The Sagittarius Festival 2020

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

In this, probably the most revered holiday in the United States, we give gratitude for our health and well-being, for family and friends, for what we have and look forward with the expectation that 2021 will begin a more peaceful and prosperous cycle for the world at large. This year has been tough on everyone, except for a very privileged few, but it has also revealed certain realities to us about our societies that have given us pause to reconsider the direction we wish to go into the future. Therein has been our opportunity, spiritually considered, though the physical reality of our individual and collective situations may seem anything other than ‘opportune’. This has been especially true in our Western democracies, where the truth of what our leaders value has been laid out for all to see, especially by the legislatures of every country, but often spearheaded by the national leaders. We probably don’t have to go into who has done a better job of handling the year’s crises. It would appear to be self-evident.

But since this a distinctly American holiday season, starting with the day, the last Thursday in November, and given the recent election, this letter will focus almost exclusively on the United States, and with a wide overview of the subjective influences that shape our nation (speaking as an American) and the resulting outer manifestations resulting from them. Some of what will follow will not be easy to read, maybe even dismissed out of hand by some readers, but the counterpoint to that is that the eventual future of the United States is very bright indeed. What is offered in this letter should be seen as seeds for thought, if not a call for action. That said, it is imperative if that bright future for the nation is to be attained in great measure, then certain home truths will need to be faced, and in the immediate years ahead. That, too, would appear to be self-evident. And since this is the Sagittarius letter, there is also another reason to focus on the US in this letter, because the rising sign for the US Sibly chart is Sagittarius, defining a national soul path, and the personality of Washington, DC is likewise ruled by Sagittarius, introducing an interesting and yet troublesome (at times) dynamic in the national psyche of the US. Then, too, the soul of Washington, DC is ruled by Cancer, whereas the Sun-sign for the national chart, set at the Declaration of Independence, is also Cancer. And the sign Cancer, as we know, represents “We, the People of the United States…”

The road less travelled: Before we delve into the United States, which will come after discussing the full moon, we begin this letter with a bit of local news. A couple of months ago there was a new addition to our ‘family’ – Pippo, an English setter. Pippo is quite the handsome lad and a favorite with the ladies. He’s also a Piscean and one of our ‘sensitive boys’ – a real sook in other words and a mommy’s boy. However, there is a problem having Pippo here, because we live in the center of our fair city. Pippo was a hunting dog, used to running around in the woods. We know because he was found with a remote-controlled shock collar on, and it traumatized him being constantly subjected to it when out on the hunt. We can tell by his behaviour. Being used to the outdoors and to gain faith in his new ‘pack’, we have had to take him out in the bosco (the forest) for long walks and therapy. That has opened some new horizons for us, too, as well as giving us some much-needed fresh air and sunshine since it has turned colder and we are inside more now.

In our travels to find places to walk, we have come upon a place called ‘Bosco della città’, described as, “…a corner of peace and nature available to all. This green area of ​​natural wood, a stone’s throw from the city, is ideal for those who are looking for a moment of tranquillity or want to keep fit with a walk, a run or a bike ride.” Sounded good to us, so we loaded Pippo and Ebete (our little problem terrier) into the car and off we went. It’s an interesting place, this bosco. It is full of paths of varying difficulty, service roads that meet in several crossroads and then disappear around mountains, and all containing some pretty stunning vistas. There is never any traffic, but you usually meet people enjoying the same walks, distance runners testing their limits, and then people on mountain bikes, of the pedal sort (no motorized vehicles at all). The people on bikes are rather masochistic, as some of those roads are pretty steep, and none of them are paved. But walking these paths and roads, it is rather relaxing to the mind, if taxing of the legs, with a good dose of endorphins in the process. And if you go when there are few people, in the off hours, walking there can be a walking meditation or reflection, out with the nature spirits, the smells of the forest and the fresh air – on roads less travelled. Insights into challenges and themes for letters often come when taking roads less travelled.

As for Pippo, he loves the bosco and is in his element, nose to the ground, chasing the scent of who-knows-what denizen of the bosco – probably other dogs, truth be known. Then, at the end of one of the paths, one comes upon a strange sight – a ruin – an old building project that was an architect’s dream but never flew. It is called the Ex-Anmil, described as ‘an eco-monster and monument to the waste of public funds’. True enough, but it is also a fine example of Italian architecture, even while it is also an excellent example of infamous Italian bureaucratic bungling and buck-passing. (Do a Google image search on ‘Anmil, Rovereto’. It’s quite interesting.) It was supposed to be a rest home in the woods, which would have been great had it gone ahead. But 50 years later it stands there awaiting its final sentence: salvation, redemption or demolition. The city wants it torn down. Environmentalists (apparently a rare bird has taken up residence there) and architecture aficionados want it preserved. And as it stands, it would cost more to make it useful than to tear it down. So the fight goes on, a testament also to the 4^th ray personality of Italy.[1] That ray is also quite active in the United States now, too, and that brings us to our consideration of Sagittarius for this year.

Worldly Sagittarius: Sagittarius in the orthodox is ruled by Jupiter, representing expansiveness, a judicial and studious nature, acquisitiveness in its lower aspects, and adventurism. Sagittarians normally find their calling either as adventurous types or as scholars and people of letters. Common professions are the law, academia, publishing, journalism, the clergy, the judiciary, educators and philosophers. These are occupations where a good amount of judgement is concerned and, being the sign opposite Gemini (the play of the opposites and particulars), it is a sign often associated with big-picture thinking, grand design projects, international relations and abstract thinking. The Sagittarian’s worst fault is a narrow, rigid sense of judgement, as one can often see in academia and judges who stick to the letter of the law instead of its spirit. On the more physical side, Sagittarians love travel and benefit greatly from it, and as such they work very well in the travel industry and in foreign relations. That sense of adventure and expansive view brings in the more esoteric side of the sign, and the next phase of the meditative process we have been considering in this series of letters.

Esoteric Sagittarius: Esoterically, Sagittarius is ruled by the Earth,[2] a planet not considered in orthodox astrology, other than as a point of reference. Of course, in heliocentric astrology the Earth is one of the planets considered in delineating a chart and the Sun becomes the point of reference. But we won’t deal with that here. The rulership by the Earth in esoteric astrology points to this sign as being one that signifies the path of discipleship. Going back to our orthodox considerations, an academic is a disciple of sorts, coming under the tutelage of a teacher and being guided to the ultimate goal – the PhD and full professorship. As the judge, the experience is very similar to that of the academic, having to immerse oneself in the study of law, philosophy and ethics and then to pass the test of the bar. And the theme here is one of guided, focused study with the aim of gaining enough insight to be able to tread the chosen path on one’s own. The esoteric side of Sagittarius is thus described as reaching and having,

“…established a balanced relationship between the personality and the soul and can function as either at any desired moment with equal facility. This takes place upon the Path of Discipleship and is called the experience of the disciple upon the plains of Earth, for the path between the pairs of opposites runs straight and level, leaving the depths of personality experience and the heights of soul experience (at this point of development) on either side.”[3]

What we see here is that the disciple is neither a personality, wholly, or a fully realized soul, yet both as the process of spiritual evolution proceeds. It is an experience in which one knows the goal ahead, but as yet does not have the experience – and that is the operative word here – to function yet fully as an initiate. There is still work to do, yet this work requires confinement and study at times, and debate and engagement at other times. The disciple must experience, and then be tested and debriefed, as it were, before proceeding to the next phase in Capricorn. This brings us to the experience of Sagittarius in occult meditation.

