[Originally begun as a footnote to my Harold Bloom article of earlier this month, the striking data that emerge seemed to warrant a separate article].
HAROLD BLOOM ON GOD
The astrology for those issues Harold Bloom has with religion and that I tackled in an article earlier this month is unusually revealing both in itself and for any untimed chart. Gratifyingly too it again empirically confirms many assumptions I have made in this area of beliefs little explored by astrology and astrologers and in which I can by now define a virtual astro-theology.
Recall that the God alienated Harold Bloom earlier in life wrote a novel, his only novel, The Flight to Lucifer. Lo and behold Bloom’s Lucifer is at 1.46 in air sign, Gemini, sign of writing and of flight, in extremely close difficulty square to his Neptune (mysticism and visions) at 1.43 of Virgo. This Lucifer is also loosely in out-of-sign conjunction with Bloom’s natal Mars at nearly 28 Taurus. This arguably reflects the outspoken, almost anti God feelings contained in Bloom’s writing on Yahweh and absolutely reflects his problems with the gospel of Mark with its declaratory demons that interest him because asteroid Marc at 27 Leo makes degree exact difficulty square with Bloom’s same contending Mars.
But where is God located for Harold Bloom and why does he so passionately write about Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine and suffer nightmares about God?
For a start Bloom’s sun at 18 Cancer conjuncts Pluto at 19. Conjunctions are very pro or con something. Since, as I’m always insisting, Pluto is the God planet, especially God as biblically imaged, this disposes Bloom towards his many arguments with and about Yahweh and their marked inner turmoil. But any potential for this is that much stronger and rendered almost inevitable by the fact that one of the two God asteroids is additionally involved. Bhagwat (Hindu name for Lord/God personally conceived) is at 17 Cancer. This makes everything that much more theological. (Just Pluto alone with Bloom’s sun might make him someone who deals with or is obsessed with death in some fashion). In my October article on Dawkins and the Fates I mentioned how the Pluto of evolutionary scientist and controversial atheist campaigner, Richard Dawkins, is opposite Bhagwat, a rather clear mark of his “out” disposition to atheism. Conjunctions like Bloom’s can as stated be very pro or con. I even maintain that Jesus had Bhagwat very closely conjunct his Pluto, one of the signatures in his case for his “I and my Father are one” claim. Under force of his Pluto/Bhagwat conjunction Bloom seems just trapped in struggle between faith and denial, impersonal and personal deity.
Bloom’s arguments over the divinity of Jesus are exquisitely mapped by the Jesus asteroid (which as stressed in my Hillary Clinton article seems to be more about the historical Jesus as opposed to the Christ asteroid’s connection to the Jesus of faith). For Bloom, the Jesus asteroid at 13 Leo is conjuncting his Theotes (divinity/Godhead) at 12 Leo so there’s plenty of potential here for battle royal over divinity and for this to become a lacerating exercise, even a bit nightmarish or hellish since Bloom’s hell asteroid, Hella (originally asteroids were registered in feminine form) is also at 12 of fiery Leo! And then Biblioran, the Bible asteroid representing the Old Testament, joins in the fray at 10 Leo. God, Hell and claims of the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) which Bloom keeps pitching against those of what he calls the Belated Testament (New Testament), itself as Biblialexa at 22 Cancer within call of Bloom’s established Sun/Pluto tensions, are thus all positively at war in his mind over belief issues. The fact that the Jesus asteroid is moreover in exact semi-sextile to Mercury means Bloom simply must keep on reading, writing or talking about this whole theological problem. By contrast, Bloom’s Christ asteroid due to its exact 19 degree to 19 opportunity aspect to Pluto plus a trine to Chiron, the wounded healer (and Bloom has plenty to say and deny about the Messiah as any kind of wounded healer figure) represents a belief possiblity at the same time as it presents itself as a decidedly, painful and undesirable one (Chiron).
I am not sure whether the Achristou Antichrist asteroid conjunct Bloom’s fated nodes (North Nodes) is meant to say something or nothing – might his Gnostic sympathies have affinities for some species of post Nietzschean Antichrist philosophy? What is transcendently definite for the whole natal pattern is that the birth opposition of Jupiter (religion, faith, beliefs) to Saturn (scepticism, doubt, duty, but also tradition as of his strictly Jewish Orthodox upbringing, strengthened by Saturn in its natural sign of Capricorn) keeps Bloom in a state of largely unresolved hard working conflict over all questions of belief. If anything, the doubt and denial potential of the strong Saturn wins in opposition to the faith demands of Jupiter since covenants whether old or new cannot receive his faith assent. The asteroids simply describe in quite vivid detail what some of the tensions are and where they lie.
HAROLD BLOOM ON SHAKESPEARE
For Bloom Yahweh can be like Shakespeare’s Lear. While researching Bloom on God I briefly turned to Bloom on Shakespeare and received a few first class surprises I feel should also be conveyed. While I admit only to have read Bloom on the Western Canon and modern American religiosity he is perhaps principally famous for his critical output and illuminating lectures on Shakespeare. This matter is modestly introduced by the "meeting" aspect (semi-sextile, here a meeting of minds) of Bloom’s writing/critical Mercury to Shakespeare’s Venus (his art, his loves)in verbal Gemini. I felt encouraged to look up asteroid Shakespeare puzzled to find it was at 17 Aries within 2 degrees of Bloom’s Uranus and one degree difficulty square his Sun at 18 Cancer. Does Shakespeare make him work, surprise him, half irritate or frustrate the poet within Bloom into critical appreciation? This I can’t answer but in effect all seems explained when amazingly we can know that Bloom’s 17 degree Shakespeare asteroid conjuncts Shakespeare’s all important nearly 17 degrees writing Mercury. Small wonder Bloom has this sense of understanding the Bard so closely! We may assume he does.
Asteroids work by sound vibe, so the name Bloom, which is anyway an anglicization of the German Blume (pronounced Blumah in German, but Bloom in English) can substitute for Bloom in the asteroid lists. As indeed it surely should. Because it seems like the heavens always knew that Bloom would write about especially Shakespeare. Bloom’s 8 degree Cancer Blume asteroid conjuncts Shakespeare’s Mars at 7.40 Cancer! It seems the heavens also knew Bloom’s most famous pupil would be controversial, anti feminist, feminist, Camille Paglia – Camilla conjuncts his fated, socially connective nodes (South Nodes) – and of course it would be supporting astrology in relation to assumed references to that subject in Shakespeare that would get Ms Paglia into some (more) trouble with the intellectual community. Thou shalt not study or support astrology on pain of academic excommunication!
MYSELF, ROLLAN MCCLEARY AND ASTROLOGICAL RESEARCH
But behind all these Shakespeare links for Bloom I personally see and can now reasonably stress something else. It’s a principle of astrology that it’s not possible to research and write on figures past or present if one’s own horoscope does not set up a few rather exact contacts by synastry in precisely the sort of way Bloom and Shakespeare so strikingly do even if astrologers are not in the habit of extending the principle as here to the new field of asteroids.
So, the above this is a final link in the chain of proofs confirming I was always significantly right about the data for Shakespeare’s birth and that Shakespeare was himself and none other. This was the subject of the most popular and quoted of my articles in The Australian Astrological Monthly Review, way back in the nineties. There I maintained the true chart of Shakespeare, one that explains him and works for his life, can be set for 11.20 am with 19 degrees of dramatic Leo rising at Stratford and on the usually given date of 23rd April 1564 (Julian Calendan). This chart is so absurdly accurate it even turns up The Part of Influence conjunct Shakespeare’s career house poet’s Neptune while its all-reflecting, mirror like Libran moon is directly conjuncted by the Part of Divination which surely sits well with Bloom’s feeling that Shakespeare had almost prenatural knowledge of people and the human mind.
Astrologers have often tried to be clever or trendy by offering alternative birth dates for Shakespeare or even proposing, like some literary critics (not Bloom), that the Bard was someone other than the Stratford youth. I am getting used to being ignored or occasionally insulted by members of the astrological establishment for all sorts of good and valuable work done and it’s all too typical that a well known astrologer who demands International Reply Coupons to reply to any issues addressed to him never used my coupon to reply to comments on the date of his famous lives Shakespeare chart. It wasn’t set for Shakespeare’s given birth date and it won’t work for Shakespeare’s life. He also didn’t reply to my comments regarding his data for Christ’s birth which though I didn’t baldly state it, unlike my own, are quite unconvincing and don’t work across history to this day. However he is easily published on this subject while I am not. Explanations are required, so…
CONTRA THE MOUNTAIN ASTROLOGER, HOROSCOPE MAGAZINE AND AN OPEN CHALLENGE TO THE A.F.A
Thinking (in relation to Shakespeare issues and astrology) of Bloom’s outspoken and ever embattled disciple, Camille Paglia, I shall finish with a few home truths this censored issues blog has so far avoided.
In future I hope the astrological establishment will display greater sensitivity and not, like the just mentioned prominent astrological writer promise answers to correspondence they don’t even reckon to give. I must seriously condemn the editors of The Mountain Astrologer and American Horoscope Magazine (the latter seem to need to take 6 months to answer anyone if at all) for their inexcusable indifference regarding the Pentecost Chart for Christianity which is the only working horoscope for a world religion and which all astrologers should be using for predictive purposes. This is not my only complaint but for sheer absurdity it rather stands out. I can reserve for later criticism of some persons and policies like a leading astrological scholar whose perverse refusal of the rectification technique most astrologers reckon to use itself is damaging to quite a lot of historical work of the Shakespeare kind and, worse, any work on Christ data where it would always be necessary. I was to give a university lecture on this while in England about three years back but when I heard arrangements could involve the astrologer in question I correctly warned my publisher (for non astrological writings) to expect little result as this person would be quite likely to get in the way to stop me speaking on this research theme. There is so much ego and prejudice of this kind I seriously believe astrology could do with a bit of reform if not a whole French revolution of its closed club ways if a lot of information is ever to get out and be processed for public use and interest.
