The Gemini Festival 2020

THE GEMINI FESTIVAL
THE FESTIVAL OF WORLD GOODWILL
5 JUN 2020
© Malvin Artley

A tantric affirmation:

I who am called (Akshobhya-vajra), from this time onwards until my enlightenment,
Shall develop a pure and peerless bodhichitta, just as all the protecting buddhas of the three times have done to ensure their enlightenment.
I shall uphold all the general and specific vows and commitments of the five buddha families, without an exception.
I shall deliver those not yet delivered,
I shall liberate those not yet liberated and
I shall give breath to those unable to breathe.
I shall place all sentient beings in the state beyond sorrow.

Topics (Linked to paragraphs): Gemini Akshobhyavajra The full moon COVID-19 and Gemini Censorship in social media What/Who do you want to believe? The US riots Hong Kong What’s up with the US, really? The loss of moral supremacy In conclusion

Greetings Everyone!

It has been quite a news cycle since the last letter, and most of it centers on the United States, in case you haven’t noticed. Due to its Gemini personality, the US will be a particular focus in the latter section of this letter as a result. The news has kept me busy. Otherwise, things are moving along here with the lifting of the lockdowns. Everything will be fully opened by the middle of the month. Italy opened its borders on the 3^rd, but some nations in Europe have yet to do so. Within the next days we will no longer be required to wear masks in Italy, as the case load and infections have fallen dramatically. What is more important now is to get economies moving again so people can at least have some economic security. The service sector has been particularly hard-hit with the lockdowns, especially since much of the manufacturing in the West has moved to the East or the Global South. The East is moving again economically and will do well in the months ahead. The West, however, is another story, and troubles continue. The virus has exposed the cracks in our current societies and systems, giving us a much-needed awareness of what needs to be addressed and where. There is a lot of work to do, needless to say.

Since the last letter there are four blog posts that cover much of what would have been covered after the discussion of the full moon in this letter: the Floyd protests, the US banking system, the anti-China gambit and the problems in the US that are bringing the latter out. The propaganda war is in full tilt now, going along with the Geminian theme of the ‘quarrelling brothers’, and there would appear to be little in the way of international goodwill, at least coming out of the West, except for one thing – the solidarity worldwide shown for the plight of blacks in the US. That is what we see on the surface, anyway.

Gemini features strongly in the two leaders of the Western ‘special relationship’. That would be Donald Trump and Boris Johnson. Both men are struggling politically, with Trump due for possible re-election toward the end of the year and with Johnson struggling to lead the UK. To distract from their own problems and the problems caused by the lockdowns in those nations because of the policies put in place there over the past decades, the media and social media is awash in a concerted campaign of distraction and misinformation, aimed at keeping the populace from rising up sufficiently to overturn said policies. It is an effort to keep the nations divided also, both at home and abroad. We have examined such misinformation quite a lot in the past years in these letters, as much as we can ascertain it. And due to the urgency of the situation brought on by the pandemic and the fact that all the faults in ‘the system’ are glaringly there for all to see, the powers-that-be have chosen to double down on the negative propaganda instead of actually addressing the problems in society. It is very disappointing, yet oh-so-predictable. And people are angry about it.

Gemini in mundane astrology rules the education system, the media, especially the tabloid press, propaganda helpful and nefarious, broadcasting, social media, information and information technology, short journeys, the postal service, stocks and stock markets, roads and general transport. All of that has been strongly affected with the lockdowns, and particularly the disruption of supply chains. At the human level Gemini rules the lungs, respiration, the nervous system in general, the hands and arms, and one’s powers of perception. Mercury rules Gemini in the orthodox, and Mercury is associated with all the items just mentioned. The process of breathing is what allows us to live. Without clean air or with a lack of air our health suffers and our lives are shortened. And if we are not allowed to communicate, if we are personally isolated, most people wither and madness, also ruled by Mercury, tends to set in. That is, unless a person has consciously separated themselves off from the world with the intent of communicating with their own souls and beyond.

In that regard, we have all heard the phrase now: “I can’t breathe!” We all know what it means, too. But there is a wider meaning, one with which the protests in the US and now abroad are also connecting and addressing at a more subjective level. People are increasingly unable to breathe spiritually because they are too concerned with their daily survival and see the future for their children and descendants growing very dark and uncertain. People know why, too. People old enough to have witnessed it unfold know well what has happened in the last few decades in terms of wages, warfare, industry, infrastructure, job security, privacy, environment, values, trust, security – do we really need to go on?

