Uranus in Taurus and the Farmer/Rancher/Rural Rebellion (2018 to 2026)

The Moon grows full at 19 degrees Taurus exactly conjunct asteroid Vesta Rx in Taurus and opposite the Sun and Mercury Rx in Scorpio in the early hours of November 12 (5:34 a.m. PST). 

The Moon is exalted in the earthy and grounded sign of Taurus. The cycles of the Moon play out like clockwork, just like the nature-based rhythms of agrarian Taurus. It's a lovely match.

The Moon relates to the public, to the populace, and particularly to the emotional state of the populace. Under this Taurus Full Moon, we have illuminated for us a full-out worldwide rebellion of rural people, ranchers, farmers, resource-based workers, and those who have a life on the land running through their blood. 

The Taurus Moon forms a conjunction to Uranus Rx at 4 degrees late tonight (11:10 p.m.), and this Uranian rebellion energy is carried into the lunar peak.

The exact conjunction between the Full Moon and asteroid of hearth and home Vesta, retrograde in Taurus, indicates strong themes involving resources and soul-level investments. We've put years, lifetimes, into our material anchors on this Earth, into maintaining a life connected to the natural cycles and rhythms of this Earth. There's a lot at stake here, and we're not letting these resources and investments be stolen from us without a fight. 

This Taurus Full Moon is the call to resist. The call to break form. The call for self-determination. Anyone who believes in the right to independence for the human soul can hear this call, whether country dweller or city slicker or a combination of the two.

Cattle on my family ranch

Photos: Willow, excluding the photo of the hail, which is used with permission

In October 2019, between 20,000 and 25,000 Dutch farmers converged on the Hague, the Netherlands' capital city, to push back against government suggestions that livestock production should be slashed by 50% to meet European Union nitrogen emissions regulations. Around 8,000 tractors came together in a tractor rally that caused a massive traffic jam in the city. Despite this inconvenience, polls showed that 89% of Dutch people supported the farmers.

From an October 18, 2019 article, "Dutch farmers stage another mass protest against new climate change regulations," by Arthur Lyons for VoiceofEurope.com:

“Last year you didn’t hear anything about nitrogen, and now suddenly it’s a mortal question,” Micha Bouwer of the Farmers Defense Force told Dutch state broadcaster NOS. “These are all people in the city who have two plants on their balcony and say ‘nature is suffering’.”

This rally is part of a massively under-reported rural (Taurus) rebellion (Uranus) going on worldwide in resistance to the forced urbanization outlined in the United Nations' Agenda 21 and Agenda 2030. We will only see this rebellion and resistance intensifying the further we get into the Uranus in Taurus transit.

In Western Canada, the recent re-election of silver spoon elitist Justin Trudeau has spurred a massive outcry from people who are also refusing the globalist climate change/green fascist/"sustainable development" agenda. Renewed interest has been stoked in a separatist movement that desires the separation of the prairie provinces from the rest of Canada. 

In a nutshell, this is resistance from resource-based prairie provinces that have long been milked for their labour and their revenue, including from agriculture and oil, with profits funneled to Eastern Canada, as well as to countries around the world.

The government refusal to build a pipeline to get Canadian oil to other areas of Canada and to sea ports for overseas markets (a move that benefits oil interests in other countries, including the United States) has meant the loss of tens of thousands of jobs in the prairie provinces, creating a white-hot point of conflict in recent years.

A recent documentary by Vivian Krause called Over a Barrel outlines the connections between Rockefeller money (heavy oil interests) and the anti-pipeline protests (complete with paid protesters) in Canada that led to the government refusal to build more pipelines. Since pipelines already criss-cross Canada and the United States, the decision to demonize them at this particular point in time is suspect, if nothing else. Smells like an agenda, doesn't it? And the Rockefeller money indicates with certainty that it is.

The long and the short of it is this: resource-based (Taurus) provinces and areas are officially fed up with being worked into early graves so that the revenue generated from their labour can be funneled into the schemes of the global elite, creating forced urbanization and propping up the dense bureaucracies of the Global Government and NGOs worldwide.

The provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan are currently operating at a deficit, and yet, billions of dollars of their revenue are still being funneled to Eastern Canada via "equalization payments," as well as to countries worldwide every year.

It is becoming harder and harder to survive outside the major centres, and this is a concerted agenda being brought down. (The elimination of Saskatchewan Transportation Company in 2017 and Greyhound bus service in 2018 are two elements of this that I've reported on in the past.) These are intentionally-created conditions. This is Global Government policy that intentionally sucks resource-based areas dry while suffocating them with unfair taxation, a lack of services, ridiculous rules, and bureaucratic red tape, among other things.

This is the United Nations' Agenda 21/Agenda 2030 being brought in top-down: force people off the land and into high-density, heavily-surveilled mega-cities where we eat corporate, chemical-soaked, genetically modified Franken-foods, work in allotted jobs, live in allotted sky-rise apartment blocks, and take allotted transit to allotted locations like good little compliant citizens. There is no connection to nature, to the land, to animals, to the celestial bodies, or to our own food and water allowed under this Grand Plan for Humanity. 

And this is how we know that "climate change" is a highly-manipulated subject being intentionally implanted as a control mechanism in the populace: it absolutely saturates mainstream media as well as conventional education. If a subject is allowed to saturate mainstream media and the education system, if the same ideas are being parroted over and over again all over the world to great corporate media fanfare, the subject is being used in a control-based way, manufacturing a version of reality (no matter how devoid of truth or fact) that is conducive to the Grand Plans of the powers-that-be. 

The practise of establishment wealth and power forcing people off the land and into starvation, early death, forced emigration, and/or slavery (literal or urban slum/factory versions), has been going on for millennia. The English enclosures, the Highland and Lowland clearances of Scotland, the Irish potato famine, the Holodomor in Ukraine, the purges and gulags of Russia, the Native American genocide and reservation systems, and the slavery of African Americans in North America are but a few heinous examples. The powers-that-be are not quite so obvious about it these days, but I experienced that slowly tightening vice while growing up on a cattle ranch and also when living back in that area as an adult. Our family, like most rural families, was under immense pressure, and it broke us down in many ways. It was only my dear father's ability to do the work of two or even three men that kept us on the ranch, in our way of life.

