DANNY NALLIAH’S FALSE DREAM OF JULIA GILLARD’S LOSS

Pastor Danny Exceeding his Spiritual Remit Again

With the narrow Labour win confirming Julia Gillard as Australia’s first woman Prime Minister, finally and thankfully, Danny Nalliah has been caught out. By now notorious for his dreams, especially of '09’s forest fires declared to be divine judgement for permitting abortion in Victoria, Nalliah, a one man Aussie version of the American Right with dramatic visionary input, had a vision of “godless” Gillard ceding defeat before media. He has also been telling people to pray she would lose this week and has been wrong. It wouldn’t be surprising if Nalliah will now declare the Victorian floods are a judgment for endorsing Gillard and that Christians should be repenting they didn’t pray hard enough to fulfill his dream which expressed less prophecy than God’choice and intention. There are interesting questions here re prophecy (does it exist?) and divine will (can it be known?).

Personally I am delighted with today’s close result which is likely to force Australia into a more consensus politics and a whole raft of reforms the Independents have successfully bargained for. I also feel enormous relief and justification as someone who myself lays some claim to prophetic insight and had reasons to doubt Nalliah’s dream as soon as I read it. Recently recovering from the shock of a disturbing prophetic dream that proved true (but which I didn’t rush to the press or even my Blog to discuss though it is covered in a new book I’m editing) I believed God had told me all one needed to know the night before the election.

DANNY NALLIAH, A HEALER WHO SHOULD GO EASY ON PROPHECY

But I’ll say first, despite his eccentric streak, unlike some people I don’t consider Danny Nalliah bad or mad. He is well intentioned in his way and I think he has real gifts for especially healing. I also believe he did Australians a good turn challenging anti-vilification laws for which he suffered a long drawn out court case defending his right to free speech as regards ability to criticize Islam. But when it comes to prophecy, which is supposed to be gift and a vocation, the healer and rights campaigner exceeds his remit and brings himself and religion into disrepute.

Yet even as Nalliah rushes in where angels might fear to tread, he is slightly more correct than church leaders who currently have nothing more "prophetic" to say to their congregations on the fate of nations and leaders than that atheists can be good persons. That’s hardly the point, especially if there is any kind of divine fate, will or “choice” at all involved in leadership - a tricky subject raising questions about the absolute as opposed to merely permissive will of God. Conservatives like Nalliah believe God always has a “choice” for leadership we should discern and pursue. The belief ignores that while undeniably God is depicted as choosing such as King Saul - who serves God’s purpose of driving back Philistines but is otherwise useless - he is “chosen” only after Yahweh has democratically conceded to Israel’s decision to have the monarchy God doesn’t want. Also Israel is covenanted to God and other nations aren’t.

On August 31st Danny Nalliah put out a message that in a dream he had seen Ms Gillard conceding defeat. The message was meant to be definitive as it was accompanied with a list of other supposedly true dreams - we were informed, once again, he had foreseen the Victorian bushfires – he left out how he had seen prior shooting mayhem in central Melbourne that never occurred. I have questions about one or two other vision claims but we can pass over that.

A couple of days later Nalliah was not quite so convinced by his dream as not to issue another missive telling the faithfu how he had felt physically sick and been up half the night beseeching God to prevent the horror of a Labor/Green alliance giving Australia into the hands of a sinful atheist and “a practicing homosexual” (Bob Brown). He wanted fasting and prayer to prevent this disaster and on the basis that what we bind on earth can be bound in heaven (Matt 16:19). He even perceived the political situation as direly similar to when (the supposedly Christian) Bush narrowly beat the New Age Gore in Florida, through the power of prayer allegedly. (As it was a matter of narrowly disputed vote count this might have been like asking God to cheat numbers in a Republican interest).

NALLIAH TRYING TO BIND AND LOOSE EVENTS

Nalliah’s position makes no sense. If you believe that anything you bind on earth can be bound in heaven by prayer, how and why did early Christians suffer the evil and persecuting emperors St Paul so controversially said must be accepted from God as part of the authority that is his will? If your stomach is too weak to accept an atheist and “a practicing homosexual” in power, how would you manage emperors at orgies or Christian kings throughout western history openly living with mistresses?

While obviously God would not approve the likes of Nero, God is still understood to support organization over anarchy (which even the imperial systems can represent) and democracy or at least what reflects the people’s mind because:
a) as per Ps 115:16 “The heavens are the Lord’s heavens, but the earth he has given to human beings”. So humans must make their choices and,
b) because as per Mk 12:17 we are supposed to accept the division of church and state basic to democracy and thus render to Caesar what’s his and to God what’s God’s.

Granted this might make it seem God has no will as regards rulers (unless for covenanted Israel) or that all things can’t work together for good as St Paul insists (Rom 8:28). But this is to be unaware how things may always be working sooner or later for God’s plan as indicated presently. As to believers “binding” and “loosing” things, this has more to do with healing and exorcism. It’s not carte blanche to organize national politics for unbelievers. What Nalliah believes can be claimed for nations is based on OT statements made in the context of Israel being covenanted to God in a way Australia isn’t (even if some people do believe Australia is or should be “the Great Southland of the Holy Spirit”). If Nalliah thinks otherwise then it’s close to the Dominionist heresy of some American churches which assumes Christ can’t return until all nations are under laws instituted by a politicized Christianity.

With and without visions, Nalliah regularly treats current party politics as though a presidential race built on personalities - “ungodly” Gillard, versus “godly” Abbot - not whole parties with their mixture or believers and unbelievers. Like Abbott, he also regards politics as confrontational, not realizing what Australia needs and which the present crisis may help precipitate, is a more consensual, flexible system.

GOD AND GODLY POLICIES FOR AUSTRALIA

Granted there are policies to consider and – marginally - the Coalition has represented more specifically Christian positions especially re chaplaincy for schools and prayers in parliament. But not only did Gillard’s atheism concede to chaplaincy, no matter how important such matters regarding faith might be, other matters like reform of health care, hospitals and schools, issues from homelessness to broadband do count. Also it was Labour not the Coalition that said the necessary “Sorry” to Aboriginals. It hardly serves God if one arrives at the equivalent of a “Tory party at prayer” situation, good for organized religion but little otherwise than big business or the cities. Though Christ is neither left nor right, a parable like the workers in the vineyard ( Matt 20:1-`16 ) is basically socialist.

I don’t say that as a committed socialist – I tend to be a pragmatic swinging voter -and in the recent difficult poll have suspected with the eccentric Bob Katter the decision may be between “the lesser of two evils”. And I do think the Left wastes money. The fact remains the Coalition has been very conservative by modern standards. The regions have been ignored, welfare has been below European standards under the Coalition, higher education half killed off under it – the religious studies dept where I obtained my doctorate and which was once deemed one of the best in the world, now shares its reduced curriculum with several other depts due to radical cuts. The mind of the people, if one thinks it counts for anything, was not being expressed on many things under the Coalition. That includes gay marriage on which the Greens may impel Labour to a conscience vote.

This leads me to mention three subjects to which Nalliah and conservatives are hysterically opposed but on which it could be that they don’t have the mind of God at all.

1). If they increase electricity charges by four, I agree the Greens would be unmentionable, but for the Christian Right and Nalliah are unmentionable for other reasons. They regard the Australian version of Green as controversially godless which it seems to be (though the movement itself was founded in Canada by a Quaker) but we need to recall that saving the threatened Barrier Reef is a policy priority for Greens. Supposing it were an important issue for God? As mentioned in my Cosmic Father, I had been shocked to be told by God to pray for the seas. It has taken the Gulf oil disaster for anything like that idea to cross most Christian minds.

2). Gay Marriage. “Godless” Gillard doesn’t support it, but may be forced to a conscience vote by the Greens. Regardless of various contemporary theological and psychological perspectives on the gay subject, if one were to argue solely within Nalliah’s framework, one can well ask what if God might actually want gay marriage passed? Married gays are less likely to be involved in unsafe sex. God doesn’t want gays dead of AIDS; the longer they live the more time to change their ways and beliefs. Health and soul surely count for more than the formality of whether marriage belongs solely to straights or not. And Jesus’ bride, the Church, is composed of both sexes. If Nalliah can’t and won’t see that simple point, then perhaps privately he’s like the Ugandan churches that want gays jailed or executed under the law. Like many religious conservatives I doubt Nalliah is completely open about his position on this subject or just doesn’t know what it is but has knee-jerk reactions anyway. Just to see Bob Brown embracing (not even kissing) his partner made Nalliah feel ill and rushing to God in distressed prayer. Ever heard of homophobia?

3) Abortion. Nalliah’s position is the Catholic one - it’s all always wrong. Doubtless there’s too much of it and late term abortion will always be controversial, but the negative position doesn’t enjoy the unanimous agreement of even early Christians. Tertullian believed the child must be sacrificed to save the mother’s life. (One of a list of reasons writer Anne Rice recently rejected Christianity was after a Catholic nurse in Arizona was excommunicated for recommending abortion to save a mother’s life). Augustine refused to say early stage abortion was murder. It is this intransigent refusal to countenance any grounds for abortion, and the indifference to the often difficult situations into which doctors are put – would Nalliah like doctors fined and imprisoned in Victoria for using their discrimination? – that has put Christians outside the pale in most people’s discussion of this subject and been a pretext for secularism to argue for abortion on almost any grounds.

DID GOD WILL “GODLESS” GILLARD’S ELECTION WIN?

Can we hope to know God’s will in these matters? Would God, contrary to Nalliah’s assumptions, “choose” an atheist and should we? The answer is a provisional yes, it’s perfectly possible.

First, let’s remember God does as he wills for his purposes and “even the wrath of man will praise you” (Ps 76:10). Without compromising human will God can oversee events in a way that will assist the larger picture in the long run. There is some scope for individuals to do wrong and make evil choices, but they cannot fully go against the tides which will force correction later if not sooner. Ecclesiastes famously writes of a time to break down and a time to build up, to plant and to pluck up. (Ecc 3) What does this and more of such statements signify? It means there is a hidden cyclical factor which the rabbis knew of and it’s the cycles of time and astrology that religious conservatives reject as the abomination of divination Jews don’t understand it to be. It’s a reason astrology could feature in even Christ’s birth. I have often said that Christian prophecy and prophets could well be checked for probability and accuracy of claim against it. The more egregious errors could be avoided by this means.

