of St Malachy would have it the current Pope is the last in line, while in Israel  leading rabbis anticipate the soon re-building of the Jerusalem temple and the advent of the end of days Messiah. If that person appeared, Christians of prophetic persuasion would doubtless assume he was the Antichrist… If these same people were on earth to pass an opinion on the identity!

There is disagreement among students of the prophetic about whether any false prophet figure would emerge before or after the so-called Rapture of the believing prepared, often seen as signalling the beginning, or near approach, of the Tribulation period. However, consensus is for post Rapture. Regardless, the inbuilt perennial tension between Jewish and Christian understanding of the messianic appears wonderfully reflected in the way that in the foundation pattern for modern Israel, the Messiah asteroid  stands at 3 Taurus in challenging opposition to the Christ asteroid at 4 Scorpio. ( I maintainJesus was born under neither sign, but his  Venus/Neptune conjunction, so important in defining his messianic image and role, was at 3 and 4 Scorpio). On the astrology of Christ see https://wp.me/p2v96G-ip

TOWARDS CONFUSION AND DECEPTION

As to what is being said and believed in Israel, it is undoubtedly rather remarkable that over forty years ago the highly respected Rabbi Kaduri forecast that the Messiah would appear at a time of elections but no government, a cryptic claim…until 2019 when Israel’s politics became almost  exceptionally stalemated! It is a highly contested matter whether in the last years of his very long life Kaduri encountered the Messiah in dreams and declared he was Jesus, but decades ago he would not have implied as much in his strange prophecy.

Given the variety of contested expectations, is it possible to look for anything at all in terms of celestial signs for apocalyptic scenarios? For someone like myself who claims to have data still working today for the birth of Christ and for Christianity at the first Pentecost, there could and should be some indication of possible ending or major crisis. And if the false prophet were to appear, that should register on the chart for that person from the data for his birth if the late Jeane Dixon was as claimed able to register his birth in vision. I will say something about especially that option and also about an interesting, strange celestial phenomenon of April 2020 that could be symbolically relevant to speculations for 2020 as the year of the onset of Tribulation and the Great Lie.

Jeane Dixon’s 666 vision of her “Child from the East” makes for a compelling astrological picture for this person given all the inner (material, earthly) planets in the human sign of Aquarius but none of the spiritual outer, Trinitarian planets (Uranus, Neptune, Pluto) in the sign although the  pattern’s Aquarian ruler, Uranus through its connections  has potential for great popularity and power, even if and while conveying ideas “human all  too human” that never arrive at the traditionally spiritual number 7. Add relevant asteroids and the picture is still more compelling as when one sees the pattern’s Christ asteroid degree conjuncting the Bethlehem Star of Jesus’ birth as though to occlude it. The pattern even seems to have worked and to be working as exampled in the article, “Malachy’s Last Pope Ringing Down the Curtain?” https://wp.me/p4kNWg-oM.

It is as though the person existed, but I assumed that given the eclipse patterns of recent years helping build influence, if this person truly existed they would have to have appeared to the public before the end of 2019 at latest. Otherwise could I honestly see the emergence? My position has become like those Jerusalem rabbis expecting a Messiah but saying “he delays his arrival” and by now I have to suspect a fluke or Dixon being misguided….even though I must still concede a point or two. For example, it’s of interest that January’s conjunction at 22 Capricorn falls conjunct the Messiah asteroid at 21 Capricorn in the chart for Dixon’s “child from the East”.

If I could  be persuaded Dixon saw true and the birth data is still relevant, then I would say with confidence that this figure must appear in 2020 if only because the eclipses of 2027 seem eloquent for the end of a reign prophetically expected to be of seven years duration prior to the open return of Christ to the world. So, I step back puzzled, except there is the other observational mystery that could be relevant….plus the mystery around Israel and Netanyahu with which I conclude – if, by half way through the year events don’t oblige it, I shall delete these final paragraphs as irrelevant.

A PARTING MYSTERY

I will revert to Netanyahu, a person of destiny it might be said, and certainly according to another of the prophetically influential rabbis, the late Rabbi Schneerson of the Lubavitch movement.

Schneerson believed Netanyahu could hope to beat many enemies and hand the keys to the Messiah (a Messiah who takes Netanyahu’s place and solves the political deadlock?).  But interestingly, Schneerson  specifically said Netanyahu could stand against 119 enemies, just the number his rival Gantz is now saying Netanyahu has to deal with in the Knesset. So it’s a reasonable question: can we see something linking Israel’s embattled leader and the messianic theme in 2020?