Under Uranus in Taurus, the agenda to break the farmers, the ranchers, and the rural people has gone into overdrive. 

And the top-down Agenda 21/Agenda 2030 plans are being brought in by riding "climate change" - one of the biggest psy-ops in human history, if not the biggest. Any level of fascist social engineering, any level of infringement on the lives and rights of others, it seems, will be accepted by those who have swallowed this "green" agenda. 

An entire generation of people has been hood-winked into believing that climate change is the most critical issue of our times - all while much more critical issues go unaddressed, unnoticed. All while top-down hyper-control of the lives of the people creeps in, inch-by-inch, step-by-step, while glad-handing and grinning for the cameras.

An entire generation of people has been hood-winked into swallowing a top-down agenda of the globalist power regime that would have us living like automatons, like androids with no access to nature, to animals, to the ability to independently grow or source our own food. With no means of escape from the increasingly controlled, micro-managed, and devoid lifestyles of the mega-cities. 

This is the life they have planned for us.

And so this is where the rebellion kicks in.

From the May 15, 2019 article, "Uranus in Taurus and Orchestrated War Attacks Involving Nuclear (Uranus) and Banking (Taurus)":

"Attacks related to food, agriculture (including geoengineering), starvation, systemic poverty, and lack (Taurus) can also be expected under this astrological symbol."

Make no bones about it - this is a concerted attack on rural people, on the rural way of life, and it is a particular attack on the people who independently produce food (with corporate interests waiting in the wings, licking their chops in anticipation). 

For many years, it has been made more and more difficult to earn a living producing food as an independent farmer or rancher. Land prices, excessive taxation of land owners, and sky-rocketing input costs from seeds to fertilizer to machinery are some of the ways the screws are being tightened in a concerted attempt to force people off the land. Commodity prices for their products are then manipulated through stock market/derivatives speculation with wild swings up and down that destabilize things even further.

Uranus first entered Taurus in May 2018, retrograding back into Aries in November 2018 and re-entering Taurus direct on March 6, 2019 for a transit that will last until April 2026.

Uranus stationed retrograde at 6 degrees Taurus on August 11, 2019, and it is now re-tracing its steps before going direct again at 2 degrees Taurus on January 10, 2020, just as we experience the exact Saturn-Pluto conjunction at 22 degrees Capricorn, also conjunct the Sun and Mercury in Capricorn.

Uranus (upheaval, shocks) in Taurus (food, agriculture, resources, rural) becomes a key astrological influence - I would argue the key astrological influence - for the next seven years as dispositor of transiting Jupiter in Aquarius (December 2020 to December 2021) and Saturn in Aquarius (March 2020 to March 2023), as well as the dispositor over the first three years of the Pluto in Aquarius transit (initial ingress March 2023). 

This rural rebellion is not something that urban people can simply ignore as "not affecting them." This rural rebellion is not just about farm people wanting to live their farmerly lives. This is literally a battle for the right to humanity's resources. This is a battle for control over these resources to benefit the people, rather than the nefarious agendas of the global wealth-holders. This is a battle for humanity's survival, for the right to eat natural food, for the right to determine where and how we live, for the right of self-determination and independence from outside control and manipulation. These are epic battles, and they affect everyone who eats, who drinks, who uses energy. They affect everyone.

As if all this were not enough for rural people to carry on their backs, we can also add the chaos and uncertainty of intentional weather modification/geo-engineering being used to create floods, droughts, and storms that drastically reduce the ability to produce food (and a living). 

I've written on the blog in the past about the intentional flooding of food-producing areas around the world via geo-engineering. This flooding, like most of the manufactured ills of our times, is blamed on that Big Bad Bogey Man and fall guy "climate change."

Looking at the astrology, though, suggests, as per usual, that these events were intentionally planned and executed.

Historic storms and wild weather patterns occurred under cardinal t-square and Cardinal Grand Cross configurations that were formed during Uranus in Aries square Pluto in Capricorn.

In August 2010, my home province of Saskatchewan, a major food-producing area, experienced massive flooding following abnormal precipitation and monster hail storms that produced baseball-sized hail. One hundred fourteen communities were declared disaster areas in the province, and there was widespread crop loss due to an abnormally cold and wet spring when many farmers could not get on the land to plant, followed by the abnormal precipitation and extensive flooding. At the time, transiting Saturn in Libra was forming an opposition to Uranus in Aries and a square to Pluto in Capricorn, and this cardinal t-square was intensified by Mars and Venus in Libra forming conjunctions to Saturn. 

Then in spring 2011, Saskatchewan experienced a repeat of the historic flooding in what was called a "300-year flood." The photograph to the left is my family ranch in May 2011. None of us had ever seen anything like this level of flooding. Again, there was mass crop loss across Saskatchewan, and people were evacuated from their homes. At the time of the flooding, the cardinal t-square formed by Uranus in Aries opposite Saturn in Libra square Pluto in Capricorn became a Cardinal Grand Cross configuration by the transiting planets in Cancer, strongly in effect from mid-June through the end of August. 

In July 2011, under that same Cardinal Grand Cross, Pakistan's breadbasket was flooded in a horrific situation that killed around 1,600 people and destroyed two million homes, leaving up to seven million people homeless. That flooding destroyed crops on a grand scale, as well. 

In June/July 2014, there was more mass flooding in Saskatchewan. By this time, we were in the thick of the series of seven exact squares between Uranus in Aries and Pluto in Capricorn (2012 - 2015).
 
Just like in 2011, there was a Cardinal Grand Cross being formed at that time with transiting Mars in Libra and the Sun and Moon in Cancer, along with Uranus in Aries and Pluto in Capricorn.

I experienced this flooding firsthand, as my village was one of the areas flooded out on June 29, 2014 after abnormal rainfall (8 to 9 inches in one day), and we were all evacuated. It was a very surreal experience. More photos from that time can be seen here.

