What's New in Our World?
Ten Key Astro-Events of 2012: Part II (6/1/12)Ten Key Astro-Events of 2012: Part II (6/1/12) By Mark Lerner There are many reasons why 2012 is an exceptional year - not just because of the supposed end of the Mayan Long Count Calendar of 5,125 years, which some believe will occur on December 21. I have gathered together my list of ten major astrological happenings that are affecting all of humanity and the Earth this year. The first five events were listed in Part I, posted on 5/26/12. (Please read Part I, if you haven’t already, before proceeding with Part II.) Events 6-10 are listed below, in order of significance. Later this year or after the Winter Solstice – assuming the Mayans have left us some breathing room for entering 2013 and beyond, and if there is anything more to add – I will be happy to update this list.
Ten Key Astro-Events of 2012: Part II (6/1/12) By Mark Lerner
Please note that there are numerous meanings and archetypes that are associated with the various celestial bodies, mathematical aspects, zodiacal placements and geometric formations presented in this first half of my Top Ten list. There is no way to cover most or all of them. It is being left to you, the readers, to ponder the potency of these cosmic events and how they are affecting the personal, collective and spiritual life-qualities of human souls gracing terra firma at this time. Please also note that the context for considering these major astro-events is the ongoing alignment of our solar system with the center of our galaxy, as well as ongoing heightened solar flare activity from the sun. Here’s the second half of my list of ten key astro-events in 2012: (6)It is somewhat unusual that both Mars and Venus have been retrograding during 2012. Mars started this when it stationed and went into reverse at 24 degrees of Virgo on January 23. It then turned direct on April 13 at 4 degrees of Virgo. Meanwhile, Venus began its reversal on May 15 at 24 degrees of Gemini and it will turn direct on June 27 at 8 degrees of Gemini. Notice that the twin retrograde cycles of Mars and Venus in 2012 are affecting similar zodiacal regions of two of the mutable signs – Virgo and Gemini. Therefore, Sun-sign Virgos and Geminis and people with strong celestial body placements in these signs are being influenced much more so than usual because, in many situations, three conjunctions to natal positions are happening instead of one. From the larger perspective, years when both Mars and Venus are retrograde – which don’t happen all that often – signify special time-periods when all men and women need to review and re-evaluate their primary partnerships, feelings and emotions, as well as the female-male balance and anima-animus archetypes that every human soul needs to understand more fully in order to make progress on the higher spiritual path. (7)The Annular Solar Eclipse at 1 degree Gemini on May 20 and the Total Solar Eclipse of November 13 in Scorpio have ramifications that stretch out over many weeks, months and years. The main pathways of each eclipse reveal places on Planet Earth where the Sun and Moon are affecting millions of people. While ancient and medieval sky watchers, nomads and shamans were in awe of such eclipse events, and often were fearful that negative events could befall them and their companions, the greater and more positive understanding in our 21st century is that eclipses are powerful alliances of the solar and lunar forces that can offer much good in the world. Gemini can signify heighted communications, valuable information exchange, literary talents, educational pursuits and intellectual prowess. Scorpio may very well be the most powerful sign of the zodiac – especially inwardly – offering a wide array of benefits in terms of determination, stamina, keen insight, eagle-like vision, psychic sensitivity, and the ability to morph into altered states of being and awareness. If you or a loved one, friend or associate has a birthday on or very close to an eclipse (within 1 day), then that individual may go through a strong catharsis and life-transformation during the 12-month cycle following the eclipse. (8)We already know that the Winter Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere is coming up in 2012 as highly significant, but just one day before the Summer Solstice takes place on June 20, there is a potent New Moon at 29 degrees of Gemini on June 19 at 8:03AM PDT. The reason this union of Sun and Moon is so significant is that two prominent stars – Betelgeuse (the main star of the constellation Orion the Hunter) and Polaris (actually a double-star system within the constellation of Ursa Minor or the Little Bear) – are both located at 29 degrees of Gemini. Therefore, the New Moon of June 19 is irradiating humanity with intense cosmic vibrations coming from two highly significant stellar sources of light, love and wisdom. Betelgeuse is a red supergiant that is 500 times more massive than our Sun, and it is the brightest star within a constellation that holds magical significance to the ancient Egyptian culture – as well as many other civilizations over the last 5,000+ years. Polaris as the North Star could be imagined as the Earth’s supreme teacher-mentor-shaman of this epoch as our north pole will point ever more closely to Polaris by the end of this century. (9)In just a few weeks, Saturn will shift from retrograde to direct on Monday June 25 at 23 degrees of Libra. Just two days later – on Wednesday June 27 – Venus will shift from retrograde to direct at 8 degrees of Gemini. While two celestial bodies do often make stations within a couple of days of each other, these two planets will also be making an intense, 135-degree aspect to one another. The precise links occur on Saturday June 23 and Sunday July 1. Notice that the first Venus-Saturn 135-degree connection happens just one day before the first item in this list (the Uranus-Pluto square on June 24). Therefore, this nearly simultaneous stopping and shifting forward of Saturn and Venus is deeply involved with the Uranus-Pluto square as well as the Jupiter-Neptune square of June 25. I don’t believe I am exaggerating when I point out that the time-period starting with the New Moon of June 19 (in contact with Betelgeuse and Polaris) and ending with Venus turning direct on June 27 could be one of the most momentous for shifts of consciousness and global events in this dynamic year of 2012. Plus – it is wise to carefully monitor money-love factors in your life in accord with the Saturn and Venus stations since these two planets connect strongly with financial, karmic and romantic themes.
©2012 by Mark Lerner and Great Bear Enterprises, Ltd. All rights reserved.
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Ten Key Astro-Events of 2012: Part I (5/26/12)Ten Key Astro-Events of 2012: Part I (5/26/12) By Mark Lerner There are many reasons why 2012 is an exceptional year - not just because of the supposed end of the Mayan Long Count Calendar of 5,125 years, which some believe will occur on December 21. I have gathered together my list of ten major astrological happenings that are affecting all of humanity and the Earth this year. The first five events are listed in order of importance below. (Events 6-10 will be posted soon, in Part II of this series; stay tuned!) Later this year or after the Winter Solstice – assuming the Mayans have left us some breathing room for entering 2013 and beyond, and if there is anything more to add – I will be happy to update this list.
By Mark Lerner There are many reasons why 2012 is an exceptional year - not just because of the supposed end of the Mayan Long Count Calendar of 5,125 years, which some believe will occur on December 21. I have gathered together my list of ten major astrological happenings that are affecting all of humanity and the Earth this year. The first five events are listed in order of importance below. (Events 6-10 will be posted soon, in Part II of this series; stay tuned!) Later this year or after the Winter Solstice – assuming the Mayans have left us some breathing room for entering 2013 and beyond, and if there is anything more to add – I will be happy to update this list.
That said, here are the first five key astro-events of 2012, as I see them: (1)Uranus in Aries squares Pluto in Capricorn– June 24, 2012 – starting a wave of seven such 90-degree, sharp alignments that will continue until March 16, 2015. On whatever level of reality this functions, a battle is being waged between revolution and tyranny, freedom and coercion, unique individual expression and power-elite repressive forces. The current series is a mirror reflection of five squares between Uranus in Aries and Pluto in Cancer from 1932 to 1934, during the first half of The Great Depression of the 1930s. In 1965 – 1966, Uranus and Pluto united in the middle of Virgo three times – as the Vietnam War was reaching a crescendo of violence and the Free Speech and Free Love movements of the mid-1960s were finding their dynamic expression. Note: Making the first of seven Uranus-Pluto squares more significant is that Jupiter in Gemini squares Neptune in Pisces the next day (June 25). In addition, the second Uranus-Pluto square occurs on September 19, 2012 – just one day after Pluto stations, shifting from reverse to direct. If you don’t tune into the Uranus-Pluto great adventure of seven cycles that begins on June 24, 2012, you may be missing one of the most important cosmic rides of your life. (2)The Winter Solstice on December 21, 2012 in the Northern Hemisphere occurs as Jupiter makes a 150-degree link to Pluto. This is followed the next day by Jupiter making the same link to Saturn while Saturn forms a 60-degree sextile to Pluto on December 27 – thereby manifesting a Finger of God, or Yod, cosmic triangle composed of Jupiter in Gemini, Saturn in Scorpio, and Pluto in Capricorn. Many of the Mayan Calendar researchers believe that December 21 of this year is when the Mayan Long Count of 5,125 years ends and who knows what will come after. From the astrological perspective, it is very rare that the two largest planets – Jupiter and Saturn – will form a triangular geometric pattern with distant Pluto over only a few days. If provocative events do manifest during this time-period, we may never know whether it was due to the Mayan Long Count ending or the celestial alliance of three highly significant planets in our solar system, or both. (3)Neptune enters Pisces for approximately 14 years on February 3, 2012. This cycle lasts until January 26, 2026. Although Neptune entered Pisces briefly from April to early August last year, the official reunion between the so-called ruler of Pisces (Neptune) and the zodiacal sign occurred a few months ago. I say “so-called” because – traditionally – Pisces was ruled by Jupiter. Even now if someone is born with Pisces rising, it is best and only logical to work with the transits of Jupiter throughout the lifetime as the actual ruling planet of that individual’s birthchart. After all, Jupiter will go through all 12 signs of the zodiac every 12 years while Neptune will only be barely moving through one sign in that period of time. Now that Neptune is in Pisces, anticipate a rising tide of babies being born with powerful psychic gifts, enhanced imaginations, and precognitive dreams. Plus – anyone born with celestial bodies in Pisces will receive the visionary energy-field of Neptune in a dynamic manner sometime during the next 14 years. The shadow side of Neptune can represent increasing confusion, chaos, uncertainty, illusions, fantasies not based on reality, as well as hallucinations and addictive behavior patterns that are difficult to treat and diagnose. Because Neptune is also the higher octave to Venus (which has much to do with money, savings and material resources), Neptune connects with the world economic “mess” and the lack of common-sense clarity, by financial leaders around the globe, to solve this ever-growing problem. (4)Jupiter in 2012 repeats its zodiacal positions from 1929 every day! In the early 1990s – while working extensively with the crucially-important printed ephemerides that show where celestial bodies are in the sky – I discovered that every 83 years Jupiter is back to where it was zodiacally, day by day. The reason is that although most astrology books indicate that Jupiter takes 12 years to go through the zodiac, the true figure is 11.862 years and if you multiply that number by 7, you get 83.034 years. Therefore, years separated in time by 83 years (i.e. 1514, 1597, 1680, 1763, 1846, 1929, 2012, 2095, etc) will have Jupiter at the same degree of the zodiac on the same dates – which could be considered as the possibility of history repeating itself. Since 1929 was the year of the Great Stock Market Crash (October 24 & 29, 1929), it is – at the very least – worrisome that when these dates come around again this year, Jupiter will exactly unite with the same zodiacal positions it had 83 years ago. Nevertheless, Jupiter is usually considered to be a planet related to golden opportunities, good fortune, the power of positive thinking, and wealth accumulation rather than loss, doom and gloom, or disaster. However, since Jupiter is also the largest planet in our solar system, when it malfunctions, the events that manifest are big ones – good or bad.
I hope this partial list of significant 2012 astro-events has been helpful to you, and that the remainder of the list (coming soon) will be, as well. ©2012 by Mark Lerner and Great Bear Enterprises, Ltd. All rights reserved.
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Mysterious Dolphin and Pelican Deaths Off the Coast of Peru (Part II)Mysterious Dolphin and Pelican Deaths Off the Coast of Peru (Part II) By Mark Lerner Update May 8, 2012. While the world still awaits an answer as to what is causing the deaths of thousands of dolphins off the coast of Peru, at least 1,200 pelicans that have been found deceased along the Peruvian coast in the last couple of weeks. By Mark Lerner Update May 8, 2012. While the world still awaits an answer as to what is causing the deaths of thousands of dolphins off the coast of Peru, at least 1,200 pelicans that have been found deceased along the Peruvian coast in the last couple of weeks. According to the Associated Press on May 5:
According to a current feature in The New York Times, the Peruvian coast is “one of the richest marine habitats on Earth.” The President of the Association of Artisanal Fisherman in Peru, Francisco Renteria, says: “Never in my 40 years as a fisherman have I seen anything like this.”
The most recent Full Moon of Taurus-Scorpio on May 5 reveals Saturn above and Mercury below throughout Peru, with Pluto – the planet of extremes, mysteries and secrets – rising off the northwest coast of Peru. Saturn rules sound and the sense of hearing while Mercury is the key ruler of all communication and navigation. Mercury and Saturn were precisely opposite in the sky at this last Full Moon – intensifying their archetypal qualities. At the upcoming Gemini New Moon (coinciding with an Annular Solar Eclipse) on May 20, Neptune – the traditional ruling planet of the oceans and sea creatures – is exactly below off the coast of Peru. This continues the recent trend – going on now for many months – where powerful and exact cosmic-planetary pressures (at New and Full Moons, Eclipses, Equinoxes and Solstices) are bearing down on this besieged South American country.
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Saturn and Neptune’s Influence Felt in Recent Dolphin Deaths (Part I of II)Saturn and Neptune’s Influence Felt in Recent Dolphin Deaths (Part I of II) By Mark Lerner Whenever I hear of unexplained dolphin deaths and strandings, I feel compelled to investigate. Being a Sun-sign Pisces is only one reason for this. At the age of 14, I visited SeaWorld in Florida, was mesmerized by the dolphins I saw there, and then gave an extemporaneous talk on my experience in a junior high school speech class that gave me the courage – for the first time in my life – to talk confidently before a large group.
By Mark Lerner
Whenever I hear of unexplained dolphin deaths and strandings, I feel compelled to investigate. Being a Sun-sign Pisces is only one reason for this. At the age of 14, I visited SeaWorld in Florida, was mesmerized by the dolphins I saw there, and then gave an extemporaneous talk on my experience in a junior high school speech class that gave me the courage – for the first time in my life – to talk confidently before a large group. The Essence of the Peruvian Crisis So Far (As Reported by the Associated Press) LIMA, Peru (AP) April 20 – 21, 2012 — Peruvian authorities say they are still trying to unravel the mystery of why hundreds of dolphins ended up dead on beaches in the country over the past 2 1/2 months. Deputy Environment Minister, Gabriel Quijandria, told The Associated Press in an interview on Friday that officials hope to complete their research on the likely causes some time next week. In the meantime, according to Quijandira, it is unlikely that the dolphins' deaths are related to seismic oil exploration work carried out off Northern Peru between February 8 and April 8 by the Houston-based company BPZ Energy. In an obvious attempt to avoid a costly lawsuit, Quijandria asserted that "the most probable hypothesis is the possibility of an infection with a virus.” Disputed Figures from BlueVoice and
More According to the far more activist organization, Blue Voice, however, the recent tragedy off the coast of Northwest Peru, is just the latest in a wave of entirely avoidable, man-made disasters. Furthermore, while the Peruvian official in the AP article above gave a figure of 877 total dolphin and porpoise deaths, Blue Voice has suggested the number may be more like 3,000 – and most, if not all, younger than five weeks old. Key members of that group, along with the Peruvian environmental organization, Orca, fear the seismic oil exploration work conducted by BPZ Energy may, in fact, be partially, if not fully, responsible for the tragedy, since a preliminary finding among the dead dolphins and porpoises points to acoustic impact and decompression syndrome – indicating that the mammals, who hear, travel and feed by echolocation (or bisonar) were rising too quickly out of deep waters, in response to BPZ’s underwater seismic activity, and dying in the process. As dolphin, porpoise and whale researchers have known for decades, these extraordinary sea creatures are highly intelligent and deeply sensitive to sound. They thrive in a rich social climate involving sophisticated communication facilitated by a variety of clicks, whistles and burst-pulsed vibrations.
