Astrology and the Election

Things are about to get weird.

I know what you’re thinking: things are already weird, Michael. But it’s about to get even weirder with the election. The heavens are declaring it.

On November 8th, Election Day here in the “land of democracy” [sic], we will see some significant portents as regards the positions of the planets and their relationship to one another.

First of all, it’s the day of a full lunar eclipse which will be visible in North America and will be fully visible in Washington, DC (which is significant) from roughly 3:00 – 6:00 a.m. Lunar eclipses typically act as release valves that loose the tension brought by a solar eclipse that typically anticipates it by two weeks. In this case we will have a partial solar eclipse on October 25th that will be visible in most of Europe (including Ukraine and eastern Russia) and the Middle East. That’s fun. Things may get very tense in that area of the world next week (not that they aren’t already—but just wait).

So that’s one thing.

In addition to this, the Sun and Mercury will be in an exact conjunction (meaning: at the same spot in the sky). Among other things, Mercury rules communication and acts as a triggering mechanism in astrological movements. This by itself is not necessarily a big deal. Mercury is not all that far from the Sun (it is the closest planet after all) so such a conjunction is not all that uncommon, this being the fourth such conjunction this year. The kicker is Uranus, which will be in exact conjunction to the Moon during this eclipse. This means that Sun-Mercury will be in exact opposition to Moon-Uranus. Uranus, which rules electronics, technology, and innovation, is also a bit of a loose cannon: you never know what it’s going to do, but you know it will do something. This is a real “expect the unexpected” deal, and, so, prediction becomes a bit of a challenge. As an aside, last year when Uranus was conjunct my Moon while Saturn squared it, I expected my aged mother, who suffers from advanced vascular dementia, to die (the Moon, among other things, represents the archetypal mother). She didn’t die, though she did get very ill. What happened, however, was that my wife developed rapid-onset uterine cancer, which we suspect was due to shedding from a v@xxed relative. My wife is healthy and cancer-free now, praise God. But I digress.

But wait, there’s more!

Not only will also this action be taking place in the sky, but Saturn also wants to play. Saturn, known as the Greater Malefic to the medieval astrologers, is the cosmic badass, the archetypal father and ruler of authority, structure, stability, and stuff like that. It often represents the father in the horoscope. So, anyway, Saturn will be in square (a ninety-degree angle) to both Sun-Mercury and Moon-Uranus, a configuration known as a T-square. (Another aside: my birth chart is just crummy with these things. I don’t recommend trying this at home.)

Oh, but that’s not weird enough. In addition, the Sun-Mercury conjunction will also be in exact conjunction to the fixed star Zubenelgenubi, one of the scales of justice in the sign of Libra (though some astrologers think of as one malevolent motherscratcher).

The take-home: though Uranus acts as a bit of a wildcard here, I can imagine there will be weird stuff happening with voting machines or even power outages (Uranus triggered by the energy of the Moon and Mercury), though I think Saturn will act as a check to this getting too out of hand. Does this mean State power will intervene? Or does it mean that tradition will prevail? Those are important questions, because I think this is precisely what is at stake in this election. Whatever the case, I think it is very possible there will probably be some potentially violent (and without a doubt emotional) protests or other kinds of (almost) spontaneous eruptions (definitely the right word) on November 8th. You probably don’t need astrology to predict that. But, because of Saturn’s role, I would guess that a conservative victory is coming. I could be wrong, of course, but that seems to be what the stars are saying.

One more thing.

November 8th is an important day on the liturgical calendar of the Eastern churches: The Feast of St. Michael the Archangel and All the Bodiless Powers of Heaven. THIS. IS. BIG. Valentin Tomberg calls St. Michael “the Archistrategist,” and even identifies Tuesday as the day of the week under his rulership and, in keeping with Hermetic tradition, associates him as the representative of the Sun. This gives me tremendous hope. But don’t kid yourself: we really are in a battle between good and evil. And St. Michael, Commander of the Heavenly Hosts, is on the job.