Certain sectors of the populace, specifically blacks and people of color in the US and to a lesser extent in Europe, have endured centuries of such mistreatment. Women of all races have endured their part of it, too. There is no other word that adequately describes the loss of the aforementioned factors. The one positive we can say about it is that the suffering and the crises it evokes draw out the souls of people. There is a mass invocation taking place now, out in the streets, for justice, for the correction of the institutionalized wrongs that have eroded our societies, and that have been part and parcel for centuries for blacks and people of color in nations where European heritage is dominant. And in the protests we see, which will hopefully continue peacefully, another message is sent to the people of privilege and in power: “We know what you are doing. We demand change. We demand justice for the wrongs of the past.” It sends a chill wind through the upper echelons of society. The status quo knows the game will soon be up. We can expect violence as a countermeasure. And we have seen it in every large protest movement.

Akshobhyavajra: Returning to the affirmation at the start of this letter, the name at the beginning of the quote refers to a deity in a specific practice. But seen in a larger context, it refers to an aspect of our higher Self, the unshakeable wisdom that leads each of us to the realization of the stage of ‘Master of the Wisdom’ and beyond. ‘Akshobhya’ means ‘unshakeable’ and ‘vajra’ refers to ‘the irresistible firmness of Spirit’, among many interpretations. It speaks of the indomitable human spirit. In Theosophy this refers to atma-buddhi, the more refined aspect of the spiritual Triad, that part of us ‘closest to God’. It has another name in Buddhist practice, the ‘sambhogakaya’, or ‘bliss body’. The vajra is the lightning-bolt realization of openness/emptiness – the space-like ocean of infinite wisdom, to word it in another way. The Great Invocation invokes that space-like vajra aspect of one’s Spirit, or penultimate essence, as well as the collective expression of it. The ultimate essence is called the buddha-nature in Buddhism, the monad in Theosophy.

When we recite the line, “Let light and love and power restore the Plan on Earth” from the Great Invocation, we invoke that vajra wisdom as much from within ourselves as from the greater Lives associated with our planetary evolution. But there is a wider point, and yet specific to what we are witnessing today. When protesters carry signs with the last statement of George Floyd – “I can’t breathe!” – that, too, invokes the very forces and beings addressed in the Great Invocation. As little as people might think about it, that statement is a collective rallying cry for a restoration of goodwill and a new expression of it, as much as it speaks truth to power. It may address a particular part of the populace, but it brings people of all persuasions and races into the picture for the same purpose.

There is quite a bit we could parse from the quote at the beginning of this letter, such as ‘protecting buddhas’, the five buddha families’ and so forth. The specific practice from which it is taken is known as ‘Victory over Evil’ – that which conquers death. As interesting as it would be to delve into those matters, the service of the immediate need demands otherwise. It is no surprise at all that the massive protests worldwide we are seeing now are a call for victory over death, though people will see it as victory over wrongful death and the establishment of justice for centuries of enslavement, marginalization, suppression and institutionalized injustice. The Goodwill Festival marks the collective cry and actions for right human relations across the board, within nations and internationally. Gemini is the great sign that speaks to the ‘union of the opposites’ and is perhaps the most important in terms of human evolution. The main ‘opposite’ that confronts us every day is the personality and the higher Self – our own – and in uniting those two, we restore our little part of the Plan on Earth, as much as we can realize it. With that, we move on to the consideration of this full moon and topical aspects of immediate importance to world goodwill.

The full moon took place at 18:40 UT on the 5^th of June (6 June at 4:40 am AEST). This full moon was also the first of three eclipses, spaced two weeks apart. The second one in this series is the one to watch because it takes place on an Aries point (0° Cancer) and it will strongly affect the United States, in addition to likewise affecting the ‘world view’. In the full moon figure this full moon axis makes a t-square with Mars at the apex in Pisces. The eclipse axis is at the 16^th degree of Gemini/Sagittarius, at the midpoint of the US Mars and Horizon axis, which will result in provocative behaviour, the fighting spirit, quarrels and mishaps by and in the US when it is activated by Mars in the first part of next year. Further, Mars in the eclipse figure is conjunct Neptune and is at the midpoint of Ceres and Neptune.