Occult Sagittarius: In the last letter we looked at the horse and the rider in reference to the winds and the drops being fused in the heart chakra. From there, the question arises, “What next?” The normal course of events in Vajrayana practice is for the rider to mount the steed and proceed outward into ‘experience’, this being done in a profound state of shamatha (one-pointed concentration, or calm-abiding), then combined with vipassana (insight meditation). The meaning of shamatha is clear enough: One must be able to maintain one-pointed meditation to the degree that hours, days and even weeks can pass in such as state without interruption before the real work of liberation can take place. It is not an easy thing to accomplish, much as it might sound so. But the one-pointed meditative state is analogous to the tip of the Sagittarian arrow that must fly from point to point, from goal to goal, as the processes of liberation take place. Thus, we have the esoteric phrase for Sagittarius: “I see the goal. I reach that goal and then I see another.”[4]

So, we have the rider on the steed, a sensed goal and then the need for ‘experience’. What does this experience entail, then? It is the experience of the energetic makeup of our very bodies and the gradual, steady clearing away of obstacles – old habits, thoughtforms, attachments and the like – the goal being the attainment of mastery over one’s own system and thus karma, and the realization of attainments (siddhis/powers) in the process. This is done in Vajrayana practice by projecting the consciousness, embodied in the tiny wind/drop construct, through the various energetic channels/nadis/meridians leading outward from the heart. These are the occult roads less travelled, and many of them contain deep imprints (‘blockages’) that hinder our spiritual vision. These channels in turn are interconnected to every other major chakra, with the eventual aim being to completely clear all obstructions to omniscience in moving toward the realization of emptiness (a.k.a, the View) from all the channels and chakras, and then eventually up the central channel of the spine, the sushumna.

The sushumna is the clear, direct path to the mountaintop, i.e., the crown chakra and beyond. In roaming through the plains of the Earth (the channels), we gain experience of our own energetic makeup and in the process attain powers. There is an old saying that if one wants to attain greater consciousness, one must alter one’s vehicles, and this is one process for doing so. These powers are the superhuman powers that give us dominion over nature in the service to all sentient beings. The Sagittarian phase governs over the lesser versions of those powers. What they are is outlined in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. At this stage we enter into Book III in Alice Bailey’s exposition on Patanjali, her book, The Light of the Soul. Now, the powers evolved can be attained either by focus on outer phenomena, as shown in Patanjali’s sutra, or can be had via Vajrayana, via the method outlined for Sagittarius, preceding.

Buddhist teachers say the heart/channel method is safer, because it is clears the peripheral channels first before entering into the spinal channel. By clearing the peripheral channels first it avoids or greatly lessens the possibility of unbalancing the personality when the full fire is raised up the spine because there will be a much freer flow of energy through the channels and nothing will be magnified to the point of being a problem. It is also under the supervision of a guru at that point and is done in retreat, away from worldly distractions. Western disciples are apt to reject such an approach because it smacks of dependence, isolation and guru-worship, they say. But there is no doubt the safer method is via the winds and drops, as the fires of one’s own body are brought to play and are controlled by the disciple’s own volition, under a stricter guidance by an experienced teacher who can watch as the process proceeds. It avoids the perils inherent when trying to go up the central channel without paying attention to the personality faults attendant with and lodged in the extra channels. And this leads into the last, hierarchical ruler of Sagittarius, Mars

Sagittarius rules over a Creative Hierarchy known as the Lunar Lords (diagram). Its energy is kundalinishkati, the power of form. That Hierarchy is also called ‘The Sacrificial Fires’.[5] Mars governs the latent fire of kundalini, which is that energy that fuels the body, keeps it warm and intact. Our bodies are supposed to be a sacrificial construct, that is to say ‘lain upon the altar of service’. Kundalini is the ‘serpent fire’, coiled at the base of the spine. It is this fire that is used when the channels are cleared and the chakras are gradually and sequentially opened in a safe manner. Progress is thus rapid in this Sagittarian phase, which covers the 2^nd path in Buddhism, the ‘Path of Preparation’. Mars in its higher aspect transmits the energy of the Destroyer – the destroyer of death, that is, the requirement to reincarnate. The ultimate goal in the occult stage of Sagittarius, then, is to set one on a clear path to the destruction of death, to become fully alive spiritually. The steed carries us slowly at first in our experience on the plains, and as we gain experience, we break into a canter and finally, as we gain full confidence, we gallop from goal to goal, leading us finally to our first full experience in the ‘light supernal’, to be covered in the Capricorn letter. Our experience in Sagittarius, though, results in lesser attainments. The full attainments are had when we can leave the steed altogether and climb the mountain alone, because, as we know, horses cannot climb steep, rocky mountains. That, we must do on our own. With that, we move on to the full moon and then on to wider plains off our roads less travelled.

The full moon takes place at 9:30 UT (8:30 PM AEDT) on 30 Nov 2020. It is also a partial lunar eclipse across the 9th degree of the Gemini/Sagittarius axis. It will be fully visible across North America, in South America at moonset and in Oceania at sunset. The maximum eclipse will be at 9:43 UT. The Sun is conjunct the great star Antares, a red supergiant, which has the following meaning when conjunct the Sun and with no other factors present (as is the case here): “Pretended religion, insincere, honor and riches ending in disgrace and ruin, military preferment, danger of treachery, violence committed or suffered, fevers and sickness, injuries to the right eye, violent death.”[6] Antares (α Scorpii) is also known as the ‘heart of the Scorpion’ or ‘rival of Mars’. The Moon is conjunct the red giant Aldebaran (α Tauri, the ‘right eye of the bull’), ‘the follower’, which has the following meaning: “Favorable for business, honor and credit, especially if in the 1st or 10th house, but danger of calamity. Favorable for domestic, public and religious matters; danger of a violent death”[7] People on both sides of the political divide in the US can extract meanings from the interpretations of these two stars. The eclipse is a member of the Saros series 116, number 58 in the series and thus in a waning part of that series. It will be first activated exactly by Mars (18 Mar) two days before the Aries ingress of the Sun on the 20^th.

Given the events taking place since November 3^rd, this eclipse does not affect either Trump or President-elect Biden. Even though the election has not been officially resolved, as there are legal challenges to the vote, the General Services Administrator has just turned on the machinery to allow the transition process to take place. We will not cover the election here, nor Biden or Trump. That will come in another post or letter, as there are larger concerns to address here.

As to the rest of the full moon figure, neither the Sun nor the Moon makes any major aspects to other planets. There are semisquares formed between the Sun and a Jupiter/Pluto conjunction, thus rendering the full moon axis a ‘hard opposition’. That conjunction is associated with plutocracy among other things, and what we see there is a battle for control of narratives – that conjunction also being associated with large-scale organization, professors and teachers of economy and law, the leaders of uprisings, squanderers and speculators. Thus, we see the nation torn. This is one of the main issues to be discussed later. The struggle within the United States can be expressed as follows:

Until enough Americans realize that what is taking place in the US is in fact a class struggle – a struggle between a moneyed aristocracy and the mass of Americans – there will be no significant change in American politics or society.

This is true cross the West, really, and lies at the heart of why the pandemic has been so badly handled in most Western nations. However, the eclipse takes place within minutes of the US Uranus in the US 6^th house (services of all sorts), and within four degrees of the US Sibly chart horizon axis.

Thus, this eclipse will have carry-on effects for the US of a Uranian manner when it is activated – including sudden events, possible humanitarian impulses, shocks, upsets and so on. In that vein, we will not be discussing the other nations in this letter, save for a few brief items, but instead we will have a much closer look at the US. It will be a sobering exposition to start, but the US has a much brighter future in store as the decades unfold. Given the nature of the US personality and the subjective energies behind it, that future will take time to emerge and will involve quite a bit of struggle in between. But a path to that future is already emerging and it falls in line with certain predictions and statements made years before about the subjective and soul qualities of the American people, instead of the fly-by-night government circus we see every four years. Without further ado, we now have a look at an important development abroad that bears our consideration into the future. That development will have repercussions in the US and will confront the Biden administration over the course of his term in office.

