"Would you tell the Dalai Lama to eat meat if you thought it was in his best interests"? It was an odd question, the one that you have to repeat back to the other person in order to wrap your head around it fully and also to buy time for an answer worthy of such tangential query. So I did. And once I did, the following words came out of my mouth; "Yes, I would." The querent seemed a little taken aback. I then followed up with, "I have no sacred cows." It was just seconds afterwards that I thought about the double meaning of my retort. The person that asked me that question was Johanna Demetrakas, director of "Crazy Wisdom" a film about the life of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. She a guest on my show on Friday. I think it perfectly illustrated something I had been thinking about for the past few weeks; The legacy of people with Uranus in Leo. Uranus was in Leo only seven years since the mid-1800’s, from June 1956 to August 1962 I'd been ruminating about this aspect in my work with a client where we are exploring a past life through astrology, a royal past life. She being Uranus in Leo as well, we talked about Uranus in Leo as royalty in exile--the true royalty. Demetrakas with Pluto in Leo demonstrated this dichotomy clearly. She was surprised that I didn't hold the Dalai Lama in the same reverent light as she did. Pluto in Leo has made more gurus and teachers wealthy than Pluto in Virgo/Libra/Scorpio combined. Go to the list of the 100 most spiritually influential people in the world and you'll see all the usual suspects, most with Pluto in Leo and if they didn't, like the DL (Pluto in Cancer), it was Pluto in Leo's purse strings and their unwavering belief that the spiritual teacher was an absolute that elevated and enriched them.
While Pluto in Leo were sunning themselves in Esalen, getting ready for the moment when the human potential movement became commercially viable under Reagan, the Uranus in Leo generation was getting restless, sucking up their fumes, getting their brains pounded by their rock gods and all that Tavistockian programming. They were like our older siblings and we did our very best to emulate them, but the three-chord redemption of Steve Jones and the bratty caterwaul of John Lydon changed all that (at least for me). Punk rock (still likely yet more Tavistock) was a generational fork in the road.
I went one way and the 60's and Pluto in Leo went the other. Its ironic that Joe Strummer (Pluto in Leo) left his old band, "The 101ers" for the Clash, fronted by three Uranus in Leo rebels. Joe knew where the bread was buttered.
NO SACRED COWS
Back in 2006, I was in a very elite space. I was sitting twenty-feet away from the Dalai Lama in a small chapel on the grounds of Stanford University, It was a spot on the pew reserved for big donors and friends of Google. I watched Orville Schell dialog with the DL and he asked him about US intervention in Iraq. What came out of his mouth shocked me. He essentially said that, "he believes in democracy and sees democracy taking shape now in the middle east." This coming from a man who saw the Chinese ransack the great monasteries and temples of Tibet while putting a boot to the throat of the people. How could he not see the parallel right in front of his face? History was repeating in an ongoing cycle hegemonic assertion, under some more noble and justifiable guise. Cow, meet blade.
From that point on, the DL's stays in the Bay Area were seen through quite a different lens. The endless motorcades, four-star-hotels, shutting down of whole city blocks became something of an obscenity in my mind. The specter of China ever returning Tibet to its rightful and sovereign status is nothing more than a few people making a couple of bucks off of t-shirts and bumper stickers. If anything, people should be engaged in a vigorous act of freeing the US from China. But Pluto in Leo are more than happy to have their spiritual kings and queens, their DL's, Eckhart Tolle's, Marianne Williamson's, Deepak Chopra's and Barbara Marx-Hubbard's, because they remind them of their own special place in the universe as children of the sun. But what have they done?
A quick look around doesn't give a great accounting for their tenure at the top of the social heap. Hilary Clinton cackles like a peroxide witch in the face sovereign states and their leaders such as Gaddafi or Assad. In Egypt they threw tomatoes, shoes, rocks, whatever they can get their hands on at her.
Countries are deeply in debt to fake money and the so-called progressive movement, descended from social justice, which descended from socialism via groups like SDS can't even muster much concern over three wars under their current leader (more about him later).
Pluto in Leo officially came into power with the arrival of Clinton (and yes, Bush was Pluto in Leo as well). We've been on a rapid descent downward ever since. Meanwhile we (Uranus in Leo) have been untangling the knots, working out the kinks and drying out from decades of decadence thanks to Neptune in Scorpio. Uranus in Aries is beginning to spark our natal Uranus and we are awakening to our potential. Our rebellion (detriment) is transforming into a lucid type of discipline. Our collective chrysalis is cracking and we don't deal in hierarchies. With Uranus, we are freedom loving to the core and omni-directional in our democratic virtues towards one-in-all. We're just coming online, mostly because we've been dealing with Pluto in Virgo and the vagaries of service. But our karmic debt is nearly paid off.
If and when the whole thing collapses (unless the real or fake aliens or the real or fake jesus come in and save the day) we'll be there with our Pluto in Virgo work boots and community organizing at a cosmic level.
I wish it didn't have to be this way. One of our own is in the oval office (theoretically). Joe Arapaio has invalidated the birth certificate, so we're not even sure if he's got Uranus in Leo or Virgo. But that's okay you had Clinton and Bush. At least we can see through the facade. You see, we were demoralized by Watergate. While for Pluto in Leo it vindicated their archetypal expression to kill (Pluto) the king (Leo) in Richard Nixon, for us it was confusing and dark. We were taught to love America. We said the pledge of allegiance everyday and then the father of our country scurried out of DC like a wet rat. That was your moment of victory--not ours. But it did something to us. It disabused us of the notion that politics mattered. Oh yeah, we had to work through decades of apathy, entropy and lethargy, but we've managed to re-kindle a spark. Our faith in the system hasn't been restored--perhaps it never will--but our faith in a deep and abiding light of the spirit in all and through all burns brighter with Uranus in Aries radiating a positive glow in our direction.
I realize that I might be preaching to a minority here, but there's nothing like a good manifesto. Our rebel souls have been tempered by the fires of life and now we humbly kneel before the one, true God in the 11th hour of the human spirit. And while we have our own particular niche, we are far from alone. With Regulus now in Virgo, the entire Pluto/Uranus in Virgo generation are waking up as well.
ADDENDUM. I have to admit, I wrote most of this post while "Excalibur was synchronistically playing in the background. I don't mean to demean any Pluto in Leo folks, many of whom read this blog and are very good and kind people, I am looking at this more from a cultural arc and collective manifestation. Not hating on the players and not even really the game, just indulging in some free-ranging, sacred-cow slaying. You/they also get the benefit of Uranus/Aries as well, so in the immortal words of one of you own, "We can all shine on, like the moon and the stars and the sun."
Last Thursday, on the 19th, I spoke with Jay Weidner and we touched on a number of topics including "The Dark Knight Rises," false flags and psychopathology as a virus. I replayed our Q and A the next day, the day that we now know as "Aurora." In some ways, our dialog was dancing at the edge of the event that would take place just mere hours after we would hang up. You can hear my interview with Jay and director, Johanna Demetrakas below.
