The Virgo Festival 2023

Topics (linked to paragraphs): Virgo Esoteric Virgo Human Virgo The Moon Jupiter The Pisces/Virgo axis The full moon Cancel culture Out of obscurity Our own censors Topical events of importance BRICS Why the big deal? It’s a Russian plot! Esoteric Primakov The material side The challenge with the third ray Putin’s policies? The BRICS declaration A globalist plot for world domination? The schism BRICS currency? – maybe not Saturn/Neptune – A new reality? BRICS’ challenges Trump and law-fare Law-fare and Brazil The new BRICS members Criticisms of BRICS In conclusion

Greetings Everyone!

We have finally had the first touch of autumn here in Rovereto after what has been a very hot few weeks of August. Summer has gone out in a blaze of heat. You may have heard of or even experienced it, with news from Italy. Even here in the north it was unbearable. We thank our lucky stars we had air conditioning installed when the old family house was renovated. August has been hot here for other reasons, too, but we won’t go into it. Suffice it to say our fair city was in the national news for the wrong reasons. That aside, in the last letter, the Leo letter, we looked at Leo as it related to personalities, leaving out the more esoteric side related to the Sun Sirius, the spiritual center of our local universe. The reason for the omission of the Sirian connection was because of developments manifesting in our fast-changing world. This letter will be somewhat an extension on the themes addressed in the last letter, with some qualification. It has been an interesting month in science and technology, too, with news of space, notably of the Moon, mentioned later. You may have heard about that, too. But our exploration of space is symbolic as well, as it advances the scope of scientific knowledge. Space, aside from being the final frontier, is also a form, as well as representing formlessness. It also represents the Great Mother, specifically the ‘womb of space and time’. We will address these themes after another bit of news, because Virgo is associated also with women in general, esoterically with Eve, Isis and Mary. But then there is this other woman…

Word about the place is that is there is a new lady in town. This one has caused a fair bit of discussion on social media, of the more negative kind. In the last letter we heard there is a lady who is sure all that glitters is gold, but the arrival this new lady is going down like the proverbial lead zeppelin – it’s just not flying. I have noticed a few more helicopters than usual flying to and from the hospital here, though. However, this new lady does actually carry gold, in the form of a golden apple. According to the WHO (not the band) she is a new COVID sub-variant named Eris. And she does like to spread discord, mainly between the people and government officials. She is also spreading around the world, we are told. There is talk across social media, speculation about whether or not mask mandates will be reintroduced along with other old COVID restrictions. According to another lady, spokesperson for the White House, Big Pharma is just about ready to roll out a vaccine – you know the type – that will work against Eris (so they tell us) to keep us out of the hospitals and possibly out of the morgues. The Who (not the World Health Organization) has a relevant song, and one of my all-time favorites – “Won’t get fooled again.” It’s one of those timeless old rock classics and it describes the current state of public opinion regarding what has come to be known as the big COVID scam by the majority of people. I guess the powers-that-be will have to come up with another way to keep us tense and at odds with each other, like, I don’t know, a new pandemic maybe (monkey pox didn’t fly either, a fantasy like flying monkeys from The Wizard of Oz), an alien invasion, war with Mexico or China even, or some such.

The health authorities in Italy have already gone through the Greek alphabet in treating the COVID variants. Early this year they released the Kraken sub-variant (in the news, that is), with the Cerberus sub-variant nipping at its heels. The public yawned. Here in Italy there is no talk of re-introducing restrictions of any kind. In fact, we had better not hear of further restrictions, so public discourse goes. Word from our friends and wife’s family in the caregiving and medical fields have not mentioned anything about new variants or, more especially any need to be alarmed about anything. Checking the World-o-Meters site for COVID in Italy, there is virtually nothing in evidence. So, why is the spokesperson for the White House bringing up the need for yet another COVID jab (how many is that now? 7? 8?), when here in Europe there is a sound……of crickets? Maybe the White House needs to distract the public from other more pressing problems, like public debt, laptops, candidates, losing wars, immigration, what have you. You tell me. There is also a Fornax variant. Fornax was the Roman goddess of the furnace who kept bread and corn from being burned in the oven. (I guess I forgot to pray to Fornax when the oven pasta burnt the other day.) Fornax is also a constellation in the southern sky. On a more serious note, if one has concerns about COVID, do take appropriate measures and seek advice, however one’s persuasion. COVID can be a nasty illness with lasting aftereffects for some people. But with all these references to goddesses and persons, that brings us to our present theme – Virgo – the sign most associated with the feminine principle, nurturing and women.

Virgo: About Virgo, then, we will get right to the point of what this sign means to humanity, as any Virgo would normally to do, starting this time with the esoteric:

“Virgo is one of the most significant [signs] in the zodiac for its symbology concerns the whole goal of the evolutionary process which is to shield, nurture and finally reveal the hidden spiritual reality…the pairs of opposites—soul and body…In Virgo, they are blended and of great and supreme importance to each other; the mother protects the germ of the Christ life; matter guards, cherishes and nurtures the hidden soul. The keynote which embodies the truth as to the mission of Virgo most accurately is “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” There is no clearer or more adequate definition of this sign than that.”^[1]

Esoteric Virgo: With Virgo, from the quote, we have the nurturing of the soul in humanity. It is not the relation of the soul to the personality. It is the relation between the Spirit and the form, or personality. This can be seen in two ways – either the spiritual Triad (the ‘soul on its own plane’) and personality in relation, or the monad itself and the personality. Ultimately it is the latter case, even though it is said the Triad is already a perfected being. Virgo rules the spiritual hierarchy associated with the monads (Spirits) in a general sense, whereas Scorpio is associated with the human monads (our ‘Fathers in heaven’). But Virgo is associated with the material aspect, it is said, with densest manifestation, or matter. How can Virgo then be associated with one’s spiritual essence, or monad? It is not a difficult distinction once one understands what we consider to be the highest planes (fields of existence) in our solar system are, from a universal perspective, the mere subplanes of the cosmic physical plane.

Our human existence and evolution from a universal perspective is entirely ‘physical’. This is an esoteric distinction, a bit outside our present discussion. But to get to the crux of what Virgo means to us it will help us to consider that matter and energy are the same. This, science has made quite clear. Matter is simply concreted energy. From the quote preceding, we have no vehicle for experience in this world over the long course of our human evolution unless we incarnate in a dense human body, therein to live our lives as souls growing in wisdom, until we come to the point where we can experience ourselves as energetic beings, released from the prison of material form. Virgo governs the growth of the soul through experience in form. We could end the discussion of Virgo at that point, but there is much more to it. So, let’s unpack this.

Human Virgo: The way Virgo relates to human beings is in the growth of spiritual consciousness through the experience of reincarnation. Reincarnation is different from rebirth, just to note. One can be ‘reborn’ in any realm (plane), but to reincarnate one must take on and possess all bodies at once in a human lifetime – physical, emotional, mental, buddhic and atmic. The monad stands alone. The main work or task in Virgo, whenever Virgo is present as the Sun or rising sign, is to build a bridge between and ultimately combine the concrete (reasoning) mind with the intuitive (conscious) mind, in other words, between the mental and buddhic planes. A very similar situation is represented for us when the Sun and rising signs in a horoscope are of opposite polarities, a theme addressed in the last letter, relevant to our enquiries a bit later here.

