Carpe Diem (in case the future sucks!)

Trying to predict the future, by whatever method, often turns out to be what's commonly known as "a mug's game".

I have a very old copy of Pathfinder Town Journal, dated December 1953 - picked it up in an antique store on our travels many years ago. When the magazine was published, topics were much the same as we find in magazines and on the internet today, but many steps back: the atom bomb, elections, new car models, black and white TVs, cookie recipes, weather and more. No astrology column. There's a paragraph in a piece titled Looking Ahead asking : "What will the US be like in 1963?" John E. Haines, VP of Minneapolis-Honeywell Regulator Co. predicted that in 10 years from 1953:

Planes will fly round the world non-stop in less than 18 hours.
Rockets will reach the moon.
Residential air conditioning will be as commonplace as automatic heating is today.
Houses will be built of plastics.

Not bad! He did rather well, I thought. I wonder, though, did anyone see the hippie culture coming? It took over more or less where the "Beat Generation" left off, a year or so later than 1963 though. Did anyone predict it? I suspect not.

For a smile or two in much the same vein, pay a visit to the illustrations at
A 19th-Century Vision of the Year 2000.


Now.... I asked in a blog post here, in late 2012, what might the USA be like 10 years from then? That'd be 2022/3. Ten year spans don't always see major differences occur on a national level - on a personal level, yes, certainly! Just for fun, I said in 2012, let's haul out the ol' crystal ball. As there was more than enough doomladen commentary and fiction around, I decided to aim for a somewhat brighter version of 2022/3. However, due to my rose coloured glasses approach, I have become the personification of that "mug in the game". It's almost seven years on now - do any of my intentionally starry eyed predictions look any nearer to coming true? Not a chance! Here they are, or were.

The USA has, for 5 years, had benefit of a very efficiently run national system of health care, with state of the art hospitals and clinics available to all, financed by a reasonable level of contribution by all citizens and residents, at a rate according to their earnings level.

A simply administered cure for some types of cancer has been discovered.

A completely biodegradable material invented to take the place of plastics in most applications.

The US Constitution, after years of struggle, updated and amended in two areas: corporate personhood rescinded, and the Second Amendment re-written and clarified.

All US military occupation abroad terminated in 2021, surplus weaponry still being destroyed and materials re-cycled. Currently in process of finalising nuclear arms agreements worldwide. A small but efficient military force remains in place in the US. The majority of military personnel are employed in a range of capacities updating, re-building and extending a variety of public transit networks, nation-wide, and running them efficiently on behalf of the government.

Weather Forecasting with Ian Lang; Astrology Forecasting with...me.

I'm using two questions and answers from Quora today, one about weather forecasting, the other about astrology. Ian Lang answered the former; I, among others, answered the latter. It might seem that there's no connection between the two subjects. I do see a connection - however vague - so please do read on.

QUESTION: How accurate is weather forecasting these days?
An answer by Ian Lang, Leading Technician (used with his kind (blanket) permission) -

Not being one of those funny people in suits from Greenwood’s [Note from Twilight - Greenwoods is a well-known men's clothing retailer in the UK] that used to infest half of Bracknell I can’t speak for them directly, but having had to do fluid mechanics (which it is, albeit dressed up and on a very big scale) I can speak from that perspective.

When you’re dealing with fluids (gasses are also fluids) in an enclosed system, the best you can do is make educated guesses. The Greenwood Suit People (GSP) are very, very educated in their subject indeed.

The problem with what the GSPs do is manyfold and one of them goes by the name of Navier-Stokes. They’re fiendishly difficult, and those chaps at Oxford and Cambridge on here doing physics might like to go into the minutae of them but frankly they’d send me to sleep if I wasn’t so busy trying not to throw myself off the roof because of them and so I’ll just say that they’re used to calculate stuff to do with fluid motion and stress in it.

