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The prevailing
belief of astrologers is that the planets influence but do not control
us. We have free will, intelligence, historic memory, judgment. We don't
freeze to death in winter because we're prepared. We can also prepare
for economic winters and other turning-point periods when the cycles of
the planets indicate, based on history, that another major change is due.
Change becomes inevitable during these times—how
we handle change depends on what we believe.
A kind of
dialogue occurs between one's beliefs and the planetary influences. We
tend to interpret evidence according to our beliefs, and too often find
what we believe rather than what the evidence indicates. I synthesize
this human proclivity in the phrase, belief trumps evidence.
A capitalist and socialist viewing Third World poverty
will prescribe different remedies based on their different beliefs. Jews
and Arabs each believe Palestine is their holy land. Is there another
creature under the Sun as peculiar about beliefs as we humans? Rationalists
cite rational reasons for, say, the great depression of the 1930s; astrologers
cite a confluence of planetary "afflictions." Blind men groping
different ends of the elephant.
Astrology has been called God's newsletter. The "hottest"
news it brings is that we humans do not rule the universe. The worst effects
of harsh aspects are resolved when we put things back into balance.
In other words, what these cyclical planetary events seem
to advertise is what the Navajo call "the corn pollen path"
symbolizing balance and harmony. We must harmonize with God's will or
suffer consequences.
But how can we know God's will? By reading God's newsletter.
This is easier said than done, for astrology is a complex, demanding study,
built on accumulated knowledge going back millennia and coming from diverse
cultures.
What is different today is our ability to use computers
to incorporate huge amounts data, and thereby weed the garden of knowledge,
harvesting truths that endure.
Although humans have been stargazing for thousands of
years, no one has discovered any tangible cause-effect mechanism for these
concordances or synchronicities or correlations. Gravitational force-fields
do not explain the Moon's obvious effects on moods, psychoses, body fluids,
crowds, etc. This is the main reason astrology may never be welcomed in
the halls of modern science, and that may be its salvation, enabling it
to outlive modern science as it has outlived other belief systems from
past millennia.
The study
of economics—not a "hard" science, by any standard—is
practically brand new. Of course humans have been studying the ups and
downs of economic well-being for millennia, but the rise of modern economics
began with the publication of Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations,
written with Pluto in philosophical Sagittarius and published in 1776
with Pluto in Capricorn, coinciding with the rise of industrialism.
A good case
can be made that economists are the real "superstitious soothsayers,"
not astrologers. A lead article in the June 15, 1958, issue of Forbes
magazine helps make the point:
| “If
I were an anthropologist,” a highly successful but largely self-educated
businessman recently remarked, “I would say that modern business,
as much as any primitive African tribe, has its own witch doctors
and medicine men. I'm referring to economists. We businessmen call
them in to read the future, rationalize the past and justify the present
to us. And, like tribal medicine men, the economists don't have to
produce results—only explanations and a kind of business cosmology.”
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Economics
is famous, too, for being "the dismal science." Maybe what makes
it dismal is that economists are continuously called upon to make predictions
but have no reliable way to do this. Thus, most economic predictions are
proven wrong, making their authors dismal. Economics is really less "scientific"
than meteorology. Nevertheless, specialists in "econometrics"
are favorite hires by governments and corporations. They toil diligently
at their dismal task of crunching huge amounts of data in their attempt
to scry the future.
There are also economists who specialize in history, and
theirs is surely a more cogent contribution to the corpus of economic
knowledge. But alas, they are not as glamorous as their econometric colleagues
and are usually confined to the more cloistered life of universities.
The monks of the Dark Ages, it seems, changed from robes to suits and
ties without removing their taboos.
I reduce economics to its essence by defining it as how
we go about providing food, shelter, clothing and the amenities of life.
Redefined thus, astrology certainly fits within our collective effort
to manage our economy and anticipate what is likely to challenge us in
the future.
Econometrics has a variety of mathematical ways and means
to scry the future; economic historians can point to such theories as
the Kondratieff Wave and other cycles. The problem with economic cycles
is that they are tied to earthly clock time only, and thus there is no
explanation for why—to cite one example—there was no great
depression in the 1990s, 60 years after the one in the 1930s. (5)
We must make a distinction between economic and financial
activity. Finance, in our capitalistic time, refers to profiting from
investments in economic activity.
Finance should not be confused with economics, although in our sound-bite
culture it usually is.
Financiers seek to profit on an imbalance: cut labor costs
to maximize profits (as long as you have consumers to profitably sell
products to, that is). The overall economy is based on the well-being
of all, not the profits of investors.
An economy functions best when in balance. The best US
economy in the 20th Century was called the "virtuous circle"
economy of the post-WWII years. It managed to strike a better balance
between the interests of investors, managers and workers/consumers. Money
flowed from investors through managers and workers/consumers back to investors
to repeat the cycle.
As Dr. Ravi Batra, economics professor at Southern Methodist
University, has pointed out that all great depressions have been preceded
by new record disparities between the richest and poorest, and resulting
speculative bubbles. It's this imbalance that is remedied by great depressions.
Right now, as we head toward 2012, the income disparity
and resulting imbalance has never been greater. Launched by the "virtuous
circle" economy of the post-WWII years, the success of the corporate
mission has driven us to the greatest imbalance in history.
Astrologically, this was foretold by Saturn (difficulties,
restructuring), during its last transit through Capricorn (ruled by Saturn),
being accompanied by Uranus (technology, innovations) and Neptune (inspirations
and deceptions). Of course we could have collectively dealt much differently
with this confluence of energies, but greed overtook common sense. There
were fortunes to be made in the ballooning stock market...and some of
those fortunes were lost when the balloon collapsed after the 1990s.
But isn't "making money" what economic activity
is all about? Not really, although making money has become the predominant
ethos in recent decades. Money is a means, a medium of economic exchange.
Making the accumulation of money the goal, not the means, is a colossal
collective mistake.
The Maya believed that money, to perform its intended
function, had to be made of physical material, not abstractions. At the
beginning of this present 13 baktun (5,128 year) cycle, we humans were
emerging from the Stone Age and entering the Bronze Age, when metal coins
came into use as money. We "progressed" from metal coins to
paper bills to numbers stored in bank computers, credit cards and cyberspace
money.
5. Economists
have noted that great depressions have occurred in cycles of 30 and/or
60 year intervals. If the 30-year cycle brings no great depression, the
following 60-year period has brought a more virulent one. But when Saturn
arrived in Capricorn for the 1990s, it was accompanied by Uranus and Neptune,
with all forming a "beneficent" aspect to Pluto in Scorpio.
No grand cross to Uncle Sam's Sun/Saturn square formed; no great depression
occurred. See my two-part article: Saturn
and Great Depressions.
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