RCEP: Regarding the other nations, there was a recent agreement signed between the ASEAN nations and Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Japan and China, comprising the largest free trade deal ever struck. The agreement has only garnered passing mention in the mainstream Western press, but the import of it cannot be overstressed. It is a distinctly Asian initiative. It was signed on 11 November of this year. There are several things about RCEP of particular note. It is not a Chinese initiative, though they are involved and do support it, but it instead was put forward by the ASEAN nations. The US was excluded, and this is most important to note. India was to be a part of it, but dropped out, fearing a flood of cheap Chinese products into India. Other reasons they dropped out may be to do with recent Sino-Indian tensions, Modi’s far right nationalism and probably a bit of pressure from the US. India can still join at a later date. Russia is also not a part of the agreement, but will probably enter the agreement via other means at a later date. RCEP will immediately service 2.2 billion consumers and will represent just over 30% of the world’s economy. That brings us to the geopolitical side of the RCEP equation.

The RCEP nations will trade in local currencies – no US dollars required. At 30%+ of world trade, that is a big chunk of change over which the US, via its SWIFT system, will not be able to control. RCEP is thus a massive instrument for de-dollarizing, intentional or not. This is a big reason why the agreement has not been covered extensively in the Western press. To report such a state of affairs is bad optics, especially for a West that must now re-examine its financial system in light of the COVID crisis and the lack of support for the common person – ‘Main Street’ – by Western mishandling of the crisis. Then, there is the factor of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which this agreement will only embolden and help. By its own choosing and actions, the US now finds itself excluded from influence in Asian regional trade policy and direction. RCEP will spur economic growth and development among its signatory nations. Signing on to the agreement will cause problems for Australia, as now they must choose between being a Washington agent/lackey in the Indo-Pacific region or being part of a huge free trade zone, decoupled from the US dollar. How the Aussie pollies handle that one will be interesting to watch, and Aussies will be rightly concerned about protections for Australian products, foreign ownership and so forth. New Zealand had already decided to decouple from the US somewhat years ago.

One of the immediate drivers of the RCEP agreement has been the COVID pandemic and the disruption of trade it produced. Another side of it has been Trump’s trade war with China, which has forced China to explore Asian markets more fully, since the US was China’s major trading partner. And then, there is also the realistic geopolitical dimension of geography, similarities of cultures between most of the nations involved, the growing instability of the world financial situation and so forth that has caused these nations to reassess their relationships and options. The tech dimension is huge, with the tech giants South Korea, Japan and China now all linked in a gigantic free trade zone. It is quite a stunning turn of affairs, this RCEP, and it serves as a counterweight to the Great Reset, discussed in the Scorpio letter, with attempts at manufacturing consent for it, largely out of European elites.

There may be some limited consent for the Reset, such a blatant attempt to salvage our current capitalistic model, but given the rightful and growing suspicions of the populace over what has been transpiring over the past months, there are serious doubts that the Great Reset will find much traction, especially in the US and Asia. Europe may succumb to it for a time, but Klaus Schwab being the front man for that effort shows a cold, detached, unemotional approach that fails to inspire, and on the other hand is the perfect exponent of it – technocratic, calculating, and divorced from the everyday reality of the general populace. In one respect this so-called Reset is elitist claptrap and dreaming, while in terms of Main Street it is a very real threat. We’ll see why when we consider the United States in a bit.

Pandemic update: We’ll add one more bit on the pandemic and then we will move on to the main consideration for the rest of this piece. As everyone knows by now we have gone into a second and larger wave of positive tests for the virus, though in the large majority of people testing positive, few if any symptoms of COVID develop. Here in Italy that 2^nd wave has peaked and is on its way down, due to government action. But hospitals in certain regions are now overflowing and doctors in Lombardy are now forced to make the agonizing choice about who gets treated and who gets turned away, as we saw in March and April. Concern over this virus and its effects is largely in the Global North (i.e. the West and associated developed economies). In the East, they knocked it out early on and are sailing onward. The Russians are, too, to a lesser degree. This has led many people to believe the pandemic was some sort of Chinese plot, given the heavy anti-China propaganda flying around now. I can cite several articles that claim to the contrary this virus was existent in the West as far back as July last year and that it is probably a bioweapon dreamed up and made in the good ‘ol U.S. of A. and released in Wuhan to sabotage the Chinese. Do you believe it? Personally, I take a wide road around these kinds of stories. We should be aware, too, that there are concerted attempts via the media and some Western governments to cast China as a pariah state, particularly by the US, and to manufacture consent for some sort of ‘action’ to ‘curb China’s malign influence’ in the world. Malign influence? Who is threatening whom? Public attitudes reflect a heavy conditioning against China and little in the way of any real investigation, as evidenced in social media.

We won’t go into the theories on the origins of the virus, the efficacy of protocols, etc., which would be of no real use anyway now. What matters at present is how our own nations have handled the pandemic and what we need to do to address the immediate and future needs of a struggling public. Having watched the pandemic evolve from here in Italy, along with the public reaction to it here and abroad, there was a recent comment I read that rings very true and has been in evidence throughout the West regarding why there have been lockdowns and the like. It also explains why the East jumped on this thing full force and dealt with it. The comment reads as follows (vk@30), referring to pandemics, lockdowns and the like:

Here in Italy, we have faced both scenarios, business and health. Even now with this 2^nd wave, the ICU and emergency wards in regions less affected than Lombardy are at capacity and they are advertising for doctors and nursing staff to go to those regions. The regions worst affected are facing ever-stricter restrictions, while Rome is doing its best to avoid another national lockdown. We know some of these medical professionals personally. It is no hoax or joke to them. With the preceding in mind, we get to the real crux of what the pandemic means for the West and why the East is sailing on, and it has to do with financial capitalism, which is what all this Great Reset business is seeking to ‘redress’(?).

Financial capitalism’s malign influence: In our rich societies, given the wealth we have at our disposal, this particular pandemic should have been a piece of cake. Do we really think there would have been such an uproar as there is now over erosion of personal rights if our governments had done a hard shutdown early this year, paid people to stay at home in badly afflicted areas (But that’s Communism!) during that time and took a positive tone on this? Probably not. People would have felt supported, that their government was proactive, as many people said in the early days. New Zealand stands out from those first pandemic days. There would not have been a financial collapse, nor a collapse of the health system. Yeah, it would have been inconvenient for a couple of months at most, but the country would have moved on and people would have been supported. And if we had had proper protocols in place there would have been no need to shut down economies or freedom of movement anyway. But our system is not set up that way, nor were we prepared for a pandemic, although glowing reports previous to the events gushed that the US and UK were the two nations best prepared to handle a pandemic. All but one of the top ten nations listed as best able are Western, with South Korea listed 9^th. Instead, South Korea outdid all of the other top nine. The US and the UK did the worst. Sweden was listed 7^th best-able, and is now the 36^th-worst in cases and deaths/million out over 200 locations listed on the Worldometers site. I don’t know if there is enough egg to go around.