At the same time as mass flooding was being geo-engineered in certain food-producing areas under the cardinal configurations, crippling drought was being created in others. Droughts in California, Texas, Montana, and North Dakota, to name a few, prompted massive sell-offs in livestock, as there was no feed for the animals. The drought experienced in California from 2011 to 2017 was so severe it was said to be the worst drought in 1,200 years. The period from 2011 to 2014 was the driest in California history. The drought has been followed by highly suspect "forest fires" that seem to burn houses to the ground while leaving the shrubs and trees surrounding them untouched. These fires also seem to occur along a proposed high-speed train line from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Hmm...

The crop losses result in devastating financial losses for ranchers and farmers, but they pay off big time for stock market schmucks sitting at desks and betting on all this going down. You may recall my reporting on crop derivatives schemes that pay off handsomely when major crop losses are experienced - or when the mass belief in crop loss fuels speculation on grains futures. This type of stock market speculation drives the price of staple foods up steeply, starving people in countries around the world. Starvation for profit. An old-school tactic of the so-called "elite."

The last time Uranus transited Taurus was between 1935 and 1942, which coincided with Great Depression years, as well as the lead-up to World War II. This astrological context must be kept firmly in mind as we experience the current Uranus in Taurus transit. 

From the September 3, 2017 article, "Hurricane Harvey, the Total Solar Eclipse, and This Era of Unnatural Disaster":

"To be blunt about it: the Great Depression was just a warm-up for these fucks.

There's no better way to control people than by starving them out or destroying their homes and businesses, their ability to make a living. This has been a historical practise of establishment wealth and power against those with much less wealth and power, and it goes across races, ethnicities, and backgrounds. This includes people being "tractored off" their farm land during the Great Depression of the 1930s, often leading to starvation or malnutrition and being forced into what amounted to slave labour.

Three hundred-year floods...500-year droughts...1,000-year floods...

"Unprecedented," "largest natural disaster in history," "unseen before in our lifetimes," "record-setting rainfall," "record-setting flooding," "most powerful earthquake ever recorded."

And all happening within the past ten years. Does this seem a little suspicious? Do you notice a pattern?

It's orchestrated."

It's all just a little bit of history repeating - except at present, instead of being tractored off the land during the Dust Bowl, farmers and ranchers are in danger of being bankrupted due to manufactured floods, droughts, and storms, along with increasingly insane input costs combined with the increasingly insane "green agenda" that is using the manipulated concept of climate change to bring down a level of social engineering that does not allow people to live on the land.

But now, with Uranus transiting Taurus, we see the push-back - not only from rural people, not only from farmers and ranchers, but from everyone who sees through this sickening control mechanism that removes all real choice and all real independence from the people. 

This is an attempt to disconnect us even further from nature, from the land, from our own food and water sources. This is an attempt to disconnect us from our own souls.

As the Moon grows full in Taurus, we must resist this soul-disconnect, this disconnect from the grounding anchor provided by nature and a natural human life. 

Resist Agenda 21 and Agenda 2030. Resist the highly-manipulated "green agenda" being used to bring in this top-down control over our daily lives. 

Support your local farmers and ranchers and the independent production of food, or succumb to whatever form of lab-created "food" the powers-that-be have deemed fit for you. You'd better believe they have it all planned out...

Happy Hallowe'en!

Happy Hallowe'en to all you spooks and sprites, witches and ghouls! Here is a little pictorial of some of the truly inspired displays of Hallowe'en spirit in my neighbourhood. I hope you all have a marvelously mischievous time tonight!

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 Well, off to get some groceries! heh Just your standard everyday witchery...

Happy Hallowe'en, all! I hope you have a festive good time tonight as we slip into the dark half...

Mercury Goes Retrograde in Scorpio Conjunct Venus on All Hallow’s Eve: A Deep Dive into the Mental Netherworld

What follows is an excerpt from the 5,000-word article, "Mercury Goes Retrograde in Scorpio Conjunct Venus on All Hallow’s Eve: a Deep Dive into the Mental Netherworld," that is available in its entirety to Willow's Web Astrology patrons. 

If you regularly find Willow's Web Astrology valuable, consider becoming a patron. Patrons receive in-depth astrological articles to their email inboxes that are not available on the public blog.

- Mercury in Scorpio: October 3 to December 9, 2019  -

 

- Mercury retrograde: October 31 to November 20 from 27 degrees to 11 degrees Scorpio -   

 

As We Enter the Dark Half…

 

We’ve just entered Scorpio season, as the Sun moved into the sign of sex, death, regeneration, healing, secrets, research, and power on October 23 at 10:20 a.m. PDT.  

The Sun and Moon come together in exact conjunction at 4 degrees Scorpio on October 27 (8:38 p.m.), marking a New Moon that drops the bottom out in certain ways. The Scorpio New Moon falls in exact opposition to Uranus Rx in Taurus, and this adds a wild card element to the following lunar cycle, which spans from October 27 to November 26. Emotional shocks, changes, or surprises are on the docket that we must gradually integrate into our psyches. Emotional intelligence is a huge boon for this lunar cycle, as is an already well-developed understanding of what lies beneath the surface.  

Mercury, Venus, and female warrior asteroid Pallas Athene will be conjunct in late Scorpio at the time of the Scorpio New Moon opposite Uranus. This indicates that strategic communication and soul-bonded alliances will play a strong role in the lunar cycle. There’s a hidden battle underway, and the only connections that can be trusted are with those who are fighting that battle just as diligently as we are. In particular, this involves the fight for soul-sovereignty, the battle to remove ourselves from the influence of coercive control and illegitimate power...

Applying Plutonic Consciousness… 

There are some uncomfortable and even potentially incendiary conversations, connections, and exchanges on the horizon as Mercury retraces its steps through the netherworld regions of our minds. Speaking right from our core realities - not getting sidetracked, not glossing over things, not chickening out - is the guiding thread through the mental and conversational landmines. We might not receive the validation or the action we were hoping for, but the act of putting things into words and expressing those words will often make us feel better. In this way, we’re doing our part, and this might be enough to put things behind us in a satisfactory way.