But things are still gonna get weird, at least for a little while.

Michael’s latest book is Sophia in Exile. He can be reached at director@thecenterforsophiologicalstudies.com See also The Center for Sophiological Studies' available courses. Also check out the latest volume of Jesus the Imagination: Flesh & Spirit. Twitter: @Sophiologist_

News from the Edge of the World

A few thoughts and observations, possibly related, but not by design.

Stella Matutina Farm

Last week our CSA ended for the year (CSA, for those of you who might not know, stands for “Community Supported Agriculture”). Our last shares included onions, celery, winter squash, arugula, garlic, and the remnant of our hot and sweet peppers. I haven’t calculated how much produce we sent out over our nineteen weeks of the CSA, but it is certainly in thousands and thousands of pounds. We fed thirty-three families over this time—clean, biodynamically-grown, nutrient-dense produce. Our garden is only about ¾ of an acre. That’s a lot of people (not including my own family) who can be fed from a relatively small amount of land.

We practice what used to be called “the French intensive method” for growing and also observe “no-dig” approaches to cultivation. We almost never use heavy machinery. This was the seventh year of farming at this location, and the fertility and health of the farm are astounding. We had very few problems with insects—almost none at all—though we did have some rabbits poaching a few vegetables. But the creation of a biodynamic farm is the creation of a synergistic relationship with nature. That’s a long way of saying the farm is starting to come into its maturity. The being of the farm has shown itself to us.

That reminds me: I think I may have seen the Great Pan in the woods just beyond the garden a few weeks ago.

With the coming of the Fall, the rhythm of the farm changes. We haven’t been doing much in the garden (outside of harvesting), though I do need to plant garlic pretty soon. Instead, our attention turns more to getting through winter. To this end, we brought our lambs to the butcher and will process our geese next week (and I do have some older laying hens—no longer laying all that much—who need to follow them pretty soon thereafter and be turned into stewing hens). Our steer will move along sometime in late winter. And did I mention deer season is coming up? We’re still milking our cow, Fiona, and we’ve been trying to put up some butter and cheeses and will continue to do so. I also have been curing some pork bellies, rendering beeswax, and making meads and metheglins. In fact, I have a metheglin working right now I’ve flavored with juniper berries and spruce twigs—should be ready for Christmas. In the basement we have baskets and boxes full of potatoes, sweet potatoes, red and yellow onions, and winter squash and still have to pull the rutabaga, arugula, kohlrabi, and collards from the garden; but they should all be able to last in their beds for a few more weeks. Then we’ll plant spinach in the hoop house. And I haven’t even mentioned cutting up some fallen trees in the woods for use in the wood stove next year.

The take-home: scarcity is a myth.

Oh yeah, I’m a scholar. I almost forgot.

I recently delivered a keynote address for the “Pavel Florensky for the Twenty-first Century” conference sponsored by The Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies at Cambridge University. The title of my talk was “The Colour Blue: On the Sophiology of Pavel Florensky” (note the British spelling!). I heard proceedings from the conference may be published in book form, but I haven’t heard anything about video of the talks being made available. Other speakers included my soul brothers John Milbank and Bruce Foltz. Many of my readers will be familiar with John, but, if you don’t know about Bruce, check out his very fine book The Noetics of Nature.

I will participating in a colloquium on The Brothers Karamazov in Washington, DC next month. This will happen right after the election. Last time I was in DC, it was for another colloquium just after Donald Trump’s inauguration. Women were still wearing their knitted “pussy hats.” I imagine this visit may be just as fun. Speaking of eye-rolling, I may do one touristy thing while I’m there: visit the Exorcist stairs!

In addition, I will also be giving a talk on Valentin Tomberg’s Meditations on the Tarot next month at the Detroit branch (though actually in Berkley) of The Theosophical Society on November 4th. Starts at 7:00.

