Now it appears to this writer that the danger Rudhyar is pointing out in his comments is in process of being acted upon; astrologers have lobbied to create accredited courses in a few universities and have even created a few of their own ‘astrological universities’. And the trend is continuing. Astrology has wrapped itself in the elegant cloak of (mostly Jungian) psychology, and added to that cloak a smattering of scientific and statistical feathers. Astrology is a very respectable study in these days of endless reams of self-help books, and the mostly caucasian (from what I’ve been able to discern) practitioners of this ancient art -the astrologers themselves- charge serious fees for their work. It hardly matters that such work is sometimes nothing more than personally mailing to the ‘client’ a computer print-out of generalized, statistical, and totally unintegrated ‘definitions’ of all the assorted particulars in a given birth chart or event horoscope. The point being that Astrologers are like everyone else in the ‘New Age’ World of Corporate Global Government, -they need to make the bucks. They are their own industry and their own self-congratulatory clique. They hang out together in like-minded clusters and give seminars, and conferences, and ‘certificates’ to each other. They want to be taken seriously, advertise themselves as ‘world class speakers’, write promotional blurbs for the covers of each others’ books. I mean, -like ‘Hello!’ these people are mainline capitalists. Consumers selling to other consumers, and creating their own products to consume. They not only write books, they design computer software programs, they endorse such programs, they compete with each other to build up a market-clientele, and they are usually quite proud to be successful members of a successful business market. Yet these are the very people who are going to ‘give’ you what they call a ‘reading’ of your birth chart, and that birth chart must always contain within it an ‘interpretation’ of the planet Saturn, -the very planet opposing Pluto these days in the skies overhead, and the planet symbolizing the ‘status-quo’, the ‘reality’ planet! The question we must ask ourselves is:

There exists in the popular mind an image of astrologers as exotic people caught up in a mystical love of the stars. Unusual people, outside the mainstream of conventional society who can ‘tell your fortune’. Modern day astrologers work very hard to dispel these notions. They want to be seen as educated, realistic people steeped in modern psychology who are interested in ‘counseling’ their clients, not ‘telling their fortunes’! Bravo, so far, so good. But pick up any one of their textbooks on the subject of the planets and read what they have to say about Saturn. You will find the same words repeated in varying styles throughout the texts. And you will find that those words always lead in the same direction, a direction which Dane Rudhyar probably described best when he wrote that Saturn is a symbol for the lowest common denominator of social-cultural consensus (please do look for yourself, I am not quoting him verbatim). Naturally, there is a consensus among astrologers as to the ‘meaning’ of Saturn, and part of that consensus is that Saturn is a symbol for ‘the objective’. Saturn, they will tell you, is the ‘ruler’ of the astrological sign, Capricorn -the sign of business, politics, and the consensus rule of objective authority. Authority manifests itself by consensus in people such as Presidents of nations, or Kings and Queens of countries, or Chief Executives in Corporations, or Judges, Lawyers, Doctors, and Priests. But consensus authority also manifests in the structural religious, philosophical, and scientific paradigms of Western Industrial Civilization. Astrologers must deal with these dominant paradigms just as you and I must. Consensus paradigms imply a strong need for agreement and acceptance yielding a shared sense of oneness; if we want to succeed in business we better not claim that two and two equals fish, or that money grows on trees, or that Saturn has nothing to do with consensus. Get the picture ? We gotta toe the line. Astrologers expecting to sell their books and be invited to international, astrological conferences know quite well how to toe that line. The line they toe is consensus astrology. Sure, there are geocentric and heliocentric practitioners, there are vedic and uranian practitioners, and what they like to call ‘Esoteric’ astrologers -mostly derivatives of the channeled work of Alice Bailey. But increasingly astrologers are partaking of the big, consensus ‘UNITY’ trip permeating the entire ‘New Age’ culture. There is a blandness to it all, an accelerating trend toward Oneness concerning which, once again, Dane Rudhyar had this to say:

“Moreover, the situation in astrology, with its many schools often at war with each other, parallels that existing in the fields of medicine and psychology. Totally different approaches to the treatment of illness at all human levels have been devised, some by ancient societies where they are still effectively applied, others in our own Western society in which new causes of disease and accidents have developed since the Industrial Revolution. Each of these different approaches results from the acceptance of a specific type of metaphysical, religious or psychological premise concerning the nature and purpose of man, life and the universe. Yet in the United States ONE approach to medical knowledge and expertise has received official sanction; a fact which reflects the glorification of our also officialized worship of empirical and materialistic science and of modern technology. A few other approaches, such as “spiritual healing” are allowed to operate, thanks to legal subterfuges, but bureaucratic controls dominate the medical and psychological field. Only ONE type of education is available in college to the would-be doctor and practicing psychologist; and political ambition, business pressures and the making of large profits are constant features of these fields, as of many others. ”

Now we are asking ourselves the question: What is political astrology ? And the answer must surely be, All astrology is political astrology because every astrologer has not only a philosophical, metaphysical, and economical milieu within which he/she practices his skill, but a political milieu as well. Rarely do ‘clients’ consider these facts, but astrologers sure do, and I submit that this is precisely why we do not read in Dell Horoscope or The Mountain Astrologer any focused astrological analysis as to why it is simply not possible for frenzied, jihad-inebriated ‘Arab’ terrorists to have flown planes into the WTC Towers without insider help. I mean to tell you, my friends, that this current triple series of Saturn to Pluto oppositions which were first exact in August of 2001 and will finish their course in May 2002 happen to be an unprecedented event in the history of these United States Of America ! They are occurring as Pluto makes its first historical contact with the country’s cherished self-image, its Persona-Mask. Pluto is passing back and forth over the Ascendant of America’s birth chart even as Saturn opposes it from the Descendant of that chart. Dubbya is the Pluto ‘Lone Ranger’, the ‘Masked Man’ currently occupying (quite illegally) the Office of the President in a rigged election, a man made President by the increasingly corrupt Supreme Court of these United States. But that’s not all; no legally or illegally ‘elected’ President has run this country since the coup which occurred at the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. The evidence is all around us, the facts are quite clear. ( http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/ST/ST.html )