The point here is not about the pandemic, but about our handling of it and the financial and human impact that mishandling has had. Yes, there are facets of this pandemic that stink to high heaven, and we can list some of them – incompetence, leaving the general public unprotected financially and health-wise, the obscene profits made by financial elites during the crisis, that fact national or state lockdowns were unnecessary (Taiwan and Japan are examples in point), the fact we are still wallowing in this mire after almost a full year, that there should even be a need to rethink the financial capitalist economy when it is so obvious we need to do so, and so on. We really don’t need to go on, as we are all sick of it anyway. And here is the thing that probably most sticks in people’s craw: We were led down the garden path by many of our leaders as to how great our societies are, how well off we are, and they failed us. Yes, they did. This has been especially evident in the US and UK. With all the preceding in mind, plus the Sagittarius rising of the US chart along with the personality of Washington ruled by Sagittarius, and the wonderful election we just had there, yet to be resolved to the satisfaction of almost half the people who voted, we move on to our main topic of discussion, because what is resolved in the US affects the whole of the Western world. And that is where the crux of the present world problem lies, not with foreign actors in the Global South. And keep in mind as we go along: The problems with the US are not with its people on the whole – us, ‘Main Street’ – but with Washington and Wall Street. We’ll see why as we go along.

The subjective United States: Just for fun, I decided to go through the books of the ‘Big Three’ in Western esoteric literature – Blavatsky, Bailey and Roerich – and pull all the references to the United States and America, compiling them into a single document, to see what emerged, what still holds true, where the nation may be headed and the subjective qualities that condition the nation. The one overriding thing that emerged was how true all the references still held today – though you might disagree – even after almost a century in some cases. Even further, some of the quoted material is more relevant today than it was when it was published – and in a few instances, that is not a cause to celebrate. You can see/download the web page or the PDF document here.[8] It is only 20 pages long, but it is quite revealing.

Before we begin going through that list, though, some interesting astrological relationships between Washington, DC and the US national chart are worth pondering. The soul ruler of Washington is Cancer, meaning the nurturing and caring for the masses is the higher calling of the national government. That is focused through the Sun in the national chart, which is posited in the 7^th house (law, litigations, but also partnerships). The national Sun is in a wide conjunction with Venus and Jupiter and in a much closer square with Saturn, showing great wealth gained through a high ambition. In fact, the rulership of Washington is reversed with the Sun and rising sign of the US national chart. One way of reading that is the Sagittarian personality of Washington can either interfere with or aid the nation in a more spiritual direction, which the Ascendant in any chart represents. What we see in Washington these days hardly seems spiritual, though evangelicals and some Trump supporters might disagree. But any government, in an ideal world we might say, should serve the will of its people. These days Washington seems to be more self-serving and pandering to Wall Street and a few foreign governments than listening to Main Street.

Here, then, are the main takeaways from the compilation on the US, shown in bullet points, with comment interspaced between a few of them. We start with the harder statements. The following are expressions of the US personality, expressed primarily through Washington and New York:

• America is a great battleground for experiment along creative lines; it is profoundly interested in trying out every kind of ideology.[9]
• The struggle between capital and labor will be decided in the US, and to a lesser extent in the UK and France.[10]
• There is a moneyed aristocracy in the US equally as distinctive, exclusive, and rigid in its barriers as that of the aristocracy of birth in the UK.[11]
• The primary means of control over the public in the US is financial.[12]
• The capitalistic spirit and the latent fascism of the United States are at this time a definite menace to world peace.[13]
• The rule by the people is being retarded by the corrupt politics in the US.[14]

Just these few statements are a mouthful, but they point to the basic dynamic that is driving what has been pulling America down since the 1970s. We had a respite from it for a few decades under FDR’s policies.

• Freedom of choice by the public can be infringed by giving them biased news and misinformation, or a garbled or distorted slant on world affairs, as is the case most particularly in the United States.[15]
• There is no truly free press anywhere; particularly is it absent in the United States, where parties and publishers dictate newspaper policies.[16]

Our not-so-free press: There was a recent example that illustrates this last point. There was a recent posting of a job application for New York Times correspondent to cover Russia. The job application essentially is asking for someone to lie to the American public, make up stories and shape the American narrative about Russia. The claptrap in that application is astonishing, as in terrible. Here are a couple of clips from it:

“Vladimir Putin’s Russia remains one of the biggest stories in the world. It sends out hit squads armed with nerve agents against its enemies, most recently the opposition leader Aleksei Navalny. It has its cyber agents sow chaos and disharmony in the West to tarnish its democratic systems, while promoting its faux version of democracy. It has deployed private military contractors around the globe to secretly spread its influence. At home, its hospitals are filling up fast with Covid patients as its president hides out in his villa…

We are looking for someone who will embrace the prospect of traversing 11 time zones to track a populace that is growing increasingly frustrated with an economy dragged down by corruption, cronyism and excessive reliance on natural resources. This posting offers the chance to chronicle the continuing reign of one of the world’s most charismatic leaders, President Vladimir V. Putin… we are on the cusp of a new, less Putin-friendly president in the US, which should only raise the temperature between Washington and Moscow.”

The hyperlinks are added by me, pointing to that fairy tale. The italicized bits are patently false, leading and loaded. Some of them are also priceless, as in hilarious, like the one about the supposed ‘iron man of Russia’ ‘hiding out in his villa’. I believe ‘dacha’ is the proper word for villa. These highlights also serve to show what the editors in New York are looking for in articles related to Russia. And this is across the Western press, not just a ‘National Paper of Record’, with ‘All the news that’s fit to print’. The potential candidate for the job should be ‘intrepid’, among other fine qualities, have knowledge of Russia and former Soviet Republics (It would help, yes.), have ‘excellent news judgement’ and so on. Fluency in Russian is ‘preferred’. Why not required? And this is the person who will be faithfully reporting on Russia and Putin to America? Perhaps we begin to get a glimmer as to why Americans are so misinformed about the world outside the US. Read the application form. It’s quite entertaining, if not frightening. (I like the bit about Putin’s ‘reign’.)

There are other, in fact many, examples of how the US media is used to shape the public narrative at home and regarding foreign affairs. The election provided another example, with these fine pieces of creative journalistic headlines, trumpeting that it is ‘TIME TO HEAL’ since the media (at the time) had declared Biden the winner in the election. A hint here: Don’t look for it in the immediate future. We have a lot of work to do to bring on national healing. The comments on Twitter show the American public is not biting on  the mainstream media line hook line and sinker. There is now a healthy skepticism of US mainstream media, growing in intensity.

• The forces of evil work through a triangle of evil, one point of which is to be found in the Zionist Movement in the United States.[17] (Note: this is not an anti-Semitic statement.) The other two points of the triangle are in Central Europe and in the Levant.[18]

Our Zionist problem: This is a point that must soon be addressed by leaders across the West strong enough to confront it. The support of successive administrations in the US and UK especially for the Zionist regime in Israel must end. Note the distinction – the regime, not the Jews there. It is a sin the present administration has pushed to an extreme, which suggests to me that a major crisis for Israel is around the corner. And if we are to believe that Zionism is a force of evil, as the quote states, then it is indeed a sin for the Trump administration to offer such fawning support to it. By every outer indication, the Trump administration has sought to normalize Zionism. Zionism is not Judaism. There are Arab Zionists, Christian Zionists, Hindu Zionists – far more in other religions than in Judaism itself. So, for Pompeo to try to conflate Judaism and Zionism is false to start, and shows the undue influence of the Zionist lobby in the US, one of Trump’s biggest donors (Sheldon Adelson), as well as Pompeo’s misplaced notions of Christianity. The leader of Hezbollah, Nasrallah, recently gave a scathing yet accurate account of what the US in general and Trump and Co. in particular have done to the region of the Levant. He also had surprising insight into the US election. Continuing with the US:

• The attitude of the United States toward blacks and their failure to live up to the Constitution where blacks are concerned, have greatly weakened the faith of other countries in the wonder of America.[19]
• The motives of the United States are very mixed motives: greed of money or its equivalent, such as oil, and at the same time sincerely good intentions for the establishment of human freedom in a democratic world—modelled, of course, on American democracy.[20]
• The most selfish country in the world today is France, with the United States (though along totally different lines) running her a close second; both are materially selfish and capitalistically engrossed.[21]
• The battle of Democracy will be fought out in the United States. There the people at present vote and organise their government on a personality basis and not from any spiritual or intelligent conviction. There is a material, selfish aspect to Democracy (rampant today), and there is a spiritual aspect, little sought after.[22]

Democracy, anyone?: Boy, didn’t we just get a good view of this last point!? And the first bullet point in this section has been all over the news lately, in the form of Black Lives Matter. But to the latter point, the election from the Democrat side was seemingly solely about getting rid of Trump. That was all that mattered to them. There was no discussion of major issues in the Presidential debates. Bernie Sanders was adamant about Trump needing to go. The election was also about wanting to feel ‘good’ again about America to Democrats, to be ‘rid of evil’. That was one side of the election. On the other side, it was about ‘Beijing Biden’ and the evil ‘librul’ Democrats from much of Trump’s base. Yet, there were also thoughtful people who saw Trump as the more effective man of the two to break the present impasse we have in the existing system, regardless of whether or not Trump was actually effective or got us there by other means.

• Socialism is regarded by some as a basic evil. Socialism can degenerate into another form of totalitarianism, or it can be more democratic than the present expressions of Democracy.[23]

More on socialism later. We cap these statements off with this one, speaking of the US 6^th ray personality:

• The sixth ray personality energy (at the present stage of unfoldment) produces an idealism which requires transmuting and changing from an idealism intensely preoccupied with the preservation of a high standard of living and physical comfort to an idealistic appreciation of the real spiritual values; these are at present veiled and hidden in the material philosophy of the country. The youthful interpretation of this idealism can be seen in the complete conviction of the American people that everything in the United States is better than anything anywhere else, in its willingness to tell all the world what should or should not be done, in its revolt from all controls, in its unthinking acceptance of any information which falls in with its preconceived ideas and prejudices; the mature aspect of American idealism leads its people to a prompt response to the good, the beautiful and the true, to the expression of an active humanitarianism and an invocative spiritual approach to reality.

A key to the future: The italicized bit is a key to our future. To some readers that may appear to be weakness or acquiescence. It can be if there is no thought or will behind such reactions. On the other hand, it takes great strength of character to stand for what is ‘good, beautiful and true’ in the face of active opposition, which we see all around us today. On the surface, upon reading all these statements thus far, it would appear we have not learned much in the US. In fact, it is said we are learning most slowly[24] of the nations in the ‘free world’. And if we continue along these lines, which appears to be likely, there is a prophecy for the US that may come to pass in the near, if not immediate future: “there is—fortunately for the soul of this great people—much suffering in store for the United States.”[25]

But there is another side to the US, which peeks out from time to time in periods of national and world crisis, which is more expressive of the Aquarian, 2^nd ray soul of the nation, which tends toward unity, cooperation and cultivating wisdom and brotherhood between groups and nations, mentioned in the final line of the preceding bullet point, and as listed in the following items:

• Order must be brought about in the States and this order will come when freedom is interpreted in terms of self-chosen discipline; a freedom which can turn into license and which is interpreted by each individual in the best interests of himself constitutes a danger to be avoided.[26]
• The Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights are listed as one of the four steps having been undertaken for the liberation of humanity from the tyranny of authority and the securing of personal freedom.[27]
• Also intimately involved in the liberation of humanity with the aim of guaranteeing the four freedoms was Roosevelt’s vision for the UN, an expression of the soul of the US.[28]
• The United States, though one of the younger nations, is—owing to the many racial types represented—one of the oldest; this curious balancing must inevitably lead to a rapid development, with a consequent assumption of power, a growing incentive to love and a shouldering of responsibility.[29]

The soul of America: This latter is a most important point, because the wisdom gained through centuries of struggle by those racial/cultural types in the often ancient civilizations from which they came goes to the very foundation of ‘the will of the people’. Immigrants to the US very often brought the wisdom of love gained by struggle, standing for what they believed in the face of opposition, mentioned above. When the diversity of the ‘racial types’ from the quote is allowed to freely express, people are usually quite accommodating of differences, and often quite enjoy them. Where would America be without its Italian, Chinese, Spanish, British, German, and even Russian immigrants, for example – and all, we might add, whose parent nations went to war against each other in the past? The nation is comprised of immigrant stock. The difficulty arises when differences are forced upon one group or another, as in the false liberalism we see today, for instance, either differences by enforced separations or enforced mingling. There is much to say on this point, but the idea is perhaps clear enough.

• In the United States, fourth [ray] energy is peculiarly active, because of the conflict of races, nations, ideas, political theories, immature development, corrupt politics, and childish selfishness; this is more prevalent among the leaders in the municipalities and in politics than it is among the masses of people in every state, who are basically sound though easily misled by their so-called leaders.[30]

The italicized bit has been with us since day one in the US. One has only to look at the media in the US to see how it is done. And as to politics, it is a healthy thing that we in the US no longer have a healthy respect for many of our leaders, across the political divide.

• The soul pattern in the States today works out through the acquisitiveness of the nation and its love of possessions which it attracts to itself through the misuse of the law of love.[31]
• The US is said to carry the note of the wisdom aspect of the 2^nd ray into the immediate future, however long that ‘immediate future’ may be. It is said to represent the ‘intuitive faculty’, instead of the hard, ruling energy of Britain. The US is likened to a feminine nation.[32]

The ‘immediate future’ could be a few years or a few centuries. Given the cycle of the receding 6^th ray, the slow coming in of the 4^th ray (see the compilation referenced at the start) and the slow coming in of the 7^th ray – all over decades at the very least – and then add in the slow slide into the Aquarian Age, which we are only now sensing to any great degree, we see that it will take at least a few centuries for the soul of the US to be fully expressing, though it can emerge more strongly long before. The current chaos we are seeing in the US is an indication of the ‘immanence of the soul’. The 6^th ray of the personality, at least the militant aspect of it, is soon to see a reckoning, as it can be neither financially nor morally sustained for much longer, as in over the next few decades at most. And on top of that, the people of the US are quickly becoming wise to the atrocious amount of money spent on the US military. These people are a growing voice, once they begin to think and investigate for themselves, and given the deficiencies of our debt-fueled economy the military-industrial complex noted by Eisenhower is going to be coming up for increasing review and exposure. The rest of the world sees this clearly. I hear it all the time in foreign media and in informed comment.

• The United States represents the intuitive faculty, expressing itself as illumination, plus the power to fuse and blend.[33] It is intuitive, mystical, alluring, beautiful, fond of display and colour, and with the faults also…, such as over emphasis upon the material aspects of life, upon pageantry, upon possession and upon money or its equivalent as a symbol of the form side of existence.  Such nations mother and nurture civilisation and ideas.[34]

One of the main things that stands out about the US, reading the soul qualities above, is the sense of community, the growth of compassion and the intuitive side of the US psyche that must evolve out of the current impasse if it is to function according to its esoteric motto – “I light the Way” – than is currently the case. It is the 6^th ray (devotion/fanaticism) and the divisive side of the Gemini personality of the US which currently holds sway, holding the nation back, exhibiting as divisiveness, militarism, the tendency to homogenize the populace (“America: love it or leave it!” and other jingoism), support for certain ideals over common sense and the overt, excessive consumerism that dulls the minds of the people while it goes toward satisfying the senses and desires – ‘bread and circuses’. Some of this is due to the youthfulness of the nation, while in still other respects it has been by design.

