Daykeeper Journal: Feature Article

by Maya del Mar

I was in Mexico on September 11, with Crystal and her family. On the one hand, I felt fortunate to be in a haven of love and light and new growth at that vulnerable time. On the other hand, I felt like I belonged on the front lines back here in the U.S.

I flew back to San Francisco on the Virgo New Moon a week later with mixed feelings. I dreaded entering the crucible of a hysterical and vengeful nation. Even though I had been avoiding the media, it was a foregone conclusion that the Bush Administration was beating the war drums.

Why War, Why Now?

Indeed it is beating the war drums, beefing up the military, and taking away civil liberties as fast as we will let it. Bush has made his intentions clear: "This is a war and it will not be a short war. There will be many casualties. The military is prepared for that."

There are many more similar quotes. He is telling us his plans.

Further, Secretary of Defense (and Star Wars promoter) Donald Rumsfeld said on September 20, "I say that victory is persuading the people that this won’t be over in five, ten, or fifteen years. We need to be sure we can use our weapons and skills." The Middle East has, in fact, been a testing ground for war weapons since 1919. This includes not only conventional weapons, but nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons.

Could this be related to the fact that it is far richer in oil and natural gas than is Saudi Arabia? That all of the big oil companies are trying to get a piece of the pie? That Afghanistan is a major pipeline route? And that the U.S. chart has Neptune, the oil planet, as the most elevated energy in its chart?

Might this "crusade" have something to do with solidifying the power of corporate globalism? Despite the rant against "terrorism," China was accepted into the WTO on September 17 with no questions raised about its human rights record.

We need to ask a lot of questions. We need to study history. We need to pay attention and to think critically—and at the same time we need to open our hearts to love, compassion, and respect for one another.

Understanding of the forces involved, which can give perspective and detachment, is my biggest help in coming to terms with a difficult situation. What I first did was to print out the feature articles which I had written during this last year, and read them all at once. It helped enormously. (Click here for a list of articles and links.)

Historic Conjoining of Pluto and the U.S. Ascendant

Astrologically, the basics are simple. Pluto is conjoining the U.S. Ascendant for the first time in history. Pluto transiting the ascendant brings explosions, eruptions, and destruction, as long-buried complexes emerge.

Opposing Pluto now is Saturn, with Vesta, conjoining the U.S. Descendant. Oppositions are like mirrors. We do attract those forces which are within us. Often we project them, especially with an opposition, and call those forces "them." Saturn and Vesta are showing us natural limits and boundaries to our ruthless plutonic expressions.

Pluto is catharsis. It gets to the bottom of the dirt in order to bring it to light and clean it out. Pluto is death, transformation, and rebirth. It is blood and guts, war and turmoil, secrecy and conspiracy. It is associated with the highest spiritual power, as well as the demonic power of the unconscious unleashed in compulsions and obsessions, and the ruthless, manipulative drive for material power.

Pluto penetrates to the depths of the subconscious, and transiting the U.S. Ascendant, the most personal point in the chart, it is bringing that national subconscious out into daylight. Some of it is wonderful—the acts of heroism, the mobilization for peace, the mounting fight for freedom. Other parts are destructive—the feelings of vengeance, the need to persecute those who appear different, the desire for war, the willingness to go along like sheep with the propaganda machine.

I Have Met the Enemy, and He Is Me

What is happening now is us, this nation, even though the planetary opposition allows us to project some of disowned qualities onto others. The others, including the "attackers," are simply mirrors for us to look at ourselves. Pluto on our ascendant is a golden opportunity, for the first time in our nation’s history, to look deeply and honestly at our behavior as a nation. Now we do it especially through the reflection of Saturnian obstacles facing us and providing a mirror in the form of others’ reactions to us. Saturn is ground level real. The mirror which the world is holding up to us is not illusion. It may be a harsh picture which we see, but it is an accurate one.

I have met the enemy, and he is me. This is literally true in this circumstance, for the United States set up, fostered, and financed the bulk of the terrorist network.

Robert Hand, in Planets in Transit, says about Pluto over the Ascendant:

You will reshape many aspects of your personality. You will have the opportunity to get in touch with the forces that have shaped you and made you what you are. This gives you greater control over the unconscious drives that have surfaced in subconsciously directed urges, compulsions, and irrational impulses.

However, en route to this desirable goal of self-improvement, you will have to meet certain challenges in order to make anything good come out of this period.

First, you will find energies arising within you that want to control everything and everyone around. (Remember, GW was born with Pluto on his Ascendant.) Now you have the chance to be either a positive or a negative force for change in the world around you, but you will almost certainly be a negative force if you don’t make the effort to understand yourself. You will be the vehicle for blind and irrational ego forces, the result of infantile and primitive urges. These forces are not directed towards what is best for you.

But if you understand yourself well, you will be able to bring about a complete rebirth of energy and effectiveness in your life.

Rebirth and Renewal

"Either a positive force for change or a negative force for change." That’s a clear and potent choice, and it is ours to make.

It behooves us, then, to really look at ourselves, to face the "ugly American," to educate ourselves about who we are and who we have been as a people. We will not be happy about the ways in which we have betrayed our national ideals of freedom and equality for all, but once we see what we’ve done, we can change our behavior. We in the U.S. tend to wallow in our isolation and ignorance, and that naivete no longer serves us. I am heartened by the teach-ins now sweeping college campuses.

Old systems are falling apart, but if we let our pathway be one of self-discovery, as a nation, our future can be creative and exciting. We can share in creating new kinds of communities and new ways of living. This entails accepting and using our personal power.

This "attack" is like an intervention. We are being told to wake up to the social destructiveness of our addictions. A 12-step program can serve, in fact, as a model for our national recovery. For many many individuals, recovering from addiction has served as a pathway to renewed spirituality.

If we give our power away to the state, as many seem quite willing to do, we are dead. And this is easy. We can do it by default. It will simply happen if we don ‘t make the effort to claim and reclaim our essential selves.

A Momentous New Cycle

Very soon we enter into the most momentous yet new cycle for the United States. In early February 2002, just as Saturn is turning direct, the United States progressed Sun exactly conjoins its natal Moon at 28 Aquarius—again for the first time in history.

We begin then to plant the seeds for a national rebirth. Now is the time to vision the future, to define it, picture it, and to nourish it.

President Bush and his backers are showing us the pictures which they want us to have. (Pluto is very hypnotic.) Is that the future we really want? If not, we need to create and project our alternatives. Now.

What will be the character of this new nation?

Will it be "this new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men (sic) are created equal"? Or will it be a militarized Roman imperium, eventually disintegrating through its own internal rot and cruelty?

People are feeling their priorities as never before. It is time to stand up and be counted.

I want to hear from people who are particularly involved in activities which support the creation of a society with democracy, justice, liberty, and social equality.

This would do more for our security and safety, internal and external, than any weapon.

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