When explosive, shocking and extreme events happen on our planet, Mundane Astrologers frequently turn to the potency of solar-lunar unions and oppositions, eclipses, solstices and equinoxes to look for celestial bodies that are rising, setting, above or below in key localities – that could be the “stellar trigger points” for earthly disasters. Consequently, when I initially read about the Peruvian Crisis, I immediately started to track the last few New and Full Moons, as well as the Winter Solstice of 2011 and the Spring Equinox of 2012. In the course of my investigation, it became clear that the planets Neptune and Saturn, in deadly combination, contributed in very unfortunate and significant ways to the recent dolphin and porpoise deaths off the coast of Northern Peru. As you may know, the main planet associated with the oceans and sea creatures is Neptune, which has only recently (February 3, 2012) entered Pisces – the last water sign of the zodiac – where it will reside for the next 14 years. Neptune is only in this sign of the double-fish every 164 years. Thus, this is a very rare linkage of a planet and a zodiacal sign that are both hugely connected to the oceans of the world, the life in these oceans, the feeding and hunting areas for sea-creatures, as well as oil exploration and any pollution or destructive activity going on in the Earth’s water-realms. In addition, Saturn is the key planet
associated with sound and hearing, as well as any negative activity that could
potentially threaten animals, such as dolphins, who rely on sound signals and
the concomitant echo vibrations to survive in their natural habitat. As I will
explore in more depth in Part II of this What’s
New In Our World installment, the Peruvian crisis described above began in
February, since at the Full Moon of February 7, not only was Saturn directly
below off the coast of Northwest Peru, but this planet was precisely stationary
or virtually motionless – ratcheting up its potency, for good or ill, to a
maximum level. Furthermore, the entire Heliocentric Orbit of Saturn – what are
known as the Nodes of Saturn – was also rising and setting in that same region
of Peru. In summary, it is clear to me that – from the astrological perspective – the cosmic influences of Neptune entering Pisces for 14 years on February 3, 2012, and Saturn’s formidable presence just four days later at the Full Moon of Aquarius-Leo (February 7, 2012), are primary agents in this massive catastrophe affecting thousands of dolphins and porpoises. In Part II, I will show that this crisis may be far from over and could connect to the center of our galaxy – which may also be part of the discord the Earth and humanity may face later in 2012 in association with the end of the Mayan Long Count of 5,125 years. (© 2012 by Mark Lerner and Great Bear Enterprises. All rights reserved.)
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Déjà Vu: The Return of the Titanic 100 Years Later (4/11/12)Déjà Vu: The Return of the Titanic 100 Years Later (4/11/12) By Mark Lerner The academy award-winning film Titanic has just been re-released to the public in 3-D. Two weeks ago, James Cameron, the film’s director, went to the lowest depths of the ocean in order to view the sunken Titanic. He will host a CSI-like scientific investigation of new facts related to the sinking of the Titanic in a roundtable of experts on the National Geographic Channel, airing on Sunday night, April 8 (to be repeated April 9 as well as April 14 and 15 – the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the supposed unsinkable ship).
By Mark Lerner
Many of my clients and students have asked me to focus on the Titanic once again. I wrote a cover story around 1993 in my Welcome to Planet Earth astrology magazine linking the 1912 Titanic sinking to the precise start of World War I two years later with the assassination of the Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
Below are listed the most significant keys to understand the symbolism of this historic disaster and tragedy:
In my cover story from 1993, I made the assertion that the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 was a symbolic precursor to European civilization falling into and creating a World War two years later. The smoking-gun proof was as follows: The Crowning of Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor on Christmas Day 800 A.D. in Rome, Italy, at noon – considered by many professional astrologers as the birth of European Civilization – has the South Node of the Moon at 5+ degrees of Cancer. The South Node of the Moon has always been considered a weak, vulnerable and karmically-sensitive point in any birth chart. 1111+ years after 800 A.D., when the Titanic was hit by an iceberg and sunk, transiting Mars was at 5+ degrees of Cancer – exactly impacting the South Node of the Moon from the birth of European Civilization. Then two years later – when the Archduke (heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne) was assassinated in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914 (known as the shot heard round the world that precipitated the first World War on July 31 – Aug. 1, 1914) – the transiting Sun was at 5+ degrees of Cancer (June 28, 1914). Thus, in synthesis, the South Node or weak and vulnerable, “fate” point of the year 800 A.D. Crowning of Charlemagne as birth of European Civilization = Mars at the sinking of the Titanic = the Sun at the Archduke Assassination that triggered World War I. I have watched 5+ degrees of Cancer in the zodiac in other instances and know that it is often a dangerous and volatile degree. Ironically, it is America’s Jupiter from July 4, 1776. And transiting Pluto at 5+ degrees of Capricorn has just spent 2011 opposing 5+ degrees of Cancer several times, and that precipitated the European Sovereign Debt Crisis, mainly over “titanic” Greek debt – highlighting, of all places, the relatively small country of Greece (home of Eris, the spurned and rejected Goddess that started the ancient Trojan War). It is noteworthy that the red planet Mars (the traditional ruler of war) at the Crowning of Charlemagne was at 20+ degrees of Libra – exactly linked to the Titanic’s fateful Lunar Nodal Axis. The Moon for European Civilization is at 23 Pisces (where Mercury has just stopped in the sky now, as the film is re-released in 3-D) and the Titanic Moon was 25 Pisces, so that – relative to the birth of European Civilization – there was a Lunar Return in Pisces on the night the Titanic sank. And, of course, Pisces is the last water sign of the zodiac – often signifying compassion, empathy and sacrifice. Transiting, though as yet undiscovered, Chiron (wounds; twilight zones of strange time; déjà vu experiences; issues of immortality (supposedly unsinkable ship) and mortality (particularly of the famous: some of the “Gods and Goddesses,” as the super-wealthy elite of the 1912 epoch*)), was only 2 minutes of arc away from Jupiter at the birth of European Civilization during the Titanic sinking, at 9 degrees and 33 minutes of Pisces. And transiting Chiron this year is exactly back there at 9+ degrees of Pisces, since Chiron has an approximately 50-year cycle, and it is now two 50-year cycles since 1912. It is chilling to see these kinds of connections, using charts from 800 A.D. and 1912 A.D., – 1111+ years apart. Working with astrology over all those years and bringing it into our current reality in 2012 (another 100 years since 1912), is equally chilling, especially given the fact that we had an eerie déjà vu type event on Friday the 13th, in January of this year, when the Costa Concordia ran aground and capsized off the northwest coast of Italy – with a loss of 30 lives out of 3,229 passengers and a crew of 1023. The many photos of the ship that flooded the multi-media at the start of this year, evoked memories of the sinking of the Titanic 100 years ago. This tragic event in the Mediterranean Sea happened on the rare day when Mercury was uniting with Underworld-ruling Pluto and while Venus was uniting with ocean-ruling Neptune, as well as during the monthly Moon-Mars union – often a symbol of volatility, reckless actions and sudden, shocking death. In conclusion, please consider the quote below from a story about the Costa Concordia as it relates to the sinking of the Titanic 100 years earlier, as well as the start of World War I in Europe in 1914 and the birth of European Civilization in 800 A.D.:
A Special Closing Note about Captain Edward John Smith A careful look at Captain Smith’s birth chart from January 27, 1850 shows a stunning connection to major planetary positions at the sinking of the Titanic. The contacts are so strong as to make it fairly clear that, in many ways, his energy-field was a significant cause of the disaster (another contributing factor was the original sailing of the ship from Southampton, England, shortly after noon on April 10, 1912 when the Moon was in a severe void placement at 30 degrees of Capricorn). The reasons much blame is attributed to the captain’s birth chart are the following: At the moment the Titanic hits the iceberg, transiting Uranus in Aquarius (shock waves, surprises, the unexpected bolt out of the blue, topsy-turvy conditions) was exactly due East on what is known as the Anti-Vertex. This is the captain’s exact placement of Pallas (his ability to be a problem-solver and strategist). In addition, he was a Sun-sign Aquarius and thus immediately went into a state-of-shock, due to his Sun-sign ruling planet Uranus being precisely East.
I could go on, making other cosmic connections, but the information above is sufficient to demonstrate that the person “in charge” of keeping the Titanic safe from harm became incapacitated in his important role by celestial influences that short-circuited his normally excellent sailing and leadership skills. http://www.marklernerastrology.com/shop/images/TitanicWRKBC1.GIF (Copyright 2012 by Mark Lerner and Great Bear Enterprises, Ltd. All rights reserved.)
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Venus Express Spacecraft and the Transit of Venus (3/23/12)By Mark Lerner Dateline: March 23, 2012. You may not even be aware that a highly sophisticated spacecraft has been taking careful measurements and photographs, and analyzing data about our closest planetary neighbor in the solar system since April, 2006. The Venus Express probe was launched on November 9, 2005, by the European Space Agency and its findings are contributing an enormous understanding to our sister-planet sunward.
By Mark Lerner Dateline: March 23, 2012. You may not even be aware that a highly sophisticated spacecraft has been taking careful measurements and photographs, and analyzing data about our closest planetary neighbor in the solar system since April, 2006. The Venus Express probe was launched on November 9, 2005, by the European Space Agency and its findings are contributing an enormous understanding to our sister-planet sunward. (NOTE: Please see my new AstroBiography feature on Velikovsky, Calleman and the Mysteries of Venus for additional information on the Venus Express.) We have known for several decades that Venus is sweltering at surface temperatures of over 800 degrees Fahrenheit, and that it is rotating slowly and clockwise (in the opposite direction of the other planets). No one knows why this has happened. Thus, something is very strange and unusual about how and why Venus is Venus – from the solar systemic perspective. Now we find out that Venus may indeed be slowing down in its unusual rotation. Here is a direct quotation from the Venus Express website at http://www.esa.int/esaMI/Venus_Express/index.html
Venusian Anomalies
The bottom line is that if Earth were revolving around the Sun and rotating like Venus, our days (sunrise to sunset) would take a couple of months (!) and our nights (sunset to sunrise) would also take a couple of months for completion. In addition, the Sun would rise in the West and eventually – a couple of months later – set in the East. Therefore, when you think of the astounding divine principles and forces at work to keep our rotational period to 24 hours (almost identical to Mars, by the way), you should be thankful for every day and night, because if something were to change our rotation, and make it similar to Venus, half of our planet would be in for the ultimate big chill (I mean completely frozen) within days or certainly weeks while the other half of our globe would become so hot as to be unlivable. Velikovsky Supporters may be Celebrating the News… As I reported in the companion AstroBiography feature for Inner Sight, the followers of Immanuel Velikovsky (who believed, contrary to most astronomers, that Venus was extremely hot and had been a comet before settling into its present orbit some 1600+ years ago) may be excited to learn that Venus could be slowing down – perhaps to eventually stop its clockwise rotation, and begin to rotate counterclockwise. Keep in mind that the speed demon Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system, does a complete rotation on its axis in under 10 hours, while the second-largest planet Saturn is no slouch either – coming in at 10+ hours. It is astounding that these two mammoth planets have fast spins, and we know that Jupiter has an enormous magnetosphere that appears as a huge tail of charged particles stretching for hundreds of millions of miles. Even the Sun rotates much faster than Venus since the Sun’s complete spin takes about 26 Earth Days to complete. Transit of Venus, the Mayan Long Count of 5,125 Years, and Venus Express
While the Sun unites with Venus from our perspective approximately every 9.5 months, the only times that Venus can physically cross the disk of the Sun are: (a) when Venus is retrograde (from the Earth’s perspective) or when Venus is moving between the Sun and the Earth; and (b) when Venus is exactly on our ecliptic or the Earth’s orbit around the Sun. The previous pair of Venus Transits happened in 1874 and 1882. The Transits of Venus can only occur in lock-step with the Venus Heliocentric Nodal Axis (which is presently located around 16 degrees and 46 minutes of Gemini and Sagittarius). Important Note: According to a NASA website, starting in about 1,320 years (during the time-period from 3332 to 3956, if we as a human species and the Earth are still intact and thriving), the Transits of Venus will be coinciding with the Solstices – meaning that certain summer and winter seasons on terra firma will coincide with super-powerful Venus energy because Venus will transit over the disk of the Sun 8 times from December 20, 3332 to June 23, 3956 (a time-period of 624 years). On Christmas Day in the year 3818, there will be a Transit of Venus – the first one perhaps on that date in about 40,000 years! It is also possible that due to the precision of a Transit of Venus, it may have an unknown but ongoing effect on humanity, lasting until the next Transit of Venus takes place. Therefore, calculating a chart for the exact Sun-Venus union in the zodiac this year on June 5 – 6, as well as for your location and time zone, might give you hints about Venus’ higher-destiny meaning for you relative to the rest of this life-time and even to future lifetimes (since the next Transit of Venus won’t happen for another 105 years). If your birthday is on June 5 – 6 of any year, or March 6 – 7, September 7 – 8, and December 6 – 7, then this rare Transit of Venus in 2012 will mean that Venus is either uniting with your Sun, in a close square or directly opposite your Sun. Since Venus is, on the whole, a positive and benevolent planet, even the 90-degree square pattern and the polarity of 180-degrees may prove auspicious – with a little nudging and coaxing on your part. The key is to be aware of the event, stay keenly conscious and tuned into higher Venusian themes and qualities at that time, and strive to be as loving, kindhearted and compassionate as possible. The Mayans were more associated with Venus than any other celestial body and considered their main deity – Quetzalcoatl – a representative of Venus and the equivalent of a Christ or Messianic figure. Now that the Mayan Long Count of 5,125 years is in the process of ending (either this past October 2011, according to Carl Johan Calleman, or on December 21, 2012, according to a variety of other Mayan researchers), might the influence of Venus on humanity become even stronger via a change in its rotational speed or other factors that the Venus Express spacecraft will report in the coming months? I find it appropriate and highly symbolic that on the day the Venus Express spacecraft was launched (November 9, 2005), the planet Venus in our zodiac was located at 4 degrees of Capricorn. This is always the placement of the Sun when Christmas is celebrated around the world on December 25. Who knows what enlightenment will greet us when December 2012 arrives and the psychological, philosophical and spiritual energies associated with Mayan Prophecy lead to the dawning of new horizons for Spaceship Earth in the Galaxy? Please visit the Venus Express website – given earlier in this article – for updates on the mission. (© 2012 by Mark Lerner and Great Bear Enterprises, Ltd. All rights reserved.)
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Gold, Silver and the Future (3/5/12)Gold, Silver and the Future By Mark Lerner Dateline: March 5, 2012 – I am sharing a few suggestions on how to educate yourself concerning the growing confusion about gold and silver, as well as their value in the years ahead. By Mark Lerner
Dateline: March 5, 2012 – After nearly 40 years as an astrologer and several decades of utilizing the tools of our trade to analyze the events that take place in the business and investment realm, I am sharing a few suggestions on how to educate yourself concerning the growing confusion about gold and silver, as well as their value in the years ahead. A Short History of How We Got Here…
Over the decades that followed, with the failure of two national banks and one of the earliest depressions in U.S. history (1836 - 1837), our economic system was in complete disarray. Following closely after the discovery of Neptune in September, 1846, one of the most important moments in our national life occurred in January, 1848, when gold was discovered in Northern California. Not only did this lead to a massive redistribution of our population from the East and Midwest to the West Coast, but it also brought a wave of immigrants to the shores of our future “Golden State” – leading to the nomenclature of the 49ers, who came to California in the pivotal year of 1849 (when the planet of shocks and revolution – Uranus – made its first ever progressed station in America’s birth chart). Just one year later – in September, 1850 – California entered the Union during a very rare Uranus-Pluto union in Aries. The Civil War created another crisis in our economic life – leading to the Panics of 1873 and 1893, in addition to the historic Cross of Gold speech by William Jennings Bryan at the 1896 Democratic National Convention, the Klondike Gold Rush of 1896 – 1899, and the establishment of America on a gold standard by 1900. On December 23, 1913, the Federal Reserve Banking system went into effect – a system that is currently headed by Ben Bernanke (born December 13, 1953, with Sun in Sagittarius and Moon in Pisces), and which divides the nation into 12 banking sub-divisions. After the Stock Market Crash of October 24 & 29, 1929, and the start of The Great Depression (coinciding with the discovery of Pluto – the planet ruling the underworld in mythology – in February 1930), Franklin D. Roosevelt (a Sun-sign Aquarius born with Uranus rising) became President in a landslide. Just a month after his inauguration, he issued a shocking Executive Order (#6102) on April 5, 1933, making it a criminal offense for U.S. citizens to own or trade gold anywhere in the world, with the exception of some jewelry and collector’s coins.