But America was born with that notorious Retrograde Mercury in Cancer opposing Pluto in Capricorn suggesting that every citizen of this country must continuously deal with a temptingly ‘shady’ mental-verbal Mercury process shared in common. There is a deep and pervasive desire among Americans to bury their heads in the sand, to be unconscious (Pluto) regarding their mental-verbal processes (Mercury), to be rather introvertedly preoccupied with Mom, Home, and Apple Pie (Cancer), to be mentally living in the shadow of their feelings. And these unconscious, mental-verbal traits are most pronounced when Americans deal with money, land, and their values. There is among us now, and there has always been this tension ‘caused’ by the opposition between Mercury Retrograde in Cancer (8th house) and Pluto in Capricorn (2nd house); this configuration points to an obsession with possessions: ‘we’ stole this continent from the Native Americans toward whom we still maintain a Federal policy of genocide, -see Wounded Knee, Anna Mae Aquash, Leonard Peltier: (  ^{http://www.dickshovel.com/AIMIntro.html  )}

and ‘we’ don’t want no goddam astrologer or anybody else to tell us this is so. Our minds (Mercury) tell us the whole subject (and very many others) is totally Taboo ( Pluto). But this astrologer, Osama Bin Grabau, is here to tell us that the jig is up, the fox is in the chicken coop, and the secret police are knocking at our doors; in other words, my fellow Americans, Pluto has reached the Ascendant of this country’s birth chart and our dark shadow is in our face! There’s no place to hide, the pigeons have come home to roost, all our dirty laundry is piled higher than those twin towers and we gotta lot of cleaning up to do. But will we do it, can we do it ?

According to the birth chart of America, we are not only an idealistic people, we are a people very much like the Hobbits who most reluctantly find themselves caught up in the evil machinations pervading the world of Tolkein’s imaginative masterpiece, The Lord Of The Rings. We Americans, like the Hobbits, are very attached to our homely comforts because the core of our collective astrological identity, the Sun -rests in the sensitive, comfort loving sign of Cancer. It is there every Fourth Of July, as it was on that celebrated Fourth of July day back in 1776 when the wonderful, ( but fraudulent ) Declaration Of Independence was signed in the City Of Brotherly Love. Cancer is the sign of the Mother, the Womb, and the Home; it is a water sign deeply concerned with the realm of personal feelings and shared, intimate nurturing. Americans, like Tolkein’s Hobbits, are very much involved with Family, family lineage, and family values. They are not inclined to poke their noses into other people’s business, and they’d appreciate it if you didn’t poke your nose into theirs! Historically speaking, it has always been hard work to get Americans interested in fighting wars ‘overseas’. Every history book points that out. But politicians and ‘big deal’ business folk among us have worked hard (and often most deviously) to get us involved in such wars. That’s all just simple, historical truth. Few contest it.

Comfort, good food, happy times, home, and family are the quintessential delights of the sign Cancer. But the rustic and rapidly fading image of small, Home-Town America, is under siege these days - just like the Hobbits’ ‘Shire’ is in the new film playing all around the globe. A strange kind of malady has struck the Land, and folks everywhere have noticed the eerie comings and goings of ‘Black Riders’ disturbing the peace. The One Ring of Corporate Global Government is radiating its unseen power among us and luring us covertly toward the Tower of Mordor and its Dark Lord. The common folk of America all know and feel this truth, but is there a Frodo or a Bilbo Baggins amongst us who might arise to carry the One Ring back to its Mount Doom source and throw it willingly into the only fires which can undo its spell ?

America is at a Crossroads ( Pluto is crossing its Ascendant) and about to determine its future. Is there any chance that Americans as a whole can wake up out of their comfort loving predjudice long enough to untangle themselves from the spreading shadows of the One World Corporate Elite ? Who knows ? But let’s consider Gandalf’s letter to Frodo wherein a glimmer of hope shines:

Hey, but that happened long ago -yesterday, or last week, they’re not going to be responsible for all that. It wasn’t their fault, they’ll tell you. Now, I ask you, my friends: what does one say to a people with this sort of blind spot ? Are they brain-dead, soul-less, or could any creatures really be that genuinely UNCONSCIOUS ?

