Astrology Watch: Cardinal Climax Today

Astrologers are anticipating today to herald the onset of one of the most stressful periods of the current century in a period extending to - yes - 2012.  Today is the so-called Cardinal Climax, in which forces of massive change confront those of crushing oppression.  The image above is taken from the What the Fuck's Going On blog, where Earl Nash reports: "This is the view of the planets from New York City on Aug. 1, at 6am. We have the most planets in the tightest alignments and at the supposedly 'sensitive' Zero degrees of Cardinal signs. It makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I looked at records going back to the 1800’s, and this is the most difficult alignment I found. When I was at a conference in Boston last month, someone said this was the most difficult alignment they have seen in the last "1,000 years." Another person told me this is the worst alignment in "10,000 years."

Cardinal Climax from Bangkok. Horauranian.com.

Nash continues: "this is the meanest, nastiest, most challenging and most transformational of any planetary phenomena in all of written history!"  Wow.  Google 'Cardinal Climax' and you find a host of people anticipating Total Global Meltdown, with most stating that it runs from 2008 to 2012. Okay.  So what is it?  Astrology Weekly states: "the outer planets will touch upon the early degrees of the cardinal signs of Aries, Libra and Capricorn, forming strong squares and oppositions that are sure to heighten world tension in the midst of the economic collapse."

Cardinal Climax Planetary Formation, according to Astroair Astrology.

Hubpages expands: "Just 2 years before the prophesied Mayan calendar end date of December 21, 2012, in the summer of 2010, 2 transpersonal planets, Uranus and Pluto, 2 social planets, Jupiter and Saturn, and 2 personal planets, the Sun and Mars, will confront each other upon the Cross of Matter in one of the most intense formations in all of astrology, often experienced only once in a human lifetime, a Grand Cardinal Cross. The waiting is over.... The Cardinal signs are the initiators of the zodiac, the outward, expressive thrust of energy in each of the four elements and seasons. Hence, Aries is cardinal fire and the spark of spring. Cancer is cardinal water and ignites the summer solstice. Libra is cardinal air and marks the autumn equinox. Capricorn is cardinal earth and initiates the dark season at the winter solstice. Since they rule the seasons, the alignment of many planets upon the Cardinal signs can literally change the face of the earth. We are about to embark on a time of dramatic change, mounting tension, and the aching pulse for a whole new paradigm of human existence. Do we have a map for the mystery? Are we in completely uncharted waters?"

According to Richard Tarnas, no we are not. "Especially problematic in such eras was the extreme intensification of both w[idespread] revolutionary ... upheaval and violent authoritarian repression in a tightly bound dialectic, mutually activating each other. ... The 1793-1796 combination of these three planetary forces gave birth to the Reign of Terror. Dictatorial "revolution" was assumed by the Committee of Public Safety, a term which foreshadows the current geopolitical Orwellian linguistics. This committee attempted to control the entire populace through fear mongering, pressuring neighbors and family members to inform on each other, rushing imprisonments, trials, and executions, and suppressing all women's societies, with their leaders imprisoned and guillotined. In response to this massive slaughter of the populace, the highly conservative Thermidorean Reaction took charge. This all sounds quite similar to the 2009 geopolitical rhetoric, especially in the United States.

The 1964-67 period included the outbreak and intensification of the Vietnam War along with urban riots in over 120 cities, the assassination of Malcolm X, and the stampeding repressive 'revolution' in China under Mao Tse Tung's Red Guards. All of these events led to the last years of the 60's, the psychedelic explosion of the flower power movement and Woodstock, and the further assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.

Within a month of 'the blackest day in stock market history, in October of 1929, Saturn, Uranus, and Pluto moved within one degree of an exact T-square formation, mirroring the 2010-11 angle of tension. This formation sets the stage for all the ensuing events of the 1930's, including the rise of dictatorial regimes, communist, nationalist, and other sociopolitical movements, labor unrest, and widespread immigration."

