It’s Never Too Late to Become a Virgin…

April 29, 2008 By

The US has a Federally funded programme which encourages young people to remain celibate until marriage. The programme is known as the Silver Ring Thing, because the teenagers involved wear a silver ring (on their finger) as a sign of their commitment to celibacy.

According to BBC news, the US government is considering cutting the funding, following a report that one in four teenage girls has a sexually transmitted disease. And with some 750,000 teenage pregnancies a year, America has one of the highest teen birth rates in the developed world.

“This national programme which has wasted $1.5bn (£750m) of tax money is a failure and our teens are paying the price,” says Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood “We’ve been wasting money on programmes that don’t work and we’re seeing the consequences every single day.”

State governments receive federal money they must match to fund abstinence programmes. At least 17 states have opted out of the system and others have suspended funding while Congress investigates whether such programmes work.

Critics say there is no evidence that they delay sexual activity and teenagers who have taken a vow of virginity are less likely to use protection if they break their promise.”

Such teenagers do not get taught about contraception. As 15 year-old Mildred from Arizona says: “We get sex-ed classes in school and that should be where teens get the right information – but that isn’t happening.”

The argument in favour of abstinence is put by a Texan lawyer, who describes himself as a member of the religious right:

“I am convinced that abstinence is the only way for kids,” he says. “You begin by teaching the consequences of bad behaviour and the benefits of proper behaviour and you do that in a way that a child can grasp. “Self control leads to a happy, joyful life. If we can learn to control the most basic of drives – the sex drive – for good, then we can control drugs, gangs, alcohol and abusive anger.”

If you’ve already had sex, it’s not too late: Teenagers who do have sex before marriage are given another chance by becoming ‘secondary virgins’. “Of course, if you view virginity as number one, and you’ve slept with someone, of course it’s going to be different and you can never go back – but that doesn’t mean there’s no tomorrow,” explains Ashley, who also says she believes teenagers who experiment with sex are laying the foundations for troubled relationships later in life. “A lot of the young people I know who go around having experiences with lots of different people are just preparing themselves for not knowing how to be committed to somebody. Once you get into the practice of doing whatever you want, it’s hard to change when you’re older.”

16 year-old Josh has this to say: “I have a lot of close friends and we pretty much agree on the same thing so we keep each other in line most of the time.”

There’s plenty of room for comedy in all this. Exactly how do Josh and his friends keep each other in line? Do they spray each other with hosepipes? And how exactly do you control the sex drive ‘for good’? Do you have a special box with a pink ribbon on it called ‘Sex Drive’ that you keep in the attic? And where does celibacy end and sex start? When you hold hands? Or is it more akin to Bill Clinton’s definition of sexual relations? And then there are the secondary – i.e. 2nd class – virgins. Do they have to stand in the corner? Are they infectious?

The Silver Ring Thing began in 1996, but it gained Federal funding in 2003 under one of George Bush’s faith-based initiatives. As a Brit, it’s gobsmacking that this sort of stuff could be taken seriously enough to be funded by a government. It’s understandable that a country might have small religious cults that think like this, but not mainstream society. OK, you have Catholic countries which are in theory like this, but they don’t seem to take it seriously. They just go to the confessional and everything is all right again.

Astrologically, I’d see it as Mars (sex drive) square to Neptune (loss and confusion) in the US chart. Mars in Gemini also suggests hypocrisy (like Eliot Spitzer, with his unaspected Sun in Gemini), as well as there being another side to the issue, which is the glamorization of sex that you get in advertising, the film industry and the media generally.

It is interesting that the Silver Ring Thing got Federal funding in 2003, at a time when Pluto was starting to oppose the US natal Mars at 21 Gemini, and squaring natal Neptune at 22 Virgo. It was an attempt at sexual (Mars) repression (Pluto).

So is there an answer? What would you say to a client who turned up with this aspect, who was by turns priggish and licentious? And liked to play cowboys (Mars-Neptune again) at weekends? I’m not sure what I’d say. But I might start with the Sun square Saturn that you get in the US chart, because this is the major character challenge. It makes for someone – or a country – who is very driven and achievement-oriented, but who over-identifies with this and can never get enough and is not at ease with himself, does not feel a solid confident foundation within himself.