The Earth and its atmosphere are, as I’m sure you appreciate, a very large enclosed system indeed. You can’t possibly know the condition of every molecule of stuff there, or predict where hot and cold fronts will go. So, then, what you do is split the volume under consideration into smaller bits. With something so big, even smaller bits are quite large, and you might have a net in which each bit is 10km wide, 10km long and 10km high. In terms of something the size of the rock on which we live that’s a pretty fine net, but we have to remember that bits of stuff are continually leaving one cube and entering an adjacent one.

What you do is look at these nets and see what’s likely to happen. If you take some variables and give them a value, you’ll get several different outcomes depending on what values you have, and you can, with computer technology, run several variations on the theme and out will pop an aggregate with the most likely probability.

It’s not exact and it can’t be. What you see on Newsnight as a weather forecast may well have changed by six o’ clock the next morning as something that happened in Uppsala may well have changed the probability in Basingstoke from overcast to bucketing down rain.

So, then, the forecast for tomorrow will have a reasonable chance of accuracy, perhaps 70% or higher, and I’ve seen it in the eighties. It would be a very foolish forecaster indeed that said, with absolute confidence, that it will be fine and sunny all day without a doubt. I’ve never seen anybody say that there’s a 100% chance of accuracy.

You can’t do long range either. Every hour into the future you peer, the chance of you being right diminishes. If anybody is offering you a three-day forecast, take it with a pinch of salt. If anybody is offering you seven days, you may laugh in their face and call them a charlatan. If anybody’s offering you ten, they may as well be Mystic Meg.

Nature abhors a vacuum. It’s not too fond of weathermen either. But at least it allows the latter to wear suits from Greenwood.

QUESTION: There are many people who believe in astrology. If there are 100 people who are born on the same day and exactly the same time, will all of them be facing the same kind of situations in life as per astrology?


An answer by me, at Quora

“…the same kind of situations in life” is the key phrase of your question as I see it. You are not asking, primarily, whether they will share personality traits and characteristics- though those factors will, inevitably, feed in to outcomes of situations encountered. Try looking on the natal chart and planetary transits affecting it, as a kind of weather forecast, but rather than predicting rain, snow, sunshine or frost, the astrological forecast indicates periods of time when things are likely to be easy-going, and other times with potential for challenges of various kinds to arise.

100 people who share very similar natal charts will experience similar “rhythms” and experiences of easy-going periods and challenging, more difficult, periods of time, because transits of the outer, slow-moving planets, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto will be conjoining personal planets in these natal charts at similar points in time. The nature of challenges and difficulties experienced will be quite different for each individual, the ways in which challenges and difficulties arising are dealt with will be different, due to differences in each individual’s early background, location, education, life situation, and so on. Sometimes a challenge opens a door of opportunity, a chance of transformation depending on choices made. Here, and always, we're dealing with astrological potential versus real-world opportunity, or lack of it.

Natal charts of 100 near astrological "twins" would manifest in very different ways, but with subtle resonance in the rhythm of challenging times and easy-going times experienced by each individual.

I now see that I could have added a thought to my answer, in the style of Ian Lang: "If anybody's offering you a prediction of a specific situation happening at some future date, based on astrological factors, you may laugh in their face and call them a charlatan - or Mystic Meg. (Poor Meg - she gets blamed for a lot!)

Past and Future Echoes

During the week we rented a DVD of the 1997 movie Good Will Hunting. The title I recognised, but neither of us could recall ever having seen the film. It was written by, and starred, the then very youthful-looking Ben Affleck and Matt Damon; also with a leading role, Robin Williams.

