Saturn Inches Forward in Publishing-Related Sagittarius

As Saturn (consolidation, concrete efforts) inches forward in publishing-related Sagittarius, I have a few interesting things to report.

First, the wonderful Jeremiah Moss, author of the fabulous Jeremiah's Vanishing New York blog, now has a book out titled, "Vanishing New York: How a Great City Lost its Soul." You can check it out online here, but it is being widely distributed and sold, so check your local book shops. (Jeremiah would encourage local, independent book shop patronage!)

For the past ten years, Jeremiah has chronicled the horrifying gentrification of the Lower East Side of New York City, in particular the doubling and tripling of rents on retail spaces to make room for stores, restaurants, and pubs directed toward the rich and trendy. This practise has put hundreds (thousands?) of much-loved and much-patronized small businesses out of business or forced them to move out of their neighbourhoods. This practise has changed the entire landscape of New York City (not just in the Lower East Side), removing a lot of the heart and soul and quirky independence by which it was once characterized.

Jeremiah lovingly documents the vanishing businesses of the Lower East Side - that so many people patronize and love - before they disappear. And I love him for it!

(Aside: I also love Jeremiah's Vanishing New York blog because it's still a blogspot. Blogspots represent!)

The hyper-gentrification Jeremiah has so heartbreakingly and painstakingly chronicled in New York City for the past 10 years is a ubiquitous Pluto in Capricorn-era theme, displacing people from homes and businesses around the globe.

It's the abusive and coercive power of all mighty fiat currency  - a type of phony and corrupted power too often worshiped on Planet Earth and never so blatantly as during the Pluto in Capricorn years (2008 - 2024).

Entire cities are being re-made as playgrounds for the rich and trendy, driving rents and real estate prices up to the point that lower income people are forced out. Make no mistake about it - it's socioeconomic cleansing, a fundamental characteristic of the Pluto in Capricorn agenda.

My own beloved Art of My Heart store (seen to the left in its second - and more orderly - incarnation on the ground floor of the mall) was gentrified out of the TD Square Mall in Calgary, Alberta in 2009. This beautiful, soulful, independent, and utterly unique store was pushed out by the Pluto in Capricorn steamroller to make way for such thrilling and unique high-end chain stores as Brooks Brothers. 

The end of Art of My Heart broke my own heart into a million pieces and threw my life into a state of chaos. At the same time, I knew that what happened there was going on all over the place. The owner and I were far from alone in our unceremonious displacement. 

This article is from May 23, 2009, at the point when I realized Art of My Heart was dead and that it wouldn't be resurrecting in a new location due to sky-high rents all over the city. The article is full of grief and rage and Plutonic horror, and it's bang-on as far as what was going on (and is still going on) and what it was doing to the people involved.

"R.I.P. Art of My Heart":

"I'm just waiting. Inside the fortress that is me. The only place that feels good.

I'm waiting for this wave of hyper-gentrification to run out of steam, so that I can properly assess the situation. At the moment, even walking down the street feels like a blast from an overexposed dystopic imagery furnace. Fake light and happy, grinding its pointy high heel into my eye. A nouveau rich nightmare. Teenagers in brand new, sickeningly overpriced clothes designed to look "lived in." Street-tastic! Carrying Chanel purses (yes, high schoolers with Chanel), cell phones and iced coffees.

They look straight out of the pages of InStyle (Star/People/US Weekly) magazine, so I can see why they feel entitled. That takes a lot of effort. 

Mount Royal Starbucks where you'll get the snobby once-over just for going in to get a take-out coffee. They can sniff out non-upper-mid-class-yuppie status.

 It's a fucking wasteland. Sorry, but it is. 

The so-called alternative crowd drinking overpriced beer, eating overpriced breakfasts in pseudo-retro diners, sitting around in carefully chosen "styles" being all alternative and shit. Talking about how to market their band. Hoping to be noticed, to get famous. Even the indy crowd in this town has this marketing veneer lacquered over everything. 

No one just living their lives. It's all an agenda. Gotta be someone. Gotta get somewhere. Gotta play the game. 

Calgary, Alberta. Schlepping phony Western Canadiana for kicks, but the mean, mean underlying vibe is always there. Vicious millionaires bulldozing soulful establishments and people's livelihoods in favour of clean, cleansed luxury for its clean, cleansed luxury-deserving patrons. A city run by and for young souls. You can throw in a few newly-minted mature souls just to give it that fake "artsy/cultured" thing. Garbage. Trying to lure the people who don't know any better into dropping their money on overpriced drinks and food, clothing and accessories. Paying for fake experiences with fake money.

The downtown mall has kicked all the real stores out in favour of luxurification plans handed down by Torontonian property management overlords.

Brooks Brothers is coming to town! How thrilling. 

