December finds us with our minds are somewhere else, weaving our plans for what is now being born in our lives. There’s a bear in a dress at the top of the stairs. A candleflame flickers, casts its granular light upon the deserted deck of a tree house in Mosswood Park.. Neuro-accretions in soft tryptamine sleep. Wherever the stage disappears in blackness, a caboose gets steg esoobac a…… It is time to move forward. The seed has been planted; but it has yet to peek its head above ground. We can’t quite see the shape, and we can’t be sure we know how we want to shape it once it appears. But it is there—no doubt about it. You didn't think Saturn was transforming in Scorpio for nothing did you? We weren’t always this sure. In fact, it is a quite recent determination, the first birth of the New Moon Eclipse on November 3. Carried on the wings of Saturn’s conjunction to the North Node and the New Mercury, with Neptune’s and Chiron’s stations direct, we see one path forward by a process of elimination. The Book of Lies teaches that seed and child and parent are mystically one, and that the seed represents the innermost and highest expression of the parent. In the Star Sapphire, a ritual form of the IX, the invocation brings father, mother, son, and daughter (YHVH, above) into one point of mystic union, referred to as Ararita. This daughter-son, the living elixir, is made a sacrifice to the magical goal of the working. Note that it is not metaphorically alive, but literally alive, containing a great quantity of living cells. Thus, for the male magician, it is the sacrifice of "all that he is and allthat he has" into the "Cup of Babalon", which is held by the Scarlet Woman of Babylon and in which the blood of the saints is said to be mingled. The inner incubation time is important and knowing when to intuitively act is a part of the process. Even projects already in motion may benefit from releasing attachments to specific pictures or outcomes and allowing for the possibility of even greater expression to unfold. As one after another of our outmoded or out-of-step ideas were weeded out, we now find ourselves with perhaps one shining option—the most challenging (and most thrilling) of all, but one we may feel ill prepared to fulfill.This is true for everyone in some area of life, because the planetary configuration leads us here. The planets are currently forming a matrix through their intermittent membership in a Grand Sextile. This matrix is the ideal field into which we can magnetize and generate what we want to create. We have to build the vibration according to what we want, and it will appear. Some call it Magick. Just don't call it late for dinner.
December follows through on this process as the end of Uranus’s five-month retrograde brings a final awakening release
that frees us to move forward—provided we leave behind anything that has been delaying the expression of our uniqueness.
Lurking behind the scenes is the Uranus-Pluto square, reminding us that we have to adapt to larger events, include global
transformative processes in our personal plans. When scientists at Mauna Loa Observatory on the big island of Hawaii announced that global CO2 emissions had crossed a threshold at 400 parts per million (ppm) for the first time in millions of years, a sense of dread spread around the world and not only among climate scientists. CO2 emissions have been relentlessly climbing since Charles David Keeling first set up his tracking station near the summit of Mauna Loa Observatory in 1958 to monitor average daily global CO2 levels. At that time, CO2 concentrations registered 315 ppm. CO2 emissions and atmospheric concentrations have been rising ever since and have recently passed a dangerous tipping point: 400ppm.
For all the climate summits, promises of “voluntary restraint,” carbon trading and carbon taxes, the growth of CO2 emissions and atmospheric concentrations have not just been unceasing, they have been accelerating in what scientists have dubbed the “Keeling Curve.” In the early 1960s, CO2 ppm concentrations in the atmosphere grew by 0.7ppm per year. In recent decades, especially as China has industrialized, the growth rate has tripled to 2.1 ppm per year. In just the first 17 weeks of 2013, CO2 levels jumped by 2.74 ppm compared to last year.
Carbon concentrations have not been this high since the Pliocene period, between 3m and 5m years ago, when global average temperatures were 3°C or 4°C hotter than today, the Arctic was ice-free, sea levels were about 40m higher and jungles covered northern Canada; Florida, meanwhile, was under water along with other coastal locations we now call New York, London, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Sydney and many others. Crossing this threshold has fuelled fears that we are fast approaching converging “tipping points” — melting of the subarctic tundra or the thawing and releasing of the vast quantities of methane in the Arctic sea bottom — that will accelerate global warming beyond any human capacity to stop it.
“I wish it weren’t true, but it looks like the world is going to blow through the 400 ppm level without losing a beat,” said Scripps Institute geochemist Ralph Keeling, son of Charles Keeling.
“At this pace, we’ll hit 450 ppm within a few decades.” “It feels like the inevitable march toward disaster,” said Maureen E. Raymo, a scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, a unit of Columbia University.
Why are we marching toward disaster, “sleepwalking to extinction” as the Guardian’s George Monbiot once put it? Why can’t we slam on the brakes before we ride off the cliff to collapse? I’m going to argue here that the problem is rooted in the requirement of capitalist production. Large corporations can’t help themselves; they can’t change or change very much. So long as we live under this corporate capitalist system we have little choice but to go along in this destruction, to keep pouring on the gas instead of slamming on the brakes, and that the only alternative — impossible as this may seem right now — is to overthrow this global economic system and all of the governments of the 1% that prop it up and replace them with a global economic democracy, a radical bottom-up political democracy, an eco-socialist civilization.
