The Scorpio Festival 2024 – a preview

This is a preview. The full article will appear here in a few days…

Halloween has come and gone here in Rovereto, and all the little monsters have returned to school. It is a city tradition here to begin preparing for Christmas just after Halloween. Soon enough the Christmas market stalls will be in place. The city has already finished its installation of the Christmas lights. After this letter is finished, the task falls to me here at the house. And winter is already here, by the way the temperature is trending. It is close to freezing in the mornings, unusual for this time of year. Here at the house we bid farewell to our oldest guerriero (warrior), our 17 y/o English setter, who had been with us for a couple of years after his padrone (master) had passed. Cancer finally claimed Igory (the setter), along with advanced age. It is the way of things. He started as a guest for a month, but here we know how that goes. He was part of the ‘family’ soon enough. He’ll be missed, of course, as they all are when they pass. But it is the cycle of life, is it not? He had fulfilled his intended experience with us and then passed on to new experiences. For the people (and dogs here at the house) left behind we experience what in Buddhism is called ‘the suffering of change’ – that is, if one does not enjoy the change. For dogs (and animals in general) the ‘great transition’ holds no terror, for they know it as being no different than going to sleep. It is only our emotional attachments that cause us to suffer when change this way comes.

This period since the last full moon has been quite intense. There is a particular transit, still in effect, active on a world scale that has caused us to consider detaching ourselves from situations that no longer suit – in other words, attachments that hinder the realization of our spiritual journey, individual and collective. That transit is described under the topic of the full moon, but it involves the rulers of the sign under consideration for our theme for this letter, which is Scorpio. As experience teaches us over time, change always carries with it the promise of opportunity. In one respect the opportunity is to see things anew. In another respect change allows us to free ourselves of ‘unwanted baggage’, to heal ourselves of painful memories and experiences, to address the primary traumas in our lives, oft unremembered, that cause us to cling to what we feel makes us safe, but in other guises bind us in emotional and mental prisons of our own making. At one and the same time, we want to feel safe and happy, while on the other side our souls beckon us to break the bonds of worldly matters in order to experience true freedom and happiness, unconditioned by the experiences of worldly life. To choose the path of true freedom takes us strongly out of our perceived comfort zones. To break out of prison is often painful, but at the same time involves strategic thinking, as in training the mind. We then tread the warrior’s path. It matters little whether we stumble and fall on that path. What matters is that we thereafter gather ourselves up and continue, with the vision of our coming victory still clear in our minds. With these points in mind we move on to a more pointed look at Scorpio for this year.

Scorpio: Scorpio rules the natural 8^th house of the zodiac, connected with death and transformation. In the old orthodoxy, Scorpio was ruled by Mars. In our current astrology, the sign is ruled by Pluto, the latter in its role as a transformative force. This is a sign that carries tremendous potency. Mars is ‘objective and full of blood’,^[3] with the Mars rulership governing all the earthly passions to which we human beings are subject. Passion can be directed toward good or ill, as we know. We can have a passion for what we do, which produces inspired work and creativity. By the same token we can direct our passions ‘downward’ toward fanatical ends, and in the process destroy ourselves. It is this idea of directed passions that brings in the Pluto rulership of the sign, because aside from being quite a passionate sign, it is also a very willful sign. Mars transmits the 6^th ray^[4] (devotion or fanaticism) and rules the entire personality,^[5] while Pluto transmits the 1^st ray^[6] (will or power). Because of these two rulerships, experience in Scorpio brings about transformation in the mean, and death in the extreme. The ‘death’ referred to here can be figurative or literal, but in general it refers to the death of old situations and the end of personal desires.