The means of connecting soul and personality, thus flooding the personality with spiritual wisdom, is known as constructing the antahkarana. Through experience in human life after human life this bridge is slowly built, first unconsciously and in the later stages of one’s evolution, consciously and deliberately. Mercury governs this process and its implementation, and Mercury is also the orthodox ruler of Virgo.^[2] The process of building the antahkarana goes on carefully, slowly over time. One knows when the time is ripe to consciously and deliberately build this bridge in consciousness when one reaches the point where flashes of real intuition come through – where one knows something in totality without having to think it through, and it is experienced in a state of bliss, the latter a characteristic of the buddhic plane. This is also known as a stage of ‘spiritual quickening’, wherein one becomes conscious that one is ‘spiritually alive’. This is the stage of spiritual awakening. Then progress along The Way becomes quite rapid, ‘flying with the wings of Mercury’. That brings us to the next stage, the esoteric ruler, which is the Moon.

The Moon represents or reflects the 4^th ray^[3], ‘harmony through conflict’. From the quote preceding we see Virgo brings the spirit and personality into close relation and they become quite important to each other. This represents the ‘stage of trial and burning’, wherein the personality is challenged as to its fitness as a vehicle for the growing spiritual life (the soul), while the child within the form – the soul – makes its presence ever-more known and increasingly demanding upon the mother. The child while still in the womb begins to rule the mother, in other words. Any mother can relate, because while one’s child is growing, especially in early stages, its needs become paramount and attention to it is all-consuming. Eventually a point of balance is reached, but often with quite a lot of struggle to adapt to changes and the needs of everyone. Mothers-to-be often have food cravings, reflecting the needs of the fetus, for example, and ever-greater care must be given to the growing life inside. After the ‘quickening phase’, the Jupiter rulership of Virgo comes into prominence.

Jupiter, as it is associated with Virgo, governs the rapid expansion of consciousness and wisdom. Jupiter transmits the 2^nd ray, and Jupiter rules the principles of supply and cohesion in our solar system. These are the stages of accumulation and probation in Buddhist terms, prior to spiritual birth, as in what is called the Transfiguration in human terms, or the Path of Seeing in Buddhist terms, In Alice Bailey’s books this is called the 3^rd human initiation, or the 1^st cosmic initiation, wherein one has the first contact with the monad (one’s true spiritual Self) and the first glimpse of one’s spiritual destiny is had. One also at that point has the first real experience of the space-like nature of reality, what in Buddhist terms is called ‘emptiness’ (perhaps a better term for this in the West is ‘openness’). At that point Virgo has completed its work. Form is thereafter rapidly transcended. The soul stands in its radiance and the mother can go on to other service. The mother and the child, instead of being of one body, are thereafter separate beings, each with their own distinct destinies and work. This is Virgo in a nutshell. In this letter we have reversed the process of describing the signs as is the usual case of going from the orthodox to the esoteric. Now we can look at Virgo in everyday and practical terms and bring in what was described in the last letter.

The Pisces/Virgo axis: In the last letter we looked at the way in which the ages should be seen in astrology, through the nature of axes instead of discreet signs. Last time we looked at Aquarius-Leo. This time we are looking at Pisces-Virgo. In this, the end of the Pisces-Virgo age we note the lunar rulership of Virgo, how it brings two polarities together in the effort to find some mode of harmonizing relationships. In social terms this has manifested as the clash of ideologies in one respect, the clash of polar opposites in yet another aspect (the ideas of ‘good and evil’, ‘material and spiritual’, ‘unity in diversity’ and so on) and all this in the context of what has been an overriding theme of Pisces all along – one of the main tenets of all religions – what in Christianity is the Golden Rule. There were only two main tenets to Christianity, those being to treat everyone as we want to be treated ourselves, and to live according to the examples set by the great spiritual Teachers (the true ones), becoming those examples ourselves. In other words, we shouldn’t see ourselves as separate from anyone, recognizing we are all here through ‘an accident of birth’, in the same way one cannot blame a child for the behaviour of its parents and relatives.

Virgo is known for is exactitude to detail, its overbearing work ethic (for good or ill), its ability to criticise even the smallest thing to the exclusion of all else, yet also for its ability to rally to the service of the immediate need when the call goes forth. When Virgo is the rising sign the path to spiritual fulfilment for that life is to bring forward those conflicts that will better suit one’s life to spiritual purpose, whatever that might be for one’s life. When Virgo is the Sun sign the challenge is to let go of detail and to see the bigger picture, to let go of criticism and to throw oneself into service, to take time to sense the soul in things instead of constantly working and thinking of mundane affairs, to be open to one’s intuitions and those of others, thus to realize we all have our parts to play, free of the opinions of those who say nay to us. Virgo may be one of the lesser-understood signs of the zodiac, but it is also one of the most important in terms of the development of spiritual consciousness. From here we move on to the full moon and world events of note.

The full moon took place on 31 Aug 2023 at 01:35 UT (11:35 am AEST, 30 Aug at 9:35 pm EDT). It was a supermoon. The figure reflects a sombre note, with the Moon conjunct Saturn in Pisces, with Saturn in its retrograde phase. In terms of a mundane chart there are no trines or sextiles to the Sun or Moon. Instead, what we see is what is called a hard rectangle which also involves the asteroid Chiron and the dwarf planet Ceres. All this together represents the growing realization that things have changed, and for people and nations affected by the planetary placements, not in the happiest of manners. Ceres is conjunct the south node, representing choices to be made regarding an old situation. In addition, Pluto is at the bending of the nodes in its retrograde phase, and no doubt we will see some reckoning in terms of relationships. Ceres is square to Pluto. Ceres has been called Pluto’s Little Sister, and indeed it does have plutonian characteristics whenever crises present themselves. Such is the case today. All of the Western powers are facing some rather serious choices as a result of recent political decisions, meaning over the past few years, as indicated by the Saturn/Pluto conjunction in Capricorn from 2020. In all, for the West this is the working out of old Atlantean karma, largely as that relates to power and theft.

There are positive indicators in the full moon figure, of course. The most obvious one is the trine of Mercury to a wide Jupiter/Uranus conjunction in Taurus, with Mercury in the sign it rules, Virgo. It is this we will be discussing shortly, as it relates to the allocation of resources and the reorganization of finances. This is further reinforced by the trine between Uranus and Pluto, with Pluto having made its short and final return into Capricorn for this cycle. With these points in mind we move on to our considerations of the topical events in world affairs, especially as they relate to Virgo. Before that, there is one important topic to address relating to information.