Well, my fellow American Hobbits, I’ve been trying to tell you -it’s a national trait, a shared ‘gift’, a profound habit. Take a look again at that Mercury (Conscious Brain) Retrograde in Cancer in the 8^{th house of sharing, recall once more that it’s in direct opposition to Pluto (Unconscious Power) in Capricorn in the 2nd house of ‘making the bucks’…these people are congenitally inclined toward AVARICIOUS UNCONSCIOUSNESS. For all their charm and friendliness, they are evasive, escapist, and terribly afraid of something they know not what! They are unconsciously compulsive and obsessive over money and possessions, they are oblivious of having ancestors who murdered the original inhabitants of the Land on which they live. Whenever it suits them, American Hobbits are able to ‘think’ in vastly unconscious ways. They tend to see themselves as the ‘democrats’ of the globe, they see America as the great ‘melting pot’ -a mixture of every race, color, and creed living together in ‘laissez-faire’ greed. And they’ve got a point, you know, because the Moon in the birth chart of America is found in the ‘New Age’ sign of Aquarius, and the Moon in the chart of a Nation -as any certified astrologer will tell you- is the symbol of that Nation’s people as a Whole. Aquarius, as a sign of the zodiac, is a symbol of the Collective One Mind of Mankind. Indeed, Aquarius includes in that ONE MIND the consciousness of ‘god’, the Whole Earth -trees, winds, rivers, coyotes…it’s the ‘Plane of Mind’ envisaged as a kind of great geometrical dance-hall full of ‘mental’ fireworks high up in the ‘fixed air’. It is the aether of the Ancients, the ‘place’ of pure and abstract thought frequently more seen than it is heard, more visualized than it is felt, more idealistic than it is practical. Put the Moon-Feelings of the people of a Nation in the sign of Aquarius and you’re likely to come up with folks who ‘think’ about their feelings in a collectively mental way rather than feel those feelings on a personal gut level. Such people ‘conceive’ themselves to be idealistic people of broad, all-inclusive feelings…feelings of the Brotherhood and Sisterhood of All Mankind. Their Moon-Feelings are inventive, ingenious, and electrical; why they invented the ‘snap, crackle, and pop’ of Rice Crispies, their very own Ben Franklin flew his kite on a cord and found the key to electricity, they were the first people to give the Earth the Aquarian FLASH of the ‘Atomic Bomb’. [see: ‘The Christ Bomb’ at The Gnostic Liberation Front: http://www.astrologyforthepeople.com/francis_donald_grabau2.htm ]}

^{Clever dudes, these Americans…and dudettes as well…musn’t forget the females among them. American Moon Women of the Aquarian persuasion lead the females among all nations toward fighting for their Equal Rights. The men and women of America invented the archetypes of Superman and Wonder Woman, they gave us Paul Bunyan and Scarlet O’Hara, Davy Crocket and Calamity Jane, John Wayne and Marilyn Monroe. They’re all much bigger than life; they believe that nothing is impossible and, -Hey, where there’s a will, there’s a way! Outrageous, courageous folks are these folks born in a nation with the Moon in Aquarius. Alas, the one big drawback of the sign is its tendency to abruptly cut-off all feeling and remain aloof! Suddenly, they are visualizing their feelings, conceiving their liberties, abstractly contemplating (from the detached mental plane) what they need to be feeling in a ‘get-down’ way. O, fiddle-dee-dee, I’ll think about that tomorrow. There’s always tomorrow. But, is there ? And even if there is a tomorrow, how do you see that tomorrow if you’re an American and your Commander-In-Chief has committed you and all your tomorrows to a ‘War On Terror’ with no distinctly determined time lines, and no clearly defined foe ? Leave it to the Americans, as the Indian journalist, Arundhati Roy, has pointed out, to have the overt hubris, the blind arrogance, the collective unconscious folly to proclaim a war of ‘Infinite Justice’! (see: http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/ArundhatiRoy.html )}

^{But you gotta understand, they grew up watching escapist cartoons on television wherein the caped rodent, ‘Mighty Mouse’, assumed infinite powers of strength flying through scenes proudly proclaiming-chest all puffed out- ‘Here I Come To Save The Day’! Oh, please,‘big boy’, -get a grip! You’re just a mouse in superman clothing, and every little ‘Minnie’ has a chest that’s puffier than yours…in case you hadn’t noticed. Yep, Cancer, your Nation’s Sun Sign, the sign of your collectively mutual Mercury brain, rules the breast! And it’s Retrograde [going backwards] at your Nation’s birth -Oh, fiddle-dee-dee, you yankee doodles, just suck on that one tomorrow!}

^{But wait, perhaps this America of superheroes and wonder women incongruously coexisting with contented hobbits has already Gone With The Wind ? Maybe those thousand famous points of light veiling the infamous Gulf War were not just the flickering radiations from depleted uranium shells, maybe America is ready to put its collectively retrograde mind to better uses. Surely many among us have reflected and seen the dark power luring us to our doom, the hidden wastefulness of our abundance, the deep Plutonian addiction of our unconscious contract with the Underworld of Money, Fear, and Corporate Global Power ? What say you, Osama Bin Grabau, are you just another fanatical ‘terrorist’ wanting to scare us to death and shame us ? Certainly there must be something wholesome and positive about Americans and our country. Sing us a lullaby of the Stars, tell us happy and helpful things. Are you not just another one of those lame-duck astrologers you rail against ? Where is the beauty, the joy, and the Magic of America ? What of our spiritual soul ?}

^{And I, Osama the Gray, the author and friend of these words assure you that I am right here with you at our country’s crossroads on the Bridge of Khazad-dum. The Orcs have us surrounded. The primordial Balrog is ready to rise up and demand our doom. And yes, the wizard light borrowed from our whimsical Gandalf friend grows dim, indeed. But, has he not wisely spoken certain words of warning to us hobbits when we’ve grown anxious, tired of giving him our attention, and felt the need to break his spell:}

Chapter Five: 

Unweaving America’s Political Spell.

If it’s true that all astrology is political astrology, is it true that all spells are political spells ? Am I asking you a rhetorical question, flying on the winds of my own inflated words ? Or have we found here a real clue, you and me ? Most dear and gentle reader, ask yourself this question: Who has promised you such lyrical, abstract, and high-flown things as ‘Infinite Justice’ in return for your participation in something he calls ‘Operation Enduring Freedom’ ? It is your President. Who believes he can give you absolution for your secret sins ? It is your Priest. Who offers you loans of money which he doesn’t have ? It is your Banker. What interest do all three of these people have in common ? It is the desire to hold your interest in trust in Public Offices of consensus Authority. Who gives such Office holders such consensus Authority ? It’s you and me. But our gifts must be freely given in good faith while their interests are compounded daily. Can you spell swindle ? Do you smell anything ever so slightly foul in this arrangement ? What does it mean to give someone your word ?