In order to be successful now, we're taking the charge out of our words (even with highlycharged situations and subject matters). We're stripping the "striving desire for power and influence" out of our words. We're just laying down the reality of the situation, plain and simple.  

Mercury retrograde in Scorpio indicates the potential for deep and profound realizations, cathartic realizations that can break our chains and move us out of detrimental karmic patterns that we've been struggling with for years. But we have to work for these realizations. We have to dig for them. We have to hold our still little centres as they come to the surface. And we have to be willing to examine some pretty gnarly dynamics in our own minds and relations in order to get to them.  

During this extended transit of Mercury through Scorpio with Mars in Libra square Pluto in Capricorn, we are in a highly complex collective situation. At this point, most people understand that there is something very wrong with the artificial power structures on this planet. (People like me understand that these are not just wrong, but straight-up evil...) In many cases, we have a common goal and like minds as far as a consuming desire for justice, emancipation, and change in the face of corruption, greed, manipulation, and top-down control. But the divide-and-conquer tactics that keep the people weak and the powers-that-be strong are being played like a fiddle, and we are often fighting each other along identity politics lines, philosophical lines, or conventional political lines, instead of joining forces to battle, together, the true enemies of humankind. 

The real power web is global, takes on all political and institutional stripes, and has been doing its dirty deeds for thousands of years. This nasty and exclusive club hurts all “non-elite” people, no matter what the race, nationality, gender, sexuality, class, or lifestyle. It just hurts us all a little bit differently.  

As of the federal election on October 21, Canada is a nation just as divided as the United States of America.  

The alienation, rage, and hurt coming from Western Canadian provinces is at cacophony-level. Membership in a “Wexit” Facebook group – proposing the separation of the Western Canadian provinces from Canada – went from 6,000 members on October 21 to 200,000 and growing on October 22. 

The green energy agenda, in particular, is being rolled out top-down not to actually advance things on the energy front for humankind but to benefit certain oil interests over other oil interests, as well as to lock down green energy as their next frontier. This green agenda is about control of the resources and control of the people, the same as any top-down agenda. And thousands and thousands of Canadians are being thrown into the hell of unemployment, financial insecurity, and poverty in the process while a silver spoon elitist figurehead on Parliament Hill smirks and preens and sticks his tongue out for the camera while spending taxpayers' dollars and natural resource revenue like a teenager with Daddy's credit card. 

People are being hurt for false, manipulated ideals and for the profit of others, and this is not right, no matter what your political stripe.

Whether Brexit or Wexit, the desire for emancipation from the global fascist regime, from the New World Order, from whatever name you’d like to apply to it, is at a boiling point all over this planet. Most people instinctively and intuitively despise and oppose the top-down agendas of the global fascist “elite.” The people want to remove their blood, sweat, tears, and tax dollars from the corrupt machine as soon as possible. They want to take their work, their energy, and their lifesblood back, rather than continuing to feed the already-bloated coffers of those in the pyramid caps of corrupt and manufactured power.  

The question is: how to go about doing this when people are so divided along identity, political, and philosophical lines…and when so many are still looking to conventional political and media figures to take them there. (Won’t happen.) 

The desire for emancipation and autonomy from corrupt, violent, and top-down power is an ancient desire, a desire that burns in the collective soul of humanity. The people have been hideously oppressed, injured, and murdered by these power schemes for millennia. We’ve always known it. We’ve just never known quite how to stop it. And this is where we continue to exist today.  

It’s this complex and truly heartbreaking collective scenario that provides the backdrop for this deep-dive Mercury retrograde process in Scorpio.  

Unacknowledged Emotional Labour Becomes Too Heavy to Bear. Breaking Points Ahead…

Scorpio is a sign related to power dynamics. With dispositors Mars in Libra and Pluto in Capricorn locked into a battle-to-the-breaking-point square aspect (exact November 5), the coercive and often invisible hand of illegitimate power is being highlighted within the structures and institutions as they exist, and this trickles down into the everyday lives of most people. 

We’re reaching some “fed up to here” points during this Mercury retrograde and Scorpio lunar cycle as far as the nasty scenarios that are being allowed to continue for the benefit of some over others. This is going on on both micro and macro levels, both personal and collective. With Mars transiting Libra and squaring Pluto in Capricorn, fairness (Libra) is a strong desire (Mars), and there is often not much of that going around within the hierarchical power dynamics that dominate workplaces, institutions, and relationships/social settings of all kinds. 

Emotional labour is a key theme of this lunar cycle and Mercury retrograde. You know, the type of work that is rarely acknowledged and almost never fully financially compensated? This is often but not always the domain of women and of men who have stronger feminine/emotional/intuitive sensibilities. Many people doing the long-term heavy lifting on the emotional labour front are reaching their breaking points now. They’ve been operating at a deficit for as long as they possibly can. There is just not enough emotional energy to continue to prop up dysfunctional, top-down systems without something (or someone) giving way. Heeding our internal signals about how much emotional energy we are giving and when to pull
back on the reins is a key to success, and this continues to be a theme as we come closer to the exact Saturn-Pluto conjunction at 22 degrees Capricorn on January 12, 2020. 

When it becomes a matter of our energetic/emotional survival, we find the courage and the motivation to make necessary changes and to draw new lines in the sand.

Pluto Stationing Direct in Capricorn Conjunct Saturn and Resisting Everyday Fascism

Lord of the Underworld Pluto stations direct at 20 degrees Capricorn on October 2 (11:39 p.m. PDT) within a conjunction to Cosmic Daddy Saturn, and patriarchal bureaucratic hierarchy's got us down!

Even recognizing the invisible, top-down, coercive hand of Everyday Fascism in the functioning of mainstream society is challenging and exhausting, let alone resisting it while using our own steely wills to chart a different course.

But recognizing and resisting this Everyday Fascism and then choosing a different course through our daily lives is exactly the challenge that has been laid at our feet under the Saturn-Pluto conjunction in Capricorn (exact in January 2020).