Given the preceding, and lest much of it sound decidedly negative, what emerges is that there are two sides to the United States, at least, and it would be advisable to scan the compilation as we consider what is to follow. On the one side, there are the people of the US, who are like people everywhere. They want a decent standard of living, to be able to make a secure and safe future for their families, who see all four of Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms, discussed in the Libra letter, with freedom from want fast disappearing (freedom from want, really, being freedom from need).

Regarding these four freedoms, censorship and surveillance is on the increase across many platforms, quickly eroding our freedom of speech. People feel their freedom to worship being infringed (There are several sides to that argument as well, and it is used as a political football.). They see their real income diminishing by the year (more on that in a bit). And lastly, the American public is fed a steady diet of fear via the media. And because of that sense of fear, enforced via the media and fomented by vested interests, America has become the most feared nation on Earth. Is any of this really surprising? And that leads to a second side of the United States – the combined power and influence residing in Washington and New York.

A house divided: We have probably all heard the saying, “A house divided amongst itself will not stand.”^[35] The quote was echoed by Lincoln in his “House Divided Speech” in 1858. That was 162 years ago, almost a cycle of Neptune, and once again the nation’s ideals are being called into question across the board, Neptune ruling idealism in its lower respects. The key part of his speech is worth remembering, as it has application to today:

On first reading of the quote we might say, well, slavery has been abolished. But has it? There are various forms of slavery. Certainly the more barbaric form of human bondage has been abolished in the US and worldwide for the major part. Brutal slavery does still go on in pockets, like Libya, for instance. Lincoln was termed a ‘racial avatar’,[36] along the line of the first ray (will/power), and one of two presidents at the time of the quoted material, who went on to enunciate parts of the soul of the United States. The other will be covered directly.

But there is a form of slavery that besets major parts of the population in the US and across the West, and that is debt slavery. That debt slavery obliges us to ‘slave away’ at meaningless jobs just to keep our heads above water, a roof over our heads and to keep the debt collectors from the door. Most readers here are not in that position, but few people these days can claim they are debt-free. We must work if we are to survive unless we have set ourselves up properly financially, if we have been able to do so. It is this compulsion to work that shows itself most clearly in the United States. Some people enjoy working long hours, and to them, this is not directed. However, Americans shouldn’t have to work past retirement age, or more than a standard 40 hour week, but millions of them have to, for various reasons – health, family obligations, costs of living, loss of private pensions due to business closures, etc. The ‘Wall Mart greeter’ meme has become entrenched in American lingo to be equated with the elderly, meaning once we reach the age of pension, we can go to work at a Wall Mart or McDonalds to make ends meet. Welcome to ‘retirement’.

There have been two events this year that illustrate most graphically what the US is facing into the immediate future, one brought on by the COVID pandemic and its mishandling in the West, and the other by the US election, which has yet to be officially announced. Both of those events show the failings of the financial capitalist system and the endemic corruption in US politics, and they are both symbiotically related. And neither Trump nor Biden will solve the problems therein represented. Trump is not the savior of the nation, fighting the oligarchs (‘the Cabal’), as many of his followers believe. But neither will Biden ‘restore the soul of the nation’ as many of his adherents hope. One has only to look at his transition team to see where he is likely to take the country, filling many of those spots with corporate consultants, war profiteers, and national security hawks. And even now, the Democrat establishment is blaming progressive Democrats for Biden’s slim victories in key swing states, ignoring the fact that he ran a rather lackluster campaign. The American people want more progressive policies, rather than more of what we have had over the last decades. And many of said policies would fit with Roosevelt’s vision for America.

The true blue: Roosevelt gave a speech that will probably find its echo for the US in the near future, with 21^st century characteristics. He was the 2^nd President to come forward and enunciate the soul of America. Probably the most memorable part of that speech was as follows:

“For twelve years this Nation was afflicted with hear-nothing, see-nothing, do-nothing Government. The Nation looked to Government but the Government looked away. Nine mocking years with the golden calf [Wall Street speculation/Roaring ‘20s] and three long years of the scourge [the Great Depression]! Nine crazy years at the ticker and three long years in the breadlines! Nine mad years of mirage and three long years of despair! Powerful influences strive today to restore that kind of government with its doctrine that that Government is best which is most indifferent.

For nearly four years you have had an Administration which instead of twirling its thumbs has rolled up its sleeves [speaking of his own administration]. We will keep our sleeves rolled up.

We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace—business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering. They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.

Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred.”

Spoken like a true disciple on the first ray.[37] Bolding and brackets added for emphasis. There are many points in that speech that we see still today. Many libertarians and conservatives would love to see a “hear-nothing, see-nothing, do-nothing Government” fully restored, seeing big government as somehow evil and against the nation’s interests. A big government can work against the interests of its populace, but it does not necessarily have to be so. What bothers people who think big government is wrong-headed goes partly to the fact that it somewhat ties the hands of the investor class, thinking it stifles business and has an overbearing influence on many aspects of society, as in religious freedom, free speech and so forth. But more than that, it has to do with taxes.

Under Roosevelt, the wealthy and corporations had to pay their fair share of taxes, which paid for infrastructure, education and other social programs. In other words, Roosevelt’s policies under the New Deal supported Main Street instead of Wall Street and the bankers. Those sorts of policies are what Bernie Sanders and many progressives would like to see returned. Instead, those people are tarred as socialists/communists today. That sort of labelling is patently laughable and false, and is in reality an attempt at narrative steering. I would just call FDR’s style of capitalism ‘American-style capitalism that supports Main Street’. People could still get rich under Roosevelt’s policies and there were many rich Americans then. There was still an investor class, but they could not access people’s money in the commercial banks as they can today. The US was still very much a capitalist nation under Roosevelt, but it was a regulated system that contributed to the public good, at the same time allowing speculation, entrepreneurial spirit and supporting innovation. Currently, what we have with our present system is financial capitalism that panders to Wall Street, billionaires and bankers. It is socialism for the rich, witnessed by the fact that the number of billionaires ballooned after the introduction of neoliberal/financial capitalism starting from the ‘80s and ‘90s. Prior to that, there were few billionaires. This will go to a point later in the letter.

A tale of three presidents: At this juncture we need to be clear about our history. In doing that, we also get a sense of what lies ahead. For instance, astrological forecasts without a good knowledge of history often fall flat and miss the context of the times. There is also often a significant ‘woo factor’ in such forecasts. Astrology based in a study of the past has been termed ‘essential astrology’.[38] With history as a context, we look at what befell these two presidents, Lincoln and Roosevelt, and what came after. Then perhaps we can see what to expect in the immediate future. Starting with Lincoln, he preserved the union and freed the slaves. Reactionary forces immediately set about ‘rectifying’ the situation, beginning with Lincoln’s assassination. The Reconstruction followed.

But there was more to what got Lincoln assassinated than the war or slavery. Instead, it was what he did to the US financial system. You can call this revisionist history if you like, but a little research will reveal the truth of the matter. When Lincoln came to office in 1861 there were over 7000 different currencies in use in the US, now called ‘broken-bank notes’ and the financial situation was completely untenable. The system was unregulated, known as the free banking era which started under Andrew Jackson, there was no central bank and there were almost 1500 individual banks all issuing different bank notes. There was no way Lincoln could finance the Civil War under such a system. He was stymied by the financial aristocracy in New York and the political dynasties who ran the political machines at the time, foreign and domestic. What he did was to introduce the greenback, standardize the monetary system and restore central control to the government instead of the banks. This was done in three steps; the Legal Tender Act of 1862 and the Banking and Currency Acts of 1863 and 1864. These acts served to rein in the private banking interests, grew the economy and national infrastructure and gave the North the vital industrial power needed to win the war. So, we see a pattern beginning to emerge, in parallel with what we see today.