Words are alive. You can hear them listen to themselves. And like people, some words are more alive than others. Can you remember that popular Rock Group ( I think they were British) some years back now who called themselves ‘The Police’ ? Every breath you take, every word you shape listens to you. But only if you are listening to it. Are you listening ? What do you hear ? Do you ever listen with your eyes ? Who speaks with a forked tongue ?

Look, a cross is a T, and if we cross our hearts we can hear that T we otherwise only see. Do you see what we’re crossing here ? Can you hear it with the ears of your heart ? T marks the spot, the still point in the dance, the chasm where the Mothers cross over. An interior dimension born of the heart. The threshold of Saturn, the source of Authority. T is the testing ground bound by the one ring formed of the void as the serpent swallows his tail. Ouroboros. I am that I am. An anagram tongued in a magic of prisms, and echoed, and etched, and awaken me from it. The hidden geometry of hearts. The power of letters forming living words conveying Spirit.

Hearts pulse to the rhythm of breathing, and we tune to that breathing by hearing the beats of our heart. Life is the song of our heart’s breath, and when we shape that breath into words we speak our hearts. Words pulse as living forces that touch the air sounding vibrations between us. Even written words partake of this vibratory power arising from the beat of our hearts. They appear on a page of paper, or perhaps on a screen before us acting as discrete packets of quantum energy. They enter our brains through our eyes as we read them. They sound in our inner ears. And their sounds, those discrete packets of quantum energy, set off tiny sparks that leap across the dendrites and neurons in our cerebral cortexes. Instantly, every cell of our body feels and knows these words while our muscles reflexively respond, our heart beats faster or slower, and our noses twitch. Or our fingers tingle. Or perhaps, they do not. But every word we say, write, or hear affects us deeply. And together all these words form rhythmic patterns that translate into synaptical firing paths in our brains. Repeated words entrain these synaptical firings into patterns, and the patterns fall into grooves, and the grooves begin to go round and round in repetitive cycles that become our neuro-muscular habits.

Hobbits, need I remind you, are the ‘halflings’ who love their habits because they love their comforts and nothing (arguably) is so comfortable as a habit. Our habits hold us in a kind of spell, they grab us beneath our surface brains and gain a certain ‘office’ of familiarity, an ‘authority’ which is the holding power of their spell. All of us are in the habit of speaking, listening to, and writing words. They interest us on a daily basis. And the President, the Priest, the Banker, and Police all share this daily interest in words. We say a man is only as good as his word. Do you remember ‘Tricky Dicky’ ? Do you recall Watergate, Vietnam, and the threat of impeachment which finally forced him to grudgingly step down ? It was not the missing tapes, my friends, but the ever present tape ‘loop’ -those habitual synaptical firings repeating the pattern that went round and round: ‘ I didn’t Lie. I didn’t Lie. I didn’t lie.’…and then the cock crowed and the man was forced to abandon the ‘office’ of the Presidency! But he never admitted that he lied, and the hidden network of unethical business that used him as a figurehead continued in its illegal tenure throughout the halls of government. It is there today, and it still seeks to hold us in its Spell. President G.W. Bush is in need of impeachment.

¯ North

It seems to me your ‘average American Joe’ thinks ‘Spells’ are things that only happen in Disneyland Movies, or in children’s Storybooks, and certainly not in the real world of business and politics. But our Wizard friend, Gandalf, would like to point out that when a Wizard wants to make a Spell he might, like the United States Government, create a PENTAGON; but unlike our Government, a Good Wizard will make sure his magical PENTAGON is oriented in the proper way to serve the Good of all. He would make it clear that our Joint Chiefs Of Staff sit in a five sided Pentagon that is blatantly oriented toward the reverse of the Good and the furtherance of Mr. Bush’s fiendishly favorite word, Evil! Yes, a Pentagon is a Pentagram is a Five-Pointed Star, symbol of Man standing with legs and arms outstretched and head erect: 2 legs, 2 arms, 1 head = 5 pointed star, the Pentacle.

­ North

The Good Wizard aligns his head, and the top of his Star to the North Pole of the Earth where the electro-magnetic currents pour down from the surrounding Van Alan Belts, where the Pole Star resides alongside the great, coiled, Dragon of Stars known as Draco. And by doing so, the Good Wizard works in harmony with the FORCE of Divine Nature. But an ‘evil’ Wizard, a Saruman, aligns the top of his Star and the force of his head with the South Pole where the Coalsack floats by the Great Magellanic Cloud, and his spread legs align his genitals to the incoming electrical FORCE from the North Pole. Thereby, the ‘evil’ Wizard reverses the order of Nature and openly displays his intent to use Her forces for his own, self-propagating pleasures. He taps into the Cosmic Creative forces pouring onto Earth for his own personal ends, and not for the natural collective good. He works a Dark Spell. The forces wielded by the Joint Chiefs Of Staff at the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia are not aligned with the collective good of this Nation, this World, or this Earth. The building is negatively aligned with its ‘head’ facing South. The Pentagon Building needs to be taken down because it is misaligned, because it is not the target of terrorists, it is actually a magical edifice specifically created to wreak the terror of Black Magick on the planet. [ Jose Arguelles pointed all this out in his book, The Transformative Vision, years before he became famous for the Harmonic Convergence. ]

The Pentagon was constructed in the heat of W.W.II, and with the National Security Act of 1947 it became wedded under the name of the Department Of Defense to the newly formed Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Council. These are the seats of real power in the United States and they are working hand-in-hand with the major Global Corporations to create the ‘New World Order’ of W. Bush’s Daddy and others. This is the very dark side of Retrograde Pluto (Ultimate Power) in Capricorn (Authority-Business-Money) in the 2^{nd house of values & money in the birth chart of America.} 