One Quarter of a 164-year Neptune Cycle Since 1971
As the eminent astrologer Dane Rudhyar wrote in many of his books, the search for gold (especially in the 1848 – 1849 Gold Rush that drastically altered the shape of America) was essentially a glamorized and dramatized search for God. After all, as every astrological student knows, the key planet of religion, spirituality and the longing for blissful union with the divine is Neptune. However, this is also the planet (when functioning in a negative manner) of deceptions, confusion, chaos, addictive behavior and, ultimately, fanaticism. It was only three to four years ago – when Saturn opposed Uranus five times (starting exactly on the day Barack Obama defeated John McCain for the presidency) – that Neptune also began its Return (after 164 years and for the first time) to its own discovery placement in late Aquarius from September of 1846. I wrote many articles about what this meant and tried to warn clients, the astrological community and people around the world reading my astro-economic research, that our political and financial leaders needed to redesign the global currency system because one of Neptune’s functions is to act as a higher octave to Venus (ruling personal money, banking and savings). While some G-7 meetings were held – oddly enough, very close to two out of three Neptune Returns to its discovery place – once the third and final Neptune Return occurred in February, 2010, our political and financial leaders failed to come up with anything tangible that might have prevented the various debacles that have been plaguing us during the last two years. Seven Uranus-Pluto Squares are Coming Up from 2012 to 2015 Inner Sight readers who have been following my reports should know that we are on the verge of a series of Uranus/Pluto transits similar to the cycles associated with the Great Depression of the 1930s. The first half of that decade saw these two celestial bodies form a waning square of 90-degrees – signifying enormous conflict between radical-change agent Uranus (i.e. The New Deal legislation transforming American life) and underworld-creating Pluto (representing the approximate 25% of the American workforce that was unemployed). Five times – from April 1932 to January 1934 – Uranus and Pluto were at loggerheads, bringing not only enormous upheavals to America, but the rise to power of Adolf Hitler as Chancellor and eventually dictator of Nazi Germany, with far-reaching consequences, leading to the start of World War II in September, 1939. However, this time around, the Uranus-Pluto squares happening during what the media is calling the Great Recession, will happen seven times and last longer than their mirror-reflection of the early 1930s. In addition, this new round of Uranus-Pluto squares – starting June 24, 2012, and ending March 16, 2015 – are waxing in nature, so potentially more physical-emotionally exhausting than the ones from the 1930s. The waning square pattern of Uranus-Pluto in the 1930s pointed toward their eventual union, which happened in 1965 - 1966 in Virgo three times. The waxing square pattern of Uranus-Pluto during much of the next three years signifies a crisis based on what occurred in the mid-1960s: the Free Speech Movement; the assassination of many of our idealistic leaders (JFK, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., RFK); the start of the highly-divisive Vietnam War; and the Student-Radical-Youth Revolt of 1968 (which has much in common with the recent Occupy Movement that started last September in New York City). Not only will the seven Uranus-Pluto squares affect everyone politically and socially, but they will also influence the economy of America and the world. Three of the seven squares – the ones in 2014 and 2015 – will trigger America’s Sun placement in Cancer from the birth of our nation. Simultaneously, transiting Pluto in Capricorn will make five oppositions to America’s Sun – starting in March, 2014, and continuing until Halloween, 2015. These Pluto polarities to our country’s Sun (our character as a people: our heart-center, core-power and life-force) have never happened before because Pluto has a 248-year orbit through the zodiac. Thus, what we are about to experience has no true historical parallel and – to add injury to insult – we are only 10 years away from our first Pluto Return to 28 degrees of Capricorn (our natal placement, which is located in the second house of money, banking, assets and values as a nation). Realize further that in 2008 – 2009, transiting Pluto united with the Federal Reserve Banking system Sun in Capricorn while simultaneously opposing its Pluto. I had warned several years earlier that our Federal Reserve Banking system was going to become either bankrupt or a tyrannical dictator (negative side of Pluto) due to its never-before confrontation with transiting Pluto. While the Federal Reserve Banking system has its fervent supporters, it has its very vocal detractors, as well. For example, Libertarian-Republican candidate and Congressman, Ron Paul, just last week chaired the House Committee before which Fed Chairman Bernanke appeared. During a particularly heated exchange, Paul pointedly produced a silver dollar, asking Bernanke whether our currency would ever have any real and solid backing in the future. Following Mr. Bernanke’s remarks on that day, the price of gold very quickly plummeted over $75 an ounce. No one knows exactly why this occurred, although many have theorized the downhill slide was connected to a huge sell-off by a super-wealthy power-broker who either had insider information or simply guessed what the Fed Chairman would reveal in his congressional testimony that would rattle the precious-metal markets. Recommendations for your Study The foregoing has been offered not to scare you, but rather to alert you to the need to figure out what actions to take in order to add safety and security to your economic future and the future of your children and grandchildren, friends and dear ones. Because of hidden and possibly manipulative forces within the mysterious wealth and power-elite that are said to rule over the national and international financial markets, there are no easy answers concerning when or whether precious metals like gold and silver will rise a lot in value. Economic forecasters have been all over the place for years – often appearing foolish in the process. Almost two years ago, I bought the New York Times Bestseller The Great Depression Ahead: How to Prosper in the Debt Crisis of 2010 – 2012 by Harry S. Dent, Jr. While some of Dent’s work was fascinating – with all kinds of astute research and statistics – he predicted that a barrel of crude oil might fall to a low of $15 (he was off by nearly $100 a barrel!), and that the Dow Jones Industrial Average would have already fallen to around the 3,000 point level (whereas it has moved very much in the opposite direction). Dent has been partially correct about the temporary strength of the U.S. dollar, but not for the reasons he imagined. Furthermore, this was the same individual who long ago predicted “Dow 36,000” and had to retract that in this book. Meanwhile, he is once again suggesting that we are in for a stock market crash and – while he could very well be right – he doesn’t seem to ever realize how corrupt and manipulative the Federal Reserve Banking system has become. In addition, he definitely doesn’t understand the hidden depths of astrological cycles and how they influence everything and everyone. My recommendations for your study at this time are straightforward. On the web, you should become familiar with www.jsmineset.com, as well as www.rufftimes.com and www.kitco.com. The first in this list is the website for James Sinclair – a major figure in the gold market for many decades. I believe he may be connected to astrologers who give him information. He will often have guest columnists – who are also scholars about the price and value of gold – appear on his website. However, you should read Howard Ruff as well because he knows a lot about silver. The third website on that list is terrific because you can read a wide variety of authors and economic researchers-forecasters daily, weekly and monthly. (Note: You can arrange to have James Sinclair send you email updates for free. There are a couple of complimentary offerings on the Howard Ruff website, but his more thorough newsletter would be something to order by subscription. I have not subscribed to his newsletter, but in reading his columns frequently on www.kitco.com I have come to highly respect his common sense and logic – even though I don’t necessarily agree with his political views.) There are a wide range of other websites – like www.bloomberg.com and www.marketwatch.com – which will give you a variety of economic viewpoints, helping you to understand the advantages and disadvantages of owning actual gold and silver (coins, bullion and bars) and how to store it – plus, the Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) that are very common now, as well as mining stocks and futures contracts. However, please remember that a full understanding of your own birth chart, transits and progressions, possibly relocation factors and natal midpoint structures will be crucial if you decide to become a trader or investor, and when and how often to do so. Some individuals are naturally lucky and fortunate on the financial-business front while others are not. Some people panic and grow fearful at strong, moderate or even slight movements up or down of a particular precious metal, commodity, currency, stock, bond, mutual fund or real-estate holding; other, more experienced people in the field may be steadier, more conservative, sensible and patient. You need to know who you are – as a business-savvy person – before you engage in financial-investment wheeling-and-dealing. I would be remiss in closing this feature if I didn’t recommend the wonderful book Time & Money: The Astrology of Wealth, by Barbara Koval (Paperback, 1993, Llewellyn Publications, St. Paul, Minnesota). This is a tour-de-force volume that can give anyone who is eager to understand fundamental economics, combined with the basics of astrology, dozens of hours of insight at the intersection between these key realms of knowledge and wisdom. (© 2012 by Mark Lerner and Great Bear Enterprises, Ltd. All rights reserved.)
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The Lunar Nodes: Dragon’s Head and Dragon’s Tail (2/17/12)The Lunar Nodes: Dragon’s Head and Dragon’s Tail By Mark Lerner The lunar nodes are two places in the zodiac where the Moon’s orbit around the Earth intersects with the Earth’s ecliptic or orbit around the Sun. They have been utilized by astrologers for centuries and show up in the birth chart as horseshoe-looking figures. In medieval times, the Moon’s nodes were called the Dragon’s Head and Dragon’s Tail. This association can be traced back thousands of years to the awe, wonder and fear engendered by Solar and Lunar Eclipses. It turns out we can only have such eclipses (where either the Sun or Moon is blocked out) when the lunar nodes are within a certain number of zodiacal degrees of the solar-lunar placements in the sky. There are specific rules for this, and a vast science and art has evolved concerning types of eclipses, their origin, history and meaning.
By Mark Lerner The lunar nodes are two places in the zodiac where the Moon’s orbit around the Earth intersects with the Earth’s ecliptic or orbit around the Sun. They have been utilized by astrologers for centuries and show up in the birth chart as horseshoe-looking figures. In medieval times, the Moon’s nodes were called the Dragon’s Head and Dragon’s Tail. This association can be traced back thousands of years to the awe, wonder and fear engendered by Solar and Lunar Eclipses. It turns out we can only have such eclipses (where either the Sun or Moon is blocked out) when the lunar nodes are within a certain number of zodiacal degrees of the solar-lunar placements in the sky. There are specific rules for this, and a vast science and art has evolved concerning types of eclipses, their origin, history and meaning. A long time ago, people imagined great celestial dragons devouring the Sun or Moon – in particular during a Total Solar or Lunar Eclipse – and this created much fear that life as we know it on Planet Earth might be destroyed. Of course, the “devouring” of Sun or Moon was only temporary – for a few moments during the precise time of the eclipse. Nevertheless, many modern astrologers believe that the lunar nodes connect strongly with fate and destiny, karma and dharma, past and future.
The zodiacal placements and house positions of the lunar nodal axis in each individual’s birth chart are important. And professional astrologers spend much time interpreting them for their clients. In addition, the aspects or mathematical relationships of celestial bodies to the Moon’s nodes in a birth chart are considered crucial to decipher and explore. To some astrologers, the north node (usually appearing as an upright horseshoe) carries a positive, optimistic, Jupiterian note – suggesting a sign and house quality a person should emphasize throughout life. The south node (usually appearing as a down-turned horseshoe) carries a negative, uncertain, Saturnian note – suggesting a sign and house quality a person should not emphasize, probably because of overuse and expression in past lives. This is just one of many theories regarding the lunar nodes, and this entire field – like everything else in astrology – should be studied in depth. I do not believe the north node should be considered “good” while the south node should be deemed “bad.” I think this is a superficial understanding of what the lunar nodes represent. From Feb. 1 to April 1, 2012, the transiting lunar nodes in the sky are focused between 12 and 8 degrees of Sagittarius (north) and Gemini (south). These two zodiacal signs remain accentuated by the nodes from now until late August, 2012, when the nodes will shift into 30 Scorpio and Taurus. Therefore, during this time period, most Sun-sign Sagittarius and Gemini individuals are feeling the hand of destiny, fate and profound change more strongly in their lives than the other Sun-signs. From Feb. 1 to April 1, 2012, the Lunar nodal axis is returning for everyone born during the following time-periods: January 1919 - February 1919; August 1937 - October 1937; March 1956 - June 1956; October 1974 - January 1975; June 1993 - August 1993. This Feb. 1 to April 1, 2012, time-cycle provides a golden opportunity for all such individuals to turn over a new leaf and make a new start in life that can last for the next 18+ years.
(© 2012 by Mark Lerner and Great Bear Enterprises, Ltd. All rights reserved.)
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The History and Astrology of Valentine's Day (2/9/12)The History and Astrology of Valentine's Day (2/9/12) By Mark Lerner Our February 14 – celebrated as a day of high romantic love, through the exchanging of thoughtful cards and the giving of gifts of heartfelt appreciation, such as flowers, chocolate and sometimes expensive jewelry – did not always have that meaning in ancient times. The rites associated with the middle of the month of February go back to a time-period before the Roman Empire existed during what we might call the late-Etruscan era prior to the birth of Christ. The word February derives from the words Februa, meaning purification, and Lupercalia, in reference to a pagan event whereby young men would dance naked except for a loincloth, wearing a wolf’s mask and using shards of goat skins to touch women in their path, potentially offering them the favor of future pregnancy. There is also the notion that the union of Jupiter and Juno (King and Queen of the Heavens, alias Zeus and Hera in Greek mythology) was honored around this time of every year.
By Mark Lerner
Highlights in the 2000-year History of an Unusual Day Our February 14 – celebrated as a day of high romantic love, through the exchanging of thoughtful cards and the giving of gifts of heartfelt appreciation, such as flowers, chocolate and sometimes expensive jewelry – did not always have that meaning in ancient times. The rites associated with the middle of the month of February go back to a time-period before the Roman Empire existed during what we might call the late-Etruscan era prior to the birth of Christ. The word February derives from the words Februa, meaning purification, and Lupercalia, in reference to a pagan event whereby young men would dance naked except for a loincloth, wearing a wolf’s mask and using shards of goat skins to touch women in their path, potentially offering them the favor of future pregnancy. There is also the notion that the union of Jupiter and Juno (King and Queen of the Heavens, alias Zeus and Hera in Greek mythology) was honored around this time of every year. The feasts and festivals of February 14, connected to the concept of the name Valentine, originated with the death and martyrdom of two individuals, a priest and a bishop, who lived between 150 and 275 A.D. The Catholic Church recognized February 14 as somehow associated with these two early martyrs by 496 A.D. (although their status as saints was reversed by Pope Paul VI in 1969). Thus, as is typical of many modern holidays (or holy days), Valentine’s Day can be traced to ancient pagan sources, which have been obscured by a relatively recent overlay of Christian sacrifice and martyrdom. It was not until Geoffrey Chaucer’s literary reference in 1382 (honoring the first anniversary of the engagement of Richard II and Anne of Bohemia) that notions of “love birds,” engagement and marriage became associated with Valentine’s Day. Just as we celebrate Groundhog’s Day (February 2) early in the month of February in order to determine if spring will arrive early or late, February 14 – associated with the universal air sign of Aquarius – carries the windy, pre-spring seeds of rebirth and regeneration, as each harsh winter nears its end.
The Cosmic Calendar and February 14, 2012 In creating the Daily Cosmic Calendar since 1981, I have written about almost every conceivable major planetary alignment, eclipse, grouping of planets, solar-lunar phases and cycles, asteroid or Chiron prominence, plus the stopping and reversing or forward-moving shift of one celestial body or another during the last 31 years. With the above in mind, it is still a humbling experience to know that your words may influence the lives of quite a large number of human souls who seek happiness or, at least, a fair amount of contentment on Valentine’s Day. Please utilize the information below as an extra guide – beyond the February 14 entry in the Cosmic Calendar (when that date appears on this Inner Sight website) – to make your personal Valentine’s Day more friendly, cheery and robust across the board. The first key alignment of February 14, 2012 is a union of Mercury and Pallas in Pisces at 3:32AM PST. This is fantastic for problem-solving, strategy sessions, conducting research, and strengthening your immune system. Therefore, while this connection has little to do directly with romantic love, it has a lot to do with nurturing yourself and, potentially, solving some difficulties associated with primary partnerships. Think of this Mercury-Pallas hook-up as a world championship Chess match – where you are able to see patterns of success and achievement that are normally invisible, and future, higher-destiny moves only accessible by utilizing your divine intuition as well as a strong intellect. Your next series of encounters are more of a trial by fire since the Last Quarter Sun-Moon Phase clocks in at 9:05AM (activating Aquarius Sun and Scorpio Moon) – simultaneously beginning a void lunar uncertainty zone that lasts until 4:57PM and during which the largest asteroid Ceres squares distant Pluto at 9:37AM. During any Last Quarter Sun-Moon Phase, your job is to cut through obstacles on your spiritual path. What kind of obstacles? Any behavior pattern, worry, stressful situation or partner’s attitudes that could block your forward advance. That is a tall order – considering that Ceres and Pluto in a 90-degree formation equate with nurturing vibes that might be repressed or distorted, particularly due to the twilight-zone influence that often occurs during 7+ hours of lunar voidness.
