PSYCHICBABBLE(sm)
by Marcy J. Gordon
New Moon in Capricorn 1996 Issue
Welcome to 1996 (and Hold on to Your Hats!)
Introduction
Greetings USED KARMA readers and best wishes for the cycle of 1996. Notice my use of the word “cycle” instead of “new year.” In astrology the new year (the solar year) begins on the vernal equinox, which is also the first day of spring and the first day of Aries, the Zodiac's first sign. In numerology, the number 1996 corresponds to the number 7. The number 7 is ruled by the planet Uranus, whose archetype is The Eccentric. The number 7 is about intuition, aloofness, rebellion, and inner awareness. The planet Uranus is about flashes of genius, inspiration and eccentricity. Thus 1996 heralds a cycle of collective awareness of the need for individual expression as guided and directed by inner forces. This is a cycle where people will develop respect for their own instincts and the instincts of others. People will suddenly perceive, understand, respect and follow their true inner desires and adjust their personal, social and professional lives accordingly. 1996 is going to be a Technicolor reprise of the individualism and rebellious spirit expressed in the social upheavals of the 1960s.
And Don't Forget Pluto in Sagittarius
You will recall from Tony Dickey's wonderful article on this topic in the New Moon in Scorpio issue [hypertext link] that Pluto is now in Sagittarius, where it will be for several years. Since Pluto has been in Sagittarius for a few months now, we can start to see the local and global effects of this transit. Pluto is about regeneration, renewal, reorganization, transformation and power. Sagittarius is about the search for truth through expanding the boundaries of thought, philosophy and religion. As Tony explains so well, Pluto in Sagittarius is about transforming the world through exposing the truth and stretching people's minds with it. The 1996 cycle, then, heralds a time of mass inspiration and social reformation through truth, inner awareness and personal expression. Individuality and eccentricity will no longer be criticized and condemned, but will be celebrated and exalted.
Uranus rules electricity and computer and information technology. The 1996 cycle will see advances in information and communications technology that will dramatically restructure society. The Internet is only the tip of the iceberg. As of this writing, there are several joint ventures between telephone companies and computer and Internet service providers. Why? Because the telephone, the television and the computer are all merging into one unified technology. Interactive television will exist in several forms, including traditional cable, traditional telephone, wireless cable and a special telephone line called video dial tone (VDT). Not only that, but there will be gateways between interactive television and the Internet, opening up new markets and providing novel economic opportunities. A few firms have already announced ongoing development of a consumer electronics device, about the size and cost of a VCR, that will sit on top of your television and give you access to interactive television and the Internet. New video compression standards will emerge that will alleviate, if not eliminate, today's bandwidth restrictions.
Pluto's influence will be felt in the social transformations that will be spawned by our Uranian technology. The Sagittarian influence is in the use of new computer and communications technologies to increase the dissemination of global information. What does it mean to live in the information age? It means we live in a world where information is power. We are rapidly moving into a world where information increasingly becomes a medium of exchange. Thus Marshall McCluhan, who declared that “the medium is the message,” will finally be validated, vindicated and celebrated as the visionary that he was. Likewise, Andy Warhol's clairvoyant prediction that “[i]n the future, everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes” will be realized through interactive video communications technology. Gil Scott Heron's most famous prophesy (“The revolution will not be televised”) will not be realized. The medium is the message, and the medium is about to go full motion video interactive. The information revolution will, indeed, be televised!
What are the indications from the past few months of Pluto's foray into Sagittarius? There are several examples in recent world events. First, there was the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israel. This assassination took place just a few days before Pluto actually changed signs, but it was at the at the end of transit's orb, and the implications of the act continue to resonate into the present. The assassination was the act of an extremist. Extremism is a sign Tony's article told us to look for. But this horrific act of hatred, violence and denial of divine interdiction served an important function by exposing this consciousness for what it is. In September of 1995 only 51% of the Israeli public were in favor of the peace process. After the Rabin assassination pollsters reported that 76% of Israelis favored the peace process. Furthermore, the many commentaries, reflections and eulogies in the world press served to raise global consciousness in a way that Prime Minister Rabin never achieved while he was living.
Please realize that I do not in any way mean to imply that the violent death of a great and wise man was a good thing. I merely mean to point out that this horrible act had a cleansing effect on the consciousness of the Israeli people and people of the world, and illustrates the meaning of the Pluto in Sagittarius transit. Yitzhak Rabin spent 70 years of his life trying to destroy the Arabs. Then he realized that no one in Israel would be happy until everyone lived in peace, so he devoted the last three years of his life to achieving a harmonious co-existence with the people he spent seven decades trying to vanquish. His death galvanized those who had previously remained silent into speaking out against the Jewish extremists. Moderate Jews who had previously ridiculed or ignored the extremists were jolted by the Rabin assassination into recognizing the danger of the extremists in their midst. Many people who were living in denial have been forced to take their heads out of the sand. This is the effect of the Sagittarian search for truth as expressed through Pluto's power of transformation.
The second example concerns the National Archives. I'll bet you've never head of the National Archives, have you? I hadn't until a few months ago, when I saw something in the legal trade media. The National Archives is a U.S. government funded agency. The head archivist there became aware of the existence of several computer tapes containing the contents of electronic mail messages from the Reagan and Bush administrations. He requested these tapes for the archives. His reasoning was that since this information was compiled at taxpayers' expense and since it pertains to items of national interest, that therefore this information belongs to the public and should be put into the National Archives for the public's use. Naturally former Presidents Reagan and Bush tried to suppress the information. The head archivist sued on behalf of the U.S. public to get the computer tapes into the National Archives. The case was decided about the time that Pluto went into Sagittarius. Naturally the National Archives won. (I must confess to wondering whether the outcome would have been different if the case had been brought a year earlier and decided before Pluto entered the Sagittarius orb.) In any event, this kind of information (which, by the way, was compiled when Pluto was in secretive, manipulative Scorpio) becoming public is definitely the sort of event that characterizes the Pluto in Sagittarius transit.
Just scan the newspaper and you'll begin to see the patterns of news items falling into the “Pluto in Sagittarius” category. Isn't it interesting that the people who buried Che Guevara have now unearthed his remains? Pluto in Sagittarius! In December of 1995 the United States Congress passed a bill imposing new rules on political lobbyists. The bill requires all lobbyists to register with the government and to disclose who hires them, what issues they lobby for, and how much they are paid. Any sort of disclosure belongs to Sagittarius, for disclosure is the exposition of truth. Major scandals are breaking in Mexico regarding hidden slush funds and Swiss bank accounts containing hundreds of millions of dollars, along with corruption allegations involving government officials, money laundering and drug dealing. For the first time in history, the United States has granted political asylum to 55 Mexican citizens. Our government has never before recognized the extent of official corruption and repression in the Mexican government. Now so much truth has come out that 55 Mexicans have been granted political asylum here! This is how Pluto expresses his power when he rides the Sagittarian Centaur. Pluto navigates, while the Centaur aims his arrows of truth.
Add Your Own Examples
Please write to me a mgordon@pipeline.com with your own examples of how the ideas discussed in this article and this column are affecting world events and your own life. I'll be happy to include and credit quality contributions in this column.
Copyright 1995 Marcy J. Gordon. All rights reserved. The author wants you to know you are free to copy and distribute this article, provided you reproduce it in its entirety and credit the author. For permission to reprint selected portions, please contact the author at mgordon@pipeline.com.