^{And with Pluto NOW on the Nation’s Ascendant for the first time in its relatively brief existence as a sovereign country, this hidden, Top-Secret side of the Nation’s ‘karma’ is in our face. Astrology suggests that ‘because’ Saturn is in the sign of language and communication opposing Pluto myself and scores of others need to write about it. Every citizen of this Nation needs to be thinking and speaking about this ‘karma’ publicly and for obvious reasons, not the least of which is that the public is the Moon and the (Progressed) Moon of America’s destiny is due to align with its ruling planet (Uranus) in a doubly emphatic manner this March of 2002 even as Saturn prepares for its third and final (for this current 29 year cycle) opposition with Pluto. These and a number of other highly dramatic astrological factors which the length of this essay prohibits me from laying out in specific detail -all point to MAJOR CHANGE and SHOCK amongst the American citizenry. This can be very positive; shock is an awakener, and there can be ‘good’ and ‘bad’ shocks as there can be good and bad anythings! Definitely, incontrovertibly this all conspires to create a WAKE-UP CALL for America the likes of which it has not seen before. We are in need of and ‘unconsciously’ preparing for a revolution within ourselves -both collectively and individually. Otherwise, the ‘New World Order’ of ‘Shrub’s’ Oily Daddy will, in fact, become the ONE RING that rules us all.}

^{And as Gandalf, himself, commented to Frodo:}

^{“ It would be a grievous blow to the World, if the Dark Power overcame the Shire; if all your kind, jolly, stupid Bolgers, Hornblowers, Boffins, Bracegirdles, and the rest, not to mention the ridiculous Baffinses, became enslaved. ”}

^{( J.R.R. Tolkien: The Lord Of The Rings; Collector’s Edition, Houghton Mifflin Co. Boston; pg. 58 )}

Chapter Six: 

A Ring is a circle is a dead end loop.

Mr. Tolkien, bless his beautiful soul, took great pains to convey to us just how the One Ring asserts its power. It pulls at the mind, its glowing golden beauty lures the finder into thinking he is rich; its power of conferring the gift of Invisibility upon its wearer fills him with intoxicating feelings of supernatural power. But, as Tolkien has so clearly shown us, it is the Ring itself that holds the power, and anyone foolish enough to cling to it finds his life force waning and the intent of his soul overshadowed by the hidden willfulness of the Dark Lord who is the One Ring’s only Master. And what makes this ‘Dark Lord’ so dark is the closed loop of his circular reasoning: he is obsessed with only one thing, the intention to control and structure everything ! He trusts and loves nothing and no one. He cannot participate in the open-ended spiral of life because he is ruled by fear. Fear, distrust, and secrecy are the tools of his trade, the basis of all his thoughts and actions. When Sauron makes a deal he does so only if he already knows how to come out of that deal as the Winner (Enron) . Lying, hiding, deceiving, and controlling are the very core of his essence; he has no life other than that which he can drain from his victims. He is his own Shadow Self, and the ‘perfect’ illustration of what astrology refers to as the ‘Negative’ manifestation of the Pluto function residing within that great cauldron of obscurity known as the Collective Unconscious.

Each one of us can manifest this Negative Pluto function, we can bring it alive and give it power in ourselves and in the World if we don’t accept our own shadow, if we don’t understand that we can’t control everything, that we can’t be Perfect. Perfection is the same abstract notion as the circle; it’s a closed system fixed around the immovable Center of the One Ring. That ‘Center’ refers everything back to itself; in humans that consciousness is usually the Ego…though that Ego masks itself from itself by calling itself (in a round of self-referencing) the ‘Higher Self’, or the ‘Master’ or even ‘God’. All that such a masterful, ‘higher-self’ of an Ego-God sees, feels, touches and thinks is homogenized. There is a boring, stultifying ONE-ness to it all. All for One, One for All; it’s a tight tape-loop, a closed circle, the One Ring of Power. When the Ego slips this Ring on its finger it becomes invisible to itself, it becomes bloated with illusions of Power. It claims to ‘see’ God, to be a chosen vehicle ‘channeling’ the One Mind, to be the blessed ‘disciple’ of an ‘Ascended Master’…and all the while the ‘Dark Lord’ hides behind this glowing Ring of ‘White Light’ biding his time, waiting in the back wings of the theatre for that ‘perfect’ moment when he can leap onto the stage revealing his spotlighted presence as the captive audience gasps in awe! Stunned.

Pluto has just leaped into the spotlight, in the theatre of America -The Invisible Lord of the Ring Of Shadows- has reached the Nation’s Ascendant, and ‘he’ is in process of dramatically revealing the hidden business that is the Government of the United States. A Government born, I remind you, while Pluto was in Capricorn, sign of the Authority of Saturn. The challenge Saturn is making to Pluto -now, as it opposes it from Gemini- is to talk, to formulate and structure in words the ‘reality’ of how our Invisible Government works. We must CONSCIOUSLY put into words the way money works AS our Government, the way the One Ring of Power hides itself behind the façade of the Declaration Of Independence.

Only real INDIVIDUALS can do this, and as they do this such individuals will recognize each other and be able to form ‘groups’ and take action. But these groups will NOT be operating at the behest of ANY AUTHORITY outside themselves because the only real authority is the authority each individual has to be self-determining, to be awake, aware, and choosing. The positive function of Saturn is this ability to focus, structure, and give form to our actions. Consciousness is power-action of an invisible nature which wants to spill over into visible, physical power expressed in concrete actions. But the One Ring of our shared Collective Unconsciousness seeks to bind all our thoughts and actions to its entropic, homogenous core. Terminator Seeds, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the International Monetary Fund, the New World Order -all of which are the One World Order of Monetary Monotheism. Stultifying entrapment in the closed circle of hidden authority binding all people of every nation to sterile conformity.