Mercury rules Scorpio hierarchically,^[7] while Mars rules the sign esoterically, which gives us clues to its most profound implications – the marriage of personality and soul, with the soul eventually taking the predominant expression. To explain this, we look at the matter of the signs in terms of evolving processes as we progress along our individual soul path. From the most recent letters here, in Virgo we recognized the light of the soul and sought to stabilize that recognition. The latter was achieved in the Libran phase. With that light held thereby steady in Libra, we can then begin to introduce another process in Scorpio – that of transformation, which requires interaction between the soul and personality. Interaction is governed by Mercury, the divine messenger, while at the same time it introduces conflict. Mercury transmits the 4^th ray^[8] (harmony through conflict). Any time there is interaction between two unfamiliar factions the possibility for conflict, as well as for harmonization, is always present. Mercury works with the intelligence aspect of human experience, intelligence that leads to wisdom. In the Scorpio experience though, Mercury serves as the director of forces within our human system itself, bringing about a real and permanent transformation of our lives. Mercury performs this task when we begin to consciously utilize the forces within our very nature to bring about self-transformation. We turn our passions toward spiritual ends and begin ‘the fiery journey’ to liberation and enlightenment. There is a fire within us that carries that opportunity.

The fires of our human system are employed to effect the transformation from worldly intelligence to universal consciousness. Every level of the personality is affected by this transformation. What we are talking about here is the utilization of the fire at the base of the spine, which is normally only concerned with maintaining the temperature of the body. This is the Mars phase of kundalini, known as ‘kundalini latent’.^[9] Kundalini is also known as caṇḍālī fire and tummo (gtum mo, or ‘fierce woman’ in Tibetan). Through certain exercises that fire is stimulated. Normally it is like a warm coal at the base of the spine, though we do not notice it. Through said exercises that coal is kindled into a flame, small at first, but noticeable nonetheless, at which point it is consciously directed upward through the central channel of the spine, bringing about revelations in consciousness and changing completely our world view – thereby challenging us at all nine facets of the Scorpio hydra – physical, emotional and mental.^[10] This is the ‘kundalini active’ stage, ruled by Mercury.^[11]

The active phase of kundalini can be a perilous phase, especially if there has been no scrupulous mind training beforehand, as one would find in the Buddhist Lam Rim,^[12] for example. Everything the fire touches gets first magnified, and all of our ‘demons’ (unresolved traumas and ego constructs) are ‘brought to the surface’ one-by-one (the Pluto rulership of the base of the spine). Then, the war is on. We are impelled to battle. Do we choose to stay in our personal comfort, or does the fierce lady carry us across the threshold of consciousness to consummate the marriage with our higher Self? As it turns out, resistance is futile. We are either driven to victory (higher realizations) or to insanity if we do not recognize what the experience is meant to achieve. Perhaps in what is put forward here we recognize why Scorpio is probably the most ‘uncomfortable’ sign of the zodiac at times. Every Scorpio type (Sun or Ascendant) carries this knowledge as a seed. For people born under its influence, the opportunity is great, while for people associated with the Scorpio, the opportunity is to follow their lead and go along for the ride.

Once the inner battle is engaged, however, increasing levels of bliss are encountered, which encourage the warrior forward toward the goal. Thus encouraged, each victory in battle brings increased insight – into one’s own nature, the nature of reality itself, an increasingly expanded awareness, which leads then into the Sagittarian phase, discussed in the next letter. In the end, once a sort of ‘critical mass’ or critical phase of the battle is passed, the struggle becomes less and less until finally, through all the strenuous effort, the disciple can honestly claim, “Warrior I am and from the battle I emerge triumphant.”^[13] With all this as background we move on to the consideration of the full moon and the current events.

The full moon takes place on 15 Nov 2024 at 21:28 UTC (8:28 am AEDT on the 16^th). It is a dynamic figure, signaling the imposition/introduction of a new rhythm in world affairs, as well as the revelations about past deeds that will come with those changes. Since this full moon follows upon the US election, the Sabian symbols may be able to cast further light on what was just stated:

• The Sun: A X-ray photograph (24.00° Scorpio)
• The Moon: A vast public park (24.00° Taurus)

The solar degree refers to the ability to see the structural buttressing of all events. It represents a revelatory experience, wherein anyone who chooses to see the undercurrents of one’s life or the forces that underpin world events can reveal to themselves the truth of any matter. What we see with this full moon is a culminating event in public awareness. The election in the US has revealed the truth about American leadership, for instance, and the same is becoming apparent for Europe. In his speech at the Valdai Discussion Club, Vladimir Putin spoke of the ‘moment of truth’:

“There comes, in a way, the moment of truth. The former world arrangement is irreversibly passing away, actually it has already passed away, and a serious, irreconcilable struggle is unfolding for the development of a new world order. It is irreconcilable, above all, because this is not even a fight for power or geopolitical influence. It is a clash of the very principles that will underlie the relations of countries and peoples at the next historical stage…”

The entire speech is worth reading in full. If we do not make the effort to see all sides of events then we fail to see the underlying structure – the cause and effect behind events. The lunar degree on the other hand refers to our collective shared experience and enjoyment. It represents our efforts to live in peace based in our shared experience. That is coming under review, shown by Uranus in the full moon figure conjunct the Moon and the lunation axis. That conjunction is the key to the chart.