The Sun is conjunct Venus, the latter in its retrograde phase. The Sun is also conjunct the star Rigel. Mercury and Venus are both out-of-bounds. Of greater interest are the midpoint structures formed by the t-square, mentioned before: Sun/Moon/Mars=Uranus/Pluto. In simplest terms, this combination defines a breaking point, as in “something has to give”, as in move or break. Now that the world is coming out of its lockdown phase, the economy and supply chains, the latter ruled by Gemini and Mercury, are under stresses in the West we have not seen since WWII. This is especially troublesome for the United States, and with its Gemini personality the focus is strongly on that nation at the moment.

The conjunction of the Sun with the great star Rigel has the following traditional interpretation: “Bold, courageous, insolent, unruly temper, hasty actions, bloodshed, many enemies, great good fortune, military success.”^[1] The t-square with Mars will generally energize that interpretation and, occurring in mutable signs, will make the outcomes quite variable, according to nation and region. The eclipse will mark a very restive period in US history. We are seeing only the beginning of that now. Any challenges arising from that eclipse will become apparent with the first Mars transit across the US descendant in early April next year. The same will be true for the solar eclipse two weeks later when Mars transits across that eclipse axis at the US Venus. Venus in the US chart rules the 6^th house (services, police and military), the 10^th house (sitting government and international prestige) and the 11^th house (alliances and Congress). All of those areas will be affected by that eclipse. In fact all three of these eclipses will impact the United States, with the last one taking place on the US Sun, being activated by Mars in early May next year.

Mention is made of the US in particular here because there was another eclipse at 0° Cancer in 2001, which signalled the 9/11 event. That was a Saros 127 series event, at the peak of that series (a total eclipse), and was being activated by Mars on 9/11, when Pluto was on the US ascendant. This 21 June 2020 eclipse is no less important for the US, perhaps even more so, because it is preceded by the full moon (lunar) eclipse at this Goodwill Festival across the US horizon axis and accompanies the first Pluto return for the US, with directed Pluto on the US Midheaven. As we saw with the 9/11 eclipse, the Mars activation in April of 2021 will again signal changes in the US social fabric, its world standing, and its own leadership, coming shortly after the next inauguration of a POTUS, if the election takes place in November this year as planned. As we saw with 9/11, that is not to say we will see another 9/11-type of event next year for the US, though it is possible. However, let us just say that eclipse will not go unnoticed. It will be covered in a separate posting. However, given the effect the COVID-19 event is having on the US and UK, and really across the Americas and Europe, the remainder of this letter will have a particular focus upon the United States with its Gemini personality, as well as a few points to be made regarding the EU and Europe in general, also strongly influenced by Gemini.

COVID-19 and Gemini: In the Easter and Wesak letters for this year we examined somewhat more in depth what this pandemic has meant for the world, some of the possible outcomes, some of the many conspiracies and emerging facts about it and so on. With our theme being Gemini in this interval, along with the Festival of Goodwill and following upon the Festival Week of the New Group of World Servers last December, we want to examine what is being disseminated this year, what is precipitating in international relations and specifically what this will mean for the relations between the US, UK and the international community. Alas, much of that will have to be left to the next letter. However, certain statements can be made in prelude to that.

The cities and nations outlined in The Destiny of the Nations^[2] having Geminian influence are as follows – the US, the UK, Brussels, Poland, New Zealand and London. Of these, the US, Poland and Brussels all have Gemini as their personality rulers. London’s Gemini is not specified as to personality or soul emphasis, though it has displayed both throughout history. Gemini with London is of interest here, because London – aside from being the capital of Great Britain – is also one of the five great synthesizing centers^[3] on the planet, being the spiritual vortex affecting the British Commonwealth nations. Therein is its Gemini emphasis, whereas its rulership astrologically as the capital of Great Britain is Leo/Libra, soul and personality, respectively.^[4] It wears two bowler hats, in other words. In the affairs of the UK, it is Leo/Libra, but in Commonwealth affairs, it is Gemini that rules London. We could add also that the 5^th and 7^th rays of London also hold sway over the UK’s financial empire along with Gemini, now that there is no longer a ‘British Empire’ per se. The two nations in the above grouping that have done worst with their handling of the pandemic are the US and UK. Brussels has not fared well, either. And now, because of years of austerity and financial capitalism in the US and UK in particular, the chlorinated chickens are coming home to roost. The lockdowns have rocked people’s sense of security in those nations, hence why we are leaving consideration of those factors for the Cancer letter.