The rigid, artificial rhythms for daily work and life that have been set out for us are internalized by most at a very young age. We're born into it. This is just "what's normal." It's "what's done." It's "the way things are."

The Machine tells us: when to wake up, when to eat or drink, when to get in our cars or on our buses or trains, when to start work, when to stop work, when to take a 15-minute break from work, when to speak (and what to say), when not to speak (and what not to say), when to take a piss, when to pay our bills, when to take our allotted leisure time, when to be entertained, when to have sex, when to go to sleep. Then rinse and repeat.

Above all, The Machine tells us: faster, faster! More slick! More efficient! More impressive! Just more!

Can't rest. Can't slow down. Can't re-direct. Can't stop. Can't show signs of weakness with the wolves at our doors.

In this "digital age," the artificial rhythms and routines are speeding up to the point where a biological organism cannot keep up over the course of time without doing severe damage to itself, to its relationships, to its environment. 

We're racing off the side of a cliff, oh-so-anxious to out-pace all competitors!

And we're wading through sick, soupy stretches of anxiety and depression as our biological systems rebel, as they whisper, then speak, then scream: "Something's wrong! This is not the way human beings were meant to live. This is not the way human beings were meant to be treated."

With Pluto stationing direct, we are reminded - under the layers of fear, terror, paranoia - of our own power within these manufactured structures that so often make us feel powerless. We're reminded that we can simply decide to get off the ride. We can commit to choosing our own pace, to setting our own daily rhythms, to defining our own versions of success. And we can carve this out to a satisfying degree even within the control-based structures as they exist.

We can remove our allegiance to The Machine as our timekeeper and life-structurer and goals-setter. We can instead seek the rightful timing of the universe, of nature, under the guidance of our higher power or our own conscience or both.

Pluto is stationing direct in Capricorn within a loosening square aspect to Venus in Libra. Venus will move into the sign of its detriment, Scorpio, on October 8 for a transit that lasts until November 1, 2019. 

In light of this upcoming Venus transit and under the currently-concentrated Plutonic energies, I'm re-posting an excerpt of an article written for the Venus retrograde in Scorpio last fall. As Venus prepares to cross into "the dark half" of the zodiac once again, the themes appear to this anarchist astro-reporter to be as relevant as ever...

From November 24, 2018, "Venus in Scorpio and Addressing Socially-Acceptable Addictions" 

"Scorpio is a sign that relates to addictions, and with Venus transiting Scorpio [October 8 to November 1, 2019)...we're addressing some hidden addictions in ourselves, in our relationships, and in our society.

Scorpio is also a sign related to detrimental karmic patterns, like addictions, that play out generation-after-generation due to suppressed emotion, psychological damage, and unresolved trauma.

Until now.

Until us. 

We make the hard stop. We draw the firm line. We say no and no and no again until we've broken through. Until it loses its charge and its draw. Until the moth no longer gives a shit about the flame...

The standard, recognized addictions in our society certainly cause enough misery and mayhem: drugs, alcohol, gambling.

But with Venus in "deep subtext" Scorpio, we're required to dig up even the socially-accepted addictions, the addictions that are allowed - that are straight-up engineered by our power structures - because they bolster and fuel the toxic and dysfunctional societies and systems within which we are existing.

I've said in the past that without coffee (or similar stimulants), there would be no consumer capitalism - at least not the rampant, go-go-go, "constant growth" model that currently exists.

And you can see how many of the socially-accepted (and socially-engineered) addictions work to reinforce this sick, soulless, and unsustainable model of society and economic production. They work to keep people content within a system that is slowly (or not-so-slowly) poisoning them.

Some of these socially-accepted addictions include: 

➝ workoholism or constant "busy-ness"
➝ caffeine, sugar, and processed food addictions to fuel the workoholism
➝ obsessive accumulation (money, property, cars, etc.) or compulsive shopping
➝ habitual "social drinking"
➝ over-reliance on prescription medications
➝ co-dependency, being addicted to another person or to a relationship
➝ sex addiction or serial dating
➝ an addiction to the high of falling in love, leading to an inability to maintain a stable, long-term relationship because the high wears off, and the person gets "bored."
➝ cell phones, social media, video games, television, film, and music - the inability to remain unstimulated by one or more of these things for even a short period of time (very prevalent in the younger generations)
➝ narcissistic obsessions with physical appearance, the body, status symbols, luxury lifestyles, and fame

The roots of addiction often (not always) involve unresolved and unacknowledged trauma and grief. Often, there is a root to the trauma and grief of generations past that have been brutally exploited by the wealth- and power-holders of their day. 

Two sides - that had no real beef with each other when you get right down to it - set up to slaughter each other in a manufactured construct called "war." This manufactured construct called "war" was designed to benefit those at the top of the pyramid schemes of power through the acquisition of land and resources, through the dispossession of people from the land, through the destruction of homes, businesses, and communities, through the self-extermination of the people, through the divide-and-conquer tactics that kept the people weak, unable to rise up in common force against their oppressors and dominators.

And also through the inevitable pain, grief, confusion, chaos, and coping-mechanism addictions and dysfunction that would then be passed on and passed on and passed on...

Eventually, the roots became "invisible." So many generations wanting to put it all behind them that this tyranny was placed into an "olden times" context, far removed from our current day, despite the obvious signs that it was still with us and still wreaking havoc.

And the systemic violence and poisoning of the people that continue to current day, embedded in the very structures of our societies, became "invisible," too. The violence of a corrupted (Scorpio) money system (Venus) and the corrupted (Scorpio) societal values (Venus) that go along with it became invisible. Just people going about their daily lives. Nothing to see here.

We're being poisoned by the current power structures, by the governments and corporations and financiers and Old Money bloodlines. It's in our air, in our water, in our food, in our psychic and mental environments. It's layer-upon-layer of radiation, chemicals, heavy metals, electromagnetic pollution, poisoned emotions, forced rhythms, manipulated media, artificial values, corrupted food, degraded life.

But we've also been tricked into poisoning ourselves. We've been tricked into poisoning our relationships. Parents have been tricked into poisoning their own children.