This time, the article continues, the United States is really going to get hit hard: "The cardinal climax will directly challenge the majority of the U.S. birthchart. For instance, between 2008-2022, the archetypal force of Pluto will dominate the U.S. populace in a cascade of intensifying experiences that will force a complete destruction and regeneration of the United States. In succession, beginnng in 2008, Pluto will oppose the U.S. Venus, Jupiter, Sun, and Mercury, in addition to squaring the U.S. Saturn and Chiron, all before climaxing in the country's Pluto return in 2022, a first in U.S. History. Stress, tension, and volatility are understatements in this scenario. Will the United States still be 'united' at this point? Will the U.S. dollar exist or signify anything? How will the citizens of the United States regenerate themselves and their country? Will there be a one-world government with one currency and what will the effect of this be? Will climate change and species depopulation force our consciousness to shift through global cataclysm? What new forms of art, what scientific discoveries, what emerging spiritualities will guide Gaia and her species through the pressures of her birth canal into self-aware, ascending beings participating in a unified, multidimensional consciousness?"

The Shifting Realities blog declares: "Power, and for that matter wealth, is concentrated in the hands of only a select few, whereas a disproportionally large percentage of humanity is disadvantaged and suffering under the extreme injustice and inequality that has also led our civilization to the brink of demise and decline now that we have to bear the consequences of politics of exploitation, dominion and exclusivity. This corrupt, failing system not only allowed world-wide crises to arise; it closed its eyes toward them. For reasons, which are obvious, change is inevitable – a balancing act in this regard has to take place.

Seen from an ever wider perspective, all of this is part of humanity’s transition between ages. The long-awaited Age of Aquarius is associated with the brotherhood of man and humankind’s journey in this sense is from the tribal to the global village; a world commune made possible on the principles of universalism and inclusivity and thus the sharing of higher, universal values as an outcome of evolution toward ever more inclusive forms or units , the very essence of the 500-year-long Neptune-Pluto cycles, the last one of which started in 1892. Since then, two political systems have emerged in opposite development to each other – capitalism and socialism, which led during the last half of the 20th century to the Cold War and at the time of the extraordinary planetary lineup in Capricorn in 1989 to the breakdown of the socialist system, especially after the introduction of “Glasnost” (openness) and PERESTROIKA, which literally means RESTRUCTURING.

At this time it is the capitalist system that starts to fall apart from within, while Uranus is on his way to the Aries Point, the alpha point in the zodiacal cycle. The slogan “change we can believe in” can become the mantra in the context of “change we can initiate” that could lead toward a new UTOPIA, a republic of the people and for the people, a true democracy. For this purpose, the ‘best’ of both systems has to be integrated into a new political system."

What?  I find the appeals to history to lend validity to all this astrological speculation fascinating.  What's really going on here?  And why do shrill appeals to the past 10,000 years begin with the French Revolution, and then quickly jump to the 1930s and 1968?  There's certainly an idea here that time works in huge cycles, propelled by Kepler-like heavenly spheres, which have mechanistic, archetypal and psychological meanings.  The wheel has turned and is about to drown us all in a sea of millennarianism, death and regeneration - oh, and it will especially if you're Aries, Cancer, Libra or Capricorn.  Mother Sky blog advises that when it comes to this sort of heavenly configuration, "there are no atheists in foxholes." 

All the same, it's funny that the more you read, the more you discover that there is a generational historical manifest destiny at work in these dire pronouncements.  Mother Sky, for example, sees this tumultuous aspect as the end result of you guessed it - the 1960s.  This is when new ideas of government will arise in the United States, finally maturing from their 1968 revolutionary roots into a new Hegelian-Marxian-Freudian synthesis.  Will the Frankfurt School never die?  Not in the world of Boomers it won't: "The heady revelations of the hippies and yippies will be ready for post-millennial application. The winsome flower-child vision will have developed into a set of responses –or reactions, depending on the level of consciousness involved — to the crises the globe is facing at present. To cite the most obvious example, the precedent of the Nixon presidency, a casualty of the massive social dissent accompanying the mid-60s transit, will find its First-Quarter parallel in the elections of November of 2008. ... Pluto will have entered Capricorn, an ingress about which so much has been written that I will only summarize some of the main points here. Pluto’s job will be to cull the dead wood from any and all institutions governed by Capricorn. As was the case with religion when Pluto was in Sagittarius, the ultimate point of this transit will be to revive an aspect of human experience that has developed pockets of unsustainable decay. Governments, corporations and all other patriarchal hierarchies will be assiduously screened by Pluto to ascertain their viability. Capricorn’s governance of governance suggests the exposure of corruption in persons and agencies that play the role of the authority figure, whether expressed on the family level (fathers), the village level (mayors, tribal elders), the company level (CEOs), the national level (presidents) or the deific level (patriarchal gods such as Allah, Yahweh and Jehovah). There may be a sea change in the global acceptance of women in positions of leadership as the paternal archetype is purged. The whole notion of federalism may be shaken to its very core, while regionalism and local authority begin a new ascendancy (clues of this trend are already in the air: consider the flurry of state challenges to Washington’s environmental policies, and the slow food movement’s emphasis on edibles being locally-grown)."