Speaking of Meditations on the Tarot, Mike Sauter and I recently interviewed its English translator, astrosopher and spiritual researcher, Robert Powell about the book (and many other things) on The Regeneration Podcast, which you can listen to on Podbean, Podchaser, and Spotify or watch on YouTube. While you’re there, subscribe. We recently interviewed, among others, Dominic D’Souza, Mark Vernon, and Ronald Hutton--so check them out! Upcoming guests include David Bentley Hart, Jonathan Geltner (see below), and Matthew Milliner, whose Mother of the Lamb has just been published and is mandatory reading for anyone interested in Sophiology.

Oh...and I finally uploaded the video on my interview with biblical scholar and Methodist preacher Margaret Barker. which appeared in print in Jesus the Imagination, Volume 5: The Divine Feminine, to my YouTube channel.

Reading list: besides rereading Dostoevsky’s masterpiece, I have been reading Jonathan Geltner’s excellent Absolute Music. You should read it too. I also have a stack of books on Distributism, enclosure, agrarianism, and folk religion on hand as I plan on getting a book on these themes (and others) finished before the next CSA year gets into full swing in April.

If I do say so myself, I also wrote a lovely arrangement of (and departure from) Hubert Perry’s setting of Blake’s “And did those feet in ancient time (Jerusalem)” which I would love to record one of these days.

Plant your love and let it grow.

Michael’s latest book is Sophia in Exile. He can be reached at director@thecenterforsophiologicalstudies.com See also The Center for Sophiological Studies' available courses. Also check out the latest volume of Jesus the Imagination: Flesh & Spirit. Twitter: @Sophiologist_

Infanticide and Sophiology

In 2012, I was teaching a course in college writing, as I have done many, many times over my career as a professor, when a very interesting article made a few waves in the academic zeitgeist. It was short article—easy enough for students to read in about fifteen minutes—and an excellent subject for introducing students to rhetorical analysis. It was co-written by two philosophers teaching in Australia, apparently former students or colleagues of Peter Singer.

The thesis of Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva’s “After-Birth Abortion: Why Should the Baby Live?” is stated very plainly in the abstract: “what we call ‘after-birth abortion’ (killing a newborn) should be permissible in all the cases where abortion is, including cases where the newborn is not disabled.” You have to admire the clarity of expression here, despite the horror.

I have used this article in the classroom regularly ever since its appearance, but I’ve noticed a change in student reception over the years. In 2012, I would watch my students read the article in class and see their growing horror and outrage at what they were unpacking. They were offended and outraged, incredulous that any professor would propose such a thing. While I hated to be “that guy,” I told them to get used to it: not only would this idea become accepted over time, it would eventually be celebrated as a good. They thought I was being alarmist. However, that outrage and incredulity has subsided over time: now students barely bat an eye.

I mention this because recent bills introduced in California and Maryland are proposing that “perinatal deaths” of newborns not be investigated—a rhetorical move that some have interpreted as opening the door to the legalization of infanticide. As expected, various news outlets have pushed against the interpretation of the proposed laws, saying that the bills do not explicitly legalize infanticide and that “the term “perinatal death” in the bill is intended to mean the death of an infant caused by complications in pregnancy.” On the other hand, the term “perinatal” is very ambiguous and could mean any time from birth to even 28 days later or more.

This is how the rhetoric (read: propaganda) game works. Make things sound innocuous or vague enough to be accepted, dress them up in euphemisms and/or neologisms (like the nonsensical “after-birth abortion”) and incrementally and eventually the goal of popular acceptance will be achieved. This is how the engineering of consent works.

I have certainly received a good deal of scorn for being an opponent of abortion. I wasn’t always against it. But then I started to give it some thought. People years ago were fond of saying that they believed abortion was acceptable, but only until the fetus had achieved “viability,” which, at the time, meant about five months into gestation. I was okay with that (at the time), but then I thought: “what about four months, 29 days, and 23 hours gestation?” So where is the magic moment? It should be obvious: there isn’t one. I was forced to change my position. In The Submerged Reality I speak out against abortion culture, and one online reviewer assumed I have never consoled or listened to a grieving or traumatized woman post-abortion, as if I speak only from an ideological position and not an experiential one. Well, I have done precisely this—and more than a couple of times. I’m still in contact with one of the women, and she may be the most pro-life person I know. She feels the culture betrayed her by telling her it was an acceptable choice. She still bears the pain of her choice over thirty years later.

