Saturday, April 17, 2010

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).

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

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.

Sunday, April 4, 2010

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.