Friday, December 16, 2016

Saturn-Neptune and the post-fact era



The underlying transit that the world is experiencing is the Uranus-Pluto square. A new world is being born, whose form is not yet clear, but Trump and Brexit are indicators of where things are going. Away from globalisation, towards protectionism and border controls. And maybe an economic crisis along the way.

At present there are overlays of Uranus conjunct Eris, and Saturn square to Neptune. Uranus-Eris describes the game-changing shocks to the system, the earthquakes, of which there are more to come.


And Saturn-Neptune describes the ‘post-truth’ world which we are, for now, entering. A world in which politicians win elections by telling bigger whoppers than usual, which then get whirled around social media. That is what it amounts to. 

But it's not that simple. It is right-wing politicians who are telling the whoppers (in the cases of Trump and Brexit), and the liberals are fighting back using their own cultural weapons, promoting the concept of ‘post-truth’ to describe their political enemies.

I don’t like the cold-heartedness of many right-wing politicians. But if the liberals had won by telling bigger lies, I don’t think the Republicans/Tories would be promoting a word like ‘post-truth’ and getting it put in dictionaries, as if it were a description rather than a weapon. When Tony Blair lied about WMD, we weren't told we were entering a new era in which politicians told big lies. And what he (and GWB) did was lie in a much more serious way than anything that has happened this year.


While there will always be a few who believe the lies that politicians tell, I don’t think most people do. People vote for the more charismatic candidate, the one who connects best with people, for better or for worse. In the case of Brexit, we had the appeal of Boris and Nigel Farage on one side, and the relatively bland David Cameron on the other. And it was the same with Trump and Hillary. (To say that doesn't make me right-wing: I'm not.)

This way of looking at things is, of course, insulting to the intelligence of the voters, but it is the way things go in elections time and again. You don’t even need astrology to predict the outcome. As Churchill said, Democracy is the worst form of government, apart from all the others. It is the ongoing Saturn (substance) vs Neptune (appearance) nature of democracy, and Neptune generally wins. It is how GW Bush and Obama each won the presidency, and how Tony Blair became the UK leader.

Saturn-Neptune describes the fact that the debate has come to centre on the lies of politicians. But it’s not the real issue, because politicians have always lied. Neptune is a hall of mirrors, it reflects back on itself.

And the same people who are crying foul because of the lies of the Brexit and Trump campaigns, have also been denying loudly that the Brexiteers and Trump actually won. The political lies are (correctly) being called unusually egregious, yet the simple facts of who won and who lost are being denied.


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The lies, particularly in the case of Trump, have admittedly been exceptional. The man will say anything that suits, and exaggerate and castigate to his heart’s content. (Though I also think it is important to admit when he has a point, like when he said that Castro was a dictator; otherwise our opposition is blind, and this kind of blindness is surprisingly common amongst ‘educated’ people.)

But the pretence that Trump and the Brexiteers lost - or that the elections were stolen and invalid, or that Brexit won't happen, or that the electoral college won't elect Trump - has to me seemed to be what is truly unusual about these events. Yes, Saturn-Neptune and bigger lies from politicians, that is part of the picture, if anyone is actually listening. 'Twas ever thus. But this new element of outright denial of a basic fact by an educated part of the population: that is what is truly different. Maybe we should be talking about the post-fact era?

I think it shows just how polarised things have become politically, which is what one expects from the larger picture of Uranus-Pluto. But I think it reminds us yet again that being educated and being self-aware are not the same thing. I think that the sense of moral superiority that many liberals have also confuses the picture, like Trump/the Brexiteers can't have won because they're the bad guys, so how did they cheat us?

Being an astrologer and being self-aware, at least in these polarised times, do not seem to be the same thing either. At a major astrological conference in the USA in October 2016, a panel of 12 experienced astrologers unanimously predicted that Hillary would win (though some said that it was 11 out of 12.)

Either way, this just doesn’t happen when you ask a bunch of astrologers to predict something. And if they’re good, I’d expect most to be right. But I certainly wouldn’t expect them all to have the same answer - in any other situation, it would be called groupthink. But these were 'gifted' astrologers, we are told, so that can't possibly be what was happening!

And I don’t think it comes down to method either, though I’m wandering now into the nature of prediction. I think if you rely on method alone for predicting, it will break down in time. Mercury the trickster comes in, this was something that Jung found. No, there is also intuition involved, even in how you decide which charts to use. It is the skilled intuition that is essential, that is the real gift of the astrologer. But because it is personal, it is also subject to personal wishes and the wishes of the collective.

This, I think, is what happened. It can happen to all of us, and we can all get predictions wrong. I do. But astrologers are well known for being politically liberal. It was a fiasco, and soul-searching is needed. 

It makes astrology look ridiculous, and heaven knows we don’t need that. But the reason I’m writing about it is that the issue was then surrounded by the same sort of defensive denial that you find in the population at large, namely that Trump hadn’t won the election because Hillary got more votes, even though everyone knows that it doesn’t work like that.