It's an enjoyable movie. One piece of dialogue, spoken by Matt Damon as Will Hunting, stood out for me as foreshadowing events and atmospheres we, in 2014, recognise even more clearly than cinema-goers of 1997 would have done. First, a wee bit of background: Will Hunting, though not formally trained or highly educated is a natural genius in mathematics, has a photographic memory and extremely sharp powers of perception in all spheres - except in recognising the incongruity of his own situation. He had settled for a janitor's working class existence and mildly wild-boy lifestyle, until his talent was discovered by an MIT professor. In the scene from which this dialogue is taken, Hunting has attended an interview with officials of the NSA (we know them well - or at least, they know us!) arranged for him by the professor. His speech during the interview:

Why shouldn't I work for the N.S.A.? That's a tough one, but I'll take a shot. Say I'm workin' at the N.S.A. and somebody puts a code on my desk, somethin' no one else can break. Maybe I take a shot at it, maybe I break it. And I'm real happy with myself, 'cause I did my job well. But maybe that code was the location of some rebel army in North Africa or the Middle East. And once they have that location, they bomb the village where the rebels are hidin'. Fifteen hundred people that I never met, I never had no problem with, get killed. Now the politicians are sayin', 'Oh, send in the Marines to secure the area,' 'cause they don't give a shit. It won't be their kid over there gettin' shot. Just like it wasn't them when their number got called 'cause they were out pullin' a tour in the National Guard. It'll be some kid from Southie over there takin' shrapnel in the ass. He comes back to find that the plant he used to work at got exported to the country he just got back from. And the guy who put the shrapnel in his ass got his old job, 'cause he'll work for fifteen cents a day and no bathroom breaks.

Meanwhile he realizes the only reason he was over there in the first place was so that we could install a government that would sell us oil at a good price. And of course the oil companies used the little skirmish over there to scare up domestic oil prices. A cute little ancillary benefit for them but it ain't helpin' my buddy at two-fifty a gallon. They're takin' their sweet time bringin' the oil back, of course, maybe they even took the liberty of hirin' an alcoholic skipper who likes to drink martinis and fuckin' play slalom with the icebergs. It ain't too long 'til he hits one, spills the oil and kills all the sea life in the North Atlantic. So now my buddy's out of work. He can't afford to drive, so he's walkin' to the fuckin' job interviews, which sucks because the schrapnel in his ass is givin' him chronic hemorroids. And meanwhile he's starvin' 'cause every time he tries to get a bite to eat, the only blue plate special they're servin' is North Atlantic scrod with Quaker State.

So what did I think? I'm holdin' out for somethin' better. I figure, fuck it, while I'm at it, why not just shoot my buddy, take his job, give it to his sworn enemy, hike up gas prices, bomb a village, club a baby seal, hit the hash pipe and join the National Guard? I could be elected president.

That dialogue was written around 17 years ago, by a couple of actor friends who, we now know, both have well-defined political views. Echoes of these were likely to be felt in this film. 17 years isn't a long time in the great scheme of things, so I shouldn't have been surprised to hear Will Hunting's speech, which seems, if anything, even more relevant today than in 1997. This isn't one of the better examples of fiction writers' involuntary prescience, a topic I've blogged about in the past, and one which continues to intrigue me.

A couple of sci-fi novels with very scary prescience are J.G. Ballard's The Drowned World and The Burning World, written in 1962 and 1964 respectively. I haven't read them yet, but the saying "read 'em and weep" will follow any thought I might have of acquiring the books.

Here are some other examples, featured as part of of an archived 2006 post of mine, Accidental Prophets, re-aired in 2008:

James Michener seems to have had amazing foresight. Several of his novels featuring a particular country, in depth, were each followed some years later by the same countries coming into prominence on the world stage. In a long interview here: he said

"I think that some of us have a deep seated sensitive antennae about what is going to happen. And somebody the other day, a fine professor, made an introduction of me, which I had not thought about, but which I had thought about a great deal since. At that time, in the world, there were about a half dozen trouble spots: the Near East, the Jewish-Arab relationships, South Africa, revolution in Poland, the emergence of Japan, the absorption in the United States of two outlying territories like Hawaii and Alaska and four or five other things. And he pointed out that I had written full-length books about all these areas before they came into prominence. And I did! There they are. Look at the dates. Now this cannot be because I was exceptionally brilliant. I am not brilliant. I'm something else. I don't know what the word would be, but it isn't brilliant."