The fact is Australia is in a cycle which requires it to change and what is now happening will help propel it towards that. Gillard herself was always going to make it. I will concede that I wouldn’t have cared to forecast it, astrologically at least, before last weekend when finally I discovered Gillard’s birth time and even then it was still difficult because we didn’t know Abbott’s to make comparison. However, when I saw that tomorrow’s lunation would be conjuncting Gillard’s Midheaven (her career/destiny) it seemed sufficiently unlikely she would lose for me to start writing this article ahead of the announcement. Now that I know the result and its timing and can see the full birth pattern, it is devastating just how fated transits and Gillard’s pattern are for her stepping into history. She was always fated to win. It is most unlikely Danny Nalliah or anyone’s interventions would not have stopped it and Abbott was always fated to lose too. The prior eclipse, always a good gauge, had been negative to his pattern.

There is much more one could say about these patterns, some of it quite technical, but my main religious point is that these tides and cycles reflect God’s will. They exist and can be traced because they parallel God’s will. Elections have never much concerned me religiously or in any other way, but this election was confusing, tightly fought and potentially historic, so that for once on the night before polling I put it before God, trying to clear my own mind. I still remember the strange sense of relief and wonderful clarity that overcame me when the message I received was simply to pray that Julia Gillard would “make the right decisions”. It wasn’t a forecast, but it might as well have been so because if it was decisions she has had to make and will be having to make and they will be difficult ones, so I did suspect I had been told the answer. Why would her decision-making matter if she would shortly lose? Even if she retired tomorrow or the consensus won't work already she has made many decisions with the Independents which will help change politics here and redirect some needed attention towards regional Australia.

We need to remember that Christians are told to pray for those in high positions (1 Tim 2:2). That is the task under any circumstances. Trying to influence voter patterns by prayer is dubious and if you think that kind of thing is right, then perhaps you will be rewarded with false visions.

I hope this election is a wake up call to Danny Nalliah who is not a person easily persuaded from his position on anything. I have several times written without response from him or his secretary and as this included paragraphs in a book of mine which mention him, clearly he is not a man to hear anything but what he wants. Contrary views come from the devil, I fancy. I shan’t be trying to contact him again. I just hope what he is gifted for is not damaged by his vainly getting into what and where he is not meant to be. I haven't made this an open letter but I would say: Leave it to others who may not have the spotlight you are given and possibly seek, but who now and again may know more.

PS. DANNY NALLIAH'S SEMI-RESPONSE TO ME

Following the election result Danny Nalliah put out an invitation to send "thoughtful" responses to the puzzle of his Gillard vision. (His own opinion is that he must still be correct, but that he got the timing wrong). Although I said I wouldn't be writing to DN again as he just won't reply, in the circumstances I did send the address of this site and article. Amazingly, within around 10 minutes of emailing it I actually received a reply, pointing me to all the positive responses to him on his site that would disagree with my position (People were indeed writing in to assure him he is inspired and must be right really).

If thoughtful responses were required then considered replies to them would be appropriate. It is impossible my article had been read, absorbed and replied to in such a brief interval. In fairness, since the article wasn't written for or to Ps Nalliah, the opening wasn't too flattering, but the rest was more fair and deserved his consideration. I imagine he read the opening lines and not desiring the negativity of criticism just dismissed it. This recalls to me some of the correspondence sent to this Blog about my false prophet articles. They mention prophets in California living in unreal worlds where their every word is hung upon and admired, every success built up, the failures ignored.

I still believe Nalliah has gifts, even if prophecy isn't their prime feature, so I just hope he won't now be spoiled by his followers turned from a pastor to an infallible guru buoyed up on an revivalist roll. It's also the fact that according to St Paul,(Rom 11:29)the gifts or God are irrevocable, and thus it is quite possible that even genuine divine gifts can continue to manifest even when the person has developed some wrong attitudes and policies in relation to them. The big problem with Danny Nalliah is he is narrowly opinionated on a whole slew of political and ethical issues and because God's gifts seem to accompany him (most recently the papers have reported he has raised a dead woman) followers feel obliged to imitate his every view, rather than seeking out the truth for themsleves.

Finally by a bit of Net research I now see Nalliah misforecast the 2007 election likewise, though this time blaming people for not praying enough to make the prophecy a certainty. See
http://www.hnlc.org.au/rensford/resources/Nalliah_election_false_prophecy.pdf

However I also see there seems to be some kind of Toronto Blessing and similar connection where Nalliah's Catch the Fire ministries is concerned. That should make anyone suspicious of his gifts and just what he represents.

ANNE RICE’S SENSATIONALIZING DECONVERSION

A FACEBOOK ABOUT-FACE ON CHRISTIANITY

This week Facebook has been theatre to best-selling author Anne Rice’s grand About-Face. Sensationally and rather self indulgently Anne Rice, the atheist reconverted to Catholicism in 1998, has now declared herself “in Christ’s name”, out of Christianity and no longer calling herself Christian. Since she refuses to reject Christ about whom she has written novels in recent years (in '02 she was in a mood to declare she would write nothing more unless on Christ) and then in view of the list of her objections to “Christianity” it might have been more appropriate to have declared herself no longer Catholic. She could then perhaps quietly have gone somewhere more Protestant where she could have been allowed her broader views on women, contraception, gays etc. But some people, particularly a type of American star personality, can’t do anything quietly. Gestures must be extreme and absolute, the whole world must hear and hopefully sympathize too.

Unfortunately, because of Anne Rice’s vast influence in many languages, it's quite likely that many will be as influenced by this about-face and make “I’m not Christian” statements as trendy in its way (and go further with it and more literally) as they once did with the Goth morbidity of her Vampire novels.

My disappointed reaction to Rice’s announcement agrees neither with those who simplistically and sympathetically buy into “poor” Anne Rice’s siding with Christ against the unpleasantness of his religion and its adherents, nor with those who say she was just a bad Catholic who should never have returned on the terms she did. These reactions are missing what I sense is the real, more hidden point and which my own minor, brief dealings with Anne Rice had led me reluctantly to suspect so that I'm not surprised at what has happened and at a propitious moment for such shocks too. (It comes in the wake of an eclipse that set up an affliction to Anne’s Mars and at the time of a portentous Grand Cross of stressed planets in the heavens that oversee such major problems in America as the wikileaks and of course Anne is making another info leak of sorts).

ANNE RICE’S HAUNTED MIND

Anne Rice is a person carrying a lot of emotional and spiritual baggage, a person still prey to her inherited demons and for this reason, whether reconciling with or renouncing religion, she risks functioning as a negative spiritual influence upon the masses. For a start, I do feel in light of things I’ve read about vampire cult in America in all its morbidity and which Anne Rice’s fiction unquestionable helped to popularize, a deep conversion would surely have made her more keen to renounce her previous writings than has been the case. If publication of earlier work could not cease for contractual reasons, she might have given away the proceeds of it.

It doesn’t seem this has happened and if she had concerned herself a little more with,say, the poor and disadvantaged, her incredibly petulant and judgemental view of Christians as nothing but a 'quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group" might have been modified. Many of us might agree to be sickened by such as impossible Catholic hierarchs, bombastic tele-evangelists and some testy, eccentric evangelical homophobes, but some Christians do actually roll up their sleeves and do some good work. Despite covering herself by refusing to renounce Christ, in fact Anne Rice has done so. She is as "out" as she claims to be, since Christ is explicit that loving him involves loving his brethren for whose feelings Ms Rice doesn't appear to care much, just as she doesn't seem to care about the effect of her words in the world.

If one doesn’t burn one’s boats more than the 100 million copy best-seller author has done, and show gratitude to the deity she said she was grateful to for bringing her out of the swamp of atheistic pessimism, then one merely keeps one’s old problems and demons alive for oneself and everyone. This kind of thing concerns issues of spiritual efficiency which is what I am writing on at present.

Clearly Anne Rice and her spiritual advisors have not given much thought to anything remotely like so-called “deliverance” ministry for which under the rules she would almost certainly qualify in a major way. The author went through years of depression and is the child of a problematic family overseen by a seriously alcoholic mother. She recognizes within herself something like a dark drive to hurt and destroy – her Called From Darkness memoir includes details like how she mused upon throwing someone over the stairs. The sort of life patterns she describes is the sort of thing needing real healing and banishment.

MY OWN EXPERIENCE OF ANNE RICE

Because it is so hard to reach “stars” or else to get them to reply, I was initially impressed when Anne Rice wrote to me very nicely a couple of times in response to my comments on both her own chart and what I told her regarding my work on Christ’s birth data. She admitted it was fascinating, but as her writing on the Christ fiction was well advanced she couldn’t or wouldn’t let it influence her at that stage. I and most people can’t admit a birth date as early as 12BC that she was working on.

Having given her some indication of things I was engaged on, in more recent times (last year) I wrote and asked her to look at my Cosmic Father book because it could interest here given the way it included a grappling with problems that specifically had been concerning her. I also suggested, given her issues around the church and gays, that she and/or her gay writer son might look at my groundbreaking study of gay spiritualities. This I hoped wouldn’t seem mere vanity or presumption on my part. If the book can lay claim to be a world first in its line and has had some media attention and the person I am addressing is having problems with the church, including round attitudes to her gay activist son, it seems to me only reasonable to contact as I did and one would hope for reply….if there is a sincere will to deal with the issues in the first place rather than just explode against Christianity and Christians about them. But is there?

In fairness to Ms Rice, we are all busy and one can’t reply to everyone and everything (I wouldn’t myself) but she had written to me before and there were other things I won’t go into it, things she was saying or blogging about her reading and thinking which suggested to me she was somehow not quite rightly spiritually on the right path. So if I felt a bit offended, I was not entirely surprised to receive no reply either. I had strongly felt I should write and I will always feel Anne Rice was wrong not to reply. I see it as all part of her faltering spirituality which seems ready enough to tell and confess in the dramatic, revivalist American style, but which in reality is perhaps not telling and confessing enough. Anne Rice’s Facebook About-Face marks not just a crisis in her own life but is symptomatic of one within American religion itself.