The bottom line, in this regard and considering this is Valentine’s Day, is that you want to maneuver through the 7+ hour void lunar cycle, in passionate and yet potentially stormy Scorpio, with a sense of caution and humor, and with common sense as well as going with the cosmic flow. You can eventually inaugurate a bold move – if that is your motivation – after the Moon enters fiery, upbeat Sagittarius at 4:57PM. It is this lunar shift that actually takes place every month – when the Moon is void in fixed-water Scorpio (sign number 8) and then morphs into mutable-fire Sagittarius (sign number 9) – which is one of the most alchemical in the entire Moon cycle of 27.3 days around the Earth. The reason is that some kind of ritual death of old fears and forebodings, or an in-depth emotional release and transformation, wants to occur during Lunar Scorpio while the entry into Lunar Sagittarius signifies a rebirth into high adventures, expansion of consciousness, exuberance and potential elation. Carrying Forth the Aquarian-Sagittarian Spirit of this Valentine’s Day Once you reach the portal of Sagittarius Moon at 4:47PM, Cupid’s positive arrows become your own and healing forces are on the march – magnified by a supportive, 60-degree alliance between Jupiter in Taurus and Chiron in Pisces at 5:38PM. Chiron has much to do with the concepts of synchronicity, the maverick, the shaman, bridge-building and healing old wounds. Therefore, much can be accomplished in ameliorating or eliminating previous disagreements, harsh words, bitterness and anger between you and any loved one during the remaining hours of this Valentine’s Day. In fact, later on the Moon unites with Juno in Sagittarius at 10:51PM, just 19 minutes before Venus forms a possibly illuminating contra-parallel formation with Ceres at 11:10PM. The Moon conjunct Juno heightens the ability to find equality in any partnership – as long as both participants agree to be respectful of one another’s feelings, thoughts and the soul-spirit source of love-wisdom. There can be true emotional empowerment that emanates from this lunar encounter unless the shadow dimension of jealousy and rage takes over unnecessarily. To back up the favorable nature of the Moon-Juno rapport, Venus 3+ degrees north and Ceres 3+ degrees south of the Celestial Equator signify an enlightenment occurring between the love-beauty-artistry components of Venus and the maternal-comforting-productive attributes of Ceres. (And waiting in the wings, less than 24 hours from this Venus-Ceres connection, is their union in the zodiac in fiery Aries – further emphasizing the positive enhancement of feminine energies flowing at the close of this year’s Valentine’s Day experiences.)
(All times listed below are in Pacific Standard Time. For Mountain, Central & Eastern Times, add 1, 2 & 3 hours, respectively. In Hawaii, subtract 2 hours. Otherwise, use Google to convert PST to your local time zone.) © 2012 by Mark Lerner and Great Bear Enterprises, Ltd. All rights reserved.
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Here Comes the Sun – 2012 Version (1/24/12)Here Comes the Sun – 2012 Version By Mark Lerner Dateline: Monday January 23, 2012 – Unless you have been living under a rock somewhere, you probably know we are nearing the apex of the 11-year sunspot cycle – with peaking predicted for 2012 to around 2014. Just last week – around the time I was reminding folks via Twitter that we were about to have a powerful Aquarius New Moon Sunday, January 22, followed by an even more powerful Mars in Virgo station and retrograde on Monday, January 23 – a solar flare emerged from the Sun, sending a coronal mass ejection (CME), or plasma of high-charged particles, into our upper atmosphere. According to the website www.spaceweather.com, the potency of this CME:
By Mark Lerner Dateline: Monday January 23, 2012 – Unless you have been living under a rock somewhere, you probably know we are nearing the apex of the 11-year sunspot cycle – with peaking predicted for 2012 to around 2014. Just last week – around the time I was reminding folks via Twitter that we were about to have a powerful Aquarius New Moon Sunday, January 22, followed by an even more powerful Mars in Virgo station and retrograde on Monday, January 23 – a solar flare emerged from the Sun, sending a coronal mass ejection (CME), or plasma of high-charged particles, into our upper atmosphere. According to the website www.spaceweather.com, the potency of this CME:
M-9 Solar Flare on Sunday, January 22, is the Strongest in 7 Years
Early this morning (0359 GMT Jan. 23, which corresponds to late Sunday, Jan. 22 at 10:59 p.m. EST), NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory caught an extreme ultraviolet flash from a huge eruption on the sun…Several NASA satellites, including the Solar Dynamics Observatory, the Solar Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), and the Stereo spacecraft observed the massive sun storm. Scientists call these electromagnetic bursts “coronal mass ejections” (CMEs), and they are closely studied because they can produce potentially harmful geomagnetic storms when the charged particles rain down Earth's magnetic field lines. In addition to generating stronger than normal displays of Earth's auroras (also known as the northern and southern lights), geomagnetic storms aimed directly at our planet can also disrupt satellites in orbit, cause widespread communications interference and damage other electronic infrastructures. Is the Red Planet Mars Involved with this Solar Flare? What I find really intriguing in all of this is the role that planets in our solar system might be playing in (a) creating sunspots in the first place, and (b) possibly triggering solar flares and CMEs due to their stations or other intense changes in their orbits. For instance, look at this statement – also presented on www.space.com:
I underscore that last sentence for your examination. Although Mars is exceedingly strong right now relative to Earth – because it appears to be motionless from our vantage point in the solar system, and its station and shift into reverse has just occurred within less than 24 hours of a New Moon – both of these important factors pertain to life on our home planet. However, why is it that the CME will hit us somewhere to the north (a glancing blow), but will then interact with Mars, almost like an expert billiards player sending one ball caroming off a second ball in order to hit a third? Is this merely a coincidence, or a deliberate celestial orchestration by divine means? I ask this because Mars is not currently in any kind of straight line with the Earth and the Sun. There is no immediately apparent reason for Mars to get hit by this CME – which will glance off our northern zones and then, somehow, strike the red planet. What if Mars slowing down in the first place actually triggered the sunspot into sending out a solar flare, which then spewed out a CME, zapping Mars? You would then have a full circuit of electro-magnetic vibratory energy – starting from a planet, going to the Sun (the heart, center and spiritual light-source of our existence), and then returning to the planet, in this case Mars. This would indicate that the planets are in some kind of communication with the Sun and vice versa – something akin to the electrical wiring within a house or the way a power station energizes an entire town composed of a series of neighborhoods. Are Other Planets in Addition to Earth Heating Up? A report a while ago suggested that just as the temperature on Earth is rising (Global Warming) – which could produce dire effects to our eco-system and eventually flood highly-populated coastal cities around the world – the temperature on other planets in the solar system is also rising. If this is true, then Global Warming may have more to do with forces at work in the core of the Sun and the planets than anything terrible humans are doing on terra firma by way of increasing carbon dioxide gas and smog-causing pollutants in our atmosphere. Of course, this doesn’t mean we should continue to use air conditioning to the maximum degree and follow China’s horrible example of continuing to burn coal to energize and electrify tens of thousands of unregulated factories and overcrowded buildings. Many doomsayers, concerning the end-shift-rebirth of the 5,125-year Mayan Long Count, hypothesize that fiery forces – whether from extreme solar flares or a major, direct hit by a CME – could fry our satellites, strike our high-tech grid and world wide web, and destroy the Earth’s protective electro-magnetic shield, also known as the Van Allen Belt. During the same time frame, we are about to have seven rare, Uranus-Pluto squares in the heavens from June, 2012, to March, 2015 – setting up the potential for shocking (Uranus) acts of mass destruction (Pluto) on Earth if the Uranus-Pluto 90-degree encounters are way on the negative side of the astro-psychic energy-spectrum. Waiting for Another September 1, 1859 Event…
Various films on this theme have already appeared many times on the Syfy Channel, and the odds are great that you can catch a couple of them a week by tuning into that station. For more intelligent information, it is wise to access www.earthchangesmedia.com as well as www.noaa.com (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration website, run by the USA Department of Commerce). Unfortunately, if we were to be hit by one of those mega-flares, the web would be gone – possibly forever or a very long time – and our ability to survive as a species would be at stake. From the eternal optimist perspective, it is better to keep believing that just as we have a world wide web now, comprised of massive amounts of information and sources of knowledge and wisdom, there is something akin to the world wide web functioning on etheric-astral-mental and more subtler realms. Along these lines, it is important to keep in mind that we have always been guided by invisible presences protecting the Earth, whether we call them mentors, spirit-guides, saints, devas, angels, archangels, gods and goddesses. In fact, what if the positive, life-affirming side of the internet-www-global grid is actually but a pale externalized reflection of that “Higher Web” of intelligences and divinities that have our best interests at heart? That Goodness wants to protect humanity even if the nefarious forces of Evil – also rampant – are trying to crush the evolutionary advance of humanity. Keep your computer dial tuned into this Inner Sight channel for more cosmic and earthly news on this important subject in the weeks and months ahead. (©2012 by Mark Lerner and Great Bear Enterprises, Ltd. All rights reserved.)
Update Dateline: January 29, 2012. The same sunspot region – 1402 – that brought us the M-9 class Solar Flare about a week ago unleashed a stronger X1.8 class Solar Flare on Friday January 27. While definitely stronger as an initial explosion than the previous one, the accompanying Coronal Mass Eruption (CME) of charged particles was not directed toward Earth. Nevertheless, it is clear that this increased solar activity – part of Sunspot Cycle 24 due to crest within a year or two – will be watched not only by our sophisticated spacecraft, solar scientists and researchers, but by the large number of doomsayers believing that the end of the world is near. A solar flare like the one that happened in 1859 and with a CME directed right in Earth’s direction is something that could do a lot of damage to our power and electronic grids, satellites, and even our way of life as a high-tech society. Therefore, it is wise to go to the websites mentioned in this article and become a more serious student of current and future solar activity.
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Security and Synchronicity: Are You Safe on the Web? (1/20/12)Security and Synchronicity: Are You Safe on the Web? By Mark Lerner
Quick – while you are reading this sentence – how many windows and tabs do you have open on this computer? Did you just do any online banking with this same browser still open? That’s an absolute no-no that can expose your computer to all kinds of nefarious phishing expeditions by would-be hackers out to possibly steal your identity or a password to your wealth and savings. Enter the 24/7 realm of former star hacker, Jeff Moss – alias The Dark Tangent – a 41+ year-old who recently (2009) became a member of the Homeland Security Advisory Council and, even more recently (2011) became the chief security officer for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).
By Mark Lerner
Quick – while you are reading this sentence – how many windows and tabs do you have open on this computer? Did you just do any online banking with this same browser still open? That’s an absolute no-no that can expose your computer to all kinds of nefarious phishing expeditions by would-be hackers out to possibly steal your identity or a password to your wealth and savings. Enter the 24/7 realm of former star hacker, Jeff Moss – alias The Dark Tangent – a 41+ year-old who recently (2009) became a member of the Homeland Security Advisory Council and, even more recently (2011) became the chief security officer for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).
It turns out – and this is fascinating to visit online – that Jeff Moss (who had graduated from Gonzaga University with a degree in Criminal Justice) was a superb hacker who wound up creating the first DEF CON hackers’ convention in 1992 and then one-upped himself by adding the BLACK HAT conference in 1997, which serves annually as the security counterpart to DEF CON.” Moss became so influential through this work – selling off some of his business at one point for over $12 million – that the US government began sending NSA (National Security Agency) associates there to learn what’s going on in the hacker universe as well as to give their own lectures and intermingle. What’s intriguing is that these get-togethers all happen in Las Vegas and are cash-only events. In other words, no hacker in his or her right mind would ever consider going to a hotel and presenting a credit card (which could be tracked by god knows who out there in cyberspace). Why This Information is Being Presented Now Over the last Saturn cycle of 29 years – since President Reagan touted his laughed-at “Star Wars” space and atmospheric technology for shooting down enemy nukes and missiles in 1983, followed by the release of blockbuster high-tech movies like War Games (1984), Enemy of the State and Mercury Rising (1998), and The International (2009) – our modern love for and dependence on technological breakthroughs has been accelerating at a lightning pace. In fact, the term “Singularity” recently came into being in high-tech circles wherein it is presumed that computers and robots will make the intelligence leap beyond human thinking by around the year 2041 (ironically exactly one Saturn cycle from 2012). Meanwhile, you have probably seen various commercials – put forward by Microsoft, in particular – where a very happy husband and wife are sending contents of articles, emails and maybe even banking information to “the cloud” for apparently safe and secure storage. To the cloud? When I first heard about this “cloud business,” I was astonished. We are already up to our eyebrows in a dizzying array of hi-tech devices, gadgets, gizmos and what-not – where very few of us have the technological know-how to run our own computers and set up all our software correctly – and now these multi-billion dollar technological corporations are creating an all-knowing and all-wise cloud above and beyond the seemingly ethereal, hard-to-fathom, and where-does-it-actually-exist world wide web. Are they trying to re-invent God or Divinity only in the image of high-technology? It also sounds like the cloud concept is a kind of phantasmagorical Mount Olympus where geeks (and possibly harmful hackers) run wild as would-be super-gods and goddesses while us mortals down below – struggling with coordinating iPhones, tablets and laptops – are operating our devices without a clue about what’s going on “up there.” Here are the first two sentences from the Wikipedia concerning Cloud Computing:
The picture shown in Wikipedia is equally alarming – in which devices like iPhones, tablets, laptops and servers are all encircling a cloud-like entity which contains words such as network, database, communication, compute, block storage, and – even more alarmingly – monitoring, finance and identity. (Note: Moss – being interviewed by Discover magazine – discusses this cloud computing realm as the next major security challenge coming up on the world’s horizon, and he is already worried about hackers breaking into the cloud and turning it into a nightmarish, high-tech Paradise Lost.) The Macrocosm of the Solar System Reveals our Safety/Security Concerns in our Earthly Microcosm If you have read my previous writing about the DAWN spacecraft currently taking photographs of the asteroid Vesta (deeply associated with safety and security matters across the board, as well the housing industry, insurance and the investment arena), you realize that what we are doing technologically, in an advanced way, by photographing the surface of Vesta, is attempting to figure out how to live more safe and secure lives on Earth and within the human community as we become more and more entrenched in the high-tech, cyberspace, global lifestyle. Just as the Voyager II spacecraft flew by Uranus in 1986 and the space shuttle Challenger exploded at the same time, and then Voyager II flew by Neptune in 1989 and Communism began falling around the world, so, too, we are now capturing images of the key rock in outer space that rules over everything associated with safety and security, insurance, housing and investment. The astrological aphorism – attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, the sage of Ancient Egypt – was “As Above, So Below,” or what’s true in the greater universe reflects its truth in the smaller universe. Clearly, that is happening now, in 2012, with the profusion of tablets, smart phones and a cloud that could easily darken our computer, high-tech skies if we are not on alert.
In closing this time, what follows is a warning and a hope. First for the warning: he asteroid Vesta will return to its natal placement at 19+ degrees of Taurus in America’s birth chart from June 12 - 15, 2012, and the next inauguration of a president (January 20, 2013) takes place with a rising Moon (representing the public) at 19+ Taurus (exactly igniting our nation’s Vesta). This past summer in 2011, when DAWN actually went into orbit around Vesta, this key asteroid – ruling over all safety, security, insurance and investment issues – made a station and turned retrograde at the Summer Solstice in an exact square pattern to America’s natal Vesta. And it was during the three summer months that our national credit rating was diminished, political disagreements regarding the debt ceiling reached epic proportions in Congress, and international economic markets were shocked by the European Sovereign Debt Crisis that seemed to come out of nowhere. To make matters more extreme, this June also starts a 7-fold Uranus-Pluto series of squares that will last until March 2015. These squares mimic a similar group that took place in the early 1930s – a time-period now known as The Great Depression. The fiscal nightmare that has engulfed so much of the world during the last few years has been called The Great Recession. The social media come up with these similar phrases because of the major, behind-the-scenes astrological cycles that are signaling the problem in the first place! However, hope is figuratively and literally on the horizon since the DAWN mission to Vesta eventually this summer changes course as that spacecraft goes on to visit Ceres in 2015, the same year another technological space marvel called New Horizons will be visiting far-distant Pluto and its trio of moons. Thus, three years from now, if these space missions stay intact, we will be seeing photographs of the so-called dwarf planets Ceres (Mother Nature; productivity; agriculture; food and water) and Pluto (death-rebirth; the underworld; willpower, purpose and government; the super-rich and the 99%), and earthly lives will drastically change again. We will need to shift our focus away from safety/security breakdowns in cyberspace in order to restore a better climate to our home planet, and rid ourselves of pollution and global poisons. Even the purity, safety, security and abundance of our precious water supply may be a top issue – which is why the following quotation is a hopeful sign of what we may discover in our solar system in a couple of years:
Update To show how serious the realm of hacking into websites is – with the goals of obtaining supposedly secure information affecting one’s identity and financial resources, or shutting down vital services – note what occurred during the January 14 - 15 weekend, just after this article was posted on Inner Sight. Zappos.com – a major shoe, hosiery and apparel company – reported that approximately 24 million client accounts were hacked into by an unknown source. Although Zappos then changed everyone’s passwords and contacted their clients (by email only, not by phone) – telling them to create new passwords – the scare was enormous and reminded so many people around the world that their addresses and credit card information might not be very safe and secure. Meanwhile, on the same day, hackers possibly connected to a Palestinian terrorist group overwhelmed the servers that sponsor and protect the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange and El Al Airlines websites in Israel – forcing those websites to go down temporarily, a double cyber-terror hit that sent shockwaves throughout Israel. Get used to this kind of online criminality as it is a daily part of this new kind of technological warfare in the 21st century. (©2012 by Mark Lerner and Great Bear Enterprises. All rights reserved.) |
Pole Shift Celebration: 100 Years Ago & 600 Light-Years AwayPole Shift Celebration: 100 Years Ago & 600 Light-Years Away By Mark Lerner
Dateline: Monday, December 12, 2011: Four days ago, I was planning to write a straight-forward article about a profound subject – the search for habitable planets in far-off solar systems by the NASA-run Kepler Mission... By Mark Lerner
Dateline: Monday, December 12, 2011: Four days ago, I was planning to write a straight-forward article about a profound subject – the search for habitable planets in far-off solar systems by the NASA-run Kepler Mission. An article appeared in The New York Times describing the success thus far achieved since the specially-designed camera on board this unique spacecraft had been sorting through thousands of star-realms, since the vehicle was launched back on March 6, 2009. Then a greater achievement was revealed, as a particular planet was located orbiting a Sun-like star every approximately 290 days. This particular planet was slightly larger than the size of Earth and about 600 light-year away.