Although we are fast approaching the precipice of ecological collapse, the means to derail this train wreck are in the making as, around the world we are witnessing a near simultaneous global mass democratic “awakening” — as the Brazilians call it — from Tahir Square to Zucotti Park, from Athens to Istanbul to Beijing and beyond such as the world has never seen. To be sure, like Occupy Wall Street, these movements are still inchoate, are still mainly protesting what’s wrong rather than fighting for an alternative social order. Like Occupy, they have yet to clearly and robustly answer that crucial question: “Don’t like capitalism, what’s your alternative?” Yet they are working on it, and they are for the most part instinctively and radically democratic; in this lies our hope. Capitalism is, overwhelmingly, the main driver of planetary ecological collapse. From climate change to natural resource overconsumption to pollution, the engine that has powered three centuries of accelerating economic development, revolutionizing technology, science, culture and human life itself is, today, a roaring out-of-control locomotive mowing down continents of forests, sweeping oceans of life, clawing out mountains of minerals, pumping out lakes of fuels, devouring the planet’s last accessible natural resources to turn them into “product,” while destroying fragile global ecologies built up over eons of time. Between 1950 and 2000 the global human population more than doubled from 2.5 to 6 billion. But in these same decades, consumption of major natural resources soared more than sixfold on average, some much more. Natural gas consumption grew nearly twelvefold, bauxite (aluminum ore) fifteenfold. And so on. At current rates, Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson says that “half the world’s great forests have already been leveled and half the world’s plant and animal species may be gone by the end of this century.” Corporations aren’t necessarily evil, though plenty are diabolically evil, but they can’t help themselves. They’re just doing what they’re supposed to do for the benefit of their shareholders. Shell Oil can’t help but loot Nigeria and the Arctic and cook the climate. That’s what shareholders demand. BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto and other mining giants can’t resist mining Australia’s abundant coal and exporting it to China and India. Mining accounts for 19% of Australia’s GDP and substantial employment even as coal combustion is the single worst driver of global warming. IKEA can’t help but level the forests of Siberia and Malaysia to feed the Chinese mills building their flimsy disposable furniture (IKEA is the third largest consumer of lumber in the world). Apple can’t help it if the cost of extracting the “rare earths” it needs to make millions of new iThings each year is the destruction
of the eastern Congo — violence, rape, slavery, forced induction of child soldiers, along with poisoning
local waterways. Monsanto and DuPont and Syngenta and Bayer Crop Science have no choice but to wipe out bees,
butterflies, birds, small farmers and extinguish crop diversity to secure their grip on the world’s food supply
while drenching the planet in their Roundups and Atrazines and neonicotinoids. This is how giant corporations are wiping out life on earth in the course of a routine business day. And the bigger the corporations grow, the worse the problems become. As we move ahead in December, the planets and the Cardinal signs they activate (Aries, Cancer, Libra, Capricorn) assume
larger roles in our experience. This augmentation comes from Venus, Mars, and Jupiter, whose retrogrades will take us
on a journey that allows us to find exactly what to initiate in our lives, how to do it, and whom to include in the
process. We’re already in the Jupiter retrograde, following through on new insights we gained around November 6 to
develop a significant opportunity for growth and prosperity. Venus enters her new retrograde on December 21 at 29 Capricorn, and we are already co-creating with her a story. We will critically define how the story will be told during the 42 days of her retrograde and fulfill it during her 19-month cycle. In Capricorn, she helps us answer the question, “Is this real, or is it only a dream?” (See the Monthly Overview for how we can gain the most from this experience.) With Venus in late degrees of Capricorn, the amount of time that the Moon is void of course is greatly reduced throughout the month.
Mars’ retrograde is not far off either. It enters its retrograde shadow on December 25, starting backward travel on March 1 at 28 Libra. Mars in Libra brings vital facts of life forward, both the miraculous and the inconvenient. We get to see what’s wrong with the way we are picturing things, as Mars fills in the missing point on the Cardinal Grand Cross.
Uranus and Pluto already have a cozy thing going between Aries and Capricorn. Jupiter has come into the scene from Cancer, threatening to blow the whole thing wide open if something positive isn’t coming from it. Then Mars comes along and says, “Let’s be fair—I mean really fair. No false justice here, and I’m getting tired of waiting.” We will discover what is out of balance and one-sided, and a shift toward a greater good will begin—with conflict if necessary.
Once Mars enters Libra on December 7, there is a beneficial dispositor (rulership) structure involving Venus disposing of (ruling) Mars, which disposes of Saturn, which disposes of Venus. Even though Venus and Mars will make three squares during the coming months, harmony is possible if we use Saturn—work and structure—to shape our relationships. Even more, financial matters will smooth out if we do the work to establish ourselves more firmly where we are unstable. This will also soften the challenges presented by Mars when it aggravates Uranus and Pluto, filling in the Cardinal Cross.
The Sun is in mutable Sagittarius for most of the month, but Capricorn assumes an ever-increasing importance as the month proceeds, taking us back to events of November 5–15, when our Venus story started. Key events in our tale’s development occur as Mars, Sun, and Mercury trace the same steps, starting December 7.
Arriving on December 12 is the second of three Jupiter (18°28' Cancer) trines to Saturn (18°28' Scorpio). This Water trine forms a particularly harmonious contact in the 20-year Jupiter-Saturn cycle. This carries the weight of human social development, as far as its manifestation in the world is concerned. The ancients watched this planetary interaction very closely to foresee events in the unfolding human drama. This waning (reaping) Water connection indicates that we are in the midst of a harvest period that lasts from June 25 this year until July 15 next year.
This is and has been a good period for real estate, but the next challenge looms in 2014-15, when Jupiter and Saturn square each other as they head for the bottom of the market, their conjunction in 2020.
Uranus reveals new secrets when it returns to forward motion (Stationary Direct—SD) on December 17. We will feel freer and more inspired after we let go of our attachments to our old ways of seeing things. This ties in with events around March 28, July 17, and October 1–3, and has special significance for our relationships.
Mercury’s cycle is only about 3-½ months long, and it reaches the Full/halfway point when it conjoins the Sun on
December 28 at 7°42' Capricorn (the Superior, or upper/furthest away, conjunction). This pair continues to move in
unison over the last week of the year to bring even more understanding of hidden factors in the situations that tantalize
us most. Key dates are December 21–January 2.
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