This denial compounded the fiasco. Astrologers, and diviners of all sorts, need to be able to stand apart from their political preferences and collective currents. This is really basic. And we will sometimes fail. But please at least let's be honest when we get it wrong.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

To be fair I think there is an awful lot of deception going on with the so-called 'leftist' politicians. (I say so-called as they no longer act in ways that lefties used to: I don't think they are concerned about the working class and the poor, they are more into language-policing us, and saying all the right things whilst sucking up to their corporate and banking sponsors - I'm talking here more about the Clinton machine than Corbyn, who at least seems to have some integrity).

The media is brainwashing everyone to hate the Russians (are we being softened-up for another war?) and this phrase 'fake news' really creeps me out. Its the way it suddenly appeared out of nowhere, and within a day or two was used by Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Obama, Merkel and the usual suspects in the big press. The whole thing seemed co-ordinated to me.

And it seems intended to draw attention away from the corruption and lies revealed by Wikileaks.

To me the really worrying thing is the way that at the moment everyone goes hysterical at a politician using rough language, yet ignores the real crimes, abuse and mistreatment that groups like the Clinton machine have been dishing out against various groups of vulnerable people (e.g. Haiti).

Who gets to tell us what is 'fake news'? Its the likes of Facebook and the New York Times. Is that healthy?

LotusLady9 said...

Hooray! Well said! Then powers that be are over so aggressive and ruthless when it comes manipulating the population through social and other media. It is truly sickening and I refuse to watch mainstream media. They are trying to swallow journalism and turn them into pr and marketing machines. Gross. I personally follow Glenn Greenwald and a few other dedicated journalists on the website "The Intercept". It can be rather difficult to read in large amounts of time because of all of the obvious deception we live with, but as a regular person, I need some LEGITIMATE sources for news from people who practice ethics and report objectively whether it is pleasant or not. I am tired of living in the dark. We have to learn to face ourselves and take responsibility for what we have allowed to happen in our world. Sorry for the rant.

https://theintercept.com/2016/11/09/democrats-trump-and-the-ongoing-dangerous-refusal-to-learn-the-lesson-of-brexit/

Meghan Bright said...

To me, this political scenario smacks of my parents relationship just prior to their divorce. There were accusations, lies, boozing, cheating, beating and all of that even despite being a respected family in a wealthy town. But I think from 10,000 feet, the political situation is a mirror for people to have greater awareness of their boundaries and to trust their intuition about what they think, say and do. Because based on very real consequences that we are all now facing, human beings are going to have to come together and re-design a system that serves the greater good. I just don't know how far things will break down before we rebuild but if history and society follow the trajectory we've been on... save any unprecedented moves from philanthropists, it's going to be long after we are gone that any real progress is made.

I would be curious, Barry, if you have looked at charts of other nation states such as China and Russia to see what their Saturn aspects look like. I was born with a Saturn Venus conjunction and I am extremely cold and calculated when it comes to structuring life for my survival. That may be from my parents divorce or it could be just who I am but I think it's an important planet to consider in politics both for timing and for structural outcomes.

Sara said...

Well, if we're going to REALLY look at this more closely, Hillary Clinton lied to reporters about the time of day she was born. She gave out two different birth times, 8:06AM and 8PM. Her actual time of birth was 2:18AM. The 11, not 12, astrologers who said she would win did so partly because they were dumb enough to believe she'd win and partly because they didn't do a forensic analysis of specific events in her life that five others did, who correctly predicted ahead of the election that she would NOT win.
The lamebrained excuses for not winning were childish. First, it was hacked voting equipment that was not connected to the internet at all, and later, it's e-mails hacked by Russian intelligence, and I'm waiting breathlessly to see what the next excuse is. The REAL reason she did not win is that both she and the lamebrained media slavering over her ignored the people in what they deemed 'flyover country' and ignored them completely. Trump, on the other hand, went everywhere.
Frankly, if you can't accept the fact that people simply got fed up with the crap coming from the Democrats, including the pre-election violence and now, the post-election threats of violence, you aren't paying attention.
She wouldn't have won, no matter what.

weaver said...

an excellent post. appreciate the commentary, too.

Anonymous said...

Bravo Barry! Two of my favorite astrologers predicted the opposite results for both Brexit and US election. One even thought Ed Miliband would win! lol.

I find the lack of self-awareness on the part of (many, not all) liberals to be quite frightening. Its like they are engaged in the childish game of "But they did it FIRST". As if, no matter how they bully, malign and (verbally) castigate others, they can never be in the wrong.

I long for a return to empathy and civility. Where we can disagree without seeking to destroy each other.

I'm curious, how is it you've managed to hold onto your objectivity? Do you think its a matter of meeting one's shadow and internal darkness enough to recognize the shades of grey as they manifest outwardly?

I feel as if (some) liberals are fighting reality. In that, Trump said horrible things. Divisive things. Yet he can still do some good things, say good things, think good things. Time for Godwin's law: Hitler loved dogs.

We now have Jupiter in Libra transiting, urging us to seek balance. The Yin and the Yang. Good contained within evil. Evil contained within good. If you lose the ability to see this, you lose your connection to reason. And to the whole of reality.

Anonymous said...

Check out whats happening in South Korea at the moment.

I'm listening said...

So many clever and thoughtful comments. A joy to read. Thank you all.