Finally, and as my last Blog word for 2007 I issue challenge for 2008 to The American Federation of Astrologers to quite simply keep its word. I have approached them more than once in the past about looking into my data for Christ’s birth and only because they have in the past specifically promised to make public announcement if they think it has been found by anyone. I declare it has been found with innumerable proofs no one will ever outdo and at that from the hands of a theologian, not an astrologer only so that a wider range of religious and historical details can be examined and proved. So the public annoucement is long overdue.
Let the AFA disagree with and reject my findings if they believe they are false, that’s fair enough, but don’t say again they can’t find my correspondence, or give no answer at all except would I (a non American) like to take on membership. The data for Christ can be discovered by anyone of any nationality and is of potential interest to any nationality and potentially historic in its significance for astrology so that membership should never be an issue. The mentioned data works to this day. (It even suitably registered the controversy of the Archbishop on the Magi of this last Christmas). Kindly just keep your word, AFA, at least respect the subject if not myself, and be open to the very real conclusive surprises I have for you if you do keep it. This paragraph will remain here for anyone to read until, if ever, someone representative takes appropriate action.
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Sunday, December 9, 2007
GEORGE BUSH, HILLARY CLINTON and 2008: THE HIDDEN ASTROLOGICAL FACTS
THE WASHINGTON AND WHITEHOUSE POTENTIAL
If you want the truth (and secrets) about incumbent US president George Bush and Senator Hillary Clinton as his possible successor small details may count. They do so considerably in those areas of astrology where people most want to have light shed. Some of the facts are nonetheless provocative and not all astrologers would discuss them if they knew them.
With the presidential race underway astrologers are trying to predict outcomes by conventional (planetary symbolism) means but that’s not always what’s most helpfully revelatory. In cases of doubt or to expand information use the asteroids! To start with a simple fact Hillary Clinton's birth chart shows a telling Hillary asteroid at 6 Virgo nearly conjuncting her career/ destiny Midheaven angle (4 Virgo). This links her name to her career and is good for fame. In fact, near to Hillary is precisely Fama (Latin for fame) while Glo, which some astrologers consider stronger for fame issues, makes degree exact fortunate aspect to her career Midheaven.
Opposite Hillary’s name asteroid and conjunct her so called Nadir angle,( the home base in any chart) is of all things asteroid, Whitehouse! I accept with the Bible that the skies “utter knowledge” (Ps 19:2) and this seems as near as the heavens could get to telling us where Hillary’s truest home would one day be. Granted George Bush’s natus by comparison doesn’t show Whitehouse on the same angle. Instead it’s minutes off the degree of a world point perhaps reflecting someone who can rule the world from the Whitehouse while preferring to be absent from it and perhaps not thinking of it much as home. However, both Hillary and Bush have Whitehouse in retrograde which for astrology can signify a return factor. Bush was returned to the Whitehouse for a second term, might Hillary now return home more gloriously ?
Inside Hillary’s career house we find not only Hillary and Fama (Fame) but asteroid, Washingtonia (i.e. Washington because asteroids were originally registered in feminine form) and this Washington is making close aspects, one hard, one easy, to Hillary C’s Mercury and Saturn respectively. Since Hillary has already been First Lady this combination, though suggestive, cannot by itself guarantee winning the Whitehouse race for which her chances must be analyzed by other means as I do in conclusion.
George Bush, who always had the advantage Hillary doesn’t enjoy of a natal sun conjuncting America’s sun, shows Washingtonia more like a cave of the secrets hidden in his twelfth sector. It’s nonetheless savingly in degree exact aspect to a powerful Pluto factor in his first house of persona. Washington and America are likely to be seen by him less as the career or destiny they are for Hillary than a natural possession. This impression is supplemented by GB having asteroid, America, in his second house of income and possessions. (America as the great cash cow?). With a chart more suited to the individualism of an artist than the mind of a negotiating statesman, exceptionally Bush shows not a single planet in his chart’s western sphere which would relate him to the will of others and the public. A lot of his motivation regarding especially military moves may always be secret given that his curiously hidden Washington, which in his case could mean chiefly Pentagon (no asteroid), favourably aspects his Mars (army and war). By contrast Hillary’s less possessive patriotism, her identification as “the” representative American is reflected by having her America asteroid in her first house of persona.
READY TO STEP INTO A PRESIDENT’S SHOES?
The president and/or party whom Hillary would be challenging to reach the top was clear from the first. At the Senator’s birth asteroid Hillary was degree exact opposite asteroid Busch and under the rules for reading asteroids what sounds is what counts, so Busch equals Bush in her chart and his. Hillary would always be Bush’s gadfly. She rather encroachingly appears in the President’s career house from where she makes difficulty square to his ascendant angle, the self same aspect her own Fama/Fame asteroid makes to his ascendant. By contrast the President’s own name asteroid is rather curiously not prominent for a person in his position but somewhat obscured in his fourth house of home and the father where it is afflicted by a first house Venus that rules his home sector. I believe I am correct to say this reflects the extent to which George Bush Jnr is a product of his father’s presidency and how he is increasingly unpopular and his name may not be well remembered. Like Hillary he does however – but only just – have Fama (Fame) inside his career house.
Anyway, if you look at America’s chart for its day of foundation (at any hour of the day because the foundation time is disputed) one finds something curious that’s likely to be significant. Saturn (generally a symbol of power, authority and ambition) falls at 14 Libra. From here it’s fortunately aspected by Busch from 13 Gemini. This is a degree acknowledged to be a power point of some sort for America (some believe foundation time corresponded to 13 Gemini rising though I don’t accept that). What’s interesting is that Hillary is conjuncting Busch at 12 Gemini. This looks like one of the signs for assuming power in America and stepping into Bush’s shoes and perhaps in some areas continuing Bush’s policies – there have already been charges this is what Hillary may actually do and by the time Bush steps down he may leave situations where his successor can do little else. In this connection and again to consider degree patterns, noteworthy is that 21 of kingly Leo, - 21 is deemed a special, “critical” degree, hence strong - is filled by Venus for Bush and Saturn for Hillary which looks like the easy shoes of one becoming the hard shoes of another!
I will return to Hillary’s chances presently but this matter of the Bush legacy is important so in parenthesis I will look at some curious details of the Bush chart. I only chanced to examine it in the wake of looking at the chart of Israel in relation to Annapolis.and with results which alone prompted me to write the present article. I had received such a surprise I was left wondering if I wasn’t just looking at the always possible fluke. If it wasn’t a fluke then the facts were bizarre to disturbing. Just who is the elusive ever smiling George Bush and what doing?
GEORGE BUSH AND THE GOD/DEVIL/RELIGION CONFLICT.
As described in my article, Accidental Revelations: Israel, Annapolis and Beyond It (November archive) I found that in Israel’s horoscope Busch was in the house of the nation’s open enemies conjunct Malin (French for Devil). At first I felt this must be a fluke (they must sometimes happen with asteroids). It would have been helpful to see where Rice fell but there’s no Rice asteroid. Or perhaps there is if you accept that the names Rice, Rhys and Rees are the same name, (which in origin they are). In that case Rees manages to conjunct Busch and Malin implying I might not be looking at coincidence after all.
Looking at Bush’s natal chart I then discovered that Rees is suitably prominent there in the first house of persona in close aspect to the President’s sun. This surely has to be Rice in Bush’s life, the influential, possibly rather dominant and domineering “right hand man” or rather woman, the person who as Secretary of State most represents the President’s international policies before the world. We can maybe locate Condaleeza Rice in the heavens after all!
But if so I wouldn’t then be able completely to dismiss the negative picture I was looking at vis-à-vis Israel because, like it or not, there were people from Jewish rabbis to Christian prophets insisting there was something seriously religiously questionable in what Bush and Rice were engaged in towards Israel (Israel is God’s land before even Israel’s and it is biblically forbidden to bargain over it and divide it). I also knew that asteroids Malin (Devil) and Lucifer, the devil as darkness and light respectively, well and truly work as such.
These asteroids are relevant to the charts of Satanists and they are deeply meaningful for the birth data of Jesus. The latter is something I claim to know empirically from innumerable proofs despite being controversially ignored to the point of censorship itself by mainstream publishing, media and just about everyone in a position to help as regards getting this historically important issue out to the world. One proof is that years before I could even know asteroids for remote dates I had singled out a certain time as being that of Jesus’ temptation. Sure enough, years later the appropriate, completely against chance, transit of Lucifer supported the rest of what I had always known.
So, beyond Israel’s chart I wanted to ascertain what the natal chart of Bush might reveal. More surprise. Bush’s natal Saturn at 26 Cancer, itself the planet associated by astrologers in religious/psychological contexts with the devil, was conjuncting Lucifer at 25 Cancer and Spirit at 24 Cancer! And this natal Saturn was in degree exact opportunity aspect besides to a career house asteroid, Lie. (He could engage cover ups about religion?) As regards asteroid Spirit I don’t imply this signifies Holy Spirit – in religious astrology and the life of Christ it is clearly Uranus which symbolizes this – Spirit points rather to the “spirit of” something at work. Within the pattern for Bush one would have to say divine and demonic appear in tension and Saturn by nature limits whatever it touches.
I didn’t and don’t of course believe this former Skull and Bones Club member who claims to be “born again” while unevangelically believing the God of Jesus is the same as Allah, was any Satanist. But there’s more chance than for other people that he could unwittingly serve negative spiritual agendas, play the proverbial “devil’s agent” to affairs, stretching truth where religion is concerned. This potentially dark pattern interestingly contrasts with Hillary’s less religiously fraught one which has Lie opposing her vulnerable, potentially victimized, Pisces moon which could expose her to bitter opposition through lies. She has been called everything from witch to murderess.
GEORGE BUSH AND THE OIL OF DECEPTION
But just what is Bush and religion about? Relevant here is that the Bible asteroid, Bibliolexa conjuncts his ascendant (he can project as “the Bible believing Christian”) while asteroid, Christen (German for Christians) falls at what astrologers call the “Praise the Lord” Jupiter/Uranus midpoint, supposedly any horoscope’s most fortunate point. (I claim the sun of Christianity’s founding Pentecost fell on this – my unique discoveries re the astrology of Christianity are something else suppressed by various religious and astrological establishments).
