Mars Stationing Retrograde in Virgo and Fighting Scams

This Mars retrograde station in Virgo has the Virgo-Pisces polarity charged, and one of the themes along this polarity, especially with Chiron transiting Pisces, is scams.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of nefarious people aggressively pushing their nefarious schemes these days. So many that I feel ill when I think about it. And certain people are considered easy targets: the elderly, the disabled, youth, the inexperienced or naive.

Neptune enters Pisces February 3, and this increases the possibility of "scam hitting blind spot" exponentially, especially if you have some nasty Pisces/Neptune/12th house action in your natal chart.

I do. And I semi-fell for a "Hello, I'm a Microsoft professional, and there's something wrong with your computer" telemarketing scam this morning.

Now, I'm not an idiot. Falling for a scam doesn't make you an idiot. It makes you a person with Piscean/Neptunian/12th house naivete and blind spots. And my Neptunian naivete and blind spots certainly do have the tendency to be preyed upon.

Hindsight is always 20/20 in these cases, but a few things conspired to soften my guard: 1) I had just woken up (still groggy) when the guy called. 2) My computer had been acting weird for the past week, so I did think something was up. 3) I'm not technologically savvy, so when a guy representing himself as a Microsoft-trained professional called saying there were problems with Windows, I found it plausible. (I know, I know. Implausible to the max.) 4) This Mars retrograde station conjunct my North Node is hitting me where it hurts.

Scam artists use every silver-tongued trick of psychological warfare at their disposal, and many of them are quite sophisticated.

Anyone with a known weakness on this front, please be careful. The aspects we're experiencing have a tendency to put us in that energetic place where things can be slipped in and slipped by.

The paralyzing energy of the Saturn in Virgo - Uranus in Pisces opposition cycle we experienced a couple years ago is being stirred up and inflamed with this Mars Rx through Virgo with Chiron and soon Neptune in Pisces. And under that paralyzing energy, we can snap into that place where we are coercively persuaded to do things that are generally out of character for us to do. That Neptunian dimension that makes us into those impossibly naive, trusting, passive versions of ourselves.

Things to avoid to stay out of that energetic place:

- isolation
- sleeping too long
- too much TV/internet/music
- use of alcohol or drugs
- daydreaming

Mars Retrograde in Virgo and the Active Re-Organizing Principle Comes Out in Full Force January 23 - April 13, 2012

Mars' forward motion in Virgo grinds to a halt today at 23 degrees of the sign (6:54 p.m. Central) as we unfold into the Aquarius New Moon. The planet of action, will, aggression, and goals will be retrograde until April 13, when it turns direct at 3 degrees Virgo. 

With this almost three-month retrograde, an active re-organizing principle comes into full force in our lives, re-directing us and making necessary adjustments down to the very last detail as we start to exist under the astrological Aquarian era classification system. This transit addresses dysfunction, and it indicates a breaking point, an official "had enough" point, for workers (Virgo), particularly healthcare and service workers. 

Mars in Virgo is inflaming all the issues and dysfunction that should have been addressed but were not addressed during Saturn's transit of Virgo (2007-2010). This Mars transit is a breaking point and a precise re-direction of the efforts of workers within (or out of) criminally corrupt and unresponsive Pluto in Capricorn structures. This includes workers both un- and under-employed (numbering in the hundreds of millions in North America alone) as well as those fully employed within systems intentionally designed to fail. 

There are not many workers unaware of the problems at this point. Those attempting to reinforce and gloss over the dysfunction rather than working to change it are the owners, the CEOs, the upper management. Those are not the people slogging it out, doing the real work. 

The real workers know the score, and, coming out of the momentum-building Occupy Movement, they hold a huge amount of collective power at this time in human history. 

With this Mars transit, if we're lucky, the workers of the world are infused with the guts, the courage, the grit, and the will to stand up and say enough is enough. With this transit, the workers of the world can be infused with enough bad ass Martian energy and rock-solid organization (with the Virgoan intelligence to use them) that they'll never back down again. They'll refuse to bow to the fears instilled by the hierarchies, refuse to allow themselves to drop, silent and passive, under collective Neptunian amnesia and anesthesia. My hand on my heart, I pray this is the scene. 