Suddenly, the pieces fall into place.  Knowing that a lot of this is about Baby Boomers needing to cap their ultimate potential with a final, celestial coup de grâce makes me feel that maybe the skies are not falling and things are much less dire than astrologers (Mayan or otherwise) predict.  Of course, it turns out that the Cardinal Climax is also about radically changing the concept of aging and death, just as our Boomer oracles are in the process of aging and dying: "We can expect the notion of physical death to shift dramatically when the Uranus square yanks Pluto into the 21st Century. Experimental life-extension technologies will very probably push and pull at mass assumptions about this most dreaded of human experiences, with existential quandaries and ethical questions coming along for the ride. The square will certainly jack up the tension that already exists in the human mind between the role of human intelligence (Uranus) and those Dark Mysteries which ordinary intelligence alone cannot fathom (Pluto). The secular societies of the West are not known for their acceptance of the role of mortality in the human condition; on the contrary, a fear-driven stagnation in the collective unconscious has stymied our understanding of death and shrouded the subject in denial."
 
This is the time when all those great ideas from the 1960s will finally bear fruit, and grassroots creative movements will emerge from below, clashing with the oppressive pressure of big governments, banks and corporations.  In other words, it'll be like 1968 all over again!  Except this time, it won't be a dress rehearsal.  The Cardinal Climax will also be about other hot-button Boomer issues, like Peak Oil and recycling.  It is amazing how, over the past forty years, the Boomer grasp of politics, philosophy and theory have created a self-enclosed, bubble-like view of human history.  Now, that view is looking to cosmic signs for its final legitimacy.

Good Heavens!  Maybe the Cardinal Climax will actually be about the implosion of Mass Egotism?  Maybe the planets have finally aligned, not to vindicate Baby Boomers' vision of the world, but to sweep it irretrievably away?  Maybe 2012 is not about the end of the world, but about the end of Flower Power?  So here's a question.  What does Generation X think of all this?  It looks like there are atheists in foxholes, after all.  Over at Rational Responders, we get an initial idea of the general attitude.  They are busy crushing various 2012 theories.  Take one forum thread entitled, "Nibiru Planet X 2012 bullshit": "That website contains all kinds of information on stupid irrational claims. My friend emailed this to me, I had to tell someone cause this is some major bs. Apparently [i]t's all based on some lady Nancy Leiders' over active imagination. Lieder states that she was chosen to warn mankind about Planet X, which would sweep through the solar system in May 2003, causing a pole shift that would destroy most of humanity. The pole shift would apparently be caused by magnetic attraction between the earth's core and the magnetism of the passing planet. This magnetic disruption of the Earth's core and subsequent displacement of the crust of the Earth is said to correspond with the event Christians refer to as the biblical Armageddon.  Anyway since of ... course nothing happened in 2003[, they] pushed it to 2012 the end of the mayan calender, and now the hoax starts again. I guess people just really want there to be an end times, apocalypse, armageddon, ragnarok, etc etc."  Rational Responders has one whole forum devoted to 'Irrational Precepts,' also known as "[b]eliefs that are so irrational they need to be eradicated off the Earth."  Another forum thread weighs the relative virtues of epistemology and atheism.  And Universe Today adds: "Another voice against 2012 mania."

Gen X: Are you going to take the red pill, or the blue pill?

 
The lesson of the day, friends, is when you hear someone preaching the end of the world, it's best to read between the lines and figure out their view of themselves in relation to time and history.  It will give you a better idea of what they are really saying, no matter how the planets are aligned.