RECENT FORECASTS FOR 2010 ANY ASTROLOGER COULD HAVE MADE

WHEN PROOF STARES OUT

If you want to prove astrology and yourself as an astrologer you should get a few forecasts correct. And on the global front I feel I missed some golden opportunities to do just that recently. This was not because I couldn’t read the signs, but because, a) I didn’t want to seem too sensational and b) I was too preoccupied (and still somewhat am with writing a non-astrological book from which I’m taking a rest), so that I felt it didn’t matter too much. But perhaps it did. You get weary, but also you just get used to having astrology trashed and ignored to the point you wonder whether it’s worth commenting and predicting anything at all.

Here are things I was expecting to happen and that did and how and why one would have to read the signs this way.

STELLAR SIGNS OF AMERICA’S BP DISASTER.

Though I wouldn’t necessarily have predicted a big and ongoing American disaster in terms of specifically an oil rig, that America was going to be hit damagingly hard from April on was pretty much shown by the fact that…

The lunation for mid April that preceded the explosion of the 20th was degree exact in what’s called affliction aspect (a square) to America’s foundational Mercury. One could then see this danger signal was well certified because it would be followed up by a full moon smack on America’s ascendant angle (I use the Scorpio rising chart) showing the population could be seriously affected. But then this lunation was guaranteed by every rule of astrology to deliver the trouble implied because the all-important scene-setting previous eclipse had opposed the same afflicted point, warming it up so to speak. Also, and very bad news, Pluto whose cycle is a 248 years one, is/was transiting opposite America’s Venus/Jupiter conjunction meaning that it is opposing the nation’s goods, resources money and just good fortune generally (nothing in astrology is more fortunate than Jupiter/Venus).

With all this joining together (and other factors we can pass over here) it was “elementary my dear Watson” that something had to give. Foreigners would likely be involved too because national Mercury is in the 9th of the overseas and it rules the eighth of shared resources. This points to an outsider involved with the national economy – at this moment in time, BP, making the mess. Mercury in water and the seas sign, Cancer, was a hint of possible damage through the seas. But frankly the picture is just drastic. This is a big, ongoing long term disaster with all sorts of consequences and it’s hardly surprising to learn it’s being found to be worse than initially thought.

America from now on could be in for a lot of bad news and if truth were told, with Pluto due to oppose the national Sun in 2014, it’s not an unreasonable speculation that around that time America could even cease to be world leader. Decline of power could be quite rapid. Pluto transits are hugely associated with the rise and fall of empires and super-powers. America is finishing its empowering Pluto cycle and there’s much reason to suppose the great days are over and there is plenty now to reckon with and get used to.

A DEFINITE FORECAST OF GAZA

How could anyone miss it? Israel was in for big trouble in recent days. The May 14th lunation prior to the flotilla crisis fell at 23 Taurus 09. This means it was significantly conjuncting. Israel’s sun is at 23.41 Taurus. Plus martial Mars has been transiting in Leo, the sign of Israel’s sun (and other planets) so that it’s also a regular trigger point for upsets and situations of aggression. The national sun falls in Israel’s seventh house of open enemies which is why it’s constantly so challenged by just about everyone (despite some deranged persons like a Turk on the streets of Ankara protesting to SBS news that Israel is dangerous because “it persecutes the whole world”. The whole world? That has to be some kind of paranoid psychological projection but which with a Seventh house sun a nation risks suffering).

It’s easy to accuse Israel if one is determined to, and plainly some are, because Gaza is an appalling, suffering mess. But while Israel is not guiltless there, much of the problem is caused by endemic corruption, suffocating bureaucracy and internecine fighting by political groups bent on power there while the people (though not the unfortunate children) are to some degree victims to problems of their own making, hating Israel but still half glad to be martyrs in conflict with the “pigs and dogs” nation they don’t wish or really intend to come to any real terms with.

Apart from being plain busy, the only reason I didn’t post alarm signals here about Israel’s situation was because I was worried about getting the level of manifestation right. It didn’t seem to me the month promised quite the all-out war that many in Israel had been expecting and still do for this year, or that some wilder Christians of the American prophetic school had been forecasting – Iran blown to smithereens or the Gog Magog war itself perhaps! I didn’t quite see that….not yet anyway. It seemed almost better not to fuel further speculation which, if anyone even bothered to listen, would almost certainly only get exaggerated.

I’m not keen to speculate further about Israel in any direction, but I’ll say I don’t much like the look of the August lunation conjunct Israel’s Saturn, though that could be more about leadership problems and disputes with Obama and America than outright war. (Saturn has been and soon will be for the long haul in Netanyahu’s sign, Libra. He has his work cut out and plenty of serious decisions!). Israel, a bit like America, is caught into force majeure Plutonic problems given Pluto back and forth opposing its Venus. Since Israel’s Venus rules its open enemies house in which its national sun sits besides, this has all sorts of potential for foreign foes and increased challenges. But Israel will outlast the America that may abandon it under Obama, if Obama stays around long enough. There are no Plutonic oppositions to Israel’s sun coming up as there are to America’s. Iran needn’t be too sure of wiping Israel off the map. In fact, it won’t happen. Israel will survive us all. There will just be trying and dangerous times for it.

THE MCDONALD’S GAY AD AND A URANUS HIT TO THE WORLD POINT

I simply knew that when Uranus would hit a World Point (this time 0 Aries, perhaps the most important of the six points) the world would see and hear something controversially gay within a short while. It did. Uranus entered the point on the 28th of last month, but May isn’t the Gay Pride month like June. So whatever date the ad may have been launched in France (it looks like the 26th May two minutes of a degree off Uranus entering the world point ) it first reached international media as a hot topic on June 2nd with the moon broadly timing the event in suitably shock-staging, and alternative Aquarius.

In France it has been seen as a joke, (by everyone but gay leaders who have long been on bad terms with McDonald’s and now feel exploited and angry for obscure reasons) but in sections of America it has been seen as further inroads of gay “agenda”. Some even proposed no Christians should ever eat in Mac’s again! Clearly everyone is having a great time accusing everyone else of something, though those moderates who actually like the ad find it, however unintentionally, educative and almost poignant.

I must admit I had thought Uranus on the WP might be more about the Vatican and the Pope who was actually born with Uranus there and who, (since conjunctions can swing either way and be very pro or anti something), is very against anything openly gay and officially opposed to gay rights. We know, or perhaps we don’t, how the Italian press regards Benedict, but anyway the Pope has so many Uranian shocks and surprises round him that surely something else gay related around him could scarcely register by now - though one never knows. But anyway….Mac is going gay. In France anyway and whether outraged gay leaders there want it or not. And the guy of the ad’s fated gay teen role at least seems representative enough of France - traditionally given by astrologers to Virgo - by looking distinctly Virgoan. Quite likely the anonymous “snowflake” as some call him, has his sun, ascendant or some kind of planetary emphasis in the sign.

Except that I don’t eat at Mac’s, I took the matter half personally when I belatedly discovered the news because I’d just come from writing something about France in the new book. I also happen to have Virgo rising and there was a shock of recognition. When I was in my teens, though I do have brown eyes and wasn’t the spitting image, heaven knows I was close enough in dress, expressions (that sidewise glance) and general appearance including to being very pale and having just that haircut. And heaven does know, since confirming I’m not too far off here, a temporary signature any astrologer would recognize was present – my viewing time for the clip had the moon exactly favourably aspected my ascendant (appearance to the world).

I finally see why when I travel internationally there are people determined to address me in French, unable to think I could be other than French. And yes, to pile up data, this current Uranus is presently directly aspecting my Jupiter in Sagittarius, planet and sign of anything foreign, suitably triggering delayed realizations; including that maybe I should have prolonged my youthful working life in Paris indefinitely and got spotted and celebrated for something or other….. But….. I realize a lot of people don’t take these stellar signs as registering anything at all.

GAY SCEPTIC, TONY PITMAN, DOESN’T LIKE ASTROLOGY

Documentary film maker and gay activist, Tony Pitman, is now back in Australia following years in Latin America and doling out sceptical theories on everything under the sun on Monday night’s Reality Check show for Joy Radio in Melbourne. Recently and for three weeks it was astrology took the whack. To everyone their opinions, but I felt the subject was taking too great a beating and being just misrepresented or misunderstood and it was time for some check mating of Reality Check. To overcome an objection about vagueness in astro interpretation, I described Tony’s chart with significant name and place asteroids which when added to the picture pretty well describe his life itself, why he was in Mexico, in Paris, how he won the Lionel Murphy award and so on, including that his birth name, originally Anthony, was rising over the horizon in its Greek and archetypally gay form of Antinous at his birth.

There is a place to send your comments for the Tony’ show. In the months since the show started there had scarcely been a comment. My own was never printed. As the studio told me, Tony has the legal right to refuse. Which I wouldn’t question, though it is/was a pity for astrology. I said however I questioned the moral right. Tony Pitman has gone further than almost anyone in Australia in opposing the principle of censorship, putting on street demos about it to the point of risking arrest. “It takes all sorts to make a world” but TP is determined to be a distinctive type among the “all sorts”.

AN ANCIENT PROPHECY OF UGANDA VERSUS THE GAYS

With Uranus on the World Point I wasn’t too surprised to hear on the news Uganda’s exceptionally draconian and internationally criticized anti gay laws might go ahead in some form or other soon (though I wonder if things might not be delayed till there’s some Saturnian input that’s due). Whatever precisely happens and when, it would be hard to describe just how disgusting the proposed laws are and the people who support them and put ideas into the nation’s heads in the first place (including some stars of the lunatic fringe of American evangelicalism like the creepy Benny Hinn, though the tabloid Ugandan press is not so favourable and loyal to him not to have alleged gay behavior by him in their country with a leading evangelist - just possibly it's the real grounds for the divorce petition whose pretext remaina a mystery to Hinn fans in America). Whatever….McDonald’s ads and snowflake boys keep your distance from the African heat, Uganda’s New Jerusalem has no room for you! Even to say a word in favour of anyone’s gay rights and even not to report someone you know is gay could have you in Ugandan jail if the fanatics get their way. Actually, just be and do something gay yourself and they’d like to have you executed or jailed for life, though that at least the international community seems likely to be able to prevent.