As Venus picks its way through the emotional/psychological landmines of the sign of Scorpio...[we will be required to address unresolved trauma and generational grief, as well as] the addictive nature of modern society and the toxic social dynamics in which we are immersed. 

In many ways, current, consumption-driven societies are built on these invisible addictions. The standard day is often structured around them, going from one fix to another to another, continuing under the guise of normalcy and standard routine.

Scorpio is associated with suppressed emotion, and one of the main seats of suppressed emotion in the body is the liver. In particular, suppressed anger and rage are stored there. (And honestly, if you aren't at least a little irritated with the state of things on this planet, you aren't paying very close attention...)

We have generation-after-generation of suppressed rage running through our biological systems, as well as a heaping helping of rage to process within our current moments, the rage that bubbles and boils just below the surface of day-to-day life. The rage that too-often erupts into violence and destructiveness, including the subtle emotional/psychological warfare running so rampant in human society these days.

If you look at many of the addictions that are playing out - drugs, alcohol, coffee, sugar, chocolate, processed foods, overeating (especially red meat) - they give an absolute shit-kicking to the liver. So do the roiling emotions kicked up by the toxic ways in which people are interacting with each other. 

We're abusing our livers, we're abusing ourselves, and too often we're abusing each other, even in small ways, in ways that are easily shrugged off as inconsequential.

These angry livers need our attention. They need us to remove the layers of poison that are providing their daily, socially-accepted beatings.

But more importantly, we must address the toxic systems and structures that force these addictive coping mechanisms.

It's all well and good for the upper and upper-middle classes to look down on the less financially-privileged as "unhealthy" in their habits.

But poor, working class, and even many middle class people have not had the luxury of being insulated via financial privilege and social status from the most toxic and terrible conditions of these systems.

They often do not have expendable income for massages and acupuncture and therapists and energy healers and Pilates classes and organic groceries - methods used by the upper and upper-middle classes to make it through the day.

They are living in a society that expects them to work their guts out, that expects them to suffer, to literally work themselves into an early grave in exchange for the privilege of surviving.  

Often, these people are doing work at which the upper and upper-middle classes would turn up their noses.

Those who haven't done working class jobs, blue collar jobs, really have no idea. Those who have not seen their friends and family and community members working themselves to death - aided by those addictive substances to get through the day - really have no idea.

The truth of the matter is: in most cases (and across most socioeconomic classes), people are not living lives of their own choosing. They're living forced lives on artificial rhythms and schedules, repugnant to a free and natural human being. Enduring this state without reprieve has highly detrimental effects.    

It's the responsibility of all of us to improve conditions on this planet, and those with luxury and comfort have even more responsibility. It is the responsibility of these "luxuriating classes" to address the ways in which they are benefiting and profiting from toxic and unfair dynamics...and to create effective remedies.

We need to acknowledge the true roots of the suppressed emotion and unresolved trauma. The raging injustice and grief, passed generation-by-generation, that simmers just below the surface. We need to stop blaming ourselves and each other for set-ups that were engineered to be just this bad...and worse. We need to understand the illegitimate power structures and illegitimate power players that are creating these Hell scenarios for us on Earth. We need to stop turning it on ourselves - and on our poor livers. We need to stop turning it on each other. 

What's going on stems from much higher up the pyramid scheme. It stems from all the way up at the pyramid cap, at the very highest rungs of this hierarchical shitshow. It stems from the "invisible" actions and direction of people we will never meet, of people who will never know our names. These are the so-called "elite." A glaring misnomer if ever I've heard one...

Our societies are being engineered to be this toxic, this dysfunctional, this anger-inducing, this full-on insane and inhumane. 

And it continues with all those unaddressed, socially-accepted addictions providing (toxic) structure and routine to our day-to-day. It continues because the people who are benefiting from it simply go along with it. They justify it.

As lovely Venus moves through the sign most fear to experience (Scorpio), the way we love ourselves and each other, the way we love humanity and the living creatures on this planet, is to peel these layers of addiction, exposing and addressing the real root causes. 

We refuse to stuff it down any longer, including with holiday meals and drinks and sweet treats. We refuse to swallow the false versions of history, the false versions of reality, that have whitewashed the real stories and protected the real culprits, the real parties responsible for this pain and dysfunction.

If we aren't working with the roots, we're just glossing over things, treating symptoms that will never truly go away, that will never really heal.

We have to support ourselves and those around us to make the changes that are needed, even if these changes seem quite radical. They seem radical only because they are so long overdue...

Bring the deep, ancestral anger up and validate it. It's legitimate. It's real. 

But then use it as fuel to outsmart the socially-engineered traps that have been intentionally set out for us. See through the hierarchical bullshit - even when it benefits you in some way to go along with it. Refuse it. Refuse to accept the charity model as adequate. Work to change the power dynamics, creating a society and a system of currency where charity is not necessary. Refuse to take your cues from a soul-sick and damaging social order. Refuse to poison yourself, your relationships, or your community for even one more second." 

Back to present day...

As you might imagine from reading the previous text, Plutonic/Scorpionic themes are some of the most hardcore of the astrological paradigm. The deeper we go and the more honest we are about even squirm-inducing subjects and dynamics, the more personal power we will be entrusted with in our lives and in our spheres of influence. 

Both winged messenger Mercury and love-and-relationship planet Venus are about to enter Scorpio (Mercury on October 3; Venus on October 8), indicating a deepening of thoughts/conversations and of relationship dynamics. Surface turbulence or drama most often indicates a root to something deeper, often something that has remained unaddressed for too long.

Dig in. Be brave. And you will be rewarded.

A Moment to Balance Ourselves as We Prepare for the Long Climb Ahead

"A Moment to Balance Ourselves as We Prepare for the Long Climb Ahead," is a 3,765-word report on the astrology of fall equinox 2019 that is available to Willow's Web Astrology patrons. 

This article covers themes that extend through the last quarter of 2019 and into early 2020.