When My Generation was Growing Up in the 1950s and 1960s… The international races to discover both poles of the Earth – a little over 100 years ago – were exciting and imaginative adventures for my generation and the earlier ones of the 20th century. I remembered learning about Admiral Richard E. Peary (born May 6, 1856) finding* the North Pole on April 6, 1909, because my Dad’s birthday was April 7 and that date struck a chord in my memory. (*Years later, I subsequently read that not only was Peary’s supposed discovery being called into question, but that the alternate discoveries by Frederick Cook and Richard Byrd might also have been falsified.) Meanwhile, in real life ten plus decades ago, Roald Amundsen was beginning to make quite a name for himself as a polar explorer. He became the first man to lead a team to discover the Northwest Passage (1903 to 1906) – a route from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean, in the northern regions of Canada, and was honored for having done so. He was about to lead a team to find the North Pole when he heard about the alleged discoveries of the North Pole by Peary and Cook. Amundsen changed his mind and re-routed to go in search of the South Pole – starting in the summer of 1910. Around the same time, Captain Robert Falcon Scott (born June 6, 1868), a British Navy officer, was leading his Terra Nova Expedition in search of the South Pole. This is what set up the rivalry and key race in 1911 to see which group of individuals would reach the pole first. December 14, 1911: Triumph and Tragedy On December 14, 1911, Roald Amundsen – along with four men and 15 dogs – reached their destination, staying several days at true 90-degrees Geographic South, and calling that place Polheim (“Home of the Pole”). While there they planted the Norwegian flag in order to provide evidence of their discovery for the British-led expedition still en route. Thirty-four days later, an exhausted and then devastated Robert Scott team realized they had lost the race and that Amundsen and his men had beaten them in an honorable quest to reach this prized designation on the vast and still largely unexplored Antarctic continent. It is hard to imagine how cold and forbidding it must have seemed to the Scott expedition to have arrived at their hoped-for goal – only to discover the Norwegian flag proudly flying there. Even though the world was not literally watching (as might be the case now via television, satellites and the internet), the major nations of the Earth were well-aware of the missions taking place. Scott and his men labored on their return and – due to bad weather, starvation and fatigue. as well as depression. Tragically, they all lost their lives in the few weeks that followed their too-late finding of the South Pole in January 1912. (The British erected statues and monuments to Scott for his heroic attempt, and I remember as a child wondering what compelled so many fearless explorers over the centuries to take such extreme risks to discover unknown lands and reach long-range goals.) Amundsen as an Emissary of the Planetary Logos It turns out that on December 14, 1911, the far-out planet Neptune reached 24 degrees of Cancer – the exact zodiacal placement of Roald Amundsen’s natal Sun-Venus union on the North Heliocentric Node of Saturn. He was 39 years old and approaching the time in life – known Now what makes this all the more remarkable is that the North and South Poles might just seem like upper and lower lines of energy for the Earth, but – from the esoteric realms – this is the spinal column of the being that gives life to our planet. Depending on what arcane sources you are familiar with, this entity is sometimes known as The Lord of the World, The Ancient of Days, Melchizedek, The Eternal Youth (my favorite name), as well as the more exotic Sanat Kumara. In many of the philosophical works concerning this presence, it said that he (or he/she – from the transcendent perspective) is deeply associated with the planet Venus, that Venus is the “alter-ego” to the Earth (the soul-mate?), and – furthermore – that the planet Saturn is one of the most profound solar systemic teachers to our Earth and humanity. Somehow or another – and I never thought I would be saying this a few days ago – it appears that Roald Amundsen and his discovery of the South Pole was an adventure fatefully supervised or orchestrated via some of the most rarefied spiritual guides on our planet. The bottom line is that Amundsen, along with a team member, Oscar Wisting, are the only two individuals to have truly discovered both poles, since these two men also flew over the North Pole together on May 12, 1926. Amazingly, there was a New Moon at this time at 21 degrees of Taurus – exactly on Amundsen’s natal Pluto – a planet said to connect to the Base of the Spine chakra in esoteric astrology and healing. As befits this kind of strange, twilight-zone like adventure, two years later – in June 1928 – at age 55*, Roald Amundsen was lost at sea (think water-ruled Cancer Sun-Venus union again) while on a rescue mission. His body was never found. *Using English-American style numerology, the name S A N A T (the first name of our Planetary Logos) adds up to 55 where S = 19, A = 1, N = 14, A = 1, and T = 20. All of this adds up to 55 – considered a double-digit master number, and therefore of very high order because it remains its own power rather than reducing to 10 or 1. For Amundsen to have been born when the Earth, the Sun and Venus were literally lined-up in the solar system, and totally connected to the North Heliocentric Node of Saturn (in reality being the orbit of Saturn around the Sun as it intersects around the zodiac), and to have discovered the South Pole when transiting Neptune was right on his Sun-Venus union, and to then die at age 55 – with a numerical vibration associated to the name SANAT (an anagram for Santa, as in Santa Claus, the Lord of the Poles, both North and South, depending on whether you live in the Northern or Southern Hemisphere) – strongly suggests that something far more intentional than mere coincidence was at work behind the scenes. In fact, these major events of Amundsen’s life appear to have been orchestrated in the manner of a deliberate synchronicity. Confirming my sense of this, as I was bringing together this research over the past weekend, the SyFy cable channel just happened to be running a film called Pole Storm, where a piece of a comet breaks off, hits the Earth and starts causing dire electro-magnetic pulses (EMPs) to occur in the atmosphere. In order to prevent our polar axis from tilting so far as to destroy all of life here on our fragile home base in the universe, a scientist devises a way to trigger enormous nuclear explosions on the opposite side of our planet (in the depths of the ocean). Earth’s Polar Axis and the Fear of a “Pole Reversal” Decades before the current concern over a global Armageddon due to the Mayan Calendar Long Count of 5,125-years ending in 2011 – 2012, America’s most famous psychic, Edgar Cayce, wrote about and had visions of a possible shift of the polar axis around the beginning of the 21st century. He died in January, 1945 and, since then, many books and stories have been written concerning whether a polar shift is more related to a reversal of magnetic north and south or the more catastrophic actual movement of the Earth on its axis. It is certainly true that the magnetic poles of our planet have reversed many times, and this has now been proven via geological research in looking at stone and metallic fragments from various epochs in our history. However, it remains to be seen whether the Earth periodically and drastically changes its polar orientation to the stars – which would wipe out entire civilizations very quickly. This would explain how many species in the past have become extinct and why an Atlantis or other continental realm of flourishing life might have met a shocking fate eons ago. As we celebrate the 100th anniversary of the stirring discovery of the South Pole this week and simultaneously prepare for jolly old St. Nicolas (alias Santa, alias Father Christmas, alias Time-Keeper and Ring-Master Saturn, alias Sanat Kumara) to come down our chimney-like spinal columns bearing toys and gifts if we have been spreading goodwill to our dear ones, friends, colleagues, neighbors, fellow citizens and human souls worldwide, let us remember to give thanks that our Earth is still alive and flourishing, even as our astronomers and scientists gaze into the distant past (600-light-years away means 600 years going back in our past) hoping to find a habitable New Earth in the so-called Goldilocks Zone (not too hot, not too cold, but just right) of a solar system far, far away (and, unfortunately, only available for future colonization if we can travel faster than light, move through a wormhole or beam ourselves a la Star Trek teleportation to another location in the universe). © 2011 by Mark Lerner and Great Bear Enterprises, Ltd. All rights reserved.
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While Europe's Debt Crisis Grows Horrific, Europa Shows Oceans Terrific (11/18)
While Europe's Debt Crisis Grows Horrific, Jupiter's Moon Europa Shows Oceans Terrific By Mark Lerner Dateline November 18, 2011. Just two days ago – in an announcement by NASA and backed up by a feature appearing in the journal Nature – more good news regarding the vast underground and salt-water endowed ocean on Jupiter’s moon Europa: it might actually be able to harbor life. Why does this sound vaguely familiar? Do you remember the film 2001: A Space Odyssey – based on the sci-fi classic by Arthur C. Clarke? By the end of that movie and in the sequels that followed, it was clear that something remarkable was happening to Jupiter (it was becoming a star) and that one of its moons – enchanting, water-enriched Europa – would become its magically evolving Earth...
By Mark Lerner Dateline November 18, 2011. Just two days ago – in an announcement by NASA and backed up by a feature appearing in the journal Nature – more good news regarding the vast underground and salt-water endowed ocean on Jupiter’s moon Europa: it might actually be able to harbor life. Why does this sound vaguely familiar? Do you remember the film 2001: A Space Odyssey – based on the sci-fi classic by Arthur C. Clarke? By the end of that movie and in the sequels that followed, it was clear that something remarkable was happening to Jupiter (it was becoming a star) and that one of its moons – enchanting, water-enriched Europa – would become its magically evolving Earth. Europa was one of a group of four moons (including Ganymede, Callisto and Io) that were discovered by Galileo in January, 1610. We now know it to be the sixth largest moon and fifteenth largest celestial body in our solar system. When the Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecrafts (back in 1973 and 1974), as well as the two Voyager missions (several years later), took pictures of Jupiter and its several dozen moons, our researchers began to realize that Europa might hold something precious to humanity – water. Once the Galileo mission was launched from the space shuttle Atlantis in 1989, and took photographs of the Jovian miniature universe from 1995 through 2003, many of our current views of Europa became solidified.
Due to new photographic breakthroughs, our scientist-astronomers have seen what they call “chaos terrains” – which appear to be something like dark-colored, sink-holes on the surface of Europa that might lead to lakes of water within the thick ice crust. These lakes – one of which seems to be only 2 miles from the surface – might periodically melt and refreeze, but during these processes be able to transfer heat and energy, back and forth, between the surface of Europa and its oceanic interior. If this interpretation is correct, it is possible that life could exist there if organic compounds are also present. On top of all this – with little fanfare, except in the NASA community – a mission called Juno began on August 5, 2011, with a spacecraft of that name now hurtling toward giant Jupiter (the largest planet in our solar system) and due to arrive in five years in 2016. On the day of the launch, the asteroid Juno (named for the goddess who was the wife of Jupiter in Roman mythology) was located at 3 degrees of Libra while Jupiter was positioned at 10 degrees of Taurus. Look at the keynotes of the symbols for these two degrees of the zodiac – as described in the well-known book by Dr. Marc Edmund Jones called The Sabian Symbols in Astrology:
Ironically, several prestigious astrologers who have investigated the meaning of the four main asteroids in great depth give the rulership of Libra to Juno – as Juno has much to do with empowerment or disempowerment within marriage or marriage-like bonds, primary partnerships, fair, respectful and equitable treatment under the law, as well as peace treaties and international diplomacy.
Scott Bolton, a lead researcher at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, TX, says the following about the Juno mission to Jupiter: “Jupiter is the Rosetta Stone of our solar system…Juno is going there as our emissary – to interpret what Jupiter has to say.” When Juno arrives at Jupiter in 2016, it will eventually go into a polar orbit – making 33 passes around the planet in order to gather accurate data about the origin, structure, atmosphere and magnetism of this colossal celestial body, large enough to contain 1400 Earths inside of it, while completing a revolution on its axis in an amazing time of less than 10 hours (causing Jupiter to be more egg-like than spherical). As exciting as the Juno – Jupiter interaction will be five years from now, the spacecraft will not actually explore Europa. However, NASA has a remedy for that because a mission – tentatively given the name Europa Jupiter System Mission (EJSM) – is set for a potential launch in 2020, the same year that Jupiter and Saturn make their next union at the powerful Zero Point of the sign of Aquarius. Even though we may be slashing NASA’s budget in future years – due to the American debt and deficit crises that may continue to spiral out of control – the EJSM is at least the second main priority mission on the NASA agenda, primarily because we may finally determine if Europa has an abundant water supply and whether organic life exists there now. Therefore, as you open up your daily newspaper or turn on your cell phone or charge up your iPad to see a headline like the following from this morning’s NYTimes Online – European Rift on Central Bank’s Role in Debt Relief – try not to worry so much about whether the Europeans on Earth will somehow drive us all madly into a World War III (based on economic corruption and shenanigans), instead think more hopefully that in our future incarnations – perhaps thousands of millennia from now – we will be joyously evolving as Europans on that transfigured moon while basking in the shining glory of a new-born star, Jupiter, in the middle of a somewhat small solar system orbiting 26,000-light-years from the heart-center of our galaxy composed of billions of stars. Copyright 2011 by Mark Lerner and Great Bear Enterprises. All rights reserved. |
Perfecting a New Astrological Technique:Almost Alignments (10/28/2011)By Mark Lerner Dateline: Halloween Weekend 2011. As I write this new feature within the Inner Sight universe, I am staggered by what it could mean for the billions of human souls currently incarnate – everyone with a horoscope potentially revealing the path to fulfilling a higher destiny – along with those rookies about to take material form in the first half of November, and those from around the Winter Solstice 2011 to mid-January 2012. Why I am focusing your attention on these windows of time? You will see in a moment, but first let us go back to 1977. By Mark Lerner Dateline: Halloween Weekend 2011. As I write this new feature within the Inner Sight universe, I am staggered by what it could mean for the billions of human souls currently incarnate – everyone with a horoscope potentially revealing the path to fulfilling a higher destiny – along with those rookies about to take material form in the first half of November, and those from around the Winter Solstice 2011 to mid-January 2012. Why I am focusing your attention on these windows of time? You will see in a moment, but first let us go back to 1977. Findhorn Community: September 5, 1977 Have you ever been so excited when buying a book for yourself that you immediately wrote down the month-day-year of purchase, as well as the time and place? That’s what occurred for me at 6:45AM on September 5, 1977 in Scotland when I was a member of the Findhorn Community. The book is entitled The English Alphabet: An Inquiry into Its Mystical Construction by Robert M. Hoffstein. [Recently, I saw that Amazon online was selling a revised version.] Over the decades, in order to have enough money to live on, support a family and travel, I have sold many of my metaphysical and astrological books. Then, when stable again, I would re-buy many of the same books. However, this extraordinary resource on the often misunderstood origins of the 26 letters of our alphabet has never left my presence. Oddly enough, as I was learning about the Hebraic connection to English – the main line of fantastic reasoning portrayed in this rather short volume – the comet-like celestial body Chiron was discovered in our solar system. This planetary world – identified with a seemingly immortal centaur from ancient Greece – has archetypes such as the wounded healer, the maverick, the outsider, the shaman, the bridge-builder and, very significantly in all of our lives, the Twilight Zone (where we are often alive and awake between chronological time and eternity). In many ways, Chiron represents a quasi-divine and human/animal blend, with the ultimate need and path to sacrifice itself for a greater good. The Letter “A” While every letter in the English alphabet has a remarkable series of meanings that go back to the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet, it is the letter “A” and its position as the first letter that I want to stress right now. It turns out that “A” is connected to a yoked ox whose main function in agriculture was to plow up fields and plant seeds. Nevertheless, its hidden function was to sacrifice itself for the sake of a greater reality. Thus, if you look at these words – apolitical, asocial and asymmetrical – the function of the letter “a” is to withdraw or absent oneself or energy-field from that realm (politics, social life, symmetry). “A” – when used as the indefinite particle “a” – singles something out to make it individual. For example: a tree; a person; a moment of time. “A” is the Monad of Pythagorean Numerology. And, as I see it, it has the ability to make any word “sacred,” the true meaning of sacrifice. Mercury and Venus in November
This Mercury-Venus almost alignment is exceedingly rare, but I am bringing it to your attention – using the letter “A” twice in naming this kind of configuration – in order that we may all try to figure out what we will be feeling, thinking, hoping for and actually experiencing in this upcoming window of time (approximately now to mid-November). Just as Mercury connects with electricity, Venus connects with magnetism; on higher levels of reality, Mercury becomes thinking and information exchange while Venus rules over feelings and loving interaction. In the business realm, Mercury stands for traders while Venus represents investors. One can also associate science with Mercury and art with Venus. In the ancient Greek mythology, Hermes (Mercury) and Aphrodite (Venus) in unison formed the Hermaphrodite – half-male and half-female magical entity. The main question I have is whether all of us will feel disappointment or encouragement from this almost alignment of Mercury and Venus. I ask this because I have seen other examples of celestial bodies almost doing something, and the usual manifestation is a possible let-down emotionally – where one’s anticipation of some kind of fulfillment was never realized. On the other hand, with these two planets so amazingly close, perhaps something unique and ingenious can occur – simply because they remain locked together for a long time-period. Jupiter and Saturn from the Winter Solstice 2011 to mid-January 2012
With just a slight bit of push backward in the zodiac by Jupiter and forward in the zodiac by Saturn, these two giants – connected so much to our philosophical, religious, political, financial, social, and educational destinies – ought to make a fourth opposition. And then they would – through Jupiter’s forward shift on Christmas Day 2011 and Saturn’s retrograde shift on February 7, 2012 – make a fifth opposition in the early spring of 2012. Jupiter and Saturn did form five oppositions from 1969 to 1971, 1989 to 1991, and they will make another five oppositions during 2029 to 2031. However, what will actually happen in our near future is that from December 22, 2011 to around mid-January 2012, Jupiter and Saturn will almost oppose, but remain 3 degrees and even a mere 2 degrees short of an exact polarity. We will all experience the heavy-duty presence and battle between happy-go-lucky, upbeat and enthusiastic Jupiter and far more realistic, down-to-earth and cautious Saturn at nearly opposite places in the zodiac, but the full impact of their polarity will be hard to understand and decipher. Similar to the Mercury-Venus almost conjunction, this Jupiter-Saturn almost opposition can represent an even higher-level of disappointment or encouragement in our lives. Oppositions have always sounded negative to students of astrology because of the word “oppose” – from which the opposition angle of 180-degrees gets its name and meaning. However, just as a Jupiter-Saturn opposition – which occurs approximately every 20 years – can represent an intense and destructive, tug-of-war of contrary forces, it can also signify a brilliant illumination externally and internally (just as the Sun-Moon opposition every month is known as the Full Moon, with its twin and yet opposite drives toward lunacy or enlightenment). What is astounding to realize is that every newborn and literally every chart for the birth of anything during the first half of this November will have the almost union of Mercury and Venus accentuated as a dynamic presence. The same thing – but regarding the almost opposition of Jupiter and Saturn existing in every horoscope wheel – will be a force to be reckoned with from December 22, 2011 to mid-January 2012. My request is that we all become more alert to our dear ones, friends, communications, environmental conditions, and current events – nationally and around the world – in the time-periods emphasized in this feature, with the hope that we take these almost alignments, and, using our A-Games and Awareness, make our lives more sacred (the real meaning of “sacrifice.”). Copyright 2011 by Mark Lerner and Great Bear Enterprises, Ltd. All rights reserved.
