Economists
were invented to make astrologers look good.
— Source
unknown
On Thursday
the Sun in stately Capricorn (meets) with Pluto to deliver
the message that problems facing people around the world are
reaching a breaking point ... this is the time to lay the
groundwork for permanent solutions rather than quick fixes.
On Saturday the year ends on the same note as it began: this
is a time of personal and global challenge ... it is
comforting to know that the battle is being fought in upbeat
signs (Aries and Capricorn) that encourage constructive
solutions. This emphasis on positive change could be a key
to the problems the world faces today. The Capricorn Sun is
also a reminder to honor the past, while the Aries Moon
offers the courage to face the future.
—
Llewellyn's 2011 Daily Planetary Guide, week of Dec. 26
Throughout 2011, trying
to figure out what was going on, I read economic analysis and
watched economists on television. During the debt ceiling crisis, I
saw former Objectivist and former Federal Reserve chairman Alan
Greenspan on NBC's "Meet the Press," looking like a deer in the
headlights as he attempted to be reassuring about the debt ceiling
issue. "The United States can pay any debt it has because we can
always print money to do that. So there is zero probability of
default,"
he said.
Inflation as a
solution. Thanks, Alan.
Moving to the Left on
the same issue: I saw Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul "unabashed
defender of the welfare state" Krugman on ABC's "This Week," his
eyes flicking madly from side to side,
insisting that there's really no problem with trillion-dollar
deficits and "we shouldn't even be talking about spending cuts at
all right now."
So moving right along
to astrology...
I don't think that
planets influence anything; they aren't even located anymore where
they were when the zodiac was created 4,000 years ago. But, as
someone who perfectly fits the profile of an Aquarian with Moon in
Leo, Libra Rising (balanced between love of freedom and love of
drama), I sometimes wonder if perhaps the Creator finds it
convenient to allow the universe to set patterns so He doesn't have
to micro-manage everything.
I just happen to have
Llewellyn's 2011 Daily Planetary Guide, bought at
Salem's Pyramid Bookstore. Trying to get a sense of what's
occurring at the New Year, I copy its last week of 2011 for my
introduction here, and to check it out, I flip back to the front of
the 2011 book, to the overview predictions that didn't really click
with me until the year's events became obvious in hindsight.
"This will be quite a
year. With a series of major changes and upheavals ahead, both
personal and global changes are indicated ... huge financial and
social change, a big shift ... major (worldwide) showdowns between
the old establishment and a new world order."
Dismissing the New Age
conversations about the last year of the Mayan calendar, astrologer
Pam Ciampi writes "the world will still exist after 2012, but it
will be a different world."
My new 2012 Planetary
Guide predicts that this will be "a highly unstable year," though
this is not viewed as necessarily negative, moving us from "obeying
the rules and regulations to a no-limits, take-no-prisoners kind of
energy ... breaking down social/mental boundaries."
As an Aquarian, I find
nothing threatening in learning that when Mars passes into Aquarius
next December, there will be "new applications in the fields of
medicine" and technology in general. Llewellyn concludes that "this
could be a time that will bring the intense transformations we have
been through ... to a safe and holy ending."
No matter what you
think about astrology, I'll bet the above descriptions of the past
year and predictions for 2012 don't seem at odds with your own
experience and expectations. If astrologers were predicting a quiet,
uneventful year, you'd be right to scoff. The world has become a
revolutionary place, in all arenas — economic, political,
technological, social, cultural — and we all know that something is
going on that we haven't experienced before in our lifetimes.
We have various choices
on how to face this. The most traditional is to turn to our
religious faiths and pray. The least helpful is to escape into
whatever distracts from scary change, like drugs and television
reality shows. I have my own moments with chocolate, hammock time
and television dramas (best escape this year was Spielberg-produced
"Terra Nova," which takes us back to the time of the dinosaurs and
gives humanity a chance to do it all over and better).
But eventually I return
to facing reality and getting involved in events that might affect
the coming change, like the November election. As we deal with 2012,
it might help to think or at least pretend that the universe may
allow a safe and holy ending, if we all do our part to create it.
Q: Why did God create
economists?
A: In order to make
weather forecasters look good.
Q: Why did the
economist cross the road?
A: It was the chicken's
day off.