Controlling the narrative: Since we are examining Gemini here, communications are all-important now, as in what is being fed to the general public. The pandemic has provoked a rising tide of information about the virus, the causes for it, as well as disinformation about it. We won’t go into all that here. The EU has now downgraded the virus’ status to a low-grade infection, causing controversy with the WHO. However, in Europe the virus is a low-grade infection now. It wasn’t before when the infection curves were sharply rising. The point here is that we are moving past the pandemic and are now faced with its legacy, which is intensive questioning about a great many aspects of our societies. There is a concerted effort as a result to control the narratives and mold public opinion away from focusing on problems extant within one’s home state and to get back to ‘business as usual’. The rallying cry now is to restart the economies. And people do want to get back to work. But the fact that they were not supported during the lockdowns will stick in the public memory and will resurface later when the economy collapses again. It surely will collapse again if indeed we do go back to business as usual. Before we get into that, though, there is something else to consider.

Censorship in social media: Before we even start with this topic, there is a key point to keep in mind: Social media constructs like YouTube, Google, Facebook, Twitter and so forth are all privately owned platforms. We may not like the fact that they censor comment and content at will, but they are perfectly within their rights to do so. And they tend to support the government and corporate interests. There is a veneer of freedom of expression but that gloss is quickly fading. There is not a single media outlet or platform that comes to mind these days that amounts to what we might call a ‘free press’, where one is free to express any view. And when we say ‘privately owned’, that means those companies – and that is what they are – dance to the tune of their stockholders. Now, it is true we can go ‘platform shopping’ if we do not like the policies of the ones we currently use or if we ourselves have been or are being censored. But, that is life in the media domain. Censorship is on the rise now. There are many vested interests, driven by events in recent years, who wish to stifle dissent against their own efforts to sell products, push their own narratives, influence politics, etc. And when we sign on to one of those platforms, our data as well as our content that we contribute is ‘mined’, as it were, and examined for profit potential or if it runs too far afield of the type of content that prevails on said media. And this runs across party lines.

If we focus upon party politics, for instance, certain media platforms will ‘lean to the left’ (if there is indeed such a platform) or ‘to the right’ (i.e. to business, financial and conservative interests) and posts that are deemed ‘inappropriate’, ‘subversive’, ‘violent’ and so on, will be deleted or subjected to de-listing by the algorithms that run the search engines of said sites. Then, there is the subject of ‘bots’, which are automated or semi-automated, which are fake sites or accounts used to push various agendas, especially when it comes to elections. Then there is the factor of trolling, which can also amount to a form of censorship if a comment or chat line is taken over by a troll. Trolling relies on emotional hooks to be successful and is often pushing more or less specific disinformation to effect its ends. It is effected either by digressive, extraneous, or off-topic messages. It is essentially a form of harassment. That leads into the next point.

What/Who do you want to believe?: In the height of the lockdowns I was asked this very question after questioning myself the validity of statements made in one of the many videos sent to me in that period. It was one of those videos that circulated then, populated with supposed experts in various associated fields. My comments went toward debunking the video, the video being widely seen, widely cited for its supposed expert views, but also refuted by people in the same field as the person in the video. My response didn’t initially go down well. The main point of the video also questioned the necessity of the lockdowns and the treatment methods for the virus. My response to the question posed to me was that I chose to believe my own reasoning after researching as much information that I could find. Everyone’s experience through this period has been different.

Facts are facts. But truth is relative. To me, the lockdowns were a necessary gift, provoking a process of awakening, which is only gradually working out. But the shock valued jarred people into questioning everything. It also drew out everyone who had vested interests in hot-topic issues, like 5G, vaccines, new world order and so forth. Most people would have disagreed with my assessment of the video, from comments I have seen. However, they do not live in northern Italy, nor know health care workers on the front lines or people who actually contracted the disease. We do here in our local community. Our experience was different to that of most people we know outside of Italy. But all this gets to the point and importance of what we are now facing: Given all that has happened in the past months and the years preceding, who or what do we want to believe going forward?