Nevil Shute, author of one of my favourites, A Town Like Alice, wrote a couple of novels which later seemed to have been prophetic. No Highway published in 1948 dealt with what might happen due to metal fatigue in aircraft. His ideas came close to fact with the Comet disasters of the 1950s. Another novel, What Happened to the Corbetts also published as Ordeal was written just before the start of WorldWar2. It tells how badly aerial bombing affected a town similar to Southampton, in the south of England, and how the bombing of civilians became a major part of the war. British people of a certain age will have no trouble recognising this as fact! On the Beach, a story of the world ending as a result of the explosion of atomic bombs, thankfully has not yet proved prophetic. It could still be "pending" however, should people forget the warning bells it rang! Shute also touched on a slightly supernatural theme in a novel called Round the Bend in which an aircraft mechanic becomes the mystical leader of a religious movement.

Seeing some correspondence between Michener and Shute, I searched around for other instances of novels which, without purporting to be science fiction, portray events which later came to pass in real life.

American author Morgan Robertson produced an early example in his story Futility. He told of a ship called Titan which sank in a way eerily similar to The Titanic, 14 years later. When this book was written there were no ships of such enormous size being built. Robertson also appeared to be crystal-gazing when he later(1914) wrote a book called Beyond the Spectrum. In this book, he described a war in the future, fought using aircraft which dropped "sun bombs" on their targets. These were powerful enough for a single bomb to destroy a city. When this book was written, aeroplanes were small, flimsy, and unreliable machines capable of carrying one person. Nuclear weapons were still unimagined. Robertson's war began in the month of December, as did the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor which brought the USA into WW2.

Michener was born 1907, Shute 1899 and Robertson 1861.

There are common sense explanations for the authors' apparent ability to see into the future, these men were not deliberately trying to predict events, as far as we know.

Michener didn't foresee actual events, but was drawn or inspired to write about countries which later came to prominence for one reason or another. He was widely travelled, highly intelligent, politically minded and had lived in all the countries he wrote about. Common sense would say that he was "putting two and two together", or using intuition.

Shute was a skilled aeronautical engineer as well as novelist. He had technical knowledge more than sufficient to foresee possible outcomes where the area of his expertise was involved. "An accident waiting to happen", in the case of metal fatigue, and some extrapolation of known facts in the case of aerial warfare ?

Robertson was the son of a ship's captain and spent some time as a cabin boy himself, so the sea was "in his blood", he had no doubt heard some tall tales from the old salts he must have encountered. These, with a little embroidery, might have helped him to invent his ship Titan. His "Beyond the Spectrum" published in 1914 is harder to explain.

Those are explanations for skeptics. Someone more open-minded, and sensitive to peculiar coincidences like these, might see a different explanation. Novelists and short story writers continually tap into vast resources of imagination. For hours at a time, their minds are "elsewhere", concentrating outside of the mundane. Isn't this akin to meditation? Could it be that as they concentrate so intently in realms of the imaginary, coloured with knowledge stored in their memory banks, they somehow inadvertently seep through a time barrier or into another dimension?

With oblique reference to the above, I read this week that plans are afoot to make a movie version of Harlan Ellison's 1965 award-winning short science fiction story, 'Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman. This should be interesting!

Harlan Ellison's story is set in a dystopian future where strict adherence to time regulation rules everything, including life and death. It's basically a satirical diatribe on social regimentation. In the story one Everett C. Marm, disguised as Harlequin rebels, albeit a whimsical rebellion, against the time regulations and the Master Timekeeper known as Ticktockman.