Certainly George Bush has been lucky through often well heeled, prosperity gospel Christians of the Right (Christen in privileged Leo!). Without them he might not be in power for a second term or even a first! This President is also anyway hugely Jesus identified. As governor or Texas he even gave Texas a Jesus day. He has told people Jesus was his most important figure philosophically “because he touched my heart”. And he isn’t lying. The skies actually endorse this! Incredibly, the Jesus asteroid conjuncts George Bush’s Venus (love and peace) in Leo (sign of the heart) in the first house of the persona (what we see, what we project). And yet and yet…. Christianity, strictly speaking, is about faith in the risen Christ beyond the historical Jesus, the moral teacher or philosopher that, say, a Hindu like Ghandi could likewise “love” without being Christian.
I must emphasize this distinction and especially here because George Bush is a problem for religion and by the looks of it, astrology too. Astrologically the problem is patent….the Christ asteroid conjuncts that difficult Lucifer with Saturn combination and something else of tell tale nature of which presently. Under the usual rules I am unable to read this other than that Bush is potentially someone who, deliberately or not, can deal in spiritually mixed agendas and deceive himself and others about them.
Bush takes Israel seriously – it’s in his career house – but his two approaches and seeming about face with regard to Israel is exquisitely shown by in one direction the fortunate friendly aspect of his Mars to his Israel asteroid (some willingness to lend it military support) and a hostile difficulty square to Mercury (any contracts) to it and certainly Bush wants Israel to get signing documents in the way he wants. With his Mercury in a fixed sign and imperial Leo Bush won’t be compromising much on what he wants his name associated with in this matter historically.
There may be ego and economic considerations involved in the peace plans but we don’t have to regard it as the demonic calculations some critics maintain. Bush could be just plain muddled in the beliefs area and he probably is. The ruler of his beliefs and religion sector is Neptune which in all but the most spiritual or discerning persons often makes for deception and muddle. Bush can deceive himself and Christians about his beliefs. That’s serious enough but at the material octave astrologers also take Neptune as a symbol for oil…..
Bush’s Neptune is interestingly opposed to asteroid Babylon, ancient capital of Iraq that Bush’s enemy, Saddam Hussein, tried to rebuild. We arguably can and should use Babylon as a symbol for Iraq in default of other signifiers - though in fact there is an important one. Anyway the Neptune/Babylon opposition bespeaks the known challenge to enter Iraq near to the Babylon region and for oil linked economic purposes, – which is what even Alan Greenspan has suggested was the original reason, not primarily the moral reasons some imagine. However, as said, there is another asteroid signifier and alarmingly enough it is Baghdad (which received Bush’s “Shock and Awe” attack). I say “alarmingly” because….. Baghdad at 27 Cancer conjuncts the controversial Saturn/Lucifer/Christ/Spirit combination!
Unless this is truly a major fluke and I’m seriously mistaken the message appears to be (especially with asteroid Lie neatly aspecting this line up and given that Lucifer is the devil as Light) that Bush can do something in effect Luciferian and pass it off to gullible money gospel Christians as service of the Good.
It’s only Bush on Israel rather than Iraq that is finally making even some Christian voters have a few doubts about the Christian Bush. His Middle East Roadmap for peace is really Saudi Arabia’s plan modified by himself with an eye to US profit and security in relation to oil states, Israel regardless (overall Israel’s defence system risks being seriously compromised). The President’s connection with Saudi is clearly mapped in the chart in a way I don’t choose to comment upon. So those prophets and religious critics alleging Bush is virtually selling the Holy Land from greed in the name of peace could have a point.
Whatever, the more critical religious opposition to Bush which is at variance with his prosperous evangelical support base, appears to be described by asteroid Church in radical Aquarius almost perfectly opposite the President’s ascendant angle and hence his Bible asteroid there. These opponents are after all saying Bush (and Rice) don’t know their Bible where Israel is concerned – which is by and large true. With Church in this opposed position Bush probably regards those Christians he can’t have in his voting pocket like the Christian Right as a nuisance or even threat - which is possibly the reason, despite numerous representations to the Whitehouse, he has never done anything to protect or just highlight the plight of persecuted Iraqi and Palestinian Christians. These Christians are evidently disposable in the face of the Muslim nations best called brothers worshipping the same God.
By contrast, Hillary, herself if for very different reasons opposed by sections of the churches, likewise has Church in her open enemies sector opposed to her ascendant but her Church is in dual Gemini and retrograde. So, the opposed churches will be in two minds about her but also, I believe, will have second thoughts and can come round to her as some are already beginning to do. She can somewhat overcome the opposition if she wills – she after all doesn’t have the odd or sinister religious input of the Bush’s pattern to contend with. She can also better negotiate peace for Israel (her name nicely aspects Israel’s Venus, its peace potential) assuming that too many matters wouldn’t have been set in place before she would even have opportunity to try,
Now I can revert to Hillary and the all important question will she win.
CAN AND WILL HILLARY CLINTON WIN?
First let’s be clear how we can have any clues about who can win. Here are some basic technicalities.
Personal: Obviously the candidate must have a natal pattern consistent with assuming power and enjoying fame. We’ve seen that Hillary has something of this including that twelfth house sun, normally a sign of hidden enemies and undermining factors but which can give specifically leaders contact with the collective unconscious of nations. Scorpio is a privileged sign for US presidents and Hillary’s planets in Leo are strong and imperial. As we have seen Fame is present as Fama in Hillary’s career house and the other fame asteroid, Glo, exactly trines her destiny Midheaven. There are no asteroids, President or First, but there is one Principia . It is not (as I incorrectly stated in the first published version of this article) perfectly conjunct the fame sensitive Glo, rather it is loosely conjunct her first house Jupiter. This does seem like the heavens declaring this person could be famous for being a female first of something though it won't be a giveaway as Jupiter and this asteroid are basically in difficulty square to the Midheaven!
Despite a basically encouraging picture Hillary appears to fail in especially two points natally. She has a sympathetic but unpolitical moon in Pisces. No American president has had, or would want to have, quite such a vulnerable factor (when Hillary protests her detractors have badly hurt her she means it) but perhaps a woman could be allowed it and it would humanize her to the masses. Hillary also has an unhelpfully unaspected sun – unless, like astrologer Michael O’Reilly, you take into account the four main asteroids Ceres, Pallas, Juno and Vesta, one of which, Ceres, has recently if controversially been declared a planet, because then Hillary’s sun aspects all of these. (O’Reilly in fact links Hillary’s lifelong concern with healthcare reform to her natal sun’s aspect to her caring/nurturing Ceres in her sixth house of health issues). Whatever, the asteroids introduce a new and largely feminine consciousness into astrology. A woman president whose natal sun aspects the leading asteroids could therefore represent the new female and feminist consciousness many voters would be wanting of her.
National: The winner must have a natal chart strongly related to their nation’s horoscope like Bush with his Cancerian sun conjunct America’s sun. Hillary’s sun favourably aspects America’s Venus, obviously positive for someone aiming to be first female president! There are doubts about the time of America’s foundation but I believe the most solid case is made by Michael O’Reilly who has given both historical and astrological evidence for a 2.21 pm chart with Scorpio rising and a Leo destiny Midheaven (and isn’t there a lot of show and theatrics in American leadership?). It’s those angles that have favoured Presidents with suns or planets in Scorpio like Hillary and also those with Mars in Leo like Hillary because then their Mars would aspect America’s leadership Midheaven. Presidents are also commanders-in-chief of the army (Mars). America’s Midheaven is at just 16 Leo, Hillary’s Mars is at 14 Leo, conjuncting a powerful Pluto minutes off a world point at 15 Leo. This helps. (It is incidentally one more proof of the 2.21pm chart that its destiny Midheaven conjuncts a World point as befits America’s role in the world. The eclipse opposite America’s Midheaven in ‘08 could introduce drama into the leadership and whole life and destiny of a debt ridden America).
Also helpful to Hillary is the fact - given the 2.21 pm horoscope which unlike the other US charts puts the moon at 25 Aquarius - that the Senator’s Uranus favourably aspects the national moon exactly to the degree. It needs to do so not only because any President should anyway connect to the national moon but because Hillary would be blazing a woman first trail and Uranus is revolution, the difference, the surprise. Hillary’s Uranus is helpfully in her eighth sector of public support, crucial for any politician. Uranus there suggests she can win especially if she engages support from alternative people and voters like gays (ruled by Uranus) stressing new ways and alternative values. Obama chases Hillary here with a Uranus opposite rather than trine the national moon so he can excite but less easily realize what America wants. His Neptune conjunct America’s ascendant incidentally suggests his rule if he had it instead of Hillary could correspond to a time of confusion.
Transits: This could be a big story but I am only going to take transits for Voting Day November 4th around which time would be a very important one in Hillary’s life if she won. This day must therefore stand out dramatically in her chart and though I haven’t studied the charts of other candidates to compare, I think it is strongly enough marked for Hillary except for one point which I shall have to consider…so
ELECTION DAY (4th NOVEMBER 2008).
Action generating Mars is transiting Hillary’s Ascendant and Mercury at that time which just by itself puts her well forward and in the news. Jupiter makes opportunity aspect to her Venus, good for a woman candidate, and Venus rules the house of her dearest wish. Both Saturn and Uranus are near to favourably aspecting Hillary’s ascendant angle and Mercury, with Saturn doing this from her career house where Saturn at this crucial time is probably best placed. Pluto is nearing a power giving aspect, albeit by semi-sextile, to her natal Jupiter. This is all pretty positive unless her rivals could show stronger aspects and if we could read properly for the main rival, Obama. (He was born 4th Aug 1961 birth time unknown. If I were reading for Inauguration Day ‘09 in favour of his having won would be Jupiter conjuncting his Mercury and against would be Pluto nearly opposite his world point Venus).
The rather major negative is that dissolving, undermining Neptune will be directly opposite Hillary’s natal Saturn which relates to ambition and the duties one assumes in life. Could this Neptune, always ruler of “the end of the matter” within her chart, undo and disappoint her? It’s quite possible but I am inclined to suppose this sign has more to do with the condition of America which is not likely to be improving and which, post Bush, could even prove a bit of a poisoned chalice, an extra heavy load, for almost anyone who won. (If the strong contender Obama whose natal Neptune conjuncts the American ascendant won, it might reflect America itself would soon take the chalice as Neptune here could signify a degree of confusion for all concerned).