The conjunction of Moon/Uranus is in turn sextile to Neptune and trine to Pluto, giving us an extraordinary opportunity to divine the truth of all matters. If we choose to do so consciously then we can better take stock of our lives and our communities. If, instead, we choose to ‘let things happen’ then our revelations will come as a shock, as Uranus is known to bring. Uranus always brings a new rhythm to living and reveals occult (hidden) matters. It is the planet that beckons us to let go of the past and to move boldly and firmly in our soul path. The fact Uranus is conjunct the Moon in this figure is a sure sign that our perceived realities of our past are about to be strongly challenged, a factor in our lives we should welcome.

Additional matters in the lunation figure are the out-of-bounds (OOB) planets – Mercury, Venus and Ceres. Ceres’ long sojourn OOB this year has shown us the inflexion points we have been undergoing for the past month – in politics, in conflicts and in environment. Ceres is slowly descending back in-bounds, when it will return in mid-January of next year. Mercury and Venus will attain their maximum southern declination on the 18^th of this month in parallel declination. Mercury and Venus OOB represent excessive focus on communications and relations. At this point of transition, between East and West, between administrations in the US, it will be difficult at times to discern the truth. Special attention will need to be paid to taking what we hear with a grain of salt and not to read too much into what we see transpiring in terms of partnerships and financial matters.

Mars is still opposite Pluto, which has been a very difficult transit for some people. Mars/Pluto combinations are quite powerful and volatile. The two planets represent the soul (Mars) and personality (Pluto) of a great systemic Being, whose emanation brings out the inner warrior in each of us, depending upon how that present astrological opposition has landed in your chart. Mars/Pluto combinations (aspects or midpoints) are often signals of surgeries, accidents, arguments and cutting of ties. That opposition began to make its effect felt in mid-October, and it will be passing out over the next week or so. The inner warrior, our soul, in each of us has been stimulated during that period. It is for us to make use of what we have learned from experiences going forward. With these points in mind we move on to the current events and the evolving international evolution

Current events:

• Trump was re-elected by a comfortable margin (it was no landslide), to become the 47^th POTUS. There was wailing and gnashing of teeth among the liberals, jubilation among the ‘garbage’ set and shrugging of shoulders among more seasoned and aware voters. There is an entire topic devoted to the subject below. You can read my preliminary analysis of the election on the blog site. What follows below will focus more on the effects of the election outside the US.
• The German ‘stoplight’ coalition collapsed upon the news the ‘Orange Terror’ (in their eyes) was elected. Like many breakups, it all came down to finances. Europe just became an interesting place to be. More on that below, too.
• The Valdai Club met in St. Petersburg, Russia from the 3^rd through the 7^th. Putin addressed the attendees and made some remarks. Yes, that will be covered below, too. Valdai is one of the premier Russian think tanks, at least of the ones known to the public.
• Western politicians and the Western press have sought to make victims of the Maccabi Tel Aviv hooligans who went on a rampage in Amsterdam. The hooligans were the instigators.
• On the 7^th, Donald Trump did not call Vladimir Putin to discuss Ukraine. Trump did not stress the strength of NATO forces in Europe. And Trump did not end the war in Ukraine with that phone call. If you read all the ‘nots’, you read this correctly. The Bezos Blog (Washington Post) put out the story of that phone call, which true to form some of the mainstream media parroted without fact checking it. The story was, as Trump loves to say, fake news. And the WaPo’s reason for posting such a fairy tale? – that will become clear as the weeks pass, but on the surface it appears to be some sort of attempt to preempt Trump on Ukraine. Moscow and Kiev both denied such a phone call took place.