A lot of stuff can come out in the sexual arena when we are imbalanced elsewhere. Sexual excess and compulsiveness can be a compensation for the lack of ease and pleasure in the rest of your life, which Sun square Saturn can easily lead to. Sexual repression can be an expression of guilt about bodily pleasure (and the US has no personal planets in earth) and self-loathing: the over-achievement of Sun square Saturn can be a sort of compensation for this self-loathing.

So this is what I might say: as long as you keep driving yourself like this, as long as you have to keep proving you are number one (negative Saturn is very hierarchical), sex is going to remain a tangled and compulsive issue for you. If you can stop and face yourself, and stop running from the imaginary abyss beneath your feet, then your Mars will have a chance to be a bit more normal. Or as normal as Mars in Gemini square Neptune can ever be! If you want normal, try Mars in Capricorn, which is an expert at the missionary position and doing its bedroom duty. Mars in Gemini is more interesting and experimental and – square Neptune – imaginative.

But what about George Bush Himself, who was ultimately responsible for funding the Silver Ring Thing under his ‘faith-based initiatives’ scheme? I never think of GWB as having a sexual dimension, and I sometimes wonder where it is. I can say for sure that he has had sex at least twice in his life, because he has 2 daughters. Do George and Laura pray together for forgiveness afterwards? Do women have orgasms in his world?

What I feel with GWB is that he views sex as something to be
controlled, and has channelled much of his own urge into the pursuit of power. This is complete speculation on my part. His ancestor Richard Bush was a member of the Plymouth Colony 300 years ago, and GWB seems to me to be a throwback to those times.

He has unaspected Mars in Virgo. So it may be quite easy for him to shovel his sex drive off to one side, for it is not well integrated with the rest of his personality. Virgo can have integrity, but can also be moralising, prudish and hypocritical. Virgo is the virgin, but is also associated with ‘oriental moon ecstasies’ (Frances Yates, Astrea, p32). Where does George Bush get his ecstasy? Probably in that more war-like manifestation of his Mars, whether it was blowing-up frogs as a kid, sending record numbers to the execution chamber while Governor of Texas, or creating carnage in his war against Islam.

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A Mini-Blogvacation

April 28, 2008 By

Dear readers, I am taking a few days off to handle the transit of Pluto to natal Mars. Rest assured that when I return I will have new insights about this powerful combination of planets and a new sympathy for Hillary Clinton, who has these guys conjunct in her chart.

Meanwhile, Dharmaruci will be regaling you with interesting tales from the world and his world, and you can also browse the archives of this blog for tidbits from the past, or peruse the articles page of my website for lots more.

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Pluto and Enhanced Interrogation Techniques

April 28, 2008 By

Posted by Dharmaruci

From the New York Times:

“The Justice Department has told Congress that American intelligence operatives attempting to thwart terrorist attacks can legally use interrogation methods that might otherwise be prohibited under international law…

Determining the legal boundaries for interrogating terrorism suspects has been a struggle for the Bush administration.”

This is Pluto in Capricorn: setting the boundaries (Capricorn) around torture (Pluto). I think it’s also a measure of how hideous the present US administration is, that you end up with this sort of debate. It’s like something from a horror spoof.

But it’s no surprise given that the 2005 Presidential Inauguration chart has a Mars-Pluto in Sag conjunction in the 8th House: secret (8th House) torture (Pluto) in a war of ideologies (Mars in Sagittarius). The 8th House suggests that while practices like waterboarding are being publicly debated, the CIA under Bush may well be getting up to much worse stuff that the legal system never gets to hear about.

But at the same time, does the US do anything that other countries do not do? At least it is more out in the open and subject to public scrutiny, which I think is a good thing. Of course, it also means that some practices become formally legitimised and therefore more widespread. It’ll be the local police force wanting to use waterboarding next.

It was the Gestapo, incidentally, who came up with the term ‘Refined Interrogation Techniques’ as a euphemism for torture. The Bush administration also has ‘Special Methods of Questioning’, ‘Extraordinary Rendition’ (for kidnapping), ‘Sleep Management’ and ‘Stress Position’. The themes of political misuse of language and government control are central to George Orwell’s 1984, a book whose time may have come under Pluto in Capricorn. I’m not suggesting that society will end up fully like Orwell suggests it could, rather that these themes are likely to be strongly present and strongly debated.

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Sunday Poetry: Ode to Gaia

April 27, 2008 By

It is fitting that Earth Day takes place when the Sun is in the earthy sign of Taurus. I feel that the Earth is the true ruler of Taurus as Taurus signifies the culmination of all that life on Earth has to offer.


