Rollan's Censored Issues Blog

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.