“Why let them order you about? Why let them tell you to hurry and scurry like ants or maggots? Take your time! Saunter a while! Enjoy the sunshine, enjoy the breeze, let life carry you at your own pace! Don't be slaves of time, it's a helluva way to die, slowly, by degrees...down with the Ticktockman!”

“And so it goes. And so it goes. And so it goes. And so it goes goes goes goes goes tick tock tick tock tick tock and one day we no longer let time serve us, we serve time and we are slaves of the schedule, worshipers of the sun's passing, bound into a life predicated on restrictions because the system will not function if we don't keep the schedule tight.”

Let us hope that author Harlan Ellison had not tapped in to any future truth!

Into 2012: "A Going On"......

Year's end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on, with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us. (Hal Borland).

Last New Year's Eve I posted some predictions for 2011 from around the net and via my tarot deck. (Relevant post is HERE). First 3 featured were, very predictably, winners.

They were part of a list drawn up by John Derbyshire, who is a contributor editor of National Review:

Numerology: People will make a great fuss about 11/11/11. Didn't they!

Vocabulary: The word “austerity” will be heard a lot. We heard it!

The culture: Obsessive texting on tiny communication gadgets will become so widespread that at some moment in some daylight hour of 2011, nobody in the U.S.A. will be speaking to anyone else. Yep!

See the rest, including my rather wishy-washy tarot offering, at the link above.

With hindsight, regarding the tarot cards drawn, I might possibly relate two of them to the Occupy movement - 8 Cups -a turning away from the status quo by many of the (Page Wands) younger generation (+ others); the third card (6 Cups) - nostalgia or the return of someone from the past....still a mystery.

I usually find that without a card from the tarot's Major Arcana turning up in the draw, it's barely possible to read stuff that could cover a whole year for the whole world. So.... as a Major card didn't turn up this time either, I'll give tarot a miss in this post. It could be a good sign, by the way: certainly no end-of-world scenario coming up! But we knew that.....didn't we?

It's good that, nowadays, it's custom to limit predictions to the year ahead -ish. Some really, really bad predictions from the past show us how mindset of any given era cannot possibly embrace thought of change on a vast scale over long periods. We have been, and still are, necessarily limited in how much future change our brains are able to process. Perhaps we have improved some, from ongoing experience, and yet, because science and technology have progressed at an ever-incresing pace, can we hope, ever, to keep up?

The ordinary "horseless carriage" is at present a luxury for the wealthy; and although its price will probably fall in the future, it will never, of course, come into as common use as the bicycle.Literary Digest, 1899.

Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.
Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre, 1904.

There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC), maker of big business mainframe computers, arguing against the PC in 1977.

It's a great invention but who would want to use it anyway?Rutherford B. Hayes, U.S. President, after a demonstration of Alexander Bell's telephone, 1876

X-rays will prove to be a hoax.Lord Kelvin, President of the Royal Society, 1883.

More bad predictions HERE

Astrologers give us their best shot at foretelling the future with each New Year. They can match coming planetary transits to potential (underline potential) outcomes. The best we can hope for is a picture painted with very, very broad brush. In 2012, for instance, the three outer planets (the ones to watch in relation to predicting the future) will all three be in, or about to enter the early degrees of a new sign. During 2012:
Uranus 0 to 4 of Aries
Neptune 28 Aquarius to 1 Pisces, having reached 3 then backtracked.
Pluto 7 to 9 Capricorn.

That could be interpreted as indicating an overall change of atmosphere - everywhere.

Pluto moved from Sagittarius to Capricorn at the end of 2008, so has been at the avant garde, the initiator of a changed atmosphere poised to develop further in coming months.

The election of Barack Obama as President of the USA in 2008 can be seen as evidence of this change. First African American president of the US = a change all by itself. Unfortunately enticing promises of change in Washington which accompanied this new phenomenon have not manifested.