“From a distance” as the song goes, God is watching and the Ugandan church had better beware. The finger is pointed in their direction. Almost in defiance of human belief (but if you work enough astrology you begin to get used to miracles), on the Pentecost day of the Church’s foundation two thousand years ago, what only in our times would be named the asteroid, Uganda, was conjunct of all things, Antinous, name of the great gay archetype. I said above that conjunctions can go either way. This shows us that Uganda simply cannot deal with homosexuality, and its being anti-something to a monumental degree is what historically will have most (un)distinguished it. I’ll not go further and deliver further surprises about Uganda on this subject – they can be included in a chapter of the book I’m writing, but I’ll simply declare something is terribly wrong and was always foreseen to go wrong in that country.

ASTROLOGY, THE FORBIDDEN MODE OF PROPHECY

So here we go again, or at least here we are. Whether it’s gay Antinous, Anthony, or just plain Tony Pitman and/or or the big world beyond his Reality Check sceptical purview, the fact is that serious, (as opposed to parlour game) astrology’s endless PR problems can be expected to meet us from every side. If people, and I mean especially media and publishing, don’t like astrology, end of story. Here’s one of the reasons I couldn’t even be bothered to expend the energy amid other concerns to forecast things I quite plainly saw coming. I am sure many other competent astrologers would tell you exactly the same thing.

SID ROTH: TRUTH AND ILLUSION

HOW WISE AND HELPFUL IS SID ROTH??

Whether or not Sid Roth will ever start growing younger as one of his guests prophesied he would, he is not the kind of person in imminent danger of growing wiser with age. In fact, he risks increasingly making a fool of himself and the eager flock that follows him; and if it weren’t quite so sad and serious, in some instances it might be almost amusing.

I am not about to say, (as some keen to trash American media religion would doubtless wish), that everything that has reached Sid Roth’s It’s Supernatural, show is nonsense to be dismissed and avoided. At least some of the themes and guests have given real grounds for reflection and the books of two persons interviewed I have recently cited in something I am writing. But two recent broadcasts epitomized for me the negative side of Roth’s quest for “the naturally supernatural” and left me appalled. Plus it’s just hard to excuse Roth too easily in light of correspondence and testimonies I have been receiving.

Way back in September ’08 I put out two Blog articles about false prophets and prophecy. For some reason, presumably linked to the dearth of critical treatment of the theme on the Net, these articles have attracted more attention than others I felt were more important. I still regularly receive correspondence about them. I can’t and don’t publish most that gets sent (and obviously I don’t include those irate messages which tell me I’m blaspheming the Holy Spirit for even questioning their favourite prophets!) and some of the correspondence is anyway to me personally, not for Blog comments publication. But...I’m aware by now I’ve hit a raw nerve. There are people either personally suffering or seeing people and churches rent apart by some of the individuals put on a pedestal and uncritically accepted and promoted by media religionists such as Sid Roth though clearly “inwardly they are ravening wolves” as the gospels would tell us.

Of broadcasts which appalled me in recent weeks one featured a certain Katie Souza and another featured film maker, Darren Wilson, whose latest offering once again included something of his friend, the spiritual “equipper”, Jason Westerfield.

KATIE SOUZA: EX CAREER CRIMINAL ASCENDS TO HEAVEN AND BUSTS CLOUDS

Katie Souza got introduced by Sid as a virtual Bonnie from Bonnie and Clyde, a career criminal. There isn’t much this hyper-active, super-resourceful person hasn’t got up to and engaged in around Hollywood, from vehicle theft and gun shoot outs, to drug pushing and making – she set up her own factory to increase income. When finally caught and locked in the slammer for thirteen years reality suddenly hit and she turned to Jesus – again. (To gather from her site she had apparently been converted years before but let slip). We are supposed to be impressed by her story – Sid is overwhelmed as usual - a sort of grace abounding in the chief of sinners tale. But something doesn’t quite ring true, especially the way Jesus supposedly gets Katie out of prison real fast and even tells her the exact date of release in advance.

We no longer live in a Christian world that talks penance especially if we’re not Catholics, but if Souza was truly converted one feels that like "Son of Sam" Berkowitz who, though exorcized and converted, mindful of his crimes has refused to ask for parole, Souza might at least have taken her medicine and slowed down a little to examine herself. Did she stop to mourn the lives of those she may have ruined through especially her drug dealing? St Paul who called himself chief of sinners and least of the apostles for having persecuted the church, retired to the desert for years before emerging with his new message.

Souza hardly waits to take breath. She starts reading the Bible and rather more. Influenced by the controversial David Herzog, (another of Roth’s highly dubious favourites), she’s off like a shot on her spiritual motor cycle and working inside Herzog’s “glory cloud” to produce miracles on the quick rather than wait, as others might need to do, for years. She even has material out that Roth is happy to promote which supply you techniques to get what you want from God - fast. You ascend to heaven like Jacob on his ladder - did he do this when he saw the ladder? - and you sort things out at “throne room level” with God. You may be given a sword to cloud bust, demon dragon kill or whatever, but you’ll get what you and others want and need. Apparently the farmers of Oklahoma only had their harvest last year because Katie ascended and sorted the weather out with God, the angels and a sword. Oh how feeble of all the Christians and saints of history not to have got their God techniques sorted out!

Please note too – though the undiscerning Roth who these days feels the power of God in the studio almost at the drop of a hat, can’t – that the glory cloud talk is nonsense. There is none. The divine glory is God’s presence which is fire hidden by the cloud. One doesn’t “work” in or with any cloud like so many Christian magicians. Katie has (heretically) learned from Herzog that creation itself was somehow effected through the Glory and she has even decided that because Jesus looked to heaven at the feeding of the five thousand, it’s a sure thing he was drawing on the Cloud and we should do the same. I mean.....anyone can just read up on it all in her book and CD! One can also listen to her final benediction on the show and be blessed. “In Jesus name” may our finances be increased, may we be given our needs etc......There was no reference in conclusion that was not purely material. If God cares for our needs God cares for other things too, and any genuinely spiritual person will remember that.

DARREN WILSON WITH ANGELS, WITCHES AND JASON WESTERFIELD

Now back one show before Souza to young film maker, Darren Wilson’s latest offering, Furious Love though that requires I mention an earlier production. Wilson’s original investigation into charismatic miracles, Finger of God, also featured by Roth, had supposedly received some of its impulse from an odd angel who kept repeating, “Are you ready, are you ready, are you ready?”. (Weird angel that can’t say what he means!). Near the beginning there is a group of people under the Toronto Blessing aegis – a warning sign in itself for deception and charismatics become virtual witchcraft as it’s the Holy Ghost laughing, barking and roaring movement triggered by Howard Rodney Brown who threatened God with suicide if he didn’t come with suitable blessing and who actually calls himself “The Holy Ghost Bartender”. Heavenly manna appears and that trendiest of miracles, gold dust has arrived. This time in an odder than usual way. An elderly man is lying helplessly on the floor under the anointing with gold dust on his trouser crotch making it look as though he’s peed himself. With people peering at the man’s crotch because gold dust’s there we’re informed the Lord must have “a killer sense of humour”. Really?

Incidentally, Sid Roth just loves the gold dust and heavenly jewels miracles. Kathy Walters, one of his guests, keeps getting dusted, so much so that prophet Bob Jones (who takes friends to heaven just by holding their hands) has assured her “it’s God kissing you”. The craze for gold dust (what biblical prophets ever knew of it?) started with the late half-crazed (or possessed?) Ruth Ward Heflin, Herzog’s guru, who was so eccentric she believed if she could dance in jet airliner toilets over certain areas of the world that helped to insure revivals in those areas!

Wilson’s latest film thankfully doesn’t include gold-drenched Kathy (who once told Sid the angels invite her to ride in chariots around the universe – as her natural Christian “inheritance”!) but early on, and then by way of grand finale, it shows (teleporting, astral travelling) Jason Westerfield’s supposed miracles. No, it’s not one of his visits to the White House and other centres of power to overhear high level meetings, but involves Jason almost forcing himself in a park upon someone with crutches whose limp, injuries or whatever, Jason heals. True, it’s done in Jesus’ name, but the recipient of healing never gets beyond being puzzled and declaring, “It’s cool”. Something doesn’t feel spiritual about the episode. It’s not exactly the Book of Acts on film with the power of God being experienced by the one healed, it’s more an episode in the general feel good ambience that Westerfield’s showbiz background easily conveys. The film concludes with a street drifter being pepped up and cured of a limp and back aches by a friendly JW. Again the event feels unspiritual, almost staged, (though I’m not charging Wilson with that).

To gather from clip of the latest film, Westerfield features again and oddly so in a way that should send out danger signals. For this docu Wilson’s group seeks to “confront” the dark side and the occult - they want exorcisms presumably. They travel to Salem to a witches’ meet. Nothing happens despite prayers all day – they probably don’t hear because they shouldn’t be where they are or doing what they’re doing. But suddenly Westerfield is moved. He approaches a witch, a black male, puts his hands on his shoulders and stares at him and just loves him and loves him in Jesus’ name. The warlock stares back slowly lowering his hood. Jesus has apparently loved the witch “furiously” and successfully. Job done, point made.

But what point? There’s a similarity here to the situation described in a controversial Jesus novel I once reviewed in which Jesus doesn’t really drive out any demons. He so intensely loves them they get uneasy with his love vibe and depart. It was an idea I wrote at the time was interesting and imaginative but which I couldn’t accept. Which I can’t. It isn’t what Jesus’ war upon the other realm is about. It suggests a forgiveness for the evil spirits which is not divinely permitted to them in the way it can be to mortals.

It’s not clear to me quite what Westerfield is about (some of my correspondents would say money – he lives in some luxury - others can only see a saint). He appears loosely affiliated with the New Mystics line in prophets. Chief spokesperson for this trend/group is the unspeakable John Crowder of the Drunken Glory Tours and Sloshfests. He converted to Jesus during an LSD trip and seems to imagine one can “toke the Ghost”, (pretend smoke or inject the Holy Spirit like the latest drug of your fancy). I can’t be bothered to decide where Jason W belongs on any New Mystics spectrum because wherever it is I don’t regard him from his odd conversion story onwards - he originally knows nothing about Christianity but some being/angel? visits his room so he starts reading up on scriptures – as representing any adequate form of religion.