Of course, now many jurisdictions in the US allow abortion not only after five months, but through all nine months of pregnancy, even to birth. This has not been a slippery slope.

As a farmer and as a sophiologist, I am intimately aware of the delicate dance of life and death, and I don’t take either one of them lightly. I deal with life and death every day. This morning, for instance, I contemplated euthanizing one of our roosters. He seems to have injured one of his eyes recently and the other rooster (who lost an eye as a chick) has capitalized on this weakness and has been attacking the injured one. I didn’t kill him, choosing to wait and see how and if his injury heals. So, I’m not against killing, per se. But I am against killing vulnerable human beings, and I’m against infanticide.

Giubilini and Minerva know their neologism is sophistry, so they try to obfuscate behind arguments such as “the moral status of an infant is equivalent to that of a fetus”—a statement with which I am in total agreement—though they also argue that “neither can be considered a ‘person’ in a morally relevant sense” which is hogwash (and I’ve washed hogs, so I know what I’m talking about.) They try to justify their rhetorical sleight of hand, that what they say is not what they say:

“In spite of the oxymoron in the expression, we propose to call this practice ‘after-birth abortion’, rather than ‘infanticide’, to emphasise that the moral status of the individual killed is comparable with that of a fetus (on which ‘abortions’ in the traditional sense are performed) rather than to that of a child. Therefore, we claim that killing a newborn could be ethically permissible in all the circumstances where abortion would be. Such circumstances include cases where the newborn has the potential to have an (at least) acceptable life, but the well-being of the family is at risk. Accordingly, a second terminological specification is that we call such a practice ‘after-birth abortion’ rather than ‘euthanasia’ because the best interest of the one who dies is not necessarily the primary criterion for the choice, contrary to what happens in the case of euthanasia.”

My claim is that the use of the term “perinatal death” works in a disturbingly similar manner.

As anyone who ever studied Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex in high school or college would be aware, exposing an unwanted baby to the elements or the hunger of wild beasts was a standard and socially acceptable practice in the ancient world. Didn’t work out in the case of Oedipus though! The people living in the age of the “Greek miracle”—the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, the plays of Sophocles and Aeschylus, the poetry of Sappho, the art of Phidias, the rise of democracy, the wonder of the Parthenon—was also an age that didn’t think twice about the problematic morality of infanticide. It was a non-issue. This remarkably sophisticated culture gave no thought to the most vulnerable.

Our own culture is already mired and falling more deeply into this dynamic of a technologically sophisticated culture masking its own barbarity (and not only as regards to infanticide).

It was only with Christianity that this dynamic started to change, and in the Didache we read: “You shall not murder a child by abortion, nor kill a child at birth.” Seems pretty clear, but without the black magic of propaganda.

For the technologies so rife throughout our culture are indeed technologies of death, bent on the domination of Nature: mineral, plant, animal, and human. Call it “The New Black Magic.” As Valentin Tomberg once observed (and as Ioan Couliano later affirmed) what we find in technological and industrial science “is the continuation of the ceremonial magic of the humanism [of the Renaissance], stripped of its occult element.” Anyone who tells you otherwise is a liar.

Sophiology is the opposite of this dubious magic, as it affirms life and does not fear it.

Choose life.

Michael’s latest book is Sophia in Exile. He can be reached at director@thecenterforsophiologicalstudies.com See also The Center for Sophiological Studies' available courses. Also check out the latest volume of Jesus the Imagination: The Divine Feminine. There are also a few spots open in the Biodynamic Farming and Gardening as Christian Path course being offered at the end of April. See more here