But assuming Hillary Clinton were to assume the difficult Bush legacy it’s interesting to note that not long after Inauguration Day (Jan 20th ‘09) a lunar eclipse hits right on her natal Saturn. If this doesn’t bespeak a period of disappointment then it announces, and more likely does so, a period of assumption of extra work and heavy duty consonant in her case with having the presidential role.
I am not an American familiar with American politics (astrological signs must be read in context)and I have not studied the possibly stronger charts of Hillary’s rivals, but within these stated limitations I am prepared to say Hillary seems 95% likely to win the race to become America’s first woman president. In fact, it almost looks like the whole thing is already in her pocket.
NOTE George Bush’s chart is always given as: July 6, 1946, New Haven CT. 7.26 AM EDT
Hillary Clinton’s birth chart, originally disputed for time, is now accepted by leading astrologers to be for Oct 26, 1947,Chicago IL. At 8 am CST. The final word of research on this (her mother had said she was born around breakfast time on the day) was given by Frances McEvoy in Astrology Newsletter, Feb/March ’98, Vol XV111 no 6.
The surely conclusive case for America’s 2.21 pm (on July 4 1776 in Philadelphia) Scorpio rising chart is given by especially Michael O’Reilly in his Political Astrology, and various articles by him on the Net.
If you want the truth (and secrets) about incumbent US president George Bush and Senator Hillary Clinton as his possible successor small details may count. They do so considerably in those areas of astrology where people most want to have light shed. Some of the facts are nonetheless provocative and not all astrologers would discuss them if they knew them.
With the presidential race underway astrologers are trying to predict outcomes by conventional (planetary symbolism) means but that’s not always what’s most helpfully revelatory. In cases of doubt or to expand information use the asteroids! To start with a simple fact Hillary Clinton's birth chart shows a telling Hillary asteroid at 6 Virgo nearly conjuncting her career/ destiny Midheaven angle (4 Virgo). This links her name to her career and is good for fame. In fact, near to Hillary is precisely Fama (Latin for fame) while Glo, which some astrologers consider stronger for fame issues, makes degree exact fortunate aspect to her career Midheaven.
Opposite Hillary’s name asteroid and conjunct her so called Nadir angle,( the home base in any chart) is of all things asteroid, Whitehouse! I accept with the Bible that the skies “utter knowledge” (Ps 19:2) and this seems as near as the heavens could get to telling us where Hillary’s truest home would one day be. Granted George Bush’s natus by comparison doesn’t show Whitehouse on the same angle. Instead it’s minutes off the degree of a world point perhaps reflecting someone who can rule the world from the Whitehouse while preferring to be absent from it and perhaps not thinking of it much as home. However, both Hillary and Bush have Whitehouse in retrograde which for astrology can signify a return factor. Bush was returned to the Whitehouse for a second term, might Hillary now return home more gloriously ?
Inside Hillary’s career house we find not only Hillary and Fama (Fame) but asteroid, Washingtonia (i.e. Washington because asteroids were originally registered in feminine form) and this Washington is making close aspects, one hard, one easy, to Hillary C’s Mercury and Saturn respectively. Since Hillary has already been First Lady this combination, though suggestive, cannot by itself guarantee winning the Whitehouse race for which her chances must be analyzed by other means as I do in conclusion.
George Bush, who always had the advantage Hillary doesn’t enjoy of a natal sun conjuncting America’s sun, shows Washingtonia more like a cave of the secrets hidden in his twelfth sector. It’s nonetheless savingly in degree exact aspect to a powerful Pluto factor in his first house of persona. Washington and America are likely to be seen by him less as the career or destiny they are for Hillary than a natural possession. This impression is supplemented by GB having asteroid, America, in his second house of income and possessions. (America as the great cash cow?). With a chart more suited to the individualism of an artist than the mind of a negotiating statesman, exceptionally Bush shows not a single planet in his chart’s western sphere which would relate him to the will of others and the public. A lot of his motivation regarding especially military moves may always be secret given that his curiously hidden Washington, which in his case could mean chiefly Pentagon (no asteroid), favourably aspects his Mars (army and war). By contrast Hillary’s less possessive patriotism, her identification as “the” representative American is reflected by having her America asteroid in her first house of persona.
READY TO STEP INTO A PRESIDENT’S SHOES?
The president and/or party whom Hillary would be challenging to reach the top was clear from the first. At the Senator’s birth asteroid Hillary was degree exact opposite asteroid Busch and under the rules for reading asteroids what sounds is what counts, so Busch equals Bush in her chart and his. Hillary would always be Bush’s gadfly. She rather encroachingly appears in the President’s career house from where she makes difficulty square to his ascendant angle, the self same aspect her own Fama/Fame asteroid makes to his ascendant. By contrast the President’s own name asteroid is rather curiously not prominent for a person in his position but somewhat obscured in his fourth house of home and the father where it is afflicted by a first house Venus that rules his home sector. I believe I am correct to say this reflects the extent to which George Bush Jnr is a product of his father’s presidency and how he is increasingly unpopular and his name may not be well remembered. Like Hillary he does however – but only just – have Fama (Fame) inside his career house.
Anyway, if you look at America’s chart for its day of foundation (at any hour of the day because the foundation time is disputed) one finds something curious that’s likely to be significant. Saturn (generally a symbol of power, authority and ambition) falls at 14 Libra. From here it’s fortunately aspected by Busch from 13 Gemini. This is a degree acknowledged to be a power point of some sort for America (some believe foundation time corresponded to 13 Gemini rising though I don’t accept that). What’s interesting is that Hillary is conjuncting Busch at 12 Gemini. This looks like one of the signs for assuming power in America and stepping into Bush’s shoes and perhaps in some areas continuing Bush’s policies – there have already been charges this is what Hillary may actually do and by the time Bush steps down he may leave situations where his successor can do little else. In this connection and again to consider degree patterns, noteworthy is that 21 of kingly Leo, - 21 is deemed a special, “critical” degree, hence strong - is filled by Venus for Bush and Saturn for Hillary which looks like the easy shoes of one becoming the hard shoes of another!
I will return to Hillary’s chances presently but this matter of the Bush legacy is important so in parenthesis I will look at some curious details of the Bush chart. I only chanced to examine it in the wake of looking at the chart of Israel in relation to Annapolis.and with results which alone prompted me to write the present article. I had received such a surprise I was left wondering if I wasn’t just looking at the always possible fluke. If it wasn’t a fluke then the facts were bizarre to disturbing. Just who is the elusive ever smiling George Bush and what doing?
GEORGE BUSH AND THE GOD/DEVIL/RELIGION CONFLICT.
As described in my article, Accidental Revelations: Israel, Annapolis and Beyond It (November archive) I found that in Israel’s horoscope Busch was in the house of the nation’s open enemies conjunct Malin (French for Devil). At first I felt this must be a fluke (they must sometimes happen with asteroids). It would have been helpful to see where Rice fell but there’s no Rice asteroid. Or perhaps there is if you accept that the names Rice, Rhys and Rees are the same name, (which in origin they are). In that case Rees manages to conjunct Busch and Malin implying I might not be looking at coincidence after all.
Looking at Bush’s natal chart I then discovered that Rees is suitably prominent there in the first house of persona in close aspect to the President’s sun. This surely has to be Rice in Bush’s life, the influential, possibly rather dominant and domineering “right hand man” or rather woman, the person who as Secretary of State most represents the President’s international policies before the world. We can maybe locate Condaleeza Rice in the heavens after all!
But if so I wouldn’t then be able completely to dismiss the negative picture I was looking at vis-à-vis Israel because, like it or not, there were people from Jewish rabbis to Christian prophets insisting there was something seriously religiously questionable in what Bush and Rice were engaged in towards Israel (Israel is God’s land before even Israel’s and it is biblically forbidden to bargain over it and divide it). I also knew that asteroids Malin (Devil) and Lucifer, the devil as darkness and light respectively, well and truly work as such.
These asteroids are relevant to the charts of Satanists and they are deeply meaningful for the birth data of Jesus. The latter is something I claim to know empirically from innumerable proofs despite being controversially ignored to the point of censorship itself by mainstream publishing, media and just about everyone in a position to help as regards getting this historically important issue out to the world. One proof is that years before I could even know asteroids for remote dates I had singled out a certain time as being that of Jesus’ temptation. Sure enough, years later the appropriate, completely against chance, transit of Lucifer supported the rest of what I had always known.
So, beyond Israel’s chart I wanted to ascertain what the natal chart of Bush might reveal. More surprise. Bush’s natal Saturn at 26 Cancer, itself the planet associated by astrologers in religious/psychological contexts with the devil, was conjuncting Lucifer at 25 Cancer and Spirit at 24 Cancer! And this natal Saturn was in degree exact opportunity aspect besides to a career house asteroid, Lie. (He could engage cover ups about religion?) As regards asteroid Spirit I don’t imply this signifies Holy Spirit – in religious astrology and the life of Christ it is clearly Uranus which symbolizes this – Spirit points rather to the “spirit of” something at work. Within the pattern for Bush one would have to say divine and demonic appear in tension and Saturn by nature limits whatever it touches.
I didn’t and don’t of course believe this former Skull and Bones Club member who claims to be “born again” while unevangelically believing the God of Jesus is the same as Allah, was any Satanist. But there’s more chance than for other people that he could unwittingly serve negative spiritual agendas, play the proverbial “devil’s agent” to affairs, stretching truth where religion is concerned. This potentially dark pattern interestingly contrasts with Hillary’s less religiously fraught one which has Lie opposing her vulnerable, potentially victimized, Pisces moon which could expose her to bitter opposition through lies. She has been called everything from witch to murderess.
GEORGE BUSH AND THE OIL OF DECEPTION
But just what is Bush and religion about? Relevant here is that the Bible asteroid, Bibliolexa conjuncts his ascendant (he can project as “the Bible believing Christian”) while asteroid, Christen (German for Christians) falls at what astrologers call the “Praise the Lord” Jupiter/Uranus midpoint, supposedly any horoscope’s most fortunate point. (I claim the sun of Christianity’s founding Pentecost fell on this – my unique discoveries re the astrology of Christianity are something else suppressed by various religious and astrological establishments).