People have a vested interest in their belief systems. The term ‘vested interest’ also has an occult significance. Facts are mental constructs, bits of information, like pieces of a puzzle. A collection of facts presents a picture, depending on how we arrange them. How we interpret that picture depends to a large extent on our past experience and emotional attachments. The latter is more important, as it strongly affects outcomes. That becomes our momentary truth – momentary because everything is subject to change. Once we have the picture in mind, we in-vest it (clothe it) in our emotions and it becomes part of public opinion if shared by many others. At that point it can become difficult to dislodge people from their opinions and interpretations, until perhaps when further facts emerge, or until one is shocked out of their comfortable community of opinion. People who have learned to practice detachment more easily divest (de-vest) themselves of their past opinions. But, that investment in belief systems is played effectively by media, by appeals to desires, as well as by stoking fear, anger and hatred. That investment can also be turned toward higher aims, too. A recent example of both can be seen in the riots that just took place in the US.

The US riots: As we look briefly at the riots that took place in the context of the larger protests over George Floyd’s death, keep in mind that those riots and protests are also part of a much larger picture. If we recall there were also large protests in the Global South in 2019, especially in South America. Those protests were about economic conditions. These protests in the US also have that as a basis, along with race issues and policing. The riots we saw in the US are not the start of a revolution or a civil war. We saw these sorts of riots in the ‘60s after the King assassination. And there have been many such riots throughout US history. Nor are the present riots the result of any one factor. They are inclusive of and not limited to of any of the following points, from a recent article:

• Racism or “White privilege”
• Police violence
• Social alienation and despair
• Poverty
• Trump
• The liberals pouring fuel on social fires
• The infighting of the US elites/deep state

What the riots do represent is an ongoing collapse of American society – that part that has needed to change. We are not seeing the end of the US. However, it will lead to ‘the end of empire’, the controlling personality of the US. That will take a few years. These riots were an insurrection that has basically passed. It will crop up again. The 2^nd Amendment, of interest, was set up to quell such insurrections, hence the heavy police presence we saw in the nation’s capital, which included out-of-state prison riot police. The duplicitous nature of the US Geminian personality has been fully on display through the course of the protests and riots, both at home and abroad. The protests against Floyd’s death have been mostly peaceful. The riots, on the other hand, were by a minority, sometimes provoked by police but more often not by disaffected individuals and in some instances by organized crime. Keeping in mind that protests are on a rising arc across the world now, we will touch on a couple of them that have been in the news last year and then come back to the US.

The Floyd protests have been compared to the gilets jaunes protests in France, but such a comparison is off the mark. The French protests have a political purpose, are brutally suppressed by police, are inherently peaceful and aim at re-establishing economic security for the French populace. They are a direct result of austerity measures as part of EU and IMF policy. The riots in the States are ill-defined. What we see in the US with the present round of riots are attacks on symbols of power, random looting and taints of organized crime (covered in the blog post on the protests). If you want the black perspective on the Floyd protests there is an excellent video that explains quite a bit about it, especially in a historical context, with Gerald Horne.

Claims of Russian interference have surfaced again, too, and are a way to discredit the protests, to discredit white supremacy and are a throwback to the Jim Crow era and beyond, where ‘outside influences’ were blamed on unrest in the black communities. Russia gets blamed for everything that is going wrong in the US these days. And now even Venezuela is being blamed as an outside agitator. Such accusations are very lame attempts at distracting from problems at home. The US riots have also been compared to the riots in Hong Kong, but that is off the mark as well. Those riots are about to sharply end. Given the current dangerous anti-Chinese rhetoric out of Washington and across the media, this bears a closer look.

Hong Kong: US and UK meddling in Hong Kong has reached a critical stage and is about to end. Strangely, the protest movement in Hong Kong is running out of cash. The reason is that the CCP is enacting its national security law. Beijing, in its view, is taking decisive action to directly confront extremism, sedition and secessionism, which is what the Hong Kong protests are really about. For Western readers who think the protests in Hong Kong are about ‘freedom and democracy’, speaking of vested opinions, here are a few inconvenient facts:

