 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
||||
Spiritual Company Newsletter
by Steffan Vanel September 20, 2005
Dear friends
First of all I want to apologize to all of you who have been asking me to share some comments about the recent dramatic/tragic events affecting our nation for taking this long to finally put my thoughts and feelings into print. I also want to say that several people who signed up in the last couple months to receive this newsletter were accidentally deleted in a computer ‘glitch.’ So if you were someone who signed up recently I apologize and ask that you try again.
In the Katrina Aftermath
When Katrina made landfall on the Louisiana Gulf Coast I was actually at the Burning Man Festival in Nevada. Those of you who have attended or heard of this event know that it creates it’s own unique reality and there is a large ‘disconnect’ from the external world at large when you are out there in the middle of the Nevada desert.
The news slowly ! filtered in, however, that New Orleans was under water and by the end of the festival there was a large scale effort to bring in donations of money, tents, CB radios and other equipment as well as offers of aid to those who had come to the festival from the areas hard hit by the hurricane.
It was rather surreal, however, to be somewhere so hot, dry and dusty while others were suffering from so much water. We also didn’t know all the details of the tragic incompetence in the relief efforts. That was also very surreal.
Since Burning Man I have been very busy preparing for and traveling out to the East Coast. I have also been slowly collecting my thoughts as to what I want to say at this time. Sometimes Astrology is a rather dreary business. Many of you have commented on the apparent accuracy of my prediction of some heavy humbling experience coming down on George W. Bush in early September. This is the actual statement from my article ‘Reflections on the Election’ of November 4 of last year:
“Many Astrological observers have noted that Saturn, the planet of karmic limitation and restriction is right now conjuncting Bush’s natal Saturn, his 2nd Saturn Return. There have been dire predictions for what this might entail. This Saturn/Saturn conjunction is in the 12th House, however, the house of the deeper unconsious and past life memory. There is a lot of personal karma involved with this which I wrote about in the chapter about George Bush. My feeling about the overall effect of this Saturn transit now on Bush’s 12th House Saturn is that of a heavy weight and pressure on his own unconscious, including his conscience, which for Bush, seems to be rather unconscious.
Bush’s conscious ego, apparently more identified with his proud and arrogant Leo Rising self-image and his feisty Aries Mid-Heaven persona, are in denial of this Satur! nian weight in his own unconscious. He has to be in detached denial from all of the suffering in Iraq.
September 12 (a rather ominous date) is when Saturn conjuncts his Leo Ascendant self-image, exact to the minute. A Leo Ascendant is given to an individual to help them to overcome or compensate for feelings of inferiority or insecurity arising from previous lives. This is when this Saturnian pressure will become very conscious to both Bush and those who observe him.
Saturn will be in George Bush’s First House of self-image for a couple of years. I don’t think this will be an easy time for him.”
I also noted in that article how at the end of August of this year George Bush would have the planet Uranus, the planet of sudden change, in opposition to his natal Mars, his planet of will and energy,. The dreariness of this Astrological business is having to witness the suffering that you sense is coming. There is li! ttle joy in being able to accurately predict such dire events. And yet, one has to keep the faith that everything is happening as part of an ultimately positive purpose.
Nonetheless, it has clearly taken this Saturnian pressure on Bush’s Leo self-image for him, during his press conference on the morning of September 13, to take responsibility for some lack of capability on his part for the first time in his entire presidency, coinciding with his lowest approval rating in his tenure as president. This pressure, as I said, will be on him for the next two years. I think there will be some continued humbling. I do think he will be a better person for it.
An additional question remaining, however, is: What does all this mean for us?
There was another prediction I had made, in relation to the US chart, which also came true with the Katrina disaster. On August 28th last month, the planet Uranus was exactly square to! the Uranus in the US birthchart, in the Sixth House of work, service, activity in the daily physical world. I had written about this Uranus in relation to the huge electrical blackout in the Northeast in 2003. These were some of my comments at that time:
“The U.S. has Uranus in positive aspect in its Virgoan Sixth House, house of work, service, activity in the world. Uranus is in positive aspect to Saturn. This is why the U.S. is so good at taking innovative electrical/technological inventions and putting them into concrete actual manifestation and effectiveness.
Transiting Uranus in the sky is now at the beginning of Pisces. It is also traveling through our Third House of communication. Over the next couple of years Uranus will move into a square to our natal Uranus. Could this blackout be a preview of coming attractions?
It does seem that the blackout was a surprising, shocking Uranian way to open people to greater Aquarian group consciousness with Piscean compassion and sensitivity for the suffering of others. A little vulnerability for our normally well-functioning innovative Uranus.”
Clearly, this Uranus square to our natal Uranus did disrupt our normally well-functioning logistical capabilities, showing not only our vulnerability but also opening us to: “....greater Aquarian group consciousness with Piscean compassion and sensitivity for the suffering of others.”