This Mars transit through Virgo activates the Pluto in Virgo generation in a big way, and the momentum starts to catch for a grand-scale generational power shift. 

Very fundamentally, this Mars in Virgo transit relates to how we apply (or refuse to apply) our physical energy and what we serve or support with that application of energy. This takes on particular importance within the context of rampant structural criminality, moral if not legal. 

From a previous post during Saturn in Virgo: 

"Don’t participate in things that are not acceptable to you. Don’t put your personal energy into things that lack integrity to you. Make your service to the planet a sacred thing and answer to a higher power than the business/money hierarchy. Answer to yourself." 

Virgo is most often about skimming off the unnecessary in order to increase function, and this transit will have us applying ourselves only in the most vital of directions. All the Virgoan territory comes under a state of intense analysis, scrutiny, and precise re-direction, particularly in the areas associated with the house in which Virgo resides in your astrological birth chart. 

As Mars Rx in Virgo forms an opposition to the Pisces Sun at 13 degrees on March 3, the previous two-year cycle of goals, will, and personal direction under the Mars in Leo overlay officially draws to a close. 

New, more practical, effective, and precise goals as well as the uses of will to achieve them start to unfold as Mars goes direct this April. 

As long as we accept and apply the re-direction, these new goals and directions are infused with great and grounding staying power from an exact Grand Earth Trine March 12-15 involving Venus-Jupiter in Taurus, Mars Rx in Virgo, and Pluto in Capricorn, all at 9 degrees of the earth signs. This is big, collective gears shifting and wheels turning. 

Mars has been transiting Virgo since November 10, 2011 and will not ingress Libra until July 3, 2012, after the Venus Transit and the first exact square between Uranus in Aries and Pluto in Capricorn June 24. This means we have almost eight months to go over things with a Virgoan fine-toothed comb, precisely re-directing ourselves through this three-month retrograde us as we enter the new and active duty indicated by this transit. 

From November 13, 2011: Mars in Virgo Retrograde: Precise Re-direction Within Grand Earth Trines  

November 10, 2011 - Mars enters Virgo 

November 18, 2011 - Mars enters the retrograde shadow 

January 23, 2012 - Mars goes retrograde at 23 degrees Virgo 

April 13, 2012 - Mars turns direct at 3 degrees Virgo 

June 19, 2012 - Mars leaves the retrograde shadow 

July 3, 2012 - Mars enters Libra 

The Mars transit and retrograde through Virgo involves an eight-month period of mutable, transitional energy that requires our precise and active participation to direct, re-direct, adjust, and re-adjust our courses. Throughout this time, we'll be directed down only the most pertinent and effective channels in our lives, honing and refining our courses and withdrawing personal energy from anything that is not necessary, valuable, or vital moving forward. This process is happening, specifically, in the house or houses where Virgo falls in your natal chart. That's the area where things need to be tightened. 

Virgo is one of the quieter placements for Mars. Mars is active here but only in the ways that count. No excess of motion, exertion, words, mental function, or use of will. Small movements, adjustments, and re-direction have big effect, and temperance rules, as too much effort in one direction results only in energy expended for self-correction. 

The energy on the planet will be getting very bizarre and out of control at times over the next years, and things can really go haywire if we allow them to. This is why we need the Virgoan qualities applied through the iron will of Mars to set our courses now, doing battle on the fine points. 

If we're oh-so-careful and diligent, smoothing every screwy detail, critiquing every glowing illusion, attending to every nagging issue, we set a tone with this retrograde that can keep us grounded and out of the worst of the hyped baloney and utter bullshit being amped up on this planet. 

Clean, crisp, clear. 

In Virgo, every detail matters. 

Virgo is a sign that needs things to be just right, and with Mars here, we're going to have to take it personally when they aren't. If it hits our ears as incorrect, it's rejected, no matter how many people are saying it, doing it, or believing it. Anyone trying to fill our minds, bodies, societies, or environments with useless crap is viewed as an enemy of our health. 

Enemies of our health. There are many. 