Certainly George Bush has been lucky through often well heeled, prosperity gospel Christians of the Right (Christen in privileged Leo!). Without them he might not be in power for a second term or even a first! This President is also anyway hugely Jesus identified. As governor or Texas he even gave Texas a Jesus day. He has told people Jesus was his most important figure philosophically “because he touched my heart”. And he isn’t lying. The skies actually endorse this! Incredibly, the Jesus asteroid conjuncts George Bush’s Venus (love and peace) in Leo (sign of the heart) in the first house of the persona (what we see, what we project). And yet and yet…. Christianity, strictly speaking, is about faith in the risen Christ beyond the historical Jesus, the moral teacher or philosopher that, say, a Hindu like Ghandi could likewise “love” without being Christian.
I must emphasize this distinction and especially here because George Bush is a problem for religion and by the looks of it, astrology too. Astrologically the problem is patent….the Christ asteroid conjuncts that difficult Lucifer with Saturn combination and something else of tell tale nature of which presently. Under the usual rules I am unable to read this other than that Bush is potentially someone who, deliberately or not, can deal in spiritually mixed agendas and deceive himself and others about them.
Bush takes Israel seriously – it’s in his career house – but his two approaches and seeming about face with regard to Israel is exquisitely shown by in one direction the fortunate friendly aspect of his Mars to his Israel asteroid (some willingness to lend it military support) and a hostile difficulty square to Mercury (any contracts) to it and certainly Bush wants Israel to get signing documents in the way he wants. With his Mercury in a fixed sign and imperial Leo Bush won’t be compromising much on what he wants his name associated with in this matter historically.
There may be ego and economic considerations involved in the peace plans but we don’t have to regard it as the demonic calculations some critics maintain. Bush could be just plain muddled in the beliefs area and he probably is. The ruler of his beliefs and religion sector is Neptune which in all but the most spiritual or discerning persons often makes for deception and muddle. Bush can deceive himself and Christians about his beliefs. That’s serious enough but at the material octave astrologers also take Neptune as a symbol for oil…..
Bush’s Neptune is interestingly opposed to asteroid Babylon, ancient capital of Iraq that Bush’s enemy, Saddam Hussein, tried to rebuild. We arguably can and should use Babylon as a symbol for Iraq in default of other signifiers - though in fact there is an important one. Anyway the Neptune/Babylon opposition bespeaks the known challenge to enter Iraq near to the Babylon region and for oil linked economic purposes, – which is what even Alan Greenspan has suggested was the original reason, not primarily the moral reasons some imagine. However, as said, there is another asteroid signifier and alarmingly enough it is Baghdad (which received Bush’s “Shock and Awe” attack). I say “alarmingly” because….. Baghdad at 27 Cancer conjuncts the controversial Saturn/Lucifer/Christ/Spirit combination!
Unless this is truly a major fluke and I’m seriously mistaken the message appears to be (especially with asteroid Lie neatly aspecting this line up and given that Lucifer is the devil as Light) that Bush can do something in effect Luciferian and pass it off to gullible money gospel Christians as service of the Good.
It’s only Bush on Israel rather than Iraq that is finally making even some Christian voters have a few doubts about the Christian Bush. His Middle East Roadmap for peace is really Saudi Arabia’s plan modified by himself with an eye to US profit and security in relation to oil states, Israel regardless (overall Israel’s defence system risks being seriously compromised). The President’s connection with Saudi is clearly mapped in the chart in a way I don’t choose to comment upon. So those prophets and religious critics alleging Bush is virtually selling the Holy Land from greed in the name of peace could have a point.
Whatever, the more critical religious opposition to Bush which is at variance with his prosperous evangelical support base, appears to be described by asteroid Church in radical Aquarius almost perfectly opposite the President’s ascendant angle and hence his Bible asteroid there. These opponents are after all saying Bush (and Rice) don’t know their Bible where Israel is concerned – which is by and large true. With Church in this opposed position Bush probably regards those Christians he can’t have in his voting pocket like the Christian Right as a nuisance or even threat - which is possibly the reason, despite numerous representations to the Whitehouse, he has never done anything to protect or just highlight the plight of persecuted Iraqi and Palestinian Christians. These Christians are evidently disposable in the face of the Muslim nations best called brothers worshipping the same God.
By contrast, Hillary, herself if for very different reasons opposed by sections of the churches, likewise has Church in her open enemies sector opposed to her ascendant but her Church is in dual Gemini and retrograde. So, the opposed churches will be in two minds about her but also, I believe, will have second thoughts and can come round to her as some are already beginning to do. She can somewhat overcome the opposition if she wills – she after all doesn’t have the odd or sinister religious input of the Bush’s pattern to contend with. She can also better negotiate peace for Israel (her name nicely aspects Israel’s Venus, its peace potential) assuming that too many matters wouldn’t have been set in place before she would even have opportunity to try,
Now I can revert to Hillary and the all important question will she win.
CAN AND WILL HILLARY CLINTON WIN?
First let’s be clear how we can have any clues about who can win. Here are some basic technicalities.
Personal: Obviously the candidate must have a natal pattern consistent with assuming power and enjoying fame. We’ve seen that Hillary has something of this including that twelfth house sun, normally a sign of hidden enemies and undermining factors but which can give specifically leaders contact with the collective unconscious of nations. Scorpio is a privileged sign for US presidents and Hillary’s planets in Leo are strong and imperial. As we have seen Fame is present as Fama in Hillary’s career house and the other fame asteroid, Glo, exactly trines her destiny Midheaven. There are no asteroids, President or First, but there is one Principia . It is not (as I incorrectly stated in the first published version of this article) perfectly conjunct the fame sensitive Glo, rather it is loosely conjunct her first house Jupiter. This does seem like the heavens declaring this person could be famous for being a female first of something though it won't be a giveaway as Jupiter and this asteroid are basically in difficulty square to the Midheaven!
Despite a basically encouraging picture Hillary appears to fail in especially two points natally. She has a sympathetic but unpolitical moon in Pisces. No American president has had, or would want to have, quite such a vulnerable factor (when Hillary protests her detractors have badly hurt her she means it) but perhaps a woman could be allowed it and it would humanize her to the masses. Hillary also has an unhelpfully unaspected sun – unless, like astrologer Michael O’Reilly, you take into account the four main asteroids Ceres, Pallas, Juno and Vesta, one of which, Ceres, has recently if controversially been declared a planet, because then Hillary’s sun aspects all of these. (O’Reilly in fact links Hillary’s lifelong concern with healthcare reform to her natal sun’s aspect to her caring/nurturing Ceres in her sixth house of health issues). Whatever, the asteroids introduce a new and largely feminine consciousness into astrology. A woman president whose natal sun aspects the leading asteroids could therefore represent the new female and feminist consciousness many voters would be wanting of her.
National: The winner must have a natal chart strongly related to their nation’s horoscope like Bush with his Cancerian sun conjunct America’s sun. Hillary’s sun favourably aspects America’s Venus, obviously positive for someone aiming to be first female president! There are doubts about the time of America’s foundation but I believe the most solid case is made by Michael O’Reilly who has given both historical and astrological evidence for a 2.21 pm chart with Scorpio rising and a Leo destiny Midheaven (and isn’t there a lot of show and theatrics in American leadership?). It’s those angles that have favoured Presidents with suns or planets in Scorpio like Hillary and also those with Mars in Leo like Hillary because then their Mars would aspect America’s leadership Midheaven. Presidents are also commanders-in-chief of the army (Mars). America’s Midheaven is at just 16 Leo, Hillary’s Mars is at 14 Leo, conjuncting a powerful Pluto minutes off a world point at 15 Leo. This helps. (It is incidentally one more proof of the 2.21pm chart that its destiny Midheaven conjuncts a World point as befits America’s role in the world. The eclipse opposite America’s Midheaven in ‘08 could introduce drama into the leadership and whole life and destiny of a debt ridden America).
Also helpful to Hillary is the fact - given the 2.21 pm horoscope which unlike the other US charts puts the moon at 25 Aquarius - that the Senator’s Uranus favourably aspects the national moon exactly to the degree. It needs to do so not only because any President should anyway connect to the national moon but because Hillary would be blazing a woman first trail and Uranus is revolution, the difference, the surprise. Hillary’s Uranus is helpfully in her eighth sector of public support, crucial for any politician. Uranus there suggests she can win especially if she engages support from alternative people and voters like gays (ruled by Uranus) stressing new ways and alternative values. Obama chases Hillary here with a Uranus opposite rather than trine the national moon so he can excite but less easily realize what America wants. His Neptune conjunct America’s ascendant incidentally suggests his rule if he had it instead of Hillary could correspond to a time of confusion.
Transits: This could be a big story but I am only going to take transits for Voting Day November 4th around which time would be a very important one in Hillary’s life if she won. This day must therefore stand out dramatically in her chart and though I haven’t studied the charts of other candidates to compare, I think it is strongly enough marked for Hillary except for one point which I shall have to consider…so
ELECTION DAY (4th NOVEMBER 2008).
Action generating Mars is transiting Hillary’s Ascendant and Mercury at that time which just by itself puts her well forward and in the news. Jupiter makes opportunity aspect to her Venus, good for a woman candidate, and Venus rules the house of her dearest wish. Both Saturn and Uranus are near to favourably aspecting Hillary’s ascendant angle and Mercury, with Saturn doing this from her career house where Saturn at this crucial time is probably best placed. Pluto is nearing a power giving aspect, albeit by semi-sextile, to her natal Jupiter. This is all pretty positive unless her rivals could show stronger aspects and if we could read properly for the main rival, Obama. (He was born 4th Aug 1961 birth time unknown. If I were reading for Inauguration Day ‘09 in favour of his having won would be Jupiter conjuncting his Mercury and against would be Pluto nearly opposite his world point Venus).
The rather major negative is that dissolving, undermining Neptune will be directly opposite Hillary’s natal Saturn which relates to ambition and the duties one assumes in life. Could this Neptune, always ruler of “the end of the matter” within her chart, undo and disappoint her? It’s quite possible but I am inclined to suppose this sign has more to do with the condition of America which is not likely to be improving and which, post Bush, could even prove a bit of a poisoned chalice, an extra heavy load, for almost anyone who won. (If the strong contender Obama whose natal Neptune conjuncts the American ascendant won, it might reflect America itself would soon take the chalice as Neptune here could signify a degree of confusion for all concerned).