Spaces are empty all over town. All over the country. All over the world. Bulldozed livelihoods. Lost our lease. Lost our lease. We're closing shop. And in a way, the independents are relieved. Because trying to keep your head above water in this increasingly corporatized climate is bloody exhausting. They tighten the vice little by little. Priced out. Squeezed out. And when the death of the business finally comes, it's accepted with a sigh. 

And so I wait for the bulldozer to run out of gas. Or to at least take a fucking coffee break. 

I can see it starting. "Luxury" stores aren't lining up to fill those empty spaces. The spots are sitting empty. Stalled monster condo projects all over town. Massive, gaping holes left in the ground with fences all around. They got ahead of themselves, trying to build on phony foundations.

And here I sit. I'm not sure what things are going to look like or if there will ever be a place I can stand being in again. 

Art of My Heart is dead. And every fucking brainless weasel in this town can go to hell."

My little beading zone at the second incarnation of Art of My Heart, TD Square Mall, downtown Calgary, Alberta

(All Art of My Heart articles)

The funny thing was that after the richy-rich gentrification of much of Calgary, the oil bust came along! They poured millions into renovating the TD Square mall, putting in fancy sky lights, and booting all the independent retailers in favour of high end chains. And then people couldn't afford to shop there anymore!

From what I hear, downtown Calgary has been pretty much a ghost town for the past number of years - compared to the oil boom days, anyway. That city really could have used the oasis of soul that Art of My Heart provided. They blew it!

Second of my publishing-related announcements: my recent article on Leslie Demeniuk and pharmaceuticals-caused violent crime has been published in the Ripe with Rage zine out of Nashville, Tennessee. You can check the 80-page zine out here. This is the second issue of the Ripe with Rage zine and has a theme of Asylum.  

My own self-published zines are also available in some interesting places at the moment. They can be found at Spartacus Books in Vancouver, B.C., at Camas Books in Victoria, B.C., or at the University of Victoria Zine Library. 

I have to say, I'm most excited about the zine library. When my own local library accepted Hexagon Astrology Magazine onto its shelves, I had a little 'squee' of delight, and when I noticed that someone had actually checked it out, that 'squee' was magnified even further.  

 WWA zines

My own zines are also available online through this blog or through my Etsy shop. 

My efforts will continue to be focused on writing articles for the blog and for WWA patrons, but it's nice to have a physical medium to work with like zines. They create some cross-pollination and get the writing to people who may not come across it otherwise.

 

Saturn Direct with Dispositor Jupiter in Some Juicy Territory

 Photos: Willow

The engine for concrete progress in the material world, Saturn, turned direct early this morning at 21 degrees Sagittarius, and we're ready to take on a new chunk of growth, development, and achievement in the public sphere. Plans slowly start to solidify and take form. Our positions have been fortified, and we're now setting our sights on the next leg up the mountain.

Saturn will now move through the last decan of Sagittarius in one sweep before entering its own sign of Capricorn at December solstice. More on the Saturn in Capricorn transit is available in this article, "Saturn in Capricorn: An Astrological Overview for Long-Term Strategic Planning."

We're ready for one final push toward achievement and greatness in the sign of scholarly Sagittarius, structuring our lives according to our own truth and guiding philosophies, making commitments and decisions under the ultimate authority of our own wisdom and knowledge.

Achievements in academia, medicine, law, or publishing are particularly highlighted, but again, the greatest Saturn in late Sagittarius achievement may be the commitment to living by our own truth, our own ethics, and our own philosophies, even when they are not aligned with those of the society or collective around us. 

There's a bit of a shake-up indicated in the status-quo-as-you-go as Saturn moves through the last leg of Sagittarius, and our wild-and-free spirits lead the way on this.

The dispositor (key influence) of Saturn in Sagittarius is Jupiter, currently transiting relationship, society, and justice-oriented Libra. 

Jupiter in Via Combusta Libra is heading into some mighty juicy territory as Saturn gets going direct again in Sagittarius, and this indicates some sparkle and flash in the social/relational realms this September.

You may recall from previous articles that Jupiter in Libra is currently in air-fire kite formation with Mars in Leo, Uranus in Aries, and Saturn in Sagittarius. This kite will be activated again by transiting Venus in Leo September 12 - 17.

Jupiter in Libra is also just about to form its final opposition to Goddess of Discord Eris at 22 degrees Aries (September 1 - 5), which brings Eris themes strongly into the kite formation party. This contact to Eris brings up the potential for some social discord and shuffling over the next month, and we have a re-triggering of themes from this February 15, 2017 article, "Necessary Discordant Notes as Uranus Makes Its Final Conjunction to Eris in Aries":

"The most well-known story about Eris involves a big social snub. Eris was not invited to a prominent wedding that was going on, despite the fact that all of Olympus had been invited. The social roster was not complete. Eris had been shut out of the proceedings. As a result, the big smiles and boisterous glad-handing were too phony for her to bear, and she stirred up some drama at their little party to make things seem more fair.

Queen Shit Disturber, that one is.