Under Mars in Virgo, we're consciously fighting to maintain health in a world increasingly toxic to living things. Our systems are quite literally being attacked on multiple fronts. There's an immediacy with this Mars transit. There's no more time to put off the changes necessary to fortify our health. It's on. In order for our systems to continue processing and metabolizing what's going on, they need to be in tip-top condition. 

Diet, exercise regimes, habits, routines, work conditions, the quality of our food and water, our mental and emotional environments - a crucial analysis and refinement is on the docket during this transit, fighting to maintain systemic health while preparing us for the next years on the planet. This involves the removal or at least strong limitation of anything that weighs our systems down: excess alcohol, drug use, cigarettes, perfumes, air fresheners, chemical cleaners, electromagnetic pollution, noise pollution, pesticides and additives in food, refined sugar, artificial colours, genetically modified food, fluoride, excessive internet, TV, music, shopping, socializing. 

Mars is a hard-ass in Virgo, and with good reason. Even things touted as healthful should be gone over with a fine-toothed comb. With Virgo, less is more. Be careful what you add to your life and to your system. In most cases, Virgo is about what needs to be taken away. 

There is a sexual element (Mars) to health (Virgo) here. A more precise application of sexual energy is required. A new understanding of the effects of sexual activity on health and on the surrounding energetic environment as a whole comes about here. 

The "too much, too fast, too soon" sexual ethic constantly shoved down our throats is rejected by those who use this transit well, and the application of sexuality is streamlined with a new awareness and focus on the health of the individual, the partner, the relationship, the immediate social groups and society, and the spirit, in general. 

There's a re-wiring of attractions and sexual habits here, a clarification, and a removal of toxic sexual connections. Holistic sexual health. 

Our work is infused with a necessary level of fight during this transit. We fight to overcome the redundancy, uselessness, and listlessness forced upon so many through mass institutionalized unemployment, underemployment, and lack of meaningful paid employment. 

Charting the course for the next two years correctly requires our absolute focus over the next eight months. Mars entering Virgo sets off a grand earth trine with Jupiter Rx in Taurus and Pluto in Capricorn that will be in effect most strongly November 16-23. Mars retrogrades back into this grand earth trine in March when the configuration will be exact. 

Jupiter in Taurus, Mars Rx in Virgo, and Pluto in Capricorn will be exactly trine each other at 9 degrees of the earth signs from March 12-15, 2012. 

Mars in Virgo will trine Pluto in Capricorn one last time May 15-17, 2012 with Mars moving direct. At that time, Jupiter in Taurus will be out of range. 

Needless to say, within these grand earth trines, the application of specific choices and actions - including what we choose not to do or say - has big ripple effects, creating real, concrete, structural changes. 

Additional articles on the Mars in Virgo Rx transit:  

Mars in Virgo and Going Scent-Free Mars in Virgo Hot or Nots 

An explanation of two-year Mars cycles and the Mars in Leo cycle officially drawing to a close: New Moon in Virgo Sets a Preparatory Tone For the Upcoming Mars Retrograde

Let's Just Say The Cosmos Isn't Going to Be Blowing Confetti Out Our Butts This Week

We move this week to a somewhat sobering and quite enervating square between the Sun in Capricorn and Saturn in Libra (January 19). With both planets on the final degrees of those signs, there's no time to mess around. 

We consciously and conscientiously advance through the last few steps of Sun in the sea-goat as we're brought to a relative (yet tension-filled) resting point on the anaretic plateau that is Saturn's retrograde station February 7. 

Our forward motion on the relationship structuring front is officially slowing - yet highly potent over the next three weeks - with every step eked out from here an effort as we grind out the last bit of progress, firmly planting ourselves in the new and exalted social/relational positions we think, hope, and fear we've earned. 

New standards in relationship, new platforms, new boundaries, new frameworks: the last steps forward have to be ground out with certainty now as Saturn prepares to look over its ledgers one last time in the sign of the scales. Its retrograde - February 7 to June 25, 2012 - will inform us of the progress we've made in real terms, the position we've concretely earned, as well as the areas that will require more diligence during Saturn's final pass direct. 

The difficulty of planting each step grows over the next three weeks, and the weight drags at us, requiring that we fully prove our mettle, our maturity, and our readiness for new relationship frameworks and a new relationship rulebook. The stern and all-business Sun-Saturn square makes for a very odd atmosphere, indeed, as Saturn in Libra continues its just-a-hair-short-of-exact trine to Neptune in the last gasp of Aquarius. 