As Uranus creeps ever so slowly, (with a bit of back-and-forthing too) into Fiery Aries we wonder exactly how this new transit will manifest, bearing in mind that around the Fall of 2012 Uranus and Pluto will "square up", that is form a challenging square (90*) aspect. Most astrologers agree that this is the key time to watch for unexpected (Uranus' signature) events in 2012.

The broadest possible astro-brushwork indicates change, but of what type, how deep, at what rate, and where it will manifest most clearly, cannot be made clear by the planets.

I'm sticking to an earlier thought of mine - that the Occupy movement could have been a very, very early sign of change-to-come, but we shouldn't expect to see spectacular, long-lasting change for some years - until Pluto transits Aquarius in fact: 2025 onwards.

Predictions of Gin Chow & The Sexagenary Cycles

In The Best of the Illustrated Astrological Journal (1933-35), an old volume I picked up in an antique store some time ago, a brief article Gin Chow, Chinese Prophet of Lompoc -by Thomas F. Collison, caught my interest.

Gin Chow, an immigrant from China, lived in Lompoc in the Santa Inez River valley, Santa Barbara county, California. He gathered the reputation of being a sage and prophet due to an ability to accurately predict the weather and timing of earthquakes.


The article tells that Gin Chow made no claim to be clairvoyant, and denied that he was a soothsayer, yet his fame spread. He used Chinese astrological doctrine, "The Yellow Road zodiac", ancient lore touching on the "fates of men and the fates of nations, and the way of the rains and the droughts and the hot spells and cold spells and earthquake phenomena", using cycles of 60 years.

Gin Chow correctly predicted that Yokohama would quake in 1923 and that Santa Barbara would fall in ruins in 1925. He believed that the destiny of China and United States "They tied up together....China is old man, Amelica is infant, but wise baby. China not been wise. She pay too much 'tention to ancestors, by Amelica she benefit much if she help China".

Other predictions by Chow cited by Thomas Stroke in his 1958 book California Editor include a a 1932 prediction of a United States war with Japan that would end in 1946 (World War II ended in 1945).

Wikipedia has a page on Gin Chow, and records that
Chow's last prediction came in 1932. He had been seriously gored by a bull and doctors believed him to be on his deathbed. Chow assured them that he would die one year later. He died in June 1933.

Chinese Astrology follows the cycles of the Moon. A complete cycle of sixty lunar years is made up of five twelve year cycles. The twelve-year cycle is sometimes called "The Yellow Road of the Sun".

I searched online for more information and found this. I suspect some astrologers might argue with the first sentence!

All astrology derives from ancient Chinese philosophy developed between 4000 and 2000 BC. At its heart is the concept of complementary opposites, and the interaction between elemental forces within a 60 year cycle dominated by the Moon. No one force or element dominates another, but each requires the others for its existence. As time progresses through the cycle, life forces change, but are always held in balance by an opposing force.
The present 60 year cycle started in 1984 – the year which George Orwell foresaw as a new world dominated by what he believed to be the dark forces of information technology in an age of fearsome new weaponry – and will end in 2044.
http://www.myqualities.com/astrology/Chinese-Astrology.asp

Hmm. Using that 12-year count we are currently in the span 2008 to 2020, the third of five 12-year segments since the previous cycle ended in 1983. I feel no affinity at all to Chinese astrology, so am drawing a blank here. There's more detail on the Sexagenery Cycle in Chinese astrology at Wikipedia

Thoughts on Prediction & Mercury Retrograde

The time around New Year is always fertile ground for prediction of one sort or another - astrological, psychic, tarot, cystal ball, entrails of an ox, clouds, tea leaves.....take your pick! It's useful at this time of year to read, or re-read, what Nicholas de Vore had to say about astrological prediction in his Encyclopedia of Astrology.

"Although predictions, as drawn from a birth Figure, often show a high percentage of correctness, the practice teaches a fatalistic philosophy that denies the gift of Free Will and Self Determination. The high percentage of correctness proves only that a high percentage of people permit themselves to be ruled by the emotions instead of the dominance of the reasoning faculties. It is only in the realm of Mundane Astrology, which deals with the mass reaction of large political or geographical groups, that predicting can be indulged in without inculcating a harmful philosophy."

