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“Live fast,
live well and leave a good-looking corpse.” That’s the rallying call of
the year-long conjunction of Pluto and Chiron in Sagittarius. How’s it
showing up? In a worldwide increase in gambling and gambling addictions.
Like the
“Teddy Bears Picnic,” if you go down to the casino today, be sure of a
big surprise—there are centaurs (Chiron in Sagittarius) down there playing
like there’s no tomorrow, high rollers, glamour and a James
Bond atmosphere that’s really alluring. What’s going on?
The clue is the mythology behind Sagittarius. It’s a wild and free world,
where the satyrs and nymphs frolic in the glade. (Have you ever seen the
décor in some casinos? It seems to have been designed by Fred Flintstone
on acid, with wooden palm trees, waterfalls, rainforests and massive aquariums
full of exotic fish.) In this fantasy world, there are no tomorrows, no
consequences and no aftereffects, so there are no limits.
Don’t
Fence Me In
Sagittarius
is the sign that hates to close off future options. Sagittarians are the
ones humming “Don’t Fence Me In” as they swing through the doors and head
for the action. Sagittarius is the Indiana Jones of the zodiac, the risk
taker, the adventurer and the globetrotter. All that fire energy creates
boundless enthusiasm and recklessness. The tourist buses and the limos
cruise up, the Learjets fly in—let the good times roll. And since Pluto entered
Sagittarius in 1995, excess and obsession have been boosted ten
times over, and so has destruction, because Chiron, astrology’s “wounded
healer,” is also there. Gambling has exploded across the world. Now it’s
one of our favorite recreational activities, after sports. When Chiron
also moved into Sagittarius early in 1999, the social problems and pain
connected with gambling addictions started hitting the headlines.
High
Tech, High Stakes
You don’t
even have to go down to the local casino to lose your dough. With Neptune’s
arrival in Aquarius in 1998, online gambling came bursting through our
doors and into our livingrooms. Interactive television is following it
close behind, so we can sit on our couches and gamble via
the Internet using our TV. Just think of all those Who Wants to Be a
Millionaire games. It’s no coincidence these all started hitting the
airwaves in 2000.
Aquarius
brings us technology, the Internet, chat rooms—relationships at arm’s
length without the armpits. (Think cybersex, now with its own share of
addicts.) When Neptune rolled into Aquarius like a glamorous mist, it
coated our reality lens with Vaseline, and the potential for addiction
skyrocketed. It’s the dream and fantasy planet, calling from a fairyland
that, like fairy gold, won’t be there the next morning when we wake on
the cold hillside. Neptune can stop us from seeing consequences. We’re
out there playing the machines, forgetting family, jobs and responsibilities.
It’s offering a dream of unlimited wealth and personal transformation,
and all without much effort on our part.
In case you’ve
avoided the lure of the major casinos, well, we’ve got mini casinos along
every highway and in the corner stores. When we buy our magazines and
newspapers and fill up our cars, the lottery is there, calling from the
glades where the liquid assets splash over the boulders, and the wind
rustles in leaves of greenbacks. If you’ve somehow forgotten the
lotteries exist, there are blimps in the sky, huge billboards on the highways
and slogans splashed across the sides of buses reminding us that when
we win, we can “spend every minute of every hour of every day of every
year for the rest of our lives.”
Enter
the Sheriff and the Stock Broker
So what happened
when Saturn, that old sheriff, marched into Taurus in June 1998 to try
and round up some of those frisky nymphs and satyrs? Taurus is the sign
of money—making it and keeping it. When it’s in Taurus, Saturn insists
on real value for money. It brings us back down to Earth, and blows away
the fairy mists and glamour. It’s the perfect time to restructure our
finances, get real with our budgets and our financial future.
But sometimes
people feel they don’t have enough money. And who should be around the
corner to lend a big generous helping hand but Jupiter, who romped into
Taurus after Saturn in June 1999. Jupiter is linked to ease and expansion.
When it entered Taurus, a lot of people’s eyes opened wide to the potential
for making very big bucks very fast with very little effort. And how did
they do it? One of two ways: the stock market or gambling.
A
Look Ahead
What’s going
to happen next with the gambling craze? Chiron’s going to be travelling
through Sagittarius until 2002, while Pluto doesn’t let up until 2009.
Our natural longings for fun and freedom are going to be intensified,
but one of the ways Chiron and Pluto can wound us deeply is through debt
and overextension of credit. Will the government come riding over the
hill to the rescue with big advertising campaigns against buying lottery
tickets? Don’t hold your breath—they’re partying as hard as the rest of
us, getting hooked on the revenue from gambling. It looks like those satyrs
and nymphs will be “gambolling” (pun intended) in the glade for a long
time yet.
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