The election that shook the West: We begin our look at current events with the reelection of Donald Trump. The topic heading is a bit misleading if we think Trump’s election has changed the world, much less the West. But what it has done is to send a shock through the Western elites, especially in Western Europe. We will get to why that is the case in due course. For the world outside the West – the vast majority of the international community – they looked at the result of the American election and shrugged. The general feeling is that they hope they will be able to get along with Trump. And in general, Trump has not posed a threat to the world at large with his past actions. His biggest international detractors have been in Western Europe and across NATO, where Trump had demanded in his first administration that Europe (NATO) shoulder more of the burden for their self-defense. Fair enough, but there are pertinent questions as to why Europe should be spending so much more on defense when in fact it would be so much easier to make peace with Russia and operate on a business basis instead of a zero-sum threat basis. And now we hear Trump talking about slapping tariffs on European imports, all the while the US is the EU’s biggest trading partner. The picks for Trump’s cabinet are not at all encouraging for the EU.

MIGA: Word on social media now is that Miriam Adelson is choosing Trump’s cabinet picks. OK, it’s not true, but the people he has chosen thus far makes it look as though the 2^nd Trump administration will be all about making Israel great again (MIGA), rather than putting America first. Just keep in mind as we go along here, that nearly all of these picks have to be approved by a Senate majority vote. As it stands the Republicans have control of the Senate, but they do not have a two-thirds majority. So, we may be seeing some of these potential cabinet picks going by the wayside. And in general, the Republicans have control of both the House and the Senate, but the majorities are slim, which could well lead to a hung Congress on some issues. However, Trump’s cabinet picks thus far are nearly all staunch Israel supporters – Susie Wiles (Chief of Staff), Marco ‘Narco’ Rubio (Secretary of State), Mike Waltz (National Security Advisor), Lee Zeldin (EPA Administrator), Kristi Noem (DHS Secretary), Elise Stefanik (US Ambassador to the UN), John Ratcliffe (CIA Director), Pete Hogseth (Secretary of Defense), Mike Huckabee (US Ambassador to Israel), Tom Homan (Border Czar) and lastly, Elon Musk (DOGE). We should probably take note of a few things about Musk and this new ‘department’.

Elon Musk, contrary to what is commonly believed, is not an inventive genius. He did not invent Tesla cars, or the rockets for SpaceX, nor did he found PayPal. ‘X’, formerly Twitter, takes its name from an online banking company he founded, called X.com. X.com eventually went bust but was absorbed and went on to become PayPal under Peter Thiel. ‘X’, the social media platform has lost an estimated 80% of its value since Musk took it over. He has never invented anything, except for video games (There is a clue as to his main interests – gaming). What he is instead is a serial entrepreneur. Musk, much like Bill Gates, is an example of inherited wealth and the doors that opens for people. Basically, he is a businessman, who has built his fortune to be the largest individual fortune in the world. He has an ego to match, but he is not stupid. However, we can set aside the bit about genius. He may be, but it has been the people under him who have shown the real inventive genius. Now he will be co-heading the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.

Musk followers will be familiar as well with Musk’s tweets about Dogecoin, a crypto currency. He didn’t invent that one, either. In fact, Dogecoin was started as a joke. It is the first meme coin, specifically taking its name from ‘dog coin’. As to Musk’s connection with it, the Australian founder of Dogecoin has pegged Musk as “a self-absorbed grifter”. Another note worthy of mention, in case you haven’t heard, is that the DoGE ‘department’ does not exist. Such a department would have to be created by Congress, who would then have to approve or trash all the recommendations from the DoGE. Instead it is an initiative created to slash government spending (Heads-up, America!), while the name of the initiative sounds somewhat familiar to the satirical Dogecoin. Is this a Musk initiative, or Trump’s? You can decide.

In some ways the creation of this department is more troubling to the average American than all the Israel-firsters Trump is recommending for his cabinet. The initiative will be co-headed with Vivek Ramaswamy. Have a read through the linked thread and read through the links there if you want to know who Ramaswamy actually is. These two billionaires,

“…will pave the way for my [the Trump] Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies – Essential to the “Save America” Movement. “This will send shockwaves through the system, and anyone involved in Government waste, which is a lot of people!” stated Mr. Musk.”