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Occupy Wall Street: Update (10/15/11)
Occupy Wall Street: The Global Revolution Returns to America By Mark Lerner
Update Saturday Oct. 15, 2011: The Top Story today was that Occupy Wall Street went global – with fairly large demonstrations in dozens of cities around the world. Some were violent – as in Rome and London. All of this reveals the power of the cosmos and astrology when an important cause begins at a celestially-active time – in this case the first Manhattan event on Saturday September 17 when the asteroid Vesta was stationary just one day after a similar pause in the sky by Pluto. Keep in mind that Uranus (the revolutionary spirit that seeks to shatter the material structures and forms stifling freedom for the masses) is still retrograding toward the potent Zero Point of the zodiac (0 Aries) into December. As this What’s New in Our World feature explains, the Uranian urge for individual liberty and true democracy – even if it occurs via shocking, unexpected methods – appears to be an unstoppable force in 2011 and beyond. There is now a website –www.occupywallst.org – concerning this rapidly-growing movement.
By Mark Lerner Update Saturday Oct. 15, 2011: The Top Story today was that Occupy Wall Street went global – with fairly large demonstrations in dozens of cities around the world. Some were violent – as in Rome and London. All of this reveals the power of the cosmos and astrology when an important cause begins at a celestially-active time – in this case the first Manhattan event on Saturday September 17 when the asteroid Vesta was stationary just one day after a similar pause in the sky by Pluto. Keep in mind that Uranus (the revolutionary spirit that seeks to shatter the material structures and forms stifling freedom for the masses) is still retrograding toward the potent Zero Point of the zodiac (0 Aries) into December. As this What’s New in Our World feature explains, the Uranian urge for individual liberty and true democracy – even if it occurs via shocking, unexpected methods – appears to be an unstoppable force in 2011 and beyond. There is now a website –www.occupywallst.org – concerning this rapidly-growing movement.
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Occupy Wall Street: The Global Revolution Returns to America (10/8/11)By Mark Lerner Dateline Saturday October 8, 2011. Most US citizens probably identify with America as the world’s number one superpower and, like it or not, as the global policeman since the end of World War II. However, our unexpected and truly shocking victory over the British between 1776 and 1781, which changed the course of all future revolutions on our planet, is our truest and deepest legacy. And with cosmic precision and synchronicity – as our initial Revolutionary War for freedom turned the tide in our favor in that last year of battles (1781) – the first of the three outer planets (Uranus) revealed itself on March 13, 1781, to Sir William Herschel, a mathematics/music teacher and part-time astronomer, living in Bath, England. After the discovery of Uranus, the British and European sky-watchers were thrilled that the seemingly unchanging solar system of Sun, Moon, five planets and assorted fixed stars now included a radical-change agent, since the finding of Uranus opened a door to vast new horizons that could be explored in the universe. Meanwhile, along the eastern region in North America, within the thirteen, upstart colonies, George Washington’s Continental Army was injected with new life – leading to the defeat of General Cornwallis and his troops in Yorktown, Virginia on October 19, 1781. What a large portion of our populace has forgotten is that future revolutionaries around the world (like Simon Bolivar in South America, Lenin in Russia, Mao in China, Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam and even Fidel Castro in Cuba) were following the script set forth first in America by the likes of Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, Revere, Hale, and so many other courageous souls. Even if their styles of leadership and political philosophies were different, they looked to the exploits of our Founding Fathers for the inspiration needed to change the governmental shape of their own homelands and overthrow oppressive or imperialist powers. What people and the press have referred to this year as the Arab Spring – due to numerous revolutionary movements for human rights in dictator-controlled Arab countries – is really misnamed because it is too narrow in scope. We can go back to the very day of the election of Barack Obama over John McCain (November 4, 2008) as the birth event for this modern overthrow of military-industrial-corporate power, greed and manipulation by the few haves over the many have-nots. On November 4, 2008, the planet Uranus in Pisces made the first of five oppositions to Saturn in Virgo. Uranus-Saturn oppositions only happen around every 43 – 44 years. They represent a tug-of-war or enlightened struggle pitting new revelations against old, worn-out structures that no longer work, future possibilities against past inadequacies, and the need for radical change against the stubborn desire to keep things running according to the entrenched system’s outmoded rules and regulations. These polarities in the zodiac – lasting until July, 2010 – were then taken over by three divisive, Jupiter-Saturn oppositions followed by three potentially uplifting, Jupiter-Uranus conjunctions all happening from May, 2010, to March, 2011. It was during the December, 2010/January, 2011 time-period that a Tunisian man immolated himself – causing a revolt in that North African country in January of this year. And it was on January 4, 2011 that Jupiter – the largest planet in our solar system – uniting with Uranus in late-Pisces, made the revolutionary and radical nature of the first of the outer planets bigger, stronger and more explosive within humanity. By March 11, 2011, Uranus entered Aries – the archetypal sign of spring and fiery, new beginnings – for a 7+ year cycle. On that fateful day, a devastating earthquake and tsunami shook Northeastern Japan – simultaneously creating a nuclear power plant disaster that is still unresolved. (Uranus rules Uranium and, as such, is the key planet associated with the fission process and the hazards of radioactivity.) Ten days later – on March 21, 2011 – the closest Sun-Uranus merger in the last 335 years occurred at the Zero Point of the zodiac (0 degrees of Aries). It is this event – beyond anything else happening astrologically – that is the cause or genesis of this year’s series of revolutionary movements springing up on Spaceship Earth. The reason is that the Spring Equinox in the Northern Hemisphere acts as a birthing moment for the 12-month cycle of what will come afterwards. Fast Forward to September-October 2011 Now that we know what is behind this revolutionary fervor, a key question remains: Why is the current Occupy This is almost akin to a celestial magic act, conveyed by invisible and psychic energy-fields, because there is a specific and clear sequence of transferred power going on from planet or asteroid to the Moon, and then to human beings on Earth. For example, on the weekend that Occupy Wall Street first began (September 17, 2011), initially Pluto (on Friday September 16) and then Vesta (on Saturday September 17) stopped their retrograding in the sky, paused, and began to shift into direct motion. Pluto (having a lot to do with conception and planting of seeds, extremes, the underworld, repressed emotions, greed, corruption, as well as Plutocracy and government by the wealthy) was located in strong-willed, pragmatic Capricorn while Vesta (having much to do with safety and security, home/shelter and the housing industry – including foreclosures – and, most importantly, the global investment community) was located in the more activist, team-spirited, universal air sign of Aquarius. What first seemed like a fizzled-out protest in lower Manhattan, only drawing about 1,000 individuals on Saturday, September 17, suddenly shape-shifted into a shocking national movement this past week (Monday, October 3, to Saturday, October 8) and this was primarily due to the catalytic force of the Moon first uniting with Pluto on October 3 and then uniting with Vesta on October 5. By the latter date, President Obama was being asked questions about the Occupy Wall Street protests, Vice President Biden was responding to the press with some of his opinions on the movement, and cities such as Philadelphia, Atlanta, Charlotte, Austin and even here in Eugene, Oregon, were responding with very similar demonstrations. The Occupy Wall Street organizers chose September 17 to start their protest because the U.S. Constitution was signed on September 17, 1787. They want to start a new democracy movement to fight against the corruption, greed, war-mongering and tyranny they believe stems from the 1% of the super-rich and all-powerful attempting to control everyone else. Hence, the numerous signs reading: We are the 99%. And in many respects they do represent the left-wing (Uranian) answer to the right-wing Tea Party advocates (Saturn) who have been far more vocal, given the fact that those Saturn-Uranus oppositions started when the Republican Party stalwart (McCain) lost to the Uranian radical-change agent (Obama) in the “Change You Can Believe In” campaign. (Note: President Obama, a Sun-sign Leo, is very Uranian and revolutionary in his being – even if he has not appeared so in his role as President of the United States. He is born with Aquarius Rising, giving Uranus the rulership of his birthchart, and his natal Uranus in Leo is closely united with the fate and destiny-ruling Lunar North Node. Likewise, Abraham Lincoln was an Aquarian Sun President with Uranus united with his Lunar North Node. Franklin D. Roosevelt was an Aquarian Sun President with Uranus rising in Virgo in his first house of self-expression. John F. Kennedy was a Gemini Sun President whose Sun was right on America’s Uranus from July 4, 1776, while JFK’s Uranus was also stationary. These four presidents are the top Uranian leaders that have reached the upper echelons of our system of government.) What the masses of Americans and people around the globe don’t realize is that Uranus – via its retrograde The reason the media is calling our current economic doldrums The Great Recession is that they are picking up on this similarity between Uranus-Pluto square formations separating the 80-years between the start of the 1930s and the start of this decade in 2011. It appears that the Occupy Wall Street movement contains considerable power to change the values and social activities of large numbers of Americans, since Venus and Uranus just happened to be in a potent opposition on September 17 when the occupiers first met in Lower Manhattan. In addition, both of these celestial bodies were very close to exactly squaring America’s Venus in Cancer from July 4, 1776, and our initial Declaration of Independence. Venus represents our social bonds, personal values, savings in the bank and the money in our wallets when we act as consumers – plus our connection to land and home ownership – while Uranus stands for the shocking, surprising revolutionary forces that attempt to upset the status-quo and create a brave, New World once the shattering of the old forms and structures in society have occurred. Meanwhile, as all of our lives continue to undergo a hodge-podge of revolutionary shifts on the social, political and economic fronts here on Earth, the Dawn spacecraft (a technological marvel designed by our brightest minds) methodically continues in its year-long mission to map out the surface of the asteroid Vesta – the cosmic symbol of our attempt to understand the evolutionary forces at work regarding our sense of home and hearth, safety and security, and the gradual transformation of the global investment community into a more selfless, altruistic field of human endeavor. Copyright 2011 by Mark Lerner and Great Bear Enterprises, Ltd. All rights reserved. |
The Hidden Meaning of Hurricane Irene (9/2/11)By Mark Lerner To quote the great poet T.S. Eliot – from the close of The Hollow Men (1925) – “This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper.” As a literary expression, it sounds right, but express this sentiment to any person living in Vermont in the aftermath of Hurricane Irene and you will find that what constitutes a whimper to meteorologists and the media, feels a lot more like a bang to those whose lives and livelihoods are now in waterlogged shambles. Today – Friday September 2, 2011 – six days after Hurricane Irene devastated thirteen states, killed close to four dozen people, forced hundreds of thousands to reluctantly evacuate their homes, and cut off power to nearly ten million weary souls, the state of Vermont was finally declared a disaster area, allowing federal support to assist local officials and the national guard in the massive clean-up efforts. A few weeks ago in What’s New2Go, I reported that NASA was looking into the genuine possibility that water is flowing now in places on Mars while solar flare activity in the direction of Earth was heating up – causing a stir within the Mayan elder community that late August might see the start of the coming transition into the 5,125-year Long Count. However, the main news of late August did not revolve around any enormous solar explosions, but rather a massive storm originating in the hot tropics of our own home planet and gradually growing into the monster named Hurricane Irene. I watched the television media – in particular – zero in on the evolution of this ocean-born behemoth. With all of the modern, high-tech tools and satellite reconnaissance – plus the vivid, horrific memories of Hurricane Katrina still circulating in our awareness from six years ago, when it devastated New Orleans and the surrounding areas as a Category 3-to-5 storm – there was now a strong emphasis on the numerical ranking of Irene. For several days – as the hurricane neared landfall on the coast of North Carolina – meteorologists and computer experts kept track of whether Irene was a 3, 2 or 1. Although news reporters did advise the public that no matter the category number, people in the path of the storm needed to err on the side of caution and evacuate, many individuals were lulled into a false sense of security when Hurricane Irene started breaking apart, shifted toward being “only a 1,” slammed into lower Manhattan and New England, and quickly dissipated into a supposed, more mild “Tropical Storm.” Meanwhile, as a professional astrologer, I had already been focused, since Thanksgiving of 2010, on the fact that America was in the midst of its eighth Saturn Return “Identity Crisis.” Every entity – person, group, organization, company, city or nation that is born at a moment of time – will need to go through a profound restructuring of its life purpose in such 29.5-year Saturn cycles. America had already gone through this soul-searching process seven previous times since our birth as a country on July 4, 1776. The difference now was that the 2010-2011 USA Saturn Return started last fall, then clocked in exactly again this past March, and then was due for completion at 5:00AM EDT on Sunday August 28 – the very morning that Hurricane Irene made landfall in New York and New England. (Note: August 28 also carried with it a potent New Moon happening at 11:05PM EDT, and the birth chart for that moment revealed several celestial bodies – Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune, and two asteroids, Vesta and Juno – demonstrating rare cosmic potency and a kind of celestial orchestration relative to the entire earthly scenario unfolding on American shores.) This is where the entire story becomes truly odd and begins to resemble a Twilight Zone episode. Saturn – in addition to having much to do with karma, fears, authority figures, rules and regulations, right timing and chronic conditions – rules over financial matters, mountains, delays, and anything that slows things down to create deep-seated frustrations, pessimism and even depression. The eye of Hurricane Irene had been somewhat broken up after the storm struck North Carolina, but by the time the swirling winds, rain and surges were ready to hit landfall again to the north, the remnant of that eye appeared to exactly strike Lower Manhattan, the area around Wall Street, where the corruption of the last several years had thrown not just America, but much of the entire globe into a financial tsunami. Meanwhile, as reporters reclassified Irene to mere “Tropical Storm” status – undoubtedly reassuring millions in the Northeast that this hurricane would be no Katrina – suddenly news flashes and pictures of roaring rivers and flooded towns came streaming in from New England, especially from Vermont, a very mountainous (Saturn-dominated) state. In fact, it wasn’t the numerical clout of Irene at all that was shocking Vermont citizens, but the torrential rains from a very slow-moving storm that – combined with the hilly terrain and already swollen rivers from many weeks of general rainy weather – were knocking out power to the people of this state and sending so many of them fleeing in fear as floods grew in their ferocity. The lesson to be learned here is that low intensity hurricanes and tropical storms can still be extremely destructive if they are slow in motion and vast in size. Unfortunately, government officials, meteorologists and media experts are at a decided disadvantage in their ability to predict and comprehend extreme weather phenomena, given that they know nothing of profound astrological cycles (for example, America’s Saturn Return), which – in this case – coincided exactly with Hurricane Irene hitting landfall for the second time in New York City and New England. And since Saturn is associated with major delays, we are still – in early September – under the influence of our Saturn Return “Identity Crisis” as a country. As this article is being written (September 2), Tropical Storm Lee is swirling slowly (a la Saturn) south of New Orleans, in the Gulf of Mexico, and could bring torrential rains to Louisiana and nearby areas during this Labor Day weekend – testing the spirit and stamina of New Orleans one more time. Finally, meandering through the Atlantic Ocean, Hurricane Katia is also growing in strength with an energy-field that could impact our East Coast just in time to cause concern about our national safety and security during the tenth anniversary of the tragedy of September 11, 2001. ©2011 by Mark Lerner and Great Bear Enterprises, Ltd. All rights reserved.