But assuming Hillary Clinton were to assume the difficult Bush legacy it’s interesting to note that not long after Inauguration Day (Jan 20th ‘09) a lunar eclipse hits right on her natal Saturn. If this doesn’t bespeak a period of disappointment then it announces, and more likely does so, a period of assumption of extra work and heavy duty consonant in her case with having the presidential role.
I am not an American familiar with American politics (astrological signs must be read in context)and I have not studied the possibly stronger charts of Hillary’s rivals, but within these stated limitations I am prepared to say Hillary seems 95% likely to win the race to become America’s first woman president. In fact, it almost looks like the whole thing is already in her pocket.
NOTE George Bush’s chart is always given as: July 6, 1946, New Haven CT. 7.26 AM EDT
Hillary Clinton’s birth chart, originally disputed for time, is now accepted by leading astrologers to be for Oct 26, 1947,Chicago IL. At 8 am CST. The final word of research on this (her mother had said she was born around breakfast time on the day) was given by Frances McEvoy in Astrology Newsletter, Feb/March ’98, Vol XV111 no 6.
The surely conclusive case for America’s 2.21 pm (on July 4 1776 in Philadelphia) Scorpio rising chart is given by especially Michael O’Reilly in his Political Astrology, and various articles by him on the Net.
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
HAROLD BLOOM’S RELIGIOUS SUPER MUDDLE
RELIGION AS LITERATURE AND NIGHTMARE
Harold Bloom is a distinguished American literary critic (and academic mentor of the Camilla Paglia) who, let loose on the subject of religion as in Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine, becomes more like a hard to manage whirling top. (Published in late 05 the book has finally reached the shores of China so I've belatedly read it). Bloom’s genuine insights appear mixed with so many contradictions and questionable claims it becomes as troubling as his own concluding confessions about how Yahweh/God, for whom his Orthodox Jewish upbringing has left him a residual if reluctant awe, wakes him at night with nightmares.
Yet the seeming chaos of Harold Bloom’s beliefs and opinions still strikes a very modern note worth considering and commenting. Also there’s a fruitful approach to the Bible in his concern to understand it more as literature with analyzable characters than something to be meticulously proved (or disproved) by the historical and textual analyses that leave people the often remote, confusing images of “The historical Jesus”. It’s an approach largely pioneered by (though also partly influenced by Bloom himself) in Jack Miles’ controversial God: A Biography and Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God which are examinations of Yahweh and Christ simply as given.
Despite the title of Harold Bloom’s book and greater part of its arguments essentially I get that the author’s theme is the problem of hanging on like grim death to some system of “transcendence”. Bloom wants to justify the best in life - like literature, art and plain optimism - against the grey of secularist, humanist, nihilist or even Buddhist traps while avoiding various Judaeo-Christian options deemed too hard to accept. Perhaps, too, the book is about how to remain Jewish when you admit you distrust and reject the Covenant, sacrifice and just about everything within Judaism and you emphatically can’t like its Yahweh, nor Jesus much either as any alternative.
SPIRITUALITY A LA IRIS MURDOCH
Harold Bloom thinks he may be a sort of Gnostic Jew, which is possible, but his beliefs and the project of this book finish a bit like the late Dame Iris Murdoch’s Christian atheism - Murdoch is in fact one of Harold Bloom’s favourite modern novelists. Murdoch's ideas were similarly described in a pell-mell of ideas and I note both of these messily suggestive writers on the spiritual are emotional Cancerians. One can well mention the point because unexpectedly astrology includes a message that explicates, if it doesn’t solve, a problem that for Bloom seems utterly insoluable. Also I note it could perhaps only be a member of zodiac’s Great Mother sign who could imagine (as Bloom does in his earlier The Book of J ) it was a woman who wrote the most attractive, accessible J strand of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh, Old Testament) even if that still hasn’t made it the kind of book Bloom likes! It’s just that the Hebrew Bible is at least its ruggedly original self. Bloom’s famous theory of “the anxiety of influence” posits an oedipal factor at work in literature in which the late come seek to overthrow their predecessors. Accordingly any “New Testament” can only be a “Belated Testament” of doubtful motivation, not any fulfilment.
Harold Bloom doesn’t go so far as Iris Murdoch as to suggest that if God existed he would be a demon, but his book, critically described as “provocative”, cannot help but offend Jew and Christian alike at points in its quasi blasphemies fit for the already famous objections of Dawkins in The God Illusion. Yahweh is described as “bad news”, “a capricious God, “this stern imp” uncanny, not to be trusted, unlovable, plainly no lover of the Jewish people at any time, an entity somewhere away in the universe nursing his lovelessness. The book concludes with the suggestion Yahweh should provide us a covenant that could actually be trusted.
POWER WITHOUT RELIABILITY
Yet despite the constant negative write-ups Bloom goes on to describe Yahweh as the most powerful figure in fiction (could any “imp” be that?) even if he could somehow be proved to be only fiction and not linked to certain real enough experiences (like Bloom’s nightmares). Actually, Bloom comes down on the side of drama rather than fiction and decides there is something distinctly King Lear like about Yahweh, passionate and raging about his ungrateful children and the world at large.
Similarly courting contradictions about Yahweh’s successor or mouthpiece, Jesus, Bloom assures us that none of the gospel writers had ever seen or heard Jesus who almost certainly was never crucified under under Pilate Pilate, still less betrayed by Judas (a pure anti-semitic fiction) but a teacher who probably died in India. Yet having assumed the gospels are totally unhistorical and unreliable and John’s gospel fit to be dismissed as a “murderous” text, Bloom then takes pains to treat at least Mark’s Jesus seriously as a rounded credible character based on probably someone who did exist and so whose character can be compared and contrasted with that of Yahweh.
In the space of this article I’m not even going to try to answer some of the objections to gospel reliability especially as at the scholarly/historical level sometimes Bloom scarcely deserves reply because he gets so much wrong. One glaring error is to propose, (having decided that Christianity is a form of Hellenism), that at least the Torah doesn’t demand perfection like the hellenized, platonic Christianity in which Jewish Christians lost out to Paul. Rubbish! Even in the very Jewish Christian gospel of James it is quite correctly observed to its Jewish readers that to fail in one point of Torah is to fail in all (Jam. 2:10). That’s a perfectionist doctrine which may have been soft pedaled or lost to Judaism since Roman times, but it existed. So what deserves answer is Bloom’s more central issue namely is Jesus like Yahweh or not? Is Jesus Yahweh’s son or possibly Yahweh himself?
On this again Bloom obfuscates and muddles and the top whirls. He protests there is no likeness between Jesus and Yahweh (as befits the hopeless heresy from Judaism he considers Christianity to be) and then he finds that really there is plenty of likeness. Jesus speaks in dark riddles, he is capricious, he is ironic, he speaks with hyperbole (exaggeration) he can be fierce. In which case there could perhaps be something “like father like son” in it all but, no, Bloom thinks he couldn’t allow the Christians that possible advantage. While he appreciates their doctrine of the Trinity “as poetry” Christians by getting philosophical in that area have finished up with a passionate Jesus and what seems like a remote impassive God the Father. Traditional trinitarianism can never fit with any Yahweh/Jesus, father/ son equation. But if you want to say Jesus equals Yahweh then character- wise that supposedly works less than a Father Son connection.
CHRISTIANITY ON THE ERA CUSP OF ARIES/PISCES
Well, how do we reconcile Yahweh and Jesus and Jesus’s statement “he who has seen me has seen the Father” (Jn 14:9 ) if also “the Lord is a warrior” (Ex. 15:3) and Jesus patently isn’t?….Or isn’t he? There is at very least the picture Bloom would inevitably discount of Jesus as apocalyptic warrior in Revelation (Rev 19: 11-16). And even if one doesn’t care to attribute that book to the disciple John as per tradition, then at least don’t let’s dismiss Revelation’s Christ images as an aspect of the Christian “hellenism” Bloom automatically assumes of the religion. It’s so little an expression of hellenism that precisely the Greek churches have never allowed Revelation a status above apocrypha!
Super quirky though Bloom’s beliefs are, they are based upon debatable notions one hears among quite a few Jews, (especially those of more Orthodox tradition such as Bloom was raised in), when faced with the OT/NT problem.
1) The only true tradition of Judaism is assumed to be a monotheism so absolute it doesn’t even allow God different “faces”. Bloom reads everything he can lay hands on but he hasn’t read or I’m sure would never cite if he had, Borderlines by Orthodox Jewish scholar, Daniel Boyarin. This makes very plain that at the time of Christ and until rabbis had a reaction against the Christian movement, there was a much more flexible notion of the one God within Judaism, especially a “two powers in heaven” idea into which Father/Son and Trinitarian notions easily slipped. There was no total heresy in thinking the Messiah could be God, the scandal lay more in thinking that specifically Jesus, someone who had been crucified, could be messianic deity.
2) From their literary perspective Bloom, like Miles, sees all the differences between Yahweh and Jesus and cannot understand what causes them. Nor perhaps can some Christians at the more popular level and this has occasioned an excessive division between what constitutes a Jewish and a Christian vision. Any difference is therefore construed by Bloom as a cultural or religious mistake or worse illusion on the part of what Bloom calls “The Belated Testament”. In fact, what Jesus so clearly represents in terms of change is to a large extent the abandonment of the Age of Aries vision of a God of War for an Age of Pisces vision of a God of compassion which could and perhaps should have been expected in Jesus’ time. We know from Josephus (and it’s a reason Josephus bizarrely decided the Roman Emperor, Vespasian, was the Messiah) that Israel expected its Messiah in the first century due to a generally accepted reading of Daniel’s Prophecy of the Weeks still promoted today by Christian dispensationlists. Since however it’s not clear whether Daniel’s weeks of years are lunar or solar years the Messiah couldn’t be very precisely dated within the first century but he was clearly someone for the Aries/Pisces era cusp. God however is all the ages, all the signs. The signs are like his faces so traces of the Arien imagery and symbolism as of the lamb, the blood, the sword, are taken over and retained within the new age. Yahweh can be both a warrior God and a healing, forgiving God. Also Yahweh’s warring is anyway most essentially on the side of freedom and the righteous and/or oppressed, a link to the Piscean savior who suffers. I would maintain contra Bloom that in the new era Jesus incarnates precisely Yahweh and/or The Angel of the Lord whose father is Elohim or El Elyon, the Highest.