JW is regarded by charismatics a la Roth and Patricia King of Xtreme Prophetic (who helped launch the disgraced and disgraceful Todd Bentley onto the world) as an exciting channel for wonders and spirit force and the mentioned clip looked to me like a lower spirit force recognizing a higher one. Which isn’t the same as to say it was necessarily God. Otherwise surely the hoped for exorcism would have taken place. And exorcism can only in rare instances take place without consent of the possessed. So, if the witch didn’t want his familiar spirit(s) to leave, what is all this about?

There are simply too many questions here and all I can say is I feel Wilson and Roth have no business to let this kind of thing so un-discerningly through, promoting it as though it’s somehow either notably supernatural or Christian. The Roth promotion is always that if someone is “walking in the supernatural”, producing healing (whether medically attested or not), it simply has to be good. And followers will assure any critics that it’s nothing but jealousy, faithlessness or demonic opposition if you question things. (Love of Truth is not a possible motivation, it seems!) But I insist if Roth and Wilson can manage to accept some of the evidence they do (even if mixed with good evidence) then they risk becoming like those who offer “strange fire” mixed with the offering in the book of Numbers (Num 3:4) or even the absurd Pentecostals of Kenya who welcomed Benjamin Creme’s Maitreya as a visitation of Jesus. See my February Blog article “How Real is Maitreya?”

SID ROTH’S TRICKY STARS

When in doubt blame others. Despite his evident hunger for the magical, Roth is on something like his moral high horse if anything like a borderline subject, say, astrology, is mentioned. It’s occult! It’s forbidden! It’s divination! It’s evil! This, despite the fact astrologers came to Jesus’ birth, the Essenes sought signs of the Messiah in the skies and the Talmudic rabbis had plenty to say about the astrology that was never understood to fall under the “divination” rubric that American fundamentalism has invented for it and pursued with its usual fanaticism. But then of course, wicked astrology can supply disagreeably awkward facts.

Number one for Sid Roth is that the conjunct Sun, Mars and Mercury of this typically communicating, media-savvy Gemini (born 30.5.1936 according to Wikipedia) are under what is called direct square “affliction” from Neptune - text book stuff giving a strong warning that Roth risks being either himself subject to, or else conveying to others, a degree of illusion. Belonging to the aspect is all his too frequent “sensing God’s presence” or angel presences in the studio and all the concomitant wiping the floor to people with some kind of “power” but too many personal and financial ambitions beyond it that bear no kind of connection with traditional prophecy.

Real prophecy if anything is more involved with abuse, failure and rejection. One doubts that Jeremiah would easily get into Roth’s studio (or many another religious programme). These days with media religionists few can get an honest word in. I am only writing this article publicly because I can’t write a message privately and hope to have a meaningful response or trigger any conversation. It’s just not the way big religious concerns in media or publishing function today. If God sent a message from heaven tonight, it would be largely blocked by the manipulative, very worldly American religious system drunk on celebrity names, money deals and agency (what’s your church? who’s recommending you? who’s your agent? what’s your CV?) and which even often has the insolence to request positive feedback only to websites or 100 word messages to fit office convenience. Many have the minds, in short, of what St Paul called “men pleasers” (Eph 6:6). Accordingly if anyone is offended or embarrassed by such as myself being public in open letter style it’s not my responsibility. It’s the fault of the system which American religion creates, then bows to.

SID ROTH’S INTERNATIONAL AMBITIONS

Sid Roth’s less than purely prophetic concern with miracles, healing and the supernatural appears to have an insufficiently examined basis in his Messianic (Christian) Jew desire to reach Jews. It’s an impulse that has heated up and increased recently, including controversially in Israel where rabbinic warnings have gone out against him, especially for the contents of a book, They Thought for Themselves, which Roth is trying to have distributed everywhere and appealing for funds to manage to do so. You can read a free version of the book on the Net. And it’s of genuine interest with perfectly fair comments from its contributors about Jewish backgrounds, rabbinical ideas and so on.

I am not seeking to oppose what it’s Roth’s perfect right to do, namely to try to teach and persuade others if he wishes or believes he should. Mission has always been a Christian imperative and Roth believes that years ago he was “told by God” to write and distribute the book. So, fair enough. But that was years ago and situations and persons change. Today, if what Roth once had was a genuine vocation it stands to be undermined by his current lack of discernment and possibly a touch of vanity or megalomania that by now seems to underlie the ambition to change a whole nation via media. And with gold-drenched Kathy diving under a table because she sees the archangel Michael turning up in Jerusalem to assure her Sid has a special mission for Israel, one ought to smell something more suspicious and less exquisite than the supposed heavenly aromas from the miracle worlds of Bob Jones and X-treme Patricia King.

For a start, Sid Roth believes he must produce or promote miracles because that’s what will, in St Paul’s words, “provoke the Jew to jealousy” (Rom 11:11) and belongs to the signs that Jews want 1 Cor 1:22). What’s getting overlooked amid this is that St Paul disapprovingly mentions that the Greeks demand wisdom and the Jews signs. Miracles are important, but belief is not meant to be founded on devastating people with the supernatural where they should be practicing faith. Jesus even tried to hide some of his miracles to avoid falsely based belief. Surely one of the reasons the Jews desire signs is because few people among traditionally religious peoples could be considered more sceptical and closer to sheer atheism than the Jews. If Sid Roth seriously imagines that the average Jew is going to listen to some of his supernaturalism as opposed to question or laugh at it, he is again seriously misled.

What Sid Roth’s change-through-miracles programme panders to is partly his own weakness for sheer magic, the same weakness that drew him years ago into the New Age and which he claims gave him the familiar spirit that finally so took over his life and terrified him that he converted to be rid of it. But the hunger for magic hasn’t disappeared and just possibly its spirit or spirits have not completely departed either – ironically one of the more solid personalities Roth has featured, exorcist Don Dickerman, controversially warned about instances of perfectly sincere believers remaining semi-possessed or at least obsessed by their original spirits. It’s hard not to believe the grosser errors of some prophetic stars of the charismatic heavens come under just this category especially when there are histories of long term prior involvements in drugs or occult practices. The Holy Spirit, if star performer charismatics really do have the Spirit, is a bit too near some other spirits for comfort.

SID ROTH: ALL THAT GLITTERS IS NOT GOLD

I can only say to Sid Roth and those who follow him, beware! Or at least start using some discrimination if you want to influence people meaningfully and with integrity. Christians are told “to try the spirits” (1 Joh 4:1). Roth and his team plainly like a good story, and it’s doubtful they’ve seriously done too much testing of the spirits if it interferes with headlines stuff. I realize the team says it does everything “under guidance of the Spirit”, but they need to remember that if you’re stubborn for your ideas you are warned that God will answer you according to your idols (Ezek 14:4) and the idols here risk being signs and wonders. And the extent of the wonders is no measure of their validity. The gospel warning against those who say “Lord, Lord” but don’t belong to the kingdom is nonetheless made against those claiming the extreme, to have prophecied, to have cast out demons and raised the very dead (Matt 7:21,22) and all in Christ’s name.

Despite all I’ve said, I believe that Sid Roth is basically well-intentioned and not a mere deliberate fraud, and I repeat that some insights can be drawn from some of the people and themes he has investigated. It’s just that for the kind of tricky areas he deals in, an area where truth can mix with illusion - and there’s no lie like a half truth - something more than just good intentions may be needed.

AFTERWORD ADDED FEBRUARY 2011

SID ROTH AND IT’S SUPERNATURAL THROUGH THE TOILET DOOR

For me the final straw with Sid Roth is the ridiculous promotion of “supernatural travel”, or transportation by another of these never to be trusted advocates of “The Glory”. Sid interviews a certain Bruce Allen (who looks a bit like Wikileaks’ Julian Assange) who has been “led” to promote this "mantle", the Christian’s inheritance of supernatural travel. Bruce learned of this when the Lord supposedly began cutting down his driving times across Washington State after he prayed over a car bonnet. It turns out that we all need to learn, and we all can if only we have faith, to travel and conveniently disappear or even go transparent as in a supposed photo of Bruce dematerialized during a church service. Jesus is now teaching this branch of the miraculous because when, soon, believers will be persecuted or the Mark of the Beast is imposed, they will need to have safe place getaways. Just walk through a supernatural portal into glory power - apparently it’s God’s own shield against your martyrdom! (Wasn't the most recent teaching that believers would be raptured before there was any Mark of the Beast?)

It gets worse. The travel idea came to Bruce from a friend telling him of a friend Richard who, to serve the Lord’s will in evangelism turned up at Kenya airport with no money or passport but knowing he must leave on a plane. God commands him to enter the third stall of the men’s toilet and to start praising the Lord. After five minutes (did occupants of the washroom hear all this praise?) he opens the lavatory door to find himself in France.

One wonders how Richard then managed if he didn’t speak French. Perhaps he spoke to the cyncial French in tongues?! But then how did he manage without cash, did it materialize like manna from heaven? How did Richard return? Even enthusiastic Sid asks that, but Foss lamely admits he didn’t ask his friend that. Didn’t ask that most essential obvious question? Didn’t ask lest the fantasy be blown away? It’s only the toilet connection remains to such tales. When Bruce himself starts travelling it’s to Sydney, Australia (he just knows that’s the place after shooting through the stars and passing through a door of light), but when he asks the Lord how to get back, God, who won’t let him see the Sydney he was so lifelong crazy to see, has to return through the bathroom door of the Sydney office high rise he’s in.

SID ROTH SHOULD AVOID BATHROOM ANGELS

I would advise the incorrigible Sid Roth to avoid all bath and restroom stories. This former New Ager who perhaps never quite got rid of his old gods and needs to have them washed out if not in a washroom, might as well belong to the god Pan for addiction to magic.