We meander in and out of this state of conscious responsibility. One moment we're hitched to the Saturnine plow, most assuredly aware of the limitations and tiresome requirements of physical life on this planet, and the next moment life is characterized by a fluid, dream-like surreality, and it seems we might just slip out of it altogether (Neptune). 

Saturn will be testing us on all points during its retrograde, carrying Neptunian siren song and nostalgic sentiment with us, tempting us to give up our hard-won new position by compromising ourselves and our relationship principles detrimentally. 

The anaretic degrees are vibrating with tension and import. A lot can be gained here with adherence to the principles, and even more can be lost if we break under the strain. Under this anaretic tension, one misstep, and we slide down a chute that squanders at least some of our hard work. 

We're taking a trip with the Ghost of Relationships Past during this Saturn retrograde in Libra, to be certain. We'll be looking back and even going back physically in some instances, meeting again with those who have had a place in our lives in the past. 

But this is a trip purely to show us how far we've come. There will be no staying, no matter how glorious it feels to be blanketed and comforted by this glowing, dreaming phantom love. 

Within the pages of an English novel, Jane Eyre and Edward Rochester find blissful union, at last, long last, as two halves of the same soul meet in holy matrimony. A fictional love to make your heart ache, feverish that you may never find its equivalent. 

And in real life, its author Charlotte Bronte marries a clergyman she is merely fond of - no great, melting love of her life - after watching her entire family perish one-by-one, only to die herself while pregnant soon after being wed. 

The high romanticism of the Neptunian love story is very dangerous at this tail-end Piscean era, threatening to submerge us, to shroud us in its gauzy myth for 30 years more. 

How many of the great historical love stories, so implanted in the collective psyche and so sought after, have been myth? And yet, the crushing emotional weight of Saturnine reality is just as dangerous now. We require our carefully meted out Neptunian dreams in order to withstand our circumstances, and you see just how carefully we have to tread with the current significators in the zodiac. 

Love, sweet love, is still the thing. But a love that is real and sustained is worth more than every fictional love story ever written. 

The Sun in Capricorn moves through its square to Saturn in Libra and into Aquarius January 20 (10:10 a.m. Central) where it will almost immediately form another square - this time to Jupiter in Taurus - to further pee on our parade. Tense and difficult aspects to both the restrictive and the expansive this week. We get it both coming and going. 

Mental exhaustion is still apparent from two months of Mercury in the sign of its detriment, followed by a conjunction to Pluto, which powerfully flooded our circuitry with the deep, the dark, the triggered, the paranoiac. 

Communications retain their Plutonic edge into this upcoming weekend. Hidden emotions can easily show themselves in moments of impatience or temper, and that could be catastrophic. 

Our social responsibilities are heavy and our relational challenges complicated with Saturn stationing retrograde on the last degree of Libra. Our challenge is to keep things as harmonious as possible while not compromising ourselves or our positions. 

Do everything in your power to remain socially pleasant and above reproach this week by neutralizing the Pluto-poisoned mind, tongue, and ear (Mercury).

The Planets Align This Friday the 13th: Hang a Horseshoe, Clutch Your Rabbit's Foot, and Load Up on Kitty Treats for Those Neighbourhood Black Cats

First Venus. Venus in Aquarius trine Saturn in Libra - 3:05 a.m. Central Venus conjunct Neptune in Aquarius - 9:17 a.m. Venus enters Pisces - 11:47 p.m. 

Love and relationship planet Venus crosses through the 29th degree of Aquarius - the official degree of the astrological era shift - on Friday, and as it does, it trines Saturn in Libra and conjuncts Neptune in Aquarius before ingressing Pisces late that night. This Friday the 13th, a day ripe with folklore, is an official relational tone setter, drawing on themes previously outlined here: Saturn in Libra (Not Quite) Trine Neptune in Aquarius and Saturn Retrograde: Neptunian Relationship Fodder From the Anaretic Degrees and way back here: Venus, Eros and Mars in the Via Combusta and Karmic Love Cleansing Through the Alchemical Fires. 