• Hong Kong is a part of China, is Chinese territory, and what takes place there is an internal affair of China. Things didn’t exactly pan out the way the British had planned when their lease ran out on Hong Kong. Hong Kong has been Chinese for the better part of five millennia. The British commandeered it for about a century. That’s something to consider.
• The protests are being funded and fomented by US and UK special services, via NGOs. They mistakenly see Hong Kong as the Achilles heel of China. Times have changed. On top of that, US, UK and Gulf States are facilitating the transport of ISIS terrorists to Xinjiang in a further effort to destabilize China. The meddling by the US and UK could be seen as akin to an attempt similar to the Maidan coup in the Ukraine in 2014.
• There never was democracy as the US or UK knows it in Hong Kong. Up until 1997 it was a British colony, with no real democracy, and prior to that it was under the rule of the various Chinese dynasties. It probably has more ‘democracy’ now than it ever had in the past. In fact, it is rated by conservatives the 3^rd–freest place on earth. That means, in effect, economically free. Ireland rates 8^th, and the US? – 15^th – something else to consider.
• There is overt racism and violence by the Hong Kong rioters against ethnic Han Chinese.
• China has broken no rules. It has abided by the ‘one nation, two systems’ rules all along, and has actually displayed quite a bit of patience with the protesters. The protesters are destroying the value of HK. Investment has fled since the protests turned violent. On the other hand, mainland investors are now buying up HK stocks, anticipating Hong Kong’s return to normalcy.
• The British government knows the game is up and is now offering 3,000,000 citizens of Hong Kong UK citizenship, virtually half the Hong Kong population. Those people would be the wealthier in Hong Kong and the ringleaders of the protests in the majority. That move is also an outrageous affront to China and hypocritical, given Western reaction to Russia giving Russian citizenship to Crimeans and people fleeing Donbass from the Ukraine after Maidan. One wonders how the British public would feel about three million new immigrants, as Hong Kongers taking up the offer would not be allowed to stay in Hong Kong. China does not allow dual citizenship.

The big concern for the CPC is to prevent the disintegration of the country, similar to what happened with Spain and Catalonia, the South with the American Civil War, India with Kashmir and so forth. If we really want international goodwill, then people might start by facing facts and looking at things historically instead of projecting their own ideals onto other cultures. But then, there is another inconvenient fact that will likely emerge after the Chinese national security law is implemented – Hong Kong will thrive again and resume its place as an important Chinese province, with its unique culture, and all the while still maintaining its cultural and financial connections with the world at large. It was doing that before the protests. And over 50% of Hong Kong voters recently signed a petition in favour of the national security law. But this time it will be without American NGOs, with proper extradition laws finally in place. Nancy Pelosi can now enjoy her ‘beautiful sights’ of protests like those in Hong Kong in her own home town.

What’s up with the US, really?: The American public is being gaslit currently in a big way. Because of the lockdown, the economy had collapsed over 50% in a deep V-shaped curve. It is now starting its slow climb back upwards. But to hear the mainstream media report it, the economy is looking great! It inspires real confidence in the American system and the Trump team’s approach to economic recovery! Trump described the recovery as ‘a rocket ship!’ Or is it?

70% of the American economy is based in the service sector. At the lower end, those are the types of jobs most people would like to avoid but cannot these days – McDonalds, cleaning, retail, pizza delivery, Wal Mart, Amazon, and so on. 40+ million Americans lost their jobs when the lockdowns started, the vast majority in the service sector. Now that the lockdowns are ending, only around 20 million of those have started back to work. Charts can look very convincing. They can also lie outright. The latter is the case with the recent CNBC report that tried to make the case that the economic recovery “sure looks V-shaped going by these charts”. The American economy may be recovering, but its progress will be slow. To add to that, the official unemployment figure is still at around 13%, but that figure is usually fudged, too. And 20 million people out of work represents a lot of idle hands and frustration.

Americans are constantly told as well that the stock market represents the economy. It represents only a small portion of the economy, the economy of the wealthy. The health or not of the stock market represents the security of the FIRE sector (Finance, Insurance and Real Estate) of the economy or lack thereof, of which Trump is a member. It is now being bailed out to the tune of around 10 trillion dollars. It had crashed spectacularly around the time the pandemic was announced. We saw a similar crash in 2008. The same thing happened both times. Instead of investing in people and infrastructure, the FIRE sector was bailed out. Unless things change, what took place post-2008 will happen again, but it will happen over a longer period and with more pain for the public.

We still see no investment in infrastructure in the US, which would produce jobs for those out of work. There are no moves to address the lack of health care or the expense of it. Unless the protests go on for many months and are heavily attended, unless there are boycotts and strikes, nothing will change in the US. In other words, unless people are prepared to go the distance for their causes in high enough numbers, protests like the present ones will fade into history, will be of media interest and little else, and policy will continue as before. The Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War protests changed policy. Women’s Suffrage change policy. Those were all sustained movements. There is nothing else really that has touched that level of sustained intent recently in the United States. Unless the status quo really feels threatened by what they are seeing, they will continue as before. The latter is the direction the US is taking, for the moment.