I recall how one of the modern doyennes of the occult centre of Findhorn worked her way and the organizations’ way to power via communications with Pan in the toilet. There’s nothing wrong with toilets except that they’re not kosher, they have been co-opted for the material realm. I have forgotten which guest it was some months back who mentioned but didn’t dwell on what struck me as a nonetheless bizarre point about angels who are so keen to accompany you around they are grinning at you in the bathroom or waiting at the toilet door as you exit. I suggest these aren’t angels. In the same way another guest, or perhaps it was the same one, had a tale about being in Mexico on a healing mission to a blind person and meeting a Jesus who got doubled over with helpless laughter. This wasn’t Jesus any more than the bathroom angels were angels. Nor is there real travel…just some psychic projection, if that.

Bruce promises to demonstrate his travel on this week’s show. Sid who can't wait to get moving admits he didn’t “travel” when Bruce seized his hand and concentrated on God and had found himself in some restaurant opposite where Sid had stayed in Jerusalem and perhaps sees or meets some waiter who works there. God has supposedly commissioned this bit of psychic trickery or just plain suggestibility to help the church. It’s all either illusion fit for party tricks or it’s demonic, one or the other, but it’s not of God.

I notice Sid began by saying he had been “freaking out” when he recently arrived in Mobile Alabama and was told at the hotel front desk he had been there in the same clothes saying the same things though Sid had never been to Mobile before. Of course it could be, and likely is, just mistaken identity; but if it truly is the spiritual phenomenon the would-be travelling Sid imagines, then he really had better start freaking out because the spirits are playing games and Lucifer is having the last laugh at quite so much undiscerning stupidity offered to the world in Christ’s name……for of course a “gift” of x dollars to have the latest book CD, course or whatever to get you travelling in the Glory. But of course if you suggested to these people that C.S. Lewis's Narnia which is reached through more enchanting doorways, was good reading for children they would protest you were as good as corrupting them with magic. The nonsense and the hypocrisy is almost more than sincerity and intelligence can stand.

ICELAND’S VOLCANO: ASTROLOGICAL SIGNS AND PROSPECTS

ICELAND’S ASTROLOGY

There’s not much doubt Iceland is in some trouble and has the capacity to be a source of trouble for the world. The heavens are speaking rather clearly on this one. I didn’t know Iceland’s horoscope and a pity not more of us did, as it might have given us some clues and warnings.

Modern Iceland, I gather, was sworn into being on 17th June 1944 at its capital. It’s a Gemini sun country (divided like the twins between fire and ice?) and of stunning mythical beauty too so that suitably enough dreamy, mythical, arty Neptune at 1 Libra conjuncts its ascendant (rising angle) at 2 of Libra, the beauty sign. Although the first house of a national chart has most to say about how the people regard themselves, this Neptune at 1 Libra also reflects the nation is in the middle of the seas like few places ever are and you travel far to reach it or to get away from it, a reason too, especially in a land so strongly secularist, that Iceland’s 9th house of religion, but also distance travel, is so strongly tenanted. You make virtual “pilgrimage” to Iceland which is what the early Irish monks did.

THE SOCIETY AND THE TERRAIN OF ICELAND EXPLODES

Iceland’s is a tough, harsh land to manage, so tough that Capricorn, "ruled" by harsh and demanding Saturn, is on the fourth sector of the native terrain. Uranus of the shocks and surprises is presently making affliction square to Iceland’s natal Saturn at 29 of Gemini and that is one of the immediate triggers, or just reflections, of what’s going on, along with transiting Saturn’s conjunction with the natal ascendant and Neptune (the people are affected, Neptunian floods are in evidence, huge ice blocks the size of houses are falling down the mountain), but it’s not all.

Transformative, volcanic Pluto has been crossing the base (IC) of the chart during the last year or so, opposing the native Midheaven (the destiny, the reputation, the government). That has had something to indicate as regards the debt, governmental problems and power struggles that have plagued the country in recent times.

But now Pluto’s movements are quite simply shaking and rocking the land itself. Pluto is presently at 5 Capricorn near the IC/Midheaven which is at 3 degrees. And perhaps that’s not good news since the question arises, will it do much or little and more or less on a social or physical plane when it actually hits that point again due to retrograde motion?

ASTEROIDS VULCANO, EUROPA AND LUCIFER

I’ve never used, tested or read about asteroid, Vulcano, but it looks to be part of the picture. Transiting Jupiter was conjuncting this asteroid (at nearly 19 Pisces in the natal 6th house) in the days leading up to and beginning the burst which really came out with the new moon last Wednnesday. Symbolically Jupiter is as hot as Saturn is cold, so this is like the warming up of the Volcano while it’s well known that at another octave Jupiter is anything to do with distance travel. Today (17th April) far travelling Jupiter is nearer to exactly afflicting the asteroid Europa at 21 Gemini (an air sign) reflecting the problems that specifically European airways are having through what has taken place and the disruptions to travel generally.

That despite its remoteness and small population Iceland has always had and might yet have, the capacity to impact the world in some way as it is now doing is conveyed by the fact that its Mars is on 15 Leo, a world point, and deemed the least fortunate of these six points amid its rather spectacular and dramatic (and fiery!) potential via Leo.

FUTURE PROSPECTS FOR ICELAND

I am not a forecaster of mundane (political/national astrology) so can’t and won’t be dogmatic but I have already indicated I am not too happy about what might happen when Pluto get to the 3 degree base of Iceland’s chart.

True, no one should put too much stress on a single aspect or transit even when it has the kind of strong potential that Plutonic transits regularly demonstrate. What is concerning is that in July/August when Pluto is hovering around that danger point there will be more of the same as regards the positions of Saturn (first squaring the 29 degree Gemini almost 0 Cancer Saturn -. another world point degree) and then square the natal Neptune.

And this will be happening at the same time as accident prone, shocking Uranus gets onto 0 Aries, another of the world points to oppose the natal Neptune and square the natal Saturn). Will Iceland and the world undergo more and in terms of volcanic eruptions rather than just economic and political issues? It’s certainly possible. And let me not be superstitious, but we are talking about a country which though irreligious is known for widespread belief in local devils....I know that asteroid, Lucifer, is an important asteroid - it certainly has its role in the chart of Christ I always claim to possess (see last December’s article) – and the fact is that Iceland shows Lucifer on the 0 Aries, world point. Could it be that with Uranus on his point this year proverbially “all hell will break loose” where the landscape of Iceland is concerned?

.....You can always pray not! But it looks like it might be wise to take a few precautions inside Iceland and to be prepared for some dust and ashes and perhaps travel delays outside it.(I would particularly distrust the period around the full moon of August 10th which is exact square the natal moon). Whether more radically what is happening and may yet occur will finish by altering whole weather patterns as intense volcanic activity has the capacity to do, I wouldn’t choose to speculate.

(A periodic apparent retrograde of Mercury starting Sunday 18th, a period which regularly corresponds to problems with communications, general transport and schedules seems consistent with emerging reports that the volcano is not immediately abating and hence plane schedules could be disrupted for some days. They probably by now would be even if the volcano completely subsided very shortly).

OBAMA AND JERUSALEM ON HIS MIND

OBAMA: FROM SPIRITUALITY TO POLITICAL POLICY.

Whether or not Obama will be falling backwards like the Eli of my last article, I am now going to make some biblical points about Barack Obama, his ideas and policies. I am however less sure about comparisons with specific biblical persons such as I made with regard to the Pope and Eli. Nor am I quite so sure as some people that Obama is in some kind of immediate danger.

According to a Malaysian correspondent of mine last year and now according to the often correct Richard Nolle in America and apparently too certain Hindu astrologers, somebody else who might be falling backwards or just falling in some way is Barack Obama. He is supposed to need extra security later this month and in May.

I don’t know how these people can be so confident of a correct chart in terms of time and place to begin offering these forecasts, but from just the pattern of the birth's date I could never be too confident of Obama the man, starting with the afflicted, deception prone Sun/Neptune aspect. Ideally no strong, really trustworthy world leader should have it, nor, among other things, such as the dangerous Lie asteroid conjunct his sun. This even lends some weight to those negative psychological assessments which speak of narcissistic problems (and, yes, Narcissus does conjunct Obama’s Saturn, the problems planet, as though to register a problem along these lines – and if President Sarkosy of France now thinks Obama is a bit “aliene”, a bit mad, then he may actually be so!).

But I am not about to join silly choruses that make out President Obama to be the Antichrist or claim that everything he does is wrong. Doubtless he’s sometimes right. But although if I were an American I would reckon to vote Democrat and also support moves towards the universal health care I consider any country should have, I could never have brought myself to vote for Obama. I don’t believe he is who he appears to be; a master showman, I think he’s inexperienced, shady and even dangerous for international politics, not least Israel which plainly he doesn’t like.

No matter what he says in order to keep some sections of the public happy, there’s no way it is possible Obama could begin to like Israel and it's beginning seriously to show through. Even if he believes he has reasons to disapprove Israel on some points at this time, something is wrong when the same man unwilling to bow at Buckingham Palace but prepared to bow to the King of Saudi Arabia (usually symbolically taken as having implications for submission to Islam )is prepared via a nobody to admit Israel’s President through a side door of the White House only, to a waiting room rather than the Oval office, and all without the ceremony normally accorded even to minor nations, and then leave his guest sitting in limbo while he arrives very late at his convenience. This kind of theatrical arrogance towards specifically and uniquely Israel belongs somewhere with the world view of Rev Jeremiah Wright whose church Obama attended for years. There Judaism could be dismissed as “gutter religion” or words to that effect – the precise beliefs and words are disputed, but not the basic anti-Semitism. I am not about to make Obama out to be the Bible’s Haman (an early type of the anti-Semite from the story of Esther) but spiritually and otherwise I believe he’s still bad news for Israel, religion and the world beyond it.

OBAMA AND THE CALL OF THE MUEZZIN

This last Easter Obama’s Easter address took a decidedly multi-faith line - or some might say un-faith line since he wanted it to embrace people of no faith too. And doubtless one part of him does like to be and seem infinitely open and accepting just as his always peculiar sense of what’s honest has caused him to affirm to the world, what isn’t strictly the case, that America “isn’t a Christian nation”. True it may not be a “good” Christian nation and obviously many minorities aren’t Christian, but the fact is that the nation is predominantly Christian and it’s to manufacture truth to propose otherwise. What personal or political motive would Obama have to maintain otherwise? Perhaps plenty.