Recall that Saturn (challenges) is currently in Via Combusta Libra (spicy, crackling relationship issues), and we're still working under an overlay from the fall 2010 Venus retrograde through Via Combusta Scorpio and late Libra. That overlay isn't complete until the Venus Transit in Gemini June 5, 2012, and all this colours the relationship proceedings. 

On this Friday the 13th, we have another opportunity to calibrate ourselves to the tone of Venus' movement, letting it seep into our bones, and then commit to the new relational track. Venus conjuncts wounded healer Chiron in Pisces January 16, indicating a time period ripe for experiences of the healing, transcendent power of love, as well as, if we aren't careful, the wounding power of human interaction - with both experiences possible in the same interaction. We need to fortify and protect our wounded spots carefully, as this is very old salt in very old wounds. The wounding themes are related, in part, to: 

- unconscious/semi-conscious ways in which we interact with people and they interact with us 

- setting ourselves up for failure in relationship by overlooking key matters 

- social niche and social pigeonholing 

- being the scapegoat for the crowd or the one whose feelings and needs are sacrificed or stepped on when a sacrifice has to be made 

- social isolation 

- weak spots in boundaries: being too permeable when it comes to other people's energy field/influence 

- pining, looking back, excessive nostalgia for relationships past, seeing things through the veil of time, not how they actually were 

- old Piscean era social archetypes: the party girl, the ditz, the idealist, the wishful thinker, the one who's allergic to reality, the stoner, the addict, the starving artist, the energy vampire, the person with "bad karma," the sick one, the disabled one, the hard luck story, the martyr, the saviour, the chronic fuck up, the person who can't get it together, the one who's unlucky in love, the person ill-equipped for the rigours of life 

- keeping ourselves on the losing end of character flaws - in ourselves or in other people 

These are cyclical relational patterns, standard dynamics worked into a deep groove over the course of the astrological Piscean era that must be consciously ushered out with the door locked behind them. 

Throughout Venus' transit of Pisces (January 13 - February 7), we have the opportunity to set the relational tone to "Pisces for the astrological Aquarian era," but this won't necessarily be easy, especially for those who have been resisting a stronger Aquarian vibe. The Piscean pull into dreamy Never Neverland is strong, becoming stronger as Neptune (illusion, delusion, blind spots) enters its home sign of Pisces February 3, and we have to actively head off its influence at points. 

We're being enticed down many relational rabbit holes we've been down fruitlessly before. The application of rational mind that can break us free is like the fight to wake up from one of those dreams that paralyzes you with its intensity. If the will is not there to do so, we plummet down the rabbit hole. 

For those who would like to avoid the surreal Alice in Relationship Wonderland this time around, things are a little counter-intuitive. Venus is in exaltation in Pisces, which means there's a strong feeling that it knows what it's doing in this sign. There's nothing quite like the heights of Piscean love, and with these glowy, exalted Venusian vibes, it's going to be difficult to convince people that some changes are required. 

There's a lot of criticism from the sign of Pisces (and from those vibing strongly to it) of the more Aquarian take on love, relationship, and partnership: it's cold, unfeeling, hard, heartless, overly intellectual, devoid of emotion, lacking in romance. 

Those who refuse to adopt the more detached, responsible, and self-preserving tack in relationships will continue to play out the same old stories, making the same old excuses. 

The successful tack in our relations involves using the relevant qualities of both Pisces and Aquarius. Determining which are the relevant qualities and which are the redundant and detrimental is what we work out now and throughout Saturn's retrograde through Libra. 

Venus will be on the 29th degree of Pisces - the last degree of the zodiac - at the time of Saturn's retrograde station on the 29th degree of Libra February 7.  

Now the Moon and Mars.  

Moon conjunct stationing Mars in Virgo - 6:36 p.m. 

The Moon is in Virgo this Friday the 13th and conjuncts Mars at 22 Virgo. Mars is slowing for its retrograde station January 24, and its themes permeate the astro atmosphere. The Moon-Mars conjunction occurring as Venus conjuncts Neptune and enters Pisces increases the impetus to sharpen the details, remove the unnecessary, and clear the Piscean/Neptunian fuzz and wishful thinking. 