The Mutable T-Square Effect and Putting Our Truth Into Practical Action

Expansion planet Jupiter, strong in its own sign, stationed direct at 14 degrees Sagittarius on August 11 - the same day revolution-or-bust planet Uranus went retrograde at six degrees Taurus. 

With Jupiter still very slow in the zodiac, we are experiencing a concentration of themes involving the Sagittarian subjects of philosophy, knowledge, beliefs, and truth.

The Cosmic Spotlight is shining a particularly intense light on what we believe and what we know to be true, which may require us to stand in our own beliefs and truth even if this is not popular with others.

With Jupiter direct traveling over degrees it has previously traversed until November 7, we're making a renewed commitment to living our truth, something we've been coming into more fully since Jupiter first entered Sagittarius in November 2018. This sounds simple but is actually quite a complex process with many hard angles to navigate. 

In many ways, this is a quiet truth, a quietly guiding truth, that lifts us up and over the corruption, deceit, manipulation, and general wrongheadedness that characterizes so much of (manufactured) human society these days. It's a truth we can cling to while surrounded by upsetting falsity.

With Jupiter slow and concentrated in mid-Sagittarius, we're being given some time to get clear on what we really believe to be true and how much it matters to us. Would we be willing to stand in that truth even in the face of a hostile majority? Would we be willing to back others up?

As Jupiter moves direct once again, we're being asked how far we can compromise our beliefs and our truth in order to navigate the systems and structures as they exist. These systems and structures - and the power dynamics inherent within them - often attempt to force a top-down version of (manipulated) truth down our throats, demanding absolute compliance and a willingness to superimpose the manufactured philosophies of The Machine over our own guiding philosophies and better judgement.

With the themes of Jupiter in Sagittarius so strong, we're peeling our way down to the core truth amidst challenging, illusory, even dangerously deceitful conditions. Fakery and glossy half-truth abound with so many pretty, smiling faces representing these things to much acclaim on both public and private stages...

Jupiter in Sagittarius will form its third and final square to transiting Neptune in Pisces on September 21 at 17 degrees of the signs. 

Jupiter entered Sagittarius on November 9, 2018, and it will transit the sign of its domicile until entering Capricorn on December 3, 2019. Jupiter has been working on the square to Neptune in Pisces for most of its transit of Sagittarius, forming exact square aspects:

- January 13, 2019 at 14 degrees
- June 16, 2019 at 18 degrees
- September 21, 2019 at 17 degrees

With Jupiter now coming into its third and final exact square to Neptune, we're coming to a culmination point, a final testing point, involving the ongoing challenge of determining what is real from what is fake, what is true from what is false, what is concrete from what is illusory, what is meaningful from what is diversionary. For the most part, we are required to determine these things for ourselves.

One of the Jupiter square Neptune themes I've written about in the past is controlled opposition. From November 19, 2018: "Jupiter Square Neptune and How to Spot Controlled Opposition."

Once you clearly see and understand the dynamics, once you can sense the dynamics, it is much harder to be taken in by these slippery, snake-charming individuals...

There are many charlatans, many phonies, many egotists, many people intensely lacking in integrity who are being placed on pedestals, who are being turned into celebrities, even if just the YouTube or Instagram varieties. 

Jupiter in Sagittarius square Neptune in Pisces:

There are many narcissists in healers' clothing.

There are many narcissists in philosophers' clothing.

There are many narcissists in truth-tellers' clothing.

There are many narcissists in positions of (unearned) power and renown as thinkers, as teachers, as leaders.

Even if they cannot be classified as full-on narcissists, harmful narcissistic tendencies are creeping in, even becoming socially acceptable, and this needs to be addressed. 

It's up to us to peel the layers of phoniness and ego-fakery, to nullify their influence, to unseat the pedestal-sitters and attention-clamourers in our own minds, rather than being taken in by it all. It's up to us to see through it. To be bemused by their gall, rather than taken in by their charm and charisma, by the intoxicating aura of fame, celebrity, popularity.

The real truth is quiet. It keeps its own counsel. It doesn't need to blow up on Facebook or Twitter or Snapchat or any of the mainstream media channels to be legitimized.

Though it would certainly be nice, the truth needs no mass legitimization.

Venus and Mars form a conjunction at 3 degrees Virgo on August 24. We then experience a New Moon at 6 degrees Virgo on August 30 within a stellium of planets in the sign of the virgin (Sun-Moon-Mercury-Venus-Mars). 

Clarification and sustained, focused effort are required in the areas associated with the houses where Virgo lies in your natal and Secondary Progressed charts.

The Virgo New Moon opens us into an intensely busy time, a time of potential overwhelm when it will be required that we stay clear on our own truth and our own roles amidst the prevailing chaos.

As we move through the lunar cycle, the personal planets in Virgo form square aspects to Jupiter in Sagittarius and oppositions to Neptune Rx in Pisces, creating a changeable and fluid mutable t-square effect that is very intense during the first half of September. 

This indicates a strongly transitional time that requires ongoing adaptation and adjustment with our duties and roles. We're being challenged under these mutable t-squares to clarify our personal philosophies, beliefs, and truth and to then put these into precise and practical action in the material world, even in the smallest and simplest of ways. 

September 2 - Venus in Virgo square Jupiter in Sagittarius (15 degrees)
September 3 - Mercury conjunct Mars and the Sun in Virgo (10 degrees)
September 4 - Venus in Virgo opposite Neptune Rx in Pisces (17 degrees)
September 6 - Mercury in Virgo square Jupiter in Sagittarius (15 degrees)
September 7 - Mercury in Virgo opposite Neptune Rx in Pisces (17 degrees)
September 8 - Sun in Virgo square Jupiter in Sagittarius (15 degrees)
September 10 - Sun in Virgo opposite Neptune Rx in Pisces (17 degrees)
September 12 - Mars in Virgo square Jupiter in Sagittarius (16 degrees)
September 13 - Mars in Virgo opposite Neptune Rx in Pisces (16 degrees) + Mercury conjunct Venus in Virgo (28 degrees) + Full Moon at 21 degrees Pisces

Phew! That is a jam-packed two-week stretch of time with an excess of mental activity and processing indicated. We're going to need a peaceful Libra season/equinox to bring all that activity (over-activity) back into balance. 