Cancel culture: In recent moves to ensure truthfulness in information, the crowd called the Public Interest Registry, based in Reston Virginia (just outside the Beltway) has seen fit to cancel the.org domains associated with Russia and Iran. These people at the PIR and their overlords “stand for hope for a brighter world.” It says so, right on their web page. Basically, Washington is cancelling sites it doesn’t like, in foreign countries. Some of the sites are familiar to many readers of these letters, sites such as Strategic Culture, South Front and so on. In researching this letter it came to my attention that sites such as those just listed had simply disappeared from the internet. Individuals with .org sites probably have no reason to worry, as those are not seen as a threat to official Western publications. But therein is the reason for the cancellation of the aforementioned sites. That said, the sites have reappeared under .su and .press domains. South Front is a military information site. Strategic Culture is a site based in Russia but featuring essays by largely Western authors who can no longer find a voice in the Western mainstream, including Alastair Crooke and Pepe Escobar, who will be cited here shortly. New Eastern Outlook is another site similar to Strategic Culture with more of a Russian authorship. There are others, but you get the idea. The hyperlinks to those sites give their present locations since they have been reconstituted, if one is inclined to investigate them.

There is another reason those sites have been cancelled, though, and that is ‘The Narratives’ in the West regarding Russia, West Asia and so on are starting to collapse. We can’t have people questioning or actually reading (video), can we? Obviously there are some things the powers-that-be do not want us to know or even question. A strong nation or one that is ‘winning’ has no need to do such a thing. It is along the same line of sanctions. Yet another example is Washington’s seizure of the Iranian state Press TV .com domain, so .com domains are coming under threat, too. That Press TV site is Iran’s largest English-language news site. Washington’s hostility to Iran is well-documented, as is Israel’s hatred of Iran. And in fact much of the American activity in Syria, where yet another attempt at a color revolution is taking place against Assad (video), is actually against Iran and Iranian influence in the region. We shouldn’t forget the Russians are in Syria, too. Not to fret, or maybe so if one wishes, PressTV is still available in English at the hyperlink.

Out of obscurity: I have been blamed in the past for citing so-called ‘obscure sites’ in these letters, such as those just listed, but unless we read widely we are not going to get a balanced view of the world, or even just another view. Western pundits and publications call sites such as those listed above as propaganda or misinformation sites, ignoring their own propaganda. People can make their own decisions about them. They may be obscure sites to Western readers, but outside the West they are quite well known. I have used them in the past because they are published in English but give a view from outside the West, as they reflect the views held across a non-Western readership. If one logs onto foreign-language sites, the latter fact becomes abundantly clear.

Our own censors: Then there are a couple of other little matters in the same vein. The first is the EU’s Digital Services Act. Companies who have over 45 million users, “…will also have to conduct yearly assessments of the risks their platforms pose on a range of issues like public health, kids’ safety and freedom of expression. They will be required to lay out their measures for how they are tackling such risks. The first assessment will have to be finalized on August 25.” Bolding added. All the Big Tech platforms used in the EU now have to conform to what is pronounced as ‘safe’ by the EU pundits and technocrats. What could possibly go wrong? I certainly feel safer online now (not). You may have noticed an increasing number of sites when doing searches that show the message “This site can’t be reached”. That tells you either there is a problem with the site (temporary) or it has been banned (like RT). RT is another site that has been reconstituted to bypass the cancel culture, at least for now. Then, lastly in the United States the Big Four tech guys – Musk (‘X’, Twitter), Zuckerberg (Meta, FB, etc.), Thiel (PayPal, Palantir Technologies) and Andreesen (Netscape) – are teaming up to make certain we all get the most accurate and truthful information possible (sure):

“Four very powerful billionaires—Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Marc Andreessen—are creating a world where “nothing is true and all is spectacle.” If we are to inquire how we got to a place of radical income inequality, post-truth reality, and the looming potential for a second American Civil War, we need look no further than these four—“the biggest wallets,” to paraphrase historian Timothy Snyder, “paying for the most blinding lights…[these four are] the Technocrats, in recognition of the influence of the technocracy movement, founded in the 1930s by Elon Musk’s grandfather, Joshua Haldeman.”

What can we say? This is all about big money, creating appearances, bread and circuses, smoke and mirrors, what have you. These guys and their sites will promote whatever generates income. They are billionaires and their platforms are private and commercial, after all. Ever wonder why Trump is back on Twitter? He’s a money-spinner for Musk. So is Tucker Carlson. All this is to point out that one is only going to get partial truths and a lot of emotional content on social media, and that a very significant portion of truthful information is being blocked or heavily algorithmed out of prime view news. One has to dig for information these days, use a VPN or learn how to use the translate function in web browsers.

There is one more thing to add, speaking of Tucker Carlson. Whatever one thinks of Carlson, since he has been on Twitter, or ‘X’ (perhaps Musk wants to create his version of The X Files), if number of views is anything to go by his message is reaching more people across the West than any of the mainstream news outlets. Now that he is unplugged from Fox he can interview and say what he wants. I was never a fan of Fox or Tucker but I have listened to some of the interviews. The latest one with Orban of Hungary is worth a listen, in particular for a few bits of info about Russia and Putin, how Eastern Europeans view the West, who started the war in Ukraine and so on. If you have not seen the interview, read the article at the first link in this paragraph first. Doctorow (the author) had this to say regarding the Trump interview, plus a bit more:

“The interview was insipid, a bore, filled only with the boastful claims of The Donald to work wonders in bringing America back from the brink of disaster if he wins the 2024 election. But Carlson could extract from Trump no more than the man is willing to give, and that is very little in light of the several legal proceedings that Trump faces.

On the other hand, in Carlson’s European travels his hosts are keen to use their interviews with Carlson to bring their messages directly to a vast American audience that otherwise is inaccessible to them. These messages are deeply critical of leadership in Washington and within the European Union, whom they accuse of wrecking the economy of the Old Continent by their inane sanctions on Russia. At the same time, these hosts allow Carlson to speak to their home audiences and thereby demonstrate to their electorate that not every American has lost his mind or is afraid to speak out against the Biden team.”

Take from it what you will. With the preceding in mind we move on to our current events. For what follows we refer to a compilation on The Destiny of the Nations by Alice Bailey, which saves on quite a few footnotes. All material on the rays and astrology of the nations are referenced on that web page.

Topical events of importance: There were several important events since the last full moon, which we will touch on here:

• The coup in Niger (blog post), the 4^th such in the Sahel. The old French colonies are tired of being looted. France has much for which to answer in its old African colonies. The Americans are looking to replace the French, thus usurping one the two main powers on continental Europe – France and Germany. Germany is being subverted by other means, mainly energy. The issue of foreign (mostly Western) military bases in Africa is also a big concern when it comes to African unity. Violence in the Sahel is not primarily about terrorism anyway, but is instead a matter of internal security for each of the states. The idea the Western powers are in those states to fight terrorism is simply narrative-spinning to justify their presence.

And as of this writing there has been a palace coup in Gabon, overthrowing Ali Bongo, overturning the 2023 election results that saw him re-elected and ending the Bongo dynasty in Gabonese politics after 56 years. Ali Bongo was a French puppet, educated in France and favoured by the Western powers. Gabon was once part of French Equatorial Africa, a French colony in other words. Yet another old French colony (map, scroll to bottom of web page) has overturned its Western-backed government. Gabon has significant reserves of oil, uranium, manganese and is tropical, with forestry being a major economic factor. The nation is 90% covered by forests. We will have to cover Africa later, but it would appear its time has come to throw off the shackles of Western control.