Ode to Gaia
I woke to soft mists over the river,
A chilled, liquid, world where dew falls as rain
From the trees in muted musical notes
And the air is faintly luminescent…
A surreal place of contrasts and shadows
In pastel hues applied with a soft brush.

I kneel beside last night’s campfire and brush
Away ash, which settles on the river…
A fine, white, snow swirling in dark shadows
Of mist and water…a breeze brings more rain,
Drops hissing on coals, red and luminescent
As birds announce the sunrise with bright notes.

Upon my pad, a monarch reads my notes.
Later in the day, I will hear the brush
Of its wings in my mind, luminescent
Beats, which bubble in memory’s river.
Another breeze and more dew falls as rain,
Some glimmering pale gold in the shadows.

Slowly, the mists flow into the shadows,
There to sleep ‘till crickets play the first notes
Of tomorrow…dew is no longer rain,
Each drop a glowing gem at the first brush
Of the sun, which also turns the river
Into gold, molten and luminescent.

No better word would do…luminescent…
Glittering light dances where once shadows
And mists were pastels over the river…
And the music! Nature’s symphonic notes!
The birds, the river and the whisk-whisk brush
Of leaves form harmonies as soft, warm rain.

Sadness fills me and tears fall as rain.
These days are fragile things, luminescent
Once-was-could be’s…for man chooses to brush
Such beauty aside…he prefers shadows,
His music consists of discordant notes
Of waste which pollutes earth, air and river.

Beautiful the river! How sweet the rain!
I’ll record these notes in luminescent
Script and soft shadows, with my soul the brush!

–Poetry by E.W. Richardson


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Britain's biggest banks use astrology!

April 25, 2008 By

From Newsmonster:

Christeen Skinner blinks at the screen of her computer and takes another slurp of coffee. It’s half past seven in the morning and she’s preparing for a crucial meeting with the chief executive of the High and Mighty fashion chain.

Apart from the black cat dozing on her lap, the only clue to Christeen’s occupation as a 21st century astrologer is a copy of an Ephemeris that lies open at a page marked “Mercury March 25th”.

“The financial crisis has ensured that I’m busier than ever,” says Christeen. “People in the City need to know what is just around the corner. I can help with that.”

Christeen is one of a growing, albeit secretive, network of astrologers who work for seemingly conservative British institutions such as high street banks, City investment funds and retailers. Desperate to avoid financial meltdown in the ongoing ‘credit crunch’ and to spot fashions and consumer trends before they start, these institutions have turned to the stars to divine the future.

“Most academics distrust astrology and regard it as mumbo-jumbo,” she says. “The thing is, it works. Nobody’s sure how it works but it does. Most of my clients are businesspeople who are very canny. If it didn’t work for them, then why would they use it?”

One of Christeen’s clients is Judith Levy, chief executive of the High and Mighty retail chain.

“I’m fairly pragmatic,” says Judith. “I will only spend money on an astrologer if the decision I have to take is very important – the kind of decision which will cost me a lot of money if I get it wrong.

“When we launched our Kayak brand a few years ago we used astrology to decide the launch date. Since then, it has gone from strength to strength. It’s one of our best selling brands.”

Astrology is generally seen as just a bit of harmless fun with no predictive power at all. After all, how can a star have any influence over our lives when it is so distant that its light takes hundreds of millions of years just to reach us? The answer to that is simple: it doesn’t.

For believers in heliocentric astrology, the branch of the discipline currently in vogue with business folk and fashion designers alike, it is the planets that appear to have an influence over us not the stars. They maintain that each planet has a subtly different effect on our behaviour, which varies as it sweeps through the zodiac during its journey around the sun.

read more…

The more electional work (the art of choosing the right date for a business or personal event) I do with clients, the more I am convinced that it can be useful. I feel there are other factors that are also important, such as the state of mind of the individual for whom the event is being planned. But the more tools we can use, the smoother our progress can be!

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Filed Under: Astrology

Growing Up on Prozac

April 24, 2008 By

I was just listening to NPR in the car, and Talk of the Nation had a story called “Growing Up on Antidepressants” which interested me greatly and I’ve written on this subject before. There were several callers to the show who had been taking Prozac or similar drugs since they were in their teens, and they commented that when they stop taking the drug they don’t feel like themselves; they don’t feel that they can live a normal life.