The full moon of March 9th is at 19.37 Virgo  which is conjunct Netanyahu’s 18 Virgo career and reputation Midheaven…..Full moons tend to bring out what the new moon implied or promised. The previous new moon on Feb 23 falls at 4 Pisces trine Netanyahu’s Uranus. Given Uranus’ rulership in his chart, this can put Bibi in the news  without its necessarily having him  in jail or the pits at a time when, if held that month, elections might even work in his favour.

Netanyahu’s natal moon is at 19 Libra in his destiny, career sector. That admittedly isn’t too helpul in relation to 2020’s Pluto/Saturn conjunction and the  eclipses across Cancer/Capricorn. But they could just bespeak satisfactory ending, one that with relief  hands over the keys. Within conjunction of his natal moon is Masi (Messiah) at 16 Libra  but  also Achristou at 18 Libra (recall that prophetically minded Christians would regard any  new Jerusalem Messiah as antichrist). Might we be looking at some messianic developments as the year progresses and the new and that full moons register against natal and national patterns?

[  April 25th  The period between the full moon and the end of the lunation month  has seen Bibi retain power and make way for a unity government. A Libran compromise fulfilled but no sign of any Messiah yet ]

The subsequent new moon on April 23rd then falls at 3 Taurus which is the degree of Masi (Messiah) in Israel’s chart. Does this mean anything? Likewise, what  might it mean that  late 2020’s solar eclipse at 23 Sagittarius not only aspects  Israel’s Sun at 23 Taurus and opposes its Uranus at 24 Gemini, but trines Achristou  at 23 Aries? Will Netanyahu indeed have handed over some keys before the year is out?

It is beyond me and perhaps any astrology to know just what is involved here, but it does look as though amid the very real dramas of 2020 some kind of messianic theme could be an important part of the general upheavals.

NOTES

1. The chart for Australia I use is the Chesleigh one for the beginning rather than the ending of the Federation  ceremony at 1pm. 1st Jan 1901 in Sydney.

2. In standard astrology one would not automatically expect the difference between 3 and 5 degrees to make such difference in affairs  and their timing as I claim to see. But to be technical here, asteroids are not representative of energies like planets. They are instead names and ideas acted upon  rather than acting, and even in personal charts the orbs for effect are small (up to only 2 degrees at most unless aspects with sun or moon are involved). It follows the transit of Uranus between 3 and 6 degrees Taurus should be able to register a lot of change in relation to   Hong Kong and appear to be doing so.

3. Additionally on April 3rd,  Pluto the death and transformations planet, is at 24.52 Capricorn  while Jupiter is at a close 24.48 of the same sign. At the first Pentecost, asteroid Anastasia (Resurrection) was at 24.30 Capricorn – in other words also in favourable aspect to Pluto (ruler of Scorpio) on April 3^rd . This itself is relevant because, natally, Jesus shows Morgenstern at 23.59, (virtually 24) Scorpio conjunct Coelum (heaven) at 24. Themes of resurrection and heaven thus join. I won’t say more than to notice that on April 3^rd shocking, upsetting Uranus at 5.16 Taurus is not just conjunct Pentecost’s Fides (Faith) and Lamb (possibly relevant to signalling any marriage of the Lamb theme) but is stress square to Pentecost’s   5.06 Aquarius Achristou which given its regular associations I have come to assume functions as the Antichrist asteroid.

 

SIMPLE LESSONS FROM ASTROLOGY ALL CHRISTIANS SHOULD KNOW

Way back in the seventies, the Catholic Seeress, Jeane Dixon, alleged a vision was given her in St Matthew’s Cathedral Washington of the disciples as the signs of the zodiac. Rather as in the art of Bulgaria’s Rila Monastery portrayed above, Christ reigns in the centre of a zodiac. Dixon subsequently believed the basics of astrology was something all Christians should know and such would eventually be taught in schools.

I can’t prove Dixon ever had the vision and knowledge claimed, but I have my reasons to say that if she wasn’t right, one feels she ought to have been.

There really are major reasons why Christians need, even badly, to assimilate a few astrological principles; and it’s anyway beyond high time they were rid of the erroneous, vehemently held, conversation stopping view, not shared by many rabbis nor many Catholics (Dixon was taught astrology by a Jesuit priest), that astrology belongs with the biblically verboten “divination” (Deut 18:10). Isn’t it at least a hint of something that Magi (ancient astrologers) were associated with Jesus’ birth?

So before going further let’s immediately state that astrology (much of which as we know it didn’t even exist in the times of the prophets who condemned the omen astrology of moon gazing) most essentially was and is a study of cycles along the lines of Ecclesiastes’ talk of recurrent history and appropriate times to act (Eccl 3:1-8).