3) What was most “hellenistic” and also New Age about Christianity was a philosophical willingness quite simply to generalize. Mainstream Judaism, based on ritual and legal specifics seemed, and still seems, unable or unwilling to do this and to recognize that if, as its prophets maintained, its message was ultimately for all peoples this expansion would be hard to convey without some generalizations of the heritage. The extremely particularizing Talmudic mind set is something alien to most people. It seems rather purely and restrictively Jewish (it is as much as most Gentiles can do even to get through a reading of the Torah, let alone the rabbinic commentaries!). The Torah, though increasingly given a virtually divine status within Judaism, one offering almost an alternative to any Messianic incarnations, contains elements suggestive of editing and the all-too-human addition. Moreover rulings such as the law of jealousy or on the rape of women who must live lifelong with her abuser are grounded in archaic cultural values which raise the most serious questions about God, perfection, revelation and justice if they are to be regarded purely as a dictated “Word of God”. Luther’s “Down with the Law” though controversial even to many Christians, was not without all reason. And though Jesus employed proverbial type expressions about “not a jot or tittle” departing from the Law till all would be fulfilled (apparently through himself) his references to the law of Moses and the elders implies he may not have thought of the Torah as in all parts equally inspired from heaven.
There is not just a religious argument going on in the long standing Jewish-Christian debates but an intellectual one with a certain refusal on the Jewish side of the Logos in all senses of the word. Like the atheist (not devout Jew) Jewish philosopher, Jacques Derrida, the more intellectual wing of Jewry seems to want to overthrow the “logocentric” mindset of the west. But while Derrida’s "deconstruction" does offer insights that reveal the limits of reason in western philosophy, Christian and secular, the result is rather anarchic, inconclusive – Derrida himself would not allow his thought was even a philosophy, more a reading, a technique. It’s a technique rather akin to Talmudic ones whereby Torah can be not just illuminated but if need be altered, whittled down or whittled away because it doesn’t fit the times or its original purpose even while one refuses there can be any philosophically or psychologically Christian/Hellenistic fulfillment or transcendence of it.
TO FULFIL OR NOT TO FULFIL
Harold Bloom denies any text can ever fulfill another. He absolutely denies the traditionally prophetic Isaiah 53 could possibly prophetically refer to, or be fulfilled in, Jesus. I admit, and intellectually almost more than religiously, to be irritated by his fairly representative Jewish take on this one. I can obviously accept it if a Jew says such and such a passage does not refer to specifically Jesus. I remain however frustrated by the kind of denial involved that this long poetic passage, so intensely personalized and about a suffering person could ever refer to any suffering messianic figure because Isaiah’s Messiah would have to be an all conquering Cyrus of Persia (who didn’t suffer) or else (as per philosopher, Franz Rosenzweig’s interpretation), must be a plural entity, namely the Jewish people as a whole. How, to intellectual satisfaction, can one read lines like
“he bore the chastisement that made us whole and by his bruises we were healed”
and seriously maintain the reference is still collective? Whose bruises in that case is this great Israel collective healing? This kind of position seems like an a playing of games with simple logic so that I feel exasperation and even possibly something along the lines St Paul is referring to when he speaks of a "blindness" overcoming Israel (Rom 11:25).
It becomes fairly clear that for certain purely cultural reasons best known to himself Harold Bloom is more determined to remain a Jew, however dissenting and blaspheming, than to assume any other philosophical or religious position. Again this strikes me as slightly perverse. We should let truth take us wherever it will take us even if, as for the skeptical Jewish philosopher,Spinoza, it takes one nowhere in particular from our starting point. However I do see Bloom as deep down wanting something that St Paul maintained the Jews of his time according to him inappropriately wanted, namely signs (1 Cor 1:22) because Bloom writes “but trust, faith, submission are none of them knowledge”. So what would be knowledge? Ultimately perhaps signs that prove.
Granted Bloom may not quite want or expect signs from heaven, but he does demand the next best thing, a verifiable knowledge rather than any exercises of faith. He in effect wants to know how it all works and to make everything work and to make it work via texts and not by inspiration. It is most noticeable that when he has his God nightmares upon waking his reaction is not to invoke God, not to pray or to meditate, but frantically to begin all over again lacerating himself by re-reading the passages of OT and NT and commentaries that trouble him, a clear case of the Talmudic attachment to text if nothing else. Perhaps this in itself shows some kind of tension between a modern desire for purely individual understanding and the demands of a Judaism formed more than Christianity around the collective, the nation, the tribe, and whose God is thus, all religious issues apart, more psychologically difficult for the individual to encompass and approach.
WHICH GOD, WHOSE GOD?
In an interesting and topical recent book, Secrets Things of God (it is written is response to the New Age philosophies of this year’s bestselling The Secret), a Christian psychiatrist, Dr Henry Cloud, records how on a radio show he was once given some very impassioned questioning about having God answer belief problems or life quests. How can we know it’s true, that God’s true etc. On being pressed he had finally to respond that if one really asked passionately enough somehow or other God would be revealed, (a case of “seek and you will find”). One listener took this very seriously to heart. Later she arrived in town asking to meet Cloud personally. She had had this marvelous vision. It was the best thing in her life, light, bliss, peace, except there was a slight problem. What was that? Well…she had asked for God but then Jesus had appeared. Why was this? She was, after all, a Jew…. and God, you know…. Dr Cloud tried to explain using all those fulfillment passages that Harold Bloom believes never could and should be used to fulfill anything. In this case the questioner felt she would have to be persuaded.
Happy Christmas Harold Bloom and everyone!
Harold Bloom is a distinguished American literary critic (and academic mentor of the Camilla Paglia) who, let loose on the subject of religion as in Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine, becomes more like a hard to manage whirling top. (Published in late 05 the book has finally reached the shores of China so I've belatedly read it). Bloom’s genuine insights appear mixed with so many contradictions and questionable claims it becomes as troubling as his own concluding confessions about how Yahweh/God, for whom his Orthodox Jewish upbringing has left him a residual if reluctant awe, wakes him at night with nightmares.
Yet the seeming chaos of Harold Bloom’s beliefs and opinions still strikes a very modern note worth considering and commenting. Also there’s a fruitful approach to the Bible in his concern to understand it more as literature with analyzable characters than something to be meticulously proved (or disproved) by the historical and textual analyses that leave people the often remote, confusing images of “The historical Jesus”. It’s an approach largely pioneered by (though also partly influenced by Bloom himself) in Jack Miles’ controversial God: A Biography and Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God which are examinations of Yahweh and Christ simply as given.
Despite the title of Harold Bloom’s book and greater part of its arguments essentially I get that the author’s theme is the problem of hanging on like grim death to some system of “transcendence”. Bloom wants to justify the best in life - like literature, art and plain optimism - against the grey of secularist, humanist, nihilist or even Buddhist traps while avoiding various Judaeo-Christian options deemed too hard to accept. Perhaps, too, the book is about how to remain Jewish when you admit you distrust and reject the Covenant, sacrifice and just about everything within Judaism and you emphatically can’t like its Yahweh, nor Jesus much either as any alternative.
SPIRITUALITY A LA IRIS MURDOCH
Harold Bloom thinks he may be a sort of Gnostic Jew, which is possible, but his beliefs and the project of this book finish a bit like the late Dame Iris Murdoch’s Christian atheism - Murdoch is in fact one of Harold Bloom’s favourite modern novelists. Murdoch's ideas were similarly described in a pell-mell of ideas and I note both of these messily suggestive writers on the spiritual are emotional Cancerians. One can well mention the point because unexpectedly astrology includes a message that explicates, if it doesn’t solve, a problem that for Bloom seems utterly insoluable. Also I note it could perhaps only be a member of zodiac’s Great Mother sign who could imagine (as Bloom does in his earlier The Book of J ) it was a woman who wrote the most attractive, accessible J strand of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh, Old Testament) even if that still hasn’t made it the kind of book Bloom likes! It’s just that the Hebrew Bible is at least its ruggedly original self. Bloom’s famous theory of “the anxiety of influence” posits an oedipal factor at work in literature in which the late come seek to overthrow their predecessors. Accordingly any “New Testament” can only be a “Belated Testament” of doubtful motivation, not any fulfilment.
Harold Bloom doesn’t go so far as Iris Murdoch as to suggest that if God existed he would be a demon, but his book, critically described as “provocative”, cannot help but offend Jew and Christian alike at points in its quasi blasphemies fit for the already famous objections of Dawkins in The God Illusion. Yahweh is described as “bad news”, “a capricious God, “this stern imp” uncanny, not to be trusted, unlovable, plainly no lover of the Jewish people at any time, an entity somewhere away in the universe nursing his lovelessness. The book concludes with the suggestion Yahweh should provide us a covenant that could actually be trusted.
POWER WITHOUT RELIABILITY
Yet despite the constant negative write-ups Bloom goes on to describe Yahweh as the most powerful figure in fiction (could any “imp” be that?) even if he could somehow be proved to be only fiction and not linked to certain real enough experiences (like Bloom’s nightmares). Actually, Bloom comes down on the side of drama rather than fiction and decides there is something distinctly King Lear like about Yahweh, passionate and raging about his ungrateful children and the world at large.
Similarly courting contradictions about Yahweh’s successor or mouthpiece, Jesus, Bloom assures us that none of the gospel writers had ever seen or heard Jesus who almost certainly was never crucified under under Pilate Pilate, still less betrayed by Judas (a pure anti-semitic fiction) but a teacher who probably died in India. Yet having assumed the gospels are totally unhistorical and unreliable and John’s gospel fit to be dismissed as a “murderous” text, Bloom then takes pains to treat at least Mark’s Jesus seriously as a rounded credible character based on probably someone who did exist and so whose character can be compared and contrasted with that of Yahweh.