When Roosevelt assumed office, he also found a financial free-for-all, devoid of regulation and run out of Wall Street, the financial aristocracy and involving foreign interests. He again reined in the private banks, separating the investment and commercial banks and introduced a graduated tax structure, again paying for vast infrastructure, industrialization and thereby providing people with jobs via his New Deal. Those programs also gave the US the incredible industrial capacity for the Allies to overcome the Axis in WWII, most especially giving Russia the initial help they needed to defeat the Nazis. That same aid to the UK also spelled the end of the British Empire. Roosevelt also introduced Social Security, one of the most revered social programs in US history. There was a planned attempted coup against him for his efforts, which was exposed and stopped by Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler (War is a Racket). His book rings as true today as it did then. The coup was professed to have been planned by Wall Street financiers and industrialists.

We have seen other similar coups before, without going into them here, but with one of the most famous being the Kennedy assassination in 1963. As to Roosevelt, no sooner was he cold in his grave then those same factions who planned the aforementioned coup against him set about to dismantle his policies, using Truman as their proxy. The timeline runs as follows: The bomb was dropped twice on Japan. The Russians were immediately cast as the main enemy instead of a close ally. The CIA was created, giving rise to the US security state over time. The McCarthy hearings cemented the anti-communist/socialist/Russian sentiment into the national psyche. The anti-Russian sentiment was also strongly pushed by the Catholic Church in the US and across the globe. Then came Kennedy.

Kennedy’s election was one of the closest in US history, having won by a mere 100,000 votes against Nixon. Republicans cried voter fraud then, too, but Kennedy won out. He, too, was facing a financial downturn, but in his case the economy was not what got him assassinated, much as a few sources have claimed. He was not seeking to rein in the Federal Reserve, but instead was seeking a transition away from silver coinage, which was then worth more by weight than the face value of the coins. Instead, Kennedy was seeking détente with the Russians over nuclear weapons, which would cut into profits for the nuclear arms industry and the Air Force. He also had stated he wanted to break up the CIA, probably more in a moment of frustration than in a real intention to do so. He was using CIA assets for a covert war in Laos 2 ½ years after that statement and in fact, actually liked the intelligence he got from them. We won’t go into the why and how of his assassination, except to say there is quite a bit of mythos around the man, his life and his death.

Kennedy did go on, especially in the last few months of his life, to enunciate some of the soul qualities of America after the death of his infant son, seeing civil rights as both a moral and political cause – the first US president ever to call it a moral issue – getting the Test Ban Treaty through Congress and the UN, easing tensions with the Soviets, and a plan to have the 16,000 troops home from Vietnam by the end of his term. These last items are probably the ones that got him killed, as it would have greatly miffed the arms industry to end the escalation in Vietnam and put a hold on the development of nuclear weapons and their delivery systems. There was also the little factor of a thawing in Cold War relations, which would have reduced the fear factor for the nation and the need for ever-expanding arms sales. Smedley Butler again comes to mind. The racket of war has been the making of many rich Americans.

The aristocracy: So, what does it tell us that there were few billionaires, adjusted for inflation, prior to the latter quarter of last century and that there are now over 600 in the US alone, all the while people’s wages have stagnated in terms of real wages since 2008? What does it tell us that the billionaires in the US especially have seen their wealth vastly increase this year alone while Congress cannot seem to pass a relief bill, and couldn’t really seem to care less? What does it tell us that real wages  have stagnated around the $22/hr mark on average since Trump took office, even though nominal (in-pocket) wages have risen by a couple of dollars per hour? Does any of this ring true with the points made about the US outlined in the esoteric literature, preceding?

Blue tsunami?: If you want to see what a progressive tidal wave in an election looks like, have a look at this picture (right). It is the Electoral College map from the 1936 election. Roosevelt won all but two states – Vermont and Maine. And one of the more interesting aspects of that election is the switch between the red and blue states from then to today. The South was solid blue, nearly all states that Trump carried in the last two elections. It was one of the areas of the nation most benefitted by the New Deal. The red states were New York (Wall Street), Vermont and Maine, by the measure of counties. If the Democratic Party wants to find the wind in its sails again, it will have to embrace progressive policy and abandon its reliance on and support of Big Money to win elections and focus much more on the concerns of its voter base, instead of giving tepid, feigned concern. The latter is why many voters abandoned the Democrats in 2016 and 2020 and voted instead for Trump. Trump promised change and a better standard of living. The Democrats essentially offered more of the same, stale policy from the past.

Bernie Sanders is a FDR-era Democrat, and when he was sidelined by the DNC machine, voters took notice and many walked away from the Democratic Party because of it. I watched it unfold on social media. It is one of the reasons why the Democrats lost seats in the House in 2020 and could not regain control of the Senate. On the whole, progressive politics lost badly in this election, and largely because the DNC would not embrace it, and partly because Americans were told progressive policies were socialism or communism. As a point of interest, one of the tropes trotted out about socialism is that it ruins economies and causes breadlines. That fear card and disinformation campaign has been played successfully by conservatives and libertarians alike. Well, we saw breadlines in the US due to our vaunted system of capitalism resulting from our being ‘best equipped to handle a pandemic’, but it wasn’t because of socialism, or the CCP. On the other hand, the linked video also shows the soul of America in action, jumping to the aid of people in need. But as a result of conditioning and the power of the vested interests against progressive policy, the Biden Presidency, at least for the next two years will be largely ineffective when it comes to advancing anything that even has a hint of progressive policy.

And, just to show how Washington will get on with business as usual, there is a long list of Presidential picks for cabinet posts who must be approved by the Senate. Given the current animosity between Senate Republicans and Democrats, and especially the attitude of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, what do we realistically expect to happen regarding Biden’s picks for cabinet posts? This is not to sound doom and gloom, but to take a hard, realistic look. There is no viable ‘left’ – a true left – in US politics today. What we can expect is that the cabinet posts will be filled by picks from establishment people acceptable to both parties.

Coming of age in America: I grew up in rural North Carolina during the time when Roosevelt-era policies were still in place, during a time when parents would send their kids out to play in the summer heat without supervision and tell them to be back home for dinner. Parents didn’t worry then. The kids always came home, full of tales of adventure from the day’s roaming. Everyone knew each other in the neighbourhood and looked out after each other and their neighbor’s kids. People could leave their houses unlocked and go off for an afternoon, assured everything would be left as they found it upon their return. True story. It’s not some urban legend about the good ‘ol days cooked up for social media. I lived it. The gang of we kids would get on our bikes in the daytime and be off exploring, often on dirt back roads and paths through the woods none of us knew – on roads less travelled. It was a big adventure in those days, days long gone. But if it sounds idyllic, it wasn’t.

I have vague memories of restaurants with separate facilities for ‘coloreds’ – blacks – and always wondered about it. My parents told us it was wrong. We didn’t understand. We were kids. But the South in those days was still segregated, steeped in racism and Jim Crowe. I didn’t know a black child until I was almost 10. That’s just the way it was back then. At school we had air raid drills in as to what to do in the case of a nuclear attack from the Russians. Russians? Who were they and why did they hate us? We didn’t understand, but the drills were like playing ‘cowboys and injuns’. We had no idea about the real meaning in the latter, either. Then, Kennedy was murdered, Vietnam happened, drugs happened, civil unrest rose and blacks were suddenly going to school with us, whereas before, we went to a white school. Yes, we had them in those days, white schools, that is.