Those are wise thoughts. To become "a slave" to astrology is to give up our freedom to be free. Considering what astrology has to offer is good, but becoming too enmeshed in, excited or worried by, detailed personal or communal predictions isn't good for anybody.


A postscript relating to the current Mercury retrograde which started in earnest on 26 December; the "shadow" period, when effects are also often felt, ran from 15 December. Mercury retrograde periods often bring upsets in communication, travel, and problems with electronic devices, not always, but quite often. You cannot usefully predict what, or if, anything will happen. For me, this time, things happened!

RETRO EFFECT #1 ~I hadn't remembered that we were in the retro-shadow period on 23 December when my computer monitor suddenly gave up the ghost, after more than 5 years' use with never a hitch. With the holidays around the corner, and bad weather forecast, we dashed out to a neighbouring town to replace the monitor.

RETRO EFFECT #2 ~ The bad weather arrived on time next day - worse than expected too, making travel even for very short distances hazardous. Our intended trip on 25th was a complete no-no as road conditions were worse than ever. On the morning of 26th December, while looking up something on Google my computer froze and various messages started appearing, including porn adverts and fake warnings. The dreaded Antivirus Live trojan had got me. It took my husband and me literally all day to find out how to rectify the situation. Luckily we have access to another computer and a laptop, which helped us find a solution. This is a very, very nasty trojan, and must be taking advantage of Mercury retrograde because on various help sites there are dozens of comments all dated this month, from people whose computers have been infected recently.

RETRO EFFECT #3 ~ On Sunday evening (27th) our furnace stopped functioning. We guessed that the problem might be with the thermostat. We have a gas fire in the fireplace - things were not as bad as they might otherwise have been, but it was still too cold for comfort in other parts of the house. The problem was an electronic part - limitation control - and now fixed by husband's son, a heat& air expert.

So this time around Mercruy retro has me in its sights! Mercury is in Capricorn now -so is my natal Mercury, at 21 degrees, just about the point where the retrograde began! Yes - "something is happening here, but we don't know what it is, do we Mr. Jones?"

Peddling Fear

Originally this post was a bad-tempered rant, but it sat in draft form for 24 hours, giving me time to reconsider a few hard words I'd written about a well-known astrologer and his predictions for next year. I've toned it down.

In my view, astrologers ought be above scaring the s..t out of their readers. How on earth can it be useful, or ethical, to present doomy predictions based on what is, after all, an imperfect tool: astrology. Astrology is imperfect, especially for the purposes of prediction. If a passing reader can name any exact predictions of world or national events from the past which proved accurate, I'll be happy to eat my words.

The best that astrologers can honestly aim for is a vague forecast of what the general atmosphere of any given period of time might be, based on cycles; based on the passage of time, marked by the movement of the Sun, Moon and planets. Their movements track time in the way the hands on a clock track time. I'm beginning to suspect that the planets themselves, like the hands on a clock, are not "it". Time and its unknown properties, waves and cycles are "it", with the movement of the planets being our only available reference points.

Perhaps the next few years will bring us to an important point in time cycles, to the crest or trough of a "wave" of sorts, when events will prove, with hindsight, to have been highly significant. Details beyond that, presented by astrologers or anyone else, are guesses at best, and to my mind ought to be labelled as such. Assumptions as to whether events will prove negative or positive in effect cannot possibly known with any certainty. Comparing what happened "the last time" such and such a planetary formation occurred seems to me to be unhelpful. We are now part of a different cycle on the spiral of time. Things are different in every conceivable way from how they were "then" - whichever "then" is chosen.