Hey, ‘Amerika’ -get those National Guardsmen, those Shadow Riding Ring Wraiths out of our airports! Stop recruiting the young men of this country into the platoons of conscripted death. Stop imposing your mechanical obedience on ‘Boot Camps’ full of youth indoctrinated into professional killing like efficient machines. By what ‘higher’ right do you claim the right to abuse and desensitize ‘soldiers’ into blindly obeying orders meant to enforce the powers of a corrupt and elitist One World Corporate Government ? Don’t ask me to give two years of my life in ‘service’ to Mordor! I say NO. And I demand that you fully acknowledge the shabby and lying tactics by which you inflicted on our Nation’s own soldiers the horrors of Agent Orange and Gulf War Syndrome. [ see: Joyce Riley; http://www.all-natural.com/riley.html ]

Pay these men and women, confess you lied to them, cough up the money they need to get whatever health care they can. And don’t limit that to your standardized AMA medications administered by the very ‘doctors’ you pay so well to create your biological warfare tools. Give them access to acupuncture, herbs, homeopathy, chiropractic assistance…anything they want or need including Voodoo if it’ll work for them. Maybe then, just maybe -‘Uncle Sambo’ - I’ll stop mocking at the very suggestion that anyone give two years of his life in service to whatever it is you think this ‘Nation’ might be. I am an individual (American, only by ‘accident’ of birth) and I know my own Authority because I am a Global Citizen, and the Conscious Author of that Authority and I sing it proudly now with Walt Whitman as the ‘Song Of Myself ’…yes, and I’d vote for the corpse of Henry David Thoreau for President of these United States before I’d even consider hiring a democrat or a republican to take out the trash! Don’t meddle in my affairs, don’t try to solicit me, ‘Amerika’, into your ‘Patriotic’ warfare for I am also (by nature and no accident of birth) a Wizard, subtle -and quick to anger. I am an Elf Warrior for the Mother Earth.

The whales and porpoises, the rivers and oceans and streams, the very Weather of the Earth herself, her winds and clouds and snows and rains are being poisoned by the polluting Corporations that want to control this world. And these Corporations are the ones creating the armies and weapons so necessary for their killing fields. Many of my fellow American Hobbits are in the habit of following ‘Authorities’ who may be masking their allegiance to the Dark Lord through very subtle strategies. Or they may be well-intentionally deluded. They are encouraged to think of themselves as ‘Light Workers’ or ‘Channelers’ bringing us ‘Great Invocations’ and other Schrafft Assorted Chocolates for our sugary spiritual consumption. Fast Food Magic. Electronically induced attention deficit disorder. Cosmic Football Cheerleaders. Love means never having to say I said it! They assure us that we must not entertain ‘negative’ thoughts or feelings but wrap ourselves round with robes of white light, surround ourselves with crystals, and heed the voice of our ‘Higher Selves’. They further assure us that there is a ‘Hierarchy’ of ‘ascended masters’ working on ‘higher planes’ to assist us in bringing peace, harmony, and prosperity to the Earth in the coming ‘New Age’ of Aquarius. Others amongst them call themselves psychics and prophets and warn of an impending ‘Apocalypse’ which will destroy most of us, but save a selected, ‘chosen’ few, supposedly the ‘good guys’ amongst us. Well, kids, you do realize that one of the great alluring glamours of the fabulous Tolkien Ring was its ability to display (to those who could see it) a miraculous, fiery inscription upon its surface written in the old ELF letters but in the language of Mordor and that inscription is the famous, ‘One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them’. I think we all ought to be questioning the credentials of these ‘New World Servers’, these psychics, channelers, and mystic sooth-sayers because they themselves may be deluded into the service of the Dark Lord by way of his many new technologically advanced methods of MIND CONTROL. These days those ELF letters used to mask the language of Mordor are written on the unseen air as Extreme Low Frequency communications invisibly aimed at us. Governments and scientists have been perfecting these inaudible and hallucinogenic technologies for the last five decades. So when you, or someone else claims to be channeling the ‘voice’ or ‘thought’ of an ‘Ascended Master’ who’s to say it isn’t a broadcast from the hired hands of the Global Mind Police ? Remote Viewers are everywhere and their very presence is due to the Secret Intelligence Community. What are all those satellites ringing the Earth actually broadcasting as they relentlessly encircle us ? What is HAARP actually broadcasting ? The remote-controlled, electronic technology exists and is in use that can induce a nervous disorder, a cerebral hemorrhage, or a heart attack in a healthy human being. Who is ‘meant’ to ‘hear’ what voice ? We do know that Pluto, Lord Of Invisibility, is ‘broadcasting’ whatever he broadcasts these days from the region of the stars known as the constellation of Sagittarius, a sign concerned with the ‘higher mind’. And we do know that ELF waves were used in the Gulf War to disorient and confuse ‘the enemy’. So, what’s up, doc ?