In the space of this article I’m not even going to try to answer some of the objections to gospel reliability especially as at the scholarly/historical level sometimes Bloom scarcely deserves reply because he gets so much wrong. One glaring error is to propose, (having decided that Christianity is a form of Hellenism), that at least the Torah doesn’t demand perfection like the hellenized, platonic Christianity in which Jewish Christians lost out to Paul. Rubbish! Even in the very Jewish Christian gospel of James it is quite correctly observed to its Jewish readers that to fail in one point of Torah is to fail in all (Jam. 2:10). That’s a perfectionist doctrine which may have been soft pedaled or lost to Judaism since Roman times, but it existed. So what deserves answer is Bloom’s more central issue namely is Jesus like Yahweh or not? Is Jesus Yahweh’s son or possibly Yahweh himself?
On this again Bloom obfuscates and muddles and the top whirls. He protests there is no likeness between Jesus and Yahweh (as befits the hopeless heresy from Judaism he considers Christianity to be) and then he finds that really there is plenty of likeness. Jesus speaks in dark riddles, he is capricious, he is ironic, he speaks with hyperbole (exaggeration) he can be fierce. In which case there could perhaps be something “like father like son” in it all but, no, Bloom thinks he couldn’t allow the Christians that possible advantage. While he appreciates their doctrine of the Trinity “as poetry” Christians by getting philosophical in that area have finished up with a passionate Jesus and what seems like a remote impassive God the Father. Traditional trinitarianism can never fit with any Yahweh/Jesus, father/ son equation. But if you want to say Jesus equals Yahweh then character- wise that supposedly works less than a Father Son connection.
CHRISTIANITY ON THE ERA CUSP OF ARIES/PISCES
Well, how do we reconcile Yahweh and Jesus and Jesus’s statement “he who has seen me has seen the Father” (Jn 14:9 ) if also “the Lord is a warrior” (Ex. 15:3) and Jesus patently isn’t?….Or isn’t he? There is at very least the picture Bloom would inevitably discount of Jesus as apocalyptic warrior in Revelation (Rev 19: 11-16). And even if one doesn’t care to attribute that book to the disciple John as per tradition, then at least don’t let’s dismiss Revelation’s Christ images as an aspect of the Christian “hellenism” Bloom automatically assumes of the religion. It’s so little an expression of hellenism that precisely the Greek churches have never allowed Revelation a status above apocrypha!
Super quirky though Bloom’s beliefs are, they are based upon debatable notions one hears among quite a few Jews, (especially those of more Orthodox tradition such as Bloom was raised in), when faced with the OT/NT problem.
1) The only true tradition of Judaism is assumed to be a monotheism so absolute it doesn’t even allow God different “faces”. Bloom reads everything he can lay hands on but he hasn’t read or I’m sure would never cite if he had, Borderlines by Orthodox Jewish scholar, Daniel Boyarin. This makes very plain that at the time of Christ and until rabbis had a reaction against the Christian movement, there was a much more flexible notion of the one God within Judaism, especially a “two powers in heaven” idea into which Father/Son and Trinitarian notions easily slipped. There was no total heresy in thinking the Messiah could be God, the scandal lay more in thinking that specifically Jesus, someone who had been crucified, could be messianic deity.
2) From their literary perspective Bloom, like Miles, sees all the differences between Yahweh and Jesus and cannot understand what causes them. Nor perhaps can some Christians at the more popular level and this has occasioned an excessive division between what constitutes a Jewish and a Christian vision. Any difference is therefore construed by Bloom as a cultural or religious mistake or worse illusion on the part of what Bloom calls “The Belated Testament”. In fact, what Jesus so clearly represents in terms of change is to a large extent the abandonment of the Age of Aries vision of a God of War for an Age of Pisces vision of a God of compassion which could and perhaps should have been expected in Jesus’ time. We know from Josephus (and it’s a reason Josephus bizarrely decided the Roman Emperor, Vespasian, was the Messiah) that Israel expected its Messiah in the first century due to a generally accepted reading of Daniel’s Prophecy of the Weeks still promoted today by Christian dispensationlists. Since however it’s not clear whether Daniel’s weeks of years are lunar or solar years the Messiah couldn’t be very precisely dated within the first century but he was clearly someone for the Aries/Pisces era cusp. God however is all the ages, all the signs. The signs are like his faces so traces of the Arien imagery and symbolism as of the lamb, the blood, the sword, are taken over and retained within the new age. Yahweh can be both a warrior God and a healing, forgiving God. Also Yahweh’s warring is anyway most essentially on the side of freedom and the righteous and/or oppressed, a link to the Piscean savior who suffers. I would maintain contra Bloom that in the new era Jesus incarnates precisely Yahweh and/or The Angel of the Lord whose father is Elohim or El Elyon, the Highest.
3) What was most “hellenistic” and also New Age about Christianity was a philosophical willingness quite simply to generalize. Mainstream Judaism, based on ritual and legal specifics seemed, and still seems, unable or unwilling to do this and to recognize that if, as its prophets maintained, its message was ultimately for all peoples this expansion would be hard to convey without some generalizations of the heritage. The extremely particularizing Talmudic mind set is something alien to most people. It seems rather purely and restrictively Jewish (it is as much as most Gentiles can do even to get through a reading of the Torah, let alone the rabbinic commentaries!). The Torah, though increasingly given a virtually divine status within Judaism, one offering almost an alternative to any Messianic incarnations, contains elements suggestive of editing and the all-too-human addition. Moreover rulings such as the law of jealousy or on the rape of women who must live lifelong with her abuser are grounded in archaic cultural values which raise the most serious questions about God, perfection, revelation and justice if they are to be regarded purely as a dictated “Word of God”. Luther’s “Down with the Law” though controversial even to many Christians, was not without all reason. And though Jesus employed proverbial type expressions about “not a jot or tittle” departing from the Law till all would be fulfilled (apparently through himself) his references to the law of Moses and the elders implies he may not have thought of the Torah as in all parts equally inspired from heaven.
There is not just a religious argument going on in the long standing Jewish-Christian debates but an intellectual one with a certain refusal on the Jewish side of the Logos in all senses of the word. Like the atheist (not devout Jew) Jewish philosopher, Jacques Derrida, the more intellectual wing of Jewry seems to want to overthrow the “logocentric” mindset of the west. But while Derrida’s "deconstruction" does offer insights that reveal the limits of reason in western philosophy, Christian and secular, the result is rather anarchic, inconclusive – Derrida himself would not allow his thought was even a philosophy, more a reading, a technique. It’s a technique rather akin to Talmudic ones whereby Torah can be not just illuminated but if need be altered, whittled down or whittled away because it doesn’t fit the times or its original purpose even while one refuses there can be any philosophically or psychologically Christian/Hellenistic fulfillment or transcendence of it.
TO FULFIL OR NOT TO FULFIL
Harold Bloom denies any text can ever fulfill another. He absolutely denies the traditionally prophetic Isaiah 53 could possibly prophetically refer to, or be fulfilled in, Jesus. I admit, and intellectually almost more than religiously, to be irritated by his fairly representative Jewish take on this one. I can obviously accept it if a Jew says such and such a passage does not refer to specifically Jesus. I remain however frustrated by the kind of denial involved that this long poetic passage, so intensely personalized and about a suffering person could ever refer to any suffering messianic figure because Isaiah’s Messiah would have to be an all conquering Cyrus of Persia (who didn’t suffer) or else (as per philosopher, Franz Rosenzweig’s interpretation), must be a plural entity, namely the Jewish people as a whole. How, to intellectual satisfaction, can one read lines like
“he bore the chastisement that made us whole and by his bruises we were healed”
and seriously maintain the reference is still collective? Whose bruises in that case is this great Israel collective healing? This kind of position seems like an a playing of games with simple logic so that I feel exasperation and even possibly something along the lines St Paul is referring to when he speaks of a "blindness" overcoming Israel (Rom 11:25).
It becomes fairly clear that for certain purely cultural reasons best known to himself Harold Bloom is more determined to remain a Jew, however dissenting and blaspheming, than to assume any other philosophical or religious position. Again this strikes me as slightly perverse. We should let truth take us wherever it will take us even if, as for the skeptical Jewish philosopher,Spinoza, it takes one nowhere in particular from our starting point. However I do see Bloom as deep down wanting something that St Paul maintained the Jews of his time according to him inappropriately wanted, namely signs (1 Cor 1:22) because Bloom writes “but trust, faith, submission are none of them knowledge”. So what would be knowledge? Ultimately perhaps signs that prove.
Granted Bloom may not quite want or expect signs from heaven, but he does demand the next best thing, a verifiable knowledge rather than any exercises of faith. He in effect wants to know how it all works and to make everything work and to make it work via texts and not by inspiration. It is most noticeable that when he has his God nightmares upon waking his reaction is not to invoke God, not to pray or to meditate, but frantically to begin all over again lacerating himself by re-reading the passages of OT and NT and commentaries that trouble him, a clear case of the Talmudic attachment to text if nothing else. Perhaps this in itself shows some kind of tension between a modern desire for purely individual understanding and the demands of a Judaism formed more than Christianity around the collective, the nation, the tribe, and whose God is thus, all religious issues apart, more psychologically difficult for the individual to encompass and approach.
WHICH GOD, WHOSE GOD?
In an interesting and topical recent book, Secrets Things of God (it is written is response to the New Age philosophies of this year’s bestselling The Secret), a Christian psychiatrist, Dr Henry Cloud, records how on a radio show he was once given some very impassioned questioning about having God answer belief problems or life quests. How can we know it’s true, that God’s true etc. On being pressed he had finally to respond that if one really asked passionately enough somehow or other God would be revealed, (a case of “seek and you will find”). One listener took this very seriously to heart. Later she arrived in town asking to meet Cloud personally. She had had this marvelous vision. It was the best thing in her life, light, bliss, peace, except there was a slight problem. What was that? Well…she had asked for God but then Jesus had appeared. Why was this? She was, after all, a Jew…. and God, you know…. Dr Cloud tried to explain using all those fulfillment passages that Harold Bloom believes never could and should be used to fulfill anything. In this case the questioner felt she would have to be persuaded.
Happy Christmas Harold Bloom and everyone!
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