For an example of where a sustained movement is needed, there is still no universal health care in the US. If another wave of this infection sweeps through, as is happening in Iran right now (they opened too soon and improperly), if there is talk of another lockdown, what do we think will happen? There is not likely to be a workable vaccine for this disease. Coronaviruses cause the common cold. There is no vaccine for that. Herd immunity will not occur for COVID-19. Vaccines are only short-term prospects for people over 60, witness the flu vaccine, which has to be repeated. We in the West are still quite unprepared for epidemics.

We were told that the US and UK were ‘the best-prepared in the world’ for handling epidemics. Environmental factors that have contributed to the emergence of this virus are still increasing the likelihood of other viruses occurring. So states one of the most experienced virologists in the US. Then, there is the leaked German 93 page document that claims the coronavirus is only a mild infection and that the German government overreacted to it, saying it was a false alarm. Again, Italy’s experience of it was different to that of Germany. Who are we to believe? Who or what do we want to believe? Our wish to believe often gets us into more trouble than calmly examining facts and setting aside our attachments to outcomes.

There are other health crises in America, too, that are not addressed – veterans’ health, the opioid epidemic, obesity, diabetes, health care costs, uninsured people, and so on. How far does it have to go before people say enough is enough? We could say the same sorts of things about racism in the US, which is a European legacy, economic disparities, education, policing, political leadership and on and on. There would appear to be a sickness of soul in the US, but that is a veneer. The soul of the US, as in every person, steadily emerges over time, from crisis to crisis or through sustained effort. Either path will effect it. For the US at the moment, the crises of COVID and Floyd are passing and the media and government are doing their utmost to keep people on board and ‘with the program’. Perhaps it will take another, longer and stronger shakeup to bring about the changes desired by most of the public. Or perhaps the change will be invoked from outside the US, causing it to turn inward and address its problems. That leads us to the final piece in this letter.

The loss of moral supremacy: We end here with a look at what the violence in the US has produced and where it is likely to lead unless true leadership begins to happen in the US. The United States has been thrown from its moral high horse from international viewing of police actions in the Floyd protests. One Twitter user has documented and collected over 200 videos of heavy-handed police incidents just from the past week. Many people knew how the US behaved before the riots even started. It has been well known outside the US for years that Washington on the whole has no ethics and is unreliable. It may come as a shock to some readers, but it is true. “We lied, we cheated, we stole…We had entire training courses!…” And that, to applause from his audience. This was from the current Secretary of State, speaking of his tenure as the CIA Chief, at a Texas university. To many nations who have been at the receiving end of coercion, subversive actions and military action by the US, this was finally an admission, a moment of truth-telling. The gloves are off now. His admission is also a reason why some nations are openly defying the US. And Americans wonder why no one trusts our foreign policy. The US has been put on crisis watch, and the situation within the US has been described as follows:

So many things make America combustible right now: mass unemployment, a pandemic that’s laid bare murderous health and economic inequalities, teenagers with little to do, police violence, right-wingers itching for a second civil war and a president eager to pour gasoline on every fire.

If these events evoked by George Floyd’s murder had happened in the Global South the pontificating from Washington and in the media would have been relentless. Now, no US ambassador will be able to raise the issue of human rights to another country without being ridiculed. This will hurt trade relations, foreign relations and ruin years of careful crafting of the American image and alliances abroad. The average American will still be favourably viewed overseas in general, however, even finding a sympathetic ear. I find that here in Italy. US state and local authorities have done their best to ease tensions domestically and are to be commended, as are most of the police. But Washington…well, that is where the change really needs to come. We will take that up more in the next letter. But the takeaway from what we are observing is that the social and power orders in the US are clearly in decline. The US is a self-collapsing empire. These next years will be determinative ones for the future of the US into the next decades.

In conclusion: From the start of the pandemic to now we have had a clear demonstration of the workings of the three major spiritual festivals, astrologically considered – Aries, Taurus and now Gemini. Aries plants the seeds of change and renewal. In this year it planted the seed of mass awakening to problems that have been there for years but had lain unaddressed. Taurus gave momentum to the awakening to issues by keeping people in place and having them search widely for answers, thus watering the seeds. Paths toward a more workable future for humanity were illuminated by many comments and articles we have read. And now we have the dissemination of what we have learned collectively internationally. The fire has been lit under the pot. Now more heat is needed to bring things to the needed boil.