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Water on Mars, Fire on Earth (8/15/11)By Mark Lerner Water on Mars… On August 3, for the first time in almost two years, Mars entered the primary water sign of the zodiac – Cancer – from the Earth’s perspective. On August 4, NASA released the following statement, reading in part:
I have put part of the last paragraph from NASA in italics because it bears an eerie resemblance to what has plagued observers of Mars – from Earth – for several centuries. For those of you who are not Mars aficionados, it was the Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli who in 1877 – during a year when Mars was closer to the Earth than usual – remapped the surface of the red planet in considerable detail and happened to use the word “canali” to describe strange channels or grooves along the Martian surface. The famous American astronomer Percival Lowell took this to mean “canals” of water – rather than channel-grooves – and he believed that a civilization on Mars was at work creating a global irrigation system. Percival Lowell built an observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona to study Mars, and eventually it was at this highly elevated outpost in the American southwest that Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto in 1930. Mars has a thin atmosphere that is primarily composed of carbon dioxide and the reason this planet appears pink-red is that particles of iron oxide dust are suspended within it. Our astronomers believe that eons ago Mars did have flowing water on it surface, but starting with the two Viking missions that landed there in 1976, we still haven’t found actual water flowing there now. It remains to be seen whether the new report from NASA on August 4 truly “holds water” or not as various probes on Mars report back to our researchers in the months and years ahead. Fire on Earth… Meanwhile, following several solar flares exploding with fury during this Solar Leo time-period in our zodiac (including a massive X6.9 rated event on August 9), NASA held a press conference yesterday (August 18) during which a movie was shown concerning how Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) strike the Earth in great detail. Thanks to a solar-observing spacecraft named STEREO-A, we now have a new technique for predicting the potency of these CMEs. The next two paragraphs come from the NASA report:
Finally, on the important subject of sunspots, as we are nearing the maximum zone of the 11-year cycle in 2012-2013, here comes important news from the website Space being released today as well in the journal Science (August 19):
Finally, in this regard and according to Mitch Battros – of the Earth Changes Media Newsletter – Mayan elders believe the second half of this month could prove very significant as a build-up to the transformational vibrations at work due to the upcoming completion of the Long Count of 5,125 years. Perhaps economic forecasters – completely baffled this month by gigantic disturbances and trading volatility within the global investment community – need to temporarily stop looking at their obscure chart analyses and gaze up to the Sun and our solar system for answers to the dangers facing our home planet. © 2011 by Mark Lerner and Great Bear Enterprises, Ltd. All rights reserved.
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Art Imitating Life Or Life Imitating Art? (8/1/11)By Mark Lerner Do you remember in the spring of 1979 when the Three Mile Island nuclear facility in Pennsylvania experienced a near meltdown and, at the same time, The China Syndrome (starring Jane Fonda, Michael Douglas and Jack Lemmon, and highlighting that exact subject matter) appeared in movie theaters across America? Similarly, the Dawn spacecraft has just started a 1-year orbit of the asteroid Vesta (which, in astrology, rules over the global investment community as well as safety and security). Meanwhile, back here on Earth, the main stock markets in America have tanked and investors world-wide are in crisis mode just as NASA holds a major press conference revealing the first close-up pictures of the surface of Vesta. Now check this out: On July 27, 2011, astronomers studying images taken by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission announced the discovery of the first known "Trojan" asteroid orbiting the Sun along with Earth. Trojans are asteroids that share an orbit with a planet near stable points in front of or behind the planet. Because they constantly lead or follow in the same orbit as the planet, they can never collide with it. (In our solar system, Trojan asteroids also share orbits with Neptune, Mars and Jupiter. Likewise, two of Saturn's moons share orbits with Trojans.) Scientists had predicted Earth should have Trojans, but they have been difficult to find because they are relatively small and appear near the Sun from Earth's point of view. "These asteroids dwell mostly in the daylight, making them very hard to see," said Martin Connors of Athabasca University in Canada, lead author of a new paper on the discovery in the July 28 issue of the journal Nature. "But we finally found one, because the object has an unusual orbit that takes it farther away from the Sun than what is typical for Trojans. WISE was a game-changer, giving us a point of view difficult to have at Earth's surface." "It's as though Earth is playing follow the leader," said Amy Mainzer, the principal investigator of NEOWISE at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "Earth always is chasing this asteroid around." In amazing synchronicity with the discovery of the Earth’s Trojan asteroid on July 27 was the simultaneous release of the film Another Earth in US theaters, July 22 – 24. Check out these film reviews:
Another Earth first appeared at the Sundance Film Festival in January, 2011. It received a standing ovation. This low-budget movie is the first directorial effort of New Haven native Mike Cahill – born July 5, 1979. The USA was born on July 4, 1776; therefore, Mike Cahill and America not only share the same Cancer Sun-sign placement and degree of the zodiac, but – from the heliocentric perspective – they share the same Earth location. The same Earth location? That is part of the fantasy and metaphorical meaning of the film – the premise being: What if there was a duplicate Earth in our solar system, another life just like ours, possibly with another you? If you could somehow travel to that other world, could you merge with a parallel identity of yours, and wipe the slate clean from your original karma on your home planet? Art imitating life or life imitating art? NASA discovers a planetary body orbiting the Sun in our own Earthly orbit at the precise time when the film Another Earth is released in the US, inviting us to ponder and reflect upon our true identity and mortality, as well as the possibility of a second-chance for all of us out there somewhere in time and space. © 2011 by Mark Lerner and Great Bear Enterprises, Ltd. All rights reserved.
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Mind over Antimatter? (7/15/11)By Mark Lerner My favorite magazine is Astronomy. The latest cover (August 2011) is shown here. When this issue arrived on July 6, I immediately opened to a series of pages called Astronomy 101 where a writer is posing 40 cosmic questions and answers. The last one intrigues me: “What’s the universe made of?” Answer: “Current estimates by cosmologists divide the contents of the universe as: dark energy, 70%; dark matter, 25%; free hydrogen and helium, 4%; stars, 0.5%; neutrinos and everything else, 0.5%.” (Italics in the preceding sentence are mine.) My first reaction is amazement. I have been reading this magazine for so long and have been dazzled by the fascinating stories of the billions of stars in our galaxy, the billions of galaxies in our star-studded universe, and the potential for multi-verses with who knows how many trillions of stars. Now I have to somehow wrap my mind around the fact that stars make up only one-half of 1 percent of our universe? I will leave it to all of you researchers on physics, metaphysics, anti-metaphysics and anti-physics to figure out what this truly means, but the bottom line is: (a) there should have been an entire, mirror-reflection universe of oppositely charged particles created at the Big Bang 14+ billion years ago (assuming you believe in a Big Bang); and (b) normally it is rare to trap antimatter for more than a split second. However, at CERN – otherwise known as the European Organisation for Nuclear research in Geneva, Switzerland – antihydrogen was created for more than 1000 seconds. (By the way, one of their toys is a large magnet. Guess how much it weighs? Answer: 60,000 pounds. Thus, you can begin to imagine what these 21st century quirky Einsteins are doing fairly close to Albert’s original hunting grounds if they have an experimental, 60,000-pound magnet to play with.) Also, it turns out that on June 5 – as reported by Nature Physics, NPR’s online division, and other reliable centers for the collection of knowledge and wisdom – antihydrogen was trapped for 16 minutes and 40 seconds. It is the first element – hydrogen – whose protons or positively charged nuclei are smashed together four at a time to create the second element (helium) that makes the Sun shine, and simultaneously release enormous amounts of energy along the electro-magnetic spectrum. In 1897, Joseph John Thomson discovered the electron (negatively charged particles surrounding the nuclei of atoms) and 31 years later, in 1928, Paul Dirac hypothesized the existence of a positively-charged electron (otherwise known as a “positron”). Several years later, his theory was confirmed and he won the Noble Prize in Physics. Flash forward to now. Our 2011 experimenters are finally getting into the thick of the potential for antimatter to actually exist as a kind of alternate universe. And in January of this year, NASA reported that its Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope accidentally discovered antimatter being created above thunderstorms on Earth. Adam Frank, an Astrophysicist writing for the NPR blog, said the following in his antimatter story: “Then in 1928 Paul Dirac predicted that electrons must have an oppositely charged ‘antimatter’ twin.” Notice the word “twin” – which relates, of course, to Gemini, the sign of the Twins. On June 5, when antimatter finally saw the light of day for 1000 seconds, the Sun reached the maximum power point in Gemini – at 15 degrees of this zodiacal sector of the ecliptic. For those of you into the beautiful and deeply-imaginative Sabian Symbols, 15 Gemini as described by Dane Rudhyar is represented by Two Dutch Children Talking to Each Other, Exchanging Their Knowledge. Thus, via astrology, we see the perfect symbol of this ongoing research regarding matter and antimatter – perhaps analogous to our alternating human cycles of waking and sleeping, and, within sleeping, dreaming versus more unconscious states of reality. Therefore, we may be living – on a daily basis – much closer to the anti-matter universe than we think. ©2011 by Mark Lerner and Great Bear Enterprises, Ltd. All rights reserved.
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Mercury: MESSENGER of the Gods (6/24/11)By Mark Lerner As the new Inner Sight/ILE website is being launched, you may be unaware that a highly sophisticated spacecraft – named MESSENGER (an acronym for MErcury, Surface, Space, ENvironment, GEochemistry and Ranging) – is now orbiting the innermost, known planet, Mercury. MESSENGER was launched on August 3, 2004, when Mercury was in one of its two ruling signs: Virgo (representing knowledge absorption and the Hermetic Wisdom teachings). In order to lock it into its current one-year orbit, the spacecraft had to make numerous, complex maneuvers in its almost 7-year and 5-billion-mile journey. When MESSENGER arrived on Thursday evening March 17, 2011, this was the first time that any spacecraft launched from Earth had been able to successfully orbit the ancient Messenger of the Gods planet. From the astrological point of view, on that night, Mercury made an inspirational, 72-degree aspect to the asteroid Pallas Athena (representing human genius, strategy, research and wisdom). The next key date was March 29, 2011, when MESSENGER beamed back to Earth the first of what will be a treasure-trove of some 75,000 high-resolution photographs of the mysterious, first-planet from the Sun. On that day, Mercury – from our vantage point – was about to turn stationary at 25 degrees of Aries. (Note: When celestial bodies appear to be motionless from Earth, they are at their most potent in influencing humanity and our little lives on the third planet from the Sun.) A recent update from the NASA website indicates that MESSENGER has already made over 100 orbits of Mercury and sent over 16,000 photographs to our mission experts. There have been more glamorous and publicized space missions in the past few years – namely the Mars Exploration Rovers and the astounding Cassini-Huygens visitations to Saturn and its numerous moons. However, MESSENGER – when finished – will have completely altered our understanding of Mercury, offering up incredible secrets concerning its dense, iron-dominant core, its thin atmosphere, its magnetic field and whether water may exist there. For a full treatment of the mission, you can read an article in the April, 2011, edition of Astronomy magazine or visit the www.nasa.gov/ website (go to Missions and then Current Missions, to look up the MESSENGER mission and any updates). Meanwhile, it might be helpful to ponder the following: What might MESSENGER mean to us Earthlings at this time in our evolutionary journey in the cosmos? Psychically, this could relate to the escalating power and pervasiveness of communication devices – cell phones, internet, computers, satellites, texting, iPods, iPads, etc. – around the world, and the impact of this communication intensification on our health, and ability to interact as a global species. The ancient aphorism of advanced astrology, “As Above, So Below,” attributed to the great sage and shaman, Hermes (whose name is the Greek word for Mercury), encapsulates the esoteric notion that the macrocosm, or the greater universe, is reflected in the microcosm, or the smaller universe. Thus, as MESSENGER reveals the planetary secrets of Mercury, humanity’s ability to communicate in a more sophisticated manner evolves on Earth. ©2011 by Mark Lerner and Great Bear Enterprises. All rights reserved.
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The Union of Venus and Jupiter (5/11/11)By Mark Lerner In the spotlight this week is the spectacular visual union of Venus and Jupiter in the pre-dawn sky about thirty minutes before sunrise as you look east. Thus, astrologers and students of astrology, you need to take out your binoculars and arise early to witness the astronomical event – that also includes Mercury close by and the red planet Mars within striking distance, although lower to the horizon. Venus and Jupiter – whose unions every ten to fourteen months portend opportunities knocking, business gains, mental expansion and social-educational advancement – are easily seen with the naked eye, but Mercury is often too small to show up unless you have binoculars. Mercury will appear a little to the right and beneath Venus and Jupiter. While the actual astrological conjunction of Venus and Jupiter on May 11 happens at 7:43AM PDT at 25 degrees of Aries in the Tropical Zodiac – followed by Mercury and Jupiter uniting at the same degree at 12:58PM PDT – you will still be able to witness the primary pair of Venus and Jupiter (usually the two brightest planets in the sky) in the pre-dawn sky on Thursday May 12 and Friday May 13. Of course, you have to hope for a clear morning sky, and a good place to view the eastern horizon without obstructions. The next Venus-Jupiter merger happens on March 13, 2012, at 10 degrees of Taurus in the Tropical Zodiac – setting up a stunning, after-sunset visual embrace of these two auspicious celestial bodies in the western sky. And the next closest astronomical union of Venus and Jupiter occurs August 17 – 18, 2014, when the pair will be at 8 degrees of Leo in the Tropical Zodiac and reveal their presence in the pre-dawn sky in the hour before sunrise looking east. For more on this subject, see the Cosmic Calendar for Wednesday May 11 on Inner Sight or contact Mark at mark@marklernerastrology.com.
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Saturn in Focus – Including its Giant Hexagon (1/15/11)By Mark Lerner |
There are many reasons why 2012 is an exceptional year - not just because of the supposed end of the Mayan Long Count Calendar of 5,125 years, which some believe will occur on December 21. I have gathered together my list of ten major astrological happenings that are affecting all of humanity and the Earth this year. The first five events were listed in Part I, posted on 5/26/12. (Please read Part I, if you haven’t already, before proceeding with Part II.) Events 6-10 are listed below, in order of significance. Later this year or after the Winter Solstice – assuming the Mayans have left us some breathing room for entering 2013 and beyond, and if there is anything more to add – I will be happy to update this list. 