And then one day, walking home from another school, I watched in shock as a black student, brandishing a pig-sticker, ran past me chasing a fellow white student down the street, yelling he was going to kill the white dude. It was horrifying. I wasn’t game to follow and at the time didn’t understand what would motivate such hatred. I soon found out. We can call the experience the end of the innocence of youth. My world, and the world of post-WWII America in its heyday had suddenly changed, it seemed. It was not a kind, trusting place any longer. People were afraid. And I was growing up. For white Americans, the America they thought they knew now haunted them. First it was Kennedy, then Malcolm, then MLK, then Bobby. From the ‘70s onward, really after the moon landing, after Woodstock, after the Beatles and Hendrix, America became a darker place, and it didn’t appear to me that way because I was growing up. Something had happened. And by the way, the pig-sticker incident took place just after MLK had been assassinated. Americans will understand, because many of us lived those days in kind. Then a great reset happened, with Nixon.

The Great Reset of 1971: There has been a reset in the US – a great reset. It is known as the Nixon Shock of 1971. It was the beginning of the end of the progressive era in the US, and Nixon was its herald. The wannabe aristocracy and military industrialists wanted their “hear-nothing, see-nothing, do-nothing Government” back, and they were going after it with a renewed sense of lust, albeit behind the scenes then. Now it is overt and unapologetic. Progressive voices had to be snuffed out, then as now, free-market capitalism restored, Roosevelt’s policies relegated to the dustbin because, well, they are just not sustainable. Note that word. That’s the way it was, then, and that’s the way it is now.

Socialism and communism are two trigger words in American political lingo that are used as if they are a great evil. Republicans use it like a dog whistle to their supporters every time a Democrat tries to pass a social program through Congress, which is happening less and less anyway. It is why the stimulus CARES Act was a one-off and there has not been a 2^nd stimulus package for the COVID crisis. “America will never be a socialist or communist country…”, to hear one of the moneyed aristocracy assert the fact. Probably never totally socialist or communist, true, but American already has and likes socialist policies. There is no true purely capitalist or purely communist country on earth anyway. But there is a big difference between ‘social programs’ and ‘socialism’, the former being programs that “promote the general welfare”, to pull the term from the Constitution, and the latter being the system of government where the workers supposedly own all the means of production. When it is stated in a quote from the esoteric books that neither labor nor capital can rule in the US, it means that neither purely capitalist nor communist/socialist policies can rule. What is emerging worldwide are mixed economies, and the US has been one such since Roosevelt. And if the cycles of the planets and historical precedent hold true – essential astrology, in other words – we are quickly going to see a rising tide of voices in the US for the reinstitution of such policies in a relatively short time. We see an example of its rising in the number of wealthy Americans seeking 2^nd passports to countries where the economies are more stable and the tax laws are not likely to be too strongly altered, or so they think.

Why the world loves America – and also why they loathe us. As we begin to wrap this up, I went back and lived and worked in the US for a couple of years recently, before I came to Italy. People here and in Australia (when I was there) ask me why I didn’t stay in the US, why I chose to stay in Australia and Italy. You see, there is a myth that America is a land where the streets are paved with gold. It’s the land of opportunity, they are told and the people who have asked me why I left cannot understand why I would come from a country that is so obviously superior to theirs, they think. Well, the obvious reason I left in both instances was because of matters of the heart. I was a free agent at the time and my partners were established and didn’t want to leave the lands of their birth or their friends and families. Fair enough. Besides, I enjoyed the experience of new places and travel. And then, there was another more subjective reason. In both instances when I first stepped off the plane in these places, I felt as though I had come home. It is a strange sensation, but can best be described as a sense of familiarity and belonging. The only other places it has happened are in London and in Tibet. Obviously, there are old karmic connections and experiences with these places.

When people ask me about America, they say they want to come and experience it. I tell them to stay away from the tourist places and instead have enough time to see the land and mix with people on their home turf. But they soon come to understand, too, once the novelty has worn off, that their own countries are actually pretty good, as well. So, what people love about America is what we love about it, too – our can-do spirit, our art, our culture, our humor, our science and our big ideas. They love the American heart, the warmth and goodness of the people. What they detest about America is the sense of entitlement and exceptionalism, our moralizing, our militarism and probably more than anything, our sense that we have the right to tell them how they should live. We don’t. Now, the average American abroad is not like the latter – brash, arrogant and pushy. Most Americans traveling abroad just want to mix with the locals, see the sights, have a good time and experience the country. Travel opens one’s eyes to a great many home truths. But when people here ask me if I would ever go back to the US to live, I just say it’s an open question. I don’t know. It would depend. And that’s true. But it’s also true when people say home is where the heart is.

Are we No. 1?: Every country is the best country in the world, if you happen to live there. In most cases in people I have spoken with in my travels that’s the general feeling. But there are still many Americans who like to think that America is #1. It is, but not in ways we would like to contemplate. COVID comes to mind as a current example. We have slipped in the rankings over the past few decades, as it were. But it’s OK. It makes us normal, in that we can begin to talk with other nations on a more human basis. We are exceptional now, but in ways that chafe other nations and peoples. We are now the gaudy light on the hill instead of the shining light. And it is cringe-worthy to Americans living abroad and to many at home when we hear bloviating by Pompeo and other officials making statements to the effect that, “The United States is the greatest force for good in the world.” Well, most nations don’t think so. They will be quite happy when we start behaving like a normal country.

We need a sense of humor: Humor highlights the truth and speaks truth to power in ways that normal conversation cannot. Yet it conveys that truth to the masses that any number of dry facts will not. From the start of this now long discussion, the biggest problem Americans face, and the resolving of which will restore our freedoms and our heart, was stated by George Carlin in his now-famous stand-up routine: “It’s a big club…and you ain’t in it! You and I are not in the Big Club.” The ‘Big Club’ he refers to is our financial aristocracy and the system they have brought in by stealth over years and across party lines. There are also foreign aristocrats, a.k.a oligarchs, involved, too. When the public cry is loud enough, as we saw with the Civil War and the Great Depression, the 1^st ray disciples step up, because government is ruled by the 1^st ray (will/power). They do not come as saviors, but as servants – servants of the people’s will. And though their methods may seem harsh at first, they unite parties by seizing the power of the immediate moment and thereby imposing a new order according to the stated need. The power of the immediate moment is embodied in the people. If we really want to see the sort of change in the US the mass of the public wants, then we must be ready invoke such power as a collective and forget our petty divisions, losing ourselves in the service of the immediate need. We need to draw out the light of the American soul and let it illuminate what is most needed for our nation.

The soul of America is compassionate, wise from the collective experience of generations of people from scores of cultures that make up its people, ultimately creative, intuitive of the world need, and ready to lend a hand – when it is requested. The personality of the US, when suffused with the light of its soul, is devoted to the highest ideals of humanity. America will eventually resolve its current conflicted and militant nature, which is agitated by the adventurous and imperious personality of Washington, fuelled by avarice for control of wealth and the world’s resources. Time and experience will bring it. When the soul of Washington is drawn out by the collective demand of the people it is meant to serve, order will come again to the United States. Then the world will enter a far more peaceful era. Slowly over time, the destiny of the nations will stand revealed, when they have thrown off their separative natures, their yearning for past glories and as they settle in for the task of planetary salvation, human progress and international goodwill. Certain nations are indicating and linking ways forward. All we need is more light to see it unfold. That is the task for the United States into the future – to shine the light of its intuition instead of projecting its iron fist. Peace through strength is a mantra for disaster. Statesmanship requires strength of character. We, as Americans, need to take a road less travelled and embrace the strength of our character instead of the fleeting strength of military and economic power. Strength of character builds peace and confidence. Let us bring to light the love that underlies the happenings of our times.

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