This is a conjunction of a major feminine planet (Moon) with a major masculine one (Mars) and has to do with the perspective of women/the feminine taking the lead in subtle and influential ways as the male-dominated trajectory on the planet is further set to: war, war, and more war (Mars). This is the fight to stop war and the impetus to discontinue support for the trajectory toward war right down to the finest details in our daily lives. 

More on the Mars in Virgo transit and retrograde here: Mars in Virgo Retrograde: Precise Re-direction Within Grand Earth Trines  

Here: Mars in Virgo Hot or Nots 

And here: New Moon in Virgo Sets a Preparatory Tone For the Upcoming Mars Retrograde 

Now Mercury.  

Mercury conjunct Pluto in Capricorn - 7:03 a.m.

Communication/transportation planet Mercury is in Capricorn until January 27, following more than two months (including a retrograde) in the sign of its detriment, Sagittarius, and we're happy to have some type of solid movement here. Unfortunately, a lot of it is Plutonic movement, as Mercury moves out of its square to Uranus in Aries and into a conjunction to Pluto in Capricorn, exact this Friday the 13th. It doesn't take much to hear (Mercury) the Pluto in Capricorn (corpo-governmental oligarchy) undertone coming through loud and clear these days as we head to the first exact square between Uranus in Aries and Pluto in Capricorn this June. The global war profiteers are just itching to get things started, and oil and nuclear take centre stage... 

Verbal aggression is ramping up (again) through the media from Western governments toward Iran over its nuclear facilities and enrichment of uranium. As always, the Plutonic insanity is only understood by a minority, as the media-fed mainstream accepts a scenario in which the only country that has ever actually used nuclear bombs in an attack against another country (the U.S. of A.) is instated as armed-to-the-teeth global nuclear watchdog, determining who can and can't have nukes. 

U.S. and U.S. Allies: Yes. 

U.S.-declared Bad Guys: No. 

The hypocrisy is amazing, and still relatively very few will openly admit the Emperor's naked as a jaybird. 

The aggression is not limited to the verbal this time, though. The United States (through the United Nations) has brought sanctions against Iran, attempting to force it to discontinue its uranium enrichment program. The sanctions have made it impossible for Iran to continue its international oil exports, leading to the plunge of the Iranian currency to an historic low. Devastation (Pluto) of currency and business infrastructure (Capricorn). 

(Incidentally, don't bother trying to use PayPal or to buy books from Amazon in Syria, either. Both these activities have been blocked as part of the broader and more destructive U.S./EU economic sanctions against that country. People with Syrian IP addresses are told they are in a "forbidden country." A further Pluto in Cap crackdown on the flow of money.) 

It might be useful for those in Cancer Sun nations United States and Canada to imagine a role reversal here. One can only imagine the outrage that would ensue if the U.S. economy and the flow of oil in and out were disrupted and interfered with to this extent by a foreign country. After all, the United States enriches uranium for weapons and munitions (and uses them), does it not? Iran is the fourth largest oil producer in the world with a large percentage of its exports (500,000 barrels per day of its 2.6 million barrels per day output) going to the European Union. This adds an interesting element to the dick-swinging global dynamics. 

Pluto relates to one's underlying interests and the overwhelming impetus of those underlying interests. The European Union is now forced to implement sanctions that are in the best interests of the United States which, in effect, starve its nations of oil. Iran is now threatening to close the Strait of Hormuz, a key waterway at the mouth of the Persian Gulf that carries about 1/6 of the world's oil supply from the Gulf nations. 

The closure of the Strait of Hormuz would be met with military aggression from the U.S. and its allies, aggression that would, again, have the seal of approval from the media-fed masses. 

Transportation routes are Mercurial, and the corpo-governmental steamroller being allowed to progress at all costs is Pluto in Capricorn. This appears to be a primary Uranus square Pluto hot spot. 

Like clockwork, it is. 

In Canada, two massive oil pipelines are in the works - though strongly opposed by many. One is the Northern Gateway pipeline, which would move oil from Alberta's oil fields to the West Coast, with a port in Kitimaat, British Columbia, to be sold and exported at a whopping price to Asia. 