What’s up, I think, is that those of us who choose to be down here in our physical bodies on the Mother Earth need to take action. We must dismiss the pseudo-spirituality that encourages us to solipsistically self-engage in ‘politically correct’ NICENESS. That was okay for Buster Brown and his cat, Midnight, who lived in a shoe along with Howdy Doody in the 1950s, but it won’t do for now. Now we must learn that all the inner peace we may (and certainly should) feel must be expressed also outwardly in social action. This is no time to be sitting around exclusively focused on our own personal union with the Divine. ( I’m sure there are important exceptions to this general truth! ) Yes, I believe in prayer, I believe in love, and though I am NOT fond of ANY form of organized religion, I know that the Divine responds to all our prayers and all our aspirations of love whether we pray to Jesus, Buddha, Quan Yin, Allah, the Virgin Mary, or the Earth Mother -provided we do so in heartfelt innocence and confident trust. I do realize the Unity and One-ness of All Being and I cherish and celebrate it. But I don’t think Political Christianity does, nor do I believe Alice Bailey and her purported teacher Dwaj Kuhl are accurate (let alone Conscious) when they say together in harmony through page after page of ‘Esoteric Astrology’ that the Earth is NOT a Sacred Planet.

What kind of supposed ‘Ascended Master’ (Tibetan, or otherwise) would have so little respect for the Mother Earth ? Among other things, I am an American. I walk on the Mother Earth where the bones and blood of my Native Brothers and Sisters have lived, prayed, loved, and died; I think Carl Jung was quite correct when he observed ( as Chief Seattle had much earlier) that Americans are ‘inhabited’ by the ‘ghosts’ of the dead of their stolen continent ( as are the Australians by the ‘Dreamtimers’, the New Zealanders by the Maoris, etc.). I feel we all truly are our Brothers keepers. My Red Indian, Native American Brothers and Sisters have ACTED from their love of the SACRED MOTHER EARTH and the ‘Great Spirit’ so consistently and so courageously as to make my heart sing and my Spirit soar! In fact, I’d have to say the same for ALL indigenous peoples everywhere. I guess you could say I have a healthy suspicion concerning racist, political, and cerebral ‘Hierarchies’ whether they’re labeled as ‘Tibetan’, ‘Atlantean’, or ‘Galactic’. The occult aethers are ‘peopled’ by innumerable spirits and entities, by all kinds of psychic (and otherwise) energy constructs and aggregates but I rarely take dictation from them, and strive NEVER to abandon personal responsibility for what I say or do. No person of integrity will willingly abandon such personal, spiritual responsibility nor will any evolved spirit form or consciousness seek to speak its Will or the Will of its ‘Spiritual Brotherhood’ through ‘temporary possession’ of another person, even if that person agrees to the arrangement. I just don’t ‘buy’ White Light Fascism, with or without the crystals, incense, and sacred oils. Nor do I support the status-quo approach of contemporary, psychological, ‘certified’ Astrology -whether it comes wrapped up in ‘esoteric’ or ‘scientific’ clothing. Methinks the Emperor hath no clothes.

Astrology, like everything else, is political. Politics, these days, is mostly in the hands of the status-quo ‘boys’ of a ‘capitalist’ paradigm that is totally bankrupt on all levels because it is exhausting. It has outlived any usefulness it may have had. Still, it is dying a slow death and resisting all the way. Pluto opposing Saturn is meant to give this death process a big push. Astrologers need to be pointing this out. The Rational Paradigm of Western White Europeans with its obsessive and mentally ‘idealistic’ insistence on ‘progress’ as a kind of relentless process of subduing Nature to exploit her ‘resources’ has caused these ‘rational’ business people with their religion of control, propaganda and greed to withdraw farther and farther away from communion with the organic life spirit of the Mother Earth. The old line of Western Kings, Queens, Popes, Businessmen, and other assorted elitist dictators are still being sustained by their college trained scientists, historians, and technologists. But the remainder of the common people, the simple Hobbits all over the Earth are awakening and Astrology can be a tool they use to help them focus their awakening. I should say OUR awakening. And I should emphasize that this Astrology is only a tool. It is a system and a structure of thought, and if it is not to become a closed circle reinforcing the ONE RING of the Dark Lord of Mordor we astrologers must be awake to the fact that His Invisible Majesty has his EYE on us, -and our beloved, sacred game. We must refuse the temptation to be successfully well-adjusted to the psychotic wasteland of the Corporate World. We must fight hard in defense of the real truth of Saturn, and that ‘Truth’ begins and ends with the bare bones of life. Who gets to ‘realistically’ define the actual, physical, economic structure of life and living now, here, on planet Earth ?

Are we conveying to those who come to us for insight into the stars that currently ALL AUTHORITY is up for grabs ? Are we supporting and encouraging real social and political action ? Are we engaged in such action ourselves ? Or are we placating our Brothers and Sisters with glamorous doses of numinous prozac, spiritual praxil, and lofty zoloft ? Are we sitting enclosed within the circle of our consensus ‘authority’ held there fixedly by the One Ring of Power ? When our ‘clients’ come away from us do they come away enthused with increased Personal Authority and Insight, or are we coddling them with condescending babble focused totally upon their own personal souls ? It is said, even by Alice Bailey and her ‘Tibetan’ ventriloquist, that the true sign of Soul and Spirit is SHARING. Sharing is an ACTION, and on the physical Earth where we live it is action we must undertake with others, not just our ‘inner selves’. If we counsel others to selfishly internalize everything that goes on in the world, if we teach ‘surrender’ to the ‘higher self’ are we not selling tickets to the old Broadway Show called: How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying ? If we are related to a ‘Higher Self’ (and I know we are) that Higher Self does not seek the mere ‘surrender’ of our Ego Personality, but its vigorous and often resistant involvement in the whole process of transformation! Do we counsel others to follow their bliss or heart leading them to believe they’ll get rich in the process ? Crazy Horse followed his heart, and so did Leonard Peltier, and Martin Luther King, and Mumia Abu Jamal and they are all assassinated or imprisoned by the Corporate World. And WE must share in the needed work to free them !