• India landed its Chandrayaan-3 lunar lander on Moon, asserting its place in space tech. The Russians attempted the landing of their Luna-25 craft, which unfortunately crashed onto the lunar surface. It was a loss for science, but the race for the Moon is on – again. The Russians will keep going with their efforts.The EU Digital Services Act and the cancellation of .org sites (primarily Russian and Iranian) that do not comply with official state narratives, just mentioned. For most readers of these letters you will note, if reading older letters, that some links no longer function.
• The BRICS summit, where six new members will be admitted to the bloc on Jan 1, 2024. The new, expanded BRICS will quickly approximate OPEC+, which will be terrifying to the Big Oil companies and in the Beltway.
• The last trained reserves of the Ukrainian army were committed to their counteroffensive and are being trounced. Lost cause is in the air. The collapse of the Ukrainian army is coming quickly now, with speculation about what is coming rife on military blogs and channels. The West is in denial. The finger-pointing has begun, Meanwhile, Biden is looking for ways to prevent a future US president from ending the war.
• The heads of the Wagner group were killed when their plane crashed (blog post). While Western commentary goes on about who killed him, in Russia the discussion is far more nuanced and sophisticated, where there is general agreement that the end result was the best for Russia. The folks in Washington may be hoping for a schism in Russia and a revolt against Putin (as they always do) with Prigozhin’s death, but in Russia it is a topic rapidly being laid to rest. We will not dwell further on it here, except to say the old Wagner PMC drama is finished. Prigozhin was laid to rest in a private ceremony in a family plot next to his father – no state’s honors, no fanfare, no official statements. His co-founder Utkin was buried in a military cemetery with state’s honors.
• Imran Khan was jailed in Pakistan under pressure from Washington. He was just released with the case against him dismissed. But he cannot contest elections for the next five years. Perhaps a shoe dropped in the midst of the Pakistani elites, watching what is happening with the BRICS around them.
• The International North South Transit Corridor (INSTC) became operational, when Iran shipped 36 containers from Russia by rail to Saudi Arabia. The INSTC bypasses the Suez canal, covers about half the transit distance at significantly lower cost and stands as an alternative to the Suez for nations who want to avoid ‘difficulties’ in transporting goods to and from Europe. It will be an important transport corridor into the future for West and Central Asia especially as Eurasian integration continues apace. The nations bordering the Caspian Sea and of the Caucasus region also stand to benefit from it into the future.
• The Maui fires, mainly for the US. (blog post) There were also major fires in Greece (arson was a major factor), the Canary Islands, Italy, California and many other nations.
• Japan begins dumping radioactive water into the ocean from Fukishima. This is otherwise known as tritium (a radioactive hydrogen isotope). The public overreaction to this is understandable, though unfounded and is used as propaganda by anti-nuclear activists. The water being released is not actually dangerous in the quantities being released, but that is not the point, is it? The dumping will go on over the next 40 years. The water has been heavily treated to remove everything except the tritium, which has a half-life of about five years. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida ate “safe and delicious” Fukushima fish on Wednesday. We’re sure he did.

BRICS: Now we get to the crux of the remainder of this letter. The biggest news since the last full moon, which was on 1^st August, has been the BRICS summit in Johannesburg, South Africa. We in the West have heard very little about it, hence much of what follows will seem of little consequence or even as propaganda. It will become apparent quite soon why it is important for people to understand it and what is taking place with that organization. So before we get into it, there are a few preliminary statements to be made. Firstly we do not have to like or agree with the policies of BRICS, the nations involved or their leaders, and probably in many instances that will be the case as we go along here. When it comes to it, most readers of these letters, by design and desire of the leaders of our nations, know very little about the nations involved or their leadership and most of what we have heard through our respective media has been negative in recent years. That was not always the case, for people old enough to remember. But it does benefit us to understand what is happening in the East, including Eastern Europe and why. For the vast majority of people BRICS is just some word that is thrown around and would apparently matter little in everyone’s daily lives. People are more concerned with putting food on the table, keeping a roof over one’s head, making ends meet, making sure one’s children are safe and have a legacy, and perhaps having enough for a vacation every now and then. The nations in the news outside of the West are just something and someone happening ‘over there’, and don’t really concern us. But in fact, these things do matter and here’s why:

When it comes to these nations outside the West, many times they are cast as being inimical to Western values and interests. Any time one of them stands up to the policies of Washington, London, or some other Western power they are spoken of in adversarial terms and cast in a negative light at the very least. Such is the case especially these days with Russia, China, Iran, Syria and a few others. It is because these nations seek to carve out their own sovereignty and direction, sometimes at odds with Western policy values, that our tax dollars – money we’ve worked hard for – are applied toward weakening or even destroying those nations. We probably don’t need to list examples here, as we’ve covered them enough and past letters. But because our tax dollars are used for negative and nefarious purposes, and because of our present economic system in the West (which said nations are actively seeking to circumvent) our own societies are affected very negatively as a result. This doesn’t even address the fact that such meddling by the Western powers puts the entire West in a bad light with much of the world. Hence we see the erosion of our social policies, our wages, our rights and so on. So, it benefits us to understand what is evolving outside the West, to see how our leadership is responding or reacting to said developments, and thus give us opportunities to begin to right sometimes what have been egregious wrongs against other nations and peoples. It is for that purpose we examine BRICS and the current developments along those lines here.

Why the big deal?: There are several reasons why BRICS is such a big deal, compared to the other news that has happened as listed above. Firstly, the bloc is quickly coalescing into an economic bloc that will certainly challenge the dominance of the G7 bloc. It already does. The end result of the summit, the most visible manifestation, was the six new members that are to become active members on January 1^st of 2024. Those include Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Argentina, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. As a bloc the 11 members will control 80% of world’s oil and gas production, will have a GDP by PPP (the only real valid measure of GDP) of 36%, greater than that of the G7 and encompasses 47% of the world’s population. The addition of the six new members is not the end, either. The growth in membership will proceed, year-by-year. There are already 40 other prospective members in line for admission at the next summit to be headed by and held in Russia at Kazan – Algeria, Bangladesh, Bahrain, Belarus, Bolivia, Venezuela, Vietnam, Guinea, Greece, Honduras, Indonesia, Cuba, Kuwait, Morocco, Mexico, Nigeria, Tajikistan, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkiye and Syria. And that is only the official list. The significance of this will become apparent as we go along here. But first it will be helpful to have some context.

It’s a Russian plot!: BRICS has its roots in Russia in the late 1990s, conceptualized by then Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov in what is known as the Primakov doctrine. The idea behind it was to form a triumvirate consisting of Russia, India and China that would stand as a hedge against American influence in central Asia. There were five points to the doctrine:

“Firstly, Russia is viewed as an indispensable actor who pursues an independent foreign policy; Secondly, Russia ought to pursue a multipolar world managed by a concert of major powers; Thirdly, Russia ought to pursue supremacy in the former Soviet sphere of influence and should pursue Eurasian integration; Fourthly, Russia ought to oppose NATO expansion; Fifthly, Russia should pursue a partnership with China.”