This is a wisdom based on observation which has nothing to do either with random factors as in the use of divinatory cards, nor establishing spirit contacts. (In some respects it can be like reading a train time table!). Astrology is, as Jung recognized, an ancient and core system of psychology. But it’s one being constantly updated and since Jung’s death name, place and idea asteroid have graced astrology in sometimes breathtakingly accurate ways.

However…. this isn’t some apologia or proof for astrology in itself but rather a notice about how it can and should legitimately function as a supplement to religious faith. And this is in some areas a lot because, if rightly understood and used, it could shut down some of the more fruitless, perennial theological and pastoral arguments that occupy minds and supply some needed objectivity in situations where people may be so troubled they can hardly know anything beyond the enveloping emotion that clouds judgement.

The following statements obviously simplify for those not in this field, but the following are the sort of questions astrology can answer, and I am of course talking about astrology beyond sun signs. Though these can tell you something, strictly speaking a birth time, place and all planets are necessary for the proper reading of natal data.

Question: Isn’t astrology all about “fate” which Christians say doesn’t govern our lives, in which case why should we need astrology when surely the Bible can tell us enough already?

Answer: Though we do have choices, the basic shape and span of a life is unquestionably subject to “fate” and cycles as surely as the gifts and career of a scientist are not those of a musician. There are things to know about a life that are indeed extra-biblical as surely as the hidden message of the gifts of the Magi which forecast a particular destiny – the death of Jesus was as fated under eloquently exact planetary transits as his birth (See “The Magi at Era’s End”, especially its op-ed article section “Proving an historic discovery”    (https://wp.me/p2v96G-ip). If you think you need nothing but the Bible, consider the confusion on some subjects that Christians using only the bible have arrived at without astrology. A common but erroneous view is that Jesus taught his soon return when in fact on more than one occasion he refers to the aion (age or era). What is the age or era  (Matt 28:20) that he is with the disciples on earth for?

The answer is the astrological age of Pisces, or age of grace that began around the time of Jesus’ birth and must last around 2100 years. Nowadays it is hard for prophecy-believing Christians to speak of the end of days at all, it has been preached so many times sensationally and falsely it has become almost redundant. Yet is should be apparent the end of the current age and the advent of the new Aquarian age (which corresponds to the biblical Millennium) are mysteries Christians simply haven’t understood and not least through lack of astrological understanding even of the most basic symbolism (see for example what I  say about Ezekiel, Millennium and Aquarian age in this article https://wp.me/p6Zhz7-4p) . But the mere fact that Jesus’ birth is a subject for Magi (astrologers) should have alerted Christians to an understanding the religion will include astrological symbolism and cycles and that the subject can’t be so evil it would have been better if Magi had never come to Jesus’ birth as Bishop St John Chrysostom so wildly proclaimed in the fourth century.

Question: So what is my general direction and purpose in life, my so-called “Fate”? Can you do as well or better than intuition and prayer?   

Answer: People believe God should or will tell them about their lives and God may. But like it or not, you won’t be having a full interview with God about your life, (though you may receive hints which you might then be tempted to doubt). Your natal chart, especially through factors like its Midheaven, tenth house and its ruler can supply you some objective pointers to your talents and life options. There are no exceptions for believers. Charts of believers from Popes to Preachers will indicate the religious direction of their life and career.

Question: Can you shed light on why some people claim to hear from God much of the time and I don’t?

Answer: While this is complex and there could be several answers (everything from the matter of innate spiritual talents to one’s spiritual state – you might be in sin condition) on a long term basis, an important element is what your sun and moon were doing at birth. If your sun (the will, the core self) is positively aspected, you will, or will think, like St Teresa of Avila you hear from God a great deal. If the main aspects are to the moon you will “hear” more indirectly, through ritual, music, feelings and intuitions. The status of Jupiter (faith) and Saturn (doubt) also count. (If you fear you are hearing from the devil you might need to see how the asteroids Lucifer, the devil as light, and Malin the devil as darkness, work within your pattern). Evangelical Christianity which has affinities for especially persons strong in fire signs, can cause needless anxiety and self-doubt by expecting people to keep hearing from Jesus to the point many pretend or kid themselves they hear messages they never heard and weren’t meant to.

Question: Do you presume to judge why was this or that prayer was not answered when I felt it should have been or a healing miracle didn’t reach a devout friend when they had faith for it and power manifestly touched others at the time. 

Answer: As Ecclesiastes tells you, there’s a time for everything under the sun. It’s useful to know when that time is. Good things like miracles only happen in harmony with good aspects and transits in the sky to your natal pattern. Likewise, bad things, including delays, only occur under hard aspects. Especially Jupiter accompanies blessings. Especially Saturn accompanies frustrations. An answer to prayer deferred is not an answer denied.