Again, heads-up, America! Musk claims the agency, which would operate outside of government in an advisory capacity, could cut $2 trillion of government spending, which would be virtually impossible to do without touching Social Security and the DoD budget. If Congress approves those cuts we are going to see a major revolt, both within and outside government, especially if these people try to go after Social Security. Congress’ revolving-door policy regarding industry would be on the chopping block, too. This administration would be facing the Washington ‘Borg’ (establishment, where there are career people inhabiting those agencies. We should not think for a minute they will simply allow their bread and butter to be taken away from them. The ‘shockwaves’ Musk is predicting will be the blowback on the DoGE and the Trump administration.

The Department of Defense is where the cuts really need to come if Trump is truly anti-war. Remember, we went off the gold standard in the West precisely because Washington could not finance its military adventurism. The Pentagon is one of the most corrupted institutions in US government. Remember the ‘missing $2.3 trillion’ under Rumsfeld’s tenure as SecDef? He announced that on 10 Sep 2001. Guess what happened the day after? The $2.3 trillion was memory-holed. The Pentagon is the only federal agency that has not complied with a 1996 law that requires transparency and reporting on an agency’s budget. Do we suspect a little corruption there? And do we expect defense spending to be cut? If all these cabinet picks are confirmed, defense spending will go up. That brings us to our two major conflicts, where the US-backed regimes are not doing very well at all.

There is another point of interest with this administration, too. The US will have its first female Chief of Staff, the most powerful position in the White House aside from Trump. Susie Wiles is a Taurus (14 May 1957) with Sun square to Pluto. She is a born manager. She is also an Evangelical Christian. She is the quiet ‘power behind the throne’ who ran Trump’s campaign this time around and no doubt has had a hand in these cabinet picks. It has been said of Wiles that on first meeting her you wouldn’t know if she will break your kneecaps or bake a casserole for you. With Taurus Sun square Pluto you probably would not want to be on her bad side. Forget the casserole. But with what we currently know of Wiles, which is little, she will run a no-nonsense administration. But her main experience is in running campaigns, not the government. She will have a steep learning curve to start. If she is allowed to run the White House the way she runs campaigns then Trump may actually be able to get some things done, but a lot of that depends on the sort of opposition will face when he returns to office.

Lastly, there are two other names with which we are now familiar who have gained nomnatioons for Trump’s cabinet – Tulsi Gabbard (Director of National Intelligence) and RFK, Jr. (Health and Human Services)… [More on this in the full letter…]

The future of Europe: Emmanuel Todd, French historian, has a new book out from January of this year, The Defeat of the West. It has recently been translated to Italian. There is not currently an edition in English. He recently gave an interview to the Italian daily Corriere di Bologna. (archived, in Italian, original) The book has raised a few eyebrows here in Europe and has brought Todd more than a little criticism. His writings have been controversial – to the powers in Europe who would rather we not focus on history. We will get to a few of his comments in a moment, but first there are some points we should know. We have looked at the phenomenon many times in these letters, but we know our information from mainstream sources about the world at large has been ‘filtered’, shall we say. Our media wants us to focus upon official narrative instead of facts. More specifically, what the media enjoins us to believe is devoid of history – history that gives us context and a wider view. In other words, what we get from mainstream sources is most often focused upon specific events, as if those events arose spontaneously. October 7^th is a good current example of such, which the Israeli hasbara machine would have us believe was an ‘unprovoked’ assault on Israeli society, an isolated event.

The narrative about 7 Oct 2023 is that Hamas just decided one day to terrorize Israeli society and commit all sorts of atrocities. We don’t need to go over it again. But that story is devoid of any historical context, as well as a great many facts. We see no cause and effect in the way our media portrays events and all those following on from them. In esoteric terms, we are not told the karmic causes of what happened on October 7^th, for which we just had the anniversary. Regarding history and causes, the same is true about what we are told about the Russian intervention in Ukraine. Washington and NATO call their invasions ‘interventions’, while the Russians ‘invaded’ Ukraine. All we are told in the West is that the Russians just attacked Ukraine one day, ‘unprovoked’, as Hamas also undertook its Al Aqsa Flood operation ‘unprovoked’. That brings us back to Todd’s book and interview. History is important – accurate history – as much as the powers that be would like to keep it from us. Regarding Europe, he lays out certain facts that our elites would do well to acknowledge to us, and which they more often than not deny themselves. Regarding Western support for Ukraine, he states the following, bracketed items inserted:

“The fact is that the United States has not been able to produce the military equipment that the Ukrainians need, because it is a fact that the power of their industry has been drained by financialization [off-shoring, downsizing]. It is a fact that the Ukrainian army is in retreat and it is a fact that it has difficulty recruiting soldiers. It is a fact that Western economic sanctions have done more damage to the European economy than to the Russian one and it is also a fact that the political stability of France is today more threatened than that of Russia [same with many Western nations]. The restructuring of the Russian economy has been made possible by the fact that this country produces more engineers [and STEM graduates in general] than the United States and by the fact that countries that are not allies or subjects of the United States have continued to trade with Russia.”

This brings us to the future of Europe, or more specifically the EU. Pay careful attention to his answer regarding the future of Europe, which hinges on the outcome of the war in Ukraine, bolding and italics added:

“Q: You argue that Europe has delegated the representation of the West to the United States and is now paying the consequences. How do you think this trend can be changed?

A: “At the moment we can do nothing else. A war has begun. It is the outcome of this war that will decide the fate of Europe. If Russia is defeated in Ukraine, European submission to the Americans will last for a century. If, as I believe, the United States is defeated, NATO will disintegrate and Europe will be left free. Even more important than a Russian victory will be the Russian army’s halt on the Dnieper and the Putin regime’s lack of will to militarily attack Western Europe. With 144 million inhabitants, a declining population and 17 million square kilometers, the Russian state is already struggling to occupy its [own] territory. Russia will have neither the means nor the desire to expand once the borders of pre-communist Russia are reconstituted. The Russophobic hysteria of the West, which fantasizes about the desire for Russian expansion in Europe, is simply ridiculous for a serious historian. The psychological shock that awaits Europeans will be to understand that NATO does not exist to protect us but to control us.“

There is a little bit more, but perhaps the most important insight into the causes of the war:

“Q: Do you think that Europe took the final step towards this subordination [to the US] during the conflicts in the Balkans, and especially with the issue of Kosovo?

A: “No, it all started in Ukraine. During the war in Iraq, after Kosovo, Putin, Schröder and Chirac held joint press conferences. This terrified Washington. It seemed that America could be expelled from the European continent. The separation of Russia from Germany then became a priority for American strategists. Worsening the situation in Ukraine served this purpose. Forcing the Russians to enter the war to prevent the de facto integration of Ukraine into NATO was, initially, a great diplomatic success for Washington. The shock of the war paralyzed Germany and allowed the Americans, in the general confusion, to blow up the Nordstream gas pipeline, symbol of the economic understanding between Germany and Russia. Obviously, in a second phase, that of the American defeat, American control over Europe will be pulverized. Germany and Russia will meet again. This conflict is in a certain sense artificial. The natural thing, in a low-fertility Europe, with its aging population, is the complementarity between German industry and Russian energy and mineral resources.”

More to come…

1. Attributed to ‘an unnamed Israeli general’. But it describes the way the West ‘wins’ wars and rewrites history. ↑
2. Upton Sinclair: I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked (1935), ISBN 0-520-08198-6; repr. University of California Press, 1994, p. 109. ↑
3. Bailey, Alice A., Esoteric Astrology (1951) New York, NY, Lucis Publishing, p. 217 ↑
4. Ibid, p. 68 ↑
5. Ibid, p. 210 ↑
6. Op cit ↑
7. Ibid, p. 68 ↑
8. Op cit ↑
9. Bailey, A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, p. 181 ↑
10. Those nine tests are: sex, physical comfort and money (Physical), fear, hate and ambition (Astral) and pride, serapativeness and cruelty (Mental): Esoteric Astrology, p. 206 ↑
11. See note 3 ↑
12. https://kadampa.org/buddhism/stages-of-the-path ↑
13. Esoteric Astrology, p. 226 ↑