I believe that astrology needs to be kept alive, pending a time when science, physics, and human knowledge catch up, and help to clarify the shadowy traditions bequeathed to us by astrologers of centuries past. I have a feeling this will happen. One day an unsuspecting physicist will utter those words..."That's funny!"

Astrology needs to be kept alive, but not by fear and pessimism - by love. Fear is a virus, it spreads and mutates, and unhealthily infects the collective mindset. Astrologers ought to keep this in mind.

Predictions

Yesterday I followed a link to website "Visions of Reality with Elizabeth Joyce" and an article posted on 17 January 2008: "Psychic Predictions for the 2008 Election"
Some of this lady's predictions haven't materialised exactly as set down, yet in a strange way an alternative view of her words might still prove to have been (accidentally?) accurate. Note especially the last four lines of this brief extract!

"For sure my psychic sense sees that a woman will occupy the White House as vice president as a result of the 2008 election, but not president. It’s just not Hillary’s time yet, as I have psychic stated for the past three years.

The male presidential candidate who runs with a woman vice presidential candidate on the ticket will win the election by a landslide. Obama or Gore will take the lead. What others are not thinking about at this time are the coming earth changes. They begin heavily after the February eclipses. America may call on and try to draft Al Gore to enter the presidential race. Psychic predictions everywhere state that we are reaching a point where the public is intrigued with the idea of a female president, but as a country we tend to take cautious steps.

If Barack Obama wins the nomination, Hillary Clinton may consider his invitation as the vice president, but his life will automatically be in danger. This “back seat” will be very difficult for Hillary to accept. Typically, you don’t want a vice president who is equally strong as the presidential candidate, but in this case it will benefit Obama, because he is “so green behind the ears,” as my grandmother, an excellent psychic, used to say. Hillary can beneifit him with her first hand knowledge of how the Oval Office is run.

My psychic sense tells me that not only will a woman become the nation’s first Vice President at the 2008 election, but she will be sworn in as president when the male president is forced to step down due to serious health issues or worse. I have also psychically stated that we will have a one-term president in 2008."


The scenario this psychic envisioned (back in January) was probably Obama winning, with Clinton as his VP, a possible assassination attempt forcing him to resign, leaving Hillary Clinton as president. As it has turned out this is unlikely to happen, but the premise of a female VP taking over as a result of the president's illness, or other reason, does remain a possibility, should John McCain win the election.

I felt intrigued enough to get out my tarot deck and ask: "What do I need to know about the outcome of the General Election?"

3 CARDS ~~~~
7 of Pentacles/Coins
The Hanged Man
The Moon

7 Pentacles/Coins relates to a time of contemplation, taking stock, and capitalizing on gains, adjusting any areas of weakness. This is apt and applicable to both Democrats and Republicans, now their respective conventions are out of the way.

The Hanged Man - a card of the Major Arcana, so more important in the reading. This card is said to be ruled by Neptune. Odd that! I've written on several occasions that when I see Obama, I think Neptune, in all its fogginess and illusion. The Hanged Man card symbolizes self-sacrifice, sometimes a period of feeling "in limbo", its message is that this is a time of waiting and requires patience, a need to watch as things develop. Being ruled by Neptune means that the card also has an undertone of spirituality.

The Moon - Again, from the Major Arcana. This card is said to relate to Pisces in astrology, Pisces' ruler is Neptune, which relates back to the previous card - a thread runs through this! The Moon card relates to highly charged emotions, a confused state of mind, feelings of fear, perhaps delusion or deceit. All is not exactly as it appears to be. Moon also signifies organic change, change led by nature, rather than manipulated change.

So..... the three cards together? Confusing! First card is clear enough, and fits the situation as it is at present. The two Major cards present uncertainty - I'm going to opt for a view that all may not be as it seems now, there is much more still to emerge. These two Major Arcana cards, for me, relate more to Barack Obama than John McCain. I could invent a scenario to fit, but it would be fiction. I'll wait, and try this experiment again in October.