The West in particular needs a revolution in the way it relates with its public and the rest of the world and the way it handles money. Europe is wiser than the US in that respect, but it, too, needs rework. That revolution was signalled by the Saturn/Pluto conjunction in Capricorn. It will take a few years to unfold more fully. What shape that would take is anyone’s guess. Some people say it will be violent, that violence is the only way. There are historical examples that say otherwise. When it does come, it won’t be cinematic. It won’t be broadcast, not initially, because we need a revolution in our media ownership, too. By ‘revolution’ we mean a sweeping change that overturns the old order. When the US and UK cease to be the primary centers for world financing, then we will begin to see the end of endless wars. When transparency comes to financing, then the old order will fade quickly.

Here in Italy we are poised to throw away the masks in the next few days, the symbol of the pandemic. It is also symbolic in other ways, too, because the masks are coming off world leaders and governments internationally. The US and UK stand bare as to the effects of the capitalism of the past few decades, witnessed by lack of preparation and disparities in treatment and wealth. The same is starting to appear openly in Brazil. Now, as we begin to move past the pandemic, the problems it has unveiled will be front and center. Therein stands our opportunity. It won’t be easy. It won’t be pretty. Change is messy, more often than not. Over the coming months tensions will rise further as reality sets in. When the stock market crashes in the US, when the payments are defaulted, then tensions are likely to explode again. We will need the wisdom born of experience to carry us through, the wisdom of the soul. Unfortunately, the peaceful protests taking place in the US will die down over the coming days. Nothing will have changed. But there will be other events that will spark fresh waves. Hope renewed.

Unity in diversity is represented in Gemini, via Venus. Venus is the planet that rules the integration of diverse factors. It is also most associated with love. The interplay between diverse factors produces conflicts at first and ultimately synthesis, resulting in a functioning whole. Mercury is ‘the revealer of truth’^[5] – our truth. What is evident in the conflicts between factions and classes in society is that of crystallization in the process of breaking down, the prelude to a new order. As yet there is no one stepping forward with a coherent plan of how to move forward after the chaos. In that sense, Geminian ‘divide and conquer’ still wins the day. But times are changing quickly. Gemini also rules over order out of chaos. In the meantime, we hold the intention that justice and a fair break for everyone will prevail, that the breath of freedom and justice will be restored. And in our invocations to the Caretakers of the infinite sea of wisdom, thereby invoking the same within ourselves, we shall give breath to those unable to breathe, and in the process we will breathe more freely ourselves.

Peace, Friends.
Malvin
8 June 2020
malvin@malvinartley.com

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Picture credits:
Gemini: Hans Peter Kolb in Deviantart
George Floyd; wall mural
Akshobyavajra: https://www.himalayanart.org/items/65003
Twin Towers: photo, pre-9/11, another set of twins
Social media: https://makeawebsitehub.com/social-media-sites/
Fake and fact: https://www.theparliamentmagazine.eu/articles/news/eu-steps-efforts-counter-disinformation-during-covid-19-crisis
Gilets jaunes: https://www.challenges.fr/tag_organisation/gilets-jaunes_34789/
Hong Kong: https://www.businessinsider.com/hong-kong-protesters-god-save-the-queen-outside-british-consulate-2019-9?IR=T
Health care: https://medicaldialogues.in/nhrc-to-hear-appeals-on-patients-rights-violations-and-medical-negligence
American exceptionalism: https://medium.com/@jerry45618/american-exceptionalism-illusion-and-delusion-842714bb4504
Masks: http://www.salute.gov.it/portale/nuovocoronavirus/dettaglioNotizieNuovoCoronavirus.jsp?lingua=italiano&menu=notizie&p=dalministero&id=4521

1. Robson, Vivian E., Fixed Stars and Constellations in Astrology, (1923), p. 198. ↑
2. Bailey, Alice A., The Destiny of the Nations, Lucis Publishing, NY, NY. ↑
3. Bailey, The Destiny of the Nations, p. 94 ↑
4. Ibid, p. 70 ↑
5. Bailey, Esoteric Astrology, p. 355 ↑