(10)Last – but in many ways not least – is that on Tuesday November 6, Election Day in America, when an all-important presidential contest will decide which set of characteristics will dominate this nation for another 4-year cycle, the planet Mercury makes a station and turns retrograde at 6:05PM EST at 5 degrees of Sagittarius. Although Mercury is retrograde three times a year, for three weeks at a time, it would be exceedingly rare for this planet to be virtually motionless on such a significant turning-point day in history. Mercury did not make any kind of station during the last two presidential election cycles in November 2008 and 2004. However, during the late-evening of Tuesday November 7, 2000, Mercury – which had been going retrograde for the three weeks prior to the George W. Bush versus Al Gore contest – made a station and turned direct at the unusual placement of 30 degrees of Libra, the sign of the scales of balance. And we all know that that election was under dispute, went to the Supreme Court for “balancing,” and after 36 days of national uncertainty, the 9 members of our highest judicial branch of government made a controversial 5 to 4 decision that affected everyone on Planet Earth for the following 8 years. Who knows whether this year’s Mercury station and reversal in the sign of higher education (and very close to America’s Rising Degree in Sagittarius) will result in questions about voting irregularities or simply signify a very close, hard-fought election campaign. Just remember that Mercury is still the ancient Messenger of the Gods and it is definitely making an exclamation point by being virtually motionless within the actual time-period when well over 100 million Americans will cast their ballots with the shadow of a challenging Last Quarter Sun-Moon Phase occurring, too -- just a week before a Total Solar Eclipse in deeply transformative Scorpio.
Please note that there are numerous meanings and archetypes that are associated with the various celestial bodies, mathematical aspects, zodiacal placements and geometric formations presented in this first half of my Top Ten list. There is no way to cover most or all of them. It is being left to you, the readers, to ponder the potency of these cosmic events and how they are affecting the personal, collective and spiritual life-qualities of human souls gracing terra firma at this time. 
Please also note that the context for considering these major astro-events is the ongoing alignment of our solar system with the center of our galaxy, as well as ongoing heightened solar flare activity from the sun. 
(5)The Transit of Venus across the face or disk of the Sun occurs on June 5, 2012. It is the companion to a similar event that occurred on June 8, 2004. Venus is always retrograde and between the Earth and the Sun when a Transit of Venus occurs. These events are rare, only happening about every 105 years. The next two will occur on December 11, 2117 and December 8, 2125 in Sagittarius. The June 5, 2012, transit happens in Gemini. Sometimes two of these Transits happen 8 years apart, but every so often there is only one. It is all part of a cycle that takes over 72,000 years to complete and it is also connected to the remarkable Cosmic Pentagram that Sun-Venus conjunctions make in our zodiac (ten unions occurring over almost exactly 8 years). In general, since we are now in a Venus retrograde cycle – that started on May 15 and lasts until June 27 – the meaning of this Transit of Venus is that all human souls need to review, reflect and re-evaluate the themes related to Venus – such as love, friendship, romance, beauty, creative artistry, social activities, emotional sensitivity, money matters, savings, material resources, real-estate holdings and values to live by.
The Peruvian Health Ministry is currently trying to pin the blame for the dolphin deaths on a virus, whereas the pelican deaths are being attributed to starvation, due to an alleged shortage of anchovies. However, environmental groups are still of the view that oil drilling, as well as pesticides and biotoxins moving up through the food chain, may be the real culprits. It is possible that more drastic and still hidden problems affecting the world’s oceans – via Global Warming and the massive melting of Arctic and Antarctic ice – could be to blame, as well. Apparently, the anchovies that both pelicans and dolphins feed on enjoy living in fairly cool waters, whereas some of the El Nino conditions in the Pacific Ocean have raised the water temperature recently.
Using Astro-Locality Techniques to Understand
the Problem
The academy award-winning film Titanic has just been re-released to the public in 3-D. Two weeks ago, James Cameron, the film’s director, went to the lowest depths of the ocean in order to view the sunken Titanic. He will host a CSI-like scientific investigation of new facts related to the sinking of the Titanic in a roundtable of experts on the National Geographic Channel, airing on Sunday night, April 8 (to be repeated April 9 as well as April 14 and 15 – the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the supposed unsinkable ship).
Since that 1993 feature, there is now an even more precise timing mechanism for the Titanic sinking. At the end of this article, you can click on a weblink to see a color chart depicting the exact location in the North Atlantic where the sinking occurred, at the exact time the iceberg struck (which was the ship time of 11:40pm on April 14, but converted to GMT was 2:38am on April 15).
Furthermore, Captain Smith was born with a retrograding Jupiter in Virgo – mirroring a retrograding Jupiter at the time of the sinking – and his Jupiter is exactly opposite the Moon in Pisces from the birth of European Civilization, while his Jupiter is exactly on top of America’s Neptune (oceans) from July 4, 1776. This detail is highly significant since he never made it to New York City on this historic, trans-Atlantic journey, as he “went down with the ship” and drowned at sea (negative Neptune). Furthermore, his Saturn at 4 Aries is the identical placement with transiting Venus at the sinking and his natal Uranus-Pluto conjunction (a very provocative and intense union), from 22 Aries to 26 Aries, exactly encapsulates the potent Sun/Mercury retrograde conjunction at 24 – 25 Aries at the time of the sinking. 
While it takes Venus 243 days to rotate on its axis clockwise (contrary to the spin of the other planets from Mercury out to Saturn), it is simultaneously orbiting around the Sun in 225 Earth days counterclockwise (in the same direction the other planets are orbiting). (Only Uranus – which has its polar axis pointed below the horizontal plane of the solar system – can even begin to compete with Venus for the title of “Most Eccentric Main Planet” in our neck of the woods, cosmically speaking.) 
2012 could very well be the Year of Venus, since we have the second in a pair of Transits of Venus over the disk of the Sun on June 5 – 6 of this year. The previous Transit of Venus over the disk of the Sun occurred in June 2004. These transits don’t always happen in a dynamic duo 8 years apart, although the next two will occur separated by 8 years in December 2117 and December 2125.
Relative to gold and silver – the two key precious metals that have stood behind the value of American money since our birth as a nation in 1776 – a key early event was the Coinage and Mint Act of April 2, 1792, which established the first U.S. Mint in Philadelphia whereby the ratio between gold and silver was recorded as 15 to 1 (or every 24.75 grains of gold being equivalent to 371.25 grains of silver).
Less than a year later – on January 30, 1934 – the Gold Reserve Act was signed into law (requiring that all gold and gold certificates held by the Federal Reserve be surrendered to the U.S. Treasury). Eventually, all that gold went to a specially-designed vault at Fort Knox, Kentucky, for safe-keeping. This act also changed the price of gold from $20.67 per troy ounce to $35 – thereby deflating the value of paper dollars, but enhancing the wealth of the U.S. government, in order to pass the sweeping legislation of the New Deal in the 1930s, intended to end massive unemployment and get the nation moving again.
Finally, on the evening of Sunday, August 15, 1971, President Richard Nixon interrupted the number one rated TV show, Bonanza, to formally announce he was taking America off the gold standard (like FDR 38 years earlier: via an executive order not authorized by Congress), and simultaneously freezing wages and prices for 90-days, following a difficult inflationary period caused primarily by the spiraling cost of fighting the Vietnam War.
While there are all kinds of ways to evaluate why gold and silver rise and fall, one way is to look at the U.S. birth chart (July 4, 1776) relative to major historical turning points (like the August 15, 1971, executive order taking the U.S. off the gold standard (thereby setting up the last 40+ years of the price of an ounce of gold floating without an anchor). It turns out that at the time President Nixon made his televised declaration, transiting Neptune had just entered Sagittarius. Neptune has an orbit of 164 years and 41 years have now passed – bringing the current transit of Neptune to the beginning of Pisces. Thus, Neptune is presently making a sharp square of 90-degrees to its previous location in 1971, and this challenging aspect – which just became exact three weeks ago – will repeat with near exactitude when Americans vote for a new president in November of this year. Thus, the person who becomes the Chief Executive of the United States for the next 4-year cycle will likely have to grapple with one of the most extreme economic cycles we have ever faced.
One of the more unusual properties of the lunar nodes is that they move in reverse, or retrograde, through our zodiac. This is fascinating as the Moon itself is associated with the past, memories and historical events. It takes approximately 18+ years for the lunar nodes and therefore the Moon’s orbit to slide backward throughout our entire zodiac.
(Closing Note: There is actually a “True” node placement and a “Mean” node placement, and they are always extremely close together. The Mean nodes are the average position of the nodes and they move backward in the zodiac at a pace of almost exactly 3 minutes of arc per day. The True nodes are on one level more precise, but sometimes they will actually move forward a little, not move at all, and then start moving backward. For centuries only the Mean nodes were used and calculated in astrological ephemerides (books that have the day-to-day zodiacal positions of the Sun, Moon and planets). However, in the second half of the 1970s, astrological researcher Robert Hand introduced the concept of the True nodes and most ephemeride creators jumped to add those placements to their books. In the meantime, after a long period of experimentation, Robert Hand concluded that perhaps the Mean node placements were more accurate and responsive for interpretation usage. This paragraph is shared because the ephemerides now in circulation will usually have both the True and Mean placements of the lunar nodes, and I am hoping to spare you some confusion.)
Cupid – the mythological son of Venus, who is a personification of erotic desire and connected to the Greek Eros and the Latin Amor – is often shown in antique Valentine greeting cards during the early 1900s with his arrows either igniting or breaking the hearts of would-be lovers. He still appears in today’s overly commercialized context as a chubby boy with cherubic face and wings, conveying the notion that some good angel is about to bring forth romantic love in all its divine glory.
For those of you unfamiliar with the concept of the void-of-course Moon, it happens every couple of days – sometimes for a few minutes, a couple of hours or even longer – when the lunar orb has made all of its main alignments to the Sun and planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, and then goes into a kind of limbo time-period until it enters the next sign of the zodiac. There is much controversy in astrology over the significance, calculation and geometric accuracy of the void-of-course Moon. However, it has been a part of this field for probably 2000 years – in one form or another – so to completely ignore it is as perilous as being too attached to its meaning, which is usually that “nothing important” can come (especially in material terms) from any activity undertaken or initiated when the Moon is void.
To have the quartet of Moon, Juno, Venus and Ceres providing fiery offerings of interpersonal love and nurturing vibrations as February 14, 2012 enters the history books will give you a well-needed boost and shield as you do battle on February 15 in the post-Valentine’s Day, 24-hour marathon as Venus squares Pluto, Mercury squares Juno, and Mars makes an abrasive, 135-degree tie to Jupiter. Thus, savor the gifts of the spirit, soul, mind and heart of February 14 because you don’t know what cosmic traps and prizes, challenges and opportunities await you when you wake up the day after…
Meanwhile, as the Earth was receiving the plasma force on Sunday from last week’s moderate solar flare, the website 
When solar researchers look back at the most powerful flares and CMEs of the past, they all point to the most massive one in the last 500+ years. It occurred on September 1, 1859, and was recorded by a solar astronomer, Richard Carrington, who even drew a picture of what the sunspot looked like, where it occurred on the surface of the Sun, and what time it happened. On that day, the Sun was in an exact trine to Pluto in earth signs, the Moon was almost exactly opposite Pluto (in the fixed, power signs of Scorpio and Taurus) while the Sun had just completed a square to shock-producing and radical-change agent Uranus during the previous 24 hours. If an X-class solar flare (the most powerful class) of the 1859 kind, which sparked and ignited telegraph lines and created spectacular auroras at unusual places on Earth, were to occur now, humanity might be blasted back to the Stone Age, due to the fact that our complete system of satellites, high-tech grid, GPS signals and earth-based power stations, etc., would be destroyed.
I had never heard of multi-millionaire, Jeff Moss, until I bought a copy of Discover magazine’s January/February 2012 issue – featuring 100 “experiments, discoveries, and new ideas that changed the world” in 2011. Story #50, entitled The Net Watchman (a play on the phrase The Night Watchman), jumped out at me. In it there is a Q & A going on between the magazine editors and this new security guru, as they call him, Jeff Moss.
Warning Ahead in 2012 & 2013 
However, my attention was diverted from this plan by a client who wrote to me concerning Roald Amundsen, the Norwegian explorer who led the first team to discover the South Pole. This client was looking for some astrological information on Amundsen (born on July 16, 1872, time unknown, in Borge, Norway). She didn’t mention the fact that the 100th anniversary of the discovery would be occurring this week (December 14, 2011). Once I looked at Amundsen’s birth chart and saw that he was born on the precise day of a highly-attractive, sensitive and magnetic Sun-Venus union on the North Heliocentric Node of Saturn (more on this unique alignment coming up), I was hooked into writing something about this special anniversary that has finally drawn the attention of a well-known science writer (John Noble Wilford) for the NYTimes online – bringing the original story from one-hundred years ago to the multi-media of today’s world.
astrologically to us now as the Mid-Life Crisis – when he and his team discovered the South Pole. It would still be a couple of years later when he would experience the potential trauma and confusion of transiting Neptune square his natal Neptune, and transiting Uranus opposing its natal position, but at the moment of discovery, transiting Neptune (the key to spiritual enlightenment, psychic sensitivity and utilizing the creative imagination on the highest levels) was precisely illuminating his Sun-Venus combined placementin the water sign of Cancer (think ice, snow and frozen tundra in this situation).
We have known for many years now that just as sci-fi master Arthur C. Clarke imagined decades ago, Europa has an enormous ocean of water underneath a thick crust of ice that may be around 62 miles thick. It appears that Europa also has a rocky core (like the Earth, Mars, Venus and Mercury) and a tenuous atmosphere mainly composed of oxygen. The big question, however, has always been whether there might be some kind of interaction from the surface of Europa – with its amazing array of unusual lines, ridges, cracks and rifts (and, apparently, abundant mineral resources) – through the thick ice crust and then into the interior ocean realm, which is thought to have more water than all of our oceans here on terra firma combined.
I share these two symbols because the Juno mission to Jupiter could rival the success of the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn that has given us an extraordinary wealth of information on the famous ringed planet and its unusual moons, one of which – Enceladus – spouts water from its south pole due to a heat exchange and electro-magnetic interaction with Saturn itself. 
And so I am
here to bring your attention to one of the more unusual cosmic situations I
have discovered in the nearly 40 years I have worked as a professional
astrologer. As I was writing the Cosmic Calendar entries for this November, I
realized that Mercury would be closing in on a union or conjunction with Venus.
Day after day, starting even now during Halloween weekend, and then during the
first half of November, these two planets are going to be incredibly close,
less than 1 degree of the zodiac apart, getting all the way to 3, 4 and 5
minutes of arc from merging – a virtual conjunction. But guess what? Mercury
and Venus never actually do unite; instead, they create what I am calling an almost alignment. (And Chiron, itself a
sacrificial entity, will be virtually motionless during this entire
Mercury-Venus alchemical process – with Chiron shifting from reverse to direct in
Pisces exactly on November 10. This adds a dramatic Twilight Zone effect to
what is going on in all our lives – if we can perceive it.)
On a larger
scale, the two biggest planets in our solar system are also going to play the almost alignment game – with much higher
stakes toward the end of this year and during the first two weeks of 2012.
What’s happening here – due to another quirky series of maneuvers by the Sun,
Jupiter and Saturn, from our perspective on Earth – is that thanks to the
current retrograde motion of Jupiter in Taurus while Saturn continues to move
forward in Libra, we are nearing – what seems to be – a fourth Jupiter-Saturn opposition
in the heavens (following their three powerful polarities on May 23, 2010,
August 16, 2010, and March 28, 2011). 
Revolutionary Rumblings in the Past Three Years
Wall Street protest gaining such a rapidly-spreading following? The answer comes from a remarkable astrological synchronicity. Whenever celestial bodies station or stop in the sky – pausing in their shift from direct to retrograde motion or the reverse – they are at their most powerful to influence earthlings. And whenever the Moon comes along – during the next few weeks after the station – to make the first conjunction with the celestial body that stopped in the sky, the masses are stirred to an enormous degree by the archetypal themes and qualities coming from the recently-stationed celestial body.
What to Expect Next…
motion since July 9 – is swinging back to reach the potent Zero Point of 0 degrees of Aries in the zodiac during most of November, all of December, and in the first week of January, 2012. What this means is that at the Winter Solstice on December 21 – 22 of this year, the Sun will not be united with Uranus in the sky (as was the case at this past Spring), but the Sun in Capricorn, with Pluto close by, will form a precise, 90-degree square to Uranus in Aries. This may lead to an upcoming national and international winter of our discontent while also setting the stage for a seven-fold series of rare Uranus-Pluto squares from Aries to Capricorn – from June 24, 2012, to March 16, 2015. These 90-degree sky patterns of outer planets mirror a similar five-fold series of Uranus-Pluto squares from Aries to Cancer – from April, 1932, to January, 1934, during the dark days of The Great Depression and the simultaneous appearance of President FDR, the New Deal legislation, and a national campaign to put people back to work.