Everyone experiences depression to some extent or another, but some people are more naturally prone to chronic depression. The astrology chart of a chronically depressed individual typically involves a strong influence of Saturn, Chiron or Pluto – each of these planets evokes a different brand of depression. A Saturnian depression is classically melancholic – there is a darkness and a heaviness to it. Chironic depression has a sharper and deeper painful quality due to the Chiron’s relentless pressure to bring old painful wounds to the psychological surface. Plutonic depression includes a dark despair and hopelessness; there is a sense of fatefulness and occasionally a longing for death.

Saturn by transit opposes its place in the birthchart at around age 14 and offers challenges to the development of the soul. If this process is interrupted by the ingestion of psychotropic drugs, this individual will not have an opportunity to develop the inner resilience that is the gift of Saturn. There is a saying, “That which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” and this is Saturn’s mode of instruction. Those of us who have Saturn strong in their charts (Saturn is on my Sun) and have lived past the age of 40 recognize the Saturnian gifts: a deep inner strength and resolve that helps us to navigate any storm. It is not surprising that these young people, on Prozac since their mid-teens, cannot survive without it. They have missed the valuable cycles that develop that core internal strength of spirit.

Individuals who have “easy” charts that are full of trines and the lovely blue lines instead of the stressful red ones sometimes have the most difficulty with depression. Never having learned the coping skills that help us to build the inner strength required to fight our demons, those with “easy” charts sometimes suffer the most when hit with a transit of one of these planets. Again, this is an opportunity to build that resilience through contact with adversity and bypassing the process with pharmaceuticals can help us to cope in the short-term, but keeps the planets from doing their job.

I was on Zoloft for about a year and a half when I went through my Uranus opposition which featured the Uranus-Neptune conjunction aspecting a T-square in my natal chart. For those to whom this is gibberish, suffice it to say that my inner and outer worlds were collapsing into each other. It was an intense time of kundalini problems, panic attacks, and a general Spiritual Emergency. I did appreciate the aid that Zoloft gave, and I noticed that it seemed to help alter some habits of behavior that continued once I was off the drug. So for me, pharmaceuticals are a great tools for emergencies but if we keep ourselves from navigating the ongoing unfolding of our soul’s journey because we are afraid to feel, we are skipping some important steps that can aid us in the future.

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Today’s Planetary News

April 23, 2008 By

We have a couple of interesting planetary configurations now that will last for a few more days.

One is a Grand Trine that includes the Sun in Taurus, Pluto in Capricorn, and Saturn in Virgo that began a couple of days ago when all planets were at 1 degree. We are as close now to a trine as Saturn and Pluto will be until the year 2030, and this is a powerful trine that enables us to build structures (Saturn) that facilitate change and transformation (Pluto).

We are still seeing the effects of that as we move into today’s T-square involving an opposition between Mars in Cancer to Jupiter in Capricorn, both of which are square to Venus in Aries. Venus in Aries wants to approach relationships from a self-oriented perspective, and Mars in Cancer has a drive to express individuality through nurturing others. For the next few days there is a conflict here between those two modalities – how to maintain our independence in relationships while being sensitive to the needs of others. Jupiter’s effusiveness and occasional arrogance can get in the way here – it whispers in our ear and tells us that we can have anything we want. Perhaps it even encourages us to bait the enemy, as Condoleeza Rice did when she called al Sadr a coward.

Venus will have moved on in a day or so and will form a sextile (harmonious aspect) to Neptune which will help to smooth the interpersonal waters, but the Mars/Jupiter effect will last a bit longer, through the end of the week. There is more energy flying around than usual, but physical activity will help to keep that energy in check and make it easier to maintain balance. This is a great time for sports and anything that involves competition.

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Saturn in Virgo: The End of Frankenfood?

April 22, 2008 By

As Jeffrey pointed out in the comment section, Saturn is stationing (standing still) as it prepares to change direction on May 3, and Saturn in Virgo is in the news on a daily basis. Here is another interesting corrolary challenging (Saturn) ideas about how we feed the world (Virgo):

Genetic modification actually cuts the productivity of crops, an authoritative new study shows, undermining repeated claims that a switch to the controversial technology is needed to solve the growing world food crisis.The study – carried out over the past three years at the University of Kansas in the US grain belt – has found that GM soya produces about 10 per cent less food than its conventional equivalent, contradicting assertions by advocates of the technology that it increases yields. …

The new study confirms earlier research at the University of Nebraska, which found that another Monsanto GM soya produced 6 per cent less than its closest conventional relative, and 11 per cent less than the best non-GM soya available.