Question: Even if astrology can tell me something about life, surely it can’t tell me anything about God in relation to life and my understanding?

Answer. In some respects it can. And it may even help you understand the little understood Trinity and its interaction a little better. The outermost planets, commonly associated with transcendence and generational influences, at another octave reflect (in their highest manifestation) the Trinity. Jesus equals Neptune. Uranus is the Spirit and Pluto the Creator and Judge/Destroyer. For example, Jesus’ declaration that any sins against himself can be forgiven but none against the Holy Spirit (Mk 3:28-30), has strange echoes in the notably forgiving, compassionate, quasi permissive outlook of Neptune, the ruler of Pisces, sign of the age of Grace, as opposed to the perfectionist, absolutist rather unforgiving mind of Uranus, ruler of Aquarius. Pluto transits can deliver people sufferings of Job type experiences in which one either dies or is profoundly transformed….

…..This subject belongs with the earlier one about healing and miracles. For example, one astrologer studying patterns of healing told me of how a terminal cancer patient who had asked Jesus to heal him was healed and allegedly saw Jesus enter his ward with transiting Neptune, the Christ planet, exactly on his destiny Midheaven. The still working chart for the birth of Christianity at Pentecost AD 30 shows Uranus (the Spirit) rising conjunct the horizon in fiery Leo at 9.15 am. (This can be known as the birth time was roughly given in the bible as necessarily after 9 am).

Question: Can we hope to avoid what feels and looks, whether humanly or astrologically, like the “bad luck” Christians are not supposed to believe in and some imagine is all that astrology deals in anyway.

Answer: There’s no doubt some people and their birth patterns are more fortunate and opportunity-bringing than others (think if you like about Jesus’ parable of the talents). Christians are not immune from problems and to be frank, astrologers are used to the unofficial visits to them of Christians lamenting God seems to have abandoned them. It happens under Saturn and/or Pluto transits as the late Sybil Leek noted years ago. It was behind St John of the Cross’s celebrated “dark night of the soul”. In the long term, the way to overcome the seriously, recurrently negative in a life is to locate its centre and work with it, perhaps invert it. If one sees a drug addict’s chart with, say, a dangerous twelfth house of hidden enemies and trapped conditions, almost certainly their cure and adjustment will be involved with working with social services, prisoners, addicts that belong with the twelfth house. You have choices, especially as regards level, but there is a degree of fate from the natal chart – just as you are born an extravert or introvert and nothing will change that essential – and it is not for Christians to call this observable root pattern, occult delusion.

Question: Are you suggesting astrology can find me my soul mate?

Answer: If it can’t find you your soul mate it can tell you who isn’t that and whether a pair are well suited, not least sexually. Christians who don’t approve contemporary mores ought to be interested in a system which can show sexual needs and romantic types so that there’s no need to keep sleeping around before marriage or divorcing after it to be sure you’ve landed Mr or Mrs Right. From head to toe, basic turn ons or off or lack of same are indicated from the birth chart. When and where the system isn’t compromised for financial reasons, the relative stability of Indian marriages has been attributed to widespread recourse to study of the couple’s affinity for marriage by horoscopes. Also as regards the vexed issue of homosexuality, it is possible to read whether a person is likely to be that way orientated. The matter is complex, but arguably the few conversion cure claims as regards orientation owe something to what is called an afflicted Neptune aspect which can manifest as highly changeable, addictive, confused and potentially bisexual. There aren’t just gay aspects but revelatory gay asteroids and a Part of Homosexuality telling the core truth of orientation which like Jesus’ so-called “eunuchs” is “from the womb”. Jesus like certain ancient astrologers stands alone in assuming something like an innate sexual difference exists.

All  of the above only touches on a big subject and something I have not covered is the major subject of how different sun signs and birth patterns incline people towards different types of beliefs and emphases in religion. I deal with this in my The Astrology of Beliefs shorturl.at/fwKLX     

I have also not covered, but somewhat do in the mentioned book, how theology itself is coloured by the astrological factor. Much that may seem alien to us today in especially the OT as it relates to women and war is considerably explained by the different values and psychology of a sign and era.  The age of Aries which precedes the age of Pisces/ age of grace, shares in the often hyper-patriarchal and bellicose  characteristics of Aries whose ideal is in the opposite sign, Libra, sign of Laws and peace, just as Pisces looks towards Jesus who was born under VIrgo. The ideal of the coming Aquarian age is Leo and Revelation pictures Jesus as the returned Lion of Judah.