A Neptunian Mercury Retrograde in Virgo: Refining the Channel From the Spiritual to the Material

This article is available in its entirety to Willow's Web Astrology patrons. If you regularly find value in the writing and interpretations here, please consider becoming a patron. Patrons receive full articles to their email inboxes that are not available on the blog, as well as other fun offers throughout the year. Patronage ensures that WWA will continue through these bumpy and amazing times on Planet Earth. 

An excerpt from the article:

The friction I run into with most anarchist groups is that I consider anarchy a way of being, a way of life that naturally occurs, rather than a political movement or a scene. So right off the jump, there's a difference in the way I define and understand things.

There's much talk in anarchist circles about the supposed failure of the "anarchist movement," and I've never understood this. How can a way of life and a way of being inherent in most people (non-hierarchical, non-coercive free association; running our own lives; making our own decisions; helping those who need it; do-it-yourself problem-solving on individual and societal levels) be a failure?

There is also much talk in these circles about what people "should" do in order to be considered a "real anarchist."

"If you don't trainhop, shoplift, and live out of dumpsters, you're not a true anarchist."

"If you don't live in a squat, hop from summit to summit, and bust out Starbucks windows on the regular, you're not a true anarchist."

"If you pay rent and bills and have some sort of employment that pays you money, you're not a real anarchist."

"If you aren't involved in the ___________  issue/protests, you aren't a real anarchist."

I've even seen the question posed: "Can someone be called an anarchist if he/she doesn't interact with other anarchists?"

It's mind-boggling to me that that would even be called into question, that that would be yet another scene-imposed "requirement" to being a "real anarchist."

This type of posturing is bizarre to me (perhaps driven by teens and early twenty-somethings?) because there is no policing of behaviour/lifestyle/actions and there is no moulding of oneself to the dictates of the group with true anarchy/anarchism - not with my version, anyway. In my mind, trying to enforce a certain lifestyle or a certain set of political views on an entire group of people is antithetical to anarchy. (IE. non-coercive, non-controlling, non-authoritarian, each person is in charge of him or herself)

Recently, with Mercury in Virgo opposite spirity-weirdy Neptune in Pisces, I had an odd moment where my computer basically sent me, of its own volition, to an anarchist site that I'd had both rewarding and frictional interactions with in the past. I found the commentary of one particular individual interesting because it described the difference in definition that I've outlined above.

Long story Virgoan-short, I came to realize that my version of anarchist is more an adjective or adverb describing a way of being, while the other version, more often used in “the scene,” considers anarchist a noun, a definite thing, a concrete label, an identity that has come to be associated with these certain lifestyle markers (all the "shoulds") that I find so aggravating.

This may seem like a small distinction - and it is.

(The only real reason I declare myself an "anarchist astro-reporter" is to give people fair warning as far as what my writing/stance is going to be like. It heads off misunderstandings and social friction.)

But this small distinction removes me from much of what I find problematic with the "anarchist scene." We are working with different definitions, and understanding this small distinction saves me (and those I come into contact with) a lot of unnecessary frustration. 

These are the types of small distinctions and refinements that we can expect to make with Mercury retrograde in Virgo.

Chiron in Late Pisces: Spiritual Solidarity with Leslie Demeniuk and Those Unjustly Imprisoned, Past, Present, and Future

Photos: Willow

This is a call for spiritual solidarity with Leslie Demeniuk and for all those unjustly imprisoned on Earth, past, present and future. 

Leslie is a 48-year-old woman currently serving life in prison without the possibility of parole at Lowell Correctional Institution, a women's prison in Ocala, Florida.

(Lowell Correctional Institution has been described as "a special hell for women," where it is common for female inmates to die under suspicious circumstances. There have been accusations by prisoners of sexual exploitation, beatings, and torture of inmates by guards.)

Leslie is a victim of the pharmaceuticals industry – of their dangerous and deadly drugs, of their lies, of their cover-ups, and of their diabolical greed, which places profit over human life. Leslie is a victim of the patriarchal hierarchy known as the medical establishment, where doctors and medical professionals often refuse to listen to patients, arrogantly (or at the very least, ignorantly) continuing with practices that contravene the Hippocratic Oath to do no harm:

"I will apply diatetic measures for the benefit of the sick according to my ability and judgment; I will keep them from harm and injustice. 

I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody if asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect."

It is the pharmaceuticals executives of GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer Inc. who should be serving this prison time, not Leslie. Leslie – like millions of others around the world  – is a victim of a reckless and irresponsible industry focused on profit, rather than real care and consideration for human beings.

In 2001, Leslie was going through a divorce and custody battle and was experiencing depression - a natural reaction considering the circumstances. Leslie saw a nurse practitioner at a local clinic and was given trial samples of the new generation anti-depressant Zoloft (manufactured and sold by Pfizer Inc.), as well as the anti-anxiety medication Xanax. 

(Of course, the instant reaction from the mainstream medical establishment is: drugs.)