Additionally, the current transit of Pluto in opposition and square to the U.S. natal Mars/Neptune square, which I have previously identified with the aggression/delusion of both the Vietnam and Iraqi wars, was exactly dead on on the Mars end of that square on September 2nd. This is relatable to the fact that nearly half of the Louisiana National Guard was on duty in Iraq during Katrina and unavailable to aid those suffering in their own state. Most ! of the Lousiana National Guard’s electrical generators, which could have been used to keep communications and hospitals functioning during the Katrina disaster, were in Iraq. The nation has to be questioning, what are we doing and why?
This question of what we are doing and why with our martial/will energy also relates to the fact that the Army Corps of Engineers wanted to improve the levee protecting New Orleans but Bush slashed the budget by two thirds. The fact that the destruction of wetlands which buffer coastal areas from intense storms are vanishing, and the fact that most scientists concur that global warming is warming the Caribean and Gulf waters creating more hurricanes, earlier in the year, and of greater intensity, and the U.S. is one of two nations to refuse to sign the Kyoto protocol on global warming.
Then there are the factors of race and poverty.
George Bush is actually a Cancer, essentiall! y a caring nurturing emotional person. But he is largely unconnected to his true nature, being more caught up with his Leonine pride and arrogance and his Aries aggresivity, and some of the delusions in his Moon/Neptune/Jupiter conjunction.
The U.S. is also a Cancer, also largely unconnected with our potential to be a caring, nurturing nation. George Bush is a clear reflection of our own Astrological dysfunctionality. As we observe his false identity having to ‘face the music ‘ as it were, our own false identiy, our own Sagittarian Ascendant self-image tendency to ‘see oneself as honest, upright and morally strong, whether true or not’ is having to endure some hard observations.
During the Katrina deluge of New Orleans and the surrounding areas the Moon was in Cancer, the unconscious emotional energies of the time, moving over the natal Suns in Cancer of both George Bush and the U.S.
Saturn has been moving through the US Eighth House for some time now. This is the Scorpio house of Sex, Birth, Death and other people’s money, such as inheritance. As it travels in that house it has been in opposition to the US Pluto in the Taurean Second House, house of money and finances.
I have been observing this Saturnian pressure bringing up all kinds of issues relatable to these two houses, over the last year especially. This has been evident in the heavy debate over the death of Terry Schiavo. This has been evident in the sexual issues around Gay Marriage. (see my comments about Homosexualty in the US in my book for additional observations). It is clearly relatable to the other heavy issue being addressed today through the shake-up of the Supreme Court, an issue which I also wrote about in some length in my book, that being the issue of Abortion in the US.
This Saturnian pressure is also why we have had the Soc! ial Security/privatisation debate. Which do we want, a continued sense of safe, secure support from younger working generations for the well being of the older, or the ability to take risk for the potential of greater financial gain for oneself?
This Saturn in the house of inheritance is also why there is the debate around the estate tax.
And now this Saturnian leaden pressure is why the continued poverty and grotesque disparity between the wealthy and the poor in this nation has been forced onto our tv screens and the cover of Newsweek magazine for the first time in a long while.
An assessment of the effect of this publicly acknowledged disparity has been noted by the writer T.G. on the internet news site salon.com, stating that these problems of race and poverty are: “problems wider than the hurricane’s path and deeper than the water that flooded New Orleans.” - (posted: September 16)
In speaking ! with friends in Europe, where there is nowhere near this level of economic disparity, their first observations are of a nation who claims to be willing to go to war with incredibly well-funded military power to aid the freedom of other nations, who clearly does incredibly little to aid those in the bottom economic rung of their own nation. During each of the last four years of the Bush administration the poverty level in America has increased. Before now this kind of fact has been virtually completely off of our national radar screen. Now Saturn has made it concrete and in living color.
Ironically, Bush’s first international speech post/Katrina was to address the UN conference on the millenium project to eliminate Global poverty.
Will this Saturnian pressure finally, substantially affect the materially obsessed/deluded American consciousness? One has to have doubts.
As to what lies ahead, I refer those who have my book to reference the final afterword I wrote in my book.. I spoke of Pluto’s entry in 2008 into the sign Capricorn, the sign of material ambition leading into the intense transits in 2012.
I spoke of the sign Capricorn and the Devil, the Tarot card serving as the outcome in a reading I did for the US on September 12, 2001. I will enclose the final paragraph of that chapter to end this newsletter:
“I continue to have faith that America too will face its own Devil, the Devil being that which blocks or limits you from being who you really are and can be, seeing clearly the illusions about yourself which you have believed, but which are not really true. I hold to the hope and the faith that this freedom from material illusion will empower us to serve as the symbol of a death and rebirth which can inspire and share in a global death and rebirth into a new age of universal love and brotherhood. I would say that the labor pains we have to endure in that process is related to our own surrender or resistance to that process.”
Blessings to you all,
Steffan Vanel
Steffan’s Spiritual Company Newsletters and ‘Starwise’ Monthly Forecasts are available by email on an annual, sliding-scale donation basis; from $10 - $50 a year.
| To donate by mail send a check to: PO Box 476, Curlew, WA 99118 |
— Steffan Vanel Archive —