Has Astrology succumbed to the pervasive passivity of consumerism and ‘success’ that is the typical brain washing of the One World Corporate Government ? Do astrologers risk alienating their potential clientele by using the art and skill of their sacred craft combined with their political views to bring collective social insight to events such as those that unfolded at the World Trade Center in New York, or the Pentagon in Arlington ? Is that ‘just’ politics, and are we to act ‘professionally’ ( according to the status-quo of Western White Paradigms ) and sit in god-like ‘detachment’ without judgement of these goings-on ? Politics is no less an expression of the Spirit than Meditation. Why is the faculty of Judgement so ‘politically incorrect’ among ‘New Age’ practitioners of alternative healing modalities ? Are our ‘clients’ -those who support us with their fees- mostly white, middle class spiritual seekers invested in the comfort and success of the ‘Yuppie’ Lifestyle ? Are we encouraging Quietism among our clients as the cost of our ‘success’ ? Or do we even know what Quietism is ?

From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)

Quietism "et*ism, n. [Cf. F. qui['e]tisme.]

1. Peace or tranquillity of mind; calmness; indifference; apathy; dispassion; indisturbance; inaction.

2. (Eccl. Hist.) The system of the Quietists, who maintained that religion consists in the withdrawal of the mind from worldly interests and anxieties and its constant employment in the passive contemplation of God and his attributes.

Retrograde Mercury in Cancer opposing Retrograde Pluto in Capricorn are, as Dane Rudhyar has pointed out [ see: The Atsrology Of America’s Destiny at http://www.khaldea.com/rudhyar/aad/aad_frontispiece.shtml ]

the only two Retrograde planets in the Nation’s birth chart and incline us collectively toward a self-involved ‘indifference’ and ‘apathy’. Furthermore, our tendency toward confused, scattered, or unfocused ACTION (or, indeed total LACK OF ACTION) can be seen in the waning & applying SQUARE aspect which Mars in Gemini is forming to Neptune in Virgo in this same National Birth Chart. Since the Neptune-Virgo combination is focused in the 9^{th house of philosophy and belief systems while the Mars-Gemini combination is expressing through the 7th house of relationships with friends and/or open enemies, it would seem we are a People easily prone to confusion and escapism in our actions due to fuzzy, unclear ordering of data and priorities. It certainly points to our vulnerability from ‘invading’ gurus, psychics, and our own remote viewers. Not to mention our shared tendency to mask from ourselves the FACTS of our actions by wrapping ourselves round with the foggy, nebulous, escapism of Neptune. This square of Mars to Neptune points out, I think, how it is that our War Machine can so aggressively invade, destroy, and rape other countries (Vietnam, Guatamala, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.) while convincing American Hobbits that they are in no way Mars-like aggressors, that they are in fact Neptunian Victims! The earliest evidence of this evasive tactic can be seen in how we as an invading people aggressively intruded ourselves upon the Iroquois, Onandaga, Algonquin natives of this Land (and progressively westward over every other ‘tribe’ from the Lakota to the Hopi) bringing disease, rape, theft, and murder everywhere we came. Yet we teach our children evasive myths all about noble Davy Crockett, Kit Carson, and General Custer as if there were not anything but SHAME associated with so many of their actions, as if the wholesale and cruel slaughter at Wounded Knee was somehow all due to a sad misunderstanding! Voila, the Habits of Hobbits in America, the veiled and shadowed actions of aggression we as a People undertake while escaping into vacuous, negative Neptune excuses! And Who is it who has decided to launch a ‘War On Terrorism’ in the name of ‘Infinite Justice’ ? Current American ‘Patriotism’ is an example of personal laziness and moral apathy; it is one of the most revoltingly disgusting evasions of personal responsibility on Planet Earth! Don’t tread on me ? America, a pig in wolf’s clothing! Americans, a flock of phony sheep. A Nation full of fat people violently consuming the natural ‘resources’ of the entire Mother Earth. Escapists. Unconscious gluttons addicted to the hand-me-downs of the Dark Lord and his One Ring of Corporate Global Power.}

^{No, I won’t sing you a positive lullaby of the Stars all about how good and noble we Americans are. We indulge in that game too much already. And rest assured, all you ‘certified’ patriots out there, Osama Bin Grabau is not a terrorist; but Pluto has come to the Nation’s Ascendant and our task is to look truthfully into our personal and collective psyche, to engage our Shadow Self, to DIE to all our old ways, and face the ‘karma’ they imply. We can do this honestly, both as individuals and collectively if we do not continue to hide from ourselves the nature of our relationship with Darkness. We can learn as a Nation how to be humble and true. And it’s not for me to spell out the ways we are to accomplish our urgent task, it’s for each of us to find our own ways, and then to bring them together. But as we struggle hard not to fall under the One Ring’s Power it will be wise of us to remember the only thing the Dark Lord doesn’t know, the joy and laughter of love shared. May our hobbit habit of shared joy and laughter touch our dark friend’s painful folly where it hides within our hearts so that soon by reed and willow, fire and moon, we will break free with him from the closed circle, singing:}

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Francis D. Grabau is a poet, writer, and practising astrologer who has been steeped in the stars since 1968. His article: "Attack of the Archons," has been published by "New Dawn" magazine.  He welcomes the opportunity to interpret your birthchart through writing and tapes as well as by phone call.  He can be reached via Internet at: www.starpathvisions.com as well as www.astrologyforthepeople.com; his personal email address is: starpath3@earthlink.net. He currently lives on the Hawaian Island of Kauai. He can be contacted via telephone in the USA on (808) 821 0710, or write to: Francis D. Grabau, 5359 Kumole St, Kapa’a, Hawaii 96746, USA.

Go to "Christ Bomb" by Francis D. Grabau

Go to "Autobiography of a Fairy" by Francis D. Grabau

Go to "Attack of the Archons" by Francis D. Grabau

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