While it’s doubtful that as critics and enemies have maintained, Obama is outright a Muslim, (even if in his Barry Soetero childhood in Indonesia he was registered as such) there’s little doubt that despite the occasional (politically required?) church attendance his affinities, sympathies, and also hopes for political appeasement lie principally with Islam and its nations. In real terms, Obama may be more like a universalist Sufi, Theosophist or Unitarian (he has anyway said all faiths lead to the same place) but his real and deepest feeling is for the path of Islam whose exclusivism he chooses to ignore.

A YouTube feature devoted to proving Obama Muslim shows him making the slip, “my Muslim, I mean Christian faith” and declaring the prettiest sound in the world to be the muezzin call to prayer, and that the Koran, which he always carefully refers to as “the Holy Koran”, is a repository of wisdom, a book “revealed” etc. It’s a reverence for the scripture which looks to be signaled by the perfect easy trine in his birth chart from religion sign, Sagittarius, to Obama’s independent Uranus of the asteroid, Koranna (It’s an asteroid I’m still trying to decide about – originally asteroids got registered in feminine form). As in Obama’s Egyptian speech in praise of all things Islamic last year, you can’t help feeling it is less conviction than hurt pride and outraged narcissism in relation to his heritage that is fuelling his assertions. Like people who want to believe themselves aristocrats, really, Obama couldn’t have less than the best when it comes to religion and culture to back him.

OBAMA’S PRIDE OF WHICH PATRIA

Obama’s Kenyan relatives are all Muslims and at his birth Kenya conjuncts Patria (homeland), a strong hint that even if Obama was not born in Kenya (as he denies but some maintain - the Kenyan Press once supposedly referred to “our Kenyan born Obama”) certainly his truest affinities all lie there and that includes with the Islam of which he imbibed plenty while at school in Indonesia where he even won a prize for Islamic knowledge.

In parenthesis on this issue of origins, one gathers a case regarding his eligibility for presidency is posted for June 3rd - though one can imagine it won’t happen – as there’s the additional problem one can’t be born of dual nationality and run America and it appears Obama’s father was registered as a British citizen. I note that astrology’s Father asteroid (Abbe) in Obama’s natus directly opposes his Jupiter (register of truth and also anything foreign) a hint that again something is “wrong” or unclear around his origins. It’s not fashionable or just not reassuring to allow that Obama’s background might be the subject of lies and any major deception – Democrats who wanted him in obviously won’t hear of it and most of all the rest don’t want to realize they could have been gypped in a truly unprecedented way by an actor who likes to play big parts on an international stage - and yes, this theatrical Leo has Actor trine his Mercury. Watch his words, watch his mouth!

So…the birther case is liable to be dismissed as right wing rumour mill and resentment. Which it doubtless sometimes is, but one would still prefer to see cooler attitudes and more stringent policies prevail towards this whole subject. Whatever Obama’s true origins, I see no reason why he should ever have refused (and been allowed to refuse) to produce his original birth certificate – a record of live birth is not the same thing and it could be fiddled. If it would keep a restless section of the public quiet, why not produce it rather than pour money into legal fees putting stops to inquiries and cases around this vexed issue of a candidate’s background? Is transparency too much to ask?

……No matter the truth about Obama’s biography, I feel the case for his ongoing Muslim affinities is now sufficiently made and is rather bolstered by the way in which as soon as Obama has been finally released to international affairs from health care battles, first in line of fire has been Israel whose position on Jerusalem is getting challenged. And it’s being so basically in harmony with (mostly late developed) Muslim notions about possession of that city. Whether you agree with that particular claim or not, the fact is that now Palestinians, encouraged by Obama’s position, have been making stronger demands than previously about terms for peace talks and have been difficult this last Passover about the Temple area. Israel’s Netanyahu insists that Jerusalem is “not a settlement” and that is true enough because even if you don’t accept what looks like Israel’s rather obvious historic claim to the city, it’s quite normal for territory won in war, especially war in self-defence, to be retained.

If the nations of the world won’t and can’t accept that in Israel’s case, then they are making an idealistic exception they don’t reckon to apply elsewhere and the Palestinians, even if one concedes something to their complaints, are not by any standards good losers in the war game. If they are not, that’s at least partly involved with the fact that engages the religious issue the liberal west doesn’t care to admit or believe, namely that there is an assumption that wherever Muslims have once held land they should retain that land. It’s a claim or assumption that goes rather beyond the somewhat similar but obviously more long standing Jewish claim to Jerusalem. (If you don’t believe any real religious conflict is involved, and it’s nothing but a human rights thing, then perhaps you had better read the understandably recently best selling Son of Hamas).

In connection to these claims and by way of introduction to the next observations, let’s note this most peculiar and striking of points. In the foundation chart of modern Israel, the asteroid, Jerusalem (at 3 of fixed Taurus, the eternity sign, is contested by being in the 7th house of open enemies, but is conjunct of all things, The Part of Bequest. Bequest is how it and for that matter Israel more generally is biblically regarded, as a place and land to which the Children of Israel are more the guardians under God than the owners in the usual sense.

OBAMA AND JERUSALEM THE BURDENSOME STONE

With so much complexity of opinion and human inflexibility involved, this is perhaps why, and prophetically too, the Bible’s book of Zechariah looks towards a time when specifically Jerusalem will become a “burdensome stone” for all the nations of the world which will eventually come against it. Israel’s battle for Jerusalem is perceived as ultimately a spiritual one because God’s “Name” (the Temple was originally called the Temple of the Name, Ha-Shem) dwells in Jerusalem forever making it the most sacred place on earth. The Satan is seen as challenging this and in Zechariah’s vision, the Lord says “The Lord rebuke you O Satan, the Lord who has chosen Jerusalem” (Zech 3:2).

Oddly, unfortunately, or however one sees it, it tends to be mostly rather noisy and sometimes merely fanatical evangelical Christians who know or emphasize this theme since Catholics read the Bible but little while even modern Judaism has become Torah orientated at the expense of even the prophets. This notwithstanding, the Jerusalem tradition is biblically so strong it would probably be more protested by Jews and Christians if it were more known and accepted. In fact, and rather incongruously, even Jerusalem’s Temple Mount area is currently under Muslim supervision to which it was accorded by the (secular) Israeli government almost as soon as Jerusalem was re-taken after millennia in 1967.

I am always claiming that with overwhelming proofs (see last December’s article on Broadcasting and Censoring the Bethlehem Star)I possess the true data for Christ’s birth, and certainly this same data dramatically reflects the just mentioned Jerusalem issue. On the chart’s world point (15 of royal Leo) there is Shaim (variant of Shem, the Name of God). Beside it at 16 degrees is Jerusalem, and beside Jerusalem at 17 degrees (conjunctions are very pro or con something) is Lucifer, placed there rather as in Zechariah’s vision challenging "the Name" and the Jerusalem where the Name stands for all peoples of the world (Shaim on the world point). Then in exact affliction aspect to Jerusalem is the asteroid, Stone, reflective of the prophecy of Jerusalem becoming “the burdensome stone” that Jerusalem will become to the nations of the world.

Jerusalem’s 16 degrees of Leo is plainly what astrologers call a sensitive degree of the kind that carries across centuries. 16 Leo is the position of Saturn, traditional symbol of restrictions and of any weight and whatever falls, in the birth chart of modern Israel. This Saturn is a linked, alternative way of symbolizing the ongoing Jerusalem problem which is all of a dramatic, mega-sized Leo one. And into this great potential for material and spiritual problems comes the fantasist Leo leader, Barack Obama, formerly Barry Soetero, that star performer ready to take on any part or sign to any name (as said, Actor trines his writing and speaking Mercury exactly!).

SHADES OF LUCIFERIAN POLICY?

Barack Hussein Obama’s Leo sun is at 13 Leo and conjuncting it on that degree is asteroid Lucifer while at nearly the 15 degree world point he has the dangerous asteroid, Lie. Well, we do all have to have Lucifer and Lie somewhere in our natus and let’s not speculate on how much Obama may have been pulling the wool over the eyes of Americans on some things! But even being as generous as possible, we can’t quite ignore Obama’s Lie is close to the sensitive Shaim/Shem of Christ’s data. Even this we might ignore if the dangerous potential were not backed up by the distinctly noticeable close opposition of Obama’s natal Jerusalem to his Pluto. And I don’t think there’s the slightest doubt that in Christ’s chart, in modern Israel’s chart, and even anyone’s chart, the highest octave meaning of Pluto is quite simply as symbol of God. So Jerusalem is especially where Obama faces divine issues.

From the biblical/prophetic standpoint, to tamper with Jerusalem can finish by doing Luciferian work which, with Lucifer conjunct his sun, Obama is perhaps more liable than some to do – though of course we all have Lucifer somewhere in our charts! – and which needless to say puts one in bad relation with the divine generally. Once again there’s a hint of just such a potential in Obama’s pattern through supplemenatiojn of the core message through the affliction square of his rebellious Uranus to Bhagwat (Hindu name of the personal side of ultimate deity little stressed in Hinduism) and the affliction square of his Theotes (Godhead) to his natal Venus.

Even if you dismiss all of this, what can’t be dismissed is that currently the Obama policy, is very largely an appeasement, almost a flattery of some Muslim nations (who don’t favour him due to his continuation of the Iraq and Afghanistan offensives), while it takes a firm line with Israel which he hopes makes up for what doesn’t please people elsewhere. This will do nothing and nobody any good and thinking Christians, who should perhaps never have voted for Obama in the first case (or in the case of Hillary Clinton consented to work for him as she is too compromised by it), ought to recognize that they are supporting a rather vainglorious individual who, if one could see behind the veil, can only help precipitate problems in the Middle East, encourage any “burdensome stone” scenarios and, however indirectly, take on God.

WHY POPE BENEDICT IS LIKE THE BIBLE’S FAILED PRIEST, ELI

THE POPE AND THE ELI CONNECTION

No one is using it, but there’s a clear biblical parallel against which to assess what is happening in and around current Vatican sex abuse scandals. This non use is testimony to the lack of spirituality in the relevant church circles and to biblical illiteracy in the world beyond the church. The situation contributes to the unbalanced, unhelpful judgements being made. According to these, either Pope and Vatican are virtual criminals, or the Pope and Vatican are being persecuted as virtual martyrs. Amid a situation of real crisis, it’s all nonsense, alarmingly and seriously so for religion and society alike.