The second massive pipeline, called the Keystone XL, would move oil from the ecological and humanitarian catastrophe that is the Athabasca Tar Sands in northern Alberta all the way down to Texas in the United States. Thousands and thousands of kilometres of pipeline just waiting to spring a leak, ripe for international and domestic sabotage. 

With a majority government led by Global Governor extraordinaire Stephen Harper, we won't be seeing any ecological responsibility coming from the Feds on this one, and it's left up to the citizens of both Canada and the United States to form the resistance. 

The United States' presidential race is now well underway, consuming massive amounts of time, energy, and analysis on media outlets. This doesn't stop at the U.S. border, however. (What border? There are no borders anymore.) 

If you flip on Canada's mainstream news (I wouldn't suggest it unless you are a fan of satire that isn't actually satire), you will see an almost equal fervour and an almost equal obsession with the minutiae of the farce going on to the south. The propaganda readers on CTV Newsnet (Canadian Television is a misnomer if ever there were one) could easily be mistaken for those on CNN these days. 

The hidden merger (Pluto) of media (Mercury) and its ownership (Capricorn). 

Because, you know, there isn't anything going on in our own country that might warrant any airtime. (See: Northern Gateway and Keystone XL pipelines) 

As stated previously, we no longer have even the facade of a sovereign nation in Canada. Pluto in Capricorn has ripped the mask off, and Stephen Harper's Conservatives - good little Global Governors that they are - take their orders and implement them dutifully. 

 In August, 2011, under a Cardinal Grand Cross that will form again throughout the fall of 2013 and in April 2014, it was announced by the "Harper Government" that the Canadian Armed Forces would be rebranded the Royal Canadian Air Force and Royal Canadian Navy. 

From a previous post: 

"The Canadian Armed Forces shed the "Royal" stamp in 1968, but in a wave of propagandistic nostalgia, the Global Government-aligned Harper Conservatives have brought the "Royal" back with a vengeance, complete with masses of Canadians all too happy to re-pledge allegiance to the Queen and British monarchy. 

Wartime patriotism and pride are being stirred in preparation and hope that the people will gladly repeat the old cycle, hands on hearts." Harper continues to do his mightiest to stir the militaristic patriotism of Canadian citizens as he does his part to create consensus for more global war. He's even adding a commemoration of the War of 1812 to this year's Canada Day celebrations in the country's capital city, Ottawa. "Hey, kids! Forget about ice cream. Look at this cool musket!" 

(You may recall that during Canada Day 2011, again under the Cardinal Grand Cross, the citizens of this country had their Stockholm Syndrome worked into a frothy lather as Wills and Kate came for a visit, also reinforcing the dominion over Kanata of Mummy Dearest in jolly old.) 

At the same time, the "Harper Government" - who sent out memos telling people not to bother calling them the Government of Canada anymore - have made an absolute mockery of the House of Commons, simply shutting it down on two separate occasions. 

The difficulty and lack of transparency Canadian journalists face when attempting to get information from Harper is well documented. 

Really, they have just unveiled, Pluto in Capricorn-style, what was always there. The facade has been stripped, and the idea that the people ever really had all that much of a say in it has gone kaput. 

So multiple exact aspects go down this potent Friday the 13th, a day rich with symbolism and superstition, making it a day with a potentially far-reaching tone. Stay on the good side of luck, as the astro conditions have a bit of a "fated" quality about them and might not let us away with much.

Mercury (Mercifully) Exits Sagittarius

Mercury leaves Sagittarius for Capricorn just after midnight tonight. 

Can I get a Hallelujah? 

The communication planet does not operate fluidly from the sign of its detriment, Sagittarius, at the best of times. Add to that a Mercury retrograde, and more than two months in this sign has been more than enough. 

Anyone with a communications-related job should be glad to see this one coming to a close. Things have gotten a mite stale. It's not that Mercury is loving life ever-so-much in Capricorn, but at this point it'll take it. 

Mercury works on a square to Uranus in Aries all day tomorrow creating some friction and frustration but also the impetus to get things moving. This square is exact at 5:23 p.m. We also experience a Full Moon in Cancer tomorrow night at 18 degrees, so make sure to spend some time with lovely Luna if you get the chance.