Just in the preceding five points we see reference to the multipolar world, Eurasian integration (leading to the EAEU, map, scroll down on web page) and the partnership with China. There is a PDF by the Carnegie Foundation that expresses all this in terms of hard power politics, as the US think tanks normally do. But there is more to this than meets the eye. BRICS is multifaceted, multi-disciplinary, has both material and spiritual components and has led to the current state of affairs with BRICS. It is perhaps useful to keep in mind that the Primakov doctrine was conceptualized during the so-called “end of history” (many Western leaders still believe this), unipolar moment of the United States, when Russia was experiencing is bad old days, with falling life expectancy, being ruled by oligarchs, being sold off bit-by-bit to Western interests, saw it slowly being Balkanized, with a weak and dispirited military, and in the throes of the Western neoliberal experiment. We begin to parse this with the subjective intuitive impulse behind the present initiative.

Esoteric Primakov: The esoteric side of the Primakov doctrine brings together the first ray souls of China and India along with the seventh ray soul of Russia, both rays having a synthesizing modus to the way they express. For this to have come from Russia, it is an expression of the 7^th ray Aquarian soul of Russia: “I link two ways”. It linked European Russia with the Asian nations of China and India in a cooperative effort. It links the 4^th and 5^th root races, the 4^th root race in China and eastern Russia with the 5^th root race in India and European Russia. BRICS has been called an alliance, but probably a better term for it is ‘a cooperative of nations’. An alliance stands against something, but that is not the intent of BRICS in its present form. The Primakov doctrine was looking to bring Russia up from its knees and protect itself rather than forming some sort of military alliance. With the ray structures of the major three members we have a synthetic trio, bringing in a new order (7^th ray) with the will to persist and determination to succeed (1^st ray). Within the trio, aside from the soul motto of Russia, and in terms of how BRICS is working out, we have China “indicating the way” via its Belt and Road Initiative 3^rd ray expansionism, along with India “hiding the Light”. The latter is not in evidence at the moment (well, it is hiding the light, after all), but it is worth noting the trio encompass pretty much all of the trans-Himalayan region, an area where great spiritual initiatory efforts have been made in the past and are still ongoing.

The trans-Himalayan region is a huge spiritual center, with Darjeeling in India being the focal and informing point. There is indeed a hidden Light in what is being birthed in the region, whether or not BRICS is included. We note also according to prophecy that eventually a new and spiritual world religion will be born in Russia.^[4] As to when, we are not told. All this might suggest the Primakov doctrine sounds like some grand spiritual design, and perhaps there is a germ of that in it, but it was based in very practical terms at the time and served the needs of the three nations in bringing them together in mutual cooperation and respect. As well, all three nations had millennia of interaction and exchange between themselves, so there were old familiarities as well as old hostilities, but the former outweighed the latter. None of the three were well off in financial terms and infrastructure in the ‘90s, and all three nations – Russia, India and China – were experiencing high rates of poverty in the ‘90s. In terms of relations, India had long had good relations with Russia and China and Russia had been pursuing a ‘constructive relationship’ since 1992, later to become the Treaty of Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation in 2001. Now with US prodding (much Washington’s dismay), Russia and China share a strategic partnership.

The material side: If one goes to the Wikipedia page on the BRICS one gets the impression that the idea for BRICS was conceived by the chief executive of Goldman Sachs at the time. Wikipedia is known these days for its Atlanticist and editing bias – just a word to the wise. It’s always a good idea to double-check claims. In point of fact, Jim O’Neil may have coined the acronym ‘BRICS’, but it was not a new idea, as we just read. Regarding Jim O’Neill and his like from the Wikipedia article, there is a bit of history here regarding China and Russia. After the fall of the Soviet Union and the neoliberal experiment in Russia, the industrialists and corporate interests in the United States and other Western nations had an eye on Russia for its resources. It is a vast country after all, the size of South America (map, scroll down on webpage). In terms of China, Nixon went to China for two reasons – as part of Kissinger’s ‘triangular diplomacy’, to try to get China peeled away from Russia, and also because he saw the huge potential of the labor market. This was just after the ‘Nixon shock’, when the US abandoned the gold standard and made the US dollar a fiat currency. Kissinger had made one of his famous secret visits to China the month before. At the time, with the advent of the fiat dollar, and progressive removal of labor regulations, China was eyed by the corporate sector for its cheap labor and for its lack of any sort of human rights concerns at the time. We all know the story of what happened next – American manufacturing was off-shored to China.

I can’t find the link now, but there was a statement made to one of the Chinese leaders of time by a US official that China should not innovate, but instead make socks for the world market. In other words, China should just be a good servant and produce cheap goods for the world’s markets, which at the time the West controlled. When China entered the WTO, the hopes were that it would open its own markets and relax its regulations, allowing the US financial interests influence and to gradually take control of the Chinese industrial base. China, with its first ray soul, was never going to allow that. In addition there is another factor that is not really talked about, and that is the relationship between the personalities of New York and China, as well as France, and that is the third ray personalities of those places. We will address that next. The bottom line here is Russia and China both shut out American control over their industry, their resources and influence in their governments. It is that which the US labels as adversarial and autocratic.

The challenge with the third ray: The third ray as it expresses through personalities can be problematic. Its tendency is to spread, to manipulate in its lower expression, toward business and finance, as well as being intellectually brilliant. There is a common complaint against the Chinese, in that when they come into a country they tend to take control of everything. There is a very simple rule for dealing with third ray types: one has to set clear boundaries and regulations with them. At the same time one must be ready to enforce the boundaries or regulations and be assiduous in that enforcement, because the third ray will tend to try to find workarounds. The Jews share the same rays with China^[5] and we see a similar antagonism toward China we often see with Jews. The Africans, regarding the third ray of the French, as in the old French colonies, had seen this third ray lower expression by France and hence we see the rejection of the French neo-colonialist order in Africa. There is no respite for France in Africa now. But in dealing with the third ray, one must be ready as stated to enforce the regulations or be ready and have the will to leave the relationship if matters become untenable. It really is that simple, but difficult in its execution. The third ray type, in its lowest expression, can be very cunning.

Aside from China and France, we also see this third ray in the New York financial sphere, with its connections with the IMF, the World Bank, the use of sanctions, and its law-fare. New York via Washington has controlled much of the world’s finances since WWII through these third ray mechanisms, keeping in mind New York is the beating heart of capitalism in the US and much of the Western world. The second ray soul of New York manifests itself through its function as an immigration point, a melting pot (with Ne York’s various Little Italys, Little Chinas, and so forth), and as the seat of the United Nations. But world reaction now outside the US and increasingly within Europe is against the more negative aspects of New York’s third ray personality. Hence we have the economic warfare that is going on throughout the globe and especially against Europe. So, with the Goldman Sachs effort to introduce self into BRICS, we see the efforts of the latter to try to gain a foothold into this Russian initiative. Obviously, the effort has failed. Macron just tried to do the same thing for France when he requested a seat at the BRICS summit. France was rebuffed then, too, like it is experiencing in Africa.