The first book of Samuel (the second, third and fourth chapters) supplies us the story of the prophet Samuel’s mentor, Eli. The elderly Eli oversees the religious life of Israel because he is guardian of the Shiloh sanctuary which holds the Ark of the Covenant prior to the building of the Temple. In short, he’s the equivalent of the country’s Pope, at any rate he’s its religious leader. Eli is a good man who advises Hannah well and mentors Samuel well and he’s disposed to listen to God. He nevertheless has two worthless sons. They abuse the rites of the shrine priesthood ritually, and for years they take advantage of their position to have sex with any women who come to “the House of the Lord”. In short, the ritual and moral integrity of the religion is being abused at its centre and the rot is spreading. Being righteous, Eli rebukes his sons; he says he’s heard the bad report (i.e. complaints) about them. But he does nothing. It’s all talk. Basically he’s loyal to his sons against whom he takes no real action.

The matter goes on for years while Samuel grows up and finally a prophet arrives to declare doom against Eli and his house for its sins. Later Eli, now in his nineties, upon hearing the Ark has been captured and his sons killed, falls backwards from his seat in shock and dies.

The problem and the relevance is that, by normal standards, Eli is a spiritual enough, kindly old man, certainly not evil. Likewise, one could hardly read Ratzinger’s Jesus of Nazareth and consider the Pope unspiritual or evil. Yet Eli’s false loyalties and inaction were polluting the life of the national religion at its centre, and abusing the “human rights” of which there was little concept at the time. This could not be overlooked and the Lord intervenes. After all….The first commandment is to Love God, and the second is to love one’s neighbour as oneself. The same two principles are enunciated in different form when Jesus declares those who love family more than him cannot be his disciple (Matt 10:37). The message is clear enough to apply here. The loyalties of people who “love the church” its priesthood and its peculiar ways (highly secretive in the case of the Vatican) over and above God and human kind generally, aren’t worthy disciples; and even if they’re not bad they’re not good enough because their outlook engages idolatry and dulls compassion…..

BENEDICT’S VATICAN IS A HOUSE OF SHILOH

Defenders of the Pope insist he has acted, and more than his predecessor, against reports of abuse. Within limits this may actually be the case – when he assumed the papacy he did at least act against the long notorious Macial Marciel one of whose victims I knew in Mexico. But the bottom line is surely that the Irish bishops claim not to have gone to police about serious cases because they understood Benedict had meant they should not do so, albeit the Pope denies they were told this (it seems excommunication could follow upon breaking Vatican secret dealings with the pedophilia cases).

To whatever extent the Pope really has concretely taken action during the last decade undeniably he has more recently spoken, apologized and criticized. But again it’s not really near enough. It’s basically just words, just as Eli spoke to his sons, but inconsequentially. And if you are prepared to assume rather extreme titles like “Vicar of Christ on earth”,then you do need to live to rather high standards! Indeed, part of the problem is precisely that with the Papacy so highly placed and extremely described, many are unable or unwilling to admit that “the unfailing rock of the holy Church” as Cardinal Sodano’s Easter sermon had it, could do wrong and then the faithful become so emotionally invested in looking to their ‘Holy Father” any attack upon him is perceived as an attack upon all faith and even upon themselves, deeper moral issues regardless. And it's this idealized picture that Benedict consents to. It was noticed he smiled at the Cardinal's "rock of Peter" statements and after the sermon he embraced him.

In all recent declarations Pope Benedict has spoken chiefly from the standpoint of protecting his own interests, and that of others in high places and that of the Church's image (or at least the Papacy's), as a paragon. But the church, even at its best is still supposed to be a company of sinners and beyond the obvious need for purposes of healing to dismiss seriously erring bishops quickly, it would have been more appropriate to have made dramatic dedication of the Easter season to masses on behalf of victims, or to have declared a whole period of penitence for past mistakes. But no. The Pope has too many secondary loyalties including to the immediate circle of “Pope’s Men”, like Cardinal Dolan of New York who for Palm Sunday in St Patrick’s cathedral, and in words shockingly abusive of religious imagery and common sense, declared "a crown of thorns" is being daily placed on the Pope’s head. Really? (And a full congregation then gave Dolan a standing ovation for this. One wonders what religion some Catholics are following and imagine they understand). Good Friday's insanity, this time from inside St Peter’s, was talk that the Pope is being treated to something like “the more shameful excesses of anti-Semitism”, words from the Pontiff's Preacher from which even the Vatican has thankfully chosen to distance itself. None of these responses have affinity for any authentic Christianity, it’s more like religion as politics and in-house dealing.

Did any of these people read and absorb the serious cruelty and evil of the abuses in Ireland where children were starved, made to lick vomit off the floor by sadistic monks and nuns and do other things there’s no need to rehearse here? It’s as bad as if the Inquisition were still with us. And if it’s really true (as the dissident Swiss theologian, Hans Kung, alleges) that Ratzinger has to have been fully aware for the last twenty years of the abuse that has been going on, what can one say? Where is the prophetic outrage, where the deep moral concern, or just spontaneous human compassion? Instead there is, when not silence from the hierarchy, almost insolent responses like talk about heroically ignoring and in Christ’s service, “the chatter of dominant opinion”, or suggestions that abuse of the nature involved is a problem in the wider society too. As though the church didn’t have special responsibilities, AND as though the gospels, which don’t mention regular Vatican obsessions like homosexuality and abortion, didn’t appear to consider the abuse of the innocent (“these little ones”) to be one of the most heinous and damning crimes Matt 18:6).

Far from recognizing this rather vital point, the Pope is well known for reserving his stronger condemnations for precisely such as abortion and gay relations - indeed he believes good Catholics in privileged positions are even supposed to be willing to become modern martyrs in opposition to various gay rights seen as the downfall of civilization itself! And now the Vatican is protesting it is because of its stand on abortion and homosexuality that it is being attacked and Judas betrayed by the world over pedophilia!

This situation only makes some kind of mad sense in a church which is not listening to scripture and the prophetic tradition in any meaningful way but rather is still overly attached to “tradition” and with it natural law theories from medieval philosophers of the kind which made sodomy worse than rape because it was “natural”, i.e. produced fetuses. But ultimately, what we are hearing is the product of people and attitudes that “love the church”, its ways, its rituals, its organization first and who from their false loyalties keep things quiet, a situation liable to generate evil and prevent healing even while, technically, those involved cannot justly be called people of immoral lives or evil intent.

LIKE ELI,POPE BENEDICT WILL FALL BACKWARDS

Plainly the Vatican’s intention is to ride out the crisis, to brazen it out we might say if the Vatican was a secular institution. It will mostly continue to be silent or trade accusations. And the Pope, a head of state, won’t be resigning. While this policy may temporarily succeed it will not succeed in the long term because the issues at stake are by now too serious and the spiritual effects too strong – many will simply leave the church in anger and total disillusion as many have already done. Again, if only for the spiritual health of all concerned the mea culpas, at whatever cost, should have been attempted.

The issue of child abuse is one of the major secrets of deeds done in secret that as the gospels have it, were waiting “to be declared from the housetops”. It’s interesting that in the standard chart for the founding of the modern Vatican in 1929, Uranus, planet of shocks and surprises, is found in the sector of sex and secrets opposite the asteroid, CHILD! That Child is moreover in the sign of the laws, Libra, itself a promise that this will become a legal matter and a costly one (placed in the second house of resources). Last December’s eclipse in tension square to both CHILD and shocking Uranus promised that in 2010 the Vatican would no longer be able to hide from the extent of the pedophilia problem. But to some extent it will try, and is trying.

THE HEAVENS DECLARE: THE RATZINGER FINI MYSTERY

When crises of this magnitude break out, and in this case involving the very future of Christianity itself, normally one might expect – as the Pope doesn’t because he questionably believes all revelation ceased with Jesus - some prophet would make declaration in the way that happens in the story of Eli. But while no prophets have as yet arrived to declare anything, it’s possible we can and do already know something in relation to this embattled pontiff and his Vatican enclave.

There is a serious double mystery about Joseph Ratzinger and towards solving the mystery I can and wish at this stage to say no more than that I believe he represents the end of something. Hopefully he just marks the end of privileged Catholic cover-ups, but it may be more. The double mystery is this. First, there’s the simple fact - like it or not and believe it or not, and I realize the prophecy is much disputed - according to St Malachy’s Prophecy of the Popes, Ratzinger is the last Pope in power before the Antichrist. In which case, according to at least the forecasts of the late Catholic seeress, Jeane Dixon, he could even be assassinated because she alleged a vision of the assassination of whoever would be the last Pope. This was an event which back in the sixties she didn’t regard as too far off, though she supplied the disaster no date. There was at least an attempt on the Pope’s life last Christmas at the Christmas mass.

Second, I offer the following point, namely the three times repeated Ratzinger Fini mystery which could be connected with the foregoing. Yes, it could just be a coincidence, a fluke and no more, but anyway it’s this. I have long insisted I possess the Pentecost chart for the birth of Christianity in AD 30 and that it is highly descriptive for persons and events and works to this day. Its data includes an odd close conjunction of asteroids Ratzinger with Fini (Finished) in the shocks and surprises sign of Aquarius. While not in conjunction, the same two factors are in aspect at the birth of both Ratzinger and the modern Vatican (while in the latter, Ratzinger at 5 Leo is even conjunct, but perhaps too widely for real significance, with the Vatican's Part of the End of Things at 8 Leo). It is as though the heavens are warning he is in some sense a harbinger of the end, the one who finishes the religion in some way.

Whether or not Ratzinger really marks the end of the church as we know it, somehow I feel that, like Eli, there will be a day when he “falls backward” so to speak and it won’t be a good day for anyone.

Indeed, and ironically, even the radical atheist, Richard Dawkins, is now beginning to fret about the possible breakdown of Christianity given its potential to leave the world exposed to “worse”, by which he means the fanatics and bombers of another major faith. For myself, I am more interested in aspects of Obama’s role in world affairs and I do find some biblical connections here even though I can’t so easily define him as a player in events through biblical parallels as regards personalities like that for Pope Benedict with Eli. But this matter will be my next article soon.