Gemini becomes the fourth leg of the mutable t-square, representing air energy and the influence of intellect. This indicates a necessity to maintain proper perspective, including a sense of context.

These astro conditions indicate a period of time when people are too busy, too taxed, and a little (or a lot) overwhelmed. It will be easy for people to get hunkered down in their own busyness, believing that they are The Busiest of Them All, The Most Put Upon, The Most Overloaded. 

The truth is that the system is set up to keep people too busy with their own lives and jobs and obligations and activities and worries and concerns to the point that they are conveniently distracted from the bigger picture.

The influence of Jupiter in Sagittarius indicates the importance of keeping the bigger picture firmly in our sights, staying clear on our own context within that bigger picture. 

Jupiter spends one year in each of the signs, taking 12 years to make a full spin through the zodiac. 

In a very real way, as Jupiter moves direct in its final pass through Sagittarius for 12 years, we're setting a tone for truth and meaning in our lives (or, unfortunately, for the lack of those things) by the way in which we conduct ourselves. 

As the personal planets in Virgo activate the mutable t-square with Jupiter and Neptune, we're required to work out the fine points as far as how we put our truth, our beliefs, and our guiding philosophies into active, daily practise in practical ways. Taking on this (somewhat sticky) challenge now ensures that we do not have to deal with the unpleasant ramifications of compromising our truth or our selves. Having a backbone now, despite the difficulty, holds form in many ways for the next 12 years of our lives.

Yes, this is big. Jupiter is the biggest planet in our solar system, and its themes are big, too.

Some big illusions are set to pop under these Virgo-heavy t-square dynamics. Some Golden Pedestals are about to crumble.

But it takes diligence on our parts to help facilitate this...

"The ideal" versus "the reality" becomes a stronger theme, including how we can make reality the very foundation of our ideals. Integrating these things rather than polarizing them. With relationship planets Venus and Mars in Virgo so strongly involved, relationships are a primary area where this theme comes front and centre.

It's the perfect, Facebook-ready outward appearances versus the up-close, nitty-gritty reality behind closed doors. It's quite mind-boggling to see the gaping chasm between the polished, social media imagery of relationship and the many problems that can exist (for everyone) in a real-life, day-to-day relationship. 

We're being confronted by some of these themes (glossy surface imagery versus a more accurate or realistic take on things) so that we can see through and disarm the illusions, the superficialities, and the harmful concept of "perfection" - in relationships and otherwise.

This Virgo season, under a Virgo stellium and powerful mutable t-square, a lot of work, a lot of diligence, and a lot of attention to detail will be required. To successfully navigate these astro conditions, we must apply our Virgoan discernment to quite a precise and relentless degree. 

These clashing mutable energies are pretty messy, and Virgo abhors a mess...

We're separating what is truly useful to us from the noisy, the illusory, and the diversionary.

This Virgo season (August 23 to September 23) has a "treading our little asses off to keep our heads above water" feel to it. We're working hard to keep our focus and to keep our cool. 

The pressure and over-activity indicated by the mutable t-squares build during the last week of August and first half of September, culminating in a Pisces Full Moon at 21 degrees on September 13. 

Immediately following the Full Moon - on September 14 - we find some relief as Mercury and Venus enter Libra, still traveling in exact conjunction. We start to seek balance, beauty, peace, and harmony, some respite as we near the end of an overly-busy and challenging Virgo season. 

The final Jupiter in Sagittarius square to Neptune in Pisces occurs September 21, one final acute point before the Sun enters Libra in the wee hours of September 23, marking equinox in the northern hemisphere.

Full disclosure of my own guiding philosophy under this Jupiter-Neptune square: 

As a working class, anarchist/Plutonic punk astrologer, I don't believe in hierarchy. I believe hierarchical power structures (and the exploitation and coercion built into them) are the root of much unnecessary suffering on this planet, and the nullification of hierarchical power would bring us to a much healthier, more humane, and more functional way of being. Removing institutionalized hierarchical power dynamics (the way nearly all institutions and organizations are set up) would release the full magic of life on this planet, allowing human beings and human societies to re-organize and solve problems that have intentionally gone unsolved by the power schemes for millennia. 

I don't legitimize hierarchical bullshit. I don't recognize it as in any way legitimate. This ethic goes to the deepest depths of my life and work. 

There really are no untouchable sacred cows for me when it comes to the truth. I won't shy away from a subject just because it is held in hallowed light within the broader society.

I don't ask people to agree with my perspective, but this is the perspective from which I come as a writer, journalist, and astrologer. 

Standing in my own truth and beliefs has caused much social and professional turbulence (a ridiculous amount, really), and I don't suggest anyone follow that path unless personally compelled to do so. 

What I do suggest under these astrological energies is a practical clarification of your own truth and beliefs, as well as what these things mean to you and how you can more effectively apply them in your day-to-day life. Getting clear on this and maintaining focus there will be required for the successful navigation of these uber mutable astro energies.

The Venus-Mars Conjunction in Virgo and Future Activations of the "Master Builder" Degree of Capricorn

"The Venus-Mars Conjunction in Virgo and Future Activations of the "Master Builder" Degree of Capricorn" is an article available to Willow's Web Astrology patrons.

Dystopian Flames Zine in the Mount Royal University Zine Collection

Dystopian Flames: The True Cost of Oil Production on the Canadian Prairies zine is now available in the Mount Royal University zine collection in Calgary, Alberta. 

A man from the university found the zine online and purchased two copies for the collection. 

I lived in Calgary for six years, which they call "the city that oil built," so to have this zine in a university zine collection in that city is a bit of a coup. Very cool and unexpected! I'm happy to spread the word about this terribly dangerous and toxic practise, going on in my home area of Saskatchewan and all over the prairies. This is certainly a practise that needs to come to a swift end before more people, animals, and environments are harmed.

Dystopian Flames was a companion zine, written in early 2019, for a photography exhibit I did at my local library.