The Nebraska study suggested that two factors are at work. First, it takes time to modify a plant and, while this is being done, better conventional ones are being developed. This is acknowledged even by the fervently pro-GM US Department of Agriculture, which has admitted that the time lag could lead to a “decrease” in yields.

But the fact that GM crops did worse than their near-identical non-GM counterparts suggest that a second factor is also at work, and that the very process of modification depresses productivity. The new Kansas study both confirms this and suggests how it is happening.

A similar situation seems to have happened with GM cotton in the US, where the total US crop declined even as GM technology took over.

Taking this a step further, a new report advocates the return to more natural methods of growing food:

The world will face social upheaval and environmental disasters if agriculture is not radically reformed to better serve the poor and hungry, a landmark UN-sponsored report said.The warning in the report by the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) comes amid growing discontent among the world’s poorest over rising food prices.

“Continuing with current trends in production and distribution would exhaust our resources and put our children’s future in jeopardy,” said the report, which was compiled by about 400 international experts.

“And the increasingly globalized food market and ever-increasing food imports mean that no country can assume itself to be immune to the implications,” it added.

In a statement, the IAASTD called for a “more holistic view of agriculture.” The first of the United Nations’ 10 Millennium Goals is to reduce by half the number of people suffering from hunger by 2015.

Virgo cherishes a natural and holistic approach to life and despises the artificial trappings that separate us from an affinity to the natural world. Once Saturn has turned direct in early May it will be interesting to see whether any changes are made in that direction.

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Saturn in Virgo: Food Rationing

April 21, 2008 By

Many parts of America, long considered the breadbasket of the world, are now confronting a once unthinkable phenomenon: food rationing.

Major retailers in New York, in areas of New England, and on the West Coast are limiting purchases of flour, rice, and cooking oil as demand outstrips supply. There are also anecdotal reports that some consumers are hoarding grain stocks.

At a Costco Warehouse in Mountain View, Calif., yesterday, shoppers grew frustrated and occasionally uttered expletives as they searched in vain for the large sacks of rice they usually buy.

“Where’s the rice?” an engineer from Palo Alto, Calif., Yajun Liu, said. “You should be able to buy something like rice. This is ridiculous.” …

An employee at the Costco store in Queens said there were no restrictions on rice buying, but limits were being imposed on purchases of oil and flour. Internet postings attributed some of the shortage at the retail level to bakery owners who flocked to warehouse stores when the price of flour from commercial suppliers doubled. …

Saturn’s limitations combined with Virgo’s interest in diet and health is creating some interesting challenges but it’s not always easy to predict where shortage will occur. When Saturn was in Virgo from 1948-1951, this cycle coincided with a worldwide food shortage in a post-World War II world.

In 1978-1980, Saturn in Virgo presided over a nurse (Virgo) shortage (Saturn) as well as a shortage of gasoline which led to a worldwide energy crisis. Neptune rules oil and other liquids, and Neptune is currently in Aquarius where it has been seeking energy alternatives. Chiron is as close now (4 degrees) to a conjunction with Neptune as it will be until the two collide in 2010, and these two will be locked in a dance until next fall where they begin to move away from each other. This is a hint of what we can expect then, and by September these pressures may have eased off somewhat.

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Void Moon Research Project

April 21, 2008 By

The first full day of the Void Moon Research Project was last Thursday April 17, when the Moon was void between 1:59 am EDT and 6:10 pm EDT. The Moon was finishing up in Scorpio where it aspects a T-square in my chart involving my Moon, so I thought that if I was susceptible to the Void Moon that would be a good time to test it. That day all of my plans went smoothly, although Friday was a different story. By Friday the Moon was firmly in Libra where it set off another big square in my chart to Uranus.

Comments to the initial void moon post yield a mixed result. There are some anecdotal reports of difficulties during the void moon, and just as many not. So far we have no conclusive information.

I will say that I did notice during the void Moon that I had a sense of relaxation and a desire to explore more fully my inner life, but that might just have been because I had a relatively relaxing day. So let’s try another round.

The next Void Moon is in Scorpio and occurs tomorrow, Tuesday April 22, at 12:47 am EDT and continues until 5:07 pm EDT when it enters Sagittarius. Please report on your experience in the comment section, and if you begin a project on Tuesday keep track of its progress so that you can determine later whether the Void Moon had any effect on its success.

Thanks for participating!

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