Putin’s policies?: What we see with Russian policy today, what many people call ‘Putin’s policies’ are simply the expansion on and expression of the Primakov doctrine. These are not the policies of one man. These are the policies of the Russian state, and Putin has been in power for so long because he continues along that line. If he were to deviate from it and try to pursue more neoliberal policies, we would see him ousted. The initial purpose of RIC alignment was to address two of Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms – freedom from fear and freedom from want for the three nations. The UN itself was born out of World War II out of the needs for restoring Roosevelt’s four freedoms. After the establishment of Pax Americana in the post-World War II years the UN became America-centric aside from the Security Council. The Marshall plan with its aid to Western Europe established the bloc of Western democracies. Another side to the BRICS cooperative was to restore the initial purpose of the UN, getting fair representation and sovereignty to the individual states. In one respect the BRICS bloc is an alternative to the UN Western order and on the other side is meant as a restorative to the original intention of the UN – a community of nations under equality and justice. BRICS is a transitional group of nations leading into the Aquarian age, as was the original intent of the UN. It is appearing as a viable alternative for the Global South – the nations outside the West – to enable them to reclaim first their economic sovereignty and later their security within their national borders. BRICS is in the nature of a great experiment in governance, international relations and economics.

The BRICS declaration: At the recent summit the BRICS group produced a manifesto for their future development and work. The following points in it are of great interest, to be discussed after (bolding added):

2. We reaffirm our commitment to the BRICS spirit of mutual respect and understanding, sovereign equality, solidarity, democracy, openness, inclusiveness, strengthened collaboration and consensus. As we build upon 15 years of BRICS Summits, we further commit ourselves to strengthening the framework of mutually beneficial BRICS cooperation under the three pillars of political and security, economic and financial, and cultural and people-to-people cooperation and to enhancing our strategic partnership for the benefit of our people through the promotion of peace, a more representative, fairer international order, a reinvigorated and reformed multilateral system, sustainable development and inclusive growth. Partnership for Inclusive Multilateralism

3. We reiterate our commitment to inclusive multilateralism and upholding international law, including the purposes and principles enshrined in the Charter of 2 the United Nations (UN) as its indispensable cornerstone, and the central role of the UN in an international system in which sovereign states cooperate to maintain peace and security, advance sustainable development, ensure the promotion and protection of democracy, human rights and fundamental freedoms for all, and promoting cooperation based on the spirit of solidarity, mutual respect, justice and equality.

Those are noble words and ideals. Now, compare those to these two quotes:

“Blocs in themselves can be good and proper if they follow lines of natural cleavages, of language differences and of cultural distinctions. They can be essentially right if they are formed for economic, educational, religious and social aims and can therefore provide no true cause for alarm. Such blocs would be cultural and not militaristic, economic and not greedy, and they could provide a normal and progressive movement away from the separative nationalism of the past and towards the distant creation of the One World, and the One Humanity. This will some day be seen, but the time is not yet.^[6]

And,

The emerging economic/trade blocs deemed advisable:

• • One based on the world democracies: The US, UK, Commonwealth states and northern Europe, including Scandinavia and Germany
  • One based around the USSR [Russian Federation], China and eventually Japan, along with the rest of Asia and eastern Europe
  • One based on the Latin and Mediterranean nations including France, and some of the Balkan states and South America. [the latter due to the influences of France, Portugal and Spain]^[7]

And lastly,

“The inner structure of the World Federation of Nations will eventually be equally well organised, with its outer form taking rapid shape by 2025. [We see this is the rising multipolar world.] Do not infer from this that we shall have a perfected world religion and a complete community of nations. Not so rapidly does nature move; but the concept and the idea will be universally recognised, universally desired, and generally worked for, and when these conditions exist nothing can stop the appearance of the ultimate physical form for that cycle.”^[8]

We already have the first two bulleted points above, but at the moment they are in conflict with each other, largely due to the Western powers. We have looked at this in past letters and will not go over old ground. The causes of the present conflict are well known across the world outside the West, while the people of the West are slowly waking up to the fact. What we see developing, and in its very early stages is the formation of the blocs mentioned in the second bullet point above, with the idea birthed in the Russian Federation and given form with the agreement of India and China. This was accomplished in 2006, from the Wikipedia entry on BRICS.

A globalist plot for world domination?: There is some thinking that the BRICS bloc is a financial globalist project, along with the idea that somehow Vladimir Putin is associated with the WEF. Those are also mistaken ideas. The BRICS bloc is actually pursuing a path different from the wave of financialized globalization promoted by the West in the ‘90s and early part of this century. At the time of the formation of BRICS, when it was taking shape back in the late 90s, financial capitalist globalization and financial capitalism were all the rage across the West and there was still hope among the Western capitalists and many of similar views within the Eastern states that Russia and China would be part of that project. In fact, O’Neil thought the BRIC bloc was keen to embrace global capitalism. That was not to be. In reality the BRIC nations had other ideas. Their model was away from market (financialized) capitalism toward industrial capitalism and mixed economies, which did not go down well in Washington, New York and London. South Africa was added in 2010, becoming BRICS. The turning point for Russia was when the US abandoned its promise to move “not one inch eastward”, and especially when NATO began its bombing of the old Yugoslavia. There was a turning point in the relations between the old Cold War blocs, and it came at the time of the Shambala impact at the turn of the millennium.

The schism: In 1999 Primakov was on a plane headed to Washington for high-level economic and security talks. Three hours into his trip across the Atlantic, when news came that NATO had started bombing Yugoslavia, Primakov turned his plane around in mid-flight and returned to Russia. Primakov was acting Russian President at the time due to Yeltsin’s illness. Vladimir Putin became Russian President the next year. Relations between Russia and the US soured quickly after that. Initially Washington had hoped that Putin would be agreeable still to Western financial reform within Russia, but they hadn’t counted on Putin’s patriotism toward Russia and the reconstruction of Russia on Russian terms. The West was busy trying to deconstruct Russia at the time. It all came to a head in 2007 with Putin’s now famous speech at the Munich Security Conference (worth reading again), denouncing the hegemony of the West. At that point he was not seen as a pariah in the West. The rest, as we say, is history. The year prior the core of BRICS (then RIC) was consolidated. US relations with China had been turning sour, too, especially since 1980 when Congress passed the Taiwan Relations Act. Then in 1989 the US and UK attempted a color revolution in China that resulted in the June 4^th Incident, as it is called in China, what is known in the West as the ‘Tiananmen massacre’. Relations between the US and China have been strained ever since. Kissinger’s realpolitik advice to the US State Department was to try to play off Russia and China against each other, in what he called ‘triangular diplomacy’, so that either one would fall easier prey to the West’s hegemony. We see the resulting failure of that policy today. So, in the preceding we have the backdrop and context to the formation of BRICS.

BRICS currency? – maybe not: Prior to the summit there was speculation that a new BRICS currency would be introduced, but that came to naught. Instead, there was the addition of the six new members. Keep in mind, the Russia, China, Iran triangle form the most powerful military/security structure within the bloc. They are also all three members of the SCO, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (map, scroll down on web page), which some commenters refer to as a sort of Asian NATO. The road to multipolarity will be long and rocky. And BRICS is unlikely to dethrone the US dollar, not in the immediate future. That is not the purpose of the bloc anyway, as so many commentators have assumed. Sergei Lavrov had this to say about ‘dethroning the dollar’:

“Moscow will continue expanding trade relations with ‘friendly’ countries and boost the use of national currencies, cutting the US dollar’s share, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated on Friday. According to the top diplomat, Moscow has no intention of undermining the US currency’s global role, but Washington is doing that itself. “We obviously are not developing our line against the US, against the West. It’s not that we want to ruin the dollar. The US no longer ensures the dollar’s global role that could satisfy everyone. That’s the problem,” Lavrov told students at the Moscow State Institute for International Relations (MGIMO).”

Bolding added, which highlights the significant point. Ruining the dollar would destabilized the entire world economy, hurting everyone. So, developing new modes of exchange are happening slowly. The fact the new BRICS currency was not in evidence at the end of this summit is actually of little consequence. The aim of all the members now, including the newcomers, is to solidify the instruments of exchange in their own currencies when conducting trade amongst each other. They have also added that the US dollar is not excluded. This is not an anti-American bloc or construct, which is important to note. The Americans and Western Europeans are perfectly within their rights to join once they abandon their hegemonic, imperialistic attitudes and are willing to exchange trade on a win-win basis instead of the zero-sum competition. The BRICS bloc will be reinforcing, or reaffirming the UN charter with the aim of moving what is otherwise known as the Global South back into the founding principles of the UN charter. This will take some time, as the Western powers are still struggling to assert their dominance in international trade. But this idea of a new currency has an astrological indicator. We refer here to the synodic conjunction of Saturn and Neptune at the zero Aries point, mentioned in past letters (Topic: “A great occult event”). We will expand a bit on it here.

Saturn/Neptune – A new reality?: The exact Saturn/Neptune conjunction is on 20 Feb 2026 at 0°Ar44, but the planets are within a degree of orb of each other the year before (that year, 2025), starting on the 9^th of Jun at the 1^st and 2^nd degrees of Aries, exactly. They remain within orb at the 2^nd degree of Aries until mid-July, when they both turn retrograde and enter into a most interesting combination, sextile Uranus on one side (which will have just entered Gemini) and sextile to Pluto in the other side, which will be retrograde in Aquarius. If there is to be the introduction of a BRICS currency, we may expect it at that point, or at that juncture it may be at a point of precipitation. There is more. Probably closer to the truth, the exchange mechanisms between states will have been completed, solidified and functioning, thus bypassing the ability of the Western powers (or any other power) to impose sanctions on the BRICS member states. Thus, that will end the ability of the US in particular to practice its ‘coercive diplomacy’, brandishing as an economic weapon the threat of banishment from the SWIFT.

The exact Saturn/Neptune conjunction finishes a partial solar eclipse very close to 0° Libra (at 29Vi04), that eclipse taking place on 21 Sep 2025. That eclipse forms a Grand Trine with the configuration just mentioned, actually forming a kite configuration with the focal point at the eclipse degree. The eclipse is also the new moon (which all solar eclipses are). What this represents is a new chapter being opened, to be confirmed (precipitated) with the exact Saturn/Neptune conjunction early in 2026. At the exact conjunction both planets are in direct motion.

In and of itself the Saturn/Neptune conjunction is quite an interesting one. It represents in its two main manifestations the struggle between material realities (Saturn) and ideals (Neptune); or it can represent the ‘grounding’ (Saturn) of an ideal in everyday circumstances and civil structures, the latter seen in the mundane perspective. The synodic conjunction appears to have a connection with monetary affairs, though that needs further investigation, This is where the idea of a BRICS currency comes in, as that is seen as an ideal outcome for the emerging bloc, at least by some commentary. And indeed, it has been pointed out that ‘currency’ may not at all be a single standard currency, as we would see in the euro or the US dollar. Instead it could represent a ‘basket of currencies’ used in mutual trade, with a single digital pathway for international settlements, with some comment pointing to a central bank digital currency (CBDC), which is much derided on the internet these days. There was almost breathless comment before that summit about a BRICS currency emerging from the summit, but it was not to be. And that brings in another point.

BRICS’ challenges: The BRICS bloc is not a solid, mighty pact as many might hope. International relations between the five founding members are not in themselves rock-solid and two of the members – Brazil and South Africa – still have a ways to go in reclaiming their sovereignty from the Western powers, especially the US in the case of Brazil, and the UK/US in the case of South Africa. And there are still the tensions between China and India, most pointedly over trade and the northern border (Kashmir) between the two. Concerning the latter, Xi and Modi have agreed to de-escalate tensions there as a result of the summit, which is actually a sigh of relief for the world, as those tensions are between two nuclear-armed states. And in January next year we have the addition of the six new members to the bloc, which will bring its own set of challenges. No one said BRICS was going to be easy. And it will certainly take time, as in a few years at least, to work out all the monetary settlement mechanisms. But those are going ahead apace. Then, there are the troublemakers for the bloc who want at all costs to make certain it never gets off the ground.

Who in the world would want to prevent an economic bloc with principles that the BRICS espouses from coming to fruition, we might ask? And why would the addition of the six new members cause such consternation among some of the capitalist elitists? To illustrate the latter question, on the announcement of the new additions, one Gunther Fehlinger sent out a tweet calling to dismantle BRICS countries, calling the bloc a ‘hostile Alliance’. This guy is a nobody and attention-seeker, and many of the comments under the tweet are interesting, but it is brought up here to underline a current of thought and a covert movement underway by the Western powers regarding BRICS. In setting up the cross-border payments in trade between BRICS members the dollar can be bypassed as a necessity in trade. The ASEAN nations (map, scroll down on web page) are following suit. In other words, the main weapon in the US/UK/EU arsenal to maintain the financial hegemony of the Western powers is quickly being undercut. Setting up these mechanisms to bypass the SWIFT system, which is what they will be, puts a serious kink in the ability of the Western powers to maintain sanctions on the BRICS member countries. And when those countries set up their own currency or basket of currencies the days of sanctions as a weapon will be ended, meaning also the dominance of the dollar and euro as must-have currencies in trade. So, we can look for hybrid warfare and lawfare to be used against these nations increasingly as it becomes apparent they will be successful in their efforts to bypass SWIFT.

Trump and law-fare: Speaking of law-fare, corruption, purity and Virgo, we see a topical example of law-fare working out in the US, with the constant stream of indictments that are levied against Trump. We won’t go into this here because the law is more rightly examined under Libra, so we leave that longer explanation for the next letter. However in terms of topical events since the last full moon, we should be aware that the arrest of Trump is not really about justice. As much as the liberals, Democrats, people who hate Trump – perhaps I repeat myself – want to see Trump go to prison, it is very unlikely to happen. He is too wealthy, retains a coterie of high-powered lawyers who are able to find every loophole and know every trick in the law books to keep him out of prison and then the big reason – from being in the White House for four years, Trump has been able to accumulate quite a bit of information on the skeletons in the many closets of Washington. And then ask: Has any US president ever gone jail? The answer obviously is no. Actually, the reason for the indictments and legal battles is precisely to keep Trump from sitting in the Oval Office again for another four years, and nothing more. Once he is ousted from campaigning or loses the election next year the indictments are likely to be buried. But this topic is only illustrative, given we are talking about BRICS. Law-fare is used as a matter of course by the US to keep other nations on the back foot.

Law-fare and Brazil: Now, Trump is mentioned here for the benefit of US readers, but there is another example of how law-fare has been used and that is in Brazil, at late notably against Lula. Corruption in Brazilian life and politics has been endemic at every level of society since colonial days. Nothing happens in Brazil of any major import unless ‘the wheels are greased’. It is a favorite tactic of right-wing politicians to smear left-wing politicians with charges of corruption. But the fact is it is endemic in Brazilian politics on all sides, as old as politics itself, and no less so in the United States. And the politicians in Washington are quite happy to see that corruption persist in Brazil, despite all the bloviating about fighting corruption, saving democracy, so on and so forth. That corruption allows US politicians and corporations to retain their power over Brazil via influence peddling. But far be it for the US to meddle in some other nation’s politics.

Lula’s biggest mistake, if one can call it that, was to try to step out of the box, as it were, and turn toward cooperation with two of America’s so-called biggest adversaries, Russia and China. The backlash was immediate, charges were brought through the corrupt Brazilian courts, Lula was sent to prison as well as Temer’s deputy and eventual Brazilian President, Dilma Rousseff. Both have been released, with Lula now President and Dilma now head of the New Development Bank – the BRICS Bank, if that tells you anything regarding her political leanings. From here on we will see negative pieces in publications like The Economist and the Financial Times in the mainstream, sites like Zero Hedge and so on, painting BRICS in a negative light. We also see this already in terms of China (China is always just about ready to collapse, you know?), the weakness of Russia’s economy, though it is now the world’s fifth-largest economy by PPP, and so on. We are also going to see protests within these countries, overly magnified by the Western press, along with efforts to destabilize the governments. The Western powers since the start of the Russian SMO have stated openly they want to Balkanize Russia. The point is, the nations chained to the neoliberal fiat currencies, especially the people who become wealthy in those nations, will use whatever they have in their arsenals to prevent the emergence of commodity-backed currencies. With these points in mind there are some other things to consider regarding these new members of the BRICS group.

The new BRICS members: Looking at Africa, with new members Egypt and Ethiopia, there is one major thing that stands out: Egypt has control over the Suez Canal, along which 15% of the world’s commerce passes. Egypt has long had good relations with Russia in general. This is not to say that Egypt would place restrictions on the canal. But the position of Egypt as a chokepoint in the supply of goods to southern and Western Europe is not lost on the Western powers when they hear that Egypt is looking East. Ethiopia lies at the other end of the Red Sea opposite the Suez Canal. Ethiopia is landlocked, but it is also long been independent, that is not colonized by the European powers. Thus it has more independence within Africa. It also lies on the eastern side or eastern end of the Sahel, which has recently been in the news, re: Niger and Gabon.

Looking at South America in terms of the new BRICS members, and looking at a map of South America, we see that Brazil and Argentina comprise most of the landmass of South America. Brazil and Argentina are also two of the strongest economies in South America. The Monroe Doctrine, as far as the United States is concerned, it is still active. However, one-by-one the South American states are also turning away from the coercive policies of Washington and are gradually lining up behind the BRICS and other similar movements. Lastly, looking at West Asia, we have Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UAE as new BRICS members. These three really have Washington and the Western European powers nervous. The reason why is obvious: those countries control the lion’s share of the world’s oil and gas as well as the ability to control pricing. The US has recently been sending troops to West Asia, notably in Syria and Iraq, and there can be little doubt that control over the world’s oil fields is one of the reasons. The US has recently unfrozen Iranian assets that had been frozen by Korea. This is in response to prisoner exchanges between the two nations, but it also applies to Iran’s nuclear program. Tensions in Syria have been escalating recently, with exchanges between Russian and American aircraft, with increased Israeli bombings, with Russian aircraft bombing terrorist positions in Idlib, and with a generalized uptick in conflicts in northeastern Syria, where the Americans in particular have been stealing Syria’s oil. Gen. Mark Milley recently stated that the US would be in Syria and Iraq for many years to come. That would appear to be doubtful, especially with the rising tensions in Israel, with increasing tensions between Russia and the US and Syria, with Syria soon to apply to join BRICS, and so on.

The Serbs now want to join BRICS, turning their backs on EU membership, which was a contested move within Serbia anyway. That would put a BRICS nation right on the doorstep of the EU. It would also represent the beginning of a reversal of the very reason Yugoslavia was destroyed – socialism – along with its good relations with the USSR/Russia. The Serbs had been resistant to EU membership but had been facing pressure from other EU states to join, which would also have led to pressure to join NATO afterwards. The Serbs and Russians see each other as brotherly peoples.

Criticisms of BRICS: The criticisms of the BRICS bloc usually center around Russia and China, with claims of their authoritarianism, lack of human rights, exclusivity, ‘debt-trap diplomacy’ (which is actually practiced by the IMF video) and so on. The common complaint with China is that they come in and take over everything. Maybe so, but if one listens to the video just linked, one sees another side of that coin. With all the negative press in the West regarding some of the nations now in the BRICS bloc, what are we to think? Well, here’s a question: If the Russians and Chinese are so bad, why have a quarter of the world’s nations lined up to join the bloc, with probably more to join the queue? The point is we should probably investigate this further. Do we really know anything about Putin or Xi Jinping, do we care or are we just happy to accept they are as autocratic as we are told they are? Are we aware of Modi’s fascist tendencies? Do we really understand Russia or China or do we project our Western values onto them and then stand befuddled as to why those nations reject them? Have we considered that most of the world’s peoples are mainly conservative, as in traditional conservatives rather than what passes for conservatism in the West these days? Even in our own nations people in the majority tend to be traditionally conservative in their views. Do we realize that much of the world actually rejects what we call ‘liberal values’ as they are presented today, as in alphabet genders, the elevation of the individual over the community and nation, the rejection of religion and so forth? If we can honestly answer these questions, staying open-minded we may find the answers to why the BRICS is starting to really take off now and why it presents an opportunity for much of the world.

In conclusion, what has been this long discussion in this letter regarding the evolving multipolar world we see certain trajectories presented to us – the end of the dominance of one sphere of influence and the rising of a new one; the changing of cycles, both large and small (as in between the astrological ages and lesser ray/subjective cycles); the emergence of the soul mottos of certain nations as well as what needs to be overcome or addressed so the souls of other nations can rightly express theirs; the balance some nations have achieved, most often through terrific struggle, while younger nations have yet to go through those challenges; the clashing of ideologies that is quickly leading us to a point of realization and of resolution; the needed resolution of old karmas, especially those of ancient (Atlantean) origin; the needed readjustment of monetary and value systems in the world – we could go on but perhaps the idea is clear enough. All these factors are present before us now and they present a very confusing picture to much of the world. Added to this is the effort by controlling interests in all nations to steer public opinion along desired lines, for good or for ill. At one and the same time we deal with the demands of our own individual spiritual destiny in the face of what the world (our karma, individual and collective) demands of us. But Virgo gives us a clue in how to face all this – in unity, in understanding borne of diverse and sometimes contrasting evidence, and most of all in our growing sense of love for all life on our little globe. The path is not so difficult when we let go of criticism and sit and calmly listen, first to other voices and then gauged by the inner voice within each of us, the voice of our own soul. Virgo urges us to calm reflection and goal-fitness. Let us each set aside time and space for